Universalizing an Incomplete Predominance

Abstract

The political strength of the ANC is readily apparent. It got 62.03 per cent of the vote in the 1994 elections and 66.35 per cent in 1999, and it was the majority party in seven of the country’s nine provinces, 1994–99. The Democratic Party obtained only 1.7 per cent of votes in 1994, and 9.56 per cent in 1999 when it became the official opposition; the NP, renamed the New National Party, won only 6.87 per cent in the second election, when the IFP got 8.58 per cent.¹ Constitutional agreements had established an electoral system of proportional representation (PR), using party lists and without constituencies, a combination which effectively centralized the ANC’s predominance in the hands of the party leadership. Voters elected parties, not individual representatives. Only members of a political party could seek election, and parliamentary office was not won or acquired through interaction between a candidate and a distinct community of voters, but in allocation by party chiefs relative to an individual’s position on the list — hence to their standing with those chiefs – and the total votes cast for the party.