JOHANNESBURG: 20th July 2009

The academic research into the relationship between political party systems and the prospects of democratic consolidation has been greatly complicated by the prevailing authoritarian nature of many multi-party regimes in Africa as well as by the ethnic plurality of African societies. The differences between largely homogeneous national states, like Germany, and multi-ethnic and multilingual societies, such as South Africa, would, on the surface, suggest a greater feasibility of political consensus in the former and a lack thereof in the latter. The reality of an alternating two-party coalition framework in Germany and a dominant one-party system in South Africa, however, suggests that high ethnic fragmentation is not necessarily transformed into highly fragmented party systems. At the same time, it proves that a largely homogeneous society can be irrevocably split along party lines.

In the current South African context, this phenomenon can be attributed to the most frequent 'ethnic congress party' which is based on an ethnic elite coalition. Yet South Africa's transition from racial authoritarianism under apartheid towards inclusive democracy during the first half of the 1990s was managed by two dominant parties. These were the National Party, which had first won power in 1948 and had become the dominant party in the mid-1960s, and the African National Congress (ANC) which emerged as the largest movement in the black struggle for liberation. The first non-racial elections, held in April 1994, gave the ANC 62 percent of the vote and set the stage for a Government of National Unity that was to rule for five years under an interim constitution. In 1996, however, the NP left the GNU and went into parliamentary opposition, leaving the ANC atop a dominant-party regime that has endured through the elections of 1999, 2004, and 2009.

Unlike most political parties in the West, the ANC took power under conditions of universal suffrage and also at a time when the state had scarce resources to meet the demands of a needy and vocal electorate. Yet, during its first decade of electoral competition and governance, the ANC expanded its voter support over successive elections and has not lost ground to other South African political parties. How has it accomplished such a feat in light of its scarce resources when facing a universally enfranchised electorate? My answer to this is that voters who have been disaffected by the governing party, have been more likely not to vote, rather than to vote for an opposition party. In addition, as opposition parties are seen to be irrelevant, many new parties spring up as would-be-leaders become frustrated with the perceived ineffectual leadership of the existing parties. This phenomenon splits the opposition and gives the dominant ANC more power relative to many small parties.

The ANC's dominance has over the years prompted a debate around two main issues: first, the nature of democratic consolidation under a dominant party system; and, second, the role of opposition parties - in particular, their potential to hold the government accountable and their ability to eventually unseat the ANC. An analysis of opposition politics in South Africa is important - not only in determining their role in South Africa's dominant party system, but also as a means of comparison to opposition politics in other party systems. South Africa's democratic transition has generally been hailed as a successful example for transitions to democracy. An important question centres on the quality of democracy that has evolved over the years and to what extent opposition politics have contributed to the consolidation of democracy within the overwhelming dominance of the ANC. An issue often contested is whether the continued dominance of the ANC will not transform democracy into an elective dictatorship.

Unlike their counterparts in alternating party systems, opposition parties in South Africa are battling for survival which ultimately depends on how they choose to oppose the ANC. One cannot dodge the question of how effective the opposition is at the moment in holding the ANC government to account. Based on the answer, one can speculate about the conditions under which political accountability can work in South Africa. It has been argued that the current confrontational opposition to the ANC based on parliamentary portfolio committee oversight and questioning on has not yielded the desired results in bringing about more transparent governance and nor has it endeared the opposition parties to the majority of the electorate. More often than not valid criticism and questioning of the government’s policies and actions has led to accusations of non-conformism and racism and resulted in racial polarization of the fragile South African society. Similarly, it has been argued that the dominant party could be contained by the available range of vertical and horizontal restraints on state power, such as the independent judiciary, and various statutory bodies, such as the public protector and the auditor general. In my experience, overreliance of the opposition on these institutions has opened them to political assault such as the dissolution of the Scorpions.

If I may venture an analogy with Germany, I will quote an observation that looking back on more than fifty years of academic writing on the German party system reveals a never ending concern with crisis. In the 1950s (and ever since) the worried question was whether Bonn was, after all, doomed to become another ‘Weimar’. In the 1960s, ideological convergence of the large parties provoked concern about the ‘vanishing opposition’ and prompted criticisms about their lack of ideological distinctiveness. It was during the 1970s when some academics saw Germany on the path towards a one-party state or worried about ‘parties versus citizens’. At the very least, the verdict was that the party system suffered from a crisis of legitimacy. The success of the Greens in the 1980s provoked a new round of alarmed debates about a potential crisis of German parties and the party system. The successful extension of the West German party system to the East in the 1990s, however, proved the viability of German democracy in much the same way as the international community hailed the success of South Africa’s transition to democracy. All this may in the end be proof that comparisons of party systems, as unfavourable as they might appear at the moment, are merely a matter of perception.

Contact:
Dr Bonginkosi Buthelezi
082 516 0156