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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Accountable to Themselves: Predominance in Southern Africa
Author:Good, KennethISNI
Year:1997
Periodical:Journal of Modern African Studies
Volume:35
Issue:4
Period:December
Pages:547-573
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:authoritarianism
democracy
Politics and Government
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/162005
Abstract:Since April 1994, South Africa has experienced a rapid and steep decline in State capacity across the board, but particularly concentrated in Social Welfare, Safety and Security, Justice, Home Affairs, Health, and the police services; performance in these Ministries have ramifications throughout government and society. Crime and corruption have escalated, closely interconnected with the debasement of the justice system. The fall in State capacity, with its deleterious consequences for the majority, is dangerously associated with the rise of a predominant party system which functions to firmly entrench political elites. These features are present too in Namibia, with similar consequences. Democracy which is understood merely as electoralism, as Botswana earlier had shown, has few defences against predominance. In South Africa and Namibia, democracy as well as justice suffered when the predominant party elite set out to falsify big political issues (concerning, for example, SWAPO and Hawala, or Inkatha and Buthelezi). The new authoritarianism, built on powersharing among the elites, backed by corporate power and the 'patriotic bourgeoisie', has potentially greater permanency than apartheid. Notes, ref.
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