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| Title: | Special issue: the African National Congres at sub-national level |
| Editors: | Butler, Anthony Southall, Roger |
| Year: | 2015 |
| Periodical: | Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa (ISSN 0258-7696) |
| Issue: | 87 |
| Pages: | 174 |
| Language: | English |
| City of publisher: | Durban |
| Publisher: | University of KwaZulu-Natal, Programme of Economic History/Development Studies |
| Geographic term: | South Africa |
| Subjects: | African National Congress (South Africa) political parties leadership legitimacy corruption |
| External link: | https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/32043 |
| Abstract: | The political entrenchment of the African National Congress (ANC) as the ruling party in South Africa over the last two decades has given rise to an extensive literature focussing upon negative internal trends such as factionalism, the manipulation of internal electoral processes, the pursuit of individual wealth, internal disorder, and increasing tensions within the tripartite alliance. Such trends, along with growing levels of popular protest, suggest a decline in the party's legitimacy and long term prospects. Such organisational deterioration has occasioned an extensive reflective literature, yet there has been little detailed research into how the ANC operates on the ground. Predominant paradigms - of the ANC as a national liberation movement; as a party that has fallen victim to neo-patrimonialism; as a dominant party; and as a vehicle of neo-liberal capitalism - are all illuminating, yet simultaneously entrench key weaknesses in analysis, focussing upon over-arching narratives rather than encouraging careful analysis of causal practices. Much of this flows from the fact that academic analysts lack practical and intuitive knowledge of the ANC's institutional life, complexity and informal networks. This special issue, which is the outcome of a project on the sub-national politics of the ANC, seeks to correct that balance by presenting a set of papers which focus upon the dynamics of the ANC at sub-national level, pointing the way to a more critical engagement with party processes than is usually presented. Contents: Preface (Anthony Butler and Roger Southall); Introduction: Understanding the ANC at sub-national level (Anthony Butler and Roger Southall); The politics of numbers: national membership growth and subnational power competition in the African National Congress (Anthony Butler); Provinces as bulwarks: centrifugal forces within the ANC (Doreen Atkinson); Factions, contestations and mining's missing millions: the African National Congress in North West province since 1994 (Andrew Manson); Party over outsiders, centre over branch: how ANC dominance works at the community level in South Africa (Laurence Piper and Fiona Anciano); African National Congress: from an emancipatory to a rent-seeking instrument (Mcebisi Ndletyana); The enemy within: factionalism in ANC local structures - the case of Buffalo City (East London) (Tatenda G. Mukwedeya); Members of members: the ANC's Manzini branch in Mpumalanga (Musawenkosi Malabela); Zuma, Malema and the provinces: factional conflict within the African National Congress (Ian Cooper). [ASC Leiden abstract] |
