Africana Periodical Literature 
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| Title: | An Unlikely Success: South Africa and Lesotho's Election of 2002 |
| Author: | Southall, Roger |
| Year: | 2003 |
| Periodical: | Journal of Modern African Studies |
| Volume: | 41 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Period: | June |
| Pages: | 269-296 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | South Africa Lesotho |
| Subjects: | elections 2002 foreign policy military intervention Politics and Government Inter-African Relations |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/3876121 |
| Abstract: | Although initially accompanied by immense controversy, South Africa's armed and diplomatic intervention in Lesotho to quell post-electoral disturbances in 1998, was to prove crucial to a restructuring of Lesotho's previously recalcitrant Defence Force, and to the promotion of interparty negotiations that led to the adoption of a new and more appropriate electoral system. Alongside other international pressures, these initiatives led to a further election in 2002, whose undoubtedly legitimate outcome appears to have laid firm foundations for democratic consolidation and stability. Despite this 'unlikely success', and despite its formal commitment to an idealist foreign policy, the South African government has consciously downplayed its role in promoting democracy in Lesotho. This article argues that this is because of the exceptionality of that country, and South Africa's reluctance to have the use of force used as a precedent by its critics for cajoling it into adopting a more activist stance for dealing with the blatantly undemocratic behaviour of the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract, edited] |
