Abstract
Throughout the first decade of true democracy, the ANC’s greatest fear was that it would lose its hegemonic hold over the African population because the party no longer had one clear issue that would unite a diverse citizenry behind it. Therefore, the party tried to prevent the emergence of a credible alternative: either a party that could articulate the interests of the disaffected poor and working class, or a set of parties that had the potential to fragment the delicate patchwork of ethnic groups that comprised the ANC’s electoral base.
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Notes
For detailed histories of the ANC, see Saul Dubow, The African National Congress (Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton, 2000)
Frances Meli, South Africa Belongs to Us: A History of the ANC (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988). For comprehensive accounts of the 1994 to 1999 period, see Lodge, South African Politics;
Heribert Adam, Kogila Moodley, Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert, Comrades in Business: Post-Liberation Politics in South Africa (Utrecht: International Books, 1998). The history presented in this section comes primarily from an integration of these sources.
Ahmed C. Bawa, “South Africa’s Young Democracy, Ten Years On: Guest Editor’s Introduction,” Social Research 17, no. 3 (Fall 2005): vii–xvii, xvi.
Deegan, The Politics of the New South Africa; UNDP, South Africa Human Development Report; Jeff Guy, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow: The Nation-State, Democracy and Race in a Globalizing South Africa,” Transformation 56 (2004): 68–89, 82.
Sean Jacobs, Richard Calland, and Sipho Ngwema,“The Parliamentary Performance of South African Political Parties,” paper published by Idasa (Cape Town: Institute for Democracy in South Africa}, September 1997}). For a post-1997 analysis, see Lia Nijzink and Jessica Piombo, “The Institutions of Representative Democracy,}” in Electoral Politics in South Africa, ed. Piombo and Nijzi
See Stephen Friedman, Building Tomorrow Today: African Workers in Trade Unions, 1970–1984 (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1987) for a review of the origins and early years of the alliance. For a discussion of the two strains of unionism that the formation of COSATU brought together, the role of unions in the liberation movement, and the formation of the alliance
Martin Murray, The Revolution Deferred: The Painful Birth of Post-Apartheid South Africa (London: Verso, 1994).
The political space to the left of the Tripartite Alliance was also closed, as extremely left-wing economic policies would alienate the international community whose investment South Africa desperately needed. See Susan Booysen, “Trends in Party Political Opposition Parties in South Africa—Ideological Constraints on Policy and Strategy,” Politeia 17, no. 2 (1998): 49.
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© 2009 Jessica Piombo
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Piombo, J. (2009). The African National Congress: Playing to Win. In: Institutions, Ethnicity, and Political Mobilization in South Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230623828_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230623828_5
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