Coexistence as a Strategy for Opposition Parties in Challenging the African National Congress’ One-Party Dominance

ABSTRACT

Post-apartheid democratic South Africa experienced the pitfalls of one-party dominance when the country’s fifth democratically elected parliament (2014–2019) faced growing corruption, state capture, undermining of parliamentary oversight and the abuse of political power and state institutions. These events threatened the country’s constitutional democracy and its principles of an accountable government as the ruling party undermined parliamentary oversight structures through majoritarianism to evade accountability by the Legislature and Executive. This led to the growing coexistence and cooperation of opposition parties (despite their ideological differences) in parliamentary oversight as a means of challenging the African National Congress’ (ANC) one-party dominance. This process resulted in the establishment of formal and informal coalitions for governing key cities such as Johannesburg, Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay. Against this backdrop, and building on a case study of these three metropolitan municipalities, this paper analyses the coexistence of the opposition parties in parliamentary oversight and in the governance of key cities as a means of challenging the ANC’s one-party dominance. The analysis delineates the prospects and challenges of using coexistence as a strategy for challenging the ANC’s one party-dominance post the 2019 general election.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Isaac Khambule http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4227-6916

Notes

1 It should be noted that one-party dominant states can also have significant positives as discussed on page 6 which is the case for the ANC as well. However, for the scope of this article, the pitfalls and loss of support are important. For a comprehensive view on OPD in South Africa, see Butler (2009a) and Southall (2005) as referenced below.

2 South Africa has been experiencing a rapid increase in the use of state institutions to fight political battles as evident in the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), State Security Agency (SSA) and more recently, the Hawks. The High Level Review Panel on SSA report found that that there was a ‘parallel intelligence structure serving a faction of the ruling party and, in particular, the personal political interests of the sitting president of the party and country’. Therefore, illustrating a compromise of state institutions and blurring party and state lines.