The Realities of Opposition in South Africa: Legitimacy, Strategies and Consequences

In many ways, a democracy can almost be defined in terms of the existence of an effective opposition. The complex relationships between political parties will do much to determine the quality, and indeed the stability, of the political order. In fragile democracies, both the ruling and the opposition parties may have the capacity to destroy democracy itself. Thus both the balance of political forces and the respective party strategies will be critical in shaping political developments. At the same time, it has long been recognized that the political system is only partly autonomous and that it is located in a context that may be more or less favourable to the establishment or consolidation of democracy. Any discussion of political opposition must therefore be contextualized. In the ideal world of democratic theory, based largely upon the western experience, we use as our model a polity in which the political forces are reasonably balanced and dynamic: at least a significant minority of the electorate is uncommitted to any party and will tip the balance periodically and thus make a change in government possible. Two threats to democracy are eliminated by this definition. The first is a society which is based upon ethnic communities whose loyalty is to their group, and where there is the probability of ethnic censuses in which elections produce permanent winners and permanent losers. The second is the existence of a long-term imbalance that provides one party with a long-term numerical preponderance. In the South African context there are several key questions that must be explored if we wish to generate insights into the consequences of political parties and broader issues of democracy and accountability. First, what are the social forces that underpin party alignments and shape mass political behaviour? Secondly, what is the relationship between the ruling party – the African National Congress (ANC) – and the consolidation of democracy? Are the ANC’s policies and actions towards other players, including the opposition, going to make a viable democracy more or less likely? And thirdly, are the actions and strategies of the opposition parties likely to impact positively or negatively on the prospects for democratic consolidation? These issues are clearly too ambitious to be answered adequately within the constraints of a short account. None the less, the comments which follow are designed to serve as an introduction