Baggrundsmateriale om det kommende parlamentsvalg i Sydafrika fra Nordiska Afrikainstituet i Uppsala i Sverige.
Elections in South Africa – No Choice?
On 14th April, almost exactly ten years after the democratic transition, South Africa arranges parliamentary elections for the third time. A predictable outcome is that the ANC will remain in government with an absolute majority of votes.
More interesting is the turnout of voters, whether or not the former liberation movement achieves a two third majority, and if the ANC will take over the two provinces of KwaZulu/Natal and the Western Cape, so far governed by the Inkatha Freedom Party and the New National Party respectively.
After a decade of post-Apartheid South Africa, the support base of the ANC is still strong. This is not due to any great enthusiasm for the governments policy, more because there is a lack of meaningful political alternatives.
The Tripartite Alliance of ANC, the South African Communist Party and the umbrella trade union body COSATU has, despite internal differences, maintained the coalition. Still, the ANC is increasingly criticised for what is labelled a neo-liberal paradigm in its socio-economic orientation, and the fact that many people continue to live in absolute poverty.
The South African society has shifted from racial segregation towards a similar discriminating and haves”, but the living conditions of the “have nots” (who remain mainly black) have shown little improvement.
Similarly, South Africas role in international politics is at times controversial indicating the problems for an emerging middle power to walk the tight rope between inter-African solidarity and national interests on the global scene.
On the one hand the government is criticised for a too collaborative approach to the G8 and the international financial institutions. On the other hand, South Africa backs the despotic regime of Robert Mugabe in neighbouring Zimbabwe to an extent which provokes doubts about its proclaimed commitment to human rights and democracy.
Critical South African voters can, however, best express their opinion through abstaining from the vote altogether. The current parties competing with the ANC offer no political alternatives or they lack a convincing concept or power base.
But whatever the outcome of the elections, the question will remain if and to what extent the current and future government will manage to overcome the structural legacy of Apartheid, which continues to remain alive.
For more information:
Henning Melber is research director at the Nordic Africa Institute. He is a political scientist with a research project on Liberation and Democracy in Southern Africa www.nai.uu.se/lidesa. Tel: 00 46 18 56 22 00 or direct 00 46 18 56 22 20. E-mail: [email protected]
Lars Buur is programme coordinator for the NAI research program: State recuperation, resource mobilisation and conflict. He is a Danish social anthropologist and ethnographer and has studied e.g. the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Tel: 00 46 18 56 22 00 or direct 00 46 18 56 22 43. E-mail: [email protected]
Other Useful contacts from NAIs research database:
Democracy, development, politics:
Elling N. Tjønneland, Senior research fellow, Chr. Michelsen Institute, Bergen, Norway. Tel: 00 47 55 574161 E-mail: [email protected]
Knut Nustad, lecturer at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, Norway. Tel: 00 47 22 856526. E-mail: [email protected]
Tore Linné Eriksen, Department of development studies, Oslo University College, Norway. Tel: 00 47 22 45 2962 E-mail: [email protected]
Land issues-environment:
Anna Bohlin, Center for Public Sector Research, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Tel: 00 46-31 7735117. E-mail: [email protected]
Jenni Kauppila, Regional Studies and Environmental Policy, University of Tampere, Finland. Tel: 00 358 50 5226241. E-mail: [email protected]
Espen Sjaastad, Centre for International Environment and Development Studies, Agricultural University of Norway.
Tel: 00 47 64 949388. E-mail: [email protected]
History:
Hans Erik Jakobsgaard Stolten, Centre for Africa Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Tel: 00 45 43735233 E-mail: [email protected]
Tore Linné Eriksen, Department of development studies, Oslo University College, Norway. Tel: 00 47 22 45 2962 E-mail: [email protected]
Tor Sellström, E-mail: [email protected]
Civil society, youth, poverty:
Kristina Helgesson, Department of Cultural Anthropology, University of Uppsala, Sweden. Tel: 00 46 18 4717281. E-mail: [email protected]
Maren Bak, Department of Social Work, University of Gothenburg, Sweden Tel: 00 46 31 7731885. E-mail: [email protected]
Steffen Jensen, Institute of International Studies, Copenhagen, Denmark. Tel: 00 45 33 854674. E-mail: [email protected]
Sten Dieden, Department of Economics, University of Gothenburg, Sweden Tel: 00 46 31 7734194. E-mail: [email protected]
Relevant publications: www.nai.uu.se/webbshop/ShopSE/index.html
Limits to Liberation in Southern Africa. The unfinished business of democratic consolidation. Edited by Henning Melber. Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2003.
Former liberation movements in Southern Africa have become authoritarian and elitist governments who reward party loyalty and are hostile to “outsiders”.
Is authoritarianism built into liberation structures? Is it inherited from colonial systems? Is liberal democracy inherently elitist?
Popular support for the struggle was often based on mystification, coercion and the manipulation of internal contradictions; while in contrast, independence by negotiation has lead to multi-party democracies.
This ground-breaking collection of essays on Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Botswana and South Africa opens a long-awaited debate on these and other related issues.
The Nordic Africa Institute has recently published a series of Discussion Papers also accessible as electronic publications on its web site (www.nai.uu.se), which offer background analyses to South Africas current situation. These include in particular:
DP 18. Davids et. al., Measuring Democracy and Human Rights in Southern Africa. Uppsala: NAI, 2002. Are there ways and means of measuring democracy and good governance? The contributions to this Discussion Paper present attempts to do this by means of surveys on democratic attitudes in Mozambique and Namibia respectively as well as by exploring the degree of commitment to and violation of human rights in a comparative perspective in Namibia and South Africa.
They illustrate attitudes by offering empirical evidence of the preferences and views of local people, as well as by examining the track record of a human rights culture. In doing so, by going beyond a level of theoretical analysis, they offer concrete evidence of attitudes prevalent among both individuals and state agencies in societies of Southern Africa.
DP 19. Neocosmos et. al., Political Cultures in Democratic South Africa. Uppsala: NAI, 2002. The contributions to this Discussion Paper reflect upon different but related aspects of South African democracy after Apartheid as represented in a variety of social forces, institutions and individuals.
They illustrate that societies in transition have to make sustained efforts to overcome the legacies of the past, and that the present reproduces some of the past structural constraints and patterns of power and control in the new framework.
DP 22. Fred Hendricks, Fault-Lines in South African Democracy. Continuing Crisis of Inequality and Injustice. Uppsala: NAI, 2003. The transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa has raised questions, on the one hand, about the tension between the imperatives of justice and equality and, on the other, reconciliation.
Transforming the decades old apartheid system under conditions of a political compromise has turned out to be a formidable challenge. This paper is about the complexity of the transformation process going on in South Africa. Although too early for a real assessment of the experiment, the tensions, dilemmas, contradictions, paradoxes and some of the changes have already begun to manifest themselves.
DP 25. Patrick Bond, South Africa and Global Apartheid. Continental and International Policies and Politics. Uppsala: NAI, 2004. This study covers a variety of political and economic aspects of Africas and South Africas relationships to the world.
The author considers the context of global apartheid, in terms of international stagnation, uneven development and African marginalisation, and evaluates the South African setting as a telling site of worsening inequality.
Where does then the New Partnership for Africas Development (NEPAD) stand on the largest economic and political problems? South Africas other proposed global reforms are also discussed. Finally, the author records an emerging ideology based not on commodification via globalisation but on decommodification and deglobalisation, and the strategies, tactics and alliances required for African and international progress
The Nordic Africa Institute has also published a series of books on the Nordic response to the struggle for national liberation in Southern Africa:
Morgenstierne, Christopher M., Denmark and National Liberation in Southern Africa, Uppsala: NAI, 2004
Sellström, Tor, Sweden and National Liberation in Southern Africa, Vol I and II, Uppsala: NAI, 1999 and 2002
Eriksen, Tore Linné (Ed.), Norway and National Liberation in Southern Africa, Uppsala: NAI, 2000
Soiri, Iina and Pekka Peltola, Finland and National Liberation in Southern Africa, Uppsala: NAI, 1999
Useful websites:
Elections in South Africa: www.electionworld.org/election/southafrica.htm
Independent Electoral Commission:www.elections.org.za
Hans Erik Jakobsgaard Stoltens homepage at the Centre for African Studies, Copenhagen: www.stolten.ishoejby.dk
Useful NAI Library Resources: www.nai.uu.se/bibl/bibleng.html
