African Studies Institute - Seminar Papers

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/7319

For information on accessing African Studies Institute - Seminar Papers collection content please contact Peter Duncan via email : peter.duncan@wits.ac.za

Browse

Filters

1992 - 19972

Settings

Start date: 1990Subject: search.filters.subject.African National Congress

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    The rise and decline of party activism in South Africa
    (1997-10-06) Stadler, Alfred William
    This paper is concerned to identify the decline in party activism in South Africa since before the general election of 1994. The paper falls into three parts: a brief overview of the general literature on the problem, including references to developments in post-colonial Africa; a schematic account of political activism in black politics in South Africa since the end of the second world war; and thirdly a series of cases in local politics in Mpumalanga at the time of the local elections of 1996 which suggest that there are areas where local party and social movement activism is still visible in the form of internal conflicts, or conflicts between the ANC and its allies, notably SANCO. These cases will be used to show the sometimes complex relations in local politics, and specifically the varied consequences of institutionalising democracy at the local level. The theoretical starting point lies in the debates which followed Oscar Kirchheimer's famous prediction that the "mass integration" class-based party which had politicised the European peasantry and working class in an earlier period, had gone into decline after the second world war, and was being displaced by the "catch-all party". (1) Kirchheimer argued that the catch-all party abandoned all efforts "at the intellectual and moral encadrement of the masses,... turning more fully to the electoral scene, trying to exchange effectiveness in depth for a wider audience and more immediate electoral success. The narrower political task and the immediate electoral goal differ sharply from the former allembracing concerns..." (2)
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    The African National Congress comes home
    (1992-06-08) Lodge, Tom
    Two years of legal existence have enabled the ANC to acquire 900 branches, 500 000 signed-up members, a 20-storey office block in central Johannesburg, a fresh leadership, a democratic constitution, an elaborate administration, and an annual income which in 1990 topped R90-million. Its homecoming is consequently a story of considerable if uneven achievement. In February 1990, the ANC's leaders were suddenly confronted with the challenge of adapting an authoritarian and secretive movement formed by the harsh exigencies of exile to the requirements of a South African environment shaped by the tumultuous politics of the 1980s. Two years later, the process of changing the ANC into an organisation geared to open and democratic forms of popular mobilisation is far from complete. In 1992 the ANC still struggles to absorb and reconcile the experiences of three generations of leadership: the elderly veterans who emerged from decades of confinement on Robben Island; the middle-aged managers of an insurgent bureaucracy; and, finally, the youthful architects of the most sustained and widespread rebellion in South African history. ... To understand what the ANC has become in 1992, it is essential to know what kind of organisation it was in 1990. One way of doing this is through investigating its institutional structures and internal procedures. This is the approach which characterises most studies of the exile ANC during the 1980s. This literature depicts a most intricate and elaborate organisation which can be represented as an embryonic state - a ‘government-in-waiting’. It resembled a state in several respects.