Hashemite's South African History/Politics Thread

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Before starting on this topic, here are stats about various topics which ought to speak for themselves:

South Africans (20+) with post Grade 12 (Matric) qualifications, 1996: 7.1%
South Africans (20+) with post Grade 12 (Matric) qualifications, 2011: 11.8%

Blacks with post Grade 12 (Matric) qualifications, 1996: 3.6%
Blacks with post Grade 12 (Matric) qualifications, 2011: 8.3%
Whites with post Grade 12 (Matric) qualifications, 1996: 26.8%
Whites with post Grade 12 (Matric) qualifications, 2011: 36.5%

South Africans (20+) with no schooling at all, 1996: 19.1%
South Africans (20+) with no schooling at all, 2011: 8.6%

Blacks with no schooling at all, 1996: 24%
Blacks with no schooling at all, 2011: 10.5%

Blacks (15+) with no education or highest level lower than G7/functional illiteracy, 1996: 40.5%
Blacks (15+) with no education or highest level lower than G7/functional illiteracy, 2011: 22.1%

Average annual household income of household head (blacks), 2011: R60,613 (US$6,856)
Average annual household income of household head (coloureds), 2011: R112,172 (US$12,687)
Average annual household income of household head (Indians/Asians), 2011: R251,241 (US$28,417)
Average annual household income of household head (whites), 2011: R365,134 (US$41,299)

Unemployment rate, 2011: 29.8% (expanded: 40%)
Unemployment rate (blacks), 2011: 35.6% (expanded: 46.3%)
Unemployment rate (coloureds), 2011: 22.3% (expanded: 31.5%)
Unemployment rate (Indians/Asians), 2011: 11.7% (expanded: 17.8%)
Unemployment rate (whites), 2011: 5.9% (expanded: 10.2%)

Formal dwellings, 1996: 65.1%
Formal dwellings, 2011: 77.6%

Informal dwellings (shacks, shantytowns), 1996: 16.2%
Informal dwellings (shacks, shantytowns), 2011: 13.6%

No access to piped water, 1996: 19.7%
No access to piped water, 2011: 8.8%

No flush toilets of any kind, 2001: 13.3%
No flush toilets of any kind, 2011: 5.2%

Electricity used for lighting, 1996: 58.2%
Electricity used for lighting, 2011: 84.7%

Household trash removed by local authority weekly, 1996: 52.1%
Household trash removed by local authority weekly, 2011: 62.1%

Households owning cellphone(s), 2001: 31.9%
Households owning cellphone(s), 2011: 88.9%

Households owning fridge(s), 2001: 49.9%
Households owning fridge(s), 2011: 68.4%

Source: http://www.statssa.gov.za/Publications/P03014/P030142011.pdf

Gini coefficient of income inequality (higher is more unequal), 1995: 56.59
Gini coefficient of income inequality (higher is more unequal), 2006: 67.4
Gini coefficient of income inequality (higher is more unequal), 2009: 63.14

Gini coefficient (whites), 2004: 36
Gini coefficient (blacks), 2004: 51

HIV prevalence (% of adult population), 2005: 21.5%
HIV prevalence (% of adult population), 2011: 17.8%

HDI, 1980: 0.56
HDI, 1995: 0.64
HDI, 2011: 0.62

Mean years of schooling (adults), 1985: 4.8
Mean years of schooling (adults), 1995: 8.2
Mean years of schooling (adults), 2011: 8.5 (US: 12.4)

GDP per capita OECD (US$), 1994: $5,606
GDP per capita OECD (US$), 2010: $10,498

General government gross debt IMF, 2000: 43.3%
General government gross debt IMF, 2008: 27.4%
General government gross debt IMF, 2012: 41.2%

Relative per capita personal incomes, % of white levels (blacks), 1993: 10.9%
Relative per capita personal incomes, % of white levels (blacks), 1995: 13.5%
Relative per capita personal incomes, % of white levels (blacks), 2000: 15.9%
Relative per capita personal incomes, % of white levels (blacks), 2008: 13%

% of population that is poor (under R3000 per capita/year), 1993: 40.6%
% of population that is poor (under R3000 per capita/year), 2003: 33.2%

Infant mortality (deaths/1000 births), 1990-1995: 50.6
Infant mortality (deaths/1000 births), 2005-2010: 54.8

Homicide rate (/100,000), 1995: 64.9
Homicide rate (/100,000), 2012: 31.8

EIU Democracy Index, 2011: 7.79 (flawed democracy)

Corruption Perceptions Index, 2012: 43, ranked 69 (declining)

Freedom of the Press (FH), 2012: 34 (0 is the freest), partly free
Freedom of the Press (FH), 2002: 0 (0 is the freest), free
Press Freedom Index, 2002: ranked 26
Press Freedom Index, 2012: ranked 42

Freedom in the World, 2013: 2 (political rights) 2 (civil liberties) - free
Freedom in the World, 2002: 1 (political rights) 2 (civil liberties) - free

Index of Economic Freedom/Heritage Foundation, 2013: 61.8 ('moderately free')

Random question to readers: should I start by doing the actual profiles of all political parties before doing further analysis of post-94?
Any other comments/questions/issues?

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Should I continue?

[RogueBeaver]

Absolutely!

[Zioneer]

Yes, please do. This is fascinating!

[Simfan34]

One particularly interesting factoid, to me, was that despite the perception of crime spiralling out of control, it seems that the homicide rate is half what it was at the end of minority rule.

[Platypus]

Infant morality?

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Please continue, this is a great read.

[Kitteh]

Your statistics are a good counter to the "South Africa is failed state/the next Zimbabwe/even worse than it was under apartheid!!!!111!" meme that seems to be prevalent among international observers.


Anyway, please continue.

[Velasco]

Yes, regardless how terrible the current version of the ANC is, the country is a regional power. The figures of inequality indexes intrigue me. Why this increase from 1995 to 2006?

[DC Al Fine]

Yes, regardless how terrible the current version of the ANC is, the country is a regional power. The figures of inequality indexes intrigue me. Why this increase from 1995 to 2006?

Lots of money flowing in after apartheid lifted= Opportunity for a few people to make a buck?

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Political Parties in South Africa

African National Congress (ANC) The ANC is South Africa’s dominant party in the country’s dominant-party system. Founded in 1912 (as the South African Native National Congress, SANNC), two years before the NP, it is one of the oldest political parties in Africa. One of the ANC’s founders and early leading figure was Sol Plaatje, a widely recognized black intellectual and luminary of early twentieth-century South Africa. From its foundations until the late 1940s, the ANC was a relatively minor player in the opposition to the whites-only regime. It was a predominantly middle-class and intellectual moderate movement, which sought to redress the black’s situation through civic means - including appealing to the colonial power, Britain.

In 1948, when the NP took power, the ANC’s leadership was ineffectual, passive and inactive. The ANC Youth League (ANCYL) - whose ranks included Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo (among others) - felt that the ANC’s old leaders were too complacent and attached to British ‘gentlemen politics’. In 1949, the younger generation defeated the ANC leadership at the party congress and adopted a markedly more radical and militant attitude against the NP regime including strikes and boycotts. However, until 1961, the ANC’s used peaceful means (civil disobedience) to the protest the regime, organizing boycotts or strikes - often alongside trade unions, Indian and coloured groups or the Communist Party.

The 1952 Defiance Campaign marked the ANC’s emergence as a major political force, but at the same time it also showed the futility of civil disobedience and mass protests in the face of NP intransigence as the state stuck to its policies and the campaign petered out. The Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, the first major incidence of state-sanctioned mass violence, led the ANC to the realization that there was no constitutional, non-violent path to change in South Africa. In 1961, Mandela created Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the ANC’s armed wing. The MK, from foreign bases in sympathetic states (such as Angola and Mozambique after 1976), launched attacks (bombings, assassinations, car bombings) against military, governmental or civilian (white) targets in South Africa.

The South African Communist Party (SACP), refounded in 1953 after the original Communist Party had been banned in 1950, became the ANC’s closest ally in the early 1950s and had a major influence on the ANC’s ideological direction. The SACP had first gained prominence during the Rand Rebellion (1922), when it had supported the labour demands of the white workers but rejected the racist backdrop to them. In the 1950s, the SACP successfully prodded the ANC towards a non-racial platform, which stipulated that all ethnic groups - including whites - had equal rights to the country, a position which alienated the more radical and nationalist ‘Africanist’ faction of the ANC. In 1955, the Congress Alliance - which brought together the ANC, the South African Indian Congress, the white anti-apartheid leftist Congress of Democrats and other organizations - adopted the Freedom Charter, which became the ANC’s purported ideological declaration. The Freedom Charter was a non-racial document which called for democracy (full voting rights for all races), human rights, labour rights but also supported land redistribution and the nationalization of mines and other industries.

The SACP’s influence within the ANC increased during the 1970s as the organization became increasingly dependent (for funding and weapons) on the support of the Soviet Union and other African communist/socialist liberation movements (FRELIMO, MPLA, SWAPO).

Despite NP propaganda which depicted the ANC as a communist terrorist organization which posed a serious threat to the government of ‘white South Africa’, the ANC in the 1970s and early 1980s was weakened and divided by the imprisonment or exile of many of its most prominent leaders. The MK’s armed campaign was foundering, as the state’s repression was taking its toll on the organization. However, the formation of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in the 1980s allowed for a rebirth of ANC militant action inside South Africa. Following the legalization of the ANC and SACP in February 1990, the MK ended its armed campaign in August 1990 and the ANC under Nelson Mandela (who replaced Oliver Tambo as ANC President in 1991) played the leading role in the  negotiations to end apartheid.

The modern ANC forms the core of the so-called ‘Tripartite alliance’ which currently governs South Africa. This three-party alliance includes the ANC, the SACP and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) - a confederation of predominantly black trade unions founded in 1985. The SACP has seats in the ANC’s governing body (the National Executive Council, NEC) and its members are placed on the ANC’s lists for general elections.

The ANC has been the dominant party in South Africa since 1994, always holding a three-fifths majority (and a two-thirds majority, with the ability to amend the constitution freely, between 2004 and 2009). It won 62.7% in 1994, 66.4% in 1999, 69.7% in 2004 and 65.9% in 2009 (the first time that the ANC lost votes).

The ANC must be understood as a factionalized and heterogeneous party rife with factionalism and internal squabbles. In many regards, this goes back to the days of apartheid, when the strains of exile, imprisonment or militant/military action in South Africa caused divisions within the party. Those who had stayed ‘behind’ and led direct actions (violent or nonviolent) against the regime at home chafed at the the autocratic and centralist style of the party’s exiled leadership. Among activists who stayed at home, organizing actions under the auspices of the UDF, there had been a strong tradition of bottom-up organization, open debate and discussion, consultation and consensual decision-making. They often resented the top-down and centralist leadership of the party’s exiled leaderships.

Since 1994, the ANC has had three presidents (and South Africa has had four). Nelson Mandela, the hero and icon of the struggle served as ANC President between 1991 and 1997, when he was succeeded by the Deputy President (of the ANC and South Africa), Thabo Mbeki, an English-educated technocrat who had been one of the ANC’s exiled cadres during apartheid. Under Mbeki’s controversial leadership, the old ANC traditions of open internal debate, consultation and consensual decision-making were lost and replaced by autocratic, top-down leadership in which those who questioned the ANC government’s behaviour or that of its leaders were crushed by the weight of the party machinery. The electoral system of closed-list proportional representation gives more powers to party leaderships, given that they are able to ‘make or break’ any incumbent parliamentarian’s future career by deciding to exclude him/her from the party’s list for the next elections.

Since Mbeki, the leader’s power over the party (and, by consequence, the legislature and executive)  has been strengthened. However, this has not changed the factional nature of the ANC. Mbeki, who will be described in more detail later, made lots of enemies within the ANC during his presidency and his autocratic style allowed diverse factions within the party to organize against him and deny him a third term as ANC President at the party’s 2007 National Conference in Polokwane. Jacob Zuma, who had served as Deputy President of the ANC and South Africa (until 2005), trounced Mbeki and his allies at the 2007 conference. Zuma, who has no formal education and stayed ‘inside’ the country under apartheid, is a more approachable and down-to-earth populist figure the elitist and aloof Mbeki could ever be; but he has proceeded to take control of the party machinery like Mbeki had before him. The Zumaist leadership of the ANC removed Mbeki from office as President of South Africa in 2008. In 2012, at the Mangaung National Conference, Zuma and his allies easily defeated Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, the candidate backed by the anti-Zuma factions.

Ideology has played a role in some of the ANC’s recent divisions, most recently at Polokwane in 2007. The ANC’s ideological and political direction since 1994 will be described in more detail later, but its shift from left-wing (socialist) economics towards neoliberal capitalism after 1994 has caused some strains within the governing alliance. The SACP and COSATU vocally criticized the ANC’s various economic policies but also opposed Mbeki on issues such as HIV/AIDS or Zimbabwe. In 2007, Zuma assembled a left-wing/populist coalition - backed by the SACP, COSATU and Julius Malema - the fiery left-wing former leader of the ANCYL - against Mbeki. In 2012, the SACP and COSATU backed Zuma (even though COSATU’s secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi has been a vocal critic of Zuma) though not as much for ideological reasons as opposition towards Motlanthe and his backers. The ANCYL, always a more radical and fiery faction within the broader ANC, became a hotbed of opposition to Jacob Zuma. The ANCYL’s former leader, Julius Malema, was expelled from the party (officially for inciting racial hatred and dividing the party but more because he had turned on Zuma) in 2011. With his fiery, radical and populist left-wing rhetoric (advocating nationalizing the mines and land reform a la Zimbabwe), he is very popular with the black youth. The ANC would be vulnerable to a strong challenge from a black left-wing party, which, like Malema, could organize and channel black anger towards the ANC’s failures since 1994.

However, most of the current internal divisions within the ANC are the result of personal animosities. Mbeki had managed to make a lot of enemies and alienate large swathes of the party’s rank-and-file, and even with the strong ideological undertones to the Mbeki-Zuma civil war between 2005 and 2008, much of that civil war was due to personal clashes. This was even more the case in 2012, when opposition to Zuma was united by little else than distaste for Zuma by ambitious politicos who felt sidelined within the party organization. Internal divisions within the modern ANC are a battle for the spoils of power and partaking in the lucrative system of government rather than any ideological or principled battle.

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In one of history’s ironic twists of fate, the NP (renamed New National Party in 1997) dissolved itself into the ANC in 2005. The NP’s last leader, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, is the current minister of tourism. After losing power in 1994 with no chance of regaining it, the NP - the dominant party since 1948 - found itself disoriented and unable to cope with being an opposition party. It waffled between frontal opposition to the ANC or cooperation with the ANC government, finally settling in favour of the latter. The ANC-NP merger certainly does appear quite contradictory given the party’s history, but by 2005 the hardliners had decamped and the NP had long since given up being an ethnic party. Already during the transition, the verligte leaders had been able to safeguard the interests of (predominantly white) capital and expand the ranks of the property-owning middle-classes to blacks. Unable to deal with the loss of power, the NP found the only way out of the hole and the only chance to share the spoils again: merging with the ANC. The merger aroused some opposition within the ANC, notably from the SACP (though mostly because it feared the NP was a Trojan Horse which would turn the ANC into a right-wing party); but Mbeki’s allies had actively supported a merger which went down on terms extremely favourable to the much stronger ANC.

In the absence of a credible and serious challenge to the ANC’s power, the party - which can still claim the mantle of national liberation and the legitimacy stemming from the fight against apartheid - will remain the dominant party in South African politics. The party retains very strong support from black voters - almost regardless of tribe, language or ethnicity. One of the ANC’s major successes in its history has been its ability to transcend tribal or ethnic boundaries within the larger black population - even as the NP tried to play on ethnicity to divide the black population. The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), the strongest black challenger to the ANC, failed to break its own ethnic Zulu boundaries and it has since been progressively crushed by the ANC. Jacob Zuma, who actively marketed himself as the “100% Zulu boy” and enjoys partaking in Zulu tribal customs, destroyed the IFP in KZN in 2009. While the ANC lost support nationally, the party gained nearly 16% in KZN. Outside the former KwaZulu homeland and Umtata (the former capital of Transkei), the ANC usually wins 85 to 95% of black votes. The party has not really needed to actively reach out to coloured, Indian and white voters given their small(er) demographic weight. It attracted about half of Indian voters in 1999 and 2004. The ANC made inroads with coloured  voters in 1999 and 2004; generally polling better with middle-class or rural coloureds. The ANC barely attracts more than 1 or 2% support from white voters.

Similarly, the ANC’s leadership is largely black. However, since 1994, some non-blacks have occupied fairly prominent (and sometimes powerful) positions within cabinet or the ANC leadership. Trevor Manuel, the long-standing finance minister between 1996 and 2009, is coloured. Essop Pahad, Mbeki’s right-hand man and chief enforcer, was Indian; as was Kader Asmal, a former education minister and ANC MP. Pravin Gordhan, the current finance minister, is also Indian. Derek Hanekom (former agriculture minister, current minister of science and technology), Barbara Hogan (a former health minister) and Andrew Feinstein (a former ANC MP turned ‘rogue’ by denouncing a major scandal in the 1990s) are white.

--If anyone wants me to include more stuff or cover some other things in these party profiles, let me know. I'll cover the ANC's ideology in the general analysis.

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Democratic Alliance (DA) The DA is South Africa’s official opposition. It took its current name in June 2000, but the DA can trace its roots to the white liberal anti-apartheid parties which formed the only parliamentary opposition to the NP’s apartheid policies. The first of these parties was the Progressive Party, whose sole MP between 1961 and 1974, Helen Suzman, was the only voice of dissent within the whites-only Parliament. After Suzman’s Progressive Party merged with Harry Schwarz’s Reform Party to become the Progressive Federal Party (PFP) in 1977, the white liberal movement garnered more support and formed the official opposition between 1977 and 1987. In 1988, following the PFP’s alliance with two NP dissidents (Denis Worall and Wynand Malan), it adopted the name Democratic Party (DP). Throughout its existence, the white liberal movement opposed apartheid policies and supported a negotiated settlement with blacks - some kind of power-sharing or consociational government with a bill of rights, decentralization, an independent judiciary and ‘one man-one vote’. It was also a strong supporter of free market economics, foreshadowing the NP’s later adoption of individualism and free market economics in the 1990s during the transition.

In the first free elections in 1994, the DP performed very poorly with 1.7% of the vote and 7 seats. It had won even less votes than it had in the last whites-only election in 1989, indicating that some of its past supporters had voted for de Klerk’s NP or another party. In 1994, the DP had been unable to move past its apartheid-era support base: affluent liberal English whites. Despite it holding only 7 seats - even less than Constand Viljoen’s Afrikaner conservative FF - it was able to become the most vocal and visible opposition to the young ANC government.

At the same time, the NP, which had won 82 seats in 1994, was clearly disoriented, hesitating between cooperation with the ANC in the government of national unity or cooperation with other parties (such as the DP) to oppose the ANC government. The question divided the party and eventually caused a major internal crisis in the NP. In June 1996, the hardliners (Delport, Kriel) and young conservatives (Marthinus van Schalkwyk) successfully pushed the NP out of the coalition government and into the opposition. In 1997, FW de Klerk, a key asset for the NP, resigned and was replaced as NP leader by Marthinus van Schalkwyk, a young lightweight. Van Schalkwyk had been able to play on verkramp fears about the rising influence and power of Roelf Meyer, the NP negotiator, inside the party after 1994. Meyer had been pushing for major renewal and change in the party, including actively seeking black leaders. For Van Schalkwyk, however, change did not go beyond adding ‘New’ in front of the NP’s name in 1998.

In the 1999 election, the NNP ran a confusing and unappealing campaign in which it painted itself as the ‘constructive opposition’ party which opposed the ANC’s failures but at the same time was reluctant to strongly oppose the ANC and insisted that it could deliver to voters by cooperating with the government. In stark contrast, Tony Leon’s DP ran a negative campaign with the slogan ‘Slaan terug’ (fight back). The DP’s platform painted a very bleak image of the ANC’s record in 1999: crumbling moral values and discipline, hundreds of thousands of rapes/murders, millions lost to corruption and 500k jobs lost. The DP targeted the gatvol (upset/angry)vote/‘angry white man’. The NNP hoped that its campaign would hold its 1994 white and coloured votes and appeal to black voters; it did neither - the party lost three-fourths of its 1994 support, winning only 6.9% and 28 seats. The DP won 9.6% and 38, forming the official opposition to the dominant ANC.

However, by insinuating that black ANC rule equalled chaos, incompetence and a collapsing society; the DP alienated black voters and opened itself to accusations of racism by ANC leaders. By 2000, the DP dropped the very right-wing and gatvol platform, but the accusation of racism stuck.

The DA was born in June 2000 from an alliance between the DP and the NNP, an alliance to “prevent a one-party state”. The DP had already been attracting NP dissidents for some time, and there has been pressure on both parties to cooperate in the white media. In 2000, the NNP chose cooperation with the DP against the ANC, in part to save its head in WC province and keep WC from falling to the ANC. For the DP, cooperation with the NNP allowed the party to focus its energies on the ANC. Merger allowed the new DA to win 22% of the vote in the 2000 local elections and a majority in Cape Town. However, both parties in the DA were suspicious of the other party’s motives. The NNP wanted to rebrand itself and download its debts onto the new party; the DP wanted the NNP’s coloured voters and the NNP’s old networks and infrastructure. Both Tony Leon and Marthinus van Schalkwyk were using one another to further their own partisan interests. It was a recipe for disaster, which ended with the NNP leaving the DA in November 2001. The NNP had come to the belated realization that it was not fit to be in opposition and, after that point; van Schalkwyk pursued a policy of rapprochement with the ANC. However, some Nats opposed van Schalkwyk’s strategy and opted to stay in the DA – among them Gerald Morkel, the Premier of the WC who became Mayor of Cape Town after the NNP quit the DA. Tertius Delport (the hardliner), Sheila Camerer (an Anglo verligte) and Kraai van Niekerk (former NP agriculture minister) all joined the DA.

To disentangle the NNP from the DA, the NNP and DA teamed up with the ANC to pass a ‘floor-crossing legislation’ which would allow legislators (elected by party-list PR) to cross the floor to join another party. This floor crossing legislation was a perversion of South Africa’s party-list PR system, given that legislators are elected on a partisan rather than individual basis. But the legislation was beneficial to the ANC, which was the main benefactor of floor crossing (from the NNP or small parties) – there were so many floor crossers from the DA to the NNP/NNP to the ANC in 2002 that the ANC gained a majority on Cape Town city council and toppled the DA mayor (Morkel).

The brief DP-NNP alliance further destroyed the NNP and allowed the DA to break through the wall and gain a significant share of the NNP’s coloured voters. In the runup to the 2004 campaign, the DA ran a slightly less ‘angry white man’ campaign, with a tamer slogan (South Africa deserves better) and a more social democratic orientation (supporting a basic income grant and free distribution of ARVs). It won 12.4% and 50 seats, solidifying itself as the main opposition to the ANC (the NNP won 1.7% of the vote after a campaign consisting of kissing the ANC’s posterior profusely) – especially in the WC where it won 27% to the ANC’s 45.3% and the NNP’s 10.9%. In coalition with the NNP, the ANC was finally able to take the premiership in the WC.

White and coloured voters by and large did not follow the NNP in merging with the ANC. In the 2006 locals, the DA increased its support to 16% and was able to narrowly reclaim power in Cape Town. In 2007, Tony Leon, the DA’s leader, stepped down and was replaced by Helen Zille, then-mayor of Cape Town. The DA, under Zille, tried to break with Leon’s more confrontational and controversial style and the rebranded itself with a new logo and ‘multi-racial’ identity.  In 2009, the DA won 16.7% and 67 seats and did particularly well in the WC where it increased its support by 24.4% to 51.5%. Helen Zille became Premier of the WC. In the 2011 local elections, the DA won 24% of the vote – a record high for a single opposition party since 1994.

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The DA’s ideology is fairly hard to pin down, given that it has often supported an eclectic mix of liberal and social democratic policies. It has been described both as centre-right and centre-left, the truth probably lies in the middle somewhere (or maybe closer to the centre-right). DA voters place crime and corruption as their top concerns, almost the reverse order as ANC voters who traditionally cite unemployment, social policies or other economic issues as their main concerns. The DA’s former leader, Tony Leon, controversially supported reintroducing the death penalty to deal with crime. Today, the DA’s platform does not make mention of it, instead talking about hiring more police officers (the DA wants up to 250,000 SAPS members) and various other vague things including a mix of rehabilitation and tougher sentencing laws.

The general orientation of the DA’s current economic and social policy is liberal (classical liberal, in the European sense) and generally right-of-centre. The DA’s platform says that their policies will “seek to give citizens control over their own lives, and not allow the state to dictate the course of their daily lives or the direction of their ambitions” and “expand choice, not contract it”. This is a clearly liberal-individualist direction in line with the party and its predecessors’ classical liberalism. At the same time, however, the platform also stresses that the state should not neglect those without the resources to “direct their own lives” – a slightly more social liberal stance. In practice, the DA’s economic and fiscal policy does not differ all that much from the ANC’s economic and fiscal policies since 1994. The main difference is that the ANC has retained an interventionist and social democratic approach, while the DA has criticized excessive state intervention and says that the state should ‘facilitate’ and not ‘direct’ the economy. Its healthcare policy, favouring a two-tiered system with a partnership between the public and the private system (the private healthcare system in South Africa is good but mainly serves rich – white – people), is quite right-wing. At the same time, its social policy is more interventionist – favouring expanding social grants for children or adults, and forcefully advocating for a ‘youth employment subsidy’ over the opposition of the ANC and COSATU.

In practice, however, the DA has tended to place emphasis on efficient ‘service delivery’ (one of the key failures of the ANC), change or searing criticism of ANC corruption and the erosion of the powers of independent institutions or parliament.

The DA does not have the shake off the ‘party of apartheid’ label, but the ANC has not hesitated to use the race card to counter the DA and keep blacks from ever voting from the DA. The ANC has often denounced the DA as a racist party, brushed off criticism of its record as the racist rantings of bitter whites and blamed shortcomings in its own actions on the damaging legacy of apartheid. In the days of the whites-only democracy, playing on latent racism in the white electorate was often a rather lucrative path for the parties. Since 1994, playing up on anti-racism and reminding black voters of apartheid has been quite lucrative for the ANC and damaging for any opposition party such as the DA.

The DA has struggled to shake off the ‘white party’ label which has stuck to it throughout its history. Since 2004, the DA has been trying to woo black voters to its fold. But it has discovered that consolidating its minority base while trying to win black votes at the same time is a very daunting challenge in modern South Africa. The two electorates which the DA is trying to bridge are on different pages. Black voters are cautiously optimistic about the future, and despite their disillusion with the promise of liberation, they are still ready to give the ANC another chance. And certainly almost no blacks long for the days before 1994. Black voters have also been instinctively suspicious of very harsh and negative criticism of the ANC’s record coming from a party labelled as the ‘whites’ party’. On the other hand, whites (but also coloureds and Indians) are very likely to be pessimistic about the country’s future, lamenting corruption, a weak economy and high criminality. With these voters, the DA’s focus on crime and corruption has struck a chord, while not as many black voters or ANC supporters care all that much about such issues. Between the white voters it has and the black voters it wants, there are two different social realities. Most whites lead a Western middle-class life unencumbered by making ends meet, finding food to feed their family or having a roof to sleep under. These are everyday problems for many black voters.

To make matters worse, at times, the DA has also done everything it could to deserve its reputation as a white party with its often patent inability to understand the black electorate.

Another factor which explains why the DA has not been able to shake off the ‘white party’ label is because there is some truth to that label. The party’s current leader is a white woman, who is undeniably a competent administrator but whose abrasive personality tends to be off-putting for black voters who would see her as an Afrikaner madam baas. Most of the party’s MPs are whites or coloured. Since 1994, the NP and now the DA have tried to wash off the damaging ‘white party’ label by seeking to recruit black members into the party and eagerly pushing their black members to the forefront in a rather crude attempt to play up its multi-racial credentials. The ‘white parties’ are often so pleased to have a black figure in the party that the new black member is touted as a talented rising star and rapidly propelled to impressive leadership positions within the party. Being black has certainly helped the political careers of many black DA politicians. However, given these parties’ heavily white or coloured membership base, the rapid accession of some black members embittered certain whites who wanted to make sure that the blacks didn’t get too powerful.

The black members whom the NP recruited in the 1990s all tended to be political opportunists (who decamped to the ANC at the first opportunity) or nobodies who turned out to be crooks.   In recent years, the DA has had a bit more luck at recruiting black members to the party. The party’s current parliamentary leader (the leader of the opposition), Lindiwe Mazibuko, is a 32-year old woman from KZN who defeated DA veteran Athol Trollip (an Anglo white) to become parliamentary leader in 2011. Unlike past black recruits who turned out to be disastrous embarrassments, Lindiwe Mazibuko has proven to be a very strong performer in the National Assembly and could actually be an actual rising star (and not a flash in the pan). She is not the only black figure actively pushed to the forefront by the DA. The DA’s national spokesperson, Mmusi Maimane (a 32-year old black man from Soweto) rose quickly within the party, becoming one of its top national figures a bit over a year after having been the DA’s mayoral candidate in Johannesburg in 2011.

The DA wins the bulk of its support from non-blacks: whites, coloureds and Indians. Since 1999, the DA has been able to consolidate white support to the point where it now enjoys near-unanimous support with white voters (around 85-95% in 2011), the only challenge on this front coming from the ever-smaller conservative FF+. The DA’s ability to win almost every white voter - English and Afrikaners alike - makes sense in the current context, but it remains a fairly remarkable achievement given how the linguistic cleavage had played a key role in the whites-only elections up until the very last one (in 1989). It has broken out of the PFP’s traditional base with urban/suburban affluent English liberals and attracted almost all whites, regardless of language, class or even ideology.

The DA has also fortified its hold on coloured voters since 2000-2001. In 1994, a solid majority of coloured voters voted for De Klerk’s NP, something which often appears contradictory given the NP’s past as the party which had oppressed coloureds and forcibly relocated many of them to slums. But at the same time, the coloureds in the Cape Province had been treated considerably better than blacks by the apartheid government, with job reservation for coloureds in most of the Cape Province. Many coloureds, who spoke Afrikaans as their mother tongue and had historically been more integrated with ‘white South Africa’ than blacks, also resented the ANC’s attempts to lump them together with the black majority - there exists a long history of mutual distrust between the two racial groups. The saying emerged that the coloureds were “too black under apartheid, too white after apartheid.” As the right-wing DP ate into the NP’s white vote bank, the coloureds became the NNP’s last solid electorate. However, the short-lived alliance with the NNP did allow the DA to finally breakthrough with coloured voters, though it came in stages. In 2004, the ANC evidently performed well with coloured voters, even in the WC. Many coloured voters were also attracted to the Independent Democrats (ID), a new anti-corruption party led by former PAC MP Patricia de Lille, a prominent whistleblower into corruption cases. The IDs won 1.7% nationally in 2004, taking over 7% in the WC and Northern Cape. By 2009, however, the DA started eating into the ID’s coloured electorate in Cape Town and the WC. In 2010, the IDs bowed to the pressure of bipolarization in South African politics and merged with the DA. Their emblematic leader, Patricia de Lille, became the DA mayor of Cape Town in 2011. In the 2011 local elections, the DA won roughly 70-85% of the urban coloured vote in Cape Town, and performed well with rural coloured voters in the WC but also NC and Eastern Cape.

The DA also wins a majority of the Indian vote, particularly outside Durban. The ANC does retain substantial support with Indian voters.

According to the DA’s analysis, the party took around 5-6% of the black vote in the 2011 local elections. Even in 2011, the party performed very poorly (1-2% on average) in the densely populated impoverished black townships - even black townships in Cape Town. Its black support must come from new middle-class blacks, many of whom live in increasingly multi-racial neighborhoods - such as Johannesburg’s upscale northern suburbs which now have a fairly substantial black minority. The DA claims that 20% of its voters are black, making it the most ‘diverse party in South Africa.’

[Hash]

Here's COPE

Congress of the People (COPE) COPE is the second largest opposition party in the National Assembly and forms the official opposition in the Eastern Cape, Northern Cape, Free State and North West provinces. Chances are that COPE will also be the latest flash in the pan, the upstart party which briefly disturbs South African politics before suffering a rapid descent into obscurity.

COPE’s creation can be traced back to the ANC’s 2007 National Conference in Polokwane, where Mbeki and his loyalists were soundly defeated by Jacob Zuma and his supporters. Polokwane was the culmination of a bitter civil war in the ANC which had begun in earnest in 2005; but Polokwane was not the end of all infighting in the ANC and in government between President Mbeki’s allies and those loyal to his former Deputy President. After Polokwane, Mbeki found himself thrust into a difficult and very precarious situation where he and his troops retained control of the national government (the Mbeki cabinet consisted mostly of his supporters) but their rivals held absolute control over the governing party, making him a lame-duck president who did not control his own party. The Zuma-led ANC quickly indicated that the government should heed the new partisan leadership or face dire consequences. The power struggle between the new pro-Zuma ANC leadership and incumbent pro-Mbeki incumbents continued, and spilled over to the provinces. In the WC, the pro-Mbeki Premier was recalled by the ANC leadership and replaced by a pro-Zuma opponent.

In September 2008, a court dismissed the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA)’s decision to recharge Zuma. In the ruling, the judge alleged that Mbeki had interfered in the court proceedings. The landmark decision triggered a coup against Mbeki. The ANC NEC voted to “recall” Mbeki, forcing him to resign the presidency only 9 days after the court ruling. His resignation was followed by that of his closest allies – right-hand man Essop Pahad, Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, and defense minister Mosiuoa ‘Terror’ Lekota.

Lekota, Mbeki’s loyal defense minister since 1999 and the ANC National Chairperson between 1997 and 2007 publicly criticized the decision to axe Mbeki. Lekota announced in early October 2008 that he was leaving the ANC to create a new party. He was joined a week later by Mbhazima Shilowa, the Premier of Gauteng, who had also backed Mbeki. Lekota and other close allies of the deposed President had denounced Zuma’s close alliance with the party’s populist left (SACP, COSATU, Malema’s ANCYL) and also criticized the increasingly racial and tribal character of the ANC under Zuma, who played up his Zulu identity and liked to sing controversial songs such as ‘Shoot the Boer’ (an anti-apartheid struggle song).

Lekota and Shilowa’s new party, COPE was launched in December 2008. The party purported to be moderate centrist alternative to the ANC, which they saw as being increasingly left-wing and populist. Its vague platform supports macroeconomic stability, job creation, reducing the role and influence of trade unions, community policing and socioeconomic equality – more or less the centrist agenda of Mbeki’s presidency. Like the DA, COPE supports the direct election of top officeholders (president, premiers, and mayors) and electoral reform (a dose of FPTP).

Somewhat disingenuously, COPE placed emphasis on democracy and fighting corruption – it decried the undemocratic nature of the NEC’s decision to topple Mbeki and made a big deal of Jacob Zuma’s persistent judicial troubles. Coming from the likes of Lekota or other embittered members of the deposed President’s old inner circle, this was quite rich. As National Chairperson, Lekota had rigorously enforced the party line and party loyalty within the ANC and offered full support to Mbeki’s autocratic leadership and his questionable policy decisions (on HIV/AIDS or Zimbabwe). As defense minister, Lekota had played a big role in covering up the huge arms deal in Parliament. Many of COPE’s members are tainted by their past as loyal Mbeki stalwarts and their criticism of corruption in the new Zuma-led ANC rang quite hollow. This is not to say, however, that the party has no ‘clean’ figures – Shilowa’s tenure as Premier of Gauteng was rather successful and he flouted Mbeki’s AIDS denialism.

The first signs of internal disunity in the new party came up in the run-up to the 2009 elections. COPE chose Mvume Dandala, a former Methodist bishop from the EC as its presidential candidate, apparently over Lekota’s opposition.  Nonetheless, COPE was rather successful in the 2009 election, considering how new it was. It won 7.4% and 30 seats, and managed to win seats in all 9 provincial legislatures (even becoming the second largest party in 4 of them). Its support was spread rather evenly throughout the country, with stronger support in the Eastern Cape and Northern Cape. Most of its votes came from predominantly black areas – especially more middle-class black areas – but it likely won some coloured support, particularly in Cape Town or the NC.

COPE’s leaders, on the losing end of the power struggle at Polokwane, agreed that they hated Zuma – but they soon found that they agreed on little else. The party more or less split before the 2011 local elections, with the Shilowa faction deciding that it would not contest the elections. The Lekota faction of COPE won only 2% of the vote. Lekota later expelled Shilowa from the party, citing an internal investigation which had found Shilowa guilty of mismanaging parliamentary funds. Shilowa opposed the expulsion, denying any wrongdoing, and took the matter to court (he lost).
The DA and other opposition parties had originally welcomed the creation of COPE and the DA hoped that COPE would siphon votes away from the ANC, and allow for the formation of DA-COPE coalitions (in those places where the ANC dropped below 50%). This was the DA’s objective, for example, in the 2011 local elections. While a few DA-COPE coalitions managed to wrestle control of some local councils away from the ANC, COPE’s utter weakness in 2011 meant that not few such coalitions actually materialized.

Since 2010-2011, COPE has been haemorrhaging support and leaders rapidly, crippled by the infighting. In the 2014 elections, COPE will likely be decimated – retaining at most a handful of seats and 1-3% of the vote. Like a few parties before it, COPE originally excited observers who were readily writing grand tales of the ANC’s impeding demise; but like those parties before it, COPE has turned out to be a flash in the pan, originally causing great excitement before rapidly falling back to obscurity.

---

No comments?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The DA is so tin-eared that it's funny.

[Hash]

Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) The IFP, a fixture of South African politics since the mid-1970s, has seen its influence diminished considerably since 1994 and especially in recent years. The IFP is a regional party and 90% of its votes in 2009 came from a single province, namely KZN.

The IFP was founded by Mangosothu Buthelezi, a Zulu tribal leader, in 1975. Buthelezi had been a member of the ANCYL in his youth and the IFP initially received the blessing and support of the ANC. However, by the late 1970s and early 1980s, as the situation in South Africa turned even more explosive and the ANC resorted to violence to render the apartheid state ‘ungovernable’, the IFP started clashing with the ANC and collaborating with the white regime. The ANC had long opposed tribalism and ethnicism, warning against the NP regime’s attempts to divide-and-conquer the black majority by fuelling animosities between the various ethno-linguistic groups (Zulus and Xhosas, for example). On the other hand, Buthelezi was a Zulu tribal leader who encouraged attempts to revive the traditional Zulu culture and preached respect for tribal traditions and the Zulu monarchy.

Relations between the ANC and IFP deteriorated rapidly after 1976, when Buthelezi became the chief minister of the autonomous KwaZulu homeland (he had been the administrator of a Zulu territorial authority since 1970). The ANC accused him of collaborating with the apartheid regime and shunned him. Indeed, by organizing on tribal grounds and endorsing federalism/self-determination for the various ethnic groups, Buthelezi was effectively playing the NP’s game. Buthelezi still tried to play to both sides – while partaking in the NP’s ‘separate development’ scheme and rejecting the armed struggle and international boycotts; he also rejected ‘independence’ for KwaZulu and gave his backing to various reformist initiatives (Mahlabatini Declaration of Faith with Harry Schwarz in 1974, rejected the president’s council opening, proposed consociational government).

Buthelezi felt increasingly insecure in the mid-1980s, as violence between the IFP and the ANC in KZN increased dramatically. As a homeland leader, he was effectively dependent on Pretoria for his homeland’s economy and his own personal security (naturally, he was more preoccupied with the latter). Buthelezi received covert, underhanded support from the regime – which wanted to use the IFP as a conservative black ally against the ‘communist terrorist’ ANC. In the mid to late 1980s and early 1990s, the IFP’s militias and hitsquads were trained by the SADF and received weapons and backing from the regime or, later, sections of the regime’s Byzantine security structure. The IFP played a huge role in the ‘black-on-black’ violence in KZN and the urbanized PWV in the transition era, partaking in several bloody massacres of black civilians and ANC sympathizers. In many of these cases, the IFP received underhand support from the regime or the security forces. The IFP and the ANC were locked into a bloody conflict for political control in KZN and the townships/migrant hostels of the PWV (Gauteng).

During the transition process, the IFP and Buthelezi were mainly interested by safeguarding their narrow ethnic and political interests. This involved a rejection of centralized government, and support for a federal regime. At first, the NP and the IFP enjoyed a fairly solid working relationship, as the NP was still trying to extract minority rights concessions from the ANC. However, when Roelf Meyer took over the NP’s negotiating team, relations between the government and the IFP quickly soured. The IFP felt betrayed by the NP and marginalized in the bilateral ANC-NP negotiation channels after CODESA II. They walked out of the multi-party forum, where the NP and ANC often teamed up to overrule the objections of the other parties. Buthelezi threatened to boycott the 1994 elections – hoping to sabotage the process. During this brief time period, the IFP found common ground with the white right/far-right, particularly the KP (which also rejected the process), and some homeland leaders (who feared their upcoming loss of power). At the last minute, the ANC agreed to recognize traditional leaders (such as Zulu monarch Goodwill Zwelethini kaBhekuzulu) and made gestures in favour of self-determination/decentralization. The IFP finally participated in the 1994 elections.

The IFP won 10.5% and 43 seats in 1994. The race was particularly contentious in KZN, the focal point for much of the IFP-ANC violence since the 1980s. Through vote rigging, the IFP was able to win the controversial poll with over 48.5% of the vote in KZN. On the provincial ballot, NP ticket-splitters allowed the IFP to win over 50%. The IFP joined Mandela’s coalition government and Buthelezi served as minister of home affairs, a position he held until the IFP finally quit the government in 2004.

The IFP’s support has been in steep decline since the first election. In 1999, the IFP won a bit over 40% of the vote in KZN, only narrowly retaining the premiership. Nationally, it won 8.6% and 34 seats. In 2004, the IFP won 7% nationally and 28 seats. In KZN, it won only 35% of the vote – over ten points behind the ANC which finally gained the premiership. The 2009 election was an unmitigated disaster for the IFP, winning only 4.6% nationally (18 seats) and 20.5% in KZN.

The IFP has never really had any ideology beyond an increasingly meaningless chauvinistic Zulu nationalism, and its main interest has always been the protection of the traditional Zulu identity and promoting Zulu ethnic interests. It has attempted to reinvent itself into a non-tribal federalist party, supporting ethnic federalism and self-determination for all ethno-linguistic groups. However, this reinvention was only half-hearted and nobody fell for it. The IFP has no discernible coherent platform, ideology, vision or mission and its sole ambitions are winning/maintaining power for itself KZN.

Whatever it has in way of a platform mostly consists of fluff or vague blabber. The IFP is traditionally seen as a conservative party, which supports the free-market and conservative economic policies. Besides that, most of its other positions are populistic in tone. It does seem a bit more coherent on AIDS, preaching a more militant treatment policy while supporting an abstinence-based education campaign. Buthelezi lost two of his children to AIDS.

The party basically revolves around its strongman, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who has ruled over the IFP with an iron hand since 1970s. Buthelezi is a political opportunist who has a long-standing reputation of changing his ‘positions’ willy-nilly and lacking any ideological depth. He is extremely sensitive to criticism of his leadership and has ruthlessly quashed internal criticism. A few years ago, he chased Gavin Woods – one of the IFP’s few respected MPs and a white man – out of the party after Woods had published a scathing attack on Buthelezi’s leadership.

Jacob Zuma is an ethnic Zulu who grew up in Nkandla, in the traditional core of ‘Zululand’; his two predecessors at the helm of the ANC where Xhosa (the second biggest black ethnic group). Zuma, a very lively and flamboyant leader, has actively played up his own Zulu ethnicity. Zuma is a polygamist (illegal in South Africa but recognized by customary law) and he often partakes in traditional ceremonies, wearing leopard skins or other traditional attire. Politically, Zuma has shifted away from the ANC’s traditional non-tribalism and placed his ethnicity at the core of his new ANC (showing off as a ‘100% Zulu boy’) and preaching respect for elders and traditional (tribal) customs. In doing so, Zuma stole the last thing the IFP had left for itself – Zulu nationalism. In the 2009 election, the ANC made major gains in KZN, recouping some loses in other provinces. In the 2011 local elections, the ANC also made gains in KZN.  It is now unquestionably the dominant party in KZN as well.

[Hash]

The IFP has been further weakened since 2011 by the creation of the National Freedom Party (NFP), a new party formed by IFP dissidents and led by the IFP’s former chairperson, Zanele kaMagwaza-Msibi. After the 2009 rout, younger IFP cadres and ambitious figures like Magwaza-Msibi clamoured for leadership change. Buthelezi quashed the simmering rebellion and expelled leaders like Magwaza-Msibi. The NFP does not really have any ideology itself, except perhaps being less dogmatic than the IFP. In the 2011 local elections, the IFP won 15.8% in KZN against 10.4% for the NFP (more than what the IFP alone had won in 2009). The IFP held an absolute majority on only two local councils after the vote, while the NFP gained control of a single municipality. However, the NFP allied with the ANC (or vice-versa) to isolate the IFP. They formed coalitions in 22 district and local councils.

The IFP is a regional party. In 2009, 90% of its votes came from a single province (KZN); in previous years it was roughly the same percentage. The only other province where the IFP has attracted non-derisory support is Gauteng, where it won 1.5% in 2009 (and holds one seats in the provincial legislature) and won 4% in 1994. An urbanized and industrialized region, Gauteng has attracted Zulu migrant workers for a number of years. 20% of the province’s population is Zulu, and 6% of its residents were actually born in KZN. During the chaotic 1980s and 1990s, the IFP gained a foothold in the PWV, and there were numerous acts of violence between IFP and ANC supporters.

In KZN, the IFP has been disproportionately strongest in rural areas and the former territory of the KwaZulu homeland. In 1999, the IFP is estimated to have received 64% of the vote in the former homeland but only 17% in the rest of the province (against 50% for the ANC). The IFP, for example, has usually been weak at Durban - its peak was 25% on the provincial ballot in 1994. In 2009, the IFP took only 6.8% in eThekwini (Durban). Younger urbanized Zulus usually preferred the ANC’s more militant and non-tribal socialism over the IFP’s traditionalist conservatism. The IFP’s strongest region in KZN is the area around Ulundi, the former capital of the KwaZulu homeland (and capital of KZN until 2004). Even in 2009, the IFP won no less than 83.6% in Ulundi. It also won 81.6% in Nongoma, the base of the traditional Zulu monarchy. The IFP still holds an outright majority in Ulundi’s local council - but it lost Nongoma to a NFP-ANC coalition in 2011.

Almost all IFP voters are Zulus, but naturally not all Zulus are IFP voters. For example, in Mpumalanga, where Zulus make up 25% of the population, the IFP won only 0.5% in 2009. The IFP never gained a foothold or built up any infrastructure in that province, unlike in some Zulu townships/hostels in the PWV or the KwaZulu homeland. Outside KZN and Gauteng, the party’s support is basically non-existent in other provinces (0.06% in the WC...).

Next: I will help you get your head around all those other little parties nobody knows about.

[DC Al Fine]

Hashemite, what do you think is the most likely way ANC would be defeated?

a) DA winning more and more black middle class votes while winning 90%+ minorities

or

b) A left wing split from ANC wins the election

[Hash]

Hashemite, what do you think is the most likely way ANC would be defeated?

a) DA winning more and more black middle class votes while winning 90%+ minorities

or

b) A left wing split from ANC wins the election

Option b is most likely, naturally. The black middle-class is not large enough of an electorate and the DA's support with them is patchy at best (considering that many of the new black middle-classes enriched themselves under the ANC because of BEE); even if they did sweep the black middle-classes and won almost every non-black, they'd still lose. The DA is going to have a hard time breaking through in poor townships, because tons of people are still loyal to the ANC and the DA remains clueless as how to win them over (and even with people like Lindiwe Mazibuko they still won't do it). A black left-wing split from the ANC which isn't damaged goods like COPE would provide a real viable alternative to the ANC. There's lots of black discontent with the ANC, especially with the unemployed youth. Malema's success with them shows that some of them would be ripe for picking by some similar leader (who would certainly displease the white armchair critics of the world even more!). But the ANC is still good at keeping everybody in its broad coalition more or less happy.

Any other comments guys?

[Platypus]

Still excellent, Hash.

[MaxQue]

We read, with attention despite the lenght of it (believe me, if it wasn't interesting, I would read something that long).

It's just than it's so complete than there is no questions to ask.

[LastVoter]

Internet access statistics?

[Hash]

Internet access statistics?

According to the 2011 census: 64.8% have no internet access at all, 16.3% have it on their cellphone, 8.6% have access from home, 4.7% from work and 5.6% from elsewhere. 21% own a computer at home, up from 16% in 2001.

[Hash]

United Democratic Movement (UDM) If COPE is the latest of those parties which start out by exciting observers and quickly end up as irrelevancies, then the UDM was the first of those parties. It holds only 4 seats in the National Assembly.

The UDM was founded in 1997 by Bantu Holomisa and Roelf Meyer. Bantu Holomisa is the former military ruler of the ‘independent’ Transkei homeland. As commander of the homeland’s armed forces, he deposed Prime Minister Stella Sigcau in a coup in 1987 and seized power. Unlike Lucas Mangope in Bophuthatswana or Oupa Gqozo in Ciskei, Holomisa and Transkei enjoyed an uneasy alliance with the ANC and provided the ANC with a safe haven. Even if Holomisa was not quite a puppet for apartheid, he was not really an exemplarily leader either: his military junta often executed its opponents without any sort of trial; and corruption flourished under his rule.

Holomisa did not oppose Transkei’s reintegration into South Africa in 1994. In fact, he joined the ANC and joined cabinet as a deputy minister. In September 1996, he was unceremoniously expelled from cabinet and the ANC after alleging that Stella Sigcau, who had become minister of public enterprises in Mandela’s cabinet, had received a bribe from a shady casino magnate in the 1980s.

As it happens, another prominent member of a major party was pushed out from his party around the same time: Roelf Meyer. Meyer, the lead NP negotiator during the second half of the transition process, was widely seen as de Klerk’s dauphin within the NP after the 1994 election. Meyer, a young reformist verligte, wanted to transform the NP by changing the party’s name and actively recruiting black members for the party. His rapid ascension within the party worried the party’s hardliners and other ambitious younger members (notably Marthinus van Schalkwyk). The hardliners were able to force the NP out of the national unity cabinet in 1996, and Meyer was eventually forced to leave the NP with some of his lesser-known allies in May 1997.

Holomisa and Meyer created the UDM in September 1997. The party intended to be a non-racial and non-regionalist national alternative to the ANC, so it naturally got a few people excited. In the 1999 elections, the UDM won 3.4% of the vote and 14 seats. Half of the UDM’s support came from the Eastern Cape, in particular the former Transkei homeland. It did win some white and non-Xhosa black support outside the EC as well.

The UDM appears vaguely centre-rightish, though its platform mostly consists of platitudes and feel-good but rather meaningless principles (job creation, national unity, economic growth). It has often placed considerable emphasis on fighting corruption.

Meyer quit politics in 2000 (and went on to join the ANC in 2006). The party was decimated in the first floor-crossing window in 2003, when it lost 10 of its 14 seats – most of them to the ANC. In the 2004 elections, the UDM saw its support reduced to 2.3% and 9 seats (it lost 3 seats in the 2005 floor-crossing window). In 2009, the UDM won only 0.9% and 4 seats.

The UDM has basically morphed into a regionalist/personalist party which is a powerful actor only around Umtata (now known as Mthatha), Holomisa’s home turf and the former capital of Transkei. In 2009, 61% of its support came from a single province (the Eastern Cape, where it won 4%); most of that support in turn came from King Sabata Dalindyebo Municipality, which includes Umtata and Holomisa’s hometown (Mqanduli). The UDM won 24% of the vote in the municipality in 2009, doing best in rural areas south of Mqanduli where it won over 45-50% in some wards. In 1999, the UDM had won over 50% of the vote in Umtata and 77% in Mqanduli. The UDM’s support reflects tribal support for Holomisa is his native region. In the 1999 election, the UDM took 21% in those parts of the EC which had been part of either Ciskei or Transkei and 4% in the rest of the province; given the low support in the Ciskei, the party’s result in the former Transkei alone was probably much stronger. Outside the EC, the UDM has very weak support. Its best other province was WC, with 0.8%, reflective of the large Xhosa migrant population which lives in Cape Town.

[Hash]

Freedom Front Plus/Vryheidsfront Plus (FF+/VF+) The VF+ is the only purely ‘white’ party in South Africa. The party aims to defend Afrikaner interests.

The VF+ was founded as the Freedom Front in 1994, only a month prior to the first free elections. The white right/far-right was hostile to the transition to majority rule, but they were divided in their strategies. More moderate Afrikaner nationalists whose main goal was Afrikaner self-determination and the creation of a sovereign/autonomous volkstaat from Afrikaners were organized under the auspices of the Afrikaner Volksfront (AVF) by Constand Viljoen, a retired SADF commander. In contrast to Eugène Terre’Blanche’s extremist and arch-racist thugs, the AVF was a more respectable force which had fairly close ties with parts of the security forces. Following the Bophuthatswana disaster, the AVF and Viljoen were convinced that electoral participation was preferable to armed opposition. In return for their participation in the electoral process, the Afrikaner nationalists had received assurances from Mandela and the ANC that Afrikaner self-determination would be considered if there was substantial support for the idea.

The VF won 2.2% and 9 seats in the first elections in 1994. However, the party has since been hurt by the consolidation of the white vote – including the Afrikaner conservative/nationalist vote – behind a single party. By 1999, the party fell to 0.8% and a mere 3 seats. In that election, the party was hurt by competition from the Federal Alliance, a white party led by corrupt business magnate Louis Luyt (2 seats) and the Afrikaner Eenheidsbeweging (1 seat). In 2004, its support increased marginally, to 0.9%, and it gained a single seat. In 2009, it won 0.8% and held its 4 seats.

Viljoen retired in 2001, pushed out because some in the party felt he was cooperating too much with the ANC. The party became the VF+ before the 2004 election when it integrated the remnants of the moribund KP (which had only run in the 1995/1996 local elections) and the Afrikaner Eenheidsbeweging. Luyt’s party later folded into the VF+ as well.

The current leader of the VF+ is Pieter Mulder, the son of Connie Mulder - the apartheid-era hardline cabinet minister behind the Infogate scandal. His brother, Corné Mulder, is also a VF+ MP.

The party has never attempted to widen its electorate and has instead focused its efforts on promoting Afrikaner interests and white minority rights - including through cooperation with the governing party. Pieter Mulder, for example, is actually a member of cabinet as deputy minister of agriculture, forestry and fisheries. In 2008, the VF+ managed to get the Afrikaners recognized by the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO).

The VF+’s original raison-d’etre - the volkstaat - is dead; it was a silly idea to begin with, and never received much support besides a handful of passionate and dogmatic white Afrikaner nationalists. The VF+ might bring up the volkstaat idea (and even draw a map of it) from time to time, but it too has recognized the futility of the idea. As aforementioned, it now defends white minority rights - which often entails Mulder or somebody in his party saying a stupid thing which reeks of the apartheid era. For example, VF+ recently got in the news by criticizing a DA municipality’s decision to rename a school which had been named after HF Verwoerd (when everybody else should be asking why things are still named after him in 2013).

VF+’s voters are conservative white Afrikaners. Its support patterns are a bit different from the DA’s support - firstly because basically no non-whites vote for VF+ and because only very, very few white Anglos vote for the VF+. For example, in KZN and the EC, where the whites are mostly Anglo, VF+ won only 0.2% in 2009. Its best provinces were the Free State (1.6%), NW (1.4%) and Gauteng (1.4%). It wins its best results in isolated Afrikaans-speaking white villages/towns in the Transvaal, OFS, or northern Cape Province - regions where the KP was strongest in the late 1980s. In 2009, it did particularly well (around 15%) in the white wards in Potchefstroom, for example. However, the party’s most famous stronghold is Orania, a small town in the Northern Cape established by Afrikaner nationalists in 1990 to form the ‘embryo’ for a future volkstaat. The Orania movement’s leader, Carel Boshoff, was the son-in-law of HF Verwoerd and the provincial leader of the VF+ until his death in 2011. In the 2009 elections, the VF+ won 87.4% of the vote in Orania.