The implementation of the Political Funding Act No. 6 of 2018 marked a turning point in South Africa’s democratic consolidation. The Act introduced a system for regulating both public and private funding of political players in a more transparent and accountable manner. Since the Act came into effect in April 2021, the Electoral Commission of […]
This paper tracks the performance of Voter Management Devices (VMDs) in South Africa from their piloting in the 2021 local government election to their adoption in the 2024 general elections. It seeks to unpack what this performance means for further modernising electoral processes in the country, and especially for the introduction of e-voting. The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) argues that hand-held touch-screen electronic devices ushered in a new era for election management in South Africa. Procured for millions of rand, VMDs replaced the old Zip-Zip barcode machines used since 1998 which could not capture real-time information. They were introduced at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic posed a threat to electoral participation in the democratic world. While the IEC and some observers argue that VMDs strengthened tough health controls in the voting process during their piloting, as with most new technology they still experienced several challenges and technical glitches. Nevertheless, the IEC resolved to deploy the new devices in the 2024 general elections. Following further glitches in the general elections, two main research questions have emerged: is South Africa technologically ready to handle e-voting based on the performance of VMDs? and what can other African countries learn from South Africa regarding modernising their voting systems? Data for this study was collected using qualitative methods. This study found that political will alone is insufficient for the modernisation of voting systems. The performance of VMDs requires further scrutiny before e-voting can be successfully implemented in South Africa.
This article assesses the local organisation of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) in its first participation in South Africa’s local government elections in 2016. Drawing on original interviews with local party activists, it explains how the EFF’s brand of populism mobilised at the grassroots level during its formative years. The study argues that the party’s populist style was effective because it helped appropriate existing diverse networks of political activists by positioning itself as the voice of ‘ordinary black people’ against business and government ‘elites’. This orientation of the EFF appealed to youth, activists, and mineworkers who felt excluded from the African National Congress (ANC); while the protests and regalia of its populist style nurtured feelings of collective identity and efficacy among local party organisers. The article indicates how a populist style can be effective in exploiting generational cleavages to build a viable opposition party within the constraints of a dominant party system.
This paper focuses on how South Africa’s governing party, the African
National Congress (ANC), and main opposition, the Democratic Alliance
(DA), leveraged microblogging site Twitter. This was part of their urban
election campaign arsenal in the 2016 local government elections (LGE) to
promote party-political digital issue ownership within an urban context.
Using each party’s corpus of 2016 election-related tweets and election
manifestos, this three-phased grounded theory study found that each party
used Twitter as a digital political communication platform to communicate
their election campaigns. The DA notably leveraged the social networking
site more for intense focused messaging of its negative campaign against the
ANC while simultaneously promoting positive electoral messages around
its own core issues and metro (urban) mayoral candidates. Furthermore,
battleground metros were identified, narrow-cast and subsequently audience segmented by the party in Ekurhuleni, Johannesburg, Tshwane (in Gauteng)
and Nelson Mandela Bay (in the Eastern Cape). This led to an emphasised
campaign to either activate the party’s own urban support base and/or to
suppress the ANC’s turnout in these highly-contested areas. The results of
this study further indicate that the ANC and DA both used Twitter to claim
explicit and implicit digital party-political issue ownership in the 2016 LGE.
This article explores the challenges to the African National Congress (ANC) in its traditional stronghold of the Port Elizabeth working-class township of Kwazakhele. The authors argue that this area has been the embodiment of single-party dominance for decades. Using exit polling and a post-election survey, the article details the challenges to the ANC from both reduced voter turnout and rising support for the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). The article concludes that the end of the ANC dominance in Kwazakhele in coming elections is possible but is not a foregone conclusion.
L’Afrique du Sud a réalisé des progrès considérables depuis 1994 dans l’institutionnalisation et la consolidation de la qualité de sa démocratie. Cependant, des problèmes graves et persistants de gouvernance et des problèmes socio-économiques ont provoqué la colère et la frustration de la population et motivé une augmentation des actions de protestation par le biais de canaux conventionnels et moins conventionnels. La possibilité pour les citoyens de participer au processus politique est essentielle pour une démocratie saine. Il est donc important que des procédures et des mécanismes appropriés soient en place. lieu pour faciliter cette participation. En utilisant la méthodologie de la qualité de la démocratie, le document aborde plusieurs questions importantes, à savoir : dans quelle mesure les opportunités de participation conventionnelle sont-elles développées en Afrique du Sud, et dans quelle mesure sont-elles exploitées ? et quelles formes non conventionnelles de participation existent et quelle est la réponse du gouvernement ? En abordant ces questions, cet article explore le lien entre citoyenneté active et participation politique.
au cours des 25 dernières années en vue de vérifier la qualité de la participation politique de l’Afrique du Sud.
The 2019 South African elections marked the country’s sixth iteration of free and fair electoral contests since its democratisation in 1994. Although the outcome gives the African National Congress (ANC) yet another five-year mandate, the party has not gone unchallenged at the polls. It registered its lowest national vote share since the transition, a major […]
This paper examines the operations of political parties in Kenya and South Africa and provides an analysis of how such operations have become drivers of election violence. The paper contends that as a result of the structure of political parties and how they operate, they have contributed to the violence that has become an endemic […]
