| Abstract: | Democratic development in southern Africa faces enormous challenges. Democracy itself must transcend its formal features and incorporate processes and mechanisms that ensure the control of the elected by the electors. Critical challenges, both internal and external in nature, face democratic sustainability. They include such conjunctural factors as economic crisis and poverty, sociopolitical cleavages, conflicts and wars, structural adjustment programmes (SAP), globalization, and environmental pressures. Notwithstanding the odds, there are reasons to be optimistic about democratic development in southern Africa. South Africa as a hegemonic power and the SADC as a regional organization can play key roles in propping up weak and fragile democracies in the region. Bibliogr., notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |