Polarization in South Africa: Toward Democratic Deepening or Democratic Decay?

Roger Southall

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2019, vol. 681, issue 1, 194-208

Abstract: Under apartheid, white oppression of the black majority was extreme, and South Africa became one of the most highly polarized countries in the world. Confronted by a counter-movement headed by the African National Congress (ANC), the ruling National Party (NP) was eventually pressured into a negotiation process that resulted in the adoption of a democratic constitution. This article outlines how democratization defused polarization, but was to be hollowed out by the ANC’s construction of a “party-state,†politicizing democratic institutions and widening social inequalities. This is stoking political tensions, which, despite societal interdependence, are provoking fears of renewed polarization along class and racial lines.

Keywords: apartheid; democratization; polarization and proto-polarization; inequality; African National Congress; party-state (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002716218806913 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:anname:v:681:y:2019:i:1:p:194-208

DOI: 10.1177/0002716218806913

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().