South Africa's One Party Government
Talks of its ANC's Party Splitting Question Democratic Credentials
Oct 13, 2008
While Americans remained mesmerized by the battle between the Republican and Democratic parties in the final weeks of this year’s presidential election, South Africa’s only significant political party, the African National Congress (ANC), has been sitting on the verge of a split. This would cause more profound change in the sub-Saharan country’s political landscape than the shifting of power from one party giant to another will ever bring about in the U.S.
ANC’s Troubled History
ANC first came to power in South Africa under the leadership of international icon Nelson Mandela. Mandela’s presidency signaled the end of the oppressive Apartheid regime, and the ANC government was celebrated as a democratic party of the people.
The celebration did not last for long, though. ANC was the only party with real political poise in the country, allowing it to stay in power no matter how unpopular its leaders were. Mandela’s successor, Thabo Mbeki, outraged HIV/AIDS activists and researchers worldwide by famously declaring, “A virus can cause a disease, and AIDS is not a disease, it is a syndrome.” Mbeki’s unwillingness to connect the HIV virus to the AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa is chronicled in the September 20, 2000 BBC article, “Mbeki digs in on Aids.”
This is one example of the increasing disconnect that many South Africans feel between themselves and their liberating party. Crime, poverty, disease, and outrage have all increased in recent years—on March 19, 2008, the Overseas Security Advisory Council reported that business robbery had escalated 29% from April to September 2007, and rapes averaged 150 a day—as more and more of the country’s residents realize their living conditions are not improving under their new government.
ANC’s Potential Split
On October 4, 2008, Robyn Dixon wrote the Los Angeles Times article, “South Africa ANC at brink of split.” The story developed two weeks after Thabo Mbeki was forced to resign as president. As Dixon reports, Mbeki was criticized for being “aloof and intolerant of criticism;” Jacob Zuma, ANC’s likely next president, had been under investigation by Mbeki for “corruption, fraud and racketeering charges.” As a result, bitter in-party fighting developed between Mbeki and Zuma supporters.
Mail and Guardian, South Africa’s most reliable national news source, published an anonymous article on October 12 titled “Defend our democracy, Lekota urges SA.” Mosiuoa Lekota is the former ANC chairperson talking the loudest about a party split.
The article nicely sums up the animosity between Zuma’s and Mbeki’s camps when it says, “Statements by certain ANC leaders calling for a solution to ANC president Jacob Zuma’s legal problems as well as threats to kill if he did not become the country’s president were strong indicators that the Constitution was no longer safe.” The article continues with Lekota saying, “The time to defend our democracy is now.”
ANC and Democracy
Ebrahim Harvey’s October 11 Mail and Guardian article "What breakaway party?” reminds readers, “With Lekota, Mbeki violated several provisions of the very Freedom Charter they now hold up as the gold standard of good comradely behavior.”
Dixon said in the October 4 Times article, “Many argue that the best thing for democracy in South Africa would be an ANC split.” It isn’t completely clear whom, if anyone, in South Africa’s existing government is acting in the interest of democracy.
So the definition of democracy itself is worth taking a look at. Merriam-Webster’s first entry reads: “1 a : a government by the people; especially: rule of the majority b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.”
There have not been any clear indicators that South Africa’s citizens feel represented by their government for some time. Americans often complain that in U.S. elections, they are just picking the lesser of two evils. But maybe a real choice between at least two parties, evil or not, is one step closer to a true democracy.
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