Download or read book Opposition and Democracy in South Africa written by Roger Southall and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection examines the nature, scope and prospects for political opposition under African National Congress political dominance.
Download or read book The Politics of Opposition in Contemporary Africa written by Adebayo O. Olukoshi and published by Nordic Africa Institute. This book was released on 1998 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In South Africa, Michael Neocosmos
Download or read book Political Opposition and Democracy in Sub Saharan Africa written by Elliott Green and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book takes a closer look at the role and meaning of political opposition for the development of democracy across sub-Saharan Africa. Why is room for political opposition in most cases so severely limited? Under what circumstances has the political opposition been able to establish itself in a legitimate role in African politics? To answer these questions this edited volume focuses on the institutional settings, the nature and dynamics within and between political parties, and the relationship between the citizens and political parties. It is found that regional devolution and federalist structures enable political opposition to organize and gain local power, as a supplement to influence at the central level. Generally, however, opposition parties are lacking in organization and institutionalization, as well as in their ability to find support in civil society and promote the issues that voters find most important. Overall, strong executive powers, unchecked by democratic institutions, in combination with deferential values and fear of conflict, undermine legitimate opposition activity. This book was originally published as a special issue of Democratization.
Download or read book On The Contrary written by Tony Leon and published by Jonathan Ball Publishers. This book was released on 2012-02-29 with total page 864 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The memoirs of former Opposition leader Tony Leon provide a unique glimpse into the political life of South Africa in the democratic era. In incisive, finely focused prose, On the Contrary records Leon's thirteen-year leadership of the Democratic Alliance and its predecessor, the Democratic Party, years in which the party grew from its marginal position on the brink of political extinction into the second largest political force in South Africa. This is an adventure in ideas that involves vivid real people - friends, colleagues and enemies alike. There is new light shed on many of the figures who have shaped modern South Africa, including Nelson Mandela, FW de Klerk and Thabo Mbeki. A trained lawyer, Tony Leon entered Parliament at age 32 at the dawn of South Africa's period of revolution and reform. He actively participated in the constitutional negotiations that led to the birth of the democratic South Africa.
Download or read book The Dominant Party System written by Heidi Brooks and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Opposing Voices written by Colin Eglin and published by Jonathan Ball Publishers. This book was released on 2006 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Without effective opposition there is no true democracy and without contribution of the prominent proponents of liberalism who have added their voices to this title, the situation in South Africa would probably be very different today. Helen Suzman takes pride of place among those liberals who devoted their lives to the fight for human rights and the rule of law in South Africa. From the start of a political career that spanned almost four decades, she challenged the iniquity of apartheid and used the privilege of Parliament to expose the inhumanity of a system that came to be defined as a crime against humanity. As a tribute to her extraordinary political life, the Isaac and Jessie Kaplan Centre for Jewish studies and research at the University of Cape Town, in association with the South African Jewish Museum, mounted an exhibition in her honour. After Colin Eglin opened the exhibition, David Welsh paid formal tribute to the guest of honour who used the occasion to reflect on her career. Both speeches are included in this volume together with a series of lectures which accompanied the exhibition.
Download or read book Against All Odds written by Hussein Solomon and published by Kmm Review Pub.. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most of the chapters in this edited volume were originally commissioned as part of a programme developed by the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) on parliaments of the Southern African Development Community.(SADC). The programme's central aim was to better understand the relationship between parliaments and civil society within SADC and to suggest practical methods to strengthen these relationships.
Download or read book The Black and White Rainbow written by Carolyn Holmes and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nation-building imperatives compel citizens to focus on what makes them similar and what binds them together, forgetting what makes them different. Democratic institution building, on the other hand, requires fostering opposition through conducting multiparty elections and encouraging debate. Leaders of democratic factions, like parties or interest groups, can consolidate their power by emphasizing difference. But when held in tension, these two impulses—toward remembering difference and forgetting it, between focusing on unity and encouraging division—are mutually constitutive of sustainable democracy. Based on ethnographic and interview-based fieldwork conducted in 2012–13, The Black and White Rainbow: Reconciliation, Opposition, and Nation-Building in Democratic South Africa explores various themes of nation- and democracy-building, including the emotional and banal content of symbols of the post-apartheid state, the ways that gender and race condition nascent nationalism, the public performance of nationalism and other group-based identities, integration and sharing of space, language diversity, and the role of democratic functioning including party politics and modes of opposition. Each of these thematic chapters aims to explicate a feature of the multifaceted nature of identity-building, and link the South African case to broader literatures on both nationalism and democracy.
Download or read book Political Parties in South Africa written by Thuynsma, Heather and published by Africa Institute of South Africa. This book was released on 2017-11-28 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political parties and the party system that underpins South Africa’s democracy have the potential to build a cohesive and prosperous nation. But in the past few years the ANC’s dominance has strained the system and tested it and its institutions’ fortitude. There are deeper issues of accountability that often spurn the Constitution and there is also a clear need to foster meaningful public participation and transparency. This volume offers a different and detailed assessment of the health of South Africa’s political system. This study intends to unravel the condition of the party system in South Africa and culminates in the question: Do South African parties promote or hinder democracy in the country? The areas of the party system that are known to require continued work are the weakness of democratic structures within parties, the perceived lack of responsibility of elected parliamentarians towards voters, non-transparent private partner financing structures and a lack of attractiveness of party-political commitment, especially for women. Experts in the respective fields address all of these areas in this book.
Download or read book The Quality of Democracy in Africa written by Jonathan van Eerd and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-04-07 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shows that democratization in sub-Saharan Africa can be successful, even if the government remains dominated by one major political party. If an institutionalized and strong opposition party – even when too weak to take power – challenges the dominant government party, the quality of democracy improves substantially. The comparative study demonstrates that competitive opposition parties in dominant party systems are rooted in the historical legacy of political cleavages related to de-colonization that precede the third wave of democratization of the 1990s and have survived the instability of post-independence political developments to the present day. The study covers 19 African countries and 55 elections overall, including four in-depth case studies of Botswana, Lesotho, Ghana and Mali. It offers scholars and practitioners of electoral democracies and competitive authoritarian regimes a novel view on the role of party systems in processes of democratization. It makes an important contribution to the general literature on state building intertwined with democratization and representation in old and new democracies.
Download or read book Special Issue Opposition and Democracy in South Africa written by Roger Southall and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Opposition in South Africa s New Democracy written by and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book After Apartheid written by Ian Shapiro and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2011-06-21 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy came to South Africa in April 1994, when the African National Congress won a landslide victory in the first free national election in the country’s history. That definitive and peaceful transition from apartheid is often cited as a model for others to follow. The new order has since survived several transitions of ANC leadership, and it averted a potentially destabilizing constitutional crisis in 2008. Yet enormous challenges remain. Poverty and inequality are among the highest in the world. Staggering unemployment has fueled xenophobia, resulting in deadly aggression directed at refugees and migrant workers from Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Violent crime rates, particularly murder and rape, remain grotesquely high. The HIV/AIDS pandemic was shockingly mishandled at the highest levels of government, and infection rates continue to be overwhelming. Despite the country’s uplifting success of hosting Africa’s first World Cup in 2010, inefficiency and corruption remain rife, infrastructure and basic services are often semifunctional, and political opposition and a free media are under pressure. In this volume, major scholars chronicle South Africa’s achievements and challenges since the transition. The contributions, all previously unpublished, represent the state of the art in the study of South African politics, economics, law, and social policy.
Download or read book Democracy in Africa written by Roger Southall and published by HSRC Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The two papers included in this analysis examine the political and socioeconomic factors that contribute to and constrain upon democratization throughout southern Africa and the African continent. With an emphasis on the policies of government, business, and civil society geared toward reducing inequality and poverty, these studies promote community empowerment as a way to promote local, regional, and national sustainable development on the African continent.
Download or read book Rhetorics of Resistance written by Bryan Trabold and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2018-10-24 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The period of apartheid was a perilous time in South Africa’s history. This book examines the tactics of resistance developed by those working for the Weekly Mail and New Nation, two opposition newspapers published in South Africa in the mid- and late 1980s. The government, in an attempt to crack down on the massive political resistance sweeping the country, had imposed martial law and imposed even greater restrictions on the press. Bryan Trabold examines the writing, legal, and political strategies developed by those working for these newspapers to challenge the censorship restrictions as much as possible—without getting banned. Despite the many steps taken by the government to silence them, including detaining the editor of New Nation for two years and temporarily closing both newspapers, the Weekly Mail and New Nation not only continued to publish but actually increased their circulations and obtained strong domestic and international support. New Nation ceased publication in 1994 after South Africa made the transition to democracy, but the Weekly Mail, now the Mail & Guardian, continues to publish and remains one of South Africa’s most respected newspapers.
Download or read book Democratisation Dominant Parties and Weak Opposition written by Chris Landsberg and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 14 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Opposition politics and democratic consolidation in South Africa written by and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prepared for 1995 Conference of the South African Political Studies Association, 1995.
