Browsing by Subject "political parties"

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    Islamic Politics in South Africa between Identity and Utopia
    (2008) Tayob, Abdulkader
    This article identifies three sites of Islamic politics in South Africa for closer and critical analysis and appraisal. It proposes that Islamic politics inscribed an idealistic vision for the future. It promoted a utopian vision that was by definition unattainable. Secondly, the paper argues that Islamic politics was preoccupied with representation, a relentless and somewhat impossible task of representing Islam and Muslims in the public. Utopia and perfect representation, then, were the chimeral quests of Islamic politics.
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    Media coverage and the election: were some parties more equal than others?
    (2004) Davis, Gavin
    Debates over the role of the media in a democratic South Africa remain as fierce as ever. The African National Congress (ANC) and its adherents routinely criticise the independent press for insufficiently transforming itself and, as a result, producing press coverage that tends to be anti-government. Opposition parties question the independence of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), claiming that the public broadcaster is fast becoming an instrument of ANC propaganda. This paper asserts that these arguments have been overstated by political actors and some commentators. Data collected during the 2004 election campaign suggests that the ANC get the lion’s share of news coverage, followed by the Democratic Alliance across all broadcast and print media. It is thus more appropriate to ascribe the media dominance of these two parties to their ability to generate publicity through superior resources, funding and organisation than media bias.
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    Political parties, social demographics and the decline of ethnic mobilization in South Africa, 1994-99
    (SAGE Publications, 2005) Piombo, Jessica
    Before the advent of democratic rule in South Africa, most people had expected the country to experience an explosion of politicized ethnicity when minority rule was replaced. Yet this has not come to pass, and ethnic political parties have declined in number and influence in post-apartheid South Africa. Instead, between 1994 and 1999 partisan politics developed in a multipolar direction, with some parties embracing racial mobilization and others attempting to build multi-ethnic, non-racial entities. This article explains these developments as a product of the ways that political parties have responded to the incentives established by political institutions, on the one hand, and the structure of social divisions, on the other. The analysis holds implications for our understanding of the ways in which social cleavages in ethnically divided societies become politically salient, and for the lessons of institutional and constitutional engineering, particularly with respect to how proportional representation systems interact with other factors to shape politics in ethnically diverse societies.