VOLUME 3 NO 2 1 Journal of African Elections ARTICLES BY Thabisi Hoeane Dirk Kotzé Shauna Mottiar Amanda Gouws Khabele Matlosa Laurence Piper Heidi Brooks Roger Southall Tom Lodge Volume 3 Number 2 December 2004 2 JOURNAL OF AFRICAN ELECTIONS Published by EISA 2nd Floor The Atrium 41 Stanley Avenue Auckland Park Johannesburg South Africa P O Box 740 Auckland Park 2006 South Africa Tel: +27(0)11 482 5495 Fax: +27(0)11 482 6163 e-mail: [email protected] © EISA 2004 ISSN: 1609-4700 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. Layout: Sue Sandrock Printed by: Global Print, Johannesburg Cover photograph: Reproduced with the permission of the HAMILL GALLERY OF AFRICAN ART, BOSTON, MA, USA www.eisa.org.za VOLUME 3 NO 2 3 EDITORS Denis Kadima, EISA Khabele Matlosa, EISA EDITORIAL BOARD David Caroll, Democracy Program, The Carter Center, Atlanta Jørgen Elklit, Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark Amanda Gouws, Department of Political Science, University of Stellenbosch Sean Jacobs, Department of Political Science, University of Cape Town Peter Katjavivi, Ambassador of Namibia to the European Union in Brussels Tom Lodge, Department of Political Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg Robert Mattes, Department of Political Science, University of Cape Town Yvonne Muthien, Corporate Affairs, MTN South Africa Ben Reilly, United Nations Development Program, New York Lloyd Sachikonye, Institute of Development Studies, University of Zimbabwe, Harare Jeremy Seekings, Sociology Department, University of Cape Town Gloria Somolekae, National Representative of the W K Kellogg Programme in Botswana and EISA Board member Roger Southall, Human Sciences Research Council, Pretoria The Journal of African Elections is an interdisciplinary biannual publication of research and writing in the human sciences, which seeks to promote a scholarly understanding of developments and change in Africa. Responsibility for opinions expressed and for the accuracy of facts published in papers, research notes, review articles and book reviews rests solely with the individual authors or reviewers. Contributions are referred to specialist readers for consideration, but the Editors are responsible for the final selection of the contents of the Journal. Editorial correspondence, including manuscripts for submission and books for review, should be sent to: The Editors, Journal of African Elections EISA P O Box 740 Auckland Park 2006 South Africa Business correspondence, including orders and remittances, subscription queries, advertisements, back numbers and offprints, should be addressed to the publisher: EISA P O Box 740 Auckland Park 2006 South Africa Tel: +27 011 482 5495 Fax: +27 011 482 6163 4 JOURNAL OF AFRICAN ELECTIONS CONTENTS Under Strain: The Racial/Ethnic Interpretation of South Africa’s 2004 Election Thabisi Hoeane .................................................................................................................. 1 Political Party Funding in the 2004 Election Dirk Kotzé ....................................................................................................................... 27 Why the IFP Lost the Election in KZN Shauna Mottiar ............................................................................................................... 47 Women’s Representation: The South African Electoral System and the 2004 Election Amanda Gouws ............................................................................................................... 59 Democracy, Hiv/Aids And Citizen Participation: Focus on the 2004 South African Election Khabele Matlosa .............................................................................................................. 77 The Election Result and its Implications for Political Party Configuration Laurence Piper ................................................................................................................. 97 The Dominant Party System: Challenges for South Africa’s Second Decade Of Democracy Heidi Brooks ..................................................................................................................121 Post-election South Africa: The Continuing Case For Electoral Reform Roger Southall ............................................................................................................... 154 The ANC After the 2004 Election Tom Lodge...................................................................................................................... 166 Review Contemporary South Africa ..........................................................................................175 Contents of Previous Issues ...................................................................................... 177 Notes for Contributors ............................................................................................... 182 VOLUME 3 NO 2 1 UNDER STRAIN The Racial/Ethnic Interpretation of South Africa’s 2004 Election By Thabisi Hoeane* Dr Thabisi Hoeane is a Lecturer in the Department of Political and International Studies, Rhodes University, Grahamstown P O Box 94 Rhodes University, Grahamstown 6140, Eastern Cape, South Africa. Tel: (046) 603 8666 (w) (046) 603 8349 (h) 084 8047 594 (cell) E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected] ABSTRACT An analytical framework that emphasises race and ethnicity has come to dominate post-apartheid electoral studies. In this view, race and ethnicity are regarded as primary analytical variables in explaining voting behaviour and are taken to be crucial in influencing the strategy and tactics of political parties. In this framework, South African society is considered to be characterised by such serious and insoluble racial and ethnic divisions that the prospects for democratic consolidation are imperilled. Most explanations of voting behaviour and party politics in the 1994 and 1999 elections were based on this interpretation. The argument advanced in this paper is that such focus is misguided and flawed. It shows, through a reading and interpretation of the 2004 election, that this approach is limited. For there is emerging empirical evidence – revealed by the 2004 election – that race and ethnicity do not play a central role in explaining voting behaviour and the performance of parties. Thus the arguments embodied within the racial/ethnic view threaten democratic consolidation. INTRODUCTION One of the analytical frameworks used to interpret South African elections in the post-apartheid era accords primacy to racial and ethnic categories.2 This view 1 For an overview of this interpretation see Schlemmer 1994a, pp 149-167; Schlemmer 1994b, pp 17-22; Welsh 1994, pp 107-116; Johnson, 1996, pp 301-322. * The author is grateful for the support of Rhodes University. 1 2 JOURNAL OF AFRICAN ELECTIONS concludes that race and ethnicity pervade the behaviour of voters and political party programmes leading to the undermining of effective democratic consolidation. Counter arguments have contested this interpretation with respect to the 1994 and 1999 elections (Seekings 1997, Taylor and Hoeane 1999, Hoeane 2002). This paper focuses the debate on the 2004 election to assess the relevance and efficacy of the racial and ethnic view in providing a viable understanding of electoral politics and the prospects for democratic consolidation in South Africa. It adopts the position that sufficient evidence is revealed by the 2004 election to challenge seriously the validity of this interpretation. It does so firstly by discussing the background to this racial/ethnic framework, outlining how it was used to explain the 1994 and 1999 elections, before providing countervailing evidence revealed by election trends and developments in the 2004 election results to challenge the contention that these factors are indeed influential in explaining the country’s transition to democracy. It concludes by identifying some of the negative consequences embodied in this racialised and ethnicised interpretation of South Africa’s democratisation process. THE RACIAL/ETHNIC FRAMEWORK This section of the paper discusses the background to the racial and ethnic interpretation, tracing its roots to the apartheid concept of race and ethnicity It then shows how these concepts have been reformulated, basically distancing them from crude apartheid understanding to accord them salience in explaining post- apartheid South African elections. The Apartheid Vision In order comprehensively to understand the apartheid vision of race and ethnicity it is important to provide a general definition of the concepts. Race is primarily associated with physical features, such as skin colour, that are taken to set races apart. As James Kellas states, ‘Races are discussed predominantly in biological terms with particular emphasis on “phenotypical” distinctions such as skin colour, stature etc, and presumed genetic distinctions’ (Kellas 1991, p 15). Ethnicity, on the other hand, is defined as binding people around some normative behaviour such as culture, language, and religion based on socio-cultural traits (Drury 1994, p 13). Apartheid thinking on the origins of race and ethnicity draws on the primordial view of the nature of human societies (Butler 1998, pp 224-25). According to this view, people are born into racial and ethnic groups,