Paper long abstract:

Although ethnicity is generally assumed to exercise great salience in African politics, African political parties have been rarely analyzed in a comparative and systematic way. The paper uses a party typology originally developed by Richard Gunther and Larry Diamond (2001) as framework of comparison for African parties. It distinguishes the following party types: the mono-ethnic party, the multi-ethnic alliance party, the multi-ethnic integrative party, the personalistic party and the programmatic party. While the first two categories constitute “ethnic parties” as defined by Horrowitz (1985) all other are regarded as non-ethnic ones. In order to distinguish between all five party categories the paper uses the following indicators: party leadership composition, party factions, electoral campaigns, national outreach and party nationalisation scores. In doing so the paper goes beyond an analysis of voting behaviour which has become fairly popular in the recent literature. In a second step the classification scheme will be applied to politically significant parties in Kenya, Ghana and Namibia between 1991 and 2007. Empirical evidence shows that diverse party types exist across all three countries. While Kenya’s party system is characterised by mono-ethnic parties and ethnic alliances, Ghana’s and Namibia’s political parties are non-ethnic in character. In its conclusion the paper formulates hypotheses which aim at explaining the existence of different types across countries and which could guide future research into African political parties.

Paper long abstract:

South Africa has a particularly complex relationship to postcoloniality insofar as it became ‘postcolonial’ in the accepted sense in 1910, with independence from Britain, but only democratic form 1994. In between these dates the struggle for freedom of speech and rights for all has been the focus of the country and its Arts, particularly in the latter forty years. Mike van Graan’s play Green man Flashing premiered at the Grahamstown Arts Festival in 2004, and it explores the contradictions, complexities and ironies of a nascent non-racial, non-sexist new democracy. It asks if “there’s a taxi coming down the road at eighty kilometres an hour and its not going to stop, despite the traffic lights being red and the green man flashing in your favour. Would you still cross the road?” (2006;207)

This paper hopes to frame the consequences of setting precedent in SA, particularly that of the TRC, to see how the past has affected the possibility of all South Africans, but especially women, to practice their constitutional right to freedom of expression, and the right to legal justice in the face of new political imperatives. It explores the contradictions between human rights and patriotic duty; while juxtaposing the greater collective good against justice for an individual. In this sense it directly relates to all peoples engaged with issues around democracy and freedom of speech, the ethics of engagement, particularly of culturally diversified societies in other African countries.