South Africa
South Africa performs in the mid-range across all four categories of the Global State of Democracy (GSoD) framework. Its economy is one of the continent’s largest and most industrialised, and key sectors include mining, transport, energy, manufacturing, tourism and agriculture. For over a decade, however, economic growth has been weak, entrenching high levels of unemployment and poverty. Compared to 2018, South Africa has not experienced any significant changes in democratic performance.
South African society has been deeply marked by over 300 years of racial discrimination, imposed first during Dutch and then British colonial rule, and later formalised under Apartheid. Through social and labour controls, the Apartheid system ensured that South Africans of different races were spatially segregated and set on highly unequal socio-economic paths. South Africa’s post-Apartheid governments have had limited success in reversing the effects of this social engineering. While affirmative action policies have helped create an emergent black middle class, South Africa’s society is one of the world’s most unequal and the inequality remains racialised. Its chronically poor (nearly half of the population) are almost exclusively black and coloured, while its small white minority comprises a disproportionately large part of the middle class and elite. The persistence of racial and economic inequalities, alongside rampant corruption, rising crime and service delivery failures, have led to declining trust in public institutions and growing frustration with the African National Congress party, the liberation movement that has governed South Africa since 1994.
Inequalities, in combination with widespread sexism, have also helped sustain one of the highest rates of gender-based violence in the world. Government legislative action on the issue means the country has a highly sophisticated legal framework governing discrimination and violence, but its response has been criticised for a lack of resources. Race, class and gender are not the only cleavages in South African politics.
South Africa has 12 official languages and four racial groups and ethnolinguistic identities constitute an important political cleavage, particularly at the sub-national level. Salient too, is the nativist nationalism that has long had currency in South African politics and society and increasingly threatens the ‘Rainbow Nation’ cosmopolitanism introduced by Nelson Mandela’s administration. It has been visible in anti-minority narratives on economic transformation, in restrictive immigration policies and in the xenophobic violence that has marked periods of the country’s recent history.
In meeting these and other challenges, South Africa benefits from a vibrant civil society, which through strategic litigation has succeeded in using the country’s acclaimed constitution to secure pioneering human rights and democratic protections. Indeed, the South African Constitutional Court’s jurisprudence is internationally respected, particularly on questions of socio-economic rights.
Since the 2024 general election, South Africa has been governed by a coalition government. Looking ahead, it will be important to monitor the stability of the coalition and its impact on the country’s democratic performance in multiple areas, including Basic Welfare, Political Equality, Absence of Corruption and Free Political Parties. Of continuing concern are the political attacks on the judiciary, which in the post-Apartheid era has proven to be the most effective check on the country’s executive and legislative branches.
Last updated: July 2024
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November 2024
National Assembly takes steps to create presidential oversight committee
On 1 November, South Africa’s parliament announced that its National Assembly is preparing to establish a parliamentary committee to oversee the Presidency, filling an oversight gap highlighted by a recent judicial inquiry into state capture. Unlike government departments, the Presidency currently receives a budget from parliament without being scrutinised by a parliamentary committee, the legislature’s primary oversight mechanism. The decision to begin the process of establishing the committee was taken by the National Assembly’s Rules Committee, but before it is implemented it will need to be formally adopted by a full sitting of the house.
Sources: Parliament of the Republic of South Africa, Parliamentary Monitoring Group (1), Parliamentary Monitoring Group (2)
May 2024
Incumbent ANC loses national parliamentary majority in general elections
On 29 May, South Africa held general elections for the National Assembly (the lower chamber of the national parliament), and the nine provincial legislatures. Official results showed that the incumbent African National Congress (ANC) had won the largest share of the National Assembly’s 400 seats (159), followed by the Democratic Alliance (87 seats), uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) (58 seats) and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) (39). It is the first time that the ANC has not won an absolute majority in the chamber since the country’s first democratic elections in 1994. Of the 14,903 candidates contesting the national and provincial seats, 6,234 (41.86 per cent) were female. South Africa’s electoral commission reported turnout to be 58.58 per cent of registered voters. The results were contested by MK and several small parties, which alleged the elections had been rigged and vowed to mount a legal challenge. As of early June, MK had declined to publicly substantiate its claims. International observers assessed the polls to have been free and fair but noted that new electoral procedures were not consistently implemented and that many voters had experienced long waiting times, in part due to malfunctioning voter management equipment.
Sources: Electoral Commission of South Africa, South African Government, Daily Maverick, African Union, Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa, Electoral Commissions Forum of SADC Countries
April 2023
President Ramaphosa signs law permitting independent candidates to contest elections
On 17 April, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law the Electoral Amendment Act, a piece of legislation that allows independent candidates to contest national and provincial elections. It gives effect to a 2020 Constitutional Court ruling that declared the Electoral Act’s bar on independent candidates to be unconstitutional. The Act also provides for the establishment of an Electoral Reform Consultation Panel to make recommendations on future electoral reform. The law was welcomed by South Africa’s Electoral Commission, which said that it provided the necessary legal certainty to prepare for the 2024 general elections. However, an opposition party and several civil society organisations have declared their intention to challenge the constitutionality of the Electoral Amendment Act in court, alleging that its provisions unfairly disadvantage independent candidates and make it impossible for them to compete equally against candidates from political parties.
Sources: News24 (1), Electoral Amendment Act, Constitutional Court Judgement, Electoral Commission of South Africa, News24 (2), Eyewitness News
November 2022
Independent panel finds President Ramaphosa may have abused his powers
A report by an independent panel of legal experts commissioned by the National Assembly, has found that South African President Cyril Ramaphosa may have violated the constitution and anti-corruption laws by allegedly covering up the theft of large sums of money from his game farm in a scandal commonly referred to as ‘Farmgate’. Ramaphosa responded to the report (released on 30 November) by denying that he was guilty of any of the allegations made against him. The panel’s findings open up the possibility of impeachment proceedings being brought against the President by the National Assembly, the lower house of South Africa’s parliament, although legislators are not bound by the report. The commencement of such proceedings would require a simple majority in the National Assembly, where the President’s party, the African National Congress, holds 230 out of the 400 seats.
Sources: Report of the Section 89 Independent Panel, Africa Confidential, The Presidency of the Republic of South Africa, The Africa Report
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