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Title:Doing Politics in Bushbuckridge: Work, Welfare and the South African Elections of 2004
Author:Niehaus, Isak A.ISNI
Year:2006
Periodical:Africa: Journal of the International African Institute
Volume:76
Issue:4
Pages:526-548
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:elections
2004
voting
local politics
Politics and Government
History and Exploration
External links:https://www.jstor.org/stable/40027297
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/africa_the_journal_of_the_international_african_institute/v076/76.4niehaus.pdf
Abstract:In the South African national elections of 2004 the ruling ANC (African National Congress) increased its majority, particularly within the poorer, black, rural voting districts. Drawing on ethnographic research that the author conducted in Impalahoek - a village in the Bushbuckridge municipality of the Limpopo Province - this paper investigates reasons for this pattern of voting. With reference to a survey of 87 households the author shows that unemployment, crime and disease had increased dramatically between 1990/1991 and 2003/2004. Yet, at the same time, there have been considerable improvements in access to State pensions, housing, school feeding schemes and child support grants. In this context, the author argues that the ANC's election campaign highlighted the capacity of government in service provision, and that voting for the ruling party constituted a strategic attempt to obtain access to State-controlled services. Hence the election was characterized by neopatrimonial politics and by a transactional logic of voting. Voting for the ruling party does not amount to an ideological endorsement of its policies, and discontent is more likely to be expressed through boycotting the elections rather than voting for opposition parties. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract]
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