The Southern African Development Community has made significant democratic progress since the 1990s following a wave of ferocious internal conflicts, as in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In order for the achievements to be sustained the region requires viable political parties, which are key role players in a democracy. The majority of the […]
Political parties are the custodians of democracy. Following the return of democracy to Africa during the ‘third’ and ‘fourth’ waves, political parties are undergoing structural changes (from military and one-party authoritarianism to liberal multiparty systems) for the development of sustainable democracy. This paper is not about institutionalised political parties or party systems, it is about […]
This paper focuses on the dilemmas of opposition political parties in Southern Africa as they grapple with the double roles of democratising state and society and attempting to capture state power in an environment that has been ideologically hostile to the existence of opposition political parties. The supremacy of the liberation parties in the region […]
In the past ten years or so the process of democratisation in emerging democracies has continued to face numerous and persistent challenges. The most pertinent of these is the rapid movement towards one-party dominant political systems. This phenomenon has been observed by scholars who have administered a series of tests to determine the possibility of […]
