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The 1999 Election and South Africa’s Postapartheid Political Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2021

Alexander Johnston
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Extract

The result of South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994 had something in common with a successful children’s birthday party. It was clear from the beginning whose day it was and where the bulk of the spoils would go, but the failure of the African National Congress (ANC) to win a two-thirds majority consoled the others. And those guests who might have spoiled the occasion with tears and tantrums were rewarded too, with control of provincial parliaments in Kwa-Zulu-Natal and the Western Cape, as well as positions in a government of national unity. These factors helped to make the 1994 election an occasion for general, not just partisan, rejoicing.

Divorced from the euphoria and sense of relief that attended the 1994 poll and robbed of any uncertainty about the outcome, observers of 1999’s election have had to work much harder to read its significance.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Issues , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , 1999 , pp. 17 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1999 

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References

Notes

1. For a succinct discussion, see David, Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (London: Little, Brown, 1998),273–275 Google Scholar.

2. Hobsbawn, E. J., The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century (London: Michael Joseph, 1994), 140 Google Scholar.

3. Ibid., 270.

4. Ibid., 273.

5. For a fuller discussion, see Johnston, Alexander M., “The Left and the ANC Alliance, Nationalism, Socialism, and the Future of South African Politics,” Indicator South Africa 16, no. 1(1999): 36–41 Google Scholar.

6. Gray, John, False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism (London: Granta Books, 1998), 17 Google Scholar.

7. Ibid., 19.

8. See Johnston, Alexander M., “Between Unilateralism and the Culture of Solidarity: The Non-Aligned Movement After the Durban Summit,” Indicator South Africa 15, no. 3 (1998): 9–14 Google Scholar.

9. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 275.