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| Title: | Mysterium inequitatis: truth, elections, autonomy in the Southern African politic |
| Author: | Louw, Stephen |
| Year: | 2006 |
| Periodical: | Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies |
| Volume: | 33 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Pages: | 221-238 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | South Africa Zimbabwe |
| Subjects: | foreign policy elections political philosophy 2000-2009 |
| External link: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02589340600884717 |
| Abstract: | South Africa's ANC has endorsed Robert Mugabe's electoral 'victories' in Zimbabwe since 2002 as free and fair. Hypothetical explanations for the Mbeki regime's response to the Zimbabwean elections, such as in terms of the need to create a strategic space for quiet diplomacy, as an expression of reflexive Africanism, or as motivated by the fear of an independent union movement or of white opposition, fail to grasp the full implications for the emerging democracy in South Africa. For the Mbeki regime's treatment of the Zimbabwean elections relates more broadly to the conception of the body politic, and the relationship between politics and collective will formation. Elections have a certain function in the reproduction of the body politic. They help stage the political in ways grossly at odds with the inherent naturalism and antipolitical tendencies of Mbeki's Africanist Weltanschauung. The ANC's continued acceptance of the Zimbabwe elections as somehow legitimate suggests far more than simply bad foreign policy. It implies, more troubling, a partial if not hostile attitude to political society and the contingency and pluralism upon which democracy necessarily rests. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [ASC Leiden abstract] |
