Electoral Systems and Democratization in Southern Africa (Oxford Studies in Democratization)

OXFORD STUDIES IN DEMOCRATIZATION Series Editor: Laurence Whitehead ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND DEMOCRATIZATION IN SOUTHERN ...

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OXFORD STUDIES IN DEMOCRATIZATION Series Editor: Laurence Whitehead

ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND DEMOCRATIZATION IN SOUTHERN AFRICA

OXFORD STUDIES IN DEMOCRATIZATION Series editor: Laurence Whitehead

Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars and students of comparative politics and related disciplines. Volumes will concentrate on the comparative study of the democratization processes that accompanied the decline and termination of the cold war. The geographical focus of the series will primarily be Latin America, the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in Africa and Asia. OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES The New Politics of Inequality in Latin America: Rethinking Participation and Representation. Douglas A. Chalmers, Carlos M. Vilas, Katherine Roberts Hite, Scott B. Martin, Kerianne Piester, and Monique Segarra Human Rights and Democratization in Latin America: Uruguay and Chile Alexandra Barahona de Brito Citizenship Rights and Social Movements: A Comparative and Statistical Analysis Joe Foweraker and Todd Landman Regimes, Politics, and Markets: Democratization and Economic Change in Southern and Eastern Europe Jose Maria Maravall Democracy Between Consolidation and Crisis in Southern Europe Leonardo Morlino The Bases of Party Competition in Eastern Europe: Social and Ideological Cleavages in Post Communist States Geoffrey Evans and Stephen Whitefield The Democratic Developmental State: Politics and Institutional Design Marc Robinson and Gordon White The International Dimensions of Democratization: Europe and the Americas Laurence Whitehead

Electoral Systems and Democratization in Southern Africa ANDREW REYNOLDS

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

This book has been printed digitally and produced in a standard specification in order to ensure its continuing availability

OXJORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Sao Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Andrew Reynolds 1999 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) Reprinted 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover And you must impose this same condition on any acquirer ISBN 0-19-829510-3

For Arend Lijphart 'There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why . . . I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?' (Robert Kennedy, 1968)

Acknowledgements

First and foremost I wish to thank the four individuals who have mentored me during the early stages of my academic career and who, I fervently hope, will continue to be as giving and supportive throughout the rest of my life. They are not merely teachers but valued friends. The chair of my dissertation committee, Arend Lijphart of the University of California at San Diego, my unofficial co-chair, Bernard Grofman of the University of California at Irvine, my master's thesis adviser, Hermann Giliomee of the University of Cape Town, and Larry Diamond of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. The remaining members of my dissertation committee (upon which this book is based) were Victor Magagna, Matthew Shugart, and Robert Horwitz of the University of California at San Diego. Numerous people helped refine, advise, and encourage me on the journey, most notably Joel Barkan, Daria Caliguire, Enoch Chihana, Laurie Cooper, Gary Cox, Leon Du Toit, Matt Eldridge, Andrew Field, Mervyn Frost, Jeff Herbst, Don Horowitz, Tom Karis, Keith Kline, Tom Koelble, Therese Laanela, Tom Lodge, Bob Mattes, Vincent Maphai, Shaheen Mozaffar, Ellen Potter, Don Rothchild, Wilma Rule, Gary Shiffman, Tim Sisk, and David Storey. At the University of Notre Dame I have been overwhelmed by the support and kindness of my new colleagues and I must single out Scott Mainwaring, Michael Coppedge, Jim McAdamSj Martha Merritt, and Katharine Belmont for special thanks. This book is a reality because of the welcome I received from those in Africa, especially in South Africa, where I owe a great debt of gratitude to the Department of Political Studies at the University of Cape Town, Professor Kader Asmal, Justice Albie Sachs, Francis Wilson, Boone and Nan Wilson, and the van Aswegans. Once again I thank Margaret Marshall and Tony Lewis for their help and advice. The writing of the dissertation upon which this book is based was undertaken while I was a Jennings Randolph Peace Scholar of the United States Institute of Peace. I thank the fellowship program and applaud the USIP on its important and influential work. Crucial funding was also provided by the Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation at the University of California, the Center for Global Peace

Acknowledgements

vii

and Conflict, and the Center for the Study of Democracy at UC Irvine, and NSF grant No. SBR-9321864. I thank all the grant makers and administrators. Last, but by no means least, I recognize the joy that my family brings to me—my wife Jennifer, my son, Atticus, and my daughter, Madeline. A.R.

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Contents

List of Figures List of Maps List of Tables Introduction

x xi xii 1

1. Denning and Measuring the Trajectory of Democratization

20

2. Denning the Intervening and Explanatory Variables

58

3. Choosing an Electoral System

89

4. Majoritarian or Power-Sharing Government

105

5. Plurality Case Study Election Results: Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe

140

6. PR Case Study Election Results: South Africa and Namibia

182

7. Re-Running Elections under Alternative Electoral Systems

203

8. Cross-Country Comparisons: Legislative and Executive Inclusion

231

9. Conclusion: The Case for Democratic Optimism

268

Appendix: Crafting Districts for Re-runs

276

Notes References

282 309

Index

331

List of Figures

I.I. 1.1. 1.2. 2.1. 2.2. 4.1. 4.2. 9.1.

Dependent, intervening, and independent variables Politically related deaths in South Africa since 1990 Electoral participation Democratic type: consensual versus majoritarian continuum Separate survival and presidential cabinet power The characteristics of integrative consensus and consociational power-sharing types of democracy The case studies classified according to the two dimensions of majoritarian versus consensus democracy The consequences of democratic type

7 26 39 80 87 124 125 269

List of Maps

I.I. 5.1. 5.2. 5.3. 6.1. 6.2.

Southern Africa Malawi Zambia Zimbabwe South Africa Namibia

18 177 178-9 180 201 202

List of Tables

1.1. 1.2. 1.3. 1.4. 1.5. 1.6. 2.1. 2.2. 2.3. 2.4. 2.5. 4.1. 4.2.

4.3. 5.1. 5.2. 5.3. 5.4. 5.5. 5.6. 5.7.

Economic comparisons Comparative indicators of political rights and civil liberties Newspaper circulation Electoral turnout Spoilt ballots Summary of democratization indicators Electoral systems typology Issues dimensions of partisan conflict Democratic type: consensual versus majoritarian Executive type: presidential or parliamentary Comparative presidential powers The characteristics of majoritarian and power-sharing democracy Favourable and unfavourable conditions for consociational democracy in Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe Ethnic, racial, or regional parties? Results of the Malawian National Assembly elections, May 1994 Malawi National Assembly results, by region Results of the Zambian parliamentary elections, October 1991 Results of the Zambian parliamentary elections, November 1996 Results of the Zimbabwean parliamentary elections, March 1980 (common roll) Results of the Zimbabwean parliamentary elections, February 1980 (white roll) Results of the Zimbabwean parliamentary elections, July 1985 (common roll)

27 30 33 38 41 56 65 72 81 84 86 106

115 132-3 142 148 157 159 168 170 171

List of Tables 5.8. Results of the Zimbabwean parliamentary elections, June 1985 (white roll) 5.9. Results of the Zimbabwean parliamentary elections, March 1990 5.10. Results of the Zimbabwean parliamentary elections, April 1995 6.1. Results of the South African National Assembly elections, April 1994 6.2. Results of the Namibian parliamentary elections, November 1989 6.3. Results of the Namibian parliamentary elections, December 1994 7.1. Effective number of elective parties 7.2. Re-running the 1994 Malawian national elections under alternative electoral systems 7.3. Re-running the 1991 Zambian parliamentary elections under alternative electoral systems 7.4. Re-running the 1996 Zambian parliamentary elections under alternative electoral systems 7.5. Re-running the 1985 Zimbabwean parliamentary elections under alternative electoral systems (common roll) 7.6. Re-running the 1985 Zimbabwean parliamentary elections under alternative electoral systems (white roll) 7.7. Re-running the 1990 Zimbabwean parliamentary elections under alternative electoral systems 7.8. Re-running the 1995 Zimbabwean parliamentary elections under alternative electoral systems 7.9. Re-running the 1980 Zimbabwean parliamentary elections under alternative electoral systems (common roll) 7.10. Re-running the 1994 South African national elections under alternative electoral systems 7.11. Re-running the 1989 Namibian parliamentary elections under alternative electoral systems 7.12. Re-running the 1994 Namibian parliamentary elections under alternative electoral systems 8.1. Marginal seats in recent plurality elections

xiii 173 174 175 183 197 200 206 212 214 216 217 218 219 220 221 223 227 229 233

xiv

List of Tables

8.2. Average IDs of SMD plurality and PR elections 237 8.3. Average indices of disproportionality in re-running southern African elections 237 8.4. Government administration by electoral system 238 8.5. The effect of district magnitude and threshold variation within PR systems 240 8.6. The effect of PR formula on the number of parties and index of disproportionality 241 8.7. Women in southern African parliaments 244 8.8. Ethnoracial breakdown of the South African National Assembly (April 1994) 245 8.9. Ethnoracial breakdown of the South African cabinet (April 1994) 246 8.10. Advantage ratio, by race, for South African legislature and executive 247 8.11. Advantage ratio, by race, for UK and US legislatures 248 8.12. White ministers in southern African cabinets (1980-1994) 249 8.13. The multiplicity of party representation by region 250 8.14. Spoilt ballot paper/invalid vote rates for established democracies and southern African democracies 254-5 8.15. The incidence of wasted votes across nine case study elections 256 8.16. Australian Senate elections 1919-1946 held under AV-MMD 259 8.17. Number of parliamentary parties in case studies and AV-MMD simulations 260 8.18. Districts where AV-MMD could make a difference 260 8.19. Electoral system choice in emerging democracies: negotiation timespan, transition type, and external actors 266 A.l. A comparison of the 1993 referendum and 1994 general election in Malawi 277

Introduction

Politically, Africa is emerging from the shadows. Throughout the continent old, inept, and corrupt one-party regimes have crumbled in the face of invigorated internal oppositions which blossomed in the vacuums left by Cold War super-powers who no longer needed satellite developing world states to rattle sabres by proxy. Between 1989 and 1996, twenty-nine of the forty-eight African nations south of the Sahara moved from non-democratic to multiparty competitive political systems,1 and in 1996 alone there were eighteen national multiparty elections—a remarkable figure considering that up until the late 1980s finding an African state with a continuous history of democratic elections was a curious anomaly.2 This blossoming of African democratization has also managed to bring those comparativists besotted with both Africa and the study of institutions out of the shadows. Today we can delight in watching contested parliamentary elections, pick apart the nuances of voting patterns, compare the subtle impact of district magnitudes, and scrutinize the effects of a variety of electoral formulas. No longer are presidential campaigns solely the domain of Europeanists and Americanists (North and South). Scholars of majoritarianism can now visit places beside Westminister, Wellington, and Montreal, and those advocates of consociationalism are now seeing for the first time in Africa some of their long-proposed constitutional solutions to ethnic conflict in divided societies actually being tested in the societies they were designed for. However, alongside the euphoria lies a well-founded scepticism which fears that these fledgeling democracies will not survive, and that the undoubted benefits that they bring to their citizens will be little more than fleeting glimpses of freedom. The wave of independence from colonial rule in the 1960s did bring dignity and nationhood to many Africans but it did not deliver participatory democracy, economic growth, or cultural harmony. Today, the new democracies of Africa face the ominous triple-whammy of economic impoverishment and dependence, the renewed threat of health epidemics,3 and simmering ethnic conflict.4 To make matters worse, often these new multiparty systems rest upon undeveloped or fragmented civil societies and are administered by bureaucracies imbued with an ethos of corruption and

2

Introduction

clientelism. Nevertheless, in some areas the early portents of democratic consolidation are good, and, despite all the worries that the change is merely transitory, many millions of Africans enjoy a level of political and human rights that would have been unthinkable to the generation before. This work deals with the region of southern Africa5 in relation to democratic consolidation, dynamic modes of representation, and the mitigation of ethnic (and regional) conflict. It starts with the premiss that all three objectives are desirable (although not necessarily mutually dependent or exhaustive of all the goals one might wish for a new democracy),6 and poses the question: which institutional arrangements will best facilitate effective representation, political stability and interethnic accommodation in the emerging democracies of southern Africa? I seek to answer this question through a comparative analysis of the effect of institutional structures in five case study countries: Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. These case studies have been chosen because all have made the transition from non-democratic government to multiparty competition with varying degrees of success (Malawi 1994, Namibia 1989, South Africa 1994, Zambia 1991, and Zimbabwe 1980). Furthermore, as they represent at least half of the southern African region, they comprise a useful cross-section of democratic types, societal dynamics, and institutional arrangements.7 The case study selection closely follows Arend Lijphart's suggestions for minimizing the 'many variables, small number of cases' problem inherent in much comparative research.8 The focus is on comparable cases, and the area approach provides clusters of characteristics which can be used as controls, particularly along historical and socio-economic lines.9 I also endeavour to utilize the benefits of a combined comparative and case study approach, as each of the five countries, to varying degrees, serves as a hypothesis-generating, theory-confirming, and deviant case. Finally, I seek parsimoniously to concentrate on three key institutional variables: electoral systems, executive type (whether parliamentary or presidential), and democratic type (whether the constitutional arrangements give rise to majoritarian or power-sharing governments). Three of the case studies use (or have used) proportional representation electoral systems to elect their national legislatures,10 while the other three use plurality singlemember districts (SMD), the first-past-the-post Anglo-American electoral system.11 Four have directly elected presidents (Malawi, Namibia,12 Zambia, and Zimbabwe13), while South Africa has a parliamentary system.14 Also, each case study sits at a different position along the majoritarian versus consensual government type continuum—with the interim constitution of South Africa closest to the consensual end,

Introduction

3

and the current Zambian constitutional arrangements closest to the majoritarian end. There is also variation in type of democratic transition: with Zambia and Malawi experiencing rapid transitions (a matter of months rather than years) from black African one-party regimes to multiparty democracies, while Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe moved from ethnically exclusive white minority regimes to non-racial democracies over much longer time-frames.16 I approach this question not merely with the hypothesis that institutional arrangements will have an effect on the prospects for political stability and accommodation between conflictual communal groups in southern Africa, but further that Namibia and South Africa, with structures leaning towards an ethos of 'inclusion', are already performing much better than Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, whose constitutions can be characterized as exclusionary. As I show in the following chapter, Namibia and South Africa, while by no means being 'out of the woods', are doing better economically, their citizens' political rights are better protected, and their prospects for future stability look better on a number of socio-economic and political levels. In contrast, the new democracies of Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe suffer from varying degrees of political corruption and government ineptitude, burgeoning regional and ethnic antagonism, and economies which at best are standing still. The prospects for democratic consolidation in these countries look distinctly bleaker when compared to their post-apartheid neighbours. As of 1998 both Zimbabwe and Zambia have, to all intents and purposes, lapsed back into de facto one-party states (with elements of a dejure one-party state) and have displayed a disturbing track record of severely restricting political and human rights. As we head into the new millennium, much of the evidence seems to suggest that the governments of Robert Mugabe and Frederick Chiluba sit atop societal pressure cookers of alienation which may be about to blow. This concept of inclusion, which I shall describe and analyse shortly, is key to my explanation of how conflicts are best managed within divided societies, and it forms an intervening variable between my object of study—political stability, democratic consolidation, and ethnic accommodation—and my macro-institutional explanatory variables.

1. The Relevance of the Question At the beginning of the 1990s, Richard Sklar made an impassioned plea to those interested in the study of African politics to seek out projects which would make an impact on the discipline of political science as a whole, and in particular on the study of comparative

4

Introduction 16

politics. He noted that for far too long Africanists had been well regarded for their area study work, while being disregarded for their ability to 'communicate to the heart of the discipline'.17 As we approach the end of the decade, Sklar's lament that 'the vast majority of political scientists still classify research on Africa as a peripheral "area study" which is not essential to the discipline's scientific progress'18 remains true. There are of course exceptions to the rule. Sklar himself notes the crucial influence of David Apter and James Smoot Coleman on modernization theory, Crawford Young's application of pluralist theory to African societies, and Robert Bates's groundbreaking work in political economy. To these esteemed political scientists (and Africanists) I would add a second generation of scholars who have impacted the discipline outside their primary area specialization. For example: Larry Diamond's work on democratization,19 Thomas Callaghy's work on the state,20 and David Laitin's investigation of the construction of communal identities in Africa.21 However, beyond these impressive exceptions, the perception remains that African studies exists as, methodologically, an academic backwater. Thus, it is in the spirit of Sklar's clarion call to 'identify significant issues or tendencies in political behavior that are more prominent and further developed in Africa than elsewhere in the modern world'22 that I embark upon this investigation of the effect of institutional design on the fledgeling democracies of southern Africa. For perhaps in these divided and most seriously challenged states we have one of the best laboratories to analyse the potential of institutions and constitutions to promote stability and manage conflict in the embryonic democratic nation states of the developing world.23 Of course the study is contextual, but then all good comparative work is. We learn from the lessons which are transportable, while still applying the lessons which are country specific. It is my hope that this work may be groundbreaking in the way it puts democratic institutions at the centre of an explanation of democratic success and failure in Africa.24 To date, the vast majority of the literature dealing with transitions to democracy, and the prospects for subsequent democratic consolidation have dealt with Latin America, southern Europe, and post-communist Eastern Europe.25 That Africa has been left out of this influential canon is partly due to the fact that the recent wave of African democratization has been so new and swift, and that 'new institutionalism' has never really been an aspect of African studies. A number of important works exist which either deal with the politics of democratization and institutional choice in Africa (i.e. transition literature),26 or have made predictions about the likely effect of constitutional engineering

Introduction

5

on democratic consolidation and ethnic accommodation (i.e. advice to princes literature).27 Rarely before, however, has a study been able to look through a multi-country comparative lens on the effect of institutions on democratic stability and ethnic accommodation in southern Africa with the use of a moderately sized data set and the luxury of several years of quantitative and qualitative case study evidence. Specifically, this book attempts to add to the current literature in three important respects: 1. For the first time, it offers a systematic measurement of the consequences of electoral laws in emerging African democracies using a psephologically rooted approach.28 The results enable us to move beyond generalized predictions about how such constructs will work in new democracies towards the attainment of hard evidence which either lends weight to or injures the hypotheses and proposals of influential constitutional engineers.29 The results in Chapters 5, 6, and 7 provide definitive evidence on which electoral systems best fulfil an ethos of representative inclusion in southern Africa. 2. On a theoretical level, I make a clear conceptual distinction between two types of power-sharing, which I call consociational and integrative consensual power-sharing structures. I relate the probable effectiveness of each remedy to the types of societal divisions found in my case study countries. This, I believe, builds on the work of both Lijphart and Horowitz and has the potential to offer practical powersharing solutions which will assuage many of the critics of both authors. The link between appropriate constitutional design and the specific cleavages within a society is crucial. I will argue that the flaw of many institutional proposals aimed at mitigating conflict in southern Africa is that they misconstrue the nature of ethnicity in these countries and ultimately try to manage conflicts which do not exist, while ignoring those divides which are more salient. 3. In a sense, I transgress upon conventional wisdom which stresses the contextual and temporal nature of constitutional design, by arguing that there are general principles of institutional design in Africa which should be at the root of all new constitutions regardless of geographical, social, or economic variables.30 It has become widely accepted (at least in the West) that multiparty democracy is one of these foundational principles,31 but I would further argue that inclusive institutional arrangements are equally important throughout the continent. I would argue even further that one set of institutional choices (i.e. proportional representation, parliamentary government, and powersharing, whether consensual or consociational, depending on the society at issue), best fulfils the preconditions of that inclusiveness.

6

Introduction

The evidence generated from this project may be able to speak to the wider discipline in two important areas. First, it can provide a fresh data set to increase our knowledge of the political consequences of electoral systems, and the way in which the rules of the game for electing representatives mould the policy outputs of government. The work adds a new region to the large body of literature which assesses presidentialism in Latin America,32 and provides comparative case studies for those interested in the power-sharing democracies of Europe. Second, and perhaps more important, the successes and failures of the new democracies of southern Africa may offer lessons to other divided and economically impoverished nations. On an experimental level the case studies are of particular interest because they were often referred to as worst case prospects throughout the 1970s and 1980s and even in the early 1990s.33 If stability and democracy can be sustained in South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe, with their baggage of apartheid and race-domination, and in Malawi and Zambia, with their histories of personalized dictatorships, then the strategies adopted in those countries may well bear fruit in other divided national states emerging from years of authoritarian rule. Successes not only speak to the so-called basket cases of Africa (e.g. Sierra Leone, Liberia, Somalia, Angola, and Zaire), but to the fragile states of Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Asia. The impact of electoral systems on the representation of ethnic and cultural minorities in the five African cases addressed herein might also tell us something about legislative representativeness in the Western democracies of America, Great Britain, and New Zealand.34

2. Defining and Measuring the Variables As illustrated in Fig. I.I, the explanatory (or independent) variables of this study can be collectively described as democratic type, i.e. the institutions which characterize the governing ethos of the nation. I deal with the three main political institutions: the electoral system; whether the executive is presidential or parliamentary; and whether the constitutional rules are designed to give rise to majoritarian or power-sharing governments. I further divide the power-sharing category into two distinct conceptual types: consociational and integrative consensus government. The interaction of these three explanatory variables leads to an intervening variable of inclusiveness or exclusiveness which can best be described by the question: to what degree do various groups within society (whether minority or majority, based on ascriptive, behavioural, or ideological identities) feel that they are

Introduction

7

FIG. I.I. Dependent, intervening, and independent variables included, represented, and listened to within the structures of government which make decisions affecting their interests? My hypothesis is that political stability and ethnic accommodation, and, by extraction, a positive democratization path (the object of study or dependent variables), are greatly enhanced if the institutional constructs put an inclusive spin on the products of the political system; i.e. that communal groups which possess the potential to act in a destabilizing manner, and would do so when feeling excluded, are encouraged to act in a pro-system manner because they feel that they are included.35 The 'first order objection' to such a typology is clearly that the causal arrows can be reversed and that inclusive institutional arrangements do not shape behaviours but are rather a consequence of a political culture which already values compromise and political accommodation. Whil the relationship between my explanatory and intervening variables is clearly multi-causal I shall argue in Chapter 2 that inclusive institutions do not necessarily have to be preceded by a 'consensual political culture', institutions do shape behaviours over time, and the task for constitutional designers in divided societies is to reinforce the desire, or need, to compromise when the window of opportunity of negotiations presents itself. If it can be shown that inclusiveness is a condition

8

Introduction

of ethnic accommodation and political stability, then the question becomes: which institutional arrangements best facilitate such an aura of inclusion? That is the key question this work seeks to answer. Of course, in practice individuals (whether leaders or followers), and not groups, feel or do not feel included within the system, but, when assessing the situation, individuals gather such information from cues associated with the segments of society through which they define their identity. A South African might characterize himself as 'a middleaged Zulu man from KwaZulu-Natal—a farmer with conservative views', thus defining himself along ascriptive lines (ethnicity, gender, language, and age), behavioural lines (occupation), and ideological lines (on a left-right continuum), in addition to regional identity which goes beyond mere ethnicity. However, in southern Africa ethnicity, regionalism, and ideology prove to be the most salient descriptive traits.38 Thus, the inclusion or exclusion or leaders (or segments) based on these traits provide the most important cues for the individual. The hypothetical respondent would probably be far more concerned that Zulus were visibly included within the system than that middle-aged farmers were. It is important to state up front that my methodology combines a primarily qualitative analysis of the trajectory of democratization with a more quantitative measurement of my explanatory institutional variables. Ideally, I would have incorporated hard quantitative measurements of the dependent variable which could have been correlated with the measurements of my independent institutional variables. But due to the youth of my case studies and the paucity of robust mathematical indicators of democratization in southern Africa my analysis of the object of study remains chiefly qualitative (although I do use a number of preliminary quantitative indicators in Chapter 1). However, I am confident of the worth of the project, even without such 'hard' measurements of democratization in my case studies for three reasons. (1) The qualitative evidence is clear and I believe that when data are added to the limited data I have presented they will reinforce my overall conclusions. (2) Often a qualitative narrative tells us more about the elusive notion of democratization than impersonal data. Many of the economic and social indices in South Africa remain negative but those indicators jar with the feeling and atmosphere of guarded but widespread optimism which continues to be palpable in South Africa as of 1998. (3) Abandoning research into the wave of democratization that hit Africa in the late 1980s and early 1990s for twenty years (by which time an adequate electoral data set would have accumulated) would blind other fledgling democracies to the lessons that they need to learn at the earliest point in their democratic experiments.

Introduction

9

3. Why Focus on Institutions? (a) The Importance of Institutions and Constitutions37 The study of political institutions is integral to the study of democratization because institutions constitute and sustain democracies. Thus, 'to craft democracies is to craft institutions'.38 On the most basic level an institutional approach to politics merely makes the argument that 'the organization of political life makes a difference'.39 As institutions become more entrenched they become actors in their own right, moulding and structuring the behaviour of participants within the political milieu. As March and Olsen noted in their seminal 1983 piece, 'new institutionalism, in company with most research on preferences, argues that preferences and meanings develop in politics, as in the rest of life, through a combination of education, indoctrination, and experience'.40 Thus, there is a multi-faceted and circular nature to institutions—as they affect the distribution of resources, they impact upon the power of political actors who go on to remould political institutions to their own ends.41 Most important, to newly democratizing countries, institutions shape the choices available to political actors. Koelble notes that this emphasis on 'rules, structures, codes, and organizational norms is based upon Weber's view of organizations as constructs designed to distribute rewards and sanctions and to establish guidelines for acceptable types of behavior'.42 March and Olsen argue that 'constitutions, laws, contracts, and customary rules of politics make many potential actions or considerations illegitimate or unnoticed; some alternatives are excluded from the agenda before politics begins, but these constraints are not imposed full-blown by an external social system; they develop within the context of political institutions.'43 In his important 1991 book Democracy and the Market, Adam Przeworski develops a concept of democracy as 'rule open-endedness or organized uncertainty . . . and the less the uncertainty over potential outcomes the lower the incentive for groups to organize institutionally'.44 Furthermore, 'the decisive step toward democracy [is] the devolution of power from a group of people to a set of rules' for institutions not only set.the rules of competition, but act as codes of punishment for non-compliance and, as outlined earlier, have distributional consequences.46 (b) The Potential Policy Consequences of Institutional Design Beyond setting the rules of the game, political institutions impact public policy through their structuring of political choice. '[Elements in

10

Introduction

constitutional design have a substantial impact on democratic performance. Some of this impact is relatively direct: the political resources of the chief executive affect government stability. [While] some of the impact is indirect: constitutional arrangements help shape the properties of party systems, which in turn affect participation, stability and violence.'46 In their preface to Politics in Developing Countries, Larry Diamond, Juan Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset identify four reasons why institutions matter: (i) Institutions structure behavior into stable, predictable, and recurrent patterns, institutionalized systems are less volatile and more enduring, and so are institutionalized democracies. (ii) regardless of how they perform economically, democracies that have more coherent and effective political institutions will be more likely to perform well politically in maintaining not only political order but also a rule of law, thus ensuring civil liberties, checking the abuse of power, and providing meaningful representation, competition, choice, and accountability. (iii) over the long run well-institutionalized democracies are also more likely to produce workable, sustainable, and effective economic and social policies because they have more effective and stable structures for representing interests and they are more likely to produce working congressional majorities or coalitions that can adopt and sustain policies. and (iv) democracies that have capable, coherent democratic institutions are better able to limit military involvement in politics and assert civilian control over the military.47

(c) Institutions and Democratization in Southern Africa While accepting that throughout the developing world the social constraints on democracy are considerable, such constraints still leave room for conscious political strategies which may further or hamper successful democratization. As a result, institutions do not work just at the margins, but are central to the structuring of stability, which proves to be the case particularly in ethnically heterogeneous societies.48 Scarritt and Mozaffar push the critical role of institutions in Africa even further by arguing that distinct institutional arrangements not only distinguish democracies, but invest governments with different abilities to manage conflicts. Thus, 'the stability and survival of third wave democracies under extremely adverse conditions hinge on these [institutional] differences'.49 Institutional design takes on an incrementally enhanced role in southern African democracies because, in the absence of other structures, politics becomes the primary mode of communication between divergent social forces. In any society, groups (collections of individuals who

Introduction

11

identify some sort of mutual bond) talk to each other—sometimes about resolving distributive conflicts, sometimes about planning for the national future, and often about more mundane issues of everyday concern. In the pluralist democracies of the West there are a variety of channels of communication open through which to carry on these conversations. Individuals from different cultures and perspectives can communicate with each other through the institutions of civil society: through the press, social and sporting clubs, residence associations, church groups, labour unions, etc.50 These institutions are not perfect— they are often exclusionary and homogeneous. In the United States, whites do not often talk to blacks on a one-to-one level, and religious conservatives do not really intermingle with secularists, but there is some element of talk, and that is deemed to be a normative good for a robust and dynamic democracy.51 Much more of the communication, between blacks and whites, conservatives and liberals, goes on within the structures of political institutions. This is a product of practical necessity and the way in which society is ordered. Groups talk to each other through conduits or representatives who express their concerns and negotiate on issues which affect the nation state as a whole. However, in fledgeling democracies, nations more deeply divided along ethnic, regional, or economic lines, political institutions take on even greater importance. They become by far the chief channel of communication between disparate groups. Such societies do not yet have the mixed institutions of a civil society. Sporting, social, and religious groups are exceedingly segregated, peoples do not live together, play together, or really talk to each other.52 And this goes beyond mere geographical distance. As anyone who has lived in South Africa knows, the mile between the leafy southern suburbs of Cape Town and the townships of Guguletu and Khayelitsha represents a different time zone—and rarely the twain shall meet. The new democracies of southern Africa do not yet have a vigorous free press where groups can talk. Indeed, there is a vigorous free press in South Africa, but each paper and television channel speaks to one section of society, not across sections.63 This holds true in the West as well, where papers speak to certain people and cities are segregated along racial, ethnic, and economic lines; but southern Africa represents the extreme of the continuum and that is why political institutions exist as the only talking shop in town. Because political institutions fulfil this role as the pre-eminent method of communication, they must facilitate the talk between groups who need to talk. If they exclude people from coming to the table then the conflicts can only be solved through force, not through negotiation and mutual accommodation. Further, those doing the

12

Introduction

talking, the representatives, must be just that—representative. To be able to make promises and then deliver on them, each political representative needs to be accountable to his or her constituency to the highest degree possible through institutional rules. (d) The Validity of Constitutional Engineering There is little dispute that institutions matter, but there is much greater dispute regarding how much one can (or would wish to) engineer political outcomes through the choice of institutional structures. In this regard there exists an important distinction between an institutional choice approach and those who seek institutional innovation through constitutional engineering to mitigate conflict within divided societies. Sisk notes that 'there has been an implicit assumption by scholars of comparative politics who specialize in divided societies that such political conflict can be potentially ameliorated if only such societies would adopt certain types of democratic institutions, that is, through "political engineering" '.54 Indeed, Horowitz proposes that 'whatever their preferences, it remains true that a severely divided society needs a heavy dose—on the engineering analogy, even a redundant dose—of institutions laden with incentives to accommodation'.55 Also, Sartori argues that 'the organization of the state requires more than any other organization to be kept on course by a structure of rewards and punishments, of "good" inducements and scary deterrents'.66 However, Sisk runs counter to Horowitz, Lijphart, Sartori, and others, in arguing that constitutional engineering should not be the primary focus of research: 'most scholarship about democracy in divided societies centers too much on examining the best outcomes, as opposed to looking at the ways these outcomes evolve through bargaining processes.'57 Elster supports Sisk with the view that 'it is impossible to predict with certainty or even qualified probability the consequences of a major constitutional change'.58 Elster and Sisk remain in the minority on this question, given that most comparative political scientists would be happy to predict with 'qualified probability' the results of a shift in electoral law or democratic system. As Sartori correctly notes, if we follow Elster's somewhat defeatist logic, then 'the practical implication of the inability of predicting is the inability of reforming'.59 There seems little reason to give up the potential power of institutions for conflict resolution if we are confident of some degree of predictive ability when it comes to institutional consequences. Ultimately there is a temporal dimension to both constitutional design and the politics of institutional choice.

Introduction

13

Political actors in a fledgeling democracy may choose certain structures (rationally) because they maximize their gain in the short term. Thus, negotiators may not alight upon more inclusive structures recommended by political scientists posing as constitutional engineers. However, the discipline of constitutional engineering rests on the assumption that long-term socio-political stability is the nation's overarching goal; and the institutions needed to facilitate that goal may not be the same as those which provide maximum short-term gain to the negotiating actors in the transitional period. Thus, institutional choice and constitutional engineering are compatible approaches. One seeks to understand what drives short-term bargains, while the other seeks to offer more longterm solutions with the benefit of comparative cross-national evidence. The task of the constitutional engineer is not only to find which institutional package will most likely ensure democratic consolidation, but to persuade those domestic politicians making the decisions that they should choose long-term stability over short-term gain.

4. Alternative Approaches While institutions are one cog, perhaps even the most important cog, in the wheel of factors which facilitate political stability and democratic consolidation in a divided society, their success and indeed democracy's future is conditional upon a plethora of other social, economic, and political conditions. These other valid lines of research and approaches to the question can be usefully grouped into three separate camps. First, there are those factors which, far from injuring an institutional approach, actually interrelate with the endogenous institutional variables contained within this study. These include: (i) the promotion of a robust and dynamic civil society generating a political culture of tolerance and democratic acceptance;60 (ii) the consolidation of political parties and the vertical structures which connect leaders with followers;61 and (iii) the decentralization of political and administrative power.62 Second, there are those factors which may have initially influenced the choice of institutions in a new democracy, but subsequently affect consolidation in a more tangential way—a way that is not necessarily dependent upon or intertwined with the performance of institutions. These may be either exogenous or endogenous factors, including: (i) the political economy of a fledgeling democracy's dependence on the West and the financial agents of the developed world;63 (ii) the role of international diplomacy in promoting certain types of democracy;64 (iii)

14

Introduction

the role and attitude of the domestic military;65 (iv) environmental and social pressures on the stability of the state;66 and (v) the role of political leadership.67 To these factors I add two historical components: (vi the type of colonialism which was practised before independence,68 and (vii) the nature of the transition from authoritarianism to democracy.69 Finally, we must acknowledge an approach which is openly hostile to an institutional analysis of democratization and condemns constitutional engineering as a distinctly unsavoury exercise. In essence this school of thought argues that elections are part of the problem in divided societies and that African societies in particular are not suited to 'Western'-style competitive politics.70 In a conference presentation entitled 'The Democratization of Disempowerment', the late Nigerian political scientist Claude Ake wrote that, with regard to the institution of democracy in Africa, elections are accorded a significance that is utterly out of proportion to their relevance. Indeed, he argued that 'elections have become a problem for democracy in Africa', as they do little to entrench democratic norms of behaviour, but do much to exacerbate conflict.71 Ake's non-mainstream belief rests on five related observations of the last two decades of African multipartyism. Some of these are undeniable and others more questionable. First, he notes that the strongest advocates of multipartyism in most African countries previously held positions of power within the one-party regime.72 He contends that their commitment to political pluralism was born more of frustrated ambition and specific grievances. Such actors will 'refuse to accept the discipline of democracy when it serves their interests to do so'.73 Second, African democratization is nothing without a fundamental transformation of the state; but the political elite, whether in or out of power, has no interest in transforming the state. Therefore, elections in Africa are merely a choice between oppressors. Third, while elections are meaningless when it comes to the institution of accountable and democratic norms, they are fought with 'consummate intensity5, as elites realize better than anyone else that power 'is the only defense against abuse and arbitrariness, and often the means of wealth accumulation'.74 Fourth, the very opening of democratic space in Africa where communal and ethnic identities are strong, and the state's legitimacy is low, is apt to cause conflict. Last, and perhaps Ake's most disputable contention, is that freedom of the press, free speech, and the right to run for office are not very useful to peasants immersed in a daily struggle for survival, ignorant of the choices and dilemmas involved.75 In fact, Ake argues that without the social upliftment of ordinary people, electoral mobilization will be inevitably handled through 'patron—client chains, leveraging parochial identities, corruption and intimidation'.76

Introduction

15

All of Ake's arguments point to the challenges of electoral democratization, not to inherent flaws of the choosing process. The elite's grip on power, which is already over-concentrated in a centralized state, the mobilization of communal identities, and the disregard for social upliftment are all far greater problems in one-party regimes than in multiparty dispensations. Indeed, the negative properties that Ake assigns to multiparty elections are merely the residual characteristics of authoritarian rule which can persist within democracies if those democracies do not entrench appropriate political institutions to generate popular support. In a direct response to Ake's pessimism, Diamond rightly notes that transitions to democracy may well struggle to throw off previous anti-democratic tendencies, but that in itself does not negate the crusade: Democracy did not emerge pristine and beautiful anywhere in the world . . . Anywhere you look you find a very nasty, utilitarian, ugly, corrupt, top-down, clientelistic process. The question is how did it get from that to a higher quality of democracy? It would not have made that progress without the operation of whatever passed for democracy itself. Elections are a step in the process .. . if you don't start there, where do you start? What is the agenda? How do you get to the deeper democracy you want? The only way you get there is by passing through the ugly, nasty, corrupt, utilitarian, exploitative, undemocratic in many ways, civilian, multiparty electoral machine that Ake indicts, [and] that is part of the development process. You have to start somewhere. You cannot build effective states and effective governance in Africa without moving toward democracy.77

A second widely held view, challenging the assumption that properly constituted multiparty democracy is beneficial for Africa and Africans, maintains that African societies are not suited to Westernstyle competitive politics. There is a continuum of intensity and obviousness in how this view is expressed, but each adds up to the disturbing 'Africans are culturally immature' thesis. Munslow writes that 'one problem in Africa is that traditional mechanisms of expressing popular opinion and of controlling leaders are fundamentally different from those expressed in national party voting systems';78 and that democracy requires a level of education and communication which is rare in Africa. Concluding that 'old habits die hard', he notes that the 'concept of a loyal opposition is generally an alien one in Africa, as personal rule predominates rather than the rule of impersonal structures'.79 This implies that 'personal rule' did not predominate in pre-democratic Europe! He juxtaposes the Caribbean and African experiences, arguing that the same people, uprooted and stripped of indigenous culture, managed to craft democracy in the Caribbean while they could not manage it in Africa. Munslow is sympathetic to the

16

Introduction

thesis that the difference emerged as a result of Caribbeans being imbued with European cultural values.80 In a similar although less subtle vein, Kaplan contends that democracy in Africa is strewn with obstacles, because Africans 'never had much of a democratic or institutional tradition to begin with'.81 Keenan is the most absolute in his cultural pessimism in arguing that democracy is a Western concept, rooted in Western culture, and is thus inappropriate for non-Western societies. 'Democracy has a relatively narrow base both in time and in space; and the evidence has yet to be produced that it is the natural form of rule for peoples outside those narrow [European] perimeters.'82 Schwarz develops this thesis to its logical and dispiriting end, borrowing from Thomas Hobbes. Schwarz concludes that the only road to stability in divided (and by implication African) societies is the domination of one group over another. 'Once internal differences become violent, usually only the logic offeree can lay them to rest. . . [LJamentably, the most stable and lasting solution to ethnic and nationalist conflicts has been ethnic cleansing and partition.'83 If democratic power-sharing solutions do arise, according to Schwarz, they only emerge after opposing sides have exhausted themselves in bloody conflict. This leaves the West with only two options: wait out the violence (d la Bosnia) or intervene by helping one side to impose its will on the other. If one buys this construct, then the West is impotent in the face of ethnic conflict because 'humane solutions are ineffective' and 'effective solutions are too inhumane to be considered'.84 A long tradition of African leaders have forcefully expressed the view that Western-style multiparty politics would be disastrous for stability and inter-ethnic accommodation in their one-party regimes. President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Kenya's President Daniel arap-Moi are only the most recent exponents of a tradition emerging from the 1960s decade of independence from colonial rule. In 1963, Julius Nyerere, President of Tanganyika (Tanzania), argued that twoparty systems would inevitably encourage factionalization around ethnic ties. Nyerere claimed that two-party systems would generate 'the politics of groups', retard nation-building, and would be 'bound, in time, to prove fatal to democracy' on the continent.85 He further maintained that 'where there is one party—provided it is identified with the nation as a whole—the foundations of democracy can be firmer, and the people can have more opportunity to exercise a real choice, than where you have two or more parties—each representing only a section of the community'.86 The view represented by these African leaders has been largely discredited. The Africans who adamantly believed in one-party states were,

Introduction

17

by and large, the few who benefited from the moral and economic corruption—not the many who suffered.87 There is in fact little reason to doubt that with time African societies will be as capable as the West in nurturing strong democratic political cultures (i.e. putting aside the debate over how robust present Western civic cultures are). Basil Davidson, one of the pre-eminent historians of Africa, has argued that pre-slaving African societies had cultures based on widespread participation and codes of morality which were just as conducive to democracy as the cultures of medieval Europe.88 Decalo agrees that a democratic ethos is not necessarily missing in Africa, rather, it has been relegated by authoritarian rule to subnational structures.89 Nevertheless, Nolutshungu rightly points out that one need not solve this historical debate to be an advocate of democracy in Africa. 'Whether African societies are culturally averse to tolerating such competition or to permitting such choices is an empirical matter, which, as luck would have it, can only be determined by the kind of open inquiry possible under conditions of free expression.'90

5. Outline of Chapters The best way to approach the question of the impact of institutions on democratization in southern Africa is to use a hybrid methodology drawn from both new institutionalist and cultural, 'rich descriptive', traditions. Therefore, throughout this work I utilize the comparative electoral systems methodologies pioneered by Lijphart,91 Taagepera,92 Grofman,93 Shugart,94 and Duverger.95 At the same time I will base my discussions of the case studies on detailed social and politically historical descriptions. Such an approach has its potential drawbacks, but ultimately a satisfying and comprehensive answer to the question 'why do some democratic constitutions survive in Africa, while others fail?' can only be found within the most intricate analysis of case study specifics. The theoretical underpinnings of this research are outlined in Chapters 1-4. Qualitative discussions of democracy in the case studies are found throughout the first six chapters. Quantitative measurements predominate in Chapters 7 and 8. The opening chapter qualitatively and quantitatively assesses the trajectory of my case studies along the lines of their political stability, ethnic accommodation, and the long-term prospects for democratic accommodation. In attempting to find useful indicators of the trajectory of democratization in each of the five case studies, I seek to measure politically related deaths, economic performance, political rights and civil liberties, electoral turnout, spoilt ballots, media freedom, and

18

Introduction

MAP I.I. Southern Africa

the trajectory of ethnic accommodation. In Chapter 2 I define the intervening variable of 'inclusiveness', and measure the explanatory variables: electoral system type, democratic type, and executive type. Chapters 3 and 4 then deal with the theoretical debate underlying electoral system design in divided societies and the debate between advocates of consensual, consociational, and majoritarian government. Within Chapter 4 I also address the presidential versus parliamentary debate as it relates to broader issues of democratic type.

Introduction

19

Chapters 5 and 6 describe the political histories of the case studies, paying particular attention to their democratic transitions, institutional choices, and experience of multiparty elections. Chapter 5 deals with the plurality SMD case studies (Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe), while Chapter 6 looks at the PR cases (South Africa and Namibia). In the spirit of Sisk's plea for academics and the international community to 'do a better job in providing information and comparative experience to contestants . . . for example, running simulations of various potential outcomes under alternative electoral systems',96 Chapter 7 sets up a series of counter-factuals to test the impact of alternative electoral systems. Chapter 8 gives a comparative analysis of both actual and simulated results along a number of dimensions relating to system inclusiveness: party system dynamics, disproportionality, executive formation, and descriptive representation, along with a discussion of the voters' access to each system, the 'Horowitz proposal' in practice, and the rationale of institutional choice. In the Conclusion, I summarize the clear patterns of evidence from the case studies which show that when it comes to democracy in southern Africa: (1) inclusion matters, and (2) institutions help determine inclusion—depending on the context, some institutions cause instability, while others facilitate democratic consolidation. Finally, I describe how those patterns are repeated elsewhere on the continent, and relate the whole issue of institutional design to the broader theoretical issues inherent within the concept of representation.

1

Defining and Measuring the Trajectory of Democratization 1. Definitions (a) Defining Democracy Just as the concept of democracy is fluid, not temporally static, political systems (both democratic and non-democratic) exist on a continuum of political and civil rights and procedural guarantees of access to institutions. These determine how state power is to be apportioned and utilized. Lijphart argues that 'democracy is a concept which virtually defies definition'.1 One might take the easy way out and follow the logic of the United States Supreme Court: when faced with the task of identifying what is pornographic and what is not, they said that they were unwilling to lay down explicit definitions but knew it when they saw it. However, as Robert Dahl has shown, political science can do better than that, and Dahl's eight institutional guarantees constituting polyarchy remain the best criteria for judging the formal 'democratic-ness' of a given political system. The guarantees are: (i) freedom to form and join organizations; (ii) freedom of expression; (iii) the (universal) right to vote; (iv) eligibility for public office; (v) the right of political leaders to compete for support and votes; (vi) alternative sources of information; (vii) free and fair elections; and (viii institutions for making government policies depend on votes and other expressions of preference.2 In essence, democratic regimes are characterized by 'not perfect responsiveness but by a high degree of it: their actions have been in relatively close correspondence with the wishes of relatively many of their citizens for a long period of time.'3 In his introduction to the Encyclopedia of Democracy, Seymour Martin Lipset refines Dahl's institutional guarantees into three essentially procedural and mechanistic features of a democracy.4 'First, competition exists for government positions, and fair elections for public office occur at regular intervals without the use of force and without

The Trajectory of Democratization

21

excluding any social group. Second, citizens participate in selecting their leaders and forming policies. And, third, civil and political liberties exist to ensure the integrity of political competition and participation.'5 Schmitter and Karl seek to distinguish between the 'procedures' that underpin democracy and the 'principles' that make democracy work.6 They add two items to Dahl's procedural list which are particularly relevant to democratization in sub-Saharan Africa. First, popularly elected officials must be able to exercise their powers without being overridden by unelected figures. Second, the polity must be self-governing; i.e. it is independent of some other overarching political system.7 It could well be argued that, due to structural economic dependency, no supposedly democratic regime in the developing world fulfils this latter criterion. With regard to the 'principles' underlying democracy, Schmitter and Karl take a similar stance to Przeworski in arguing that democracy requires an agreement on a set of rules that embody contingent consent.8 Przeworski expresses this as a self-enforcing equilibrium in which no coercive compliance is required for actors to accept institutions because it is in everyone's interest to comply. 'Democracy is a system of processing conflicts in which outcomes depend on what participants do but no single force controls what occurs.'9 In a sense, the path and creation of democracy revolve around a Rawlsian veil of uncertainty. Political actors know little about their potential strength under democratic institutions and therefore opt for the solution which maximizes the pay-off to all involved. Thus, institutions are adopted which introduce checks and balances and maximize the political influence of minorities, thereby making policy largely insensitive to fluctuations in public opinion. Of particular importance to this project, and the issue of African democratization in general, is Schmitter and Karl's assertion that Western foreign policy has become imbued with the fallacy of 'electoralism', or 'the faith that merely holding elections will channel political action into peaceful contests among elites and accord public legitimacy to the winners—no matter how they are conducted or what else constrains those who win them'.10 The fallacy of electoralism fails to acknowledge that what goes on between elections often matters as much as the election moment itself. If the lines of communication and accountability between representatives and the represented, governments and people, are cut between elections, then one can slip into what O'Donnell has characterized as 'delegative democracy'. This rests on the premiss that executives are 'entitled to govern as they see fit—constrained only by existing power relations and a constitutionally limited term of office'.11 O'Donnell notes that while delegative

22


democracies may belong to the democratic genus, they 'could hardly be less congenial to the building and strengthening of democratic political institutions'.12 (b) Political Stability and its Relationship to Democratization If one excuses the tautology, throughout this work I take political stability to mean the absence of political instability, which in turn is defined by Morrison and Stevenson as: a condition in national political systems in which the institutionalized patterns of authority break down, and the expected compliance to political authorities is replaced by violence intended to change the personnel, policies, or sovereignty of the political authorities by injury to persons or property.13

Perhaps more succinct is Lijphart's definition of political stability in Democracy in Plural Societies, which combines the ideas of system maintenance, civil order, legitimacy, and effectiveness. 'The foremost characteristics of a stable democratic regime are that it has a high probability of remaining democratic and that it has a low level of actual and potential civil violence.'14 Both ethnic accommodation and political stability are integral pillars of democratic consolidation. That is not to say that something approaching democracy cannot exist in societies where simmering ethnic hostility remains and the stability of the political system is fragile at best. However, substantive long-term democratization both requires and engenders political stability.15 Conversely, instability, characterized by unpredictable violence and a lack of communal trust based on national identity, is both a product and a cause of the failure of democracy consolidation. (c) When is a Democracy Consolidated? Democratic consolidation is unlikely ever to be an absolute term. That is why the primary object of study of this book is 'democratization' and not 'democratic consolidation' per se. A state may appear set for life on the path of competitive multipartyism and socio-political freedom before rapidly collapsing into authoritarianism or totalitarianism. One can, however, envision a threshold for consolidation where the ethos and norms of democratic behaviour have taken hold to such an extent that the democracy is likely to endure despite exogenous shocks to the system. In sum, democracy is unlikely to break down when it is behaviourally practised, attitudinally widely accepted, and constitutionally entrenched.16 More specifically, one can consider democracy as enduring when compliance with the institutional rules which


23

structure the political sphere becomes the equilibrium position for all competing actors. Przeworski's definition perhaps best captures the essence of democracy as a positive sum game. '[DJemocracy is consolidated when under given political and economic conditions a particular system of institutions becomes the only game in town, when no one can imagine acting outside the democratic institutions, when all the losers want to do is to try again within the same institutions under which they have just lost.'17 However, pervasive consolidation must go beyond elite pacts and party acceptance of institutions to a more widespread popular belief in the rule of law. When the democratic equilibrium is reached, what Max Weber calls 'rational-legal legitimacy' emerges.18 Citizens accept the basis of laws and their administration even if they are unhappy with the agents of power at any given time. Lipset notes that rational-legal legitimacy is usually based on institutional performance over a number of decades, if not centuries; but fledgeling democracies do not have the luxury of proving to their citizens over an extended period of time that constitutional democracy is the only way. Lipset offers two solutions to the dilemma. First, new democracies should make the promotion of robust judicial independence a priority; and, second, they should 'draw up a constitution as soon as possible, to provide a basis for legitimacy, to define limits on state power, and to ensure political and economic rights'.19 While engendering a belief in the rule of law is a key prerequisite of democratic survival, it may not be sufficient to assuage the fears of those people who hope for democracy to deliver them to the promised land. To invoke required compliance from all actors, democracy must generate some degree of substantive outcomes. Again, as Przeworski notes, while the institutions must be fair, they must also be effective. These requirements may be contradictory: 'a stable democracy requires that governments be strong enough to govern effectively but weak enough not to be able to govern against important interests.'20 The crux of constitutional engineering is creating institutions which fulfil this enormously complex requirement. The plethora of facilitating conditions which aid the development and consolidation of democracy have been discussed in detail in the preceding chapter, but it is useful to reiterate, in the words of Diamond, Linz, and Lipset, the list of 'ideal conditions' for ensuring democratic survival: [Structural factors make democracy more or less likely but neither inevitable or impossible. Democracy is more likely—in particular, more likely to survive— where poverty and inequality are limited and levels of education and income

24


are generally high; where cultural norms value democracy, tolerance, bargaining, and accommodation, and efficacious citizens join together in a wide range of civil society organizations; where ethnic pluralism is limited, or different ethnic and nationality groups form coalitions and feel secure with one another; where military prerogatives and roles are limited, and a country's valued regional and international ties depend on its being or becoming democratic.21

2. Measuring the Trajectory of Democratization Tatu Vanhanen notes that countless researchers have attempted to come up with empirical indicators of comparative democratization, but these measures have been characterized more by their complexity and lack of common ground than by agreement or parsimony.22 Nevertheless, political competition, electoral participation, and the degree of respect paid to civil liberties are common themes running through the multitude of proposed indicators. Robert Dahl's eight institutional guarantees of polyarchy are all present in each of the five case studies to some degree. However, within this chapter, and throughout the rest of the book, I will use quantitative indicators of those institutional factors which can be assessed numerically and qualitative narratives for the more nebulous concepts of civil liberties and political freedoms. In keeping with the previous discussion of democratic consolidation, and my desire to use indicators which give a clue to the 'trajectory of democratization', the remainder of this chapter deals with the measurement of a mixture of social, political, and economic indicators for each case study country. I first address the number of deaths through political violence as an indicator of the trajectory of political stability. While detailed monthly figures are only available for South Africa, in each of the other case studies the trend is clear. Next comes economic performance, which is both a function of, and facilitating condition of, stability. In line with the canon of democratization literature, my hypothesis is that democratic consolidation is far more likely when economies are buoyant and individual living standards are on the rise. For a useful and overarching measure of political liberalism, I have included the Freedom House ratings of political rights and civil liberties (1978-96). Then, more specifically, I include two measures of electoral robustness: first, turnout (expressed as a percentage of the voting age population) and second, spoilt ballot papers (as an indicator of alienation expressed through the ballot box). Finally, to these more standard indicators of democracy, I have added sections dealing with the trajectory of media freedom and influence and the degree of ethnic accommodation. As w


25

approach the new millennium, these eight indicators provide evidence for the confidence one should feel about the prospects for democracy in South Africa, Namibia, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. (a) Measuring Political Violence In all of the case study countries, political violence declined dramatically with the onset of multiparty democracy, although, in South Africa and Zimbabwe, the number of deaths through political violence did not fall to levels which might be deemed acceptable in Western democracies. In Malawi, the practice of state-sponsored torture, detention, and disappearance, so widespread during Banda's rule, effectively ceased upon the inauguration of the new government in May 1994. Kaunda's one-party state in Zambia was never characterized by the same degree of conflict or state repression found in the rest of the region; although, at least twenty-nine people were killed in the demonstrations of June 1991 which precipitated Kaunda's eventual downfall. Chiluba's new government retained the old 'shoot to kill' paramilitary robbery squads. In October 1993 police shot dead a student demonstrator in Lusaka,23 but political violence to date has not exceeded pre-1991 levels. The violent Rhodesian civil war between 1972 and 1980 left hundreds of thousands dead (less than 10,000 whites) before the Lancaster House agreement mercifully brought an end to the war. However, state violence against opponents of the new ZANU-PF government did continue, most seriously in the mid-1980s when thousands of Ndebele were killed by the army during popular uprisings in Matabeleland.24 In Namibia political violence has been reduced to a very low level since the cessation of hostilities in 1989. Perhaps the most clear correlation between negotiations, democratization, and politically related deaths can be found in South Africa, where, despite continuing political conflict in KwaZulu-Natal between African National Congress and Inkatha members, political deaths have declined to their lowest level for a decade or more. Deaths hit peaks in: March 1990, following de Klerk's speech announcing the unbanning of the ANC; August 1990, when the 'Pretoria Minute' setting out negotiations between the ANC and NP was signed; March 1992, on the eve of the whites-only referendum; July 1993, on the announcement of the April 1994 election date and just after the assassination of Chris Hani; and on the eve of the election itself. However, as Fig. 1.1 shows, the establishment of the Government of National Unity in May 1994 did ensure a dramatic and, to date, lasting drop in the number of deaths through political violence.

FIG. 1.1. Politically related deaths in South Africa since 1990 Note: (E)=April 1994 election. Sources: South African Institute of Race Relations and Human Rights Committee.


27

TABLE 1.1. Economic comparisons

South Africa PPP$ Growth Inflation Namibia PPP$ Growth Inflation Zimbabwe PPP$ Growth Inflation Zambia PPP$ Growth Inflation Malawi PPP$ Growth Inflation

Pre-multiparty elections (mean)"

Post-multiparty elections (mean)

Rank

5,071 (1990-3) -0.6% (1990-3) 13.3% (1990-3)

3,885 (1994) 3.5% ( 1994-7") 9.0% (1994)

1 2 1

n.a. n.a. n.a.

1,760 (1992-4) 3.9% (1990-7b) 11.9% (1991-6)

2 1 2

662 (1980-6) 3.8% (1980-9) 13.4% (1980-9)

1,533 (1989-94) 1.3% (1991-5) 27.6% (1991-5)

3 3 3

717 (1990) -0.7% (1989-90) 119.8% (1989-90)

848 (1991-4) -0.2% (1991-4) 132.8% (1991-4)

4 4 5

589 (1989-93) 3.9% (1990-3) 16.7% (1990-3)

800 (1994) -0.8% (1994-6) 28.2% (1994-6)

5 5 4

" Figures given for Zimbabwe are for the first decade of multiparty politics (1980-9). During the pre-democracy years, 1969-79, PPP$ was 200. b Estimated for 1997. Notes: n.a.=not available, PPP$=purchasing power parities in $US; Growth=real GDP growth %; Inflation=consunier price inflation %. Sources: Economist Intelligence Unit Country Reports (1989-96); Sylvester 1991: 99-101.

(6) Economic Indicators As illustrated in Table 1.1, South Africa and Namibia, situated within a desert of economic impoverishment, stand out among the case studies as the only countries which are positioning themselves through moderate economic gains to realize robust and dynamic economies in the twenty-first century. Both countries have experienced modest growth rates (averaging between 3 and 4 per cent) and have kept inflation down to manageable levels. Early successful economic management has facilitated a comparatively high purchasing power capacity for South African and Namibian workers in Africa. In contrast, since their transition to multiparty democracy, Malawians and

28


Zambians continue to endure high inflation rates (astronomical in Zambia's case), negative growth rates, and desperately low purchasing power. Zimbabwe has also failed to build upon the economic optimism of the early independence years. In the 1990s, Zimbabwe registered growth rates which were on average less than half of those recorded in the 1980s. In the seven years since Frederick Chiluba's MMD government replaced Kenneth Kaunda's UNIP regime, Zambia has spiralled downwards to a new economic low.25 The radical structural adjustment programme, initiated by Chiluba with the support of Western donors and the IMF, proved to be a disaster as it was only effective in redistributing resources from the already impoverished town-dwellers to pre-existing elites. As Ihonvbere explains, privatization and burgeoning commercialization merely led to the retrenchment of thousands of workers and 'a general inability to meet the basic needs of the people'.26 The privatization of the agricultural marketing system replaced cooperatives with buying agencies dominated by old political elites. This led to individual farmers being starved of cash and machinery, and, as a result, to a virtual collapse of the dairy industry. Compacting agricultural failings, industry has contracted within an increasingly hostile economic environment. A number of multinational corporations, including Dunlop, Johnson & Johnson, Colgate, and GEC, have either scaled back their operations in Zambia or moved lock, stock, and barrel to neighbouring countries. Local industries were hit by so many new taxes that their competitiveness inside and outside the country became crippled. In Malawi President Muluzi's administration faced a very difficult job when it took office in 1994, inheriting one of the weakest economies in the world, widespread poverty and malnourishment (80 per cent of Malawians live below the poverty line), and a system imbued with the ethos of one-party corruption and clientelism. Nevertheless, taking into account the indubitable obstacles, Muluzi's first two years in office saw a net contraction of the economy after many years of marginal growth, and an inflation rate spiralling out of control.27 Malawi remains entirely dependent on the $US843 million foreign aid pledged by members of the consultative group in December 1995. The portents for economic development were comparatively much better at the birth of Zimbabwean multiparty politics 1980. In its first few years of independence, Zimbabwe registered impressive growth rates of between 11 and 13 per cent. Hopes for the future were high, as the country was rich in natural resources, and had a well-developed economic infrastructure and a diversified industrial and agricultural sector.28 However, throughout the 1980s, farming production was retarded by drought


29

and the average GDP growth rate for the decade was a moderate 2.9 per cent. In 1990, Mugabe launched a structural adjustment programme comprised of trade deregulation, currency devaluation, the lifting of price controls, a cut in government social welfare spending, and the ending of consumer subsidies. As in Zambia, most of these actions hit the poor first and led to severe hardships for both urban and rural black Zimbabweans. By 1995, the government debt had doubled and the real incomes of those in the formal sector hit a record low. The manufacturing industry appears to be on the decline and 22,000 public service jobs have been axed since 1990. By the late 1990s many Zimbabweans are understandably questioning whether the 1.3 per cent growth rate of the decade's first half was worth the hardship produced by the government's austerity programme. Comparatively, the two more optimistic cases continue to be Namibia and South Africa. Namibia enjoys the status of being one of Africa's most prosperous nations, despite fluctuations owing to the nature of a highly distorted economy concentrated around mining income (with a PPP$ only bettered in the region by South Africa). Unemployment and income distribution29 remain serious problems, but economic growth since independence has been steady and inflation kept to a manageable level. Donald Sparks notes that since President Nujoma initiated a programme of incentives for private sector investment in manufacturing and industry in 1993, 'Namibia appears to have made the transformation from colonial rule to independence with relatively little social or economic upheaval and, indeed, with public economic policies and a physical infrastructure which should lead to long-term development and growth.'30 South Africa has long been the economic power house of the region. Indeed in the face of increasing international economic isolation, South Africa achieved a remarkably high growth rate throughout the 1960s, but the benefits of the strong economy were heavily concentrated on the already prosperous white population to the exclusion of the majority black population. South Africa's growth continued into the 1970s but then slowed dramatically. By the 1980s, the nation could only manage a moderate growth rate of 1.4 per cent, not enough to protect real incomes. South Africa was hit by its worst recession between 1989 and 1993, when real GDP contracted by 4 per cent and foreign investment all but dried up. Nevertheless, the new democratic government has presided over a return to moderate annual growth rates of 3 to 4 per cent, as well as the slow return of international investment in the manufacturing and service sectors.31 In the areas of unemployment and housing, the ANC-led government continues to face substantial obstacles which will require pervasive changes to both the economic and

TABLE 1.2. Comparative indicators of political rights and civil liberties 1978

1980

1981

1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

6 6

6 7

6 7

6 7

6 7

6 7

6 7

7

7 6

NF

NF

NF

NF

NF

NF

7 6 NF

6

NF

6 7 NF

6 7

NF

6 7 NF

NF

NF

6 7 NF

6 5 PF

2 3 F

2 3 F

2 3 F

— —

— —

— —

—

— —

— —

— —

— —

— —

6 5 PF

4 3 PF

4 3 PF

2 3 F

2 2 F

2 3 F

2 3 F

2 3 F

2 3 F

5 6 PF

5 6 PF

5 6 PF

5 6 PF

5 6 PF

5 6 PF

5 6 PF

5 6 PF

5 6 PF

5 6 PF

6 5 PF

6 5 PF

5 4 PF

5 4 PF

5 4 PF

2 3 F

1 2 F

1 2 F

5 5 PF

5 6 PF

5 6 PF

5 6 PF

5 6 PF

5 5 PF

5 5 PF

5 5

6 5 PF

6 5 PF

6 5 PF

2 3 F

2 3 F

3 4 PF

3 4

PF

5 5 PF

PF

3 4 PF

5 4 PF

5 5 PF

3 4 PF

3 5 PF

3 5 PF

4 5 PF

4 5 PF

4 6 PF

4 6 PF

5 6 PF

6 5 PF

6 4 PF

6 4 PF

5 4 PF

5 4 PF

5 5 PF

5 5 PF

5 5 PF

5 5 PF

Malawi

PR CL Namibia

PR CL

—

S. Africa

PR CL Zambia

PR CL Zimbabwe

PR CL

Notes: For an explanation of the Freedom House methodology see Ryan 1995: 672-7. PR=political rights; CL=civil liberties; NF=not free; PF=partly free; F=free. Sources: Freedom in the World 1978-96 (Freedom House).


31

social structure of South Africa. Unemployment is estimated to be between 18 and 45 per cent,32 and of the 'one million new homes by the year 1999' pledged by Mandela's government in 1994, only 11,000 had been built by 1996.33 South Africa must solve her growth and unemployment problems to succeed in the long run; and, as R. Stephen Brent contends, 'the determining factor will be leadership, which cannot come entirely from government'.34 Leadership must also come from the white business community and the predominantly black labour unions. However, Brent echoes what many have felt about the opening years of South Africa's post-apartheid democracy, i.e. 'if South Africa were a "normal" country, one could not expect this kind of joint leadership to be forthcoming. . . But South Africa is not a normal country. It has emerged from a history of tragedy to become a model of compromise and creative leadership for the world. Those qualities give special hope that the new challenges of growth and development will be met.'35 (c) Political and Societal Indicators (i) Political rights and civil liberties

Freedom House's composite measure of civil liberties and political rights gives a useful guide to the trajectory of political decency and tolerance in each of the case studies. Many of the specific factors upon which these ratings are based are discussed elsewhere within this chapter. As seen in Table 1.2, South Africa, Namibia, and Malawi all moved to a free classification after their multiparty elections of 1994, 1989, and 1994, respectively, after many years of being partly free36 (in the cases of South Africa and Namibia) and not free in the case of Malawi.37 However, Zambia and Zimbabwe have not managed to move into the free category despite continuous periods of multiparty competition. Zambia has experienced multiparty competition since 1991, and Zimbabwe since 1980. In Rhodesia, the state was considered to be not free before 1978 and then only partly free during the short-lived Zimbabwe-Rhodesia dispensation. After the first inclusive non-racial elections of 1980, Zimbabwe received her lowest ever ranking (a combined total of seven), but this still left the country only partly free. Since 1981, both political rights and civil liberties have declined to disappointingly poor levels. Zambia was considered free during 1991-2, but state respect for individual liberties and rights rapidly worsened returning the country to the partly free category between 1993 and 1996. (ii) Media freedom and influence

Among the integral elements of democracy which underpin electoral choice, no single item is more important than the freedom of, and access

32


to, mass communication, whether through the broadcast or print media or internet. The United States Supreme Court has aptly stated that: The basic right of free expression is one of the principal human rights .. . For a free, democratic order it is a constituent element, for it is free speech that permits continuous intellectual discussion, the battle of opinions that is its vital element. . . . In a certain sense, it is the basis of any freedom. . . . 'the matrix, the indispensable condition of nearly every other form of freedom.'38

In 1995, Boutros Boutros-Ghali argued that the burgeoning business of mass communications within fledgeling multiparty states was transforming democracy. 'For the past two centuries, it was law that provided the source of authority for democracy. Today, law seems to be replaced by opinion as the source of authority, and the media serve as the arbiters of public opinion.'39 And as Michael Schudson notes, in any democracy, whether old or new, 'the media are a vital force in keeping the concerns of the many in the field of vision of the governing few'.40 Schudson links the growth of a free press to democratic consolidation through what a dynamic news culture represents. If government believes that 'the knowledge of citizens can from time to time be effective', then it will facilitate, or at the very least not impinge upon, the flourishing of those very channels of communication which bring the people's voice out into the public sphere.41 In Africa, the trajectory of media freedom has not been positive. Joe Davidson notes that state intolerance of media criticism has been present in not just authoritarian regimes, but supposedly democratic ones as well. Political, constitutional, and economic barriers are often placed in the way of a growing free media. Also, the weakness of civic institutions in many African nations means that media outlets are not as respected and protected as they should be.42 One first step in measuring 'a dynamic media culture' is to compare the reported circulation figures of newspapers and magazines. The figures shown in Table 1.3 undoubtedly underestimate the actual circulation of newspapers, given that new and informal broadsheets pop up constantly, and established papers go through many hands between the point of purchase and ultimate discard. However, the figures do clearly show a 'reading culture' in Namibia and South Africa, which to date is far less pronounced in Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi. Beyond levels of readership, the respect paid to the principles of a free press by those in power has varied dramatically between the five case study countries. Despite strong competition, the MMD government of President Chiluba in Zambia can lay claim to the title of 'worst respecters of press freedom' in southern Africa.43 Much of Chiluba's bile has been


33

TABLE 1.3. Newspaper circulation 1995

1990

No. No. Total % of No. No. Total % of daily non-daily circulation" VAP daily non-daily circulation VAP Namibia 6 S. Africa 19 Zimbabwe 2 2 Zambia 1 Malawi

18 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a.

291,000 (1,298,000) (206,000) (99,000) (25,000)

42 (7) (5) (3) (1)

4 20 2 2 1

25 76 59 26 18

297,000 6,341,000 1,025,000 577,000 187,000

40 28 19 14 4

a

Figures in brackets represent daily newspaper figures only. Note: VAP=voting age population (see Table 1.4). Source: Africa South of the Sahara 1990-1995.

directed at the newspaper the Post (formerly known as the Weekly Post), which ironically was one of the Movement for Multi-Party Democracy's first allies in the middle of 1991. Since 1993, various stories critical of Chiluba's government appearing in the Post have led to the repeated arrest and harassment of Post staff and its editor Fred M'membe, the ambush by gunman of a Post delivery truck, violent police raids on the newspaper's Lusaka offices, the occasional banning of publication, and the resurrection of an eighteenth-century British law inherited from colonial times which effectively allowed the Speaker of parliament (under Chiluba's direction) to detain senior Post staff for an indefinite period on the pretext of silencing dissenters for contempt. At any given time during the last three years, M'membe has had at least eight criminal charges outstanding against him. Chiluba has retained firm control over the state-owned Zambia Daily Mail and the radio broadcasting company. Commenting on the March 1996 detention of M'membe, an opposition Zambia Democratic Congress member of parliament said that 'Chiluba is a worse dictator than his predecessor, who, at his very worst, never did what his government has done this week.'44 The suppression of media freedom culminated in June 1996 with M'membe and Masautso Phiri (editor-in-chief of the Post) being held without trial under the charge of criminal defamation of the President over an article which reported claims by a Zairean woman that she had been Chiluba's lover since the early 1980s. In the first decade of post-colonial Zimbabwe, the independent private sector press made substantial gains, gaining admiration on the continent for its journalistic freedom and economically successful media markets. Nevertheless, since 1990, those divergent opinions have

34


been stifled by a government increasingly preoccupied with suppressing even the mildest dissent. Through economic and political pressure, by the mid-1990s, the ZANU government had reinforced the market dominance of Zimpapers—the state-owned company which publishes Zimbabwe's two daily newspapers and four weeklies. In those cases where independent papers managed to survive the economic downturn, political pressure was applied by Mugabe to force them to lessen their criticism of the government. After tiring of the paper's continual exposes of government corruption, repression, and mismanagement, the state Zimbank refused to reschedule the loans of editor Trevor Ncube's Financial Gazette in 1996, despite its profitability. This led the Gazette's owner, Elias Rusike, to rule that the paper's writers should go light on politics and curtail their criticisms of Mugabe's government. Ncube, and other senior editors, left the Gazette in protest to start up another paper, the Zimbabwe Independent, but it is likely to experience a struggle to be heard under the repressive regime. Media freedom was further injured in May 1996 when the government subsumed the power of the non-partisan and ostensibly independent Mass Media Trust, which had been set up in 1981 to oversee Zimpapers. Although the Trust's influence had been withering for a long time, Richard Saunders notes that before the effective abolition, 'there was always the hypothetical possibility of calling the editors to account, by appealing to the tenets of fair play and tolerance set forth by the trust'. After Mugabe's move, 'even that small space for principled intervention [had] collapsed'.45 Media freedom is even more restricted in the broadcast media. Jeffrey Herbst argues that 'majority rule in Zimbabwe has been characterized by repression of ideas as well as violence. Because the government directly controls the electronic media, open debate and discussion are stymied.'46 In an audacious speech to the conference 'African Voices: Strengthening the Media', held in Harare in 1993, Mugabe said that the introduction of an independent television network in Zimbabwe would be unacceptable because one would not know 'just what propaganda they will broadcast'.47 In the first two years of Malawian multiparty democracy, there were a number of positive signs that the country was emerging from the media totalitarianism of Hastings Banda's thirty-year regime. Countless newsheets sprang up in 1994 and in 1996, when a new independent board was appointed to oversee the day-to-day business of Press Corporation Limited, which controls over 30 per cent of the Malawian economy and the largest media outlets. PCL had always been one of the main pillars of Banda's empire. There were even tentative plans to introduce television to a country where the vast majority of people


35

rely on BBC radio for their news. Nevertheless, the profusion of new newspapers are now mostly used to further the political careers of their owners, while the long-established papers remain in the hands of Banda's MCP. The first signs of government intolerance came in June 1996, when repeated opposition attacks on the UDF government prompted President Muluzi to threaten to use the old laws of sedition, inherited from the one-party state constitution, and before that from the colonial era. Muluzi, somewhat strangely, said it was 'unbecoming anywhere in the world to abuse a head of state', and he warned the opposition not to provoke him 'into doing what the former head of state used to do'.48 If a strong and critical free press is to develop in Malawi, then politically autonomous and unaligned newspapers will have to emerge, and control of the real broadcasting giant, the Malawian Broadcasting Corporation, will have to be taken out of state hands. The Namibian constitution, adopted in 1989, is almost unique within Africa by specifically entrenching 'freedom of speech and expression, which shall include freedom of the press and other media'.49 Forrest notes that during their first term of office the SWAPO government strongly upheld the constitutional provisions of free speech and the privately owned media, especially the four daily and two weekly newspapers, which were 'relentless in their critiques of the SWAPO regime'.50 Lindeke asserts that while some of the national newspapers have been acquired by the opposition DTA, the Namibian continues to be politically independent, and the government's New Era weekly paper retains a degree of editorial independence. Similarly, the electronic media has been more open in Namibia. Although television is state-owned, many people have access to independent South African television (e.g. M-Net), and at least eight private radio stations (broadcasting in as many different languages) compete with the national radio station. The proliferation of media in Namibia led Lindeke to note in 1995 that 'the political opposition has no trouble finding outlets for its viewpoints'.51 However, in April 1996, the SWAPO government introduced a draft law which would punish journalists for deliberately or accidentally reporting leaks or 'false information' on parliamentary affairs. The proposed new offence, punishable by a maximum fine of R20,000 and/or five years in prison, was described by editors and human rights lawyers as the 'first serious blot' on Namibia's record of press freedom.52 While the government-funded NBC's editorial independence had been gradually dissipating, the print media had not previously faced official sanction.53 SWAPO's manipulation of NBC television programming appeared to be on the rise just before the bill was presented

36


to parliament, when President Nujoma spent half an hour of network time attacking Pastor Siegfried Groth for his recently published book The Wall of Silence, which detailed allegations of SWAPO's torture of detainees in its guerrilla camps before independence. One of the few areas of semi-tolerated opposition to the white regime in apartheid South Africa before 1994 was the English-language press which, while enduring relentless harassment and violence from the government, was never effectively silenced. The proud legacies of the Rand Daily Mail and Drum, live on in South Africa today with a dynamic, critical, and largely free press, despite the economic difficulties faced by a number of the smaller papers. Silke and Schrire note that historically, within the sphere of white politics, South Africa's newspaper industry was divided on linguistic grounds. 'The English press under the watchful eye of their parent bodies, Times Media Limited and the Argus groups, provided effective, watchdog opposition to the NP government despite the impact of severe reporting restrictions and penalties. Conversely, the Afrikaans-speaking press has almost exclusively supported the NP.'54 This division largely carried over into democratic South Africa and in the April 1994 elections many of the old liberal papers continued to support the Democratic Party just as its followers were jumping ship to de Klerk's 'reborn' NP. The alternative press born in the 1980s, still predominantly catering to a white readership, continues to be led by the more social democratic Weekly Mail and Guardian, which are not uncritical supporters of the ANC government. In addition, newspapers aimed at the black South African market, led by the Sowetan and the Nation, are mushrooming in number and circulation. Unlike the print media, under apartheid the electronic media 'found themselves at the mercy of the regime of the day',55 but the ANCled government has taken steps to distance the state from radio and television control and engender in the broadcast media the type of critical independence traditionally found in the South African press. At the end of 1993, a new board was named to take over day-to-day running of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) with an ANC-aligned Chair. Zwelakhe Sisulu, son of Walter, eventually became SABC Chief Executive. Since the SABC relaunch in February 1996, there have been some questions about ANC members being appointed to top positions, but to date there is little evidence to show that the new board will kowtow to the post-apartheid government in the way the old board submitted to the National Party. Similarly, radio is becoming increasingly competitive and diverse in South Africa. The Independent Broadcasting Authority has granted over 100 private licences to small community-based radio stations since 1995.


37

In many ways South Africa should be held up as a good facsimile of what a free media market can and should look like in Africa; although it is true to say that, economically, the market remains heavily dominated by whites. Nevertheless, the ANC-led government has little will, or ability, to influence what is said about it on the airwaves or in the print media. Taking a leaf out of Namibia's book, the permanent constitution adopted in May 1996 includes in its Bill of Rights section the right of 'freedom of the press and other media'56—although this clause does not extend to the right to distribute 'propaganda for war' or the 'advocacy of hatred that is based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion, and that constitutes incitement to cause harm'.67 (d) Electoral Indicators (i) Turnout Electoral turnout has long been used as an indicator of the robustness of democracy, despite the fact that the United States, perceived as having one of the strongest democracies in the world, has one of the lowest participatory rates.58 In southern Africa, turnout is best gauged by taking the number of ballots cast as a percentage of the eligible electorate (i.e. voting age population) rather than as a percentage of the number of registered voters.59 In the first place, South Africa (1994) and Zimbabwe (1980 and 1990) did not enforce registration as a prerequisite of voting eligibility. Second, when registration has been in operation, the ease of access has been highly variable from country to country. Turnout measured as a percentage of registered voters also proves to be an unsatisfactory method in those case study elections where the total number of registered voters was in dispute— a situation leading to widely varying estimates of turnout. For example, Africa Confidential estimated the turnout of Zimbabwe's 1990 presidential and parliamentary elections to be approximately 38 per cent; while du Toit and Moyo put the figure at (a far more likely) 54 per cent (see Table 1.4). Indeed, there are even academic disputes over turnout when there is no voters' roll and the precise number of votes cast is beyond doubt. My initial calculation of turnout in the first South African parliamentary elections of 86 per cent60 was based on dividing the estimated eligible electorate of 22,709,15261 by the actual number of votes cast in the elections for the National Assembly, 19,726,579. However, R. W. Johnson disputes this figure, preferring to use a Decision Survey International poll taken four to five months after the election. This poll found that 94 per cent of respondents claimed to have voted in

TABLE 1.4. Electoral turnout Country

Year

Election

Reported turnout (%)

Voters' roll

Estimated % registered'

Actual number votingh

Estimated electorate/VAP1

Turnout of eligible electorate (%)

Namibia Zimbabwe South Africa Zimbabwe Namibia Namibia Malawi Malawi Zimbabwe Namibia Zimbabwe Zambia Zambia South Africa Zimbabwe Zambia Zambia Zimbabwe Zambia

1989 1980 1994 1985 1994 1994 1994 1994 1990 1992 1990 1991 1991 1995 1996 1996 1996 1995 1992

Parliamentary Parliamentary Parliamentary Parliamentary Parliamentary Presidential Presidential Parliamentary Presidential Local/regional Parliamentary Presidential Parliamentary Local Presidential Parliamentary Presidential Parliamentary Local

97 95+ 87a-94b 80c-95 76 74 80 80 38d-54e 81 38d-54e 44 44 42 32 56 56 32 8

Yes (701,483) No No Yes (n.a.) Yes (654,189) Yes (654,189) Yes (3,775,256) Yes (3,775,256) No Yes (523,965) Nof Yes (2,981,895) Yes (2,981,895) Yes (12,680,101) Yes (4,822,289) Yes (2,267,382) Yes (2,267,383) Yes (4,822,289) Yes (2,981,895)

102.3

680,688 2,702,275 19,726,579 2,972,146 497,499 485,295 3,040,665 3,021,239 2,587,204 381,041 2,195,000 1,325,155 1,325,038 5,301,354 1,557,558 1,331,047 1,325,053 1,531,364 238,552

685,917 3,040,788 22,709,152 3,895,000 735,000 735,000 4,945,686 4,945,686 4,494,990 680,500 4,494,990 3,425,821 3,425,821 16,258,943 5,335,440 4,600,000 4,600,000 5,335,440 3,425,821

97.0 88.9 86.8 76.3 67.7 66.0 61.5 61.1 57.6 56.0 48.8 38.7 38.7 32.6 29.2 28.9 28.8 28.7 7.0

a

— — — 89.0 89.0 76.3 76.3 — 77.0 — 87.0 87.0 78.0 90.4 49.3 49.3 90.4 87.0

See Reynolds 1994: 186-9 (the above figure includes spoilt ballots). See Johnson and Schlemmer 1996: 303-6. ° See Sylvester 1991: 80. d See Africa Confidential (14 Apr. 1995), 6. " See du Toit 1995: 137, and Moyo 1992: 61. f The voters' roll was suspended one week before the 1990 election, see Moyo 1992: 62. ' The reported number of registered voters divided by the estimated population of voting age. h Valid and invalid votes. ' All those citizens over 18 years of age. b


39

FIG. 1.2. Electoral participation Notes: E=presidential election, L=parliamentary election, Loc.=local or regional election.

the April elections. However, one must remember that by August 1994 there was little incentive for South Africans to say that they had failed to show up at the largest party ever held on the continent.62 For all practical purposes, 87 per cent seems a much more likely approximate of the truth than Johnson's estimate. Nevertheless, bearing in mind the South African case, a credible and appropriate cross-country comparison can only be achieved by taking votes as a percentage of those of voting age. This method also controls for those citizens illegitimately excluded from the voters' roll who would have cast a ballot if given the opportunity. Table 1.4 and Fig. 1.2 illustrate that electoral turnout has differed dramatically throughout the case study countries—ranging from a high of 97 per cent in Namibia's first parliamentary elections in 1989, to a low of 7 per cent in Zambia's local elections of 1992. One might expect local elections to draw substantially fewer voters than presidential or parliamentary elections (as occurs in Western democracies), which has indeed been the case in South Africa, Namibia, and Zambia. However one can also see a variance in turnout at the national level across country and across time. Even factoring in the uniqueness of founding, or 'uhuru', elections, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe lead the list when it comes to electoral participation. Namibia has displayed the ability to maintain

40


turnout, at a reasonable level, over time. Those three countries' first post-colonial elections, using PR electoral systems, produced turnout rates of 97, 87, and 89 per cent, respectively. In contrast, in Malawi's first-past-the-post founding election, only 61 per cent of the eligible electorate turned out. In Zambia, the figure was a desultory 39 per cent, which declined still futher to 28 per cent in the second generation parliamentary elections of 1996. Namibia, retaining her institutional structures, maintained a credible level of electoral participation in 1994 (with 66 per cent), while Zimbabwe has experienced a systematic and quite stunning decline in turnout over her six parliamentary and presidential elections since 1980 (see Fig. 1.2). The fact that both Robert Mugabe and Frederick Chiluba were re-elected to their respective presidencies in 1996 on polls of less than 30 per cent of the voting age population is one of the clearest indicators of the collapse of participatory democracy in those states. (ii) Spoilt Ballots

As argued later on in this work, in Chapter 8, spoilt ballots, at least in southern Africa, are much better indicators of protest and alienation than illiteracy and error. Thus, we would expect that as turnout decreases, signalling declining voter confidence, the spoilt/invalid paper rate should increase. While this is generally true, particularly so in the cases of Zimbabwe and Zambia, so few die-hard voters turned out in the Zimbabwean presidential elections of 1996 that the spoilt ballot paper rate did not reach the heights of 1990. Nevertheless, Table 1.5 shows that in line with virtually all other indicators, the inclusive systems of Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe (1980) do much better in mitigating protest voting than the more exclusionary regimes of Zambia and Zimbabwe (1985-96). Malawi's rates are not significantly higher than Namibia's. Zimbabwe's rates reached a troubling level when one out of every sixteen voters (nearly 15,000) spoilt their ballots in the 1990 parliamentary elections. Spoilt ballot paper differentials correlate quite strongly with the 'Democratic Type: Consensual versus Majoritarian Continuum' shown in Figure 2.1. (e) Ethnic Accommodation The degree of ethnic accommodation in a society can only truly be measured qualitatively, by a rich description of the political and social interactions between distinct cultural groups. For the purposes of this study, it is more useful to analyse the level of accommodation in relation to what has gone before, i.e. whether ethnic/racial/regional relations are improving or worsening when compared to relations under the

41

The Trajectory of Democratization TABLE 1.5. Spoilt ballots Country

Year

Election

System

Spoilt Ballots (%)

South Africa Namibia Namibia Zimbabwe Namibia Malawi Malawi Namibia Zimbabwe Zimbabwe Zambia Zambia Zambia Zimbabwe Zambia Zimbabwe Zimbabwe Mean

1994 1989 1994 1980 1992 1994 1994 1994 1985 1996 1991 1991 1996 1995 1996 1990 1990

Parliamentary Parliamentary Parliamentary Parliamentary Regional Presidential Parliamentary Presidential Parliamentary Presidential Presidential Parliamentary Parliamentary Parliamentary Presidential Presidential Parliamentary Parliamentary Presidential

PR PR PR PR

1.0 1.4 1.7 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.3 2.4 2.6 2.8 3.1 3.4 4.0 4.1 5.0 5.7 6.3 2.7 3.2

— —

Plurality Plurality Plurality Majority Plurality Plurality Majority Plurality Plurality Plurality Majority Plurality Plurality — —

previous regime and institutional arrangements. In this analysis, I do not seek to argue that ethnic accommodation is better in one country than in another (although in most cases the comparisons are clear). Instead, I seek to assess the trajectory of accommodation within each case study. Institutional arrangements may have helped to raise interethnic relations from appalling to bad in one country, while a different set of institutions may have played a role in communal relations going from moderately good to moderately bad in another. Much of the evidence which follows deals with either the way in which political entrepreneurs have sought to mobilize political support around an exclusionary and hostile view of ethnicity; or, conversely, how political leaders have led and facilitated moves toward ethnic and racial reconciliation. Thus, I primarily deal with ethnic accommodation as exemplified by the actions of elites and not necessarily by the behaviour of so-called ordinary citizens in the community. While for some this may be an unsatisfying way to operationalize ethnic accommodation, such elite behaviour is more often than not the key to long-term political and social harmony. Thus, political leadership is the most germane sphere of activity when assessing institutional effects on ethnic conflict. A synopsis of the trajectory of ethnic/regional accommodation in each of the case studies follows.

42


(i) Worsening ethnic and interregional relations

Zambia. Zambia is one of the most ethnically and linguistically heterogeneous nations in southern Africa, with seventy-three distinct ethnic groups and over eighty identifiable languages, including seven official languages.63 The four main cultural groups are as follows. (1) The Bemba, dominant in the Northern, Copperbelt, and Luapula Provinces of the North, who historically provided the labour force for the coppermines. President Chiluba comes from a subgroup of Bemba society based in Luapula, but he spent most of his childhood in Ketwe in the traditional Bemba Copperbelt heartland. (2) The Nyanja, originally from the East, who are now in the majority in the Central Province and the capital of Lusaka. Former President Kenneth Kaunda is a Nyanja speaker from the Eastern Province. (3) The Tonga from the agricultural South. (4) The Lozi of the Western Province, which was administered as a separate protectorate by the British under colonial rule and given special administrative authority over certain local matters upon independence in 1964. There is also a small Asian and white (predominantly of English descent) population. Bjornlund et al. note that despite this cultural and ethnic diversity, Zambia avoided 'significant inter-ethnic strife' throughout the First and Second Republics (1964-91).64 This was achieved by the UNIP government against a backdrop of simmering regional and ethnic hostility and jealousies. In 1971 Simon Kapwewe, a former Vice-President and recognized leader of the Bemba, bolted from the UNIP cabinet to form a new party (the United People's Party (UPP)), when Nyanjas from the East began to dominate the cabinet and higher echelons of the UNIP hierarchy. After enduring seven years in the political wilderness and Kaunda's declaration of a one-party state, Kapwewe was lured back into the government, largely because assuaging Bemba fears (i.e. Kaunda's traditional opponents) was deemed to be crucial at a time of great economic and political instability.65 As Bratton notes, throughout his reign, Kaunda practised a 'skillful balancing act amidst the competing political interests of Zambia's ethnically complex society [which] relied on the distribution of appointments to party and state offices among leaders from the country's main regions'.66 Chikulo describes how this 'regional or tribal balancing' was institutionalized under Kaunda in the interests of 'stability, national unity and integration', but upon taking office in 1991, the MMD government of President Chiluba disregarded the practice as undemocratic and nothing more than a discredited divide-and-rule strategy.67 Perhaps as a result, ethnic and regional antagonism have proliferated since multiparty democracy was instituted in 1991, giving Kaunda a certain degree of


43

ammunition for his 1990 claim that multiparty competition would lead Zambia into the 'stone age polities' of ethnic violence.68 Less than a year after Chiluba's inauguration, Chikulo remarked: Public rows have broken out over tribal representation and the distribution of political offices. There have been accusations that President Chiluba's appointments have been heavily biased in favour of his own ethnic group— the Bemba, who as a consequence have come to dominate economic and political power. Some observers have therefore concluded that Chiluba has abandoned the convention of tribal balancing because his own tribe stands to benefit. Other observers have suggested that President Chiluba is simply unaware of the importance of tribal balancing in Zambian politics.69

By 1992, the MMD government had effectively split into two pressure groups, the Group of Seven (G7) dominated by businessmen from the Northern Province, and the Caucus for National Unity (GNU) whose Western intellectuals pressed President Chiluba to be more ethnically inclusive in his appointments. However, a return to the policy of ethnic balancing failed to materialize, precipitating a succession of political destabilizing incidents. In June 1993, the Lozi in Western Zambia gave Chiluba a month to restore the powers of their paramount chief, the 'Litunga', or face a threat of secession. The Lozi expected Chiluba to restore their pre-independence autonomy, which had been gradually eroded by Kaunda and the one-party state, but were left disappointed with not only a retention of the status quo, but the feeling that they were being further excluded from influence in the new democratic government.70 This Lozi resentment led in part to the defection of fifteen MMD MPs to form a new political party, the National Party (NP), founded by, among others, Arthur Wina, and Inonge and Akashambatwa Lewanika, all leading Lozi political figures. The growing mobilization of political entities around antagonistic ethnic and regional ties was accentuated in July 1994 by the resignation of Vice-President Levy Mwanawasa, who cited his unhappiness with Chiluba's lack of action in the face of growing ineptitude and greed in government.71 Mwanawasa was the thirteenth government minister to resign, fuelling speculation that the MMD's North-South coalition had collapsed, thereby reducing the government to an ethnically exclusive club for Bemba-speakers from the Northern and Luapula Provinces. Most of the departing ministers were from the South, and many had accused the remaining Bemba ministers of building personal and tribal fiefdoms at the expense of good governance. The situation was somewhat complicated in 1995 with manoeuvrings by the Bemba 'Hawks' in the cabinet who, in anonymous leaflets, attacked both Mwanawasa and Chiluba for being too weak to carry the MMD to victory in 1996. As noted in Africa Analysis, the attacks on Chiluba were

44


made by Northern Bembas who had never really accepted the authenticity of Chiluba's Luapula Bemba roots. These ethnic traditionalists were further offended when former Foreign Affairs Minister Vernon Mwaanga, a Tonga from the South, was given the nod as Chiluba's 1996 running mate.72 Late in 1995, Kaunda rejoined the political fray and immediately began to present himself as the only man who could return the nation to ethnic harmony. Lastly, in October 1995, the climate of ethnic hostility ignited racial conflict as 5,000 Zambians of Asian origin living in Livingstone in the Southern Region had to flee across the border to Zimbabwe and to the capital Lusaka because a lurid ritual killing crime was publicized with a racial emphasis. Regionalism and ethnicity played an increasingly important and negative role in the general election of November 1996, with minority parties carving out ethnic enclaves of electoral support. The NP won four of their five seats in the Lozi-dominated North-Western Region and gave the MMD the closest run for their money by only losing 43 : 35 per cent. And despite the MMD's success in sweeping all nineteen of the Eastern Province seats that victory was based on the votes of less than 10 per cent of the eligible electorate, illustrating the enduring Nyanja strength of UNIP and the success of their election boycott. As of 1998, provincial and ethnic distrust continue to complicate and undermine the give and take of democratic competition in Zambian multiparty politics. Malawi. Rather than dealing with straightforward ethnicity it is more appropriate to talk of 'regionalism' in Malawi, which both dovetails and cuts across preconceived ethnic boundaries. Kaspin identifies Chewa, Tumbuka, and Yao as the main languages of Malawi, not as a result of numerical dominance but rather as a product of cultural visibility shaped by colonial administration and missionary activity. 'These forces motivated group consciousness among specific populations while providing local intellectuals—and/or anthropologists—with the insignia of their collective identities to be crafted into official accounts of tribal culture and history . . . The result was the high visibility of the Chewa, the Tumbuka, and the Yao, but not the Ngonde, the Tonga, the Lomwe, and the Sena.'73 While the North is known as Tumbuka land, the Centre as Chewa, and the South as Yao, and these linguistic groupings may well be dominant in those regions, there are pockets of other minority ethnic identities within each region.74 Early in his thirty-year rule, Hastings Kamuzu Banda sought to build national unity (it might be less charitably asserted that he sought to build a clientelistic support base) through the 'Chewa-isation'76 and centralization of Malawian political life. In 1968, Chichewa was entrenched as the single official African language and it became illegal


45

to use Chitumbuka (up to then the official language) in government offices, schools, the press, and radio.76 In the 1970s, the capital was moved from Zomba in the South to Lilongwe in the Centre. Throughout Banda's reign, the central region received the lion's share of investment, and Chewa culture was promoted as 'the cornerstone of nationhood'.77 This strategy of glorifying the Chewa, marginalizing the Tumbuka of the North, and co-opting, but never fully accepting, the Yao of the South, clearly exacerbated regional and ethnic tensions and helped create the preconditions in which those societal divisions could become negatively politicized in the post-1994 period. Nevertheless, those tensions only rose to the surface and became expressed in overtly hostile political terms after Banda's political demise and the advent of multiparty competitive politics. Through a combination of ruthless suppression of dissidents in the North and the more subtle strategy of economically co-opting the elites of the South, Banda, somewhat similar to Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia, managed to keep the lid on any societal instability which might revolve around communal hostilities. By the elections of 1994, two movements had emerged in opposition to Hastings Banda's Malawian Congress Party (MCP) of the Chewa and the Centre. The Alliance for Democracy (AFORD) of Chakufwa Chihana was identified as the Tumbuka party of the North and no matter how much they tried to attract leading figures from the two other regions they could not break out of that public perception. The United Democratic Front (UDF) of Bakili Muluzi proved to be somewhat more successful in reaching out to voters from the Centre, but essentially remained a regional party of the South. In the absence of clear ideological differences, those regional and ethnic ties structured the results of the May 1994 parliamentary elections and set the scene for future political manoeuvrings based on regional patronage and clientelism. The opening years of the new age of Malawian democracy dramatically illustrated the way in which the new multiparty constitutional dispensation provided incentives for the mobilization of antagonistic regional identities. In September 1994, the UDF minority government was forced to give in to AFORD's demands for a number of ministerial positions. Thereafter, the two parties quickly set about channelling resources to their home regions and thus marginalizing the Central region: 6.2 million Kwacha were siphoned off from the Poverty Alleviation Fund and distributed among the UDF and AFORD members of parliament.78 Nevertheless, this South-North coalition quickly fell into trouble, with accusations of corruption and regional nepotism aimed by AFORD at the government of Bakili Muluzi. Chihana claimed that the President's

46


appointments were increasingly characterized by regional favouritism, and indeed 50 of the 57 new civil service Principle Secretaries were from the South.79 Then, on 5 March 1996, the AFORD House leader, Ian Mkandawire, stunned his supposed governing coalition UDF colleagues when vehemently criticizing President Muluzi's State of the Nation address. Mkandawire contended that the government had done nothing to improve the lives of Northern Malawians. He claimed that 'the Northern region, which long ago used to be described as the dead north, was still dead,' and that corruption and nepotism had run amuck within the UDF leadership.80 AFORD's growing unhappiness with their coalition with the UDF was in no small part driven by the realization that associating with a governing party and President, perceived as being anti-North, was weakening AFORD's credibility and electoral support in their own heartland. This was made patently visible when AFORD actually lost a by-election in the North to the MCP in the constituency of Mzimba (a seat they had won with over 70 per cent of the vote less than two years before). As in the previously outlined case of Zambia, the transition from an oppressive one-party regime to a multiparty democratic regime has not led to the creation of previously unknown ethnic conflicts per se, but it has opened up a Pandora's box of incentives which reward the politicization of exclusionary ethnic identity. Not only have the instruments of containment been removed, but the rules of the game now facilitate and reward the politics of ethnic clientelism and regional patronage. As will be shown in the course of this book, this explains the heightened visibility of ethnic conflict and the concurrent increased threat to political stability in both countries. (ii) Improving ethnic relations Namibia. More than half of Namibia's sparse population lives on the northern border with Angola in what were the 'homelands' of Ovamboland, Kavango, and the Caprivi strip. Numerically the Ovambo dominate the total population (over two-thirds). However, scattered across the rest of the country are pockets of Damara, Herero, Nama, white (German and South African), and coloured communities, who have similarly played a key role in the evolution of the territory formerly known as South West Africa. Between 1884 and 1915, the Germans who colonized South West Africa decimated the majority of the Nama and Herero peoples in the southern and central areas, and dispossessed the survivors of their land and cattle.81 This 'police zone' of occupation was taken over by the South African government in 1915, who, after receiving a League


47

of Nations administrative mandate in 1920, set about entrenching white power in the majority of the country and clustering indigenous peoples into the 'native reserves' of the north. As the South African racially exclusive state developed, so did the 'protectorate' of South West Africa. In 1962, the Odendaal Commission began to implement Verwoerdian-type legal and administrative apartheid structures in the region. By 1977, domestic South African policy had begun to centre around the creation of ethnic homelands administered by puppet governments with a fafade of autonomy. South Africa's strategy was superimposed on South West Africa and the Turnhalle Conference crafted eleven separate ethnic administrations. However, the new structure was regarded with contempt not only by the United Nations and Western governments, but by the South West Africans themselves who saw the Council as a facade for continued white control. In the early 1980s, the rampant South African Defence Force (SADF) attacked the Marxist-backed government of Angola, from bases in the Caprivi Strip and Ovamboland. The attacks were conducted in tandem with a reign of terror inflicted on the Ovambo themselves by regular SADF troops and Pretoria-backed mercenaries.82 However, in an attempt at some degree of liberalization in 1985, the Pretoria regime installed a Transnational Government of National Unity (TGNU). This body was never elected and was similarly based upon a divide-and-rule strategy of recognizing political representation only along the lines of ethnic leadership. As might have been predicted, the TGNU collapsed under the weight of ethnic outbidding and charges that some groups were being allocated more resources than others. As will be described in detail in Chapter 5, the end of the Cold War and the concurrent shift in geopolitics helped pressure South Africa into accepting UN Resolution 435: this would ultimately lead to Namibian independence and the holding of national elections based on a universal franchise in the territory. In 1989, the majority of racially discriminatory legislation was repealed and over 40,000 political refugees, including many leaders of the opposition SWAPO movement, returned to Namibia under amnesty.83 After a century of race war, ethnic accommodation and reconciliation finally began in the Constitutional Assembly elected in 1989. It succeeded to such an extent that by 1994 Lindeke cited 'the palpable sense of peace and stability that was established early in the independence period' as being 'one of the most remarkable achievements of Namibia's first five years of independence'.84 Forrest puts much of the new-found sense of multi-ethnic nationhood down to the practicalities of democratic governance. He argues that '[t]he experience of working together in a single parliamentary chamber has enhanced

48


the level of interparty accommodation . . . Although during 1990 and 1991 the relationship between the parties was characterized by uneasy mutual tolerance, by 1993 the parliamentary atmosphere had become more collegial, reflecting the National Assembly's evolution into a more legislative chamber.'85 Lindeke gives credit to the SWAPO leadership for promoting a positive air of ethnic and racial accommodation, and he notes that they were conscious of the problems Angola and Mozambique had faced when there was an exodus of whites in the post-independence period. In the spirit of reconciliation, SWAPO reached out to its former enemies both practically and symbolically. There was a 'hands-off' policy with regard to the land and business interests of the white community,86 and in the constitutional negotiations even the DTA were shocked at the level of give and take. As Lindeke notes, 'this achievement was followed by the inclusion of opposition leaders in the cabinet and an attempt to represent all of the major population groups in government, so that all parts of the population could feel that they had some representation at the table . . . [furthermore] some of the strongest opposition voices were assigned to investigate government wrongdoing in public hearings. This effort follows a long-standing practice by SWAPO to be a national movement rather than a narrow ethnic one . . . [and] displays an amazing degree of transparency in public affairs.'87 The government has also allowed traditional chieftains and headmen (mostly non-Ovambo) to continue practising communal law and hold local administrative positions. As Forrest states, 'in general, the government has sought to play a mediating role in local level ethnic conflicts'.88 Nevertheless, the path of ethnic and racial reconciliation has not been entirely smooth. The appeasement and co-option of white business interests have led to fears of a backlash from younger, more militant blacks. Such youth see reconciliation as a one-way street with millions of acres of land and white-collar positions remaining in white hands, while nearly 40 per cent of the black majority remain unemployed and poverty stricken.89 Also, perceived traditional groups have begun to assert themselves, re-establishing kingships and attempting to mobilize electoral support around ethnic ties. In 1993, the Rehoboth community applied to the United Nations for recognition as an indigenous group and demanded self-government. The 30,000-strong community lays claim to 1.4 million hectares of land in the Central Region, now predominantly owned by white Namibians.90 Later that year, the leader of the United Democratic Front, Chief Justus Garoeb, proclaimed himself as King of the Damara in an effort to shore up electoral support as the parliamentary elections approached. There were


49

similar moves made by headmen from the Kwanyama, a subsection of the Ovambo.91 Opposition leaders also charged that by 1994 Namibia had become little more than an ethnic democracy with voting following strict lines of clan, ethnicity, and race.92 However, as Lindeke, Wanzala and Tonchi, and Forrest all note, a deeper analysis of the two general elections and the 1992 local and regional elections shows a more complicated picture of cross-cutting voting patterns.93 Indeed, while the minority parties may have remained ethnically driven, in 1992 and 1994 SWAPO built on their Ovambo foundations to become a truly multi-ethnic and multi-regional party. Finally, reconciliation did take a step backwards in 1996 when the long-simmering storm over SWAPO's treatment of detainees in their pre-independence camps once again bubbled to the surface with the publication of a book detailing atrocities by a German pastor. Nevertheless, in the words of Lindeke, 'these negative experiences are not the dominant ones'.94 When Namibia's history of racial oppression and ethnic fragmentation is taken into account, her post-independence trajectory of ethnic accommodation can only be described as a remarkable and powerful (if not yet complete) role model for the rest of the region. South Africa. Despite the ethical and methodological problems of assigning ethnicity (and for that matter 'race') in South Africa, there is little doubt that the country exhibits the greatest communal diversity on the African continent. Arenstein identifies six 'nations' within modern-day South Africa: Afrikaners, coloureds, English, Indians, Nguni (comprising Xhosa, Zulu, and Swazi), and Sotho (Pedi, Tswana, and Sotho).95 In 1994, among the estimated 40 million South Africans, approximately 21 per cent were Zulu, 17 per cent Xhosa, 10 per cent Tswana, 10 per cent Pedi (North Sotho), 8 per cent coloured, 8 per cent Afrikaans-speaking whites, 6 per cent Sotho (South), 5 per cent English-speaking whites, 4 per cent Shangaan (Tsonga), 3 per cent Swazi, 2 per cent Indian, 2 per cent Venda, and 1 per cent Ndebele. Linguistic diversity is recognized within the new constitution which identifies no fewer than eleven official languages in the Republic.96 With the plethora of excellent work describing life in apartheid South Africa,97 it would be redundant to spend much time reiterating the fact that up until a few years ago South Africa was the archetypal case study in how not to manage ethnic and racial diversity. With the election of D. F. Malan's Nationalist government in 1948, pre-war colonial domination based on racism evolved into formal apartheid. By the 1970s, government policy morally regressed even further into the insidious 'homeland' system. Throughout most of South Africa's history, the 'white' government was obsessed with categorizing, classifying, and

50


condemning people on the basis of what they were, rather than who they were. To be white was to be anointed with prestige, respect, and power—anyone else was inherently of less value. However, apartheid did not stop at white and black, it felt compelled to classify ethnicity to the most detailed and ludicrous level. The Population Registration Act, which determined where one was to be 'returned' under the homeland system, sought to classify within the black South African population: Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana, Shangaan, Venda, Ndebele, and Sotho (North/Pedi and South) groups; as well as differentiating between whites, Indians, coloureds, and 'bantu'. Before 1994, to be a non-white South African meant not only the denial of political rights, but often the splitting up of one's family,98 forced removal to a place thousands of miles away never seen before, and the omnipresent threat of police violence. For over 100 years, millions of South Africans lived on the edge of an emotional and physical precipice, while the state was overwhelmingly preoccupied with creating ways to chip away at the dignity of the majority of its citizens. Therefore, it is of little surprise that the negotiated settlement between the agents of white and black South Africa has reversed this trend of outright ethnic conflict and has facilitated an environment of improving relations between previously hostile groups (i.e. the base line of social relations was so bad that any sign of common ground would be an improvement). However, what is surprising is that only six years after Mandela's release and the first public negotiations between state and liberation movement occurred, ethnic reconciliation and accommodation have progressed so well and so quickly. The trajectory of reconciliation is reflected on a day-to-day basis in a number of diverse social, political, and economic areas. As expressed by Andre Brink, the elections of April 1994 marked the beginning of the miracle of the ordinary in South Africa. In politics the quest for ethnic accommodation is manifest on a number of levels. In the national elections of 1994, and the local elections of 1995-6, all main political parties (bar the Afrikaner Freedom Front and the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania) attempted to appeal to a wide spectrum of voters. This was advertised through ethnically diverse lists of party candidates. As described in detail in Chapter 8, 15 per cent of the ANC's parliamentary caucus is white, 30 per cent of IFF MPs are white, and just over 25 per cent of the NP's 82 MPs are black, coloured, or Indian South Africans. The cabinet, both during the Government of National Unity in 1994-6 and after the NP's withdrawal, has been similarly diverse with regard to ethnicity. Upon withdrawing from the GNU in May 1996, de Klerk argued that his party would 'further consolidate [its] position as a party based on


51

values rather than ethnic affiliation'.99 The NFs public pronouncements—i.e. that it expected to expand its support among black South Africans to become eventually the largest party in the country—have to be taken with a large grain of salt. Undoubtedly, the NP's strategy is to build a Christian democratic conservative coalition which, to be viable, must be multi-ethnic and broadly inclusive of the majority black population. Similarly, the ANC sees little benefit in breaking with its historical ethos of multi-racialism. Despite early hiccups, and huge obstacles, integration has proceeded relatively smoothly, if slowly, in the fields of defence, education, and business. The government's financial management has been generally well received by white business leaders; while a small, but ever growing, black middle class is moving out of the informal economy into the formal. Growing white confidence in the future of a democratic South Africa was signalled in 1995 as emigration figures continued to drop. In 1994 and 1995, the net loss of persons in professional, semiprofessional, and technical occupations was less than 900.10° Perhaps most indicative of the trajectory of ethnic relations is in the world of sport, which is imbued with a social importance almost unparalleled in the rest of the world. South Africans of all colours joyously came together during 1995-6, as the nation won the Rugby World Cup (with an integrated side101), the African Nations Soccer Cup (with an integrated side), and thrashed England over six cricket test matches (with a team that remained all white). This list of positive strides toward ethnic reconciliation should not obscure the very real problems and hostilities which the country continues to endure. Ethnic hostility could be said to be increasing in the Western Cape. There, a National Party administration, which cynically manipulated coloured voters' fears of a black South African government, continues to play the race card to hold on to local power. This has only exacerbated pre-existing tensions.102 Political violence continues to be a serious threat to stability in KwaZulu-Natal, but, as noted elsewhere, this remains an intra-ethnic (intra-Zulu) conflict stemming from the twenty-year manipulation and politicization of Zulu identity by Inkatha and the former apartheid government. In addition, the integration of black schoolchildren into white schools has been characterized by several ugly incidents of (white) parental obstruction.103 Bearing in mind the history of over a century of politicized, separate education in South Africa, it is far more remarkable how few incidents of white hostility have recently occurred, when, across the country, black students began to be bussed into affluent white neighbourhoods. In many ways, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission under the chairpersonship of Archbishop Desmond Tutu symbolizes the path

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of ethnic accommodation in the new South Africa. In a short space of time, the commission has aired half a century's worth of violent racism, but its proceedings are seen by the vast majority as helpful to the transition to a new and just non-racial society. (Hi) Trajectory uncertain

Zimbabwe. The approximately 12 million people living in Zimbabwe today are predominantly of Shona or Ndebele extraction, although there remains a small white and Asian population. About 75 per cent of the country is Shona, 19 per cent Ndebele, 4 per cent Tonga-VendaShangaan, 1.5 per cent white, and 0.5 per cent Asian.104 The two dominant black Zimbabwean groups are composed of a number of other 'sub-ethnic' groups who share linguistic and historical ties. The Karanga, based in South-Central Zimbabwe, are the largest Shona group constituting 28 per cent of all Shona (21 per cent of the entire population). They are followed in size by the Zezuru, from the Harare region, who make up 23 per cent of the Shona group (17 per cent of the nation's population)—Mugabe is a Zezuru. Next come the Manyika, from Mutare and the north-east (17 per cent of Shona, 13 per cent of the population); the Korekore, from the north (16 and 12 per cent, respectively); the Rozvi, who are scattered throughout the country (12 and 9 per cent); and lastly, the Ndau who are a very small Shona group from the south-east (4 and 3 per cent). The Ndebele, concentrated in central and western Zimbabwe (Matabeleland), on their own make up 14 per cent of the population, but they are joined by the smaller Kalanga ethnic group (5 per cent) who, through conquest, were incorporated into the Ndebele in the nineteenth century. The first half of the civil war decade, 1970-5, was characterized by almost as much internecine ethnic conflict within the competing guerrilla armies and liberation movements as was present between white Rhodesians and black Zimbabweans inside the country. The Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) was first torn apart by Ndebele versus Zezuru divisions in 1971 (which led to Ndebele withdrawal), and then later by Manyika versus Karanga (both Shona) tensions, until Robert Mugabe managed to reunify the party in 1977 with a balanced Karanga-Manyika-Zezuru executive committee under his Zezuru leadership.105 Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) began life with a mixture of Ndebele and Shona leadership but rapidly became dominated, and associated with, exclusively Ndebele interests. Even Bishop Abel Muzorewa's United African National Council (UANC) was racked by ethnic divisions. Sithole notes that 'by the middle of 1979, there were seven nationalist factions involved in one way or another in the Zimbabwe struggle for major-


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ity rule, and all the factions were haunted by the ethnic factor'. This does not include Ian Smith's white Rhodesian Front. Although the elections of 1980, and indeed all subsequent elections, were marked by clear patterns of ethnic voting,107 ZANU, under the leadership of new Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, did initially move to reconcile blacks and whites, and Shona and Ndebele. Two whites and three Ndebele from ZAPU, led by Mugabe's long-term opponent Joshua Nkomo, were included in the cabinet and Mugabe made a public plea for national unity: I urge you, whether you are black or white, to join me in a new pledge to forget our grim past, forgive others and forget, joins hands in a new family and together, as Zimbabweans, trample upon racialism, tribalism and regionalism, and work to reconstruct and rehabilitate our economic machinery.108

Unfortunately, this ethos of ethnic accommodation rapidly disappeared. In early 1981, Nkomo was demoted. Then, in 1982, he was dismissed after the discovery of arms caches on ZAPU-owned farms in Matabeleland. Ndebele dissidents from ZAPU's military wing, ZIPRA, launched a series of randomized attacks on the agents of the state which led to a prolonged government crackdown on the region as a whole. Herbst estimates that the regime killed between 1,000 and 2,000 Ndebele during the mid-1980s; while du Toit notes the disappearance (and presumed deaths) of over 100 ZAPU leaders in 1985.109 Mass graves were discovered in the region in 1993. Both Herbst and du Toit note that in addition to these killings, the Shona-dominated government ran amok in Matabeleland, causing injury, detainment of many civilians without trial, the forcing of people to flee their land, and the torture of prisoners at the infamous police station in Bulawayo.110 The conflict in Matabeleland was only lessened in intensity in 1987 when Nkomo's ZAPU agreed to merge with Mugabe's ZANU to form the new ZANU-PF government. The new party reverted back to the principle of ethnic balancing and its politburo contained three Zezuru members (Shona), three Karanga (Shona), three Kalanga (Ndebele), two Manyika (Shona), and one Ndau (Shona).111 Along with the three white members in the cabinet, the politburo reflected, at least on the surface, a particularly inclusive leadership. Sithole is uniquely optimistic about the socio-political trajectory of ethnic relations in Zimbabwe, arguing that not only did the ZANUZAPU accord mark the end of violent conflict in Matabeleland, but it 'opened up the space for democratic expression in parliament' because it forced the opposition similarly to 'extend its support base to all the major regions of the country'. Indeed, he notes that ethnic pluralism need not inevitably lead to political discord, but it 'can weaken,

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minimize or moderate competition' if competitors are given incentives to appeal outside their denned ethnic group. In addition, 'one healthy aspect of ethnicity in Zimbabwe is that expressions of ethnicity or tribalism have not been irredentist or secessionist in character'.112 However, events in the first half of the 1990s do not seem to support Sithole's optimism—perhaps because no such incentives have been laid for political parties fundamentally to reinvent themselves as nonethnic groupings. The Land Acquisition Act of 1992 announced the government's intention to confiscate at least twenty-seven white-owned farms by 1995, marking the end of Mugabe's kid-gloves treatment of white landowners during the first ten years of independence. In 1993, remarkably, 4,000 whites still owned over half of the country's farmland. Therefore, not unsurprisingly, the 1992 Act caused panic in many quarters. The deterioration of white-black relations became exemplified in part by the Commercial Farmers Union's (CFU) attacks on the policy and Mugabe and Nkomo's retaliatory anti-white rhetoric. These culminated in several threatening events, including Nkomo's June 1994 warning to 'undesirable' elements in the white community to leave Zimbabwe 'before it is too late',113 and students rampaging in Harare attacking restaurants and clubs frequented by whites.114 Mugabe also described the black leaders of the new Zimbabwe Unity Movement as nothing more than puppets of Rhodesian whites who were seeking a return to the power they enjoyed before independence. In 1996, Roger Boka led a public campaign demanding that the government force whites out of commanding positions in the economy to be replaced by black Zimbabweans. This deterioration in racial relations has been partially reflected in a deterioration in ethnic relations between subgroups within the Shona, as well as a re-emergence of the long-standing distrust between Ndebele and Shona. Sylvester notes that on the eve of the 1990 elections a ZANU MP from Mazowe and the ZANU-appointed governor of Mashonaland Central accused each other of 'fostering differences between the Korekore and Zezuru'.115 The run-up to the 1995 elections further exposed Ndebele-Shona and intra-Shona divisions. No Shona contestants won posts in the Bulawayo provincial elections in February 1994, while Ndebele candidates did not even stand in the rest of the country. In Masvingo the Karanga faction triumphed over the Zezuru faction in a highly ethnically polarized election. Shortly before the 1995 parliamentary elections, Joshua Malinga, the Mayor of Bulawayo, warned that there would be 'bloody ethnic conflict similar to Rwanda' if the Ndebele were not adequately included within the national government. While the number of Ndebele cabinet ministers did double


55

in the new government, Africa Research Bulletin noted that the result was widely viewed in Matabeleland as another 'triumph' for the ruling Shona majority, with ethnic troubles likely to recur.116 In sum, ethnic relations have clearly and dramatically improved since the violent days of the Rhodesian civil war, and even since the Matabeleland uprisings of the mid-1980s, but an apex of accommodation seems to have been reached in 1987 with the ZANU-ZAPU merger. Since that time, intra-Shona, intra-black, and black-white relations appear to have returned to a negative course, which bodes ill for Zimbabwe's future political stability. (/) Summary of Indices of Democratization At the beginning of this chapter, I argued that the prospects for democratic consolidation in any given country are best assessed through a systematic investigation of certain key socio-economic-political indicators, and that trajectories are more useful than absolute comparisons. Table 1.6 summarizes the findings for each case study along the lines of: ethnic accommodation, political violence, economic indicators, civi liberties, political rights, the freeness of the media, electoral participation, and the number of spoilt ballots. While the simple methodological distinction between the categories improving, unchanged, or worsening is not highly sensitive to intra-country differentials, the scale does nevertheless offer compelling evidence that the prospects for democratic consolidation are to date much better in South Africa and Namibia than they are in Zambia and Zimbabwe, while Malawi's future remains too close to call. Both South Africa and Namibia are improving on six of the dimensions, and their elections have been characterized by high turnout rates with low spoilt ballot rates. Malawi has made strides in reducing political violence, improving civil liberties and political rights, and opening up the media since Banda's one-party rule ended, but its economy is worsening, ethnic/regional hostility is growing, and, electorally (in 1994), they experienced only moderate levels of participation. In Zimbabwe, a comparison is made between the first seven years of parliamentary democracy, versus the subsequent period as a presidential, de facto one-party state. In that country the economy has worsened alongside the repression of civil liberties and political rights, and the suppression of a free media. Electoral participation has declined dramatically while the number of spoilt (protest) ballots on average runs twice as high as in the other case studies. For Zimbabwean democrats there are few signs of hope. On the positive side, only overt political violence has declined. Lastly, the prospects for democracy look equally

TABLE 1.6. Summary of democratization indicators Malawi

t Ethnic accommodation Political violence Economic indicators Civil liberties Political rights Free media Electoral turnout Spoilt ballots

«—»

Namibia

4*

t

/

/ / / / / / / /

/ / / / / / /

multi=the percentage of national votes won by multi-ethnic, multi-racial, or cross-regional parties, respectively. b

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Majoritarian or Power-Sharing Government

to be sullied by 'knee-jerk' primordial voting, it would have been ethnic voting, as expected by Horowitz and others during the transition period. One cannot spend years bemoaning the future threat of ethnic voting only to jump horses post-election to bemoan racial voting when the expected ethnic voting does not materialize (as was done by a number of leading South African scholars).72 As Table 4.3 illustrates, Johnson is wrong to categorize the South African election as a 'mere ethnic census'.73 A full 85 per cent of the votes went to multi-ethnic political parties. Indeed, only Inkatha (85 per cent Zulu), the Freedom Front (83 per cent Afrikaans), and the Democratic Party (69 per cent English) can legitimately be considered ethnic parties.74 The ANC's vote was constituted in three equal parts, i.e. Xhosa, Tswana, and Zulu (roughly 30 per cent each), with the remainder centred among coloureds, Indians, white Afrikaners, white English speakers, Seswati, Venda, and Shangaan speakers— undoubtedly a very multi-ethnic electoral base. Similarly, the National Party's vote was approximately 30 per cent Afrikaner, 30 per cent coloured, 20 per cent English-speaking white, 8 per cent Indian, with the rest being Zulu, Tswana, Seswati, and Xhosa. The PAC's vote was just over 55 per cent Xhosa, 25 per cent Zulu, 10 per cent Seswati, 5 per cent Venda, and 5 per cent coloured. These findings are a strong indication that the space for multi-ethnic voting coalitions and accommodatory elite behaviour does exist in South Africa, and the country need not be condemned to governance through closed-door bargains between rigid ethnic segments. The 1994 elections may not have shown much ideological fluidity (Mattes and Gouws note that partisan identification was very high), but they did demonstrate ethnic fluidity and the propensity for cross-cutting voting cleavages. Namibia. After analysing the patterns of vote concentration in the first Namibian elections, Potgieter argues that 'the Ovambo voted SWAPO; the Damara voted UDF and DTA; the Herero voted strongly DTA, the Nama voted DTA, the whites voted DTA and ACN, while mostly Basters voted FCN'. In sum, 'the SWAPO victory seems to have been based to a large extent on a massive tribal vote of the Ovambo'.75 It is true that SWAPO fulfil the two-thirds criteria as an Ovambo ethnic party, harvesting 60 per cent of their vote from Ovamboland and picking up the vast majority of Ovambo votes elsewhere. Similarly, the UDF were predominantly supported by Damara, the FCN by Basters, and the NNF by Herero. None the less, over one-third of all votes cast went to multi-ethnic parties (the DTA, ACN, and NPF). In addition, SWAPO only just cleared the two-thirds barrier to be considered an ethnic party: despite its ethnic base, in both 1989 and 1994 SWAPO enjoyed significant non-Ovambo support.76


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Lindeke, Wanzala, and Tonchi strongly reject the notion that the 1989 election was a reflection of tribal or ethnic processes. They see the results more as a rejection of colonialism, and argue that ethnic identities, far from being inherently antagonistic, can be compatible with a unifying national identity and the building of an inclusive and harmonious multi-ethnic state. They reject Potgieter's ethnic census thesis on two levels: first, that SWAPO's victory was based on some degree of voting support across ethnic groups; and second, that the relative weakness of SWAPO's support outside Ovambo 'can be accounted for by the historically uneven access of SWAPO to Namibians in different parts of the country under apartheid structures'.77 They note that SWAPO originated as a 'multi-ethnic, issue-orientated organisation'. SWAPO eventually became rooted in the Ovambo region because of colonial laws, as well as the labour system. The latter created an Ovambo working class of mine workers, which became organized into the embryonic beginnings of the Ovambo People's Organization (OPO), and subsequently SWAPO. SWAPO was born out of non-tribalism, or at least has multi-ethnic roots, and their subsequent leadership, campaigning style, and performance in government all indicate a commitment to national unity and non-racialism. This in itself does not destroy Potgieter's claim that SWAPO's electoral victory rested on the back of an ethnically exclusive vote. Nevertheless, Lindeke et al. prove that Potgieter has, at the very least, exaggerated the numerical basis for his claims. Outside Ovamboland, SWAPO carried the districts of Kavango, Luderitz, Tsumeb, and Swakopmund. These districts have a substantial Ovambo population, as well as a large number of other minority groups. Lindeke et al. argue that the only areas in 1989 where SWAPO can clearly have done 'poorly' were primarily Herero-speaking districts—areas where the DTA performed particularly well. A detailed reading of Namibian colonial history reveals that the evidence for 'tribal leaders imposing choices on their communal populations . . . is weak at best', especially when it is noted that the traditional leaders who did cooperate with apartheid structures rapidly lost their support base along with their legitimacy.78 Lindeke, Wanzala, and Tonchi conclude that SWAPO, as the embodiment of the struggle for independence, was the primary beneficiary of Namibia's desires for the end of South African colonial rule. 'Despite the overt and covert attempts by the colonial regime to foster them, ethnic identities were not such an important part of the process.'79 Zimbabwe. If one follows Masipula Sithole's definition and classifies the Shona and Ndebele as 'nationalities', encompassing eight component ethnic groups (the Karanga, Zezuru, Manyika, Korekore, Rozvi,

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Ndau, Ndebele, and Kalanga),80 then neither ZANU (PF) nor ZAPU would have qualified as ethnic parties before 1987. Both were broad ethnic coalitions (ZANU (PF)—Karanga, Zezuru, Manyika, Korekore, and Rozvi; and ZAPU—Ndebele and Karanga). Only Ndabaningi Sithole's ZANU-Ndonga might have fulfilled the two-thirds ethnic voting group requirement, given its limited support concentrated among the Ndau in Manicaland. However, the more conventional method of taking the Shona and the Ndebele as the base unit of ethnic analysis results in all main parties in Zimbabwe being classified as ethnic parties. ZANU (PF) won 97 per cent of its total vote in the six majority Shona districts in 1980 and 1985; while ZAPU won 72 per cent of its total vote in Matabeleland in 1980, and 81 per cent in 1985. After the 1987 merger between the forces of Nkomo and Mugabe, the new ZANU PF became a majority Shona ethnic party: its electoral base was 80 per cent Shona in 1990, and 86 per cent Shona in 1995. Even the smaller, less ethnically antagonistic parties could not avoid the ethnic party label. Muzorewa's UANC won 84 per cent of its vote from Shonaland in 1980, 87 per cent in 1985, and 82 per cent in 1990. Tekere's ZUM was 83 per cent Shona in 1990, and Dumbutshena's FORUM party was 82 per cent Shona in 1995. Nevertheless, such ethnic imbalances within the minor parties merely reflect the imbalance between Shona and Ndebele in the country as a whole (75 per cent Shona, 19 per cent Ndebele). Also, the fact that Ndebele now vote for Mugabe's Shona-led ZANU PF, albeit in much lower numbers than they voted for ZAPU, illustrates the potential for Zimbabweans to vote for parties which are not identified as being of 'their ethnic group'. That being said, it must be noted that of the five case studies, Zimbabwe remains the chief example of 'ethnic voting', where political entrepreneurs seek to mobilize communities around an often hostile and exclusionary notion of ethnic loyalty. Zambia. The MMD's overwhelming 1991 victory in Zambia was clearly based upon a broad multi-ethnic electoral coalition of the Bemba, Tonga, and Lozi ethnic groups, along with a minority of the Nyanja. They won eight of the nine provinces with over two-thirds of the vote. UNIP were reduced to the status of an ethnic party based on the support of Nyanja in the Eastern Region and elsewhere. However, UNIP cannot be classified as a regional party, as only 40 per cent of their national vote came from the East, another 12 per cent from Lusaka, and 10 per cent from the Copperbelt. In 1991, ethnicity appeared to play a relatively subdued role in voting behaviour (apart from Kaunda's reservoir of Nyanja support). However, as noted in Chapter 1, the politicization of divisive ethnicity subsequently became a much more serious problem in Zambia in the lead-up to the second multiparty elections of


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November 1996. Even so, in the face of a fragmented and ineffective opposition, Chiluba's MMD still managed to cobble together a multiethnic and cross-regional support base, even if that vote represented only 20 per cent of the electorate and was led by its Bemba core. The success of UNIFs boycott call in the Eastern Province illustrated their continuing strength among the Nyanja and the NP's strong showing in the North-West confirmed their Lozi support, although not enough ethnically based support to qualify as an 'ethnic party' under the twothirds criteria outlined above. Malawi. Malawi demonstrates the clearest example of voters choosing on the basis of where they live, over and above ethnic ties, ideological concerns, or competing individual candidates. In the 1994 election, a full 99.3 per cent of the vote went to regional parties, while only the tiny UFMD, MDP, and CSR parties had electoral bases distributed across the whole of Malawi. The UDF won 75 per cent of their total vote in the Southern Region, the MCP took 74 per cent of their vote from the Centre, while 69 per cent of AFORD's total vote came from the North. Although most striking in its regional voting homogeneity, Malawi is also the best example of how imagined communal identities and interests can be manipulated, politicized, and ultimately exploited by elite entrepreneurs. There the vote was not primarily motivated by ethnicity, as each region of Malawi is linguistically heterogeneous and identities are fluid. Of the three main parties, only Hastings Banda's MCP might be aptly considered an ethnic party as well as a regional party, for his vote was based on support from the Chewa Centre and those pockets of Chewa (Nyanja speakers) living in the Chikwawa, Mwanza, and Nsanji districts of the South. Even the MCP drew a significant number of votes from Ngoni living in the Central Region. In contrast, both AFORD and the UDF were multi-ethnic coalitions, built around one 'lead' ethnicity. Muluzi's UDF gained the support of his native Yao in Mangochi, Machinga (in the South), and Salima (on the Centre's border with the South), but the balance of his vote came from the Lomwe, Mang'anja, Nyanja, and Sena voters of the Southern Region.81 Chihana's AFORD vote was based upon the Tumbuka of the North, but only in two districts do Tumbuka predominate, Rumphi and Mzimba (see Map 5.1). The rest of AFORD's vote came from the Asukwa, Ngonde, Nyakyasa, and Tonga in the North.82 As Kaspin notes: [O]pposition voters consistently supported the candidate from their own region. Not only did non-Tumbuka in the north vote for Aford, and non-Yao in the south vote for the UDF, but non-Tumbuka and non-Yao groups divided by regional borders tended to support the opposition candidates of their own region. For example, Ngoni in the north supported Aford, while those closer

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to the southern region supported the UDF. So too, Tonga voters in the north voted for Aford, while the contiguous Tonga population in the Center gave most of their support to the UDF.83

As noted in Chapter 5, the primacy of 'regionalism' over ethnicity was created by centuries of indigenous conflict, colonialism, and missionary activity. In addition, thirty years of Banda's autocratic rule sought to advantage the Centre through the 'Chewaization' of national culture, which was ambivalent to the South and overtly hostile to the people of the North.

5. Prescriptions for Southern Africa As outlined earlier, if voting patterns are based on almost unbreakable ascriptive traits, then institutional arrangements should be more consociational than consensual: in such situations, integrative consensus may not be a strong enough dose of power-sharing to build confidence between hostile groups. But if voting patterns are more fluid, or rigid but not ethnically rooted, then consociationalism can retard the very real prospects for a decline in the saliency of ethnic/racial divides. Consociationalism, even if it does not institutionalize ethnicallyculturally rooted parties, still presumes that they are more likely. Thus, it offers sometimes subtle, sometimes overt, incentives for their persistence. All five case studies, to varying degrees, show signs that their ethnic divides are not primordial but flexible and malleable, and that ethnicity as a political factor has been crafted to serve elite ends. The strongest signs of evolving cross-cutting cleavages are found in South Africa, but they are also clearly present to a lesser extent in Namibia, Malawi, Zambia, and even Zimbabwe. The pertinent question then is, given this opportunistic state of affairs for the constitutional engineer, how does one encourage such integrative tendencies, while retaining the key inclusive confidence-building mechanisms which are needed to preserve stability in the short term? An ideal type might include: (i) an STV electoral system, or some other method allowing for preference voting and proportionality; (ii) mandated power-sharing governments which include all significant political parties (a la Switzerland); (iii) the practice of rotating the title of 'President' within a parliamentary system;84 (iv) bicameralism with the upper house directly based on regional elections; (v) a written constitution with a strong bill of rights and judicial constitutional review; and (vi) a moderately federal and decentralized political system which protects the rights of regional minorities. Indeed, there will


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be practical and philosophical objections to this system. Preference voting is said to be too complicated for Africans,85 while governments of national unity are said to cause policy gridlock and weaken the role of parliamentary opposition. However, both of these objections may be surmountable, and the benefits of encouraging both ethnic powersharing and integrative tendencies may well outweigh the negative side-effects.

5

Plurality Case Study Election Results: Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe1 Chapters 5, 6, and 7 form the historical, empirical, and quantitative heart of this work, providing the foundational evidence against which earlier postulated theories are gauged (see Chapters 1 and 2), and upon which subsequent comparisons, recommendations, and conclusions are based (see in particular Chapter 8 and the Conclusion). Chapters 5 and 6 tell the stories of the eleven case study elections2 analysed within this book, and place those events in the broader context of each country's democratization process. In Chapter 5 I deal with the Republics of Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, while in Chapter 6 I describe and analyse elections, held under PR, in South Africa and Namibia. For each case study, full numerical results are given, along with an explanation of the electoral system formula and how that system came to be used. Also included are summaries of the implications, for both parties and government, of election results, defining aspects of each newly elected parliament, and the election campaign which preceded it. By their very nature, the officially published election results form the base unit of analysis of this exercise. Also, elections in Africa have been notoriously characterized by manipulation, unfairness, and a lack of transparency. Thus, I also address the question of the validity and legitimacy of each published result. At this point, the investigation is largely limited to two key issues: (i) were the ballots cast by voters properly counted, tallied, and published, and (ii) were eligible voters given reasonable access to polling stations to cast their ballots physically unhindered and (to the extent that we can ever gauge) mentally unpressured? Equally important issues are addressed elsewhere in this work regarding how franchise eligibility was determined, i.e. by a registration of voters or an ID system without a voters' roll; and regarding the structural and cultural influences on the 'freeness' of the vote.3 In Chapter 7 I deal with the methodology used for the re-running exercise and the results themselves. First, the range of alternative

Plurality Case Study Election Results

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electoral systems used for the re-runnings are described and their inclusion in the exercise is justified. Those plurality SMD elections held in actuality in Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe are re-run under the alternative vote in single-member districts (AV-SMD), the alternative vote in multi-member districts (AV-MMD), list PR in regionally defined multimember districts, and list PR in one national multi-member district. Those list PR elections held in South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe are re-run under plurality SMD, AV-SMD, AV-MMD, and the list PR method not utilized in the actual elections. Then the following two methodological objections to the entire exercise, which might best be characterized as 'first order objections', are addressed. First, the objection to the underlying assumption that voter preferences would have largely remained the same regardless of the type of electoral system used; and second, the argument that differing electoral system incentives would have changed the number, and nature, of political parties on the ballot paper. Finally, I explain the way in which hypothetical district boundaries were crafted for each election and each electoral system, and outline and justify the assumptions used for determining second preferences for the alternative vote re-runs. In the second half of Chapter 7, I give the results of the entire rerunning exercise by country, by each case study election, and by alternative electoral system. The practical implications of each re-running observation are discussed, as are the positive and negative consequences for stability and representative government. Chapter 8 then draws together the full results to assess patterns, cross-country comparisons, and the importance of electoral system design in the new democracies of southern Africa in general. Chief among the questions addressed are: what determines the index of disproportionality? How representative are comparative parliaments? What are the electoral system implications for voter accessibility? Does the chosen system alleviate or accentuate entrenched, geographically concentrated party fiefdoms? How competitive or frozen is the system? Is there an electoral system effect on cabinet formation? And does the type of PR matter to the final results? I conclude this section with a detailed discussion of the Horowitz (AV-MMD) proposal across all five case study countries, and an institutional choice-based analysis of the interaction between negotiated transitions to democracy and the type of electoral system chosen for the new democratic constitution.

1. Malawi The Malawian general election of May 1994 was held under the classic single-member district (SMD) form of plurality as used in Britain

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TABLE 5.1. Results of the Malawian National Assembly elections, May 1994 Party

Votes

National (%)

Seats

UDF MCP AFORD Other Total

1,370,027 992,768 558,875 28,652 2,950,322

46.44 33.65 18.94 0.97 99.03

85 (48%) 56 (32% 36 (20% 0 177

Notes: UDF=United Democratic Front (Muluzi), MCP=Malawian Congress Party (Banda), AFORD=Alliance for Democracy (Chihana), Other=CSR, MDP, MDU, MNDP, UFMD. Sources: Malawi Electoral Commission, 1994 Presidential and Parliamentary Election Results (Blantyre: Government Printer, 1994); Venter 1994; van Donge 1995.

and the United States. One hunded and seventy-seven parliamentary seats were up for election and district boundaries were drawn within three administrative regions. The Northern Region contained 33 seats, the Central Region 68 seats, and the Southern Region 76 seats. Due to voting irregularities, two parliamentary seats were re-run as byelections on 28 June. Full results, including the by-elections, are given in Table 5.1. (a) The Transition to Democracy in Malawi Malawi's history since independence from British colonial rule in 1964 has been replete with massive inconsistencies. This was mostly due to the idiosyncratic governance of His Excellency the Life President Ngwazi Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda, who, after thirty years of rule, became Africa's longest-serving head of state. Despite the fact that Malawi is estimated to be one of the half-dozen poorest countries in the world, it actually became benefactor and host to over 800,000 refugees from war-torn Mozambique, constituting 10 per cent of Malawi's total population. However, Dr Banda's benevolence failed to extend to his own people. Malawi is only now beginning to break away from the effects of its intolerant one-party rule, where the opposition was ruthlessly eliminated, any type of dissent was outlawed, and financial corruption was rife within Banda's closest circle. Between 1964 and 1994, detention without trial for political offences was the norm and the persecution of religious minorities was rampant. Up until 1992, opposition to Banda was fragmented and was only kept alive through the agitation of exiles living in neighbouring countries. Even these low-level activities were ruthlessly suppressed by the


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Malawian government, a key case in point being the kidnapping and detention of Orton and Vera Chirwa.4 However, from the spring of 1992, opposition to the Malawian Congress Party (MCP) and Banda's rule spread rapidly inside and outside the country. The spark was lit in March 1992 when Malawi's eight Catholic bishops, highly respected figures in this highly religious country, issued a pastoral letter which criticized the intolerance of the Malawian government. All copies of the letter were confiscated and possession of it was deemed to be a criminal offence. Some of the bishops were forced into hiding, but the draconian response only prompted many more Malawians to take to the streets to voice their desire for multiparty democracy. Riot police opened fire on one student demonstration in Zomba, injuring many, and protests broke out throughout the Southern and Central Regions. This prompted the calling together of exiled Malawian opposition leaders in Lusaka, Zambia. They decided to send Chakufwa Chihana5 back to Malawi to sound out the internal opposition, and also to send delegates to the Paris Club of international donors to argue for a suspension of economic aid to Malawi pending human rights improvements.6 When Chihana did return to Malawi on 6 April 1992, he was, as expected, immediately arrested despite the presence of international diplomats to greet him at Lilongwe Airport. A 5,000-strong crowd, unheard of in the history of Malawian politics, then demonstrated on behalf of Chakufwa Chihana outside the High Court upon his arraignment on 7 May. The protests intensified in June when antigovernment literature began to circulate, originating mostly from faxes sent into the country by opposition groupings in Lusaka, Zambia. The best estimates regarding this period of time calculated that over 2,000 people had been detained over the previous month in connection with anti-government activities, and increasing numbers of Malawians defied a ban on protests by excitedly expressing their support for Chihana outside the High Court in Lilongwe. On 29 June the single-party elections for the Malawian Parliament came and went with little violence, but significantly, Western diplomats reported an unusually low poll with less than 50 per cent of the registered voters casting their votes. Chakufwa Chihana was released from prison on 11 July, but redetained on 14 July to face further charges of sedition after giving an interview to the BBC. Eleven other church leaders were arrested at a pro-democracy rally in August, and Father John Leahy, an Irish missionary resident in Malawi for twenty years, was deported. This series of events, and a number of other documented human rights violations, prompted the British government to announce that there would be no resumption of aid 'until such time as political changes

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had been made in that country'. British pressure carried acute weight given that Britain was Malawi's main trading partner, accounting for a quarter of Malawi's exports and a fifth of her imports.7 By the autumn, the opposition began to coalesce into two distinct organizations. In September 1992 the Alliance for Democracy (AFORD) was launched as the first internal opposition grouping since independence in 1964. Chakufwa Chihana was elected chairman of the committee, which identified itself not as a political party, but as 'a pressure group formed to campaign peacefully for democratic change by constitutional means'.8 Soon after came the announcement that a number of former government members of the Malawian Congress Party were to launch the United Democratic Front (UDF) to help campaign for a multiparty democracy vote in the 15 March 1993 referendum, which Banda had been forced to call as a result of international pressure. At this time, Africa Analysis was reporting that, while many felt the collapse of the Banda government to be inevitable, they were fearful of John Tembo combining his allies in the Renamo Mozambican opposition guerrilla army with the para-militaristic Malawian Youth Pioneers to form a force which would ruthlessly put down developing dissent against the Congress Party's rule. Chihana appealed against his two-and-a-half-year sentence for sedition and his case came up again on 29 March 1993. However, in the previous week, Friday Makuta, the Minister of Justice, suddenly resigned his post, after he had clashed with John Tembo over the issue of who was primarily responsible for the legal system and the Chihana case. The High Court subsequently reduced Chihana's term of imprisonment to nine months on appeal, obeying what were seen as Tembo's wishes. Whether Tembo felt that this reduced sentence would dampen international appeals for Chihana's release is unclear. If this was his motivation, the plan proved to be unsuccessful, as the Malawian government continued to attract criticism from a number of United States Senators and human rights organizations throughout the world. Chihana was eventually released from Mikuyu Prison on 12 June 1993, two days before the referendum was to take place. Despite experiencing poor health during his time in detention, he immediately resumed his pro-democracy campaigning activities to help ensure a multiparty victory in the referendum. Despite the uphill struggle that the pro-democracy movements faced during the referendum campaign, the vote on 14 June 1993 was strongly in their favour. The Chairman of the Electoral Commission, Brown Chimphamba, announced on 16 June that the vote for multiparty democracy totaled 63.5 per cent, against those 35.5 per cent who had cast their ballots for the maintenance of one-party rule. The turnout


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was high and the government's vote was mostly concentrated in the Central Region surrounding the capital of Lilongwe. Banda's forces actually carried this region despite losing by 80 : 20 per cent margins in the North and South.9 John Tembo immediately refuted the implication that the overwhelming vote for multipartyism had been a vote against Banda, claiming that 'the referendum had nothing to do with whether Dr. Banda should remain President or not'.10 This implied that the Malawi Congress Party would remain in government until they were constitutionally obliged to hold elections in 1997. The opposition movements reacted to the result by demanding that Banda immediately form a coalition government which would enact legislation and preside over presidential and parliamentary elections before December 1993. Chakufwa Chihana offered Banda the opportunity to stay on as a ceremonial figurehead of the transitional government. After the referendum, a transitional National Consultative Council (NCC) was formed consisting of government, opposition, and laymembers, which helped to alleviate fears that Banda and the MCP would try to delay the multiparty elections for an inordinate amount of time. The NCC began to operate as an interim government, advising parliament, setting up electoral laws, agreeing on constituency boundaries, and denning the roll of any future directly elected president. In November 1993 the legislature met to change the one-party constitution and an electoral commission was set up, under the chairpersonship of Justice Anastazia Msosa, which included representatives of all parties contesting the elections. They quickly agreed to prepare for elections on 17 May of the following year. (b) Electoral System Choice Since 1966, the Malawian National Assembly has been constituted using a 'first-past-the-post' plurality electoral system, based on the Westminster model—a system inherited from elections held in the colony of Nyasaland, and the Central African Federation administered by Great Britain. In the final one-party elections of June 1992, 136 singlemember constituency seats were filled, with 91 of these seats being contested by MCP candidates. An additional 11 National Assembly members were named by the President. Malawi proved to be one of those democratizing nations where the choice of electoral system was never fully considered, nor were the consequences of the choice (or, as in this case, the negation of a choice) recognized. The electoral system question was not touched upon in the transition negotiations between the MCP government and AFORD-UDF led opposition, largely because of a consensus that this was not a priority issue and that

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the historical system of choice, the 'first-past-the-post' plurality electoral system, could be easily maintained for multiparty elections. Despite the overwhelming evidence that, within the context of a strong three-party system, an SMD plurality system could pose serious post-election problems, most party elites refused to countenance any break with the familiar Westminster system.11 (c) Free and Fair Elections'? The vote and count in the week of 17 May were ratified by the Commonwealth Observer Group and the Joint International Observer Group as 'free and fair'. They were also quick to applaud the orderly conduct of the elections.12 Justice Msosa announced that Malawians had 'expressed their will and exercised their democratic right to elect a government of their choice freely and fairly without any acts of violence', although she did note that there were a few electoral law violations reported to the commission.13 Adding to this comforting picture, Kees van Donge stated that while there were cases of intimidation and electoral irregularities, they were 'marginal to the process and certainly did not influence the result'.14 While all the evidence seems to suggest that the 1994 Malawian election was one of the most orderly and violence-free general elections held in southern Africa, it is also true to say that the pre-election campaign period was characterized by a number of abuses of standard democratic practice. Chief among these was the almost inevitable monopolization of the broadcast media (radio), key press (the Malawi Times), and the bureaucratic wheels of government, which until the spring of 1994 were all under effective MCP control. Venter cites UN reports in the run-up to the elections, which highlighted 'campaign violence and widespread intimidation, bribery and misuse of official positions'. [The reports] named the ruling MCP as the main violator, pointing specifically to MCP functionaries—ministers, members of parliament, and chiefs and village headmen—who misused their official positions to induce the electorate to participate in pro-MCP activities—sometimes by making use of the intimidatory tactics employed by dancers in the secret Nyau-Nyau initiation ceremonies—and to interfere with the registration process by the confiscation, theft or purchase of voter registration cards.15

Finally, while the overall vote totals were never seriously called into question, two constituencies won by the MCP, Nsanji North and Nsanje South-West, had their results nullified by the Electoral Commission


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following complaints of irregularities. In the by-elections, the MCP managed to hold Nsanji North but lost the South-West to the UDF. (d) The 1994 Election Results The UDF's minority government result in the parliamentary election and Bakili Muluzi's plurality victory in the presidential race were both testament to a hard-fought three-way election, in which each party dominated its own region but failed to make necessary inroads outside its home base. Despite total domination of the least populous Northern Region— winning all 33 seats with 85 per cent of the vote—AFORD was unable to win more than a handful of seats in the Central Region (on the North-Centre border), and no seats at all in the most populous Southern Region, where they could only muster 7 per cent of the vote. The UDF polled a full 75 per cent of their national vote from the Southern Region and won all but five of the 76 seats on offer in the South, but their subsequent government was based on the support of only 20 per cent of the voters outside their home region. Finally, the MCP held on to second position by dominating Kamuzu Banda's home Central Region, winning 51 of the 68 seats available, with nearly twothirds of the area's votes. However, they too were wiped out in the North and could only pick up five parliamentary seats in the South. In fact, the only semi-competitive region proved to be the Centre in which all parties managed to win seats (MCP=51, UDF=14, AFORD=3); but even this result masked a pattern of rural MCP dominance, as the UDF picked up their seats in the capital of Lilongwe, the nearby town of Salima, and the southern border region of Ntcheu. Regional vote and seat totals are given in Table 5.2. The election results revealed a number of important aspects of postBanda Malawian democratic politics, which in many ways are in line with previous African electoral history, while in other equally crucial ways depart from the norm. First, the strong regional fiefdoms (even if those fiefdoms were exaggerated by the plurality SMD electoral system) illustrate that voter preferences were largely based on regional loyalty and the cult of personality politics, rather than competing ideological stances and long-term economic strategies. Indeed, with respect to the 'big' economic and social issues, the major parties presented somewhat of a united front. They all expressed support for a mixed economy supported by international investment and internal incentives, the need to alleviate poverty, combat childhood disease, and solve the Mozambican refugee situation. Also, all parties strove

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Plurality Case Study Election Results TABLE 5.2. Malawi National Assembly results, by region

Party

% Vote

Seats

%

Northern AFORD MCP UDF Total

84.9 8.2 5.3 98.4

33 0 0 33

100 0 0 100

Central MCP UDF AFORD Total

64.4 27.7 7.2 99.3

51 14 3 68

75 21 4 100

Southern UDF MCP AFORD Total

75.8 16.4 6.8 99.0

71 5 0 76

93 7 0 100

to maintain a public stance of social propriety, which was not merely a moral gesture, but electorally advantageous in this highly religious country dominated by European missionary teachings and recovering from thirty years of Hastings Banda's near puritan rule. Nevertheless, Malawi's regionalism was somewhat atypical because it did not dovetail closely with ethnicity. While it is not true to claim (as Banda was keen to do) that there is no ethnic division in Malawi, it is clear that ethnicity has a far lower impact on Malawian society than in the neighbouring nations of southern Africa. There are at least eleven major ethnic groups in Malawi, of which the Chewa, Nyanja, and Tumbuka are the largest, but no one group, or alliance of groups, is seen to dominate the others. While Banda is a Chewa, and was criticized in the 1970s for promoting Chichewa as the lingua franca, Chewa are dispersed throughout the country and many Chewa residing in Banda's Central homeland still voted for the UDF in May 1994. Clearly, the voting cleavages were motivated by regional loyalties and prejudices over and above ethnic loyalties. A good example is the Northern Region which was the heartland of missionary exploration and education. It has been somewhat distrusted and envied by Central and Southern Malawians for producing the educated elite of the country. Indeed, AFORD played on this sentiment by presenting


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themselves as an intellectual and educated party untainted by any connection with the one-party regime.16 AFORD's inability to present themselves as anything more than a Northern party was shown by their 7 per cent vote in the Central and Southern Regions. Combined with the pressures of regionalism were the politics of personality, which, it can be credibly claimed, was the chief motivating force behind voting behaviour. Not only do the presidential election results illustrate this personality vote—with Muluzi, Banda, and Chihana all dominating their home regions with 78, 64, and 88 per cent, respectively—but so do the parliamentary exceptions to one-party regional dominance. For example, where a party actually picked up seats outside its home region, it was almost always due to the party presenting a locally well-known figure as one of its candidates or one of its leaders. The MCP managed to pick up four of the five parliamentary seats in the Nsanji district (in the UDF's Southern Region), because its Secretary-General, Gwanda Chakuamba, was a son of Nsanji.17 Similarly, the UDF's vote was markedly increased in the Ntchisi North and North-East constituencies (in MCP heartland territory) due to the fact that UDF's Vice-President, Justin Malewzi, was from that area.18 The parliamentary election results left President Muluzi's UDF four seats short of an absolute majority and AFORD immediately demanded that a cabinet be constituted from the membership of all three main political parties. Muluzi quickly ruled out any deal with the MCP, but was keen to incorporate AFORD into his cabinet for practical and public relations reasons. However, Chihana somewhat overplayed his hand and demanded that he be given an executive vice-presidency and a major cabinet portfolio, and that AFORD be given seven other seats in the cabinet. While Muluzi wanted to appear conciliatory, he was fearful of giving in too easily to AFORD demands. So, for many weeks there was an effective stand-off between the two parties, with the UDF attempting to operate a minority government and AFORD signing a 'memorandum of understanding' with the MCP in parliament. This 'pact with the devil' angered many AFORD members and led to the resignations of Machipisa Munthali and Peter Kaleso, and at the same time injured Chihana's credibility inside and outside his party. But the 'net effect was not power for the MCP . . . but a maximization of the negotiating position of AFORD'.19 In September, this led to Muluzi offering AFORD five ministerial portfolios and Chihana, himself, being given his coveted vice-presidential slot along with responsibility for Irrigation and Water Development. The nature and consequences of this ultimately short-lived de facto consociational arrangement are discussed more fully in Chapter 3.

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2. Zambia Similar to Malawi, Zambia maintained the use of her colonially inherited first-past-the-post electoral system for the October 1991 multiparty elections. The parliament was increased by 25 members to 150, but no full redistricting exercise was undertaken. Twenty-five of the old constituencies were simply split in half to produce the new parliamentary districts. This led to large disparities between the amount of voters registered in each constituency, with the largest seat being over eleven times the size of the smallest. This system was maintained for the second general election of the Third Republic held in November 1996. (a) The Transition to Democracy in Zambia In 1953, at the prompting of British colonial administrators, Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) was joined with two of the other case study countries, Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (Malawi), to form the ill-fated Federation of Rhodesia. Shortly after the break-up of that artificial construct, Zambia became an independent republic under the leadership of Kenneth David Kaunda and the United National Independence Party (UNIP). In January 1964 Kaunda was elected President and this son of a Malawian missionary was to endure as Zambia's most dominating political icon. Indeed, even after his defeat in the 1991 presidential elections, he arguably remained the most important national figure, constantly overshadowing the new President, Frederick Chiluba, during his increasingly inept attempts at economic reform and nation-building. Politically UNIP had fought hard to win the first multiparty elections of 1963 against Nkumbula's African National Congress (ANC), which, like UNIP, had strong roots in the independence struggle and an ethnic/regional base. But by the second democratic elections in 1968, internal divisions had weakened Kaunda's UNIP government and the ANC were able to win back the Southern, Central, and Western Provinces. Then a leading Kaunda ally, Simon Kapwepwe, broke with the government over what he took to be Eastern domination of the cabinet to form the United Progressive Party (UPP). The UPP was able to marshal strong support in the Copperbelt and Northern Provinces.20 At this time in the early 1970s, with new parliamentary elections approaching, 'UNIP was in trouble [and] in danger of winning only four of nine provinces and losing its majority in the National Assembly.'21 Thus, they took what was to be the safest route,


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if not the most democratic. They first banned the UPP, and then in 1972 transformed Zambia into a de jure one-party state with UNIP as the sole legal political party. However, while Kaunda was able effectively to suppress political opposition, he was less effective at fulfilling the economic needs of his people. At its birth, Zambia was one of the wealthiest and most industrialized nations in Africa with a per capita income of $700. However, by the end of the 1980s, GNP was actually falling and per capita income had plummeted to $290.22 This led to increasingly severe austerity measures and in 1987 fifteen people were killed in food riots. Again in June 1990 severe shortages led to three days of bloody rioting and an unsuccessful coup d'etat, which, after the mistaken broadcast that the coup had been successful, led to thousands of Zambians celebrating in the streets of Lusaka.23 Kaunda then began to re-evaluate his position and in June 1990 he announced that a referendum would be held four months later on the adoption of a multiparty system. Nevertheless, and in the tradition of Nyerere and Banda, President Kaunda began to campaign with the message that a multiparty system was unsuitable for Africans, as it would accentuate ethnic and tribal divisions. He went so far as to say that '[t]he one-party participatory democracy is itself a free evolution from our own special experience of a multiparty democracy.'24 However, in a surprising about-face in September 1990, Kaunda scrapped the October referendum, legalized political parties, and announced multiparty elections to be held the following year. The Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (MMD) emerged from a loose opposition alliance of unions intellectuals, and businesspeople as the main challenger to Kaunda and UNIP. In its first party convention of February 1991, the MMD chose Frederick Chiluba, the Secretary-General of the Zambian Congress of Trade Unions, as its leader and presidential candidate in the forthcoming elections. (6) Electoral System Choice As in Malawi, the first-past-the-post electoral system was carried over to Zambia's Third Republic of 1991, through all stages of the country's political evolution. It was first used for colonial and 'native' elections in Northern Rhodesia and the Federation of Rhodesia, then for the 1964 and 1968 multiparty elections held under Zambia's First Republic, and continued through the single-party years of the Second Republic stretching from 1972 to 1991. Throughout the negotiations during 1991 and 1992 between the MMD, government, and international mediators, the issue of the electoral system was hardly touched

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upon and no proposal was offered to switch to a PR system. This can be explained by a combination of two factors. First, as in Malawi, a general ignorance existed among the key players regarding the consequences of electoral system design; and a feeling of attachment to the Anglo system, which had been used for the previous thirty years, persisted. However, unlike Malawi, both UNIP and the MMD had good reason to feel optimistic about the vagaries of plurality SMD results coming out in their favour. UNIP had a well-defined grass-roots organization within the constituencies, 'down to the level of sections, groups composed of 10 to 25 households';25 and they believed they had a strong regional/ethnic basis among the Nyanja and Bemba of the East, Centre, North, Lusaka, and Copperbelt Provinces. The MMD expected to dominate the unionized industrial/mining regions and the capital of Lusaka. UNIP also felt they would benefit by the rather ad hoc method used to delimit the 25 new constituencies which were added to the old 125-member parliament. Instead of completely redefining the boundaries, the delimitation Commission decided merely to divide certain constituencies to obtain the requisite number, based on the need for effective representation in areas which had severe physical and communication difficulties. This led to vast disparities in the number of voters registered in constituencies, ranging from 70,379 registered voters in the urban Mandevu district, to only 6,376 in the rural Mulobezi constituency. 'These extraordinary variations seemed to give an unfair advantage to voters in the smaller, largely rural constituencies, which were thought to be UNIP strongholds.'26 Nevertheless, as Bjornlund et al. note, 'the opposition [MMD], perhaps feeling confident about its support in the rural areas, accepted the new delimitation plan [and by implication the maintenance of the SMD system] after only minor complaints'.27 Surprisingly, the question of the electoral system formula remained dormant in the run-up to the 1996 elections with UNIP, along with other opposition parties, concentrating their efforts on trying to rescind the constitutional principle which had blocked Kaunda's candidacy for the presidency. The lone voice calling for a switch to PR in 1996 came from Alfred Zulu of the Zambian Independent Monitoring Team who argued forcefully that the plurality SMD system was accentuating ethnic divisions, weakening the legislature, and generally retarding the prospects for successful democratic consolidation.28 (c) Free and Fair Elections? The level of fairness and order associated with the 1991 Zambian elections proved to be similar to the Malawian general election previously


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discussed in this chapter. There were logistical failures on polling day, incidents of violence and intimidation during the campaign, misuse of state apparatus by UNIP, and a very low turnout; but, on the whole, the elections went smoothly, which led independent observers to say that the electoral authorities had conducted successful and credible elections.29 Eric Bjornlund, Michael Bratton, and Clark Gibson (members of the internationally supported Zambia Voting Observation Team (Z-Vote)) summarized the findings of the international observers: All groups came to the conclusion that the elections were reasonably free and fair. While administrative irregularities did hamper balloting and 'instances of political manipulation' were evident in the election campaign, the results reflected the will of the Zambian electorate. No pattern of deliberate electoral abuse was detected. And, gratifyingly, fears of social unrest proved unfounded; Zambia's first multiparty elections in nearly two decades were peaceful and orderly.30

After many years of UNIP dominance, and the almost total interweaving of the governing party with the institutions of the state, it was remarkable how quickly the opposition was able to mobilize after Kaunda removed the ban on multipartyism in September 1990. The chief obstacle to free campaigning was the state of emergency which remained in place throughout the election period and precluded opposition campaign meetings and evening canvassing sessions. Indeed, in October 1990 Chiluba was charged with unlawful assembly after addressing an MMD meeting.31 The opposition was also hindered by a lack of access to the national media, thanks to UNIP's control over radio, television, and the only two national newspapers.32 The situation only improved late in the campaign when a number of small independent MMD-supporting newssheets began to appear, and High Court rulings overturned Kaunda's edict that newspapers not publicize the activities of the opposition.33 However, as noted earlier, the campaign was not free of violence. Kaunda and other UNIP members were pelted with stones, bottles, and fruit while arriving at a soccer match in July. Widespread incidents of attacks on MMD supporters in the Eastern Province also took place. 'Certain chiefs in different parts of the country allegedly expelled villagers from their homes because of their political affiliations [and] youths from both parties intimidated those attending rallies of their opponents.'34 The very low turnout of only 43 per cent can be explained in part by the widespread rumour-mongering of both parties predicting impending violence and fears of civil strife upon the announcement of the results. On election day, the electoral authorities 'transported the ballot boxes, conducted the count, and transmitted the results with relatively few

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serious problems'.35 However, as in all the case study elections analysed in this chapter, the polling itself was characterized by a number of logistical failures. Some polling stations in Zambia did not open in time, some ran out of supplies, and many had invalid equipment and were unable to follow the electoral code in full. Nevertheless, there is little reason to believe that the overall results did not reflect the general will of the Zambian people. One editorial in Southern Africa heralded the Zambian experience as being 'informative and instructive for the rest of Africa, particularly with respect to both the peaceful conduct of the electoral process itself and the tolerance that is an essential component of the democratic process'. The editors concluded, somewhat defensively, 'Africans do not naturally resort to "tribal" warfare at the time of elections.'36 The picture was far from as rosy in the second elections of November 1996. In May of that year Chiluba's government had passed into law a highly controversial constitutional amendment which, among other things, barred Kenneth Kaunda and his UNIP deputy Chief Inyambo Yeta from standing for the presidency, changed the presidential electoral system from a majority to a plurality system, and declared Zambia to be a 'Christian nation', thus offending the entire Muslim community along with the more liberal elements of the Christian Church in Zambia. Kaunda and Yeta were barred through the three eliminating criteria for presidential candidacy found in the new constitutional clause. First, a candidate had to have Zambian parents (Kaunda's originated from the former Nyasaland and travelled to what was then Northern Rhodesia before Kaunda's birth), second, anyone who had already served two presidential terms was barred (again disqualifying Kaunda), and third, traditional chiefs were denied the right to run for public office (disqualifying Yeta who is a traditional chief from the Western Province). These clauses, which precipitated UNIP's eventual boycott of the November 1996 parliamentary and presidential elections, were doubly ironic as the Post raised substantial doubts about Chiluba's claim that his parents were Zambian. The best leads suggested Chiluba was born to Zairean parents. Not content with denying Kaunda's run for office the MMD government detained, under what were largely seen as trumped-up charges, eight senior UNIP party officials (including Yeta) on charges of planning a series of bomb attacks against government buildings as members of the clandestine 'Black Mambo' organization. All eight were acquitted on all charges in November 1996 but their long detention had successfully weakened UNIP's campaigning abilities in the runup to the general election. Overall, the general environment in the leadup to the 1996 polls was not conducive to a 'free and fair election'. The


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Electoral Commission remained under the firm control of the government in the office of the Vice-President, and there was a severe misallocation of media space between political parties. The Zambian National Broadcasting Corporation featured the MMD 95 times (during the campaign) while the opposition only had 50 spots. The Zambia Daily Mail and the Times of Zambia, both government controlled dailies, featured the ruling party three times as often as the opposition. Added to this was the fact that opposition papers such as the Post were continually harassed and hindered from publicizing criticisms of the MMD government. Human Rights Watch called for a 'strong international response' to a catalogue of electoral abuses they had evidence of in the run-up to elections. Citing 'restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly, intimidation of those in the legal system and harassment of opposition parties' along with the duplication of national registration cards, the partisan politicization of voter education, the threat that constituencies which did not vote for the MMD would be denied state services, and the augmenting of local police with MMD supporters prior to elections, HRW argued that numerous human rights violations seriously undermined the legitimacy of the elections. Equally disturbing was the widespread failure of a scheme to increase voter registration from the pathetically low levels of 1991. In 1995 the government contracted an Israeli firm, NIKUV, to conduct a registration exercise at the cost of $US 18 million. The registration process was complex and required two trips to a registration centre, which led to the exclusion of millions of voters in rural and inaccessible areas. Activities were also concentrated in the rainy season which doubled the difficulties faced by NIKUV and eventually, after two extensions of the registration period, the voters' roll consisted of 2.3 million names, 600,000 less than 1991 and half of the estimated 4.6 million Zambians of voting age. When registration cards were issued in August 1996 there were so many reports of irregularities that UNIP took the issue to court and were only defeated by the judges' ruling that too much money had already been spent on the NIKUV operation to abandon the scheme. As a result of the UNIP boycott and general alienation from the political system demonstrated by the electorate, on the day only just over a million Zambians voted in the presidential and parliamentary elections, representing less than 30 per cent of the eligible electorate.37 However, even the validity of these low figures was brought into doubt with allegations of widespread multiple voting. The Post claimed that based on the figures released by the Electoral Commission 'at least 384,000 voters may have participated in "ghost or flying voting" on November 18', which not only affected the results in parliamentary

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constituencies but could have inflated Chiluba's vote by up to 384,000 voters, casting 'doubts on President Chiluba's acclaimed mandate'.38 Local observer groups claimed that the elections had been fraudulent. Alfred Zulu, President of the Zambia Independent Monitoring Team (ZIMT), argued that the pattern of voting had shown the results to be fixed and that the elections had failed to meet international standards as set by human rights law associations. Ngande Mwanajiti, Chair of the Committee for a Clean Campaign (CCC), concurred that the elections were not free and fair. Both were detained by the police for their pronouncements. Surprisingly, an observation mission sent by the Organization of African Unity claimed the elections were 'peaceful and without corruption'. Their report said that 'the voting was unfettered and there was no perceptible evidence of any attempt to influence or corrupt voters on the election day despite the fact that in some polling stations some voters did not know how to vote and had to be assisted'.39 (d) The 1991 Election Results The first multiparty elections for nearly thirty years illustrated the three primary realities of modern-day Zambian political life. First, opposition to the old one-party state of Kaunda and UNIP was overwhelming. Second, regionalism maintains a strong influence on voting behaviour and party identification. And third, Africans were (and are) capable of participating in a relatively stable and successful transition from authoritarian rule to multiparty competitive electoral politics. As Chikulo notes, 'for the first time in over thirty years since the era of independence, an Anglophone African state had changed a president and a government through democratic multiparty elections'.40 The electoral swing away from UNIP to the MMD was dramatic. In the parliamentary elections, the embryonic opposition won nearly three-quarters of the popular vote and over 80 per cent of the seats. In the Central, Copperbelt, Luapula, Southern, and Western Provinces, all areas which had previously strongly supported Kaunda, the MMD extinguished the UNIP from gaining any representation with vote shares ranging between 70 and 80 per cent. In the Lusaka, Northern, and North-Western Provinces, pockets of electoral support did enable UNIP to win 6 seats (out of 45), but the MMD still took nearly 80 per cent of the votes. Only in the UNIP stronghold of the Eastern Highlands could Kaunda's party hold on to their primarily Bemba support, which yielded UNIP all of the province's 19 parliamentary seats with 74 per cent of the vote.


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TABLE 5.3. Results of the Zambian parliamentary elections, October 1991 Party

Votes

National (%)

Seats

MMD UNIP Other Total

940,312 312,177 12,709 1,265,198

74.3 24.7 1.0 100.0

125 (83%) 25 (17%) 0 150

Notes: MMD=Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (Chiluba), UNIP=United National Independence Party (Kaunda), Other=NDP, NADA, DP, Independents. Sources: Electoral Commission, 1991 Presidential and Parliamentary Election: Provisional Official Election Results (Lusaka: Government Publications Office); Chikulo 1993: 87-104.

The MMD's electoral dominance swept UNIP central committee members, cabinet ministers, and district governors from power;41 but their dominance was not merely at the expense of UNIP. There were three other parties (NDP, NADA, DP) and a total of twenty-seven other parliamentary candidates who hoped to fill the vacuum of opposition to UNIP, all of which were swallowed in a tide of MMD support and failed to win any seats, or even make the smallest of impacts in a single constituency race. Thus, the MMD's victory could be characterized as multi-ethnic, cross-regional, and based on a nationally unifying desire for change. In contrast UNIP's losing vote was clearly regionally and ethnically based—a fact which gave cause for concern to a number of observers of the evolving multiparty system. Burnell speculated that regionalism would play an increasingly strong role in the elections of 1996 and beyond, particularly in the Western Province 'where there is strong Lozi resentment against the government's reluctance to reinstate the 1964 Barotseland agreement'.42 Furthermore, he argued that the MMD were best positioned to hold on to the Luapula and Copperbelt Provinces which have been graced with half of the ministerial appointments. Note that Chiluba comes from the Copperbelt Province. Breaking the pattern of other southern African uhuru or new democracy elections, the Zambian election of 1991 had a particularly disappointing turnout rate of only 43 per cent. In the key contest of 1968 between UNIP and the ANC, the turnout had reached 87 per cent. Since then, and through the years of one-party rule, turnout has steadily declined, hitting a low of 40 per cent in 1973. Nevertheless, the closed UNIP general elections of 1978 and 1983 still provided turnouts of approximately 65 per cent. Thus, the MMD's victory was less overwhelming than was originally perceived, as they only

158


received 946,000 votes out of an estimated 2.9 million which potentially could have been cast. In the presidential election, the vote pattern coincided almost exactly with the parliamentary electoral split. Kaunda's 310,000 votes were only 2,000 less than UNIP's national vote; and Chiluba's extra 26,000 votes, over and above the MMD's national vote, can be explained by the added support of those who cast their ballots for the tiny opposition parties or independents in the parliamentary elections. The MMD's overwhelming dominance of the new government was seen by some as a 'severe setback for the democratization process in Zambia'.43 It led Chikulo to describe the transition as being nothing more than a shift from a 'de-jure to de-facto' one-party state.44 Indeed, the journalist Jowie Mwiinga argued in 1994 that there had been little organized pressure on the President to clean up his government, 'thanks to the absence of either a meaningful opposition or an independent press'.45 The situation was made even worse by the recycling of former government politicians. As in Malawi, many leaders of the new democracy movement were formerly high-ranking ministers in the one-party UNIP government, and friends and confidants of Kenneth Kaunda. (e) The 1996 Election Results In the same way as the Zambian political milieu began to mirror Zimbabwe's the election results of 1996 echoed the one-party dominance of their neighbours to the east. The November elections were the story of a democratically elected government increasingly playing fast and loose with the principles of democracy and, once their chief opponents were successfully marginalized, taking on and defeating handily a fragmented and ineffective bundle of tiny opposition groupings. The Movement for Multi-Party Democracy's 131 seats represented an increase of six seats over their 1991 performance but that victory rested on 13 per cent and 160,000 less votes than they had polled five years earlier. They swept every seat in the Copperbelt, Eastern, Luapula, and Southern Provinces but only with between 56 and 70 per cent of the vote. The failure of the four main opposition parties was highlighted by the fact that independents, with ten seats in the new Assembly, formed the next largest block after the MMD. The majority of successful independents were MMD members who were not adopted by their party and former UNIP members who defied their party's call for a boycott. The National Party (NP) of Humphrey Mulemba won five seats, four from their stronghold in the North-West where they garnered 35 per cent of the popular vote, the best performance of any opposition party


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TABLE 5.4. Results of the Zambian parliamentary elections, November 1996 Party

Votes

National (%)

Seats

MMD ZDC NP NLP AZ Inds. Other Total

778,989 176,521 90,823 81,876 18,982 125,837 4,557 1,277,585

61.0 13.8 7.1 6.4 1.5 9.8 0.4 100.0

131 (87%) 2 (1%) 5 (3%) 0 2 (1%) 10 (7%) 0 150

Notes: MMD=Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (Chiluba), ZDC=Zambia Democratic Congress (Mung'omba), NP=National Party (Mulemba), NLP=National Lima Party (Scott/Kapita), AZ=Agenda for Zambia (Mbikusita-Lewanika), Inds.=Independents, Other=NC, MDP, UNIP, PPP, RDP. Source: Electoral Commission, 1996 Presidential and Parliamentary Election: Provisional Official Election Results (Lusaka: Government Publications Office).

in any province. And, as Africa Confidential noted, in the Western Province 'personalities rather than policies seemed to be decisive', with Dean Mung'omba's Zambia Democratic Congress (ZDC) winning three seats and Akashambatwa Mbikusita-Lewanika's Agenda for Zambia (AZ), an offshoot of the NP, winning another two. Indeed, with 14 per cent of the national vote, but only two parliamentary seats, the ZDC was most disadvantaged by the first-past-the-post electoral system. The National Lima Party (NLP) led by former Minister of Agriculture Guy Scott and former Chair of the Zambia National Farmers' Union Ben Kapita was expected to poll well among the farming vote but they failed to win a single seat, despite polling four times as many votes as the AZ with two seats.

3. Zimbabwe Zimbabwe has had the longest multiparty electoral history of the five case studies analysed in this work, although her level of democratic competitiveness has sharply declined through the four national general elections held since March 1980—leading to a state of affairs rendering the country the least democratic of all the case studies analysed herein.46 Zimbabwe is also the only country in southern Africa since the 1980s to have switched electoral systems.47 Zimbabwe used a list PR system for her first non-racial, but dubiously legitimate, general election of 1979, as well as for the fully inclusive and thus more

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useful election of the following year. In the election of 1985, and the subsequent parliamentary elections of 1990 and 1995, she reverted back to the Anglo-American plurality SMD system. A second change came in the reservation of seats for whites elected from racially segregated voters' rolls. In 1979, 1980, and 1985, twenty seats were reserved for whites and, interestingly, there were electoral system innovations even within this small section of the constitution. In 1979, the white seats were elected through the alternative vote, while in 1980 and 1985 the system reverted back to the plurality system used in pre-independence Rhodesia. This meant that in 1980 two separate electoral systems were in use simultaneously to constitute the membership of the national parliament. All voters were allowed to register on the common roll PR election, while whites were uniquely given a second bite at the cherry with their own exclusive plurality SMD election. (a) The Transition to Democracy in Zimbabwe*6 Mineral prospectors, financed by Cecil Rhodes, headed north from the gold fields of Witwatersrand at the end of the nineteenth century. As they had done in South Africa, these 'pioneers' soon felt it necessary to remove the indigenous population from the best farming land to 'tribal reserves' far away. Not surprisingly, the Africans rebelled, but the pattern of violently enforced colonialism in southern Africa was repeated, most spectacularly with the crushing of the Shona and Ndebele during what became known as the Chimurenga Wars. Jeffrey Herbst points out that the early economic development of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe predetermined the racially polarized upheaval which was to follow in the latter half of the twentieth century. He notes that the white settlers of Rhodesia were distinct from other African colonialists in two important ways. First, the 'absence of mineral resources on the scale of South Africa's' meant that the number of whites in Southern Rhodesia would never be large enough to maintain all the intricate legal structures of South African apartheid. Second, they were powerful enough to act independently of colonial administrators, which was clearly unlike the administrative colonists in African countries such as Mozambique, Angola, Kenya, and Algeria. The unique size and autonomy of Rhodesia's white population, 'too small for grand apartheid but too large for an easy exit. . . accounted for the peculiar twists and particular tragedies in the country's history'.49 By the 1920s, the Rhodesian settlers had voted for self-government and against incorporation into South Africa, and had developed a huge network of state patronage, employing over 2,000 whites in six different administrative offices.50


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As noted earlier, between 1953 and 1963 Southern Rhodesia joined with Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi) to form the ill-fated Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Initially, this aided trade between the colonies and gave nervous whites a feeling of strength in numbers. But the winds of change sweeping throughout the continent led to: independence in both Zambia and Malawi in the early 1960s (which contained much smaller settler populations); the break-up of the Federation; and new pressures on white Rhodesians to craft some compromise with the black African majority. Harold Macmillan's government in London appeared willing to grant independence to the Rhodesians if '[they] had at least some aspirations to majority rule'.51 However, the Rhodesian Front (RF) government headed by Ian Smith was belligerent in not giving any ground to the black African population. The RF unilaterally declared independence (UDI) on 11 November 1965. In the early years of UDI, black opposition to the white Rhodesian government was weak and often torn by internal wranglings. At this stage Joshua Nkomo, an Ndebele from Matabeleland, was the leader of the chief opposition party, the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU). ZAPU had grown out of a number of liberation movement organizations that had been banned in the 1950s. Nkomo's style was one of 'personalized rule' and 'eloquent popular demagogy". In 1963, his style and his perceived willingness to compromise with whites led to a group of senior party figures abandoning ZAPU to form the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU52).53 Election returns in 1980 and 1985 show each of these opposition movements to have been rooted in distinct regions and defined ethnic groups, with ZAPU dominating among the Ndebele and Kalanga of Matabeleland, and ZANU support drawn from the various Shona groups. However, Stoneman and Cliffe note that 'the two parties were not equitable with these ethnic groups at the outset', and it was only later in the 1970s that 'cadres and leaders from one ethnic group came to predominate in each party'. 'The net result was that after clashes within ZAPU in Zambia in 1970 and 1971 many of the majority Shona-speakers departed to join ZANU, so that the two parties, which originally had mixed ethnic compositions, became now to a greater extent identified with one or other of the main language groups.'54 As Herbst notes (1990), 'ZANU was also riven with intra-Shona divisions that led to deep suspicions between competing subgroups.' In the mid-1970s, the British government began to make a series of attempts to settle the UDI problem by talking with some of the more malleable and conciliatory black African figures. This came at a time when the guerrilla armies of ZANU and ZAPU were making

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increasingly successful incursions into Rhodesia itself—particularly after Frelimo's victory in Mozambique had opened up the Eastern Highlands-Mozambique border as a crossing point for the rebels. Bishop Abel Muzorewa and Ndabaningi Sithole65 were first courted and then co-opted by the Pearce Commission, which offered limited constitutional change consisting of slow incremental increases in black political influence. Then, in 1979, they participated in a discredited 'internal settlement' election, which was boycotted by most serious representatives of black Zimbabwe. Muzorewa's United African National Council (UANC) gained 67 per cent of the vote in this election, but there was never any real threat of the Rhodesian government offering anything like majority rule; and Muzorewa and Sithole were seen by ZANU and ZAPU as nothing more than stooges of Ian Smith. By the late 1970s, the dynamics of southern African regional affairs had been radically altered by the leftist coup in Portugal and resulting transition to independence in Angola and Mozambique. These events not only changed the mindset of Western powers, but they injected an air of realism into the economically and diplomatically isolated Rhodesian government. At the same time, leaders of both ZANU and ZAPU came to the realization that a military victory over the powerful Rhodesian Army backed and supplied by South Africa would come at great cost, if it came at all, and so they too agreed to seek a negotiated settlement. The settlement was thrashed out in London at Lancaster House by Ian Smith's RF, Mugabe's ZANU, Nkomo's ZAPU, and Muzorewa's UANC, all under the watchful eye of Lord Carrington, the British Foreign Secretary. Agreements were made on a new constitution, a military ceasefire, the timing and nature of elections, and the transition to full independence. While ZANU and ZAPU could look forward to 'free' common roll (non-racial) elections for the first time in Zimbabwean history, they also had to give in on a number of key constitutional clauses which would protect and serve white interests for many years to come. Paramount among these 'Rhodesian victories' were clauses protecting property rights and the entrenchment, for seven years, of twenty parliamentary seats (out of eighty) to be elected by white voters only. (b) Electoral System Choice The choice of PR for the internal settlement election of 1979 was both unusual and important. The decision represented the first time that a former British colony in Africa had adopted the 'continental' PR system; and second, while the 1979 elections lacked legitimacy themselves,


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the electoral laws under which they were held were important, as they endured, largely intact, into the first proper multi-racial democratic elections of March 1980. In those 1979 elections, boycotted by ZANU and ZAPU, 20 seats elected from a separate voters' roll were reserved for 'whites', while 72 members were to be chosen by electors on a 'common' voters' roll (inclusive of whites) from eight PR districts. A high threshold of 10 per cent was set for representation at the district level. There was also provision for a cabinet of national unity where each party winning five seats or more in parliament would be entitled to a proportionate share of cabinet positions. Interestingly, and uniquely in the history of African elections, the 20 white members were to be elected by the alternative vote in single-member districts. The 1979 Lancaster House agreements made few alterations to the electoral laws previously outlined. Still, the number of 'common' roll seats was increased from 72 to 80, the cabinet was no longer required to be proportionally constituted among a number of parties, and the white members were to be elected by straight plurality SMD instead of the alternative vote. That PR should have been maintained for these all-important first democratic Zimbabwean elections is unsurprising when the political dynamics of the transition are taken into account. First, there was the practical need for an electoral system which did not require extensive boundary delimitation and the registration of voters within small areas. The previous decade of war had left hundreds of thousands of displaced refugees, rendering former electoral infrastructures inadequate. As in Sierra Leone in 1995, it was believed that a single-member district system would simply be too unwieldy to manage, while a list PR system would facilitate a much higher turnout. Second, both leading liberation movements, ZANU and ZAPU, were unsure of their electoral strength and were wary of any system which could be manipulated in favour of the previous regime or collaborators with that regime. Thus, they hoped that PR would be able to mitigate localized incidences of malpractice and intimidation. Third, whites represented at the Lancaster House talks were mindful of the new realities of multiparty politics in Zimbabwe. They realized that if they were ever to make gains with black allies in the common voters' seats, then plurality SMD would not aid their chances—whites in 1980 comprised only 2 to 3 per cent of the population. Smith and the British Foreign Office also hoped for some degree of division between the four strands of nationalist leadership—ZANU and ZAPU, and the Muzorewa and Sithole groupings56—a division which would be facilitated under a PR system, but probably suppressed under a plurality SMD system. With that in mind, it is surprising that such a high threshold of 10 per cent was instigated for the common voters' roll seats,

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because a lower threshold would have helped fragment the 'black' parliamentary parties even further. The move to the Anglo-American plurality constituency system in 1985 was primarily at the instigation of Mugabe and ZANU-PF who wished to bring an enhanced degree of geographic representation into the choice of parliamentary members. Although there are no documents available to prove the hypothesis, the cynical assessment of such a switch is that Mugabe knew that PR would perpetuate the multiparty system while plurality SMD would facilitate his desire to move to a one-party state. The latter would make it much more difficult for minority groupings to win seats in parliament in the face of ZANU government hegemony. Indeed, after abolishing the twenty 'whites only' seats in 1987, the simple move to a plurality SMD electoral system reduced the anti-ZANU (PF) forces in parliament by a factor of ten in 1990 and a factor of nine in 1995.57 Nevertheless, after two crushing opposition defeats in 1990 and 1995 which left Zimbabwe with little more than a de facto one-party state, there have been rising calls for constitutional change and an overhaul of the plurality SMD electoral system. In May 1995 Michel Auret, of the Harare-based Catholic Commission for Peace and Justice, stated that he had 'come to the conclusion that [the] constitution is fundamentally flawed and must be thrown out, lock, stock, and barrel'.58 This was echoed by a columnist in the Independent Financial Gazette, who on the eve of the April poll said, 'voting this weekend will give legitimacy to an illegitimate, and basically corrupt electoral system which should no longer be tolerated in the interests of good governance'.59 In his important 1992 book Voting for Democracy, Jonathan Moyo argues: There is nothing in the country's electoral system which entrenches the values of a multiparty democracy. Quite to the contrary, Zimbabwe's winner-takesall system is a recipe for a one-party state in its de-jure or de-facto varieties. . . . proportional representation is also in the interests of the ruling parties— which are not guaranteed popularity. Under a winner-takes-all electoral system, the ruling party risks losing everything—even when it still enjoys some considerable minority support. This is what happened in the 1991 Zambian general elections where UNIP would have received more than 25 seats if the elections had been run on the basis of proportional representation.60

(c) Free and Fair Elections? In the context of the previous twenty years of conflict and colonial manipulation, ZANU (PF) felt that the odds were stacked against them in the first truly open elections of 1980. Indeed, the colonial administrators headed by Lord Soames were hoping for an alliance of whites and more 'compliant blacks' (i.e. Muzorewa as opposed to Mugabe), which would


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be able to defeat ZANU (PF). Rhodesian security forces were vested with maintaining law and order and ZANU candidates and officials were arrested as a matter of course. Robert Mugabe estimated that as many as 20,000 ZANU workers had been detained by former Rhodesian police during the campaign.61 Nevertheless, Commonwealth observers felt that the voting itself was 'relatively free from manipulation'.62 If anything, charges of violent intimidation and electoral misfeasance were primarily laid at the door of Mugabe's ZANU (PF). Nkomo's PF-ZAPU, Muzorewa's UANC, and Sithole's ZANU all complained that they were denied access to rural areas controlled by ZANLA guerrillas. Edison Zvobgo, director of ZANU's campaign, added credence to these complaints, when he argued: 'Why should any party go where it is not wanted? Why should any party wish to go and reap where it did not sow?'63 There were attempts on Mugabe's life during the campaign64 and fighting leading to fatalities was noted between supporters of the main parties. Nevertheless, on balance, ZANU (PF) was able to dominate campaigning in proportion to its domination among the Shona and its concurrent domination of Zimbabwean territory. However, in the 1980 elections, those with detailed knowledge of Zimbabwean political dynamics argued that 'even if the other parties had been given safe passage into former ZANLA areas or the others into former ZIPRA areas, it is quite unlikely that the results would have been otherwise'.65 The polling itself in the 1985 elections proved to be beyond reproach, with little violence and intimidation visible at the polls and voters behaving in a civil and exemplary manner under the watchful eye of local and international observers and uniformed police. Parties were excluded from canvassing within 100 metres of the polling stations and the two-day election period was extended to allow everybody a chance to vote. Professor Walker Kamba, the Chairman of the Electoral Supervisory Commission, announced that the commission was: satisfied beyond doubt that the elections were conducted fairly at every stage of the process. My commission visited many places in the country observing the election preparations, during the polling period, and the counting of votes. We were satisfied that the officials acted and behaved with probity and impartiality. I have no doubt that the electorate expressed its choice at the polls freely. In every area, and in every constituency, people voted for the party or candidate of their choice.66

However, the real problems came after the close of polls, when an orgy of violence by 'celebrating' ZANU (PF) supporters was inflicted upon those identified with minority parties. In addition to the evictions and killings were a number of incidents of mock funerals where symbols

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of Nkomo and ZAPU would be buried. 'Although other minority parties were also the object of similar ridicule, the anti-ZAPU manifestations were many and more pronounced.'67 In 1990, the inter-party violence was somewhat reduced due, in large part, to the 1987 incorporation of Nkomo's PF-ZAPU into Mugabe's ZANU (PF) government. In this de facto one-party state, attacks on the electoral process might have been expected to come from antisystem movements alienated by Mugabe's increasing restrictions on free expression and civil liberties which suffocated political debate. That they did not was testament to the government's hegemonic domination of civil society and political discourse. Nevertheless, the climate created by ZANU PF during the election campaign did lead to incidents of violence and intimidation directed at the small opposition parties and their supporters. Government party adverts 'depicted voting for ZUM as tantamount to death', exemplified by the commentary 'AIDS kills. So does ZUM. Vote ZANU-PF.'68 This created an atmosphere in which opposition parties were denied rally permits or planned meetings were simply broken up. Throughout the Midlands, Masvingo, Manicaland, and Mashonaland East, ZUM candidates and supporters were attacked, vilified, and harassed, and as Moyo notes, the most disturbing feature of the violence was 'that the police appeared to ignore [it]'.69 One of the most heinous abuses of the process was the case of Patrick Kombayi, a former high-ranking ZANU PF official and Mayor of Gweru who had fallen out with Mugabe in the late 1980s. He challenged Vice-President Simon Muzenda in the Gweru constituency but only weeks before the poll he was abducted by government agents and shot. He survived but was disabled and continued to remain in the race, which prompted the government to redraw Gweru's constituency boundaries. Muzenda went on to win with 72 per cent of the vote. Three years later two Central Intelligence Organization (CIO) agents were arrested and found guilty of attempted murder but then, in a contemptuous disregard for the rule of law, were pardoned by Mugabe. The polling went ahead with widespread administrative failures and most polling stations opened late, lacking necessary supplies, and without adequate security. A number of legal provisions were ignored: chiefly the law against canvassing within 100 metres of the polling station, which was consistently flouted by ZANU PF.™ During the count ZUM officials were notably absent and Moyo even speculates that the Electoral Commission refused to publish the presidential results by district because 'Robert Mugabe lost the presidential election in some provinces [despite winning overall], most notably in Matabeleland and Manicaland, where Edgar Tekere's ZUM did rather well in the general election.'71 While there were far fewer incidences of post-election


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violence than in 1985, there were still a number of attacks on ZUM members, and assumed supporters, in the Makoni Central, Karoi, Mufakose, Gweru, and Kwekwe constituencies, in 1990.72 Moyo's research team from the University of Zimbabwe also found that 'voters who had first-hand experience of how the campaign period was conducted felt that the elections were neither free nor fair'.73 In the most recent elections of 1995 the polling was effectively delegitimized before the election day even came. Bishop Muzorewa and Edgar Tekere led a boycott of eight opposition parties, claiming that 'partisan state control of the electoral process and unfair press coverage did not give opposition parties a fair chance'74 and the lack of a coherent opposition led to 55 ZANU PF candidates being returned unopposed which, along with Mugabe's 30 discretionary parliamentary appointments, meant that the government had been returned to power even before the polling stations opened on 8 April 1995. This led New African to comment that the elections were a farce and the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace to conclude that the elections could not be fair because 'the opposition parties have not had a fair chance'.75 While the extent of the government's monopolization of media coverage and their abuse of police power was lessened in 1995 (in comparison with the elections of 1990), there were still troubling incidents of violence and intimidation during the election campaign. Fears of unrest were raised in June of 1994 when Mugabe warned political opponents that ZANU PF supporters would 'meet violence with violence' in the run-up to the voting. This was a reaction to Enoch Dumbutshena's (Forum) warning that opposition supporters should keep spears and axes in their homes in case of attack by ruling party youths.76 Indeed, one independent candidate in Harare, Margaret Dongo, suffered continual harassment and a number of attacks on her supporters at the hands of ZANU PF members. The irregularities and voting fraud were so extreme in this constituency that the April results had to be nullified and a special election held in November 1995: an election which Dongo won easily with 65 per cent of the vote. A larger flaw in the process was the errors in the register of electors which led to over 100,000 eligible voters being turned away at the polls (Electoral Commission estimates77). In a bizarre vignette Ian Smith was refused permission to vote when his name had been incorrectly listed as 'Smith Ian' on the computerized roll. Upon hearing of Smith's disenfranchisement Mugabe quickly ordered the local officials to give him a ballot paper. After ZANU PF's overwhelming victory had been announced most international observers echoed the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace view that, while 'relatively free from violence', the elections had been Tree but not fair'.78

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Plurality Case Study Election Results TABLE 5.5, Results of the Zimbabwean parliamentary elections, March 1980 (common roll)

Party

Votes

National (%)

Seats

ZANU (PF) PF-ZAPU UANC Other Total

1,668,992 638,879 219,307 122,351 2,649,529

62.99 24.11 8.28 4.62 100.00

57 (71%) 20 (25%) 3 (4%) 0 80

Notes: ZANU (PF)=Zimbabwe African National Union (Mugabe), PF-ZAPU= Zimbabwe African People's Union (Nkomo), UANC=United African National Council (Muzorewa), Other=ZANU, ZDP, NFZ, NDU, UNFP, UPAM. Sources: Sithole 1986: 75-98; US State Department report to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, 1980.

(d) General Election Results 1980-1995 The 1980 elections. The received wisdom (or perhaps British Foreign Office/Rhodesian Front wishful thinking) in the first week of April 1980 was that the election would be a very close-run thing, necessitating a coalition of two or more political parties to form a government. Sylvester notes that many Westerners were predicting an Nkomo PF-ZAPU victory right up until the last minute 'because ZAPU was the oldest and best known party'.79 But, as Table 5.5 shows, by 10 April it became clear that Mugabe's ZANU (PF) had won an absolute majority of the votes, giving them an absolute majority in the new parliament even when the 20 seats reserved for whites were taken into consideration. Their 63 per cent of the popular vote gave them 57 of the 100 seats in parliament, a majority of 14 over all opposition parties combined. Joshua Nkomo's PF-ZAPU polled a disappointing 24 per cent of the national vote and won 20 seats, while Bishop Muzorewa's South African-backed UANC were reduced to only 8 per cent of the vote and three seats, after polling 67 per cent a year earlier—albeit in elections boycotted by both ZANU and ZAPU. Sithole's breakaway ZANU party polled the best of the 'also-rans' but even they could only muster 2 per cent, not enough to win seats under the regionally based, high-threshold type of PR formula used. As is shown in Table 7.9 the unsuccessful ZANU-Ndonga and ZDP parties would have gained parliamentary representation if a 'Namibian'-like national list PR system had been used instead of the PR system which was used. Masipula Sithole argues that four key factors explain ZANU's 'overwhelming' victory in the first non-racial Zimbabwean elections. First,


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the issue paramount in all Zimbabweans' minds when they entered the polling booth was, 'who is most likely to end the war?', and Sithole speculates that, as ZANLA guerrillas were in over two-thirds (the Shonaspeaking areas) of the country, most voters felt only ZANU (PF) could bring an end to the conflict: 'the people were left without any doubt that peace meant a ZANU (PF) victory.'80 Second, he claims that Mugabe was the only leader who widely appealed to both the working and middle class, and was seen to be someone whom the whites would do business with. Third, opposition to ZANU (PF) was weakened by the discrediting of Muzorewa and Sithole through their compliance with the 'internal settlement'.81 Finally, and perhaps most importantly, ethnicity had gradually become a growing factor in the nationalist movement since the 1970s and the resulting split between a Shona-based ZANU and an Ndebele-based ZAPU would serve up an in-built twothirds majority to Mugabe and the larger Shona ethnic group. As in all the other case studies the correlation of voting behaviour and ethnicity was pronounced, but the significance of the correlation was strongly disputed by politicians and academics. On the face of it the Shona voted ZANU (PF) and the Ndebele voted PF-ZAPU. In the five 'Shona' districts of Mashonaland East, Central, and West, Victoria, and Manicaland Mugabe's ZANU (PF) won between 71 and 87 per cent of the vote (Nkomo's PF-ZAPU won 2 to 13 per cent—their highest vote coming from Mashonaland West which borders Matebeleland and has a higher proportion of Ndebele speakers). In the two Matabeleland districts the 'Ndebele' PF-ZAPU was equally hegemonic winning 79 and 86 per cent of the vote against ZANU (PF)'s 10 and 6 per cent. In the Midlands—the one moderately competitive, and linguistically mixed, district—ZANU (PF) won 59 per cent and PF-ZAPU won 27 per cent. Rough calculations imply that ZANU (PF) received 5 to 10 per cent of the Ndebele vote, with PF-ZAPU receiving an equivalent share of the Shona vote. The hypothesized correlation of ethnicity and voting behaviour is lent even more credibility when PF-ZAPU's 24 per cent is compared to the 19 per cent of Zimbabwe's population which is Ndebele, and the fact that the remaining 76 per cent of the votes went to parties with Shona leadership and the Shona make up 75 per cent of the population. We should be careful not to assume that ethnicity was the only thing driving voting behaviour—Cliffe and Stoneman show that in Zimbabwe, as in the rest of southern Africa culture, ethnic correlations often mask more sophisticated economic and historical pressures, and preferences and choice interact with each other in a series of complicated ways (see Chapter 2)—but even they note that Mugabe's legitimacy as a national unifying figure was weakened by his failure to gain Ndebele votes. This prompted

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Plurality Case Study Election Results TABLE 5.6. Results of the Zimbabwean parliamentary elections, February 1980 (white roll)

Party

Votes

National (%)

RF Ind.

13,622 2,776

83.07 16.93

Total

16,398

100.00

Seats 20 (100%) 0 20

Notes: RF=Rhodesia Front (Smith), Ind.=Independent candidates in the Bulawayo South, Kopji, Makoni, Mount Pleasant, Southern, and Western constituencies. Sources: Sithole 1986: 75-98; US State Department report to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, 1980; data collected by Leon du Toit of Stellenbosch University.

Mugabe to name Joshua Nkomo as Minister for Internal Affairs in his first cabinet. Much as in traditional electoral politics in the old Rhodesia the 1980 elections for the 'whites-only'82 twenty parliamentary seats were a competitive non-event. Ian Smith's Rhodesian Front won every seat and were only opposed, by independents, in six constituencies. In these contested districts the RF still managed to poll 83 per cent of the vote. Only in Kopji was the RF seriously challenged, where Dr Timothy Stamps ran on the platform that white voters could no longer bury their heads in the sand, rather they had to work for their places in the new Zimbabwe. Stamps gained 34 per cent of the district vote. The most visible white 'liberal' candidate was the leader of the National Unifying Force Party, Nick McNally, who stood in the wealthy suburban Mount Pleasant constituency. However, the weakness of Rhodesian liberalism, in even this affluent and somewhat 'Europeanized' suburb of Harare, was shown up by his disappointing 21 per cent of the vote. The white roll election was overshadowed by the national elections planned for two months later. Smith's RF campaigned on the philosophy of providing a bulwark against unfettered black majority power, and the protection of white economic and cultural interests. They also promised to build a coalition with any black party which could block a Marxist government. Undoubtedly the reference was to a potential RF/PF-ZAPU/UANC coalition to defeat Mugabe's ZANU (PF). A leading RF spokesman, Chris Andersen (subsequently appointed by Mugabe as Minister for Public Affairs), said one week before the election: 'The RF has a role to play and will play it. It has adapted to changing circumstances and will continue to do so. Its most important role will be as a representative of the white community, although it is concerned not solely with the white community. It will be concerned to keep the country stable, viable, Christian and democratic.'83


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TABLE 5.7. Results of the Zimbabwean parliamentary elections, July 1985 (common roll) Party

Votes

National (%)

Seats

ZANU (PF) PF-ZAPU ZANU UANC Other Total

2,233,320 558,771 36,054 64,764 376 2,893,285

77.19 19.31 1.25 2.24 0.01 100.00

64 (80%) 15 (19%) 1 (1%) 0 0 80

Notes: ZANU (PF)=Zimbabwe African National Union (Mugabe), PF-ZAPU= Zimbabwe African People's Union (Nkomo), ZANU=Zimbabwe African National Union (Sithole), UANC=United African National Council (Muzorewa), Other=NDU, NFZ. Sources: Sithole 1986: 75-98; Sylvester 1991: 81; data collected by Leon du Toit of Stellenbosch University.

The 1985 elections. In the second post-independence elections ZANU (PF) managed to increase their number of votes by over 550,000 and their percentage share leaped fourteen points to 77 per cent. Under the new single-member district electoral system they won seven extra seats (giving them 80 per cent of the common roll seats) and 64 per cent of the overall parliament—just under the two-thirds needed to amend the constitution on their own. Their overwhelming national victory rested on total dominance in the Mashonaland Central, East, and West districts, where they won every seat; as well as the Midlands district where they managed to remove the four PF-ZAPU members of parliament. In Manicaland only Sithole's ZANU could taint their hegemony by winning the Chipinge constituency. However, despite a disappointing drop of 5 per cent in their national vote share, and the loss of five seats, Nkomo's PF-ZAPU increased their dominance in Matebeleland by winning all fifteen seats and defeating two incumbent ministers in Mugabe's cabinet.84 While Muzorewa's UANC managed to poll almost twice as many votes as Sithole's ZANU (which won a single seat) the geographically dispersed nature of their vote meant that not even Muzorewa himself could win a parliamentary constituency. The UANC's meagre percentage of the national vote sounded the death knell of a party which had seen its vote decline from 65 per cent in 1979, to 8 per cent in 1980, and then just 2 per cent five years later. All minority parties were hurt by the government's propaganda that the smaller parties were incapable of any public good and merely puppets of the South Africans setting out to destabilize the country.85

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Sithole argues that the election results revealed 'an even stronger manifestation of Ndebele-Shona ethnicity than in 1980' while the 'question of class was quite secondary, if at all significant'.86 PF-ZAPU's increased strength in Matabeleland was achieved in the face of serious military threats against the Ndebele and Mugabe's widely cited comments that this was the last chance for the Ndebele to 'vote right'. Moyo claims that 'no intimidation could have been greater than the conditions which prevailed in Matabeleland during the 1985 elections'.87 Indeed a comparison of the 1980 and 1985 district votes appears to show a heightened connection between ethnic ties and voting behaviour. The Ndebele PF-ZAPU increased their dominance in the two Matabeleland provinces by winning 84 per cent of the vote (as opposed to 82 per cent in 1980), and ZANU (PF) won 93 per cent in the five predominantly Shona districts (versus 80 per cent in 1980). But Stoneman and Cliffe maintain that simply explaining the vote through 'some identity called "ethnicity" is to explain nothing' as there was nothing inevitable about the regional support for the parties.88 They argue that the poor vote gained by ZANU (PF) in Matabeleland was due to the party refusing to use Ndebele as the campaign lingua franca in that area and Mugabe's premature and often vitriolic attacks on Nkomo. Increasing police repression in Matabeleland, and the withdrawal of services and food relief, further served to alienate Ndebeles from the government in Harare.89 Nevertheless, Mugabe was able effectively to 'write off' the Ndebele vote in 1985 and rely upon the Shona-speaking population for his majority, while many of the factors which had catapulted Mugabe to office in 1980 were unchanged. ZANU (PF) once again appeared to be the only credible party of government, able and willing to deal with the whites and the international business community. Further, the party now had the added benefit of being able to exploit their incumbency advantage and the state apparatus in the election campaign. Lastly, Sithole argues that rural Zimbabweans generally felt 'overall satisfaction that they [were] better off than five years before'.90 The white election proved to be more enthralling than the common voters' roll election, despite it being undeniably less crucial to the future of the state. It was widely expected that Ian Smith's Rhodesian Front, now renamed the Conservative Alliance of Zimbabwe (CAZ), would suffer a mortal blow at the hands of the newly formed Independent Zimbabwe Group (IZG) which 'espoused a more conciliatory style of politics . . . under the assumption that the future lay with a single black party and not with separatist white politics'.91 As a result of defections from the RF parliamentary party to the IZG, at the eve of poll Smith's group was reduced to seven MPs versus thirteen for the

173

Plurality Case Study Election Results TABLE 5.8. Results of the Zimbabwean parliamentary elections, June 1985 (white roll)

Party

Votes

National (%)

Seats

CAZ IZG Ind. PF-ZAPU Total

18,731 13,513 1,486 311 34,041

55.02 39.70 4.36 0.91 100.00

15 (75%) 4 (20% 1 (5%) 0 20

Notes: CAZ=Conservative Alliance of Zimbabwe (Smith), IZG=Independent Zimbabwe Group, Ind.=Chris Andersen, Minister of State for the Public Service, and successful independent candidate in the Mount Pleasant constituency, PF-ZAPU=Zimbabwe African People's Union (Nkomo). Sources: Sithole 1986: 75-98; Sylvester 1991: 81; data collected by Leon du Toit of Stellenbosch University.

offspring IZG. But in the elections themselves, held a few days before the general elections, the CAZ managed to hold on to fifteen of the twenty seats with 55 per cent of the vote. The IZG won four seats and Chris Andersen, the Minister of State for the Public Service who had stood as an independent, won the Mount Pleasant constituency. This vote of confidence in the hard-line party of Smith and his old Rhodesian government infuriated Mugabe and the ZANU (PF) leadership. Mugabe put aside his policy of racial reconciliation and argued that: The vote cast by the majority of the white electorate has shown us that the trust we placed in whites and our belief that they were getting reconciled to the new political order was a trust and belief that was not deserved... [whites] have spilled the blood of thousands of our people . . . The vote has proved that they have not repented in any way.92

Thus it was not unsurprising when the white seats were abolished in 1987.93 As Moyo notes, this removal of whites from the open arena of electoral politics forced them to seek more pressure-group-like avenues to influence government policy, and it can be argued that the economic interest lobbying groups, such as the Confederation of Zimbabwean Industry and the Commercial Farming Union, have actually managed to increase white influence on government policy since the reserved seats were abolished.94 The 1990 elections. By December 1987 Mugabe had taken a huge step forward in his desire for a one-party state by buying off Nkomo, with a number of cabinet posts, to merge PF-ZAPU into the governing ZANU (PF) party. Mugabe was elected by an electoral college to

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TABLE 5.9. Results of the Zimbabwean parliamentary elections, March 1990 Party

Votes

National (%)

Seats

ZANUPF ZUM ZANU-N Other Total

1,690,071 369,031 19,448 19,643 2,055,625

80.55 17.59 0.92 0.93 100.00

117 (97%) 2 (2%) 1 (1%) 0 120

Notes: ZANU PF=Zimbabwe African National Union (Mugabe), ZUM=Zimbabwe Unity Movement (Tekere), ZANU-N=Zimbabwe African National Union-Ndonga (Sithole), Other=UANC, NDU, independents. Sources: Moyo 1992: 165-82; Sylvester 1991: 81; data collected by Leon du Toit of Stellenbosch University.

the new office of the presidency and Nkomo was given a special ministerial portfolio dealing with Welfare, in the office of the President. Against this backdrop, and the fact that opposition parties were effectively in disarray, the 1990 elections became, in Jonathan Moyo's view, a referendum on democracy, with the only question being whether the new Mugabe/Nkomo ZANU could wipe out all opposition from parliament and thus pave the way to a de jure one-party state. Indeed, 'in the election campaign, ZANU (PF) committed itself not only to winning every seat in parliament, but also to making sure that all opposition candidates did so badly as to lose their deposits'.95 The largely impotent Senate was abolished and the parliament was increased in size to 150 members with 120 of those being elected from single-member districts; ten seats went to 'traditional chiefs', while the remaining twenty members were appointed by the President from the provincial governors and elsewhere. In 1989 the ZANU (PF) provincial head in Manicaland, Edgar Tekere, fell out with Mugabe over his attacks on government corruption and formed the Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM) which did well in a by-election held in a previously rock-solid ZANU (PF) constituency. In 1990 ZUM proved to be the only party capable, and willing, to challenge the government throughout the country. The election results shown in Table 5.9 illustrate the almost complete dominance of Mugabe's ZANU PF in the balloting but the fact that this dominance was not absolute meant that the President's dream of a one-party state was severely injured. ZANU PF won all but three of the directly elected seats but were still faced with one-fifth of the electorate voting against them. While ZUM could only win two seats in Manicaland, and ZANU-Ndonga held


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TABLE 5.10. Results of the Zimbabwean parliamentary elections, April 1995 Party

Votes

National (%)

Seats

ZANUPF ZANU-N Other Total

1,138,896 95,743 163,455 1,398,094

81.46 6.85 11.69 100.00

117a (97%) 2 (2%) 1 (1%) 120

a

Of those 117 seats, 55 were won unopposed. Notes: ZANU-PF=Zimbabwe African National Union (Mugabe), ZANU-N=Zimbabwe African National Union-Ndonga (Sithole), Other=Forum (Dumbutshena), Zimbabwe Congress Party, Zimbabwe Federal Party, Zimbabwe Aristocrats, ANP, Independents. Sources: Inter Press Service, Harare, 11 Apr. 1995; data collected by Leon du Toit of Stellenbosch University; New York Times, (28 Nov. 1995), A13.

the Chipinge district, they facilitated an anti-one-party state climate which led to many 'pro-democracy' ZANU supporters boycotting the parliamentary election (turnout was 80 per cent in 1985 versus 60 per cent in 1990) or deliberately spoiling their ballot papers.96 Spoilt paper rates leaped from 2.0 and 2.6 per cent in 1980 and 1985 to 6.3 per cent in 1990. In September 1990 Mugabe officially abandoned ZANU PF's stated aim of transforming Zimbabwe into a de jure one-party system; however, with a full 97 per cent of the elected seats in parliament many observers felt that Zimbabwe's multiparty democracy had become little more than an illusion, regardless of legal niceties. The 1995 election. The fourth post-independence Zimbabwean election continued the pattern of ZANU PF hegemony although there were growing signs of fracture within the party leadership itself. On election day ZANU PF won all but 2 of the 65 contested seats which, along with the 55 seats they had already won unopposed and the 30 parliamentarians appointed by President Mugabe, meant that ZANU PF held 148 of the 150 new seats. However, the results in the district of Harare South were later nullified due to the discovery of widespread voting fraud. The subsequent special election held on 28 November 1995 was won by the independent candidate, Margaret Dongo, bringing the opposition in parliament back to three members in size. Table 5.10 gives the full results including the November by-election. The opposition forces collectively managed to poll nearly as high a percentage of the vote as they did in 1990 (18 as opposed to 19 per cent) but lost one of their 1990 seats (Mutuare Central—which was retaken by ZANU PF after the incumbent ZUM MP refused to be nominated, in line with ZUM's boycott of the parliamentary elections). This left the two ZANU-Ndonga MPs, party leader Ndabaningi Sithole in Chipinge

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South and Fred Sithole (no relation) in Chipinge North, and Dongo the independent, as the sole opposition in the House. In line with previous elections the ZANU-Ndonga vote was seen as ethnically motivated, emanating from the tiny Ndau ethnic group which is concentrated in the far south-eastern Chipinge area, along Zimbabwe's border with Mozambique.97 Indeed, ZANU-N drew almost half its 95,000 national votes from a handful of districts in the eastern provinces of the country. A few months after the election Mugabe placed Ndabaningi Sithole under house arrest on the charge that he had been plotting to assassinate the President. The Forum party, led by retired Chief Justice Enoch Dumbutshena, expected to make gains and predicted that they would win 'five or six seats' but in the event the best Forum could do was Dumbutshena's 28 per cent of the vote in Harare Central. While the number of seats won by ZANU PF appeared to illustrate an even more devastating rejection of the opposition, and vote of approval for the government, the plurality SMD electoral system served to mask a perceptible slippage of the popularity and social control commanded by Mugabe and ZANU PF. First, turnout had fallen to 54 per cent of a voters' roll which was dubiously accurate in the first place,98 and in many urban areas turnout was as low as 30 per cent." This meant that while ZANU PF's percentage share of the popular vote slightly increased in real terms their vote fell by over half a million. Second, because of ZANU PF dominance, the 'real' elections proved to be the primaries held to choose government party candidates in each district. Media consultant Tonic Sekaike noted the general election was 'a ritual we engage in every five years, but our MPs are chosen at the ZANU PF primaries'.100 While most politburo members had stood in urban constituencies in 1990, in 1995 they fled to the rural areas because of increasing unhappiness with Mugabe's government in the cities. Ibbo Mandaza echoed the sentiments of many voters when he said, 'the leaders are afraid to stand in the urban areas where they originally come from'.101 The search for 'pocket boroughs' also led to some of the most vicious fighting of the campaign, within ZANU PF. In Gutu North former Air Force Chief and ZANU PF politburo member Josiah Tungamirai had the audacity to challenge Vice-President Simon Muzenda in the party primary. Tungamirai enjoyed the support of local leaders, including Edison Zvobgo. However, Mugabe was quick to squash this challenge by making it illegal for either VicePresident (Joshua Nkomo being the other) to be challenged in their districts. However, the Tungamirai family took revenge when Josiah's sister Pamela defeated Mugabe's sister Irene in another primary. Nevertheless, both Tungamirais were subsequently suspended from the party. This internal discord prompted some newspapers to speculate


MAP 5.1. Malawi

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178


MAP 5.2. Zambia


179

180


MAP 5.3. Zimbabwe

that any future opposition to Mugabe would come from within ZANU PF as it suffered from the same 'splits, fights and lack of cohesion' as the opposition parties.102 ZANU PF were able to maintain their vice-like grip on Zimbabwean electoral politics through a monopoly of state resources, a legal and social framework stacked against dissent, the general ineffectiveness and fragmentation of opposition movements, plus the reservoir of loyalty held by Mugabe in the North and Nkomo in Matabeleland. However, three factors began to emerge or re-emerge in 1995 which boded


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ill for ZANU PF's continued unchallenged rule. First, and despite the ZANU-ZAPU merger in 1987, ethnicity began to reassert its ugly head, not only in the small Ndau ZANU-Ndonga vote, but also in Ndebele areas disenchanted with Mugabe and Nkomo's acquiescence to the ZANU PF regime. There was a feeling in Matabeleland that the election results were just another unwelcome Shona triumph. Joshua Malinga, the Mayor of Bulawayo, warned that 'there would be bloody ethnic conflict similar to Rwanda' if discrimination against the Ndebele did not cease.103 Second, as highlighted by the ZANU PF primary controversies, it became increasingly apparent that ZANU itself was 'riddled with factions . . . almost all based on personalities and interest groups lining up for Mugabe's succession'.104 Finally, there was mounting fear among government apparatchiks that ZANU would suffer the same fate as Banda's Malawian MCP or Kaunda's Zambian UNIP. That is, they would continue to win elections, but on ever-decreasing turnouts indicative of a collapsing civil society—an alienated society ripe for the agents of an organized uprising.

6

PR Case Study Election Results: South Africa and Namibia 1. South Africa The South Africa general election of April 1994 was held under a form of national list PR, with half the National Assembly (200) constituted from nine provincial lists and the other half from a single national list. In effect, the country used one nationwide constituency (of 400 members) for the conversion of votes into seats and no threshold for representation was imposed. The Droop quota (votes/ (seats+1)) was used to allocate seats, and surplus seats were awarded by an adaptation of the largest remainder method.1 Full results are provided in Table 6.1. (a) The Transition to Democracy in South Africa After over 40 years of apartheid law and 300 years of colonialism, political change was rapid in South Africa when F. W. de Klerk replaced P. W. Botha as leader of the National Party (NP) in February 1989, and subsequently acceded to the presidency in August of that year. The post-1989 history of the transition toward a democratic South Africa is complex, as change was not always unidirectional. However, there was a series of key events which shaped the process, including, in chronological order, the unbanning of the African National Congress (ANC), South African Communist Party (SACP), and Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) in January 1990; the release from prison of Nelson Mandela in February 1990; the repeal of key legislative aspects of apartheid throughout 1989—90; the convening in December 1991 of nineteen political organizations (out of the twenty-four invited) in a 'Convention for a Democratic South Africa' (CODESA) to negotiate plans for a new constitution and transitional phase; a 'Yes' vote of 68.6 per cent in the March 1992 government referendum which asked white voters whether or not they supported 'continuation of the reform

PR Case Study Election Results

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TABLE 6.1. Results of the South African National Assembly elections, April 1994 Party

Votes

National (%)

Seats

ANC NP IFF FF DP PAC ACDP Others Total

12,237,655 3,983,690 2,058,294 424,555 338,426 243,478 88,104 160,175 19,533,498

62.65 20.39 10.54 2.17 1.73 1.25 0.45 0.82 100.00

252 (63%) 82 (21%) 43 (11%) 9 (2%) 7 (2%) 5 (1%) 2 (1%) 0 400

Notes: ANC=African National Congress (Mandela), NP=National Party (de Klerk), IFP=Inkatha Freedom Party (Buthelezi), FF=Freedom Front (Viljoen), DP=Democratic Party (de Beer), PAC=Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania (Makwetu), ACDP=African Christian Democratic Party (Meshoe). Sources: Independent Electoral Commission, Republic of South Africa 1994 General Election: National Results by Province/District (Johannesburg: Election Administration Directorate, 1994). My thanks to Tom Lodge for supplying me with these figures.

process which the State President began on February 2, 1990 . .. aimed at a new constitution through negotiation'; the withdrawal of the ANC from negotiations in June 1992 after the Boipatong massacre, and their subsequent return to the table in September after the Bisho massacre; the creation in May 1993 of an even more inclusive forum than CODESA, called the Negotiating Council, which agreed that non-racial elections would be held by May 1994; and, finally, the first non-racial democratic South African general election of 27-9 April 1994.2 (b) Electoral System Choice Interestingly, one of the least contentious issues throughout the entire negotiation process was the agreement of almost all key players on the use of a proportional representation system to elect the Constituent Assembly in 1994. The whites-only parliament had inherited the British SMD plurality system with dramatic implications as has been noted in Chapter 1, and it was long thought that the ANC would seek to maintain the system, not only because they perceived electoral advantage in doing so, but because SMD plurality fitted in with their desire for a majority rule constitutional dispensation. Indeed, Kader Asmal, the key mover behind the ANC's eventual adoption of PR, admitted

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that while 'we present proportional representation as the fairest system . . . I don't think it is in the ultimate interest of the ANC.'3 Nevertheless, the ANC did agree to the use of PR and argued strongly that it would encourage participation by all groups with significant followings, avoid wasted votes, and hence be an inducement to vote in areas where one party was dominant, leading to a more exact reflection of the popularity of political parties. They also maintained that it would avoid the time, expense, and accusations of bias in the process of delimiting constituencies. However, there were a number of pragmatic and self-interested concerns which lay behind the ANC's enlightened stance. First, they realized that 'giving in on the PR issue' would be perceived both domestically and internationally as 'a major concession to minority concerns'.4 It would prove to be a strong bargaining chip with the Nationalists in the negotiations and a clear sign to the international community that the ANC was not about to try and seize power and turn the country into a racially exclusive one-party state. Second, the ANC estimated that the Group Areas Act had created ethnic bastions which would return minority members no matter what and thus would disenfranchise ANC supporters in non-hegemonic ANC areas. Despite the fact that the 1980 census showed whites to be in a majority in only five magisterial districts the ANC's reasoning appears to have had some basis in fact, as the re-running evidence outlined in Chapter 7 shows that under a plurality SMD system the ANC would have been shut out in Northern KwaZulu and much of the Western Cape. Third, an SMD plurality system would have slightly increased the complexity of the ballot and made candidates more of an issue on the ballot paper than they proved to be on the actual list PR ballot. As Sisk argues, within the context of South Africa's high illiteracy rate and history of racial oppression, the nature of 'voting once and only for a party— could have considerable value to an organization such as the ANC .. . which carried the symbolic virtue of being the leader in the struggle against apartheid'. Neither the spoilt ballot paper rate of 1 per cent nor the ANC's massive 62 per cent vote in the April 1994 PR elections injures this thesis. Lastly, it is clear from the pronouncements of Asmal,5 the effective author of the electoral system found in the interim constitution, that the ANC appreciated the way in which PR could facilitate an inclusive polity which would convert potentially anti-system minority parties into pro-system parties with incentives to play their democratic roles as constituent segments of a 'loyal opposition'. 'The ANC chose it [PR] after a well-considered assessment of not only what was desirable but also of what was possible, given the preferences of others. It evolved out of the process of strategic interaction.'6


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That the National Party desired PR as a component of any new constitutional dispensation was never in doubt as proportional representation was integral to any power-sharing arrangement which shied away from separate voters' roles. PR was integral to the NP's own bundle of consociational mechanisms presented in its 1991 document 'Constitutional Rule in a Participatory Democracy'.7 Prompted by Gerrit Viljoen, the Minister for Constitutional Affairs, and his deputy Roelf Meyer the NP quickly realized that the existing SMD plurality system had the potential to devastate their seat-winning abilities, even if they polled a significant minority of the vote. As it turned out their fears may have been somewhat unfounded as under the plurality rerunning they won only twelve less seats than under the list PR system used in 1994, but in 1989 no one could have confidently predicted that the NP would do so well among the coloured community of the Western Cape or whether their votes would be geographically concentrated enough to win single-member districts in the face of an overwhelmingly dominant opponent. Furthermore, the disproportionality of plurality would not have been great but it would have given the ANC enough of a 'seat bonus' to push them over the two-thirds threshold, giving them enough seats to write the permanent constitution alone. Equally interesting, although perhaps of less actual weight, were the electoral system preferences of the remaining minority parties, who all advocated PR (some consistently but others not) for a variety of, not necessarily compatible, reasons. The Inkatha Freedom Party, under the spell of Mangosuthu Buthelezi, never specifically spelt out their proposed institutional frameworks in full but much can be gleaned from their previous actions and public pronouncements during the negotiation process. Most of the time they supported PR, reasonably so for a minority party unsure of its strength, which was in line with the recommendations of the Buthelezi Commission Report of 1982 and the KwaNatal Indaba of the mid-1980s. But at times they leaned towards majoritarianism and single-member districts, which again was understandable for a party with highly concentrated electoral roots in a region which they wished to rule alone. In the end they plumped for PR, as it was effectively a fait accompli by the time they returned to the negotiating table, but their earlier equivocation was justified by the fact that they would have done better in the 1994 elections under a single-member district system.8 The Democratic Party had perhaps the most sophisticated understanding of the electoral system debate and thus it was unsurprising that they came up with the most complicated proposal, most suited to their peculiar basis of electoral support and self-perceived role in the South African polity. In the 1980s DP theorists such as David Welsh

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toyed with the idea of the single transferable vote as a voting method which not only exhibited the advantages of a proportionally constituted parliament, but would build consensus and encourage moderation through its preference voting incentives (see Chapter 1). However, by the early 1990s that option had been effectively rejected by the ANC, who were understandably fearful of using any system which, through its complexity, might advantage literate and educated votes over the illiterate and less formally educated. In their constitutional proposals of 1991 the DP proposed an amended PR system which combined small multi-member constituencies with a PR component. In their plan there would be 100 three-member districts with 100 additional (and compensatory) seats being drawn from a separate national list. In the eyes of the DP this arrangement fulfilled the requirements of proportionality while protecting the role of geographical accountability in the choice of representative. Professor N. J. J. Olivier, the then head of research and development for the Democratic Party, argued that 'the candidates elected should be accountable to the voters which elected him/them. A totally impersonal kind of nexus between the voters and their representative is essentially undemocratic and would probably bring about alienation between the voters and the legislature/government.'9 The DP also perceived the plan in their best interests as historically their support was highly concentrated in the white liberal suburbs of Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Durban. As DP members of parliament in the old whites-only Assembly almost always had one or two colleagues representing adjacent constituencies these proposed three-member districts seemed optimal. Among the other parties the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) and the Azanian People's Organization (AZAPO) both accepted PR but this sat uneasily with the PAC's insistence on majoritarianism and their opposition to the Nationalists' power-sharing proposals. Nevertheless, Barney Desai, the PAC Publicity Secretary, argued that list PR would avoid wasted votes, encourage participation, and test exactly who would have a 'mandate' in the Constituent Assembly.10 It is difficult to avoid speculating that the PAC's support for PR was also based to a large degree on their realistic assessment of how low their vote was likely to be in the forthcoming elections.11 On the white right there was little consideration given to electoral system design. Those parties boycotting negotiations (the Conservative Party and AWB) were more preoccupied with partition and Volkstaats than institutional design, and those elements of the white right which did play some part in the negotiating process (the Afrikaner Volks Front and later the Freedom Front) saw PR as the only option if they were to compete in a nonracial election.


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An area which received less debate than it deserved was the issue of the level of threshold which should be imposed for representation under the PR system. Initially the ANC had strongly argued for a 5 per cent threshold to exclude all bar serious and substantially supported parties from representation in the Assembly. Asmal claimed that a high threshold was essential to maintaining stability, for unless the threshold was set at 5 per cent there would be a proliferation of small parties. He drew on comparative experience to argue that 'in Israel, even with a threshold (1 per cent) rabid and extremist parties have had little difficulty in electing representatives but the system works there (through virtually permanent coalitions) because of a fundamental agreement on the nature of the and basis of the State. Such agreement of consensus does not exist in South Africa.'12 The only other party explicitly to mention the threshold in their proposals were the Democratic Party, who guessed they could count on between 3 and 7 per cent of the popular vote and therefore advocated a threshold of 3 per cent. However, during the final detailed negotiations in 1993 the imposed threshold requirement was dropped altogether, which was fortunate for the Democratic Party, Freedom Front, Pan-Africanist Congress, and African Christian Democratic Party, as none of them surmounted even the 3 per cent level in the April 1994 elections. (c) Free and Fair Elections? Alongside the euphoria felt in South Africa and abroad about the April election there were many criticisms of both the voting and counting process which might draw into question the legitimacy and validity of the results, which were released on 6 May by Judge Johann Kriegler, head of the Independent Electoral Commission.13 The weight of evidence seems to suggest a flawed electoral process, characterized by substantial and troubling irregularities, but nevertheless one which was in the words of Judge Kriegler 'substantially free and fair' and produced results which were a close reflection of the ballots cast. On the first two days of voting there were extreme logistical failures which left many polling stations without ballot papers and prospective voters outraged. However, most of these problems were rectified quickly and the extra day of voting in the six former homelands appears to have enabled virtually all who wanted to vote, to vote. The estimated turnout of 86 per cent further supports the thesis that there were few South Africans disenfranchised through a lack of access to the ballot. The legitimacy of the collection and count of the vote is perhaps more vulnerable to criticism as in many areas the IEC guidelines were secretly flouted, or else openly abused. In the Port

188


Elizabeth, Northern Transvaal, and KwaZulu-Natal areas it was claimed that some ballot boxes arrived with neatly stacked ballot papers—a clear sign of tampering—and in other regions there were complaints of ballot boxes arriving at counting stations in private cars, from pirate stations, and without official seals. It is clear that the local IEC monitors let many of these irregularities pass, especially in the Northern and Midland areas of KwaZulu. If any of the provinces' results can be seriously called into question they were from KwaZulu-Natal, where Inkatha's wafer-thin absolute majority led the ANC's Harry Gwala to reject the announced results as not meeting the 'substantially free and fair' status outlined by Judge Kriegler.14 Georgina Hamilton and Gerhard Mare argue that 'the published results were a product of a trade-off between the competing parties. Despite all attempts in creating transparency in the voting process, the trade-off that characterized the final moments of vote-counting in KwaZulu-Natal remains opaque. It is not clear how far the votes attributed to parties in this region are removed from the actual preferences and voices of those who were treated so badly by the election machinery.'16 But even so Hamilton and Mare still contend that 'despite the extraordinary irregularities, both alleged and observed, during the election days, there is much to suggest that the favorable IFF result was not as far off the mark as it is claimed by ANC militants such as Harry Gwala'.16 (d) The 1994 Election Results17 When the South African people as a whole spoke for the first time on 26, 27, and 28 April 1994 in overwhelming numbers they said, 'Mandela'. By any objective standard the African National Congress (ANC) won a resounding electoral victory in the first non-racial democratic parliamentary elections in South Africa's history. The 62.6 per cent of the national vote they obtained was a full 42 per cent ahead of their nearest rivals, the National Party (NP), and left them with a majority of 104 over all others combined in the new National Assembly. Such a high vote could only be achieved as a result of the ANC winning a huge proportion of the votes of the black South African community which in itself was overwhelmingly dominant among the divergent ethnic groups which constitute the people of South Africa. The fact that the South West African People's Organization (SWAPO) only won 57 per cent of the national vote in the first Namibian elections of 1989 (against much weaker opposition than the ANC had to face) puts the ANC's achievement into some perspective. In Western democracies governments rarely, if ever, win competitive elections by


189

such a large margin. No ruling party in the United Kingdom in the twentieth century has ever come close to winning 60 per cent of the popular vote18 and even under electoral systems of national proportional representation, such as Israel, governments almost never come into office with the support of more than 50 per cent of the electorate. In the face of the ANC's victory F. W. de Klerk could also feel some satisfaction and bask in the knowledge that his party had successfully pulled off an illusion of Houdini-like quality to transform themselves into a majority non-white party (in their electoral base) and retain a high degree of influence in the new democratic dispensation. The simple mathematical fact that only 15 per cent of South Africa's electorate are white and that de Klerk's National Party managed to win over 20 per cent of the popular vote immediately tells us that many people who had never voted Nationalist before, because they had never been allowed to vote before, did so in spite of years of repressive and blatantly racist apartheid legislation directed at them. De Klerk won the Indian and coloured communities in South Africa by as large a margin as he won the white community and it was only the lack of inroads into the votes of black South Africans which failed to push his party's vote up even higher than its already considerable base. If it was not indicated by the events of the past five years the election results certainly confirmed de Klerk's position as the 'consummate politician'. Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) could also feel well pleased with their efforts after rejoining the electoral process at such a late stage that they only had five days 'officially' to campaign (despite the fact that they had been 'unofficially' campaigning since 1975, so any serious talk of Inkatha's campaign 'disadvantage' in the election is at best a misnomer). The IFP's half-share of the KwaZulu-Natal region gave Buthelezi not only a provincial base to rule but also (along with a scattering of votes from outside of KwaZulu) over 10 per cent of the national parliamentary seats, enough to catapult this mercurial political personality back onto the national stage. Even General Constand Viljoen's Freedom Front could take some comfort in their fourth place, despite that fact that Viljoen's 400,000 plus (white) votes only translated into 2 per cent (and nine seats) of the national total. For in the most important respect Viljoen achieved all he set out to do. He split the 'white right' down the middle, thus mitigating the danger of Afrikaner anti-system violence, bred from exclusion, which certainly was a more pressing possibility before he brought his 'moderates' into the democratic process. He put the issue of an Afrikaner Volkstaat firmly on the agenda (which many argued is all he wanted to do as, being a rational man, Viljoen realized the concept of a Volkstaat was a non-starter, but debating the issue over

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the following five years reduced the threat of immediate and possibly violent secession by small pockets of white right-wingers in the 'Volkstaat heartlands' of the Transvaal and North-West). The only clear losers in this watershed election were the minor parties. The Democratic Party (DP) failed to break out of their suburban white base and so, because of the new realities of the franchise, were resoundingly crushed in the electoral fray. The Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) had far more potential but far less competence. Their election campaign was a textbook case in how to squander an increasingly favourable position through leadership ineptness, detachment from the community, and organizational disarray. In the supposed PAC heartland of the Western Cape they failed to outpoll even the tiny African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) and in the Xhosa-dominated Eastern Cape they came in behind the Democratic Party. In fact the ACDP was the one minor party which could be pleasantly surprised by its success—winning 88,000 votes on the national level entitling the party to a surprising two National Assembly seats. In the end the election results resembled a gloriously inclusive 'pass the parcel' game with everyone getting a small prize along the way as they unwrapped another piece of the fabric of the old society. De Klerk got a Deputy President spot along with a pack of ministers in the new cabinet of national unity. Buthelezi won KwaZulu-Natal (some would maintain was given KwaZulu-Natal) and three cabinet ministers, and a handful of smaller parties got a few parliamentary seats and encouraging words on how they would not be ignored in the new dispensation, but of course no one ever really doubted who would be unwrapping the big prize at the end.

2. Namibia For her 'liberation' election of November 1989 and her second parliamentary general election held in December 1994 Namibia used the most basic form of national list PR with the whole country constituting a single district returning 72 members of parliament. Unlike South Africa, Namibia calculated the allotment of seats by the Hare method which, along with the Droop quota, is a largest remainder method but uses a slightly different quota which on average gives more proportional results.19 The Hare quota is found by simply dividing the number of valid votes cast by the number of seats to be filled. No threshold for representation was imposed so the quota became 1.39 per cent of the national valid vote (or lOO-s-72) but with the largest remainder method the Namibia National Front (NNF) managed to win a single


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seat with 0.8 per cent of the vote in 1989, and the Democratic Coalition of Namibia (DCN) and Monitor Action Group (MAG) won seats with 0.82 per cent and 0.83 per cent respectively in 1994. Full results for 1989 and 1994 are given in Tables 6.2 and 6.3.

(a) The Transition to Democracy in Namibia For much of the twentieth century Namibia was the 'forgotten colony' of southern Africa, first occupied by the Germans in 1884, then liberated by South African and allied forces in 1915, only to be effectively recolonized by South Africa who were given trusteeship of the region by the League of Nations in 1920. Apartheid South Africa effectively superimposed her ethnically divisive and exclusionary legal structures upon Namibia (or South West Africa as it was then known) in the post-war period right up until full independence in 1990. The year 1989 proved to be one of rapid change after seventy years of internal struggle and international ambivalence, and years of foot dragging by the South African government who, ten years before in 1978, had agreed to a United Nations (UN) plan for a military withdrawal and transition to independence. As in South Africa internal resistance to the South African government's abuse of the UN's trusteeship blossomed in the late 1950s under two organizations representing various indigenous ethnic groups. Initially the South West African National Union (SWANU) and the South West African People's Organization (SWAPO) worked together to try and pressurize the South African government into releasing their grip on Namibia, but over time SWAPO became the dominant expression of internal political resistance. Coming on the heels of the ANC taking up arms in 1960, SWAPO committed themselves to the 'armed struggle' in 1966 but made clear that this was merely one aspect of a multi-pronged strategy to try and make life difficult for the occupying regime and keep the issue of occupation visible to the eyes of the international community. Akin to the ANC, SWAPO never had any serious pretensions of defeating the overwhelming force of the South African Defence Force. After years of low-level pressure on the South Africans, including the UN's revocation of their mandate over Namibia and condemnation from the International Court of Justice, the South African parliament gave up direct legislative powers over the country and set up a puppet Constituent Assembly which was elected (without SWAPO participation) in 1978.20 An administrator-general appointed by the South Africans took power in 1977 and remained a key decision-making figure

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through the transitional process in the 1980s. The transition to Namibian independence was enmeshed within the broader foreign policy of the South African government, which saw a 'total onslaught' against its perceived enemies in neighbouring countries as the only way to forestall the collapse of white power. Thus, Namibia was seen as a buffer against Cuban troops in Angola and all discussions about South Africa's withdrawal from the territory were situated in the broader regional security context. Although Pretoria had agreed to UN Security Council Resolution 435 (UNSCR 435)—which laid out the transitional process, including a ceasefire and UN-supervised democratic elections, in 1979 —after three years of inaction the South African government began explicitly to insist on 'linkage', meaning that 'any progress on implementing the UN plan for Namibia should be subject to progress in negotiations about the withdrawal of Cuban troops and the Soviet presence in neighbouring Angola'.21 Therefore, the turmoil in the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s must be seen as one of the key events of Namibia's democratization process because it (i) precipitated the withdrawal of both Cuban and Soviet troops from Angola, (ii) in a more general sense eased the threat of creeping communism felt by the Pretoria regime, and (iii), and perhaps more cynically, removed the hook of fear (however unfounded in reality) upon which the successive South African governments had justified their 'total onslaught' strategy to white South Africans. In 1988 agreements on the withdrawal of both SADF and Cuban troops from Angola were reached simultaneously with the South Africans' acceptance that UN 435 had to be implemented.22 Alongside this seismic change in the world political order in the late 1980s was a more internal, but equally seismic, political change which also facilitated Namibian independence. As I have outlined in the previous section, by 1989 the reformist de Klerk had replaced Botha the securocrat, which led to the unbanning of the ANC, Mandela's release, and a quantum leap in the realities of domestic South African politics. As Cliffe notes, these 'changes within South Africa made the continuation of a policy of hanging onto Namibia irrelevant: a buffer was not needed to contain ANC's armed struggle once it became an internal political struggle under a legally recognized movement'.23 All this led to an informal ceasefire between SWAPO and the SADF on 1 November 1988 and the implementation of the UN's transitional plan through 1989 to 1990. A decade after UNSCR 435 had been agreed to by all parties the ceasefire was formalized, armed forces were demobilizing, refugees were allowed to return, and elections were to be held to choose a Constituent Assembly which would be vested with the task of crafting the first non-racial, democratic Namibian constitution.24


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(b) Electoral System Choice The adoption of list PR came primarily at the instigation of the United Nations who urged as early as 1982 that any future non-racial electoral system ensure that political parties managing to gain substantial support in the election be rewarded with 'fair representation'.25 Indeed, unlike the other case studies in this work, the Namibians had their new constitution largely imposed upon them. While these imposed constitutional clauses were often meant with the utmost good intentions they could still be characterized as to some extent paternalistic offerings from the outside. As Baran notes, when it came to constitutional design the case of Namibia illustrates the old adage that, 'whether there will be meat in the kitchen is never decided in the kitchen'.26 The option of discarding the first-past-the-post electoral system (the whites-only system operating in what was the colony of South West Africa) and moving to a rigid list PR system was originally proposed by Pik Botha, the then South African Foreign Minister,27 although the South Africans had previously, but unsuccessfully, pressed for separate voters' rolls (a la Zimbabwe 1980-5) which would have ensured that whites gained seats in the new Assembly. Botha's subsequent PR proposal was accepted in principle by the UN SecretaryGeneral, who then handed over the specific details to the South African Administrator-General and UN Special Representative. The PR system dovetailed nicely with the UN's earlier pronouncements which stressed the need for as wide as possible representation in the forthcoming Namibian Constituent Assembly. There was some unease that the South Africans were promoting a PR electoral system solely in order to fractionalize the Constituent Assembly. This led the UN Institute for Namibia to advise all political parties interested in a stable independence government 'to reject any PR system that tends to fractionalize party representation'.28 Nevertheless, this advice remained unheeded and the PR system was the last substantive issue to be agreed to in 1985, and, as Cliffe notes, the option of a threshold for representation (one of the chief mechanisms for reducing the number of parties in a list PR system) was never put forward by the UN or made an issue by any of the political parties. In line with many other negotiated transitions to multiparty democracy the key players apparently failed to realize the long-term importance of the minutiae of electoral laws. For the first elections in 1989 the South West African People's Organization (SWAPO) had expressed a preference for keeping the single-member district system, no doubt reasonably expecting (as the dominant party) to be advantaged by such winner-take-all constituencies.

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However, when the Constituent Assembly met for the first time in November 1989, and each parliamentary party presented its draft constitution, SWAPO readily gave in on the issue of PR apparently as a concession to the minority parties for which they hoped to gain reciprocal concessions on matters of more importance.29 Even if the entrenchment of PR in the permanent Namibian constitution was a result of political bargaining based on imperfect comprehension of potential consequences, many observers expected the decision to have lasting and positive effects on the evolution of Namibian politics. Cliffe echoes the widespread feeling that 'not only would a PR system allow votes for SWAPO, or any other party, in areas where it had only a minority to count towards its aggregate national representation; [the] system would also arguably remove some of the preconditions that would generate a regional, clientelistic type of politicking between and even within parties. National leaderships would not be so dependent on local barons who could deliver the vote in their constituencies.'30 It is little surprise that the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (DTA), and other tiny parliamentary parties (United Democratic Front (UDF), Action Christian National (ACN), National Patriotic Front (NPF), Federal Convention of Namibia (FCN), Namibia National Front (NNF)) readily accepted SWAPO's willingness to continue the PR system in 1994. (c) Free and Fair Elections? While the 1989 elections were generally considered by international observers to be 'free and fair', to such an extent that the head of the European Parliament's delegation spoke of an 'extraordinarily relaxed and positive election atmosphere' leading to 'one of the most democratic elections in recent history',31 there were a number of critics who felt that these all-important first elections had been tainted by inadequacies in some important respects. As Potgieter notes, various, and perhaps not unexpected, logistical problems cropped up with long queues at polling stations, a shortage of ballot papers (a la South Africa) in certain areas, and accusations of DTA or SWAPO members intimidating opposing party supporters to stop them from reaching the polls being the most common complaints.32 Indeed, Justice Bryan O'Lynn, the Chair of the Electoral Malpractice Commission, had to deal with 215 official complaints of intimidation and concluded that 'intimidation was a serious problem throughout the election period . . . and . . . it created the danger that a free and fair election could come into jeopardy'.33 However, after sifting such evidence Cliffe argues that 'In the end the remarkably high turnout, even without SWAPO's hoped for two-thirds majority, seemed to silence observer reservations about


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the fairness and freedom of the elections, lack of time for voting, adequacy of the number of polling stations, and so on.' He notes that over 83 per cent of registered voters had managed to cast their ballots by the fourth day of the election so polling stations needed to handle only a few voters on the last two days.34 However, of more concern to the legitimization of the election results was the clear obstruction of party campaigning, and the subsequently admitted external manipulation of the campaigning process. Potgieter claims that both SWAPO and the DTA were precluded from spreading their message in 'opposing territory' and that the SWAPO military incursion of 1 April 1989, the presence of Cuban forces south of the 16th parallel, and the 'explicit bias of certain UNTAG elements towards SWAPO, created conditions conducive to intimidation' and ultimately denied the DTA access to the huge voting populations of the Ovambo region.35 He does note that the retention of Koevoet (former members of the South African Defence Force) as part of the police force in the north of Namibia led to the harassment and possible murder of SWAPO supporters in that area, but on the whole he argues, 'it was widely accepted (when it came to administration) that South Africa's position was effectively counterbalanced by the monitoring and supervisory role of UNTAG'.36 However, Lindeke, Wanzala, and Tonchi take quite a different view in asserting that most of the discriminatory practices were directed against SWAPO and chiefly instigated by the South African government. Along with the intimidatory tactics of Koevoet they point to the discriminatory laws left on the statute books, maintained by the South African Administrator-General, as a hangover from apartheid South West Africa. First, the Western Caprivi remained a proclaimed game park which meant that SWAPO had no campaigning access to the area, and second, white farmers were legally entitled to ban political parties from campaigning on their land which denied SWAPO access to some 150,000 to 300,000 voters.37 Perhaps even more troubling were the 1991 revelations that the de Klerk government had illegally infiltrated the DTA and other antiSWAPO parties, and channelled at least 100 million Rand to political parties during the election process to try and deny SWAPO a two-thirds majority. Pik Botha admitted that at least R65 million of South African taxpayers' money went secretly to the DTA.38 Nevertheless, the UN Special Representative Martti Ahtisari proclaimed the elections free and fair on 14 November and there were few objections to the actual count or final tallying of the results. As Cliffe summarizes, in the imperfect climate of a newly democratizing ex-colony, 'what many observers were probably finding was that even if parts of the process were certainly not free, the overall result was roughly fair'.

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Similar objections arose to the 1994 election results, although, five years on, the tumultuous events within Namibia's southern neighbour had removed concerns that an apartheid government would again try illegally to "buy' the election result it desired. By December 1994 Nelson Mandela's ANC-led Government of National Unity had been in office for over seven months and the former apartheid regime's covert activities had effectively been dismantled (even if some of their legacies had not). The drying up of funds for anti-SWAPO parties, most importantly the DTA, meant that these parties were placed at a huge campaigning disadvantage during the 1994 campaign. Early in 1994 there had been all-party agreement on the state funding of political parties but the SWAPO government withdrew support for the bill only four months before the election and the DTA, left with few resources, were quick to attack SWAPO for unfairly utilizing the wheels of the state for its own electioneering purposes. As in the 1989 elections, in the eyes of the international observers, the 'casting and counting of votes proceeded smoothly . . . apart from a few irregularities'.39 Chief among these irregularities was the discovery that in four constituencies in SWAPO's heartland of Ovamboland (Ogongo, Okatjali, Okalongo, and Oshikango) the number of votes cast had exceeded the number of registered voters. It was later found that approximately 1,000 tendered votes had been improperly accepted or placed in the wrong ballot boxes and the opposition was quick to claim that this was indicative of much more widespread electoral fraud. Nevertheless, investigations by the Director of Elections, Professor Gerhard Totemeyer, found these to be isolated incidents which did not affect the overall allotment of seats to various parties. The weight of evidence again seems to imply that the 1994 elections, while not entirely free from overt malpractice, were substantially free and fair and the final results proved to be an adequate reflection of the votes cast. This however was not the view of the DTA who, after an ostensibly valid ballot paper cast for the DTA was fished out of the Atlantic, took their legal objections to the Supreme Court.40 The Court is expected to deny the complaint and ratify the election results as they now stand.

(d) Election Results 1. The 1989 results. Precursing the subsequent South African general election of 1994 the first multiparty Namibian election of 1989 produced what many international observers felt to be a 'dream result' with the liberation movement (SWAPO) winning handsomely, with 57 per cent of the national vote, but not winning enough seats (48) to write the new constitution alone. The opposition, led by the DTA,


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TABLE 6.2. Results of the Namibian parliamentary elections, November 1989 Party

Votes

National (%)

Seats

SWAPO DTA UDF ACN NPF FCN NNF Other Total

384,567 191,532 37,874 23,728 10,693 10,452 5,344 6,640 670,830

57.33 28.55 5.65 3.54 1.59 1.56 0.80 1.00 100.00

41 (57%) 21 (29% 4 (6%) 3 (4%) 1 (1%) 1 (1%) 1 (1%) 0 72

Notes: SWAPO=South West Africa People's Organization (Nujoma), DTA=Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (Mudge), UDF=United Democratic Front (Garoeb), ACN=Action Christian National (Pretorius), NPF=National Patriotic Front (Katjiongua), FCN=Federal Convention of Namibia, NNF=Namibia National Front (Krohne), Other=SWAPO-D (Shipanga), CDA (Kalangula), NNDP (Helmuth). Sources: Namibian Parliament, 17 Nov. 1989, Official Gazette Extraordinary (Windhoek), 5864: 2-4; Cliffe et al. 1994: 183, and 254-5; Ansprenger 1991: 118-19; National Democratic Institute for International Affairs 1990: 109 and 130.

were in the eyes of many, suitably rejected for their tainted pasts and explicitly ethnic appeals, but they still commanded enough votes and seats to mount a serious opposition within parliament and balance out the possible excesses of SWAPO majority rule. This 'positive power configuration in the Constituent Assembly conducive to real compromise'41 led to a new constitution, adopted in March 1990, which has been widely acclaimed as one of the most democratic and enlightened constitutions to be found anywhere in the world. While SWAPO proved to be the only party capable of winning an absolute majority in the 1989 Namibian elections the wildly inconsistent distribution of their vote led some African political scientists to argue that they had dramatically failed to live up to their promise of being the 'sole and authentic representative of the people of Namibia'.42 SWAPO gained over 90 per cent of the votes in the large northern electoral district (ED) of Ovamboland, which contributed nearly 60 per cent of their national total. Furthermore, while country wide they did manage to outpoll all other parties combined SWAPO actually won a majority in only 7 of the 23 electoral districts, with the DTA winning majorities in 15 districts. In fact, in the 22 EDs outside Ovamboland the DTA received more votes than SWAPO: 180,787 to 158,946.43 Potgieter points out that 'if Ovamboland and the districts containing large numbers of Ovambo voters (Tsumeb, Windhoek, Swakopmund

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and Luderitz) are not taken into consideration', then SWAPO's average vote fails to reach even 26 per cent.44 Similar regional concentrations of party support existed for the minority parties. Besides the DTA, which gleaned most of their votes from the south of the country and other farming areas in Koakoland and Hereroland, the UDF and ACN (the only other parties to win more than one parliamentary seat) drew their support from clearly denned geographical areas and ethnic groups. The UDF was strongly identified with the Damara ethnic group and as expected polled an absolute majority of the votes in Damaraland, while the ACN, a predominantly white grouping, polled nearly half its entire national vote in the EDs of Karasburg (the southern border area where many South African whites voted), and Windhoek (the capital, which again played host to a disproportionate number of white voters). These intersections of party support, regional variation, and ethnic concentrations lead Potgieter to describe the 1989 elections as little more than a racial census with SWAPO's victory being due 'primarily to massive support from the Ovambo' betraying its support among other ethnic groups as being 'rather thin'.46 However, Lindeke, Wanzala, and Tonchi again take issue with Potgieter and argue that he deliberately tried to undermine the significance of SWAPO support outside of Ovambo.46 They rightly point out the difficulties of using the twenty-three electoral districts as units of analysis, for not only were they a hangover from apartheid colonialism, but they varied dramatically in population size. There were 248,000 votes cast in the largest ED (Ovamboland) which was more than 100 times more than the 2,300 votes cast in the smallest ED (Bethanie). While the DTA did win twice as many EDs as SWAPO, the liberation movement won the most populous districts which accounted for 68 per cent of all registered voters. They also cite the existence of more than 90,000 'tendered votes', where the voter registered in one district but voted in another. As SWAPO won over 52,000 of these tendered votes it can reasonably be postulated that some SWAPO losses' in the smaller EDs might have been transformed into victories if the tendered ballots had been counted where cast. In support of the anti-ethnic census thesis Cliffe et al. argue that what was striking about the election was that outside Ovamboland 'the returns indicated mixed party support in most regions. Although party support varied regionally, there is only a very partial correlation of party support with the ethnic makeup of the local electorate.'47 Lindeke et al. seem to be on less solid ground with their theory that SWAPO's failure to poll a substantial number of non-Ovambo votes was caused by the party's historical inability to gain access to, organize, and campaign in non-Ovambo areas. Some anecdotal evidence


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suggests that in the months leading up to the election SWAPO actually lost support in the southern and central areas of the country, partly as a result of unease with SWAPO's treatment of prisoners and those it deemed to be traitors during the independence struggle.48 While it seems fair to state that Potgieter overstates his case, when a winning party garners approximately 60-70 per cent of its total vote from one ethnic group, and other smaller parties are almost exclusively and explicitly based on ethnic appeals, there is some cause for concern. It may well be that much of the correlation between ethnicity and the vote in Namibia is, and will be, a proxy for other cleavages within society. Ovambo workers may vote for SWAPO because they are part of the industrial working class, just as struggling white farmers may have voted for the DTA for economic policy reasons, but, as in South Africa (and indeed in the USA), there are enough 'block votes' visible for the psephologist to speculate about voting behaviour and whether preferences have more to do with community allegiance than issue based campaigns (see Chapter 1). 2. The 1994 results. The 1994 elections illustrated a consolidation of SWAPO support juxtaposed against a severe erosion of the opposition vote. SWAPO actually polled 23,000 votes fewer in 1994 than they had gained in the first parliamentary elections of 1989 but the much lower turnout (down from 682,000 to 497,000) meant that their share of the vote was pushed up nearly 20 per cent, giving them twelve extra seats and more than the two-thirds parliamentary majority needed to change the constitution unilaterally. The stayaway of voters who had cast ballots in 1989 came primarily at the expense of the DTA. Their 101,000 national votes were only just over half the 191,000 they had received in 1989 and translated into a loss of six parliamentary seats. Similarly the UDF lost two of its four seats (retaining only 35 per cent of its 1989 vote) while Moses Katjiongua's NPF, now renamed the Democratic Coalition of Namibia (DCN), could do no more than retain its single seat. SWAPO's overwhelming victory prompted the DTA leader and presidential candidate Mushake Muyongo to claim that the election had shown the country to be divided along ethnic lines, and that it had become an ethnic democracy. Heribert Weiland argues that it is probably incorrect to speak of an ethnic democracy, as 'SWAPO has voters and members throughout the country, and in all ethnic groups'. However, he does acknowledge that the close ties between SWAPO and the Ovambo (and that group's numerical dominance in Namibia) mean that SWAPO is effectively assured of a built-in majority in future elections. 'There are very few Ovambos who do not support SWAPO, which means that the Government's majority is most

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TABLE 6.3. Results of the Namibian parliamentary elections, December 1994 Party

Votes

National (%)

Seats

SWAPO DTA UDF DON MAG Other Total

361,800 101,748 13,309 4,058 4,005 4,716 489,636

73.89 20.78 2.72 0.83 0.82 0.96 100.00

53 (74% 15 (21%) 2 (3%) 1 (1%) 1 (1%) 0 72

Notes: SWAPO=South West Africa People's Organization (Nujoma), DTA=Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (Muyongo), UDF=United Democratic Front (Garoeb), DCN=Democratic Coalition of Namibia (Katjiongua), MAG=Monitor Action Group (Pretorius), Other=SWANU of Namibia, Federal Convention of Namibia, Workers Revolutionary Party. Sources: International Foundation for Electoral Systems, Elections Today, 5/2 (May 1995): 35; Weiland 1995: 349-57; data collected by Joel Barkan.

unlikely to be eroded. The high correlation between ethnic and political loyalty explains why the floating vote is so small, and virtually guarantees that SWAPO will continue to rule for the foreseeable future.'49 Nevertheless, in Weiland's opinion this move toward a 'dominant party state' has not yet infringed upon any of the 'constitutional guarantees of democratic rule'.50 Indeed, immediately after the election President Nujoma pledged that they would not misuse their twothirds parliamentary majority and that constitutional clauses would only be amended by popular referendum. For the 1994 elections, the Namibian boundary commission discarded the old, uneven South West African electoral districts in favour of 13 new regional districts broken down into 95 smaller counting areas. This makes detailed comparisons between 1989 and 1994 more difficult, but patterns clearly suggest that SWAPO managed to make more inroads into the votes of non-Ovambo communities in 1994 than they had done in the first multiparty elections. In 1994, the DTA won absolute majorities in only two regions (Hardap and Omaheke) and pluralities in only three others (Caprivi, Otjozondjupa, and Kunene), compared with 15 of the 23 electoral districts in 1989. SWAPO's share of the vote rose substantially in Karas (from 30 to 45 per cent), Okavango (50 to 80 per cent), and Khomas (45 to 60 per cent).61 The UDF failed to hold onto the predominantly Damara district of Kunene, but did score two out of their three victories in the Kunene subdistricts of Sesfontein and Khorikas.


201

MAP 6.1. South Africa

Despite the SWAPO percentage advance, and the failures of the minority parties in 1989, it seems clear that most of the changes can be attributed to DTA absenteeism rather than SWAPO winning the votes of former minority party supporters. Weiland finds the behaviour of the Namibian electorate to have remained fairly stable and suggests three explanations for the vote shifts between 1989 and 1994. First, 'tens of thousands of eligible voters in the 1989 elections were not permanent residents of Namibia'.52 In 1989, simple residency gave franchise rights and approximately 50,000 South Africans and Angolans registered to vote. However, by 1994, new citizenry requirements had removed these mostly anti-SWAPO voters from the electoral roll. Second, 'the voter turn out among potential DTA supporters was much lower than among SWAPO supporters'.53 This is borne out by the fact that the turnout in DTA areas was substantially lower than in SWAPO strongholds. Finally, 'only a small number of 1989 DTA

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MAP 6.2. Namibia After: Cliffs et al. 1994: p. x.

voters have become supporters of SWAPO since independence'.54 Here Weiland relies upon evidence from his surveys of 1991, 1993, and 1994, which suggested that 'party loyalty is very strong, few have considered changing their political allegiance, and the number of floating voters since 1989 has been very low'.65

7

Re-running Elections under Alternative Electoral Systems 1. The Importance of Re-running Evidence This chapter seeks to pose a series of counter-factuals to test the hypothesis that electoral system choice can greatly influence the parliamentary dynamics of new democracies, as the theoretical arguments outlined in Chapter 2 would predict. Each of the twelve case study elections is re-run under four alternative electoral system formulas, with the assumption that voting preferences would have remained largely constant despite the marginally different incentives placed on voters by various electoral systems. I justify this assumption in Section 2, which follows. The results of this exercise illustrate how electoral system choice helps to determine: (i) how many parties are represented in parliament and their strength (the effective number of parties and the index of disproportionality); (ii) whether governments are single-party or coalition administrations; (iii) whether ruling parties have super-majority voting capacities in constitution-designing assemblies; (iv) the numerical strength of parliamentary opposition; (v) the ability of minority parties to gain representation; (vi) the extent of geographic 'party fiefdoms' where one ethnically or regionally based political party dominates an area to the exclusion of all other voices; and (vii) the degree of voter accessibility, i.e. to what extent does an individual voter feel his or her vote counts, and therefore is worth casting. The empirical evidence gained from this counter-factual exercise can then be used to assess how stable each political system would have been, considering the particular divisions within that society. The five southern African case studies analysed in this work represent a useful variety of electoral systems. Out of the twelve observations, eight were elections held under plurality SMD (Malawi 1994, Zambia 1991 and 1996, Zimbabwe 1985, 1990, and 1995 (common roll), and 1980 and 1985 (white roll)), while four were held under a variant

204

Re-running Elections: Alternative Systems

of PR (South Africa 1994, Namibia 1989 and 1994, Zimbabwe 1980). One plausible objection to this exercise, and indeed to the entire work, is that the youth of these democratic regimes and the resulting lack of election observations weaken the analytical benefit of the project. My defence lies in the very essence of this investigation and the question I hope to answer: which institutional constructs can facilitate stability and democratic consolidation within the plural societies of southern Africa? I do not have the luxury of fifty years of data, given that in all the case studies analysed herein permanent constitutions are being designed and revised at this very moment. Sixteen years and four elections under multipartyism in Zimbabwe, and twenty years and six elections collectively in Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, and Zambia, must suffice if political scientists are able to aid at this crucial watershed of democratic evolution in southern Africa. As the failure of countless African states has shown, if democracy does not take root early on, then it does not flourish at all, and subsequent democratization attempts become increasingly more difficult.

2. Methodology Used in Exercise (a) Alternative Electoral Systems Chosen For the purposes of this exercise I have re-run the said elections under: (i) single-member district (SMD) plurality, (ii) a majoritarian system, the alternative vote in the same single-member districts (AV-SMD), (iii) regionally apportioned list proportional representation (PR), and (iv) nationally based list PR. To these main electoral systems I have added (v) the alternative vote in multi-member districts (AV-MMD).1 This electoral system was so integral to Donald Horowitz's constitutional engineering solution for a divided society such as South Africa that it is fascinating to see whether, in practice, such a system might have worked to encourage the growth of moderate parties and reduce their ethnic exclusivity; and therefore whether the recommendation should be reconsidered in the current round of constitutional discussions and design. A detailed methodology of how districts were crafted for each of the case study simulations is given in the Appendix. (b) Underlying Assumptions and First Order Objections 1. Voter preferences would have remained the same regardless of the electoral system used. The underlying assumption of the exercise is that voter preferences would by and large, have, remained the same


205

regardless of the electoral system used in each case study, and therefore electoral system incentives would not have significantly affected the votes cast. But indeed the predominant objection to re-running elections under alternative systems is that a voter's party preference may not be constant under varying electoral rules as some systems, chiefly plurality-type ones, provide powerful incentives for minority party supporters to vote tactically where they believe their first choice party has no feasible chance of winning in a single-member district. Preference voting systems, such as the alternative vote, help in part to negate such tactical voting by allowing supporters of minority parties to express their second preference on the ballot, while, at the other extreme, list PR, in districts of large magnitude, frees the voters to choose their first preference party almost regardless of that party's perceived support because the low threshold for representation makes 'wasted' votes far less likely. However, I would argue that intuitively this objection is far less troublesome in the case of democratic elections in southern Africa as party identification and voting preferences are strongly held, reflecting polities highly polarized along linguistic, cultural, ideological, and regional lines.2 The evidence from all five countries given this intuition is that there was little scope for voting 'defection' among party supporters. Furthermore, the argument that electoral system incentives only have an impact at the margins of voter behaviour is supported by the disjunction between theory and practice when it comes to the effective number of parties in each system. If such electoral system incentives were influential in the case studies then we would expect the normal pattern of Duverger's hypothesis, where the plurality systems would give rise to two clear parties, and the PR systems would lead to strong multiparty systems. But, in fact the Laakso-Taagepera index of the 'effective number of elective parties'3 shows minimal difference between the PR and plurality SMD case study elections. While the 'first-past-the-post' election in Zimbabwe in 1990 produced the most dominant one-party system with an index of 1.47, the Malawian election of 1994 (held under the same electoral system) gave rise to the highest degree of multipartyism at 2.74. As illustrated in Table 7.1, there is a minimal difference between the average indices of effective parties between the two electoral formulas, while there is a much bigger difference between plurality and PR in the rest of the world. Malawi. The situation in Malawi was clear cut with three parties representing three distinct regions and the three strands of Malawian political history. In Malawi's 1994 election, their first democratic election for thirty years, if you were from the Centre and identified with the one-party rule of Hastings Kamuzu Banda you voted for

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Re-running Elections: Alternative Systems TABLE 7.1. Effective

number of elective parties

Case study election

Effective number of elective parties

PR elections Namibia (1989-94) South Africa (1994) Zimbabwe (1980) Mean

2.05 2.18 2.16 2.13

Plurality SMD elections Malawi (1994) Zambia (1991-6) Zimbabwe (1985-95) Mean

2.74 2.03 1.51 2.09

Overall mean

2.11

his Malawian Congress Party (MCP), if you were from the North and supported the historically externally based opposition movements (untouched by the corruption of the old regime) you voted for the Alliance for Democracy (AFORD), and if you were from the South and accepted the credentials of enlightened former MCP government office holders, then you voted for Bakili Muluzi's United Democratic Front (UDF). As described in Chapter 3, AFORD won 85 per cent of the votes of the North, the MCP 65 per cent of the votes from the Centre, and the UDF 76 per cent of the votes from the South. Here, as in South Africa, it is unlikely that the incentives of a PR system, as opposed to the plurality system which was used, would have significantly altered each party's national total vote percentage. This thesis is further supported by the evidence from the United Kingdom where the opportunity and incentives for 'tactical voting" by supporters of the third placed Liberal Democratic Party under the plurality system appear remarkably high. But here, where the costs to the voter of defection from party to vote tactically seem to be far less than in southern Africa, there is still no pattern of widespread tactical voting by third-party supporters. Zambia. Zambia's first multiparty elections for thirty years in 1991 were less about constituting a representative parliament than a referendum on President Kaunda, one-partyism, and the future direction of the country. Under this environment it is difficult to see how 'tactical voting' would have played any part in the results as the two spectra of opinion were perfectly reflected by the only two parties with any


207

electoral basis: UNIP and the MMD. It is possible that if the elections had been run under a PR system it would have not been quite such a wasted vote to plump for any one of the three tiny parties but in practice they had little to distinguish themselves from the opposition MMD. The unique nature of the campaign is highlighted by Chikulo; 'it was evident that neither the contents of party manifestoes nor the personal integrity or probity of candidates were the central issues of the election campaign. Consequently, the whole campaign was fought on the peoples' desire for change and the generally held view that political change would provide the necessary impetus for economic recovery.'4 Finally, the fact that the main opposition, UNIP, vote was so regionally and ethnically rooted in the Eastern Province seems to indicate a high degree of party allegiance which would not have been affected by the marginal incentives of a different electoral system. The use of a PR system may well have had a greater impact in the 1996 elections, with some alienated voters feeling it was worth turning out to cast a vote for the opposition despite their limited potential for overall victory. Nevertheless, voter preferences were, as in 1991, clearly divided into two hostile camps, the MMD government and the opposition parties (ZDC, NP, NLP, AZ), and the actual single-member district votes betrayed few signs of 'tactical voting'. Zimbabwe. In the 1980 and 1985 Zimbabwean elections the patterns of party-regional/ethnic loyalty proved to be just as strong as in the rest of southern Africa, but since the ZANU-ZAPU merger of 1987 there is more of a case to be made that the use of a PR system (instead of plurality SMD) would have influenced the way Zimbabweans voted. As outlined in Chapter 3, in the first two post-independence elections there was a high degree of correlation between language, region, and voting behaviour which would not have been affected by an alternative electoral system. Indeed the shift between a PR system in 1980 and a plurality SMD system in 1985 gives us a basis upon which to compare the possible impact of different electoral system voting incentives. In both elections PF-ZAPU's Ndebele vote in Matabeleland held constant at 82 and 84 per cent, respectively. ZANU (PF)'s vote jumped in the five predominantly Shona-speaking districts from 80 to 93 per cent due to the influx of former Muzorewa supporters who voted for the UANC in 1980 but defected to Mugabe's ZANU (PF) in 1985. This may have been due to geographically dispersed UANC voters realizing their party had no chance of winning in winner-take-all constituencies and voting tactically, but was probably more a function of the discrediting of Muzorewa's 1979 'internal settlement', and his perceived ties to South Africa, which cost him whatever political integrity he retained.5

208


However, in 1990 and 1995 the ZANU PF's hegemony, accentuated and propped up by the single-member district system, clearly helped to suppress the opposition vote. From all the anecdotal evidence it seems quite clear that a PR system in 1990 and 1995 would have freed up a number of weary ZANU PF voters to allow them to vote for viable opposition parties, and perhaps more importantly it would have encouraged alienated voters to turn out on polling day. The most common newspaper reports in 1995 were the stories of disgruntled Zimbabweans resigned to the fact that whether they voted or not was an irrelevance. One schoolteacher admitted that she had given up voting after the 1980 independence elections because 'there is no one to vote for, the opposition is just not there so I cannot be bothered'.6 John Makumbe of the University of Zimbabwe argued that through the constitution the ZANU (PF) had weakened civil society and engendered 'a political culture of fear so that people are afraid to oppose the ruling party'.7 Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that the opposition vote could have been higher than their combined 18 and 19 per cent in 1990 and 1995 if a PR electoral system had been used. However, while ZANU (PF)'s huge parliamentary majority would have been diminished it would have required a political earthquake, with their vote falling by over 30 per cent, to remove their grip on government: different electoral system incentives, on their own, would never account for such an earthquake. South Africa. In a series of eight Launching Democracy reports the Institute for Multi-Party Democracy (MPD) of South Africa found that a strong identification with a party was the norm and 'floating' voters were difficult to find. In one survey that tracked party support between August 1993 and February 1994, R. W. Johnson and Lawrence Schlemmer found that the shifts in party support were 'very slight', which seemed to illustrate that even two months before the election 'the die was cast as regards to voters preferences'. Mattes and Gouws found that 88 per cent of all voters expressed 'strong' party identification and most parties had exceptionally high rates of conversion from identifiers into voters. Mattes found that 97 per cent of respondents who expressed identification with the African National Congress (ANC) had also voted for the ANC.8 These findings indicate what most observers of South African politics would have expected—that those steeped in the ANC, anti-apartheid, and United Democratic Front (UDF) movements were likely to vote ANC regardless of the electoral system used, coloured and white supporters of de Klerk's National Party were not overly affected by the incentives of a plurality system, and cardcarrying Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) members, which describes most of the electorate of voting age and non-voting age in the North


209

of KwaZulu-Natal, placed their cross by the face of Mangosuthu Buthelezi no matter what. Namibia. It is not necessary to follow Potgieter's simplistic ethnic census voting explanation (see Chapter 6) to concede that Namibian elections have displayed a high correlation between language/ethnic group and party support. As Pendleton notes, 'while the salience of ethnic loyalty within a post-apartheid context cannot be ignored it is important to note that ethnicity and primordialism are different issues. People may vote on the basis of kinship ties, but not in response to traditions and customs that have no relevance or utility for survival in the current context.'9 The huge Ovambo vote for SWAPO, taken in conjunction with the particular regional niches carved by the DTA and UDF, illustrates that, in both 1989 and 1994, the strength of party identification was high across the political spectrum. In a highly informative survey of voting behaviour undertaken by the University of Namibia for the local elections of 1992, Pendleton et al. found that party loyalty was at least as strong as in South Africa, 85 per cent, and there was minimal variation between various demographic variables, 'except for constituency and language group'. Oshiwambo (Ovambo) speakers expressed strong party allegiance (to SWAPO) 84 per cent of the time, while the figures for Germans, Afrikaners, and the Herero were on average even higher. The Pendleton team's findings were backed up by a series of representative surveys undertaken by Heribert Weiland, who found in 1994 that 'party loyalty is very strong', few voters had 'considered changing their political allegiance, and that the number of floating voters since 1989 [had] been very low'.10 2. Differing electoral system incentives might have changed who was on the ballot.11 A second first order objection to the re-running exercise, akin to the previous objection, is that the ballot paper (and thus the range of choice) would have looked different if an alternative electoral system had been used. This objection rests on the premiss that small parties would have merged if a plurality SMD system had been used instead of a PR system, and conversely, large parties would have fragmented under the incentives of a PR system as opposed to the constraints of majoritarianism. However, the evidence from at least two of the case studies contradicts this hypothesis and implies that, while parties might have campaigned differently, the same key parties would have stayed on the ballot regardless of the system used. This is especially true of the first democratic elections after a long period of repressed political activity, where party strengths are somewhat unclear, emotions pervade just as much as hard-headed party manoeuvring, and the electorate are unpractised (and possess poor information) in the discipline of strategic voting.

210


The nature of the African National Congress, and the electoral system chosen, in South Africa gives us a perfect counter-example of how cultural, historical, and emotional constraints can overwhelm institutional incentives in the new democracies of southern Africa. The national list PR, no-threshold, electoral system used in April 1994 gave the clearest incentive to the constituent elements of the ANC alliance to compete as separate parties, and then to ally themselves within parliament if they so wished. Chief among these parties were the South African Communist Party (SACP) who, despite their incorporation into the ANC, have consistently offered a vision and programme at variance with the mainstream non-communist ANC leadership. That they chose to run candidates as ANC candidates, despite some internal SACP dissent that their radical message was being watered down, is one com pelling piece of evidence to show that the ANC-SACP alliance would have stayed together in those uhuru elections no matter what institutional incentives were placed on each party. Furthermore, although there were nineteen parties on the ballot and this number might have been reduced under a plurality SMD system, twelve of those parties failed to gain even 0.5 per cent of the national vote and their ineffectiveness made them irrelevant to the re-running exercise. Only some combination of the NP, FF, DP, and IFF could have affected the plurality SMD simulation results and the mutual animosity between these parties would have precluded alliances. The hypothesis of electoral system incentives altering the number of competing parties is further hurt by a contrary experience in Malawi. Here, the plurality SMD system might have been expected to force the two 'opposition parties' into alliance especially after the Kenyan experience. But regional and personality factors overcame these coalition incentives. There were a number of tiny parties on the ballot in Malawi and there might have been a few more if a list PR system had been used but there is no evidence to suggest that these hypothetical new parties would have managed to achieve seat-winning electoral dimensions. Neither is there evidence to suggest that ballot papers would have been any longer or shorter in Zambia and Namibia. In Zambia in 1991 the race was always between the 'old and the new', MMD versus UNIP, and while three tiny parties did stand in Zambia they exhausted the realm of potential (non-MMD/UNIP) opposition. In 1996 the UNIP boycott of the elections was over the constitutional amendment which barred Kenneth Kaunda from contesting the presidency. The choice of electoral system was never an issue and therefore PR without Kaunda's name on the presidential ballot would not have drawn UNIP into the electoral fray. In Namibia the geographic concentration of even the smallest parties rendered the differing


211

incentives of plurality and PR electoral systems negligible. For example the Damara-based UDF were just as hopeful of winning singlemember district seats in their region as they were of winning enough Damara votes to win national calculated list PR seats. Once again Zimbabwe, after the ZANU-ZAPU merger in 1987, becomes the most tricky case study to justify the assumption that a different electoral system would not have increased the number of parties on the ballot. As noted in Chapter 5, in 1995 a PR system would have been one of a whole bundle of democratic inducements to bring into the electoral fray opposition parties such as ZUM, DP, and UANC. But it is unclear whether they would have taken votes away from Mugabe's ZANU PF, under a PR electoral system, or more likely from the opposition party (ZANU-N) which did stand. In Zimbabwe the chief factor affecting the number of parties on the ballot in 1990 and 1995 was not the electoral system used, but the plethora of institutional regulations placing obstacles in the way of minority party registration and campaigning.12 Because of both of these concerns it is important to stress that this re-running exercise is limited to the snapshots of time during which each case study election took place. I do not seek to predict future results from the simulations nor argue that electoral systems are the only institutional mechanism to shape the political terrain in a fledgeling democracy. Nevertheless, the results in this chapter do illustrate that the choice of electoral system can dramatically impact upon the evolution of political parties and the competitive party system within which they operate.

3. Results for Re-runs of Plurality SMD Elections (a) Malawi 1994 1. Alternative vote. The use of the alternative vote in single-member districts in Malawi would have had a negligible effect on the final parliamentary results. Because of each party's geographically concentrated support only eight (4.5 per cent) of the 177 seats were not won with an absolute majority and in the simulation only one of these eight seats would have been likely to change hands if AV had been used. The greatest impact AV-MMD would have had on dynamics within the new Malawian parliament is that the United Democratic Front would have gained 93 (or 52 per cent) of the seats with 46 per cent of the popular vote, enabling them to form a single-party cabinet and majority government on a minority of the popular vote. This would have


212

TAB LE 7.2. Re-running the 19'94 Medawiai i natumal el ectionti unde,r alternativ e elect:oral sy'stems

Party

UDF MCP AFORD Total ID

Vote

Plura\

AV-S]MD

AV-M

Prov. PR

Nat.]PR

(%)

Seats %

Seats %

Seats %

Seats %

Seats %

46.44 85 33.65 56 18.94 36 99.03 177 2.1

48 86 32 55 20 36 100 177 2.6

49 93 31 51 20 33 100 177 5.5

52 79 29 59 19 39 100 177 2.5

45 83 33 60 22 34 100 177 0.4

47 34 19 100

Notes: UDF=United Democratic Front (Muluzi), MCP=Malawi Congress Party (Banda), AFORD=Alliance for Democracy (Chihana), ID=index of disproportionality (least squares index).

had serious implications for internal stability as it is unlikely that the Central and Northern Regions (the supporters of respectively the MCP and AFORD) would have accepted such an exclusionary government based on minority electoral support. In 1994 President Bakili Muluzi incorporated members of AFORD within his cabinet along with members of his own UDF.13 This he was pressured to do because the plurality system awarded the UDF four seats short of an absolute parliamentary majority. Thus, for the sake of stability and the need for legislative majorities, the executive adopted an informal type of power-sharing which would not have been necessary if the majoritarian AV-MMD had been in use. Finally, the AV-MMD electoral system would have done little to alleviate the development of regional fiefdoms of support, as in the Northern and Southern Regions the number of party seats won would have remained the same for all three majoritarian methods (i.e. plurality SMD, AV-SMD, and AV-MMD). In the Central Region the UDF would have won eight extra seats and the MCP would have lost five from their already dominant share, but AFORD would have lost their three Central plurality seats, thus effectively disenfranchising the 82,000 AFORD voters in that region. 2. Proportional representation. Table 7.2 shows that the use of national list PR (or the 'South African' system) in Malawi would have led to highly proportional results (an ID of 0.4) but these results would not have dramatically altered the party strengths in comparison with the plurality SMD system which was actually used in May 1994. The UDF would still have been short of a parliamentary majority and they could have still crafted such a working majority by co-opting the second 'opposition' party, AFORD. However, the implications for the


213

evolution of the Malawian democratic party system and prospects for future stability would be great. Instead of homogeneous areas of support, where one party totally dominated the representatives from a region, all three parties would have at least two representatives in each region and the dominance of the MCP in the Centre and the UDF in the South would be curtailed. This would alter the system in three important ways: first representation would be improved as virtually every voter would have a regional representative of his or her own party to approach. Under the plurality system there are vast swathes of the country where losing party supporters have no access to likeminded politicians. Secondly, the system would encourage more inclusive government behaviour because one party could no longer 'write off' one of the regions if it was not dominant in that area. One consequence of the geographical concentration of party seats under plurality in Malawi is that there is little incentive for a single-party government to provide resources for the region, or regions, where it was not strong. Under both types of PR analysed here there is every incentive to gain votes (however few) in all regions because every vote counts toward determining the overall number of seats won at the national level. Finally, such incentives may have created a certain amount of fluidity in the party system and allow for party appeals outside of traditional ethnic or regional boundaries. Once there are incentives for a party to appeal outside their own support base they become more aware of, and more accommodatory to, other groups' preferences. As a result Horowitz's desire for constitutional incentives to compromise and Vote-pool' seem to be far better fulfilled by list PR in Malawi, than by the alternative vote in multi-member districts, although to be fair Horowitz has not dealt with Malawi in his analysis or proposals. The use of provincial list PR in Malawi would have been less appealing than national list PR, because the malapportionment of regional seats meant that the resulting disproportionality of parliament was higher than even under plurality (2.5 as opposed to 2.1). The overrepresentation of the Northern Region (14 per cent of the registered voters and 20 per cent of the parliamentary seats) translated into AFORD winning five seats over and above what they might expect to receive under a purely proportional system. (b) Zambia 1991 and 1996 In many ways the results of re-runnings of the Zambian plurality SMD elections mirror the Malawian results previously outlined. Both countries demonstrated a 'seat bonus' for the largest party and the way in

214


TABILE 7.3. Re-running t he 199'1 Zam bian p>arlian,tentary ' electiions under aliternati ve elec toral s;^sterns Party

Vote

Plum1

(%)

Seats

MMD 74.32 125 UNIP 24.67 25 0 Ind." 0.20 Total 99.19 150 8.5 ID

%

AV-S1VTD

AV-M:MD

Prov. PR

Nat.l3R

Seats

%

Seats

%

Seats

%

Seats

83 17 0 100

131 19 0 150 12.5

87 13 0 100

112 38 0 150 0.5

75 112 25 37 1 0 100 150 0.5

83 125 17 25 0 0 100 150 8.5

%

75 25 1 101

* Bina Moyo, who polled 2,493 votes as an independent candidate in the Eastern Province constituency of Lumezi. The MMD did not run in this constituency and Mrs Leticia Mwanza of UNIP subsequently won the seat. Notes: MMD=Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (Chiluba), UNIP=United National Independence Party (Kaunda), ID=index of disproportionality.

which plurality systems accentuate geographical fiefdoms of party support. The key difference was Zambia's more stereotypical two-party (or dominant party) system, which produced a much higher index of disproportionality, as compared to Malawi's enduring three-party system which unusually led to a very low ID. 1. Alternative vote. In the 1991 Zambian parliamentary results not a single seat was won with less than 50 per cent of the popular vote and thus AV-SMD would have been redundant. Only six seats (4 per cent) could be considered marginals: four won by the MMD and two UNIP seats. The dominance of each party in its 'home' base is illustrated by the fact that, on average, the MMD won their seats with 81 per cent of the votes and UNIP won with 70 per cent. While, the results would not have been affected by the alternative vote in single-member districts they would have been different if Horowitz's alternative vote in multi-member districts had been in operation. The MMD's overall margins of victory in the Lusaka, Northern, and North-Western Provinces (averaging 80 per cent) would have swallowed up the two plurality SMD seats that UNIP won in each of those areas. Therefore, the MMD would have gained an extra six parliamentary seats, giving them a 13 per cent seat bonus over and above their share of the national vote. Further, it would have meant the total elimination of any heterogeneous representation as UNIP would have won every seat in the Eastern Province with the MMD taking every seat outside that isolated bastion of loyal Kaunda supporters. As in all the other case study re-runnings AV-MMD proved to give the most disproportional results with an ID of 12.5.


215

2. Proportional representation. Both provincial and national list PR re-runnings would have led to much more proportional results, although not as proportional as the same method yielded in the larger South African Assembly. One clear advantage of provincially based PR would have been the distribution of both minority and majority representatives from each region. In every district outside the Eastern Province there were at least two UNIP members of parliament and in UNIP's stronghold there were five MMD MPs to advocate the interests of the quarter of the electorate who voted against Kaunda in the East. Under the real-life plurality SMD results between a tenth and a quarter of the voters in the Central, Copperbelt, Eastern, Luapula, Southern, and Western Provinces were completely detatched from a representative of their choice. In 1996 the Movement for Multi-Party Democracy's 131 seats represented an increase of six seats over their 1991 performance and a 'seat bonus' of 26 per cent, as opposed to only 9 per cent five years earlier. The lack of coherent opposition, the dispersed nature of voting support for those small parties which did challenge the MMD, and the high vote for independent candidates meant that the index of disproportionality of 21.3 was the highest of any of the real-life elections analysed in this study. 1. Alternative vote. Unlike the 1991 elections in 1996 twenty-eight seats were won on a plurality and under the methodology given in the Appendix five of those seats (Luangeni, Chipili, Chongwe, Mwinilunga East, and Lukulu West) would have changed hands if the alternative vote in single-member districts had been used. In multi-member districts the MMD would have been able to overwhelm opposition support in every district apart from a six-member seat in the North-West Province. Here the NP would have triumphed based on its regional concentration of support. 2. Proportional representation. Using either national or list PR would have dramatically reduced the levels of disproportionality and reduced the MMD's parliamentary majority from 112 to 36-8. Eight of the independent candidates who had won seats in the actual elections polled enough votes in their constituencies to win largest remainder seats under the national list PR calculations. As in 1991 the use of provincially based PR would have increased the distribution of party representatives within regions. In the actual elections the MMD swept four regions (Copperbelt, Eastern, Luapula, and Southern), two parties (plus independents) were represented in Lusaka and the North-West, while only in the West was there multiparty representation (MMD=11, ZDC=2, AZ=2, Ind.=2). However, in the provincial PR simulation four parties had representatives in each of the Central, Copperbelt, Eastern,

216


TABLE 7.4. Re-running the 1996 Zambian parliamentary elections under alternative electoral systems Party

HMD ZDC NP NLP AZ Ind. (1) Ind. (2) Ind. (3) Ind. (4) Ind. (5) Ind. (6) Ind. (7) Ind. (8) Ind. (9) Ind. (10) Ind. (11) Ind. (12) Ind. (13) NC Ind. (14) Ind. (15) Total ID

Vote

Plural

(%)

Seats

60.97 131 13.82 2 7.11 5 6.41 0 1.49 2 1 0.96 1 0.66 1 0.44 0.33 0 1 0.31 0 0.31 1 0.30 0.29 0 0.24 1 1 0.24 1 0.22 0.22 0 1 0.18 0.17 0 1 0.11 0.10 0 94.58 150 21.3

%

AV-SMD

AV-MMD

Prov. PR

Nat. PR

Seats

Seats

%

Seats

%

Seats

%

96 0 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

94 23 12 11 3 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0

63 15 8 7 2 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 150 1.7

0 0 0 0

93 21 11 10 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 150 1.1

62 14 7 7 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0

87 126 1 4 3 6 1 0 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0

1

1 1

1 1 1

0

0

1

0

1

0

1

0

1 1

150 18.7

%

84 144 2 0 4 6 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 150 27.1

1

1

Notes: MMD=Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (Chiluba), ZDC=Zambia Democratic Congress (Mung'omba), NP=National Party (Mulemba), NLP=National Lima Party (Scott/Kapita), AZ=Agenda for Zambia (Mbikusita-Lewanika), NC=National Congress, Ind. (l)=Kabwe constituency, Ind. (2)=Lusaka Central constituency, Ind. (3)=Isoka East, Ind. (4)=Bwacha, Ind. (5)=Lukulu East, Ind. (6)=Wasakile, Ind. (7)=Isoka West, Ind. (8)=Kwacha, Ind. (9)=Kabompo West, Ind. (10)=Kapiri Mposhi, Ind. (ll)=Mufumbwe, Ind. (12)=Malole, Ind. (13)=Luena, Ind. (14)=Mfuwe, Irid. (15)=Chipili, ID=least squares index of disproportionality, ENP=effective number of elective and parliamentary parties.

Northern, Southern, and Western Regions, and three in the NorthWest, Luapula, and Lusaka. (c) Zimbabwe 1985, 1990, and 1995 The most striking element of the results in Table 7.5 is that the use of alternative electoral systems would have made very little difference


217

TABLE 7.5. Re-running the 1985 Zimbabwean parliamentary elections under alternative electoral systems (common roll) Party

Vote

Plural

AV-SMD

AV-MMD

Prov. PR

Nat. PR

(%)

Seats %

Seats %

Seats

%

Seats %

Seats %

ZANU (PF) 77.19 19.31 PF-ZAPU 2.24 UANC 1.25 ZANU-N Total ID ENP

1.6

64 15 0 1 80 2.6

80 64 19 15 0 0 1 1 100 80 2.6 1.5

80 65 19 15 0 0 1 0 100 80 3.4 1.5

81 62 19 16 0 1 0 1 100 80

1.56 1.4

77 62 20 15 1 2 1 1 100 80 0.5 1.6

77 19 2 1 100 1.6

JVotes: ZANU (PF)=Zimbabwe African National Union (Mugabe), PF-ZAPU=Zimbabwe African People's Union (Nkomo), ZANU=Zimbabwe African National Union (Sithole), UANC=United African National Council (Muzorewa), ID=index of disproportionality, ENP=effective number of elective and parliamentary parties.

in the common roll Zimbabwean elections of 1985. This is primarily due to the high degree of proportionality achieved by the plurality SMD system which was in turn caused by the high correlation between party, ethnicity, and geographically concentrated voting support. The results for plurality SMD and AV-SMD would have been identical. The strength of vote concentration is illustrated by the fact that ZANU (PF), on average, won their seats with 91 per cent of the district vote and PF-ZAPU won with 84 per cent of the vote. Nkomo's PF-ZAPU won every seat in Matabeleland while Mugabe's ZANU (PF) won every other seat bar one. Under AV-MMD total regional hegemony would have been ensured, with ZANU (PF) picking up Sithole's lone Chipinge seat in Manicaland. The key difference that a national list PR system would have made to the parliamentary seats won is the redistribution of two ZANU (PF) seats to Muzorewa's UANC, who would have been awarded representation for their 2 per cent share of the national vote. Under a provincially allocated list PR system the UANC would have lost one of those two seats to PF-ZAPU. However, while the final seat totals were almost identical to the national allocation, provincially based PR would have again lessened the problem of one-party dominance in given regions. Under the real-life plurality SMD elections only Manicaland could boast of representatives of more than one party, but under provincial list PR calculations half the districts (Matabeleland North, Manicaland, Mashonaland East, and the Midlands) contained MPs from two parties. The use of PR would have made a much bigger impact upon the 'white roll' seats in 1985 and might well have lessened some of the ZANU

218


TABLE 7.6. Re-running the 1985 Zimbabwean parliamentary elections under alternative electoral systems (white roll) Party

Vote

Plural

(%)

Seats 15 4 1 20 19.8

55.02 CAZ IZG 39.70 Ind. 1 4.36 Total ID ENP 2.16

AV-SMD

AV-MMD

Prov. PR

Nat. PR

%

Seats

%

Seats %

Seats

%

Seats %

75 20 5 100

15 4 1 20 19.8

75 20 5 100

— —

— —

— —

11 8 -^

—

— —

—

20 0.5

1.65

1.65

— — — — —

55 40 5 100

2.15

Notes: CAZ=Conservative Alliance of Zimbabwe (Smith), IZG=Independent Zimbabwe Group, Ind. l=Chris Andersen, Minister of State for the Public Service, and successful independent candidate in the Mount Pleasant constituency, ID=index of disproportionality, ENP=effective number of elective and parliamentary parties.

(PF) unhappiness with white voters (which led to the abolition of white seats in 198714) emanating from Smith's CAZ victory, which was made to appear far more comprehensive by the plurality SMD system. If a PR system had been used for the white roll then the CAZ would have won only a bare majority of the twenty seats and the IZG's eight seats, and 40 per cent of the vote, would have stood out as a substantial vote among whites for conciliation and compromise with Mugabe's government. This election, although much smaller than the common roll vote, was substantially more competitive and the plurality SMD system led to the highest index of disproportionality recorded in any of the eleven election observations. One-quarter of the seats could be considered marginals and the CAZ only held their seats with an average of 52 per cent of the vote; in fact the IZG did better by winning 55 per cent of the district vote in the four seats they held. Three CAZ seats were won with less than 50 per cent of the popular vote (Hatfield, Highlands, and Mazowe-Mutoko) but in all three the CAZ would have held the seat if the alternative vote had been used. The 1990 and 1995, post-ZANU-ZAPU merger, elections illustrated some of the worst anomalies of plurality SMD and at the same time the advantages of a PR-based electoral system. In 1990 the governing party won every seat in every province apart from Manicaland. There pockets of opposition support gave Tekere's ZUM two seats and Sithole's ZANU-N one. Perhaps the greatest impact of any alternative electoral system would have been Horowitz's AV-MMD which would have awarded every parliamentary seat to ZANU PF, thus facilitating Robert Mugabe's plans to implement a de jure one-party state. As


219

TABLE 7.7. Re-running the 1990 Zimbabwean parliamentary elections under alternative electoral systems Party

ZANUPF ZUM ZANU-N UANC Total ID ENP

AV-SMD

Vote

Plural

(%)

Seats

%

80.55 17.59 0.92 0.46

117 2 1 0

97 116 3 2 1 1 0 0 100 120 15.6 1.1

120

16.4 1.5

Seats

%

Prov. PR

Seats

%

Seats

%

100 0 0 0 100

100 19 1 0 120 2.6

83 97 16 21 1 1 1 0 100 120 0.2 1.4

97 120 2 0 0 1 0 0 100 120 18.5

1.1

Nat. PR

AV-MMD

1.0

Seats

% 81 17 1 1 100 1.5

Notes: ZANU PF=Zimbabwe African National Union (Mugabe), ZUM=Zimbabwe Unity Movement (Tekere), ZANU-N=Zimbabwe African National Union-Ndonga (Sithole), UANC=United African National Council (Muzorewa), ID=index of disproportionality, ENP=effective number of elective and parliamentary parties.

noted in Chapter 3, ZANU PF committed itself not only to winning every seat in parliament, but also to making sure that all opposition candidates did so badly as to lose their deposits, so that the Mugabe/Nkomo ZANU could wipe out all opposition from parliament and thus pave the way to a de jure one-party state. Under both types of list PR the opposition ZUM would have had a far larger parliamentary party, reflecting their 18 per cent of the national vote, and Muzorewa would have remained in parliament as the sole UANC representative. If provincial PR had been utilized then every province, apart from Mashonaland Central, would have had multiparty representation, with Manicaland sending MPs from ZANU PF, ZUM, and ZANU-N to the parliament in Harare. In many ways the 1995 elections were a re-run of the 1990 vote and this is reflected in the simulation, but ZANU PF's already pervasive dominance was slightly strengthened electorally. They remained steady with 117 of the 120 parliamentary seats but their national share of the vote was up just under 1 per cent to 81.3; in the seats they won they polled 82 per cent of the vote (as opposed to 81 per cent in 1990)— there were no marginal seats. The use of AV-SMD would have been irrelevant as ZANU dominance was such that not a single seat was won with less than 50 per cent. As in 1990 ZANU PF would have won every seat in parliament if AV-MMD had been used, but, unlike that election, in 1995 a PR system would have revealed a more fragmented parliamentary opposition. ZANU-Ndonga and the Forum Party's handful of MPs would have been joined by five independent candidates who

220

Re ruuning elections:alternative

TABLE 7.8. Re-running the 1995 Zimbabwean parliamentary elections under alternative electoral systems Party

Vote

Plural

(%)

Seats

%

AV-SMD

AV-MMD

Prov. PR

Nat. PR

Seats %

Seats %

Seats %

Seats %

ZANUPF 81.46 118 (55) 98 118 2 2 2 6.85 ZANU-N Forum 0 0 0 6.02 0 0 0 0.59 Ind. (1) 0 0 0 0.59 Ind. (2) 0 0.51 0 0 ZFP 0 0.34 0 0 Ind. (3) 0 0 0 0.25 Ind. (4) 0 0.25 0 0 Ind. (5) 100 120 100.00 120 Total 12.5 12.5 ID 1.5 1.0 ENP

98 120 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100 120 13.2 1.0

100 105 7 0 6 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100 120 4.5 1.0

87 99 6 8 5 7 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 100 120 1.1 1.3

82 7 6 1 1 1 1 1 1 100 1.5

Notes: ZANU-PF=Zimbabwe African National Union (Mugabe), ZANU-N=Zimbabwe African National Union-Ndonga (Sithole), Forum (Dumbutshena), ZFP=Zimbabwe Federal Party, Ind. (l)=Gutu-Bikita constituency, Ind. (2)=Bikita constituency, Ind. (3)=Zaka East, Ind. (4)=Kwekwe West constituency, Ind. (5)=Kwekwe West, ID=least squares index of disproportionality (see Gallagher 1991: 38-40), ENP=effective number of elective and parliamentary parties.

would have been entitled to seats under a national list calculation (only two would have won seats under provincial PR—both in Masvingo). These independents were mostly alienated ZANU PF members who had lost out during the party primaries and decided to continue their challenges in the general election. Most visible of these mavericks was Margaret Dongo in Harare Central (see Chapter 5).

4. Results for Re-runs of PR Elections (a) Zimbabwe 1980 If the first democratic Zimbabwean elections had been held under plurality SMD, instead of the high-threshold type of provincial list PR that was actually used (see Chapter 5), the chief beneficiaries would have been ZANU (PF) with two extra seats, and the chief losers Bishop Muzorewa's UANC, who would have lost their three parliamentary seats. While PF-ZAPU would have gained exactly the same number of seats as Sithole's ZANU-N (20), ZANU-N would have made it into parliament through their pocket of support in Chipinge. In the actual


221

TABLE 7.9. Re-running the 1980 Zimbabwean parliamentary elections under alternative electoral systems (common roll) Party

Vote

Plural

AV-SMD

AV-MMD

Prov. PR

Nat. PR

(%)

Seats %

Seats %

Seats %

Seats'' %

Seats %

ZANU (PF) 62.99 59 24.11 20 PF-ZAPU 8.28 0 UANC 2.01 1 ZANU-N 1.06 0 ZDP 80 Total 9.7 ID 2.2 ENP

74 59 25 20 0 0 1 1 0 0 100 80 9.7 1.6

74 64 25 16 0 0 1 0 0 0 100 80 13.8 1.6

80 54 20 19 0 7 0 0 0 0 100 80 3.6 1.5

67 51 24 19 9 7 0 2 0 1 100 80 0.8 1.9

64 24 9 2 1 100 2.1

" Using the same districts as the actual 1980 election but removing the 10% threshold and using the Droop instead of Hare quota. The actual result led to an ID of 6.9. Notes: ZANU (PF)=Zimbabwe African National Union (Mugabe), PF-ZAPU=Zimbabwe African People's Union (Nkomo), UANC=United African National Council (Muzorewa), ZANU-N=Zimbabwe African People's Union-Ndonga (Sithole), ZDP=Zimbabwe Democratic Party, ID=index of disproportionality, ENP=effective number of elective and parliamentary parties.

list PR elections Mugabe's ZANU (PF) picked up one of the sixteen Matabeleland seats but under either plurality-majority SMD system all of Matabeleland would have been dominated by Nkomo's PFZAPU, while the twelve Midlands seats would have been split twothirds to one-third in favour of ZANU (PF) over ZAPU. Once again AV-MMD produced by far the most disproportionate result, giving a substantial seat bonus to the largest party. With 63 per cent of the vote ZANU (PF) would have won 80 per cent of the common roll seats. A reduction in the high 10 per cent threshold would have primarily benefited Muzorewa's UANC, who would have been entitled to over twice as many seats as they had won with the threshold. Finally, a straightforward national allotment of PR seats would have brought two more opposition parties into parliament (ZANU-N and the ZDP) and most importantly left Mugabe's government with only a two-seat parliamentary majority over the combined opposition forces. Such a scenario might well have changed the immediate post-independence political dynamics dramatically. As noted in Chapter 5 I am unable to re-run the 'whites-only' 1980 elections as no party presented itself to counter the Rhodesian Front's hegemony among the white community but it seems likely that a PR system would not only have facilitated the challenge (and partial success) of white liberal opposition groups but also would have encouraged

222


the predominantly black African parties to stand candidates on the white voters' roll. (6) South Africa 1994 1. Plurality SMD. The first, and probably most salient, issue to note concerning plurality's effect on the South African National Assembly election is that the ANC would have won, under this system, more parliamentary seats than under any alternative system and furthermore that they would have received well over two-thirds of the Constitutional Assembly, giving them enough power to write the new constitution without formal reference to any other party in the Assembly. The 283 ANC seats represent a 'seat bonus' of 31 members over and above what the party would have won under a purely proportional electoral system. Interestingly the vast majority of ANC seats turned out to be 'safe' ones, in the sense that there was no competitive challenge in the district from another party. Only 8 (3 per cent) of the 283 ANC-won plurality SMDs were not won with an absolute majority and the average ANC seat was taken with over 80 per cent of the popular vote. In seats they lost the ANC averaged only 19 per cent of the vote. This illustrates that, under plurality at least, the likelihood of the ANC losing their grip on parliamentary power in the next, or subsequent, elections would be slim. If the Nationalists were to make gains from the ANC (or if Inkatha, or the PAC, were to win converts from the ANC) those defectors would be within already safe ANC constituencies and thus the ANC could easily hold such seats even with a moderate drop in their national popular vote. In Britain marginal seats are categorized as those seats won with a majority of less than 10 per cent of the recorded vote; these are then considered the Tjattleground' districts—their winning or losing determining which party forms a government. In the 1992 British parliamentary elections there were 171 such marginal seats, or 26 per cent of the total. However, under the plurality simulation for South Africa only 13 (3 per cent) seats were won with majorities of less than 10 per cent, and thus would be considered 'marginals'. In effect the system would be frozen in terms of seats won and requiring a political earthquake to jar the patterns of party voting concentration. This finding is a serious blow to the case for plurality in South Africa, for such majoritarian prescriptions rely on the perception that executive power can change hands from election to election. If plurality leads to a de facto oneparty state then there are no incentives for losing parties (in this case the NP, IFF, FF, and PAC) to remain loyal parliamentary opposition parties. A deeply divided society like South Africa is most threatened


223

TABLE 7.10. Re-running the 1994 South African national elections under alternative electoral systems Party

ANC NP IFF FF DP PAC ACDP Total ID

Prov. PR

AV-SMD

AV-MMD

Seats

%

Seats

%

69 17 13 0 0 0 0 100

282 63 55 0 0 0 0 400 7.2

71 255 82 16 14 43 8 0 7 0 5 0 0 0 100 400 0.8

Vote

Plural

(%)

Seats

%

62.65 20.39 10.54 2.17 1.73 1.25 0.45 100.00

283 68 49 0 0 0 0 400 6.7

71 277 70 17 53 12 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100 400 5.9

Seats

%

Nat. list PR Seats

64 252 82 20 11 43 9 2 7 2 1 5 2 0 100 400 0.3

% 63 20 11 2 2 1 0.5 100

Notes: ANC=African National Congress (Mandela), NP=National Party (de Klerk), IFP=Inkatha Freedom Party (Buthelezi), FF=Freedom Front (Viljoen), DP=Democratic Party (de Beer), PAC=Pan-Africanist Congress (Makwetu), ACDP=African Christian Democratic Party (Meshoe), ID=index of disproportionality.

in its fledgeling democratic times if incentives for pro-system loyalty are lacking. The second most serious threat to stability posed by the plurality results is the total exclusion from parliament of the smaller minority parties (the Freedom Front (FF), the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), the Democratic Party (DP), and the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP)). The exclusion of the liberal Democratic Party might be a sad loss to parliamentary debate in the new South Africa and clearly Helen Suzman's thirteen years as a lone voice in the previous 'whites-only' parliament illustrated that the level of parliamentary effectiveness does not always correlate with a party's number of seats. Similarly the loss of the ACDP's two seats might eliminate another small but growing section of opinion. But the threat really would emanate from the exclusion of representatives of the Afrikaner Freedom Front led by General Constand Viljoen and the Pan-Africanist Congress of Clarence Makwetu. Both parties have undergone an internal 'battle for the soul' waged by proponents of moderation versus those who have in the past advocated and practised anti-system violence. The pressures on the Freedom Front to withdraw from the democratic system come from Afrikaners within the Conservative Party (CP) and Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB), and PAC withdrawal is argued for by similarly vociferous extremists in the Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA), the armed wing of the PAC nationalist movement. However, the fourteen combined seats won by these diametrically opposed parties under the list PR system

224


invested each group with a 'pro-system' democratic mentality which helped to tip the balance in favour of the moderate wings of each respective party. If, as under the plurality electoral system, the FF and PAC had won not a single National Assembly seat then their incentives for anti-system violence might have been greatly increased. Some more technical issues of disproportional representation under plurality can now be explained. The NP with 68 seats would have been clearly 'underrepresented' under the plurality system, while the IFF would have gained a 'seat bonus' of six—this was primarily due to the difference in vote concentration between each party. The Nationalists, while winning over half their national votes from the Western Cape, Northern Cape, and PWV (Gauteng) Provinces, still won on average 10 per cent in the other six provinces. In comparison the IFP won all their seats and a full 88 per cent of their votes in their home KwaZulu-Natal. As David Butler notes, 'unless they have great concentrations of local strength, minor parties are always penalized, in the sense that their proportion of seats is much less than their proportion of votes'.15 In the South African case the NP, FF, DP, PAC, and ACDP are Butler's rule and the IFP his exception. Perhaps a more telling implication that plurality would have had for the evolution of politics in South Africa is the way in which the system would have created regional/provincial fiefdoms of homogeneous party power. Under the actual results each province sent representatives from at least two parties, and in the PWV case five parties, to sit in the National Assembly. But under the plurality simulation all the seats were won by a single party (the ANC) in four provinces (the North-West, Northern Transvaal, Eastern Transvaal, and Eastern Cape) and all but one seat was won by the ANC in the Free State. The NP would have been far more dominant in the Western Cape (winning 34 out of 42 seats instead of 24 out of 42) and the IFP more dominant in KwaZulu-Natal (taking 49 out of 80 seats as opposed to 39 out of 80). Such concentrations of representation would firstly increase pressures for the politics of clientelism—the exclusion of some regions from government resources and the inclusion of others—while eliminating the ability of minority party supporters in most regions to approach a representative from their region who sympathized with their views. 2. Alternative vote. For all intents and purposes the impact of the alternative vote on South Africa's election would have been the same as an SMD plurality system. Most seats (94 per cent) were won with absolute majorities (making the AV redundant) and of those 17 seats won by a plurality only 6 would have been likely to have been won by the second placed party in the plurality vote. The ANC would still have had their two-thirds parliamentary majority, although with 6 seats


225

less than their plurality victory. The NP and IFP's handful of extra seats would not have been enough to alter the dynamics of the new National Assembly. The exclusion of the FF, DP, PAC, and ACDP and also the troubling occurrence of regional fiefdoms would have remained. The results in Table 7.10 illustrate that AV-MMD in South Africa would not only have been far less proportional than the two types of PR I have analysed but even less proportional than results simulated for a straight SMD plurality system. This is primarily due to the occurrence of minority parties winning plurality SMDs, then being submerged, and defeated, in larger multi-member AV majoritarian constituencies. The practical implications for South Africa were: first that the ANC gained a seat bonus of 30 and, as under plurality and AV-SMD, would have had enough parliamentary seats to write the new South African constitution unfettered; second, similar to the other majoritarian systems, all other minority parties (bar the NP and IFF) were excluded from representation; and finally, the creation of homogeneous provincial party fiefdoms became even more pronounced. The NP lost five seats from their plurality total—they picked up two seats in the Western Cape and one in the Northern Cape, but these gains were outweighed by losing eight seats in KwaZulu-Natal. The IFF were the main beneficiaries of that loss, picking up six seats, over and above their plurality total, from KwaZulu-Natal. However, the most important implication for the Horowitz proposal is that the geographical concentration of each party's vote meant that only three multi-member constituencies (totaling nineteen seats) were not won with an absolute majority and therefore in only 5 per cent of the National Assembly seats was there any incentive for a party to appeal outside its particular support base. Horowitz could well argue that I simply have not tried hard enough to draw heterogeneous constituencies but the reality is that drawing substantial numbers of plurality-won MMDs in South Africa, under current electoral realities, would be nigh on impossible. There is no conceivable way of drawing such districts in the Orange Free State, North-West, Eastern Cape, Northern Transvaal, or Eastern Transvaal Provinces, and in vast swathes of the PWV area and the Western Cape. Only in the Northern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal could such districting be countenanced and even there it would require massive gerrymandering of district boundaries, losing any semblance of geographical compactness. Increasing the magnitude of the districts does not help and would add the disadvantage of a highly complicated ballot in a multi-candidate, multi-member, preference voting constituency. From the evidence of simulations in both South Africa and Malawi it appears as though the Horowitz proposal might only have merit when either (i) there is a

226


massive realignment of voting behaviour, or (ii) there is substantial dwelling mobility among different ethnic groups and districts become far more integrated and diverse than they are at the present—neither occurrence seems likely in the foreseeable future. 3. Proportional representation. Re-running the election on a provincial list PR basis with no national or compensatory list seats would have largely left the national results unaltered, as is illustrated in column 4 of Table 7.10. The ANC would have gained three seats, one from the Freedom Front and both the parliamentary seats of the ACDP, but this would not have altered the dynamics of the new parliament as the ANC would still have an absolute majority short of a two-thirds super-majority. Even with the smaller district magnitude and lack of compensatory seats the index of disproportionality was still only 0.8. (c) Namibia 1989 1. Plurality SMD. Due to the huge (90 per cent plus) majorities built up by SWAPO in the twenty-six Ovamboland constituencies Nujoma's party would have actually lost seats if a plurality SMD system had been used for Namibia's first democratic elections. Nevertheless, SWAPO's loss of a single seat (from their actual total of 41) would not have dramatically altered the government's parliamentary dominance —their majority over all other parties would have been secure. The chief losers under the plurality re-run were the minor parties (ACN, FLN, NPF, and NNF), who would have lost their six collective seats due to a lack of sufficent vote concentration in any one geographical district. Closest to victory were the FCN in Rehoboth, but their 29 per cent 'Baster' vote would still not have been enough to win the seat from the DTA. Similarly, the third party UDF would have lost two of their four parliamentary seats, only managing to hold on to the two districts in Damaraland and Karibib. The main winners under a single-member district system would have been the DTA, whose more even vote distribution was far more suited to the vagaries of plurality SMD. They would have won a full nine seats over and above their actual parliamentary caucus of twenty-one MPs, increasing their parliamentary party by nearly 50 per cent. Thus, the effects of using a plurality SMD system in Namibia in 1989 would have been more pronounced (in terms of seats won) than any of the other case studies. This is highlighted by the fact that the plurality SMD index of disproportionality of 10.0 was the highest of any of the list PR re-runs. The heightened vagaries of plurality SMD also indicate the higher level of competiveness which the 1989 Namibian elections demonstrated in comparison to their southern African neighbours. Thirteen


227

TABLE 7.11. Re-running the 1989 Namibian parliamentary elections under alternative electoral systems Party

SWAPO DTA UDF ACN NPF FCN NNF Total ID ENP

AV-SJas

Vote

Plural

(%)

Seats

%

57.33 28.55 5.65 3.54 1.59 1.56 0.80 99.02

40 30 2 0 0 0 0 72 10.0

55 40 42 30 3 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100 72 10.0 2.1

2.4

Seats

%

AV-M:MD Seats

55 45 42 27 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100 72 8.9 2.1

%

Prov. PR Seats

62 44 37 24 0 2 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 100 72 5.2 1.9

%

Nat. 11st PR Seats''

61 42 33 21 3 4 1 3 0 1 1 1 0 0 100 72 1.1 2.1

% 58 29 5 4 1 1 0 100 2.3

" Droop quota as opposed to Hare quota. The actual Hare quota results are given in Table 6.2. Those results give an ID of 0.8 and an ENP of 2.42. Notes: SWAPO=South West Africa People's Organization (Nujoma), DTA=Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (Mudge), UDF=United Democratic Front (Garoeb), ACN=Action Christian National (Pretorius), NPF=National Patriotic Front (Katjiongua), FCN=Federal Convention of Namibia, NNF=Namibia National Front (Krohne), ID=index of disproportionality, ENP=effective number of elective and parliamentary parties.

(18 per cent) of the SMDs were taken with pluralities (eleven DTA, two UDF)—this was by far the highest number for any of the eleven re-running and actual election observations. Of the twenty-three electoral districts used only thirteen were won by absolute majorities and six of the remaining ten districts featured strong competition between three or four parties (Karibib, Maltahone, Okahandja, Otjiwarongo, Outjo, and Rehoboth). The concentration of'regional fiefdoms' of party support was also less pronounced than in the other case studies (especially if Ovamboland is left out of the analysis). Based on the six provincial districts crafted for the AV-MMD and provincial PR re-runnings, only three (Ovamboland; the Rehoboth, Mariental, Maltahone, and Bethanie district; and the Hereroland, Gobabis, and Kaokoland area) would not have multiparty representation under plurality SMD. Most areas would have had SWAPO and DTA representatives while in Damaraland there were both DTA and UDF members of parliament. 2. Alternative vote. Although thirteen seats were won on a plurality none of these was likely to change hands under the AV-SMD rerunning, but if the alternative vote had been used in multi-member districts the political terrain would have been dramatically altered. SWAPO would have won every seat in the three largest regions

228


(Ovamboland, Windhoek, and Kavango) plus Swakopmund to give them forty-five seats, just short of the two-thirds they needed to pass constitutional amendments. The DTA would have also gained a seat bonus of eight, over and above their actual total, by winning all areas not taken by SWAPO. Ultimately, AV-MMD would have excluded the five other minority parties from representation despite the fact that they had collectively polled 14 per cent of the popular vote. Nevertheless, the distribution of the vote would have led to Horowitz's Votepooling' incentives being much more important in this election than they would have been in South Africa. In half the districts analysed SWAPO and DTA would have to woo the second preference votes of minor party supporters in order to build an absolute majority. In two districts, Windhoek and Rehoboth, the leading parties (SWAPO and the DTA respectively) were close enough to the 50 per cent threshold not to be overly concerned about wooing minority parties, but in the other three appeals to the UDF and ACN would have been necessary. In Grootfontein-Tsumeb-Outjo and Rehoboth-Mariental-MaltahoneBethanie, the UDF-ACN 18-19 per cent of the vote would have determined the eventual winner, while in Damaraland the UDF alone would have played king-maker between the DTA and SWAPO. None the less, the evidence seems to suggest that in none of the five plurality-won AV-MMD districts would the second placed party on first preferences have leapfrogged to victory as a result of third and fourth placed party transfers (see Chapter 6). 3. Proportional representation. If a provincially based type of PR had been used minority parties would have still been disadvantaged but the disparities between vote share and seat share would have been less extreme than under any of the plurality-majority formulas. Both SWAPO and the DTA would have gained three seats (over the nationally allocated results) at the expense of the UDF and ACN (who each lost two seats) and the NNF and NPF, who would have lost their single seats. This redistribution resulted from the smaller district size and higher thresholds inherent within provincial PR. As in all the case studies analysed in this chapter, provincial PR would have provided many more voters with access to an MP of their choice. Every electoral district would have contained representatives of SWAPO and the DTA (including Ovamboland) while four would have also included UDF, FCN, or ACN members of parliament. The use of the Droop quota, instead of the Hare quota, for the national calculation of seats would have caused the minor adjustment of the NNF's seat being redistributed to SWAPO. In retrospect the slightly increased fragmentation of parties (and expression of diverse views) in parliament resulting from the use of the Hare quota appears to be warranted.


229

TABLE 7.12. Re-running the 1994 Namibian parliamentary elections under alternative electoral systems Party

SWAPO DTA UDF DON MAG Total ID ENP

AV-SMD

Vote

Plural

(%)

Seats

%

73.89 20.78 2.72 0.83 0.82

57 14 1 0 0 72 4.0

79 57 19 14 1 1 0 0 0 0 100 72 4.0 1.5

99.04

1.7

Seats

%

AV-MMD

Prov. PR

Seats

%

Seats

%

81 19 0 0 0 100

56 15 1 0 0 72 3.0

78 54 21 15 1 2 0 1 0 0 100 72 1.0 1.5

79 58 19 14 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 72 5.2 1.5

1.5

Nat. list PR Seats''

% 75 21 3 1 0 100 1.6

" Droop quota as opposed to Hare quota. The actual Hare quota results are given in Table 6.3. Those results give an ID of 0.6 and an ENP of 1.69. Notes: SWAPO=South West Africa People's Organization (Nujoma), DTA=Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (Muyongo), UDF=United Democratic Front (Garoeb), DCN=democratic Coalition of Namibia (Katjiongua), MAG=Monitor Action Group (Pretorius), ID=index of disproportionality, ENP=effective number of elective and parliamentary parties.

(d) Namibia 1994 1. Plurality SMD. The use of plurality SMD in 1994 would have had less of an impact upon the final results than in the previous election as increased SWAPO dominance, driving the opposition into ever smaller enclaves, meant that the use of single-member districts would have led to a roughly proportionate parliament. The low ID of 4.0 was only bettered by plurality elections in Malawi (1994) and Zimbabwe (1985) and was considerably lower than the average for African plurality SMD elections of 12.8 (see Table 8.2). The results show SWAPO gaining four seats (one each from the DTA, UDF, DON, and MAG) if a Westminster winner-take-all electoral system had been used. This would not have radically altered the dymanics of the current Namibian parliament, as SWAPO under any system would have a more than comfortable majority, but it would have removed the voices of Katjiongua (DCN) and Pretorius (MAG) from parliament—forces which, however slight, might well be more compliant within parliament than outside it. The fact that multiparty competition had declined markedly in the five years since the first all-inclusive elections was borne out by the plurality SMD indicators of competitiveness. The number of marginal seats was down to five (6.9 per cent); there were only six seats not won with an absolute majority (three SWAPO, two DTA, and one UDF) and none of these would have changed hands under AV-SMD. While

230


the average SWAPO seat was taken with 85 per cent of the district vote the DTA was more vulnerable, winning with only 59 per cent (the UDF picked up their single seat in Kunenu with 35 per cent of the popular vote in a tight three-way race). Nevertheless, the pattern of regionally concentrated representation did not significantly worsen compared to 1989. While SWAPO did make a clean sweep of the four Ovamboland districts, and Okavango, and the DTA swept the three seats in Omahoke, in Kunenu, Caprivi, Hardap, Karas, Khomas, Otjuzundjupa, and Erongo (containing over 40 per cent of the parliamentary seats) there was a mixture of party representation. 2. Alternative vote. AV-MMD once again provided the most disproportional and exclusionary result with the DTA taking all the seats in Kunenu, Caprivi, and Otjuzundjupa, while SWAPO won everything else in the remaining ten regions. Unlike 1989 there were fewer areas where 'vote-pooling' incentives for moderation could have played a part. Only three AV-MMD districts were won on a plurality and in the Caprivi strip the DTA was only 0.7 per cent away from acheiving an overall majority. 3. Proportional representation. The use of provincial PR within the same multi-member districts would have produced a much more proportional result but still excluded from parliament the DCN and MAG. The UDF would have picked up a seat in Erongo, and SWAPO would have gained three MPs over their actual total, but the DTA would have been unaffected. However, the breaking down of the twenty-sixmember Ovamboland district into four component parts containing seven to eleven members would have lost the DTA their one Ovamboland MP which they gained under the 1989 provincial list PR re-running. Thus, five districts containing over half the Namibian electorate would have been SWAPO fiefdoms with no minority representation in Windhoek. Finally, as in 1989, the use of the Hare quota for the national list PR calculation led to a tiny minority party winning a seat (the MAG with less than 1 per cent of the national vote) whereas under the Droop quota that seat would have gone to SWAPO.

8

Cross-Country Comparisons: Legislative and Executive Inclusion Throughout Chapter 8 (and indeed the whole work) runs the implicit assumption that my dependent variable, a positive trajectory for democratization and the concurrent absence of societal conflict, is deeply affected by my overarching intervening variable, the level of inclusiveness of various conflictual groups in parliament and government. As noted in the Introduction, such inclusiveness can be denned and measured in a number of ways, but here I limit myself to channels of representation and the analysis of the treatment of: attitudinal traits based on opinions and ideology (party voting patterns), and ascriptive traits such as race, ethnicity, and gender.1 Therefore, this chapter follows a number of avenues of analysis in trying to assess how 'inclusive or exclusive' each electoral system was by using the twelve real-life electoral observations and the counter-factual simulations as outlined in the previous chapter. I begin by measuring the level of inclusiveness of citizens in southern African parliaments along attitudinal lines by taking political parties as my unit of analysis and comparing the various indices of disproportionality, the effective number of elective and parliamentary parties, and the electoral system impact on party political composition of cabinets and whether governments are likely to be single-party or multiparty administrations. After coming to the conclusion that the choice of a plurality SMD or PR electoral system has an important impact on the level of legislative inclusiveness I proceed to analyse whether the type of PR formula matters. Inclusiveness is a factor which does not merely affect party leaders but has a psychological impact on voters. Thus, we also need to investigate the degree to which voters feel they are represented within the political system, the access they have to representatives, and their capacity to exercise their democratic right to cast a vote. The level of comfort for voters when they assess how government 'represents' them is particularly highlighted in an ethnically divided society by the degree of descriptive representation they

232

Cross-Country Comparisons

see in parliament. Therefore, I discuss how well each case study parliament mirrors the nation along ascriptive lines of gender, race, and ethnicity. Accessibility is also enhanced by the nature of representative distribution; i.e. do you have an MP 'of choice' to approach in your area/region in times of need? But even before that stage, the inclusion of a citizen within the electoral process is determined by access to the vote. The question of whether citizens believe that their vote matters can be measured in theory by the number of 'wasted votes' and in practice by the level of turnout and the number of spoilt (or 'invalid') ballots. I shall make the argument that, contrary to the conventional wisdom that spoilt ballots are an indication of a lack of political sophistication, they are in fact a better measure of the degree of alienation that the electorate feels with the political system as a whole. The evidence seems to show that invalid ballots, even in the highilliteracy countries of southern Africa, are not ballots with mistakes but ballots of protest. Finally, in this chapter, I analyse how the Horowitz AV-MMD electoral system proposal would have worked across all five case study countries and the way in which electoral systems are chosen—using an institutional choice analysis based on the history laid out in Chapters 5 and 6. However, I shall begin with what might be the most damning evidence against using plurality SMD systems in Africa, that is, the degree to which different electoral systems determine whether party seat shares are 'frozen or fluid'.

1. Frozen Party Systems The evidence from both actual and simulated plurality SMD elections shows that majoritarian constructs in Africa lead to 'frozen party' systems where the alternation of parties in government and opposition is not perceived as a likely, or natural, occurrence. The fact that oppositions are not a 'realistic alternative to the government of the day' leads precisely to Jung and Shapiro's fear that crises for the government become crises for the democratic regime.2 Table 8.1 illustrates that elections held under plurality in southern Africa have provided a paucity of key competitive battleground seats which are the lifeblood of the Westminster system of government. Writing as advocates of majoritarianism Courtney Jung and Ian Shapiro state that 'given the unpredictability of unconstrained PR versus the predictability of the first-past-the-post plurality system in generating two-party polities' they would choose plurality 'if the goal were to produce oppositional parliamentary politics'.3 But the evidence

233

Cross-Country Comparisons TABLE 8.1. Marginal seats in recent plurality elections Election

No. of %of Largest marginals*1 total party seats

Southern Africa 0 Zimbabwe 1995 South Africa 1994a 13(5) 4(1) Zimbabwe 1990 3(1) Zimbabwe 1985 6(4) Zambia 1991 12(5) Malawi 1994 5(2) Namibia 1994" 11(7) Zambia 1996 Established democracies USA 1994 88 Canada 1993 63 (37) UK 1992 171 (92) 157 India 1980 New Zealand 1993 30 (15)

0 3.2 3.3 3.7 4.0 6.8 6.9 7.3

20.2 21.4 26.3 29.7 30.3

Average Legislative vote in seats majority won (%)

ZANUPF ANC ZANUPF ZANUPF HMD UDF SWAPO MMD

82 80 81 91 81 72 85 66

Republican Liberal Conservative Congress National

65 56 52 52 44

114 166 114 28 100 -7 42 112

a

Simulation (see Ch. 7). The number of marginal seats won by the largest party appears in brackets. Note: Marginals denned as those seats won with majorities of less than 10% of the total district valid vote. Figures are for lower houses of parliament only. b

from southern Africa clearly shows that if there is any hope for some degree of opposition to one-party hegemony it comes from inclusive power-sharing arrangements and not exclusionary first-past-the-post electoral systems. Empirically, plurality elections in southern Africa give rise to the classic elements of a de facto one-party state where governing parties are insulated from oppositional challenges. In Malawi, Zambia 1991, and Zimbabwe, the largest parties won their seats with huge slices of the vote making them largely invulnerable. Marginal seats are categorized as those seats won with a majority of less than 10 per cent of the valid vote; these are then considered battleground seats, the winning or losing of which determines which party forms a government, as noted elsewhere. In the five established democracies shown in Table 8.1 between one-fifth and one-third of the seats were considered marginal but in southern Africa competitive seats have never amounted to more than a tiny fraction of the total legislative body. In Zimbabwe no seat has ever changed hands when it was contested in the following election by the incumbent party. Indeed, in all but one of the southern African cases the number of marginal seats

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won by the government (i.e. those likely to be at risk from opposition challenges in subsequent elections) is vastly outweighed by the government's majority. Only in Malawi is this not the case. In the key test case of South Africa the introduction of such a plurality SMD system would produce overwhelming ANC majorities at this point and long into the future. While one may argue that such majorities would be justified, one cannot assume that such overwhelming support for one particular party will strengthen, in any way, oppositional movements. What is far more likely is that a one-party system would emerge leading different currents of thought within the ANC to clash over policy, while it would remain unlikely that a strong opposition would arise as a result of a merger between various white African parties (NP, DP) or black African opposition groupings such as the PAC and AZAPO. In effect, plurality systems in heterogeneous societies freeze the number of seats won and create an environment where a political earthquake becomes necessary to jar loose the patterns of voting and party voting concentration. This finding is a serious blow to the case for plurality in South Africa because if plurality leads to a de facto one-party state, then there are no incentives for losing parties to remain loyal parliamentary opposition parties. In contrast, PR systems may be more sensitive to evolving vote patterns by facilitating shifting government coalitions or forcing single-party cabinets to include others when their support falls below an absolute majority of the population. And when simple legislative proportionality is not enough, proportionally constituted executives might be the answer. Indeed, Mattes and Gouws argue that the retention of the interim multiparty Government of National Unity in South Africa was crucial to ensuring some degree of competitiveness and electoral uncertainty. 'The national governing party (the ANC) would be forced to worry not only about shifts of support which might affect its majority/minority status (which, as we have demonstrated, is highly unlikely in the near future), but about any shift in support which could alter the crucial distribution of the number as well as the importance of cabinet seats among the political parties who meet the required minimum threshold.'4

2. Indices of Disproportionality In 'Elections in Agrarian Societies',5 Joel Barkan offers a strong challenge to the newly emerging conventional wisdom that proportional representation (PR) is the best electoral formula for the fledgeling— and often highly divided—democracies of Africa. First, he criticizes PR


235

for weakening (or even severing) the link between individual MPs and constituents. This, he argues, hinders the development of the 'vertical' dimension of democracy (that is, the representative relationship between elites and non-elites with a common political interest), 'greatly reducing] the prospects for the consolidation of democratic rule'.6 For Barkan, the relationship between representative and voter that obtains within a single-member district (SMD) best reflects the nature of agrarian societies in Africa, in which the strongest ties are those of kinship, neighbourhood, and land, and people 'define their [political] interests . . . on the basis of where they live'.7 While accepting that some degree of proportionality (indicating the protection of minority interests) is a normative good, he argues that the patterns of geographically polarized voting seen in agrarian societies enable SMD plurality systems to produce parliaments that are reasonably reflective of the distribution of the nationwide popular vote. Thus one can retain one of the underpinnings of consociational government (a proportionally constituted parliament) while avoiding the main drawback of PR: the detachment and lack of accountability of representatives elected from party lists. It is true that when voting patterns closely follow cleavages among groups defined by ascriptive traits (such as race, ethnicity, language, or religion), and when different groups cluster in different areas, elections held under SMD plurality can produce highly proportional results. As Barkan notes, the 1994 general election in Malawi gave rise to a parliament that closely mirrored the distribution of the national vote among the three main parties. An election's index of disproportionality (ID) measures the degree to which the distribution of parliamentary seats among parties diverges from the distribution of votes, with zero representing a perfectly proportional outcome. The score on that index for the Malawian election (2.1) was lower than the figures for plurality elections in all but three of the established democracies for which data are presented in Arend Lijphart's comprehensive Electoral Systems and Party Systems, which covers the period from 1945 to 1990.8 Similarly, the regionally polarized Zimbabwe parliamentary election of 1985 produced an ID of 2.5, and my own 'rerunning' of the 1994 parliamentary elections in South Africa and Namibia (which were held under PR systems) indicated that SMD plurality would have produced relatively proportional results, with IDs of 6.7 and 4.0, respectively. The ID for a given election tells us much about parliamentary composition. High IDs indicate a high likelihood that: (1) minority parties are receiving little or no representation; (2) larger parties are gaining 'seat bonuses' over and above their share of the popular vote; (3)

236


governments with 100 per cent of the executive power are being catapulted into office with less than 50 per cent of the popular vote; and (4) governments based on a simple majority of the popular vote are being awarded super-majority powers (as in South Africa, where the use of a plurality system would have provided the African National Congress (ANC), which received 62 per cent of the vote, with two-thirds of the seats in the National Assembly—enough to write the new constitution unfettered). Barkan maintains that the evidence from Malawi in 1994 and Zimbabwe in 1985 (and the hypothetical evidence from South Africa and Namibia) indicates that, in southern Africa, SMD plurality can provide 'the best of both worlds'—a proportionally constituted parliament, along with the representational advantages of a district-based system. And he goes as far as to say, 'in agrarian societies . . . PR does not produce electoral results that are significantly "fairer" or more inclusive than plurality elections based on SMDs.'9 Yet the results from Malawi and Zimbabwe have not been mirrored in established democracies, in Africa as a whole, or within southern Africa itself. At the end of the day, these are atypical cases, and we must take care not to be blinded by them. The five countries using SMD plurality for democratic elections in southern Africa since 1965 have, on average, experienced IDs in line with plurality elections in the rest of the world (see Table 8.2). The results have been slightly more proportional than those for Africa as a whole but slightly less proportional than those for the established democracies—Britain and the inheritors of her 'first-past-the-post' electoral system. Furthermore, the figures for PR elections show that, despite the low IDs for plurality in Malawi and Zimbabwe, when it comes to translating votes into seats, PR is not just marginally superior to SMD plurality but substantially so. The evidence from throughout Africa suggests that the use of an electoral system based on SMDs does not ensure the proportionality of electoral results. This is true even in agrarian societies, where voting patterns are geographically concentrated. It follows that if proportionality is a necessary feature of a consensus democracy, plurality cannot be relied on to secure it. Finally, the argument that PR consistently produces more inclusive results in southern Africa is supported by the simulation results as outlined in Chapter 5. While the simulations show plurality SMD giving lower IDs in the five case study countries (than in the real-life plurality elections in Botswana, Malawi, and Zambia), across the board PR is still substantially better at translating votes into seats (Table 8.3).


237

TABLE 8.2. Average IDs of SMD plurality and PR elections

SMD plurality PR

Southern Africa

Africa

Established democracies

11.7" 3.7b

13.3' 4.8d

9.8" 2.9f

8

Fourteen elections: Botswana, 1965-94; Lesotho, 1993; Malawi, 1994; Zambia, 1991 and 1996; Zimbabwe, 1985 (common roll), 1990, 1995. » Six elections: Angola, 1992; Mozambique, 1994; Namibia, 1989, 1994; South Africa, 1994; Zimbabwe 1980. c Twenty-one elections: Botswana, 1965-94; Gambia, 1966-92; Kenya, 1992; Lesotho, 1993; Malawi, 1994; Zambia, 1991 and 1996; Zimbabwe, 1985-95. d Thirteen elections: Angola, 1992; Benin, 1991; Burkina Faso, 1992; Burundi, 1993; Cape Verde, 1991; Madagascar, 1993; Mozambique, 1994; Namibia, 1989, 1994; Niger, 1993, 1995; South Africa, 1994; Zimbabwe, 1980. e Calculated from data for 78 elections held under plurality in five countries: Canada, 1945-88; India, 1952-84; New Zealand, 1946-90; United Kingdom, 1945-92; United States, 1946-94. f Calculated from data for 212 elections held under various PR formulas in 17 countries: Austria, 1945-90; Belgium, 1946-87; Costa Rica, 1953-90; Denmark, 1945-88; Finland, 1945-87; Germany, 1945-87; Iceland, 1946-87; Ireland, 1948-89; Israel, 1949-88; Italy, 1946-87; Luxembourg, 1945-89; Malta, 1947-87; the Netherlands, 1946-89; Norway, 1945-89; Portugal, 1975-89; Sweden, 1948-88; Switzerland, 1947-87. Note: Method of calculation: least squares index developed by Michael Gallagher. See Gallagher 1991: 33-51. Sources: For Africa as a whole, calculations based partly on data presented in Mozaffar 1995; for established democracies, calculations based on data presented in Lijphart 1994a, updated by author.

TABLE 8.3. Average indices of disproportionality in re-running southern African elections Plurality AV-SMD AV-MMD Prov. PR Nat. list PR

Country

No. of elections

Malawi Namibia South Africa Zambia Zimbabwe ID average11

1 (1994) 2.1 2 (1989-94) 7.0 1 (1994) 5.7 2 (1991-6) 14.9 4 (1980-95)" 10.3 9.2 —

a b

Common roll only. Across all ten elections.

2.6 7.0 4.7 13.6 10.1 7.8

5.5 7.0 6.2 19.8 12.2 11.4

2.5 4.1 0.6 1.1 3.1 2.6

0.4 1.0 0.2 0.8 0.6 0.6

TABLE £i.4. Government administration by electoral system

Malawi 1994 Namibia 1989 Namibia 1994 South Africa 1994 Zambia 1991 Zambia 1996 Zimbabwe 1980 Zimbabwe 1985 Zimbabwe 1990 Zimbabwe 1995

Plurality

AV-SMD

AV-MMD

Prov. PR

Nat. list PR

NOG UDF 4 seats short SWAPO majority of 8 seats SWAPO majority of 42 seats ANC majority two-thirds majority MMD majority of 100 seats MMD majority of 112 seats ZANU PF majority of 18 seats ZANU PF majority of 28 seats ZANU PF majority by 114 seats ZANU PF majority by 114 seats

NOC UDF 3 seats short SWAPO majority of 8 seats SWAPO majority of 42 seats ANC majority two-thirds majority MMD majority of 100 seats MMD majority of 102 seats ZANU PF majority of 18 seats ZANU PF majority of 28 seats ZANU PF majority by 114 seats ZANU PF majority by 114 seats

UDF majority of 7 seats SWAPO majority of 18 seats SWAPO majority of 50 seats ANC majority two-thirds majority MMD majority of 112 seats MMD majority of 138 seats ZANU PF majority of 28 seats ZANU PF majority of 30 seats ZANU PF majority no opposition ZANU PF majority no opposition

NOC UDF 10 seats short SWAPO majority of 16 seats SWAPO majority of 40 seats ANC majority Simple majority MMD majority of 74 seats MMD majority of 38 seats ZANU PF majority of 8 seats ZANU PF majority of 24 seats ZANU PF majority by 80 seats ZANU PF majority by 90 seats

NOC UDF 6 seats short SWAPO majority of 12 seats SWAPO majority of 36 seats ANC majority Simple majority MMD majority of 74 seats MMD majority of 36 seats ZANU PF majority of 2 seats ZANU PF majority of 24 seats ZANU PF majority by 74 seats ZANU PF majority by 78 seats

Note: NOC=No overall control.


239

3. Electoral System Effect on Executive (Cabinet) Formation At first glance Table 8.4 appears to indicate that the forming of governing administrations is affected little by varying electoral systems in southern Africa but, as in all good documents, the real interest lies in the fine print. While it is true to say that the use of alternative electoral rules would not have dramatically altered SWAPO dominance in Namibia, ZANU PF majorities in Zimbabwe between 1985 and 1995, and the MMD's overall majority in Zambia, in the Malawian, South African, and first non-racial Zimbabwean elections of 1980 the system would have had a more substantial impact. In Malawi the choice of electoral system would have determined the UDF's ability to rule alone, as a minority administration, or in coalition with another party. As noted in Chapter 5 President Muluzi would have been unlikely to have co-opted the leaders of AFORD if he had been awarded an absolute parliamentary majority (as would have been the case if AV-MMD had been used). In South Africa the choice determined whether President Mandela's ANC would have had the two-thirds National Assembly majority to be able to write the new constitution alone. Finally, using a national list PR system (without threshold) in Zimbabwe in 1980 would have given Prime Minister Mugabe's ZANU PF only a two-seat parliamentary majority, leaving them in a precarious position at a time of great instability and fragility for the new democratic institutions. Taken in combination with the constitutionally mandated 'Government of National Unity' in South Africa the choice of electoral system would have also changed the respective number of ministerial portfolios given to the three largest parties. If either of the plurality-majority systems had been used then the ANC would have been allocated one extra cabinet position at the expense of F. W. de Klerk's National Party.

4. Does the Type of PR Matter? As the psephologist might expect, district magnitude and the imposition of thresholds for representation have the most impact on seat distribution within PR electoral systems. Table 8.5 illustrates that provincially based PR (i.e. the allocation of seats in multi-member districts based on regional within-country boundaries) produce more disproportional results than straight national list PR (as practised in South Africa and Namibia) and reduce the number of parties represented in

240

Cross-Country Comparisons TABLE 8.5. The effect of district magnitude and threshold variation within PR systems

Malawi 1994 Namibia 1989 Namibia 1994 South Africa 1994 Zambia 1991 Zambia 1996 Zimbabwe 1980 Zimbabwe 1985 Zimbabwe 1990 Zimbabwe 1995 Mean

Provincial PR (smaller district magnitude)

Nat. list PR—Droop (no threshold)

Nat. list PR—Droop (5% threshold)

No. of parties

ID

No. of parties

ID

No. of parties

ID

3 5 3 6 2 5 3 3 3 5 3.8

2.5 5.2 3.0 0.8 0.5 1.7 3.6 2.1 2.6 4.5 2.6

3 6 4 7 3 5 5 4 4 9 5

0.4 1.1 1.0 0.3 0.5 1.1 0.8 0.5 0.2 1.1 0.6

3 3 2 3 2 4 3 2 2 3 2.6

0.4 5.3 3.6 3.9 0.7 6.1 2.9 3.4 1.3 3.9 3.1

parliament from an average of 5.0 to 3.7. Of equal impact would be the imposition of a 5 per cent threshold within the national list PR system (as used in Germany and Russia), which would cut the number of parliamentary parties in half and increase disproportionality fivefold. Most strikingly, with the inclusion of such a threshold, the number of parties in the first Namibian parliament would have been reduced from six to three, while the first South African Assembly would have only included three parties instead of the seven in the current parliament. When it comes to the calculation formula used for allocating seats in any PR system the differences are less dramatic, but still illustrate how this seemingly neutral mathematical choice can help determine the seat-winning success of tiny parties. As Table 8.6 illustrates, the Hare (largest remainder) and SainteLague (highest average) quotients provide the most proportional overall results and would allow even the smallest of parties to gain representation. If either method had been used in South Africa in 1994 (instead of the Droop quota) the African Muslim Party (AMP) and the African Moderate Congress Party (AMCP) would have both gained single seats at the expense of ANC and IFP. In Namibia in 1989 the Hare and Sainte-Lague formulas would have led to the election of a


241

TABLE 8.6. The effect of PR formula on the number of parties and index of disproportionality Largest remainder

Highest avera;ge

Hare

D'Hondt

Droop

No. of

Namibia 1989 Namibia 1994 South Africa 1994 Mean

No. of

Sainte-L ague

No. of

No. of

parties

ID

parties

ID

parties

ID

parties

ID

7 5 9 7

0.8 0.6 0.1 0.5

6 4 7 5.7

1.1 1.0 0.3 0.8

6 3 7 5.3

1.9 2.0 0.5 1.5

7 5 9 7

0.8 0.6 0.1 0.5

Notes: Hare quota=valid vote-rnumber of seats; Droop quota=valid vote-rnumber of seats plus one; D'Hondt method=party vote divided by 1, 2, 3, etc.; Sainte-Lague method=party vote divided by 1, 3, 5, etc. Nambian National Front (NNF) representative at the expense of SWAPO. In Namibia in 1994 (where the Hare quota was in actuality used) the Droop formula would have excluded the Monitor Action Group (MAG) from parliament, while the D'Hondt formula would have further excluded the Democratic Coalition of Namibia (DCN), leaving only three parties in the Assembly.

5. Descriptive Representation: The Presence of Women and Ethnic Minorities in Parliament and Government One view of 'what a representative parliament should be' can be characterized as the descriptive representation or 'mirror view', which argues that a legislature 'should be an exact portrait, in miniature, of the people at large, as it should think, feel, reason, and act like them'.10 Pitkin describes the theory in the following terms: [w]hat distinguishes a representative legislature from some other collection of people is its accurate part-by-part correspondence to the larger population for which it stands. If political representation is to be understood on the model of, say, representational art, then it seems to depend on a descriptive likeness between representatives and those for whom they stand. To be representative, a legislature must be an accurate map of the whole nation, a portrait of the people, a faithful echo of their voice, a mirror which reflects accurately the various parts of the public. What qualifies a man to represent is his representativeness—not what he does, but what he is, or is like.11

242


Logical problems with this theory of representation have been outlined by Grofman et al. (1982). First, it is not clear exactly which characteristics should be mirrored in a legislature when individuals are often bundles of divergent ascriptive, attitudinal, and behavioural traits.12 Even if we limit our mirror to the realm of ascriptive traits (as is most often the practice), then do we ensure that ethnic groups are mirrored in proportion to their numbers in society; or gays are given, say, 10 per cent of the legislature, or Catholics are awarded a certain amount of seats? And, to complicate matters further, how do we ensure descriptive representation for gay men who just happen to be white, and of the Catholic faith? As Grofman notes, 'The mirror view, carried to its extreme, would argue for a random selection process for legislative assemblies,'13 but few would argue that the best legislature is entirely typical of the electorate at large. Perhaps even fewer people would argue 'that a legislator [legislature] must be typical of his [its] constituents to be an effective representative of them'.14 The notion of descriptive representation appears to preclude an elector rationally choosing a candidate because the candidate 'possesses characteristics that the voter may lack but he nonetheless sees as desirable'.15 Finally, if the emphasis on descriptive representation is too strong, then, as in simple formalistic representational theory, the behaviour of the representatives once they have power is not an issue for discussion—achieving the correct composition of the legislature would become an end in itself. However, recognizing the persuasive objections to such a notion of representation previously outlined, it does seem apparent that some degree of descriptive representation is still an important objective in itself for any democratic political system. If the mechanics of a particular electoral system exclude to a large degree members of a particular ascriptive group (ethnic or otherwise), or women (members of a majority group), then more often than not that is damning evidence that the system is excluding the interests of that particular group from the structures of decision-making power. Clear evidence shows that majoritarian political systems disenfranchise women and members of minority ethnic groups, largely because they exclude members of such groups from being elected to positions of government.16 Such is the story of women and minorities in the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, New Zealand, India, and Canada. The following sections describe and analyse the cross-national variations of gender and ethnic diversity in southern African parliaments. The data on ethnoracial minorities are only available for South Africa as detailed statistics are almost impossible to find for Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Namibia; nevertheless the South African experience does


243

amply illustrate the way in which a high district magnitude closed list PR system can facilitate an ethnically diverse legislative body. However, I have gathered extensive data on the presence of women in nine southern African countries and eighteen parliaments, which is germane to the discussion of ethnicity for, as Taagepera notes, 'what we know about women's representation (and the obstacles that impede such representation) should be applicable to ethnoracial minorities'.17 This is especially true as patterns of ethnic vote concentration begin to break down and minority parties begin to draw support from more geographically diverse foundations.

(a) Women in Southern African Legislatures What explains the number of women members of parliament in the nine southern African democracies, and eighteen election observations, analysed in this chapter? In 1995 women made up 11.6 per cent of the membership of the 135 National Parliamentary Lower Chambers affiliated to the Inter-Parliamentary Union—ranging from Sweden's high of 40.4 per cent to twelve national legislatures which contained no women members at all. Throughout the world, and even in Sweden, women constitute a smaller proportion of parliamentary members than their numbers in society and they face a sliding scale of obstacles to election: barriers which Wilma Rule has summarized as 'narrow gender roles, restrictive religious doctrines, unequal laws and education, discriminatory socio-economic conditions, male-biased party leaders or other political elites and some voters, and "women unfriendly" election systems'.18 Furthermore, these barriers are 'typically interrelated and mutually reinforcing'.19 These obstacles can be separated into five component aspects of any given country's political system: (i) political culture, consisting of cultural norms and attitudes which are also reflected in the socio-economic and educational positions of women in society; (ii) the level of party competition for places in the legislature; (iii) the variety and nature of party ideologies in the system; (iv) the way parties are internally organized, and (v) the type of electoral system.20 Nevertheless, the electoral system has proved to be one of the 'most widely accepted factors which explains cross-cultural differences in the representation of women',21 for, as Rule notes, 'favorable societal conditions will not substitute for unfavorable electoral systems for women to reach their optimal representation in parliament and local legislatures. But unfavorable contextual conditions—including cultural biases and discriminatory practices—can be overcome to a great extent by alternate electoral systems.'22


244

TABLE 8.7. Women in southern African parliaments Country and election year

Electoral system

No. of women

%of assembly

World rankb

Africa rankb

Mozambique (1994) South Africa (1994)" Namibia (1994) Zimbabwe (1995) Botswana (1994) Zimbabwe (1990) Zimbabwe (1985) Angola (1992) Zimbabwe (1980) Zambia (1996) Zambia (1991) Namibia (1989) Botswana (1989) Malawi (1994) Botswana (1979) Botswana (1984) Lesotho (1993) Botswana (1974) Botswana (1969) Totals

List PR List PR List PR SMD SMD SMD SMD List PR List PR SMD SMD List PR SMD SMD SMD SMD SMD SMD SMD List PR SMD

63 100 13

25.2 25.0 18.1 15.3 11.8 11.7 11.0 9.5 8.0 8.0 7.2 6.9 5.9 5.6 5.4 5.1 4.6 0.0 0.0 15.5 7.1 9.7

9 10 20 26 47

2 3 5 8 13

— — 49 — — —

— — 14 — —

Overall Established democracies SMDd List PR « Overall

23' 4 14 11 21 8 12 9 5 2 10 2 2 3 0 0

— — 72 — — 77 — —

— — — 23 — — 25 — —

11.1 19.7 17.5

" An informal quota of 30% was operated by the ANC for their list composition. b Rankings for parliaments sitting in 1995. c Including Margaret Dongo, the independent MP elected for Harare South in Nov. 1995. d New Zealand (16.5%), Trinidad and Tobago (13.5%), Canada (13.2%), United States (10.8%), United Kingdom (9.2%), Barbados (3.6%). e Finland (39.0%), Norway (35.8%), Sweden (33.5%), Denmark (33.0%), the Netherlands (29.3%), Iceland (23.8%), Austria (21.3%), Germany (20.5%), Switzerland (17.5%), Spain (16.0%), Luxembourg (13.3%), Costa Rica (12.3%), Venezuela (10.0%), Belgium (9.4%), Italy (8.1%), Portugal (7.6%), Greece (5.3%). Note: For each country a figure for the parliamentary lower house, or National Assembly, is given. Sources: Rule 19946, Chikulo 1993, Cliffe et al. 1994, Inter-Parliamentary Union, Distribution of Seats between Men and Women (1945-95).


245

TABLE 8.8. Ethnoracial breakdown of the South African National Assembly (April 1994) Black

White

non-Zulu0 Zulu

English Afrikaans

Coloured Indian

Total

19 (7%) 23 (9%) 252 ANC 149 (59%) 21 (8%) 24 (9%) 16 (6%) 8 (10%) 4 (5%) 82 NP 8 (10%) 1 (1%) 7 (8%) 54 (66%) IFF 0 5 (12%) 43 1 (2%) 24 (56%) 7 (16%) 6 (14%) FF 0 9 (100%) 0 0 9 0 0 DP 0 6 (86%) 1 (14%) 0 0 0 7 0 1 (20%) 1 (20% PAC 3 (60%) 0 0 5 ACDP 0 1 (50%) 0 2 1 (50%) 0 0 86 29 Overall 162 46 44 33 400 (21.5%) (40.5%) (11.5%) (11%) 7% 52% 32,.5% 8% 100%

" Including Xhosa, Tswana, Sotho, Venda, Pedi, Shangaan, Ndebele, Swazi.

One can only assume that the chief determinant of women in parliament in southern Africa is electoral system type, as the PR legislatures are, on average, twice the size of parliaments elected under plurality SMD and n6 clear relationship exists between the number of women elected and either of the five alternative explanations offered by Lovenduski and Norris (regressions correlating the number of women in parliament with: legislative size (correlation coefficient (pearson r)= 0.73, £=4.2j5, significant at the &J5 per cent level), the effective number of parties (correlation coefficien|'(pearson r)=0.26, £=1.08, not statistically significant), the candidate to MP ratio (correlation coefficient (peajspn r)=-0.59, £=1.63, npi statistically significant), and discussions of the impact of party ideology and organization—all demonstrate a weak relationship at best).

(b) Ethnic Diversity in Southern African Legislatures As has been noted earlier the PR lists, combined with the nature of democratization and reconciliation in South Africa, facilitated one of the most ethnically diverse national assemblies seen in the world. The extent of diversity shown in Table 8.8 is, in actuality, underemphasized as the 'non-Zulu' black South African parliamentary body is further fragmented into Xhosa, Sotho, Venda, Tswana, Pedi, Swazi, Shangaan, and Ndebele speakers.

246


TABLE 8.9. Ethnoracial breakdown of the South African cabinet (April 1994) Black

ANC NP IFF Overall

White

Non-Zulu

Zulu

English

Afrikaans

12 0 0 12 (40%)

1 0 3 4 (13%)

1 1 0 2 (7%)

1

53%

5 0 6 (20%) 27%

Coloured

Indian

Total

1 1 0 2

4 0 0 4

20 7 3 30

7%

13%

100%

Notes: Including President Mandela and Deputy Presidents Mbeki and de Klerk. By March 1996 Abe Williams (the coloured National Party member of the cabinet) had been replaced by another coloured South African, Patrick McKenzie (formerly a minister in the Western Cape provincial government). In January 1996 Chris Liebenberg (a non-party political appointment) replaced the NP's Derek Keys as Minister of Finance, which allowed for the inclusion of John Mavuso (a black South African National Party official) as Minister of General Services. This increased the black membership of the South African cabinet to jg (58%) and decreased the white share to £ (26%).

The resulting cabinet of President Mandela was similarly diverse, drawn from the three largest seat-winning parties and made up of members of all main ethnic and cultural groups in the country. Taagepera argues that the 'Taagepera-Shugart advantage ratio' (% seats/% votes) can be just as usefully applied to the study of the representation of minorities and women, to show to what extent such groups either benefit or are short-changed by the system.23 Table 8.10 demonstrates how black and coloured South Africans are relatively disadvantaged in the National Assembly and cabinet while white and Indian South Africans are overrepresented in relation to their population share. It is interesting to note the similarity in figures for the legislature and executive, implying that the principle of inclusion and diversity has (unusually) been extended to the highest levels of the political system, but perhaps most striking is the fact that Indians are substantially overrepresented in the National Assembly (by a ratio of over 300 per cent) but even more fortunate in the cabinet (by an advantage ratio of over 500 per cent). And these figures do not include the Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the South African Parliament who are both Indian South Africans. Internally within the black South African


247

TABLE 8.10. Advantage ratio, by race, for South African legislature and executive Executive

Legislatiare

Black Zulu Non-Zulu White Coloured Indian

Assembly (%)

Actual (%)

Advantaj*e ratio

Cabinet; (%)

Actual (%)

Advantage ratio

52.0 11.5 40.5 32.5 7.2 8.2

75.8 20.5 55.3 13.2 8.5 2.5

0.69 0.56 0.73 2.46 0.85 3.28

53.3 13.0 40.0 26.7 6.7 13.3

75.8 20.5 55.3 13.2 8.5 2.5

0.70 0.63 0.72 2.02 0.79 5.32

community Zulus are proportionately underrepresented in both the National Assembly and cabinet, while non-Zulus, still disadvantaged, are dealt a slightly better hand. Nevertheless, this comparison lacks the sophistication of being able to break down the non-Zulu South African population into its various groups (which is, as apartheid South Africa found to its cost, an imprecise and dubious exercise to undertake in the first place). Comparisons with the United States and United Kingdom are not entirely fair as both of those countries have a far smaller minority population and the context of discrimination is different, but nevertheless the advantage ratio for the USA shows its House of Representatives underrepresenting African, Latino, and Asian Americans while slightly overrepresenting white Americans. However, the advantage ratios in the UK's House of Commons place the South African National Assembly in an even better light as the UK does particularly badly if the objective is to secure ethnic minority representation in rough proportions to each group's population share as a whole. The three Afro-Caribbean, and three Indian subcontinent, British MPs represent (dis)advantage ratios of 0.29 and 0.17 respectively. However, it may be too early to place the credit for South Africa's parliamentary diversity entirely in the hands of her list PR electoral system as Zimbabwe has demonstrated similar degrees of ethnic diversity by using alternative methods within the confines of a plurality SMD system. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s the Zimbabwean parliament included white, Shona, and Ndebele Zimbabweans in both the legislature and cabinet. In the 1980 and 1985 elections twenty seats

248

Cross-Country Comparisons TABLE 8.11. Advantage ratio, by race, for UK and US legislatures United Kingdom House of Commons 1992

White Black Latino Asian a

United States House of Representatives 1992

Assembly (%)

Actual (%)

Advantage ratio

Assembl;y (%)

Actual (%)

Advantage ratio

99.02 0.46 — 0.46"

94.5 1.6 — 2.7"

1.05 0.29 — 0.17"

85.7 9.0 4.4 0.9

77.7 11.8 7.5 3.0

1.10 0.76 0.59 0.30

Those Britons of Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi extraction.

(20 per cent) were reserved for whites against a white population which measured less than 3 per cent of the national total. Within the black community ZANU PF and PF-ZAPU's respective dominance among the Shona and Ndebele meant that these communities were proportionately represented in parliament, and after 1987 (and the merger of Mugabe's ZANU with Nkomo's ZAPU) meant that ZANU PF candidates and MPs in Matabeleland were mostly Ndebele, while they were predominantly Shona in the rest of the country (whites were often appointed as MPs through the thirty discretionary spots allocated by President Mugabe). Similarly, Malawi's 1994 plurality SMD parliament may have been regionally fragmented and adversarial, but it did contain a relatively good spread of Northerners, Southerners, and those from the Centre, along with Chichewa, Tumbuka, and Yao speakers. Finally, one of the most remarkable features of all southern African cabinets (elected though democratic or semi-democratic means) has been the consistent inclusion of white ministers in black majority cabinets. All eleven of the cabinets shown in Table 8.12 had white ministers and in all but four the Agricultural portfolio was given to a white citizen of the country. The fact that Agriculture, Finance and Commerce, and Tourism feature most prominently on the list of positions given to whites illustrates how these appointments were often seen as confidence-building signals by the black presidents who made them and by the white minorities for whose consumption the appointments were primarily made. It is also true to say that whites were often included in African cabinets to reassure international investors such as the IMF and World Bank.


249

TABLE 8.12. White ministers in southern African cabinets (1980-1994) Whites in cabinet

White population i

Portfolios

Agriculture, Finance, Constitutional Development, Housing, Land, Environment, Energy Agriculture, Finance, Tourism and Environment Health, Transport, Mining Agriculture, Commerce and Industry Agriculture Agriculture, Health Agriculture Tourism and Environment Commerce and Tourism Agriculture without portfolio

No.

%

South Africa 1994

7/27

26

13.2

Namibia 1989

3/19

16

6.0

Zimbabwe 1990 Zimbabwe 1980

3/21 2/22

14 9

1.4 2.9

Botswana 1994 Zimbabwe 1995 Mozambique 1994 Namibia 1994 Malawi 1994 Zambia 1991 Zimbabwe 1985

1/11 2/23 1/20 1/21 1/22 1/25 1/26

9 9 5 5 4 4 4

>3.0 >1.0 >1.0 6.0 >1.0 5.3 1.5

6. Regional Fiefdoms of Party Support As Barkan points out, accountability and dialogue between representatives and constituents are crucial to any properly functioning democracy. And it is true that the type of national, large-district PR used in South Africa and Namibia has weakened the link between elites and non-elites, giving rise to fears of a 'suspended state . . . disconnected from the population'.24 Yet instituting an electoral system based on SMDs may not always be the best way to overcome such obstacles to the fulfilment of the vertical dimension of democracy. First, the overwhelming regional concentration of voting patterns throughout Africa gives rise to SMDs that are little more than pocket boroughs of this or that party. One intuitive hypothesis is that the less competitive the seat, the lower the quality of the candidates, and therefore the less able the elected MP will be to advocate his or her constituents' needs. This 'yellow dog* syndrome (so called because voters would sooner elect

250

Cross-Country Comparisons TABLE 8.13. The multiplicity of party representation by region

AV-S:MD

Plura.lity

Malawi 1994 Districts % seats Namibia 1989 Districts % seats Namibia 1994 Districts % seats S. Africa 1994 Districts % seats Zambia 1991 Districts % seats Zambia 1996 Districts % seats Zimbabwe 1980 Districts % seats Zimbabwe 1985 Districts % seats Zimbabwe 1990 Districts % seats Zimbabwe 1995 Districts % seats Total

AV-MMD

Prov. PR

SP

TP

MP

SP

TP

MP

SP

TP

MP

SP

TP

MP

1/3

1/3 43

1/3 38

1/3 19

1/3 43

1/3 38

1/3 19

2/3 81

— —

— —

— —

3/3 100

— —

19

2/10 8/10 — —

2/10 8/10 12 88

— —

10/10 100

— —

— —

6/13 7/13 — 58 42 —

6/13 7/13 58 42

— —

13/13 100

— —

— —

4/9 38

4/9 41

1/9 20

4/9 38

4/9 41

1/9 20

5/9 46

3/9 1/9 34 20

— —

6/9 70

3/9 30

— —

6/9 70

3/9 30

— —

9/9 100

— —

— —

— —

9/9 100

— —

6/9 73

2/9 16

1/9 11

5/9 60

2/9 21

2/9 19

8/9 92

1/9 — 8 —

— —

— —

9/9 100

6/8 71

2/8 29

— —

6/8 71

2/8 29

— —

8/8 100

— —

— —

2/8

15

2/8 27

4/8 58

7/8 86

1/8 14

— —

7/8 86

1/8 14

— —

8/8 100

— —

— —

4/8 38

4/8 62

— —

7/8 87

— —

1/8 13

7/8 87

— —

1/8 13

8/8 100

— —

— —

1/8

6

6/8 81

1/8 13

8/10 77 59

2/10 — 23 — 32 8

8/10 77 57

2/10 — 23 — 33 9

10/10 100 85

— — 12

— — 2

3/10 38 15

12

88

6/10 4/10 65 35

5/13 7/13 1/13 54 39 7

1/9 2

8/9 98

4/10 3/10

29

33

40

44

Note: SP=single party, TP=two party, MP=multi-party. Excluding independents.

a yellow dog than someone from an opposing party) has been noted throughout the democracies that traditionally have used SMD plurality, especially the United States (where the term was coined) and the United Kingdom. Perhaps even more striking is the cross-country evidence from Chapter 7 as it relates to 'regional fiefdoms' of party support where large numbers of minority supporters are excluded from easy access to an MP from their party of choice. Table 8.13 shows that under both majoritarian electoral systems (plurality SMD and the alternative vote


251

in single-member districts) regions constituting more than half the total seats would be one-party fiefdoms with no minority party representatives. Only 8 per cent of the voters would live in regions represented by more than two parties (the Western Province of Zambia 1996, the KwaZulu Region of South Africa in 1994, the Central Region of Malawi in 1994, and the Manicaland district of Zimbabwe in 1990). The AV-MMD simulations show an even more striking pattern of oneparty fiefdoms with an average of 85 per cent of voters residing in districts controlled absolutely by a single party. Indeed, in Zambia, Namibia, and Zimbabwe (1980, 1985, 1990, and 1995) there were no two- or multiparty districts. However, if all elections had been run under a form of regionally allocated proportional representation the patterns of single-party hegemony would have been disrupted. Under these simulations only 15 per cent of voters would not have had multiparty representation in their area, while nearly half of the electorate would have had access to representatives of three or more parties. These findings are important because adequate constituency representation is not simply a matter of advocating the interests of 50, 60, or even 80 per cent of a given community; it is about allowing supporters of both majority and minority parties within a certain area to have their views articulated in parliament. In practice in Africa, SMD plurality has accentuated regional fiefdoms of party dominance to the extent that 25 per cent of the voters of Zambia's Eastern Province (who happened not to support the United National Independence Party (UNIP)), 15 per cent of Malawi's Northern Region (who voted against the Alliance for Democracy (AFORD)), and virtually the entire opposition vote of Zimbabwe (which hovered around 19 per cent in both 1990 and 1995) were prevented from having a direct say in legislative affairs. The constitutional engineer who seeks to craft a dynamic and inclusive representative democracy must look somewhere in between the extremes of the remote and unaccountable representation that characterizes national list PR and the exclusionary and all too often complacent representation provided by MPs elected from 'safe' SMDs. The debate currently taking place within South Africa's Constitutional Assembly highlights both the dissatisfaction with large-district list PR and the ways in which PR systems can be adapted to provide more accountable and responsive representation. In South Africa, a number of options are on the table. One is to introduce SMDs for electing a proportion of the National Assembly (perhaps half), with the rest of the MPs being elected from regionally based lists. This would resemble the German system in that, overall, the National Assembly would reflect near proportionality between votes cast and seats won, but a single person would represent each district.

252


7. Voter Accessibility Much of the literature analysing turnout in African democracies has concentrated upon the degree to which voters are precluded from exercising the franchise due to political violence or intimidation, or administrative manoeuvres designed to exclude a certain group or area from the vote. However, less has been said about two other important barriers to voting, (i) the degree of difficulty involved in the practical process of casting a ballot (what we might call a mechanical barrier), which is especially important in the high-illiteracy, developing nations of southern Africa, and (ii) a psychological barrier: the level of 'wasted votes' in a given area. This figure can be used by minority party supporters as an indication of whether their individual ballot can, and will, make a difference to the final result, and thus whether the costs of voting outweigh the perceived benefits. It has been widely thought that the inability of third-party voters to elect candidates of choice in plurality SMD systems alienates a section of the electorate from exercising their democratic prerogative, while under PR systems, where there are far fewer wasted votes, minority supporters are more likely to turn out.

(a) Spoilt Ballots The first question of accessibility, i.e. the degree of difficulty of the ballot, has had profound practical implications for electoral system design in southern Africa. Some of the most innovative institutional designs for conflict mitigation in the new South Africa involved electoral systems based on preference voting or within-party candidate choice, but these were uniformly ruled 'unworkable' by an ANC-dominated negotiating committee which feared that anything beyond the most simplistic X vote on a single ballot would disadvantage its, primarily less educated, constituency in which illiteracy and innumeracy was estimated as high as 50 per cent.25 This belief directly impacted upon the details of the draft interim constitution because it ruled out electoral systems where the voter could discriminate between candidates expressing various ideologies within a single party, or systems which would encourage cross-cutting cleavages and give incentives for ethnically or regionally based parties to appeal outside their homogeneous support base. Indeed the ANC's chief objection against having two ballot papers in the April 1994 elections (one national, one provincial) was that it would be too complicated for their voters to understand. Not only did this split ballot prove to be influential to the final


253

results26 but the low spoilt ballot paper rate implied that the electorate deserved much more kudos for their voting sophistication than the ANC strategists gave them credit for. Indeed, part of the problem of designing voting systems in Africa is that all too often educational illiteracy is conflated with political illiteracy; in South Africa, for example, this is certainly an error. The child of the Soweto uprisings of 1976 may not have had much formal schooling but she or he can debate the political nuances of the day with the best of the 'educated' analysts. One indicator often used to illustrate the difficulty of a voting system is the number of 'spoilt' or 'invalid'27 ballot papers recorded in the final tally. Traditionally ballot papers are ruled invalid if no clear preference can be gleaned or there is an administrative error in the casting (e.g. the paper does not show an official stamp), but often ballots are spoilt deliberately by voters unhappy with a particular party or candidate or alienated from the political system in general. Indeed, the evidence suggests that, while there are within-country examples of ballot complexity affecting the number of invalid votes, multi-country comparative evidence indicates that spoilt ballots are much better seen as indicators of protest than of voter error. Table 8.14 appears to show little correlation between straightforward electoral system type and the number of spoilt ballots, indicating that voters (both literate and illiterate) find PR and SMD systems equally easy to use. The mean for the 21 PR systems of 1.9 per cent is just slightly below the average of 2.0 per cent for all 32 cases analysed and again only marginally better than the 2.2 per cent rate of the seven plurality SMD systems. The three preference voting systems (Australia, Ireland, and Malta) have a mean of 1.4 per cent, while the average for the five southern African case studies is 2.5 per cent. Within PR systems, the seventeen cases where the voter is able to choose between candidates produce a spoilt ballot paper rate of 2.0 per cent, while the five more simplistic and restrictive closed list systems gave rise to an identical rate. If most spoilt ballots are voting errors then we would expect the spoilt rate to rise as illiteracy rises, but the regression results given in Table 8.14 demonstrate no clear correlation.28 Zimbabwe and Zambia, with higher levels of spoilt ballots, do indeed have lower literacy rates, but in Belgium and Luxembourg (with the highest spoilt rates) illiteracy is almost non-existent. In fact the split between 'white' and 'common' voters' rolls in the 1980 Zimbabwean elections provides further evidence that literacy is not necessarily a determining factor. The common role (where literacy was approximately 70 per cent) gave rise to a spoilt ballot rate of 2.6 per cent while the white roll (where literacy was in the high 90 percentile range) led to almost double the rate, 4.8

254

Cross-Country Comparisons TABLE 8.14. Spoilt ballot paper/invalid vote rates for established democracies and southern African democracies

Country

Elections

Invalid vote (%)

Electoral system

Literacy rate (%)

ENPP

Turnout (%)

United Kingdom Norway Denmark Finland Malta Sweden New Zealand Greece" South Africa Ireland Canada Austria" Japan Switzerland

1964-87 (13) 1945-85 (11) 1945-88 (19) 1945-87 (13) 1947-87 (11) 1948-88 (14) 1946-87 (15) 1946-89 (14) 1994 (1) 1948-89 (14) 1945-88 (15) 1945-86 (13) 1946-86 (17) 1947-87 (11) 1989-94 (2) 1946-87 (14) 1946-86 (13) 1977-86 (4) 1945-6 (3) 1980 (1) 1949-88 (12) 1949-87 (11) 1994 (1) 1958-88 (11) 1946-87 (18) 1952-80 (7) 1975-87 (7) 1991-6 (2) 1946-87 (11) 1985-95 (3) 1948-89 (11) 1946-87 (16)

0.2 0.4 0.5 0.5 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.9 1.0 1.0 1.1

Plurality SMD PR—list PR—list PR—list PR— STV PR— list Plurality SMD PR—list PR—list PR—STV Plurality SMD PR—list SNTV PR— list PR—list PR—list PR—list PR—list PR—list PR— list PR—list PR—list Plurality SMD

99 100 99 100 84 99 99 93 76

2.13 3.20 4.52 5.03 2.42 3.25 1.97 2.14 2.21 2.78 2.37 2.27 3.06 5.10 2.05 3.70 4.66 2.68 4.23 1.75 4.44 3.21 2.69 3.50 2.50 2.22 3.05 1.35 3.59 1.19 3.30 4.63

76.9 81.2 85.8 77.9 85.5 86.2 89.5 80.0 86.0 74.1 75.4 93.6 72.5 62.7 97.0 90.1 89.8 73.9 79.9 n.a. 80.8 86.9 80.0 76.3 94.3 54.7 82.1 45.0 91.9 re. 90.2 92.7

1.92

59.7

Namibia Iceland The Netherlands" Spain France 1 Zimbabwe 1 Israel West Germany Malawi France 2 Australia" India Portugal Zambia Italy" Zimbabwe 2 Luxembourg" Belgium"

1.3 1.3 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.7 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.3 2.4 2.7 3.2 3.5 3.7 4.2 4.7 5.8 6.5

TBS AV-SMD Plurality SMD PR—list Plurality SMD PR— list Plurality SMD PR—list PR—list

99 99 98 100 99 58 100 99 97 99 74 92 99 41 99 100 52 85 76 97 74 100 98

328 United States Mean

observations 1948-80

n.a. 2.1 (33) 1.9 (21) 2.4 (8) 3.9 (7) 1.8 (26)

Plurality SMD Overall

97 93

PR Plurality Compulsory voting Non-compulsory voting

• Compulsory vote (Austria in four districts, the Netherlands 1925-67 compulsory=3.3, 1971-81 non-compulsory 0.6%). Notes: SNTV=single non-transferable vote; PR—STV=proportional representation—single transferable vote; AV~SMD=:alternative vote—single-member district; TBS=two-ballot system; ENPP=effective number of parliamentary parties.


255

per cent. Finally, the low invalid rates found in Namibia in South Africa seem to prove the point that functional illiteracy is not synonymous with political illiteracy. Contrary to conventional wisdom as it relates to electoral law design in fledgeling democracies the strong circumstantial evidence points to spoilt ballots not being a failure of the system to record the preferences of all its voters, but rather an alternative (but none the less valid) expression of the voters' discontent with the party system as a whole. A more sophisticated and desirable electoral system would have a box for abstentions (or 'reopen nominations' as it is known in British student union elections) and that box would be treated like any other candidate for the purposes of the count. If 'reopen nominations' was elected (in either a single-member or multi-member district) then the nominations for that office would be reopened and the election re-run. The evidence also implies that a more sophisticated dual vote or preference vote should not necessarily be deemed 'unworkable' in a society with minimal democratic experience or one which is burdened with higher than average illiteracy rates. The benefits of the alternative vote and single transferable vote may still be viable options for the new democracies of southern Africa.29 Finally, the argument that 'first elections' are atypical and are therefore of little analytical use can be refuted when it comes to the study of spoilt ballots. The mean percentage for twelve first elections held after long periods of one-party authoritarian rule is 2.9, which falls in the mid-range of the long-term rates for developed nations. Italy's post-Mussolini spoilt ballot rate in 1949 was 7.7 per cent and Portugal's post-Salazar rate in 1975 reached 6.9 per cent, but Austria's post-Hitler 1945 rate was only 1.1 per cent and Spain's 1977 post-Franco rate was a country low of 1.7 per cent.30 (6) Wasted Votes The incidence of wasted votes, shown in Table 8.15, provides overwhelming evidence that, if the propensity to vote declines the less the voter feels he or she can impact upon the final result, plurality SMD systems create a psychological barrier that far surpasses any

None of the three measurable independent variables proved to be statistically significant in a simultaneous regression equation. The standardized regression coefficients were: literacy (—0.21, T=1.0), ENPP (0.13, T=0.6), and turnout (0.04, T=0.2). Sources: Mackie and Rose 1982; Lijphart 1994a; The 1994 Information Please Almanac (Boston: Houghton Mifflin).

256

Cross-Country Comparisons TABLE 8.15. The incidence of wasted votes across nine case study elections % wasted votes PR systems Namibia 1989 Namibia 1994 South Africa 1994 Zimbabwe 1980 PR mean Plurality SMD systems Malawi 1994 Zambia 1991 Zambia 1996 Zimbabwe 1985 Zimbabwe 1990 Zimbabwe 1995 Plurality mean

1.0 1.0 0.8 4.6 1.8

23.4 18.5 36.1 9.9 19.4 17.3 20.8

Note: Wasted votes are considered to be those votes cast which did not ultimately count towards the election of a particular candidate or a party's list of candidates.

disincentives found under PR systems. In the six plurality SMD case studies between one-tenth and over one-third of all ballots did not go towards the election of a candidate, and in effect the casting of these ballots was irrelevant to the mechanical electoral process.31 In the PR systems on average over 98 per cent of votes cast helped to elect a candidate and those 'wasted votes' which did occur were cast for the very smallest fringe parties who could not reach 0.25 per cent of the national vote in South Africa and 0.8 per cent in Namibia. The analysis of the 'multiplicity of party representation by region' found in Table 8.13 further supports the hypothesis that PR systems are more accessible than plurality SMD systems. In the four PR systems not only did 98 per cent of voters impact on the final seat shares but, on a provincial basis, over 80 per cent of the electorate were regionally represented in the national parliament by members of two or more parties—thus giving visible confirmation of the fact that it was worth minority supporters casting their ballots. Conversely, in nearly onehalf of the regions in the six plurality SMD systems one party dominated all the representatives, leaving minority supporters not only with wasted votes in their own constituency but no like-minded representatives from neighbouring areas.


257

8. Summary of the Horowitz AV-MMD Proposal in Hypothetical Action The theory behind Donald Horowitz's proposal of the alternative vote in multi-member districts has been fully discussed in Chapter 3, but before embarking on an analysis of the real-life and simulated evidence of how his proposal has worked in Australia, and would have worked in southern Africa, it is useful to reiterate the benefits that he attributes to AV-MMD. First, he argues that the alternative vote is 'considerably better at insuring proportionality' than plurality SMD, which in turn ensures the party proliferation which is required to make his system work for accommodation.32 Indeed, Horowitz argues that it is correct to fear plurality's tendency 'to underrepresent minorities and . . . produce legislative majorities from mere pluralities of voters'33 and 'it is a virtue that AV does not provide as much of a seat bonus as do plurality systems'.34 Second, he argues that the successful representation of an ethnic minority's views may not be necessarily best achieved by guaranteeing proportionate office holding for all groups. Rather what is required is a system that encourages broadly based moderate political parties which are attentive to the needs of a variety of minority and majority groupings. The incentives would come from the electoral system (AV-MMD), the party context (multiparty proliferation) with no single party able to win on an absolute majority of the vote, and a ballot paper (preference voting) which facilitates the transfer of lower preferences between parties, or 'vote-pooling'. As Horowitz notes, 'To induce interethnic vote exchange, three elements are needed: (a) party proliferation, (b) heterogeneous constituencies, and (c) electoral incentives that make vote pooling politically profitable.'35 When it comes to the evidence from the AV-MMD simulations in Chapter 7 the proponent of AV-MMD might well argue it is unfair to assume that preferences would remain constant, when the rationale behind 'vote-pooling' is that it allows the expression of a more sophisticated preference which ranks candidates and parties and can change the nature of political parties, their support base, and the way in which they appeal to the electorate. However, it is important to note that Horowitz does not attribute to vote-pooling the power to change deeply held first preferences (i.e. the vote for a party which represents one's cultural or ideological interests); rather, under the right conditions, it encourages parties to appeal outside their ethnic base to the lower preferences of opposing party supporters. The key phrase here is 'under the right conditions'—for Horowitz's plan to work, multiparty

258


proliferation (on a district level) is required and constituencies must be heterogeneous rather than homogeneous. As he notes when citing Richard Rose on the case of Northern Ireland, if the conditions are wrong then vote-pooling will fail. In the Irish case there were 'no incentives to seek votes across the religious divide because the chances of winning an extra seat by adding a few votes from the other community were much less than the chances of losing votes by appearing "soft" on the issues that were of central concern within the party's home community.'36 The conditions within South Africa, and southern Africa as a whole (perhaps with the exception of Namibia in 1989), are even more detrimental to the successful working of vote-pooling under AVMMD because there is no regional party proliferation to speak of. If a single party can win all the seats in a district with 80-90 per cent of the votes, as is often the case, then, not only are there no incentives for parties to appeal outside their traditional base, but any 'split ticket ballots' which do occur (i.e. ballots which listed alternative party candidates as second or lower preferences) become irrelevant to the final count. Once a party (or its slate of candidates) has won over 50 per cent of a district's votes then all other parties are excluded from representation. Horowitz sums up, 'If a party can win on first preferences, second preferences are irrelevant.'37 What about Horowitz's foundational claim that AV-MMD is more proportional than plurality SMD and gives rise to the level of party proliferation needed for vote-pooling incentives to work? As shown in Table 8.3, the ten case study simulations found the index of disproportionality of AV-MMD to be consistently higher than PR and plurality SMD systems, and AV-MMD led to the largest seat bonuses for the dominant parties, in the case of Malawi awarding the UDF a parliamentary majority on a plurality of the vote, something that plurality SMD did not even achieve, and in Zimbabwe in 1990 and 1995 leading to a situation where all opposition parties to ZANU PF were excluded from parliamentary representation. This hypothetical evidence is backed up by the only real-life experience of AV-MMD—the results of ten elections for the Australian Senate between the First and Second World Wars. As Table 8.16 shows, AV-MMD in Australia produced extremely high IDs (a mean of 29.4, which is more than double the average for most plurality SMD systems in Western Europe). When it came to seat bonuses Wright summed up the failures of the system as being 'spectacular'. 'In all ten elections . . . the results were unsatisfactory. On two occasions parties with less than half the votes won majorities of seats, and on eight occasions parties or coalitions with more than 40 per cent of the votes won three seats (or less than 15 per cent).


259

TABLE 8.16. Australian Senate elections 1919-1946 held under AV-MMD Election year

Adjusted index of disproportionality

1919 1922 1925 1928 1931 1934 1937 1940 1943 1946 Mean

35.5 14.0 45.4 8.9 24.7 40.8 39.7 10.3 42.3 32.5 29.4

Note: I am indebted to Arend Lijphart for supplying me with these figures. The adjusted figures are based on final count votes and on the assumption of equal apportionment.

In 1948 the system was replaced by a quota-preferential system of PR (STV).'38 The high levels of disproportionality shown by AV-MMD clearly impacts on the degree of party proliferation which, as Horowitz notes, is the lifeblood of any vote-pooling scheme. Table 8.17 illustrates how AV-MMD in southern Africa would reduce already limited party competition to a level where proliferation would be almost non-existent. In all but one of the case studies AV-MMD would have reduced the number of parliamentary parties, excluding minority groupings with less than 10 per cent of the national vote. In Namibia in 1989 the number of parties would have been reduced from seven to two, and in South Africa in 1994 from seven to three. The effective number of parliamentary parties index (ENPP), measuring the strength of parliamentary groups, would be uniformly reduced if AV-MMD had been in operation. Again these findings are supported by the Australian evidence. In the 1925 Senate elections Labour, with 45 per cent of the votes, failed to win a single seat, while in 1943 the Labour Party actually won all nineteen seats up for election with 55 per cent of the votes. Finally, on the district level (where seats must be heterogeneous for vote-pooling incentives to work) AV-MMD clearly fails the test. Table 8.13, 'The Multiplicity of Party Representation by Region', shows that in over 85 per cent of all regions in the five southern African case studies, one party would win all the parliamentary seats with vote shares often into the 90 per cent range. This relates to the number of seats

260

Cross-Country Comparisons TABLE 8.17. Number of parliamentary parties in case studies and AV-MMD simulations

Malawi (1994) Namibia (1989) Namibia (1994) South Africa (1994) Zambia (1991) Zambia (1996) Zimbabwe (1980) Zimbabwe (1985) Zimbabwe (1990) Zimbabwe (1995) Mean

AV-MMD no. of parties

Actual no. of parties

AV-MMD ENPP

Actual ENPP

3 2 2 3 2 2 2 2 1 1 2

3 7 5 7 2 4 3 3 3 3 4

2.56 1.92 1.46 1.82 1.28 1.08 1.47 1.43 1 1 1.50

2.69 2.42 1.69 2.21 1.38 1.32 1.75 1.48 1.06 1.04 1.71

TABLE 8.18. Districts where AV-MMD could make a difference

Namibia (1989) Namibia (1994) South Africa (1994) Malawi (1994) Zambia (1991) Zambia (1996) Zimbabwe (1980) Zimbabwe (1985) Zimbabwe (1990) Zimbabwe (1995)

No. of MMDs

No. of seats

%

of legislature

10 3 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

28/72 11/72 19/400 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

38.9 15.3 4.7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

where vote-pooling incentives for conciliatory behaviour could kick in. As Horowitz notes, eligible seats are ones in which no single party can garner an absolute majority of the votes (or has the perception that they can win an absolute majority). However, only in Namibia and South Africa were there degrees of regional party vote proliferation, and only in Namibia in 1989 was there anything like the number of seats needed to allow vote-pooling incentives to have an impact on the overall national results. All the evidence of the workings of AV-MMD refutes the benefits that Horowitz anoints the system with in A Democratic South Africa?


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The proposal might warrant serious consideration only when party systems have become markedly more fluid and fragmented, or the patterns of cultural groups concentrated in homogeneous areas have broken down. It must be said that neither occurrence looks likely in the foreseeable future.

9. An Institutional Choice Analysis Timothy Sisk argues that, when discussing democratization and institutional design, analytical priority should be given to bargaining processes, 'on what basis do political actors choose among alternative institutions', rather than concentrating on institutional structures which may be most appropriate in theory.39 Within his institutional choice approach, 'knowing why actors make the choices they make, students of political change can describe the process of negotiated transition, explain the positions various actors take in negotiations, and make some tentative predictions about outcomes . . . Such an analysis may even provide clues as to whether such a democracy can be consolidated.'40 In the South African case Sisk argues that the actors' preferences converged on a set of democratic institutions which were perceived as 'fair' by key negotiating parties, given their 'history, ideology, interests, and power and the effects of strategic interaction'.41 The study of how institutions come into being (institutional choice) versus how they might be, to best alleviate societal conflict (constitutional engineering), are not mutually incompatible disciplines, but a consideration of the strategic negotiation game which occurs during the transition to democracy does help us to understand the prospects for democratic consolidation under the rules currently set up to structure political competition. Co-opting his models I shall concentrate upon an institutional choice explanation of the adoption of electoral rules, but I add one important component to Sisk's study of South Africa in my discussion of southern Africa as a whole; which is the recognition that often ignorance of the consequences of electoral laws becomes a key factor in the politics of institutional choice. South Africa. One key component of Sisk's institutional choice argument is that the South African conflict only became solvable as it moved from a zero-sum to a positive sum dynamic, when 'the balance of power between the dominant white minority and the increasingly empowered black majority reached a level of approximate parity'.42 The degree of uncertainty that political parties felt about their future position in the new order led to a convergence on institutions which straddled, to some extent, both majoritarian and consociational

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traditions. Majoritarianism was attractive to the ANC for obvious reasons but the NP also held out hopes of building a multi-racial Christian democratic alliance, sometime in the future, which could challenge the liberation movement's dominance among the black South African community. The IFF, PAC, and AZAPO also expressed a preference for simple majority rule but this may have been engendered more by delusion than by practicalities. Nevertheless, when it came to choosing an electoral system there was a remarkable consensus that PR should and would be the 'modifier' within modified majoritarianism. Those who perceived themselves to be in the minority (DP, FF/CP, PAC) saw the plurality SMD 'sword of Damocles' hanging over their heads, while those who expected to be in the minority, but in the long run had majority aspirations, alighted on PR as a safeguard which would reward them with legislative influence whether they polled well or poorly in the first elections. Even the ANC, expected to be the most vigorous advocates of plurality SMD, were uneasy with the potential vagaries of the Anglo-American system which might exclude minority voices from parliament and award them a seat bonus—a benefit at odds with their stated aim of being sensitive to white fears of an elective dictatorship. ANC experts were also concerned that designing single-member district boundaries would be a quagmire of unsavoury gerrymandering, bearing in mind the legacy of the Group Areas Act. Malawi. By June 1993 the power dynamics in Malawi had become balanced between the ancien regime of Hastings Banda's MCP and the invigorated pro-democracy movement consisting of the UDF and AFORD. The 14 June referendum had shown that two-thirds of the electorate were on the side of multipartyism (and therefore against Banda) but the MCP retained a monopoly over the wheels of the state, the police, Young Pioneers, civil service, and the media. Because of the relative speed of the democratization process43 a high degree of uncertainty over prospective electoral fortunes existed, which, as Przeworski notes, is integral to the success of any democratization process.44 This uncertainty was to some extent decoded by the results of the referendum (one-party option=63.5 per cent, multiparty option=35.5 per cent) because it clarified the size of the MCP's electoral base and signalled the proportion of the vote that the UDF and AFORD were competing for. But in many ways all the referendum did was to deepen the uncertainty because it pointed to a highly competitive threeway race in which it was unclear who would be the plurality winner. In this light the preference of all three negotiating parties to stick with the inherited plurality SMD system appears reasonable as, in a competitive three-way race, a slight national plurality victory in votes cast can translate into the prize of absolute executive control.


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However, the actions of AFORD late in 1993 and early 1994 in not pushing for a PR system illustrated the lack of sophistication every negotiating party possessed when it came to positioning themselves on the electoral system question. By that stage AFORD had clear evidence to show that their support base was overwhelmingly concentrated in the less populated North and outside that region they could only rely on small pockets of support in Zomba, Blantyre, and Lilongwe (the main cities of the South and Centre). Despite this evidence, and the clear implication that they were going to be disadvantaged by the continuation of the plurality SMD system, they did not advocate a change to PR in the negotiating forum. All indications are that not only AFORD, but the MCP and UDF, had a poor understanding of the consequences of various electoral laws and felt that the use of the Westminster system was a fait accompli. Such ignorance ultimately proved beneficial to the UDF and was largely neutral to the fortunes of the MCP and AFORD in 1994, but the slightest change in votes could have easily awarded the UDF an overall parliamentary majority with the same share of the national vote (46 per cent) and led to the total exclusion of the MCP and AFORD from power. Namibia. As noted in Chapter 6 the adoption of list PR for the new Namibian non-racial constitutional dispensation came primarily at the instigation of the United Nations. SWAPO, as the leading liberation movement, expressed little opposition to the recommendation (despite holding a soft preference for plurality SMD), despite the fact that the system had originally been proposed by Pik Botha, the South African Foreign Minister. Namibia is unique among the case studies to the extent that her interim constitution was negotiated outside the country by non-Namibian actors (the UN and South African government) and the way in which the embryonic political party formations were presented with a fait accompli electoral law in 1989 (much as the Japanese were in 1948). Nevertheless, an institutional choice explanation of competing SWAPO and DTA preferences (leaving aside the influence of the UN and South Africans) would still have predicted PR as the electoral system of choice emanating from the negotiations. As in South Africa the negotiations were characterized by a fair degree of give and take, reflecting a balance of power between black voting power and white economic hegemony. Both parties saw a type of modified majoritarianism (where minorities were included but not ascriptively defined) as the best way to protect majority and minority interests. This more sophisticated attitude towards institutional design was based on many years of democratization studies, UN-backed workshops, and an access to international experts, which gave the domestic Namibian negotiators the tools to understand not only the

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consequences of electoral laws but the broader institutional choice picture. In contrast with Malawi, the length of the democratization process45 facilitated a high degree of knowledge among all interested parties and led, as in South Africa, to the realization that PR was the only system which could adequately assuage minority fears of exclusion while facilitating some of the aspirations of the hitherto disenfranchised majority. Zambia. Zambia's democratization process (from June 1990 to October 1991) was only matched for speed by Malawi and in many ways both countries chose (or more accurately defaulted on the choice) an electoral system in a similar fashion. On one level both UNIP and the MMD had the prerequisite background variables leading to the advocacy of plurality SMD. Both parties were uncertain of their support base but confident of victory and thus saw little need to move to a positive sum game, and neither party had the time or the will to research institutional choices beyond the remit of those which already existed on the statute book (laws which had been largely inherited from colonial rule ending in 1964). Historical and anecdotal evidence from 1990 and 1991 suggests that there was no consideration of changing the electoral system, apart from discussions about the delimitation of the twenty-five new single-member constituencies. Even after the 1991 elections, which gave Kaunda's government ample evidence that their limited regional concentration of voting support hurt them badly under plurality SMD rules, there was no appeal by UNIP to change to a proportional system. Zimbabwe. An analysis of institutional/electoral system choice in Zimbabwe is more complicated than the other case studies for two reasons. First, the nation switched from plurality (whites only) to PR in 1979 and 1980 and then back to plurality in 1985. Second, external actors (Britain and South Africa) played a crucial, but complicating, role in the democratization process. Nevertheless, the choice of a PR electoral system in 1979 (the first time that PR had been used in a former British colony in Africa) bore genealogical resemblance to the choices made in South Africa and Namibia a decade later. In all three countries the process of transition from authoritarian minority white rule to non-racial political competition took years rather than months and there was extensive international involvement (both at the diplomatic and academic level) in the process of crafting a new democratic dispensation. The Lancaster House agreements of 1979 might be one instance where the strength of external actors (in this case the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office) upset the trajectory of institutional choice variables and final party preferences. First, the 'proportionality'


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aspect of the electoral system, protecting white minority representation, was taken care of by the twenty reserved seats which could only be contested by white Zimbabweans. In a way this proviso removed one of the chief rationales for PR cited by Namibians and South Africans. If we take the common voters' roll in isolation an analysis of the actors' strengths and expectations might lead us to expect that plurality SMD would be the system of choice. Right up until the final results were announced in March 1980 it was unclear who the largest party would be. Both Mugabe's ZANU and Nkomo's ZAPU had strong historical ties to various regions of the country but in their years as guerrilla movements they had been untested in the electoral arena. As in Malawi and Zambia the leading parties were uncertain of their precise electoral appeal but had confidence that they could win a majority—and thus, with all else being equal, they might have been expected to converge on plurality SMD. But, as noted in Chapter 3, all else was not equal and the two liberation movements had developed fears of what might happen under an 'Anglo-inherited' system during the previous years of negotiation and information gathering. The war had left hundreds of thousands of displaced refugees and the former Rhodesian electoral structures were inadequate to cope with millions of newly enfranchised blacks voting in constituencies. Such difficulties were bound to suppress turnout among ZANU and ZAPU supporters and the liberation movements were wary of Ian Smith's administrative ability to manipulate the old white Anglo-American system. For their part whites were mindful of the new realities of multiparty politics in Zimbabwe and realized that, if they were ever to make gains (with black allies) in the common voters' roll seats, then plurality SMD would not help their chances. Lastly, the British Foreign Office saw PR as a means of fragmenting the four strands of nationalist leadership—ZANU and ZAPU and the Muzorewa and Sithole groupings. The move back to a plurality SMD system in 1985 fitted in with Robert Mugabe's stated aim of moving to a one-party state and was facilitated by the preservation (at least for those elections) of the reserved whites-only seats, and the fact that white Zimbabweans had now realized that they no longer had a future in the political sphere, but influence and power could be wielded and preserved in the economic sphere. ZAPU, correctly, felt that the switch to plurality would not disadvantage them electorally while any potential opposition to the move from the UANC or ZANU-Sithole was simply brushed aside. Table 8.19 illustrates three important patterns which help to explain electoral system choice in the five case studies. Plurality SMD is used when; (i) the timespan of transition to democracy is short— a matter of months rather than years; (ii) the switch is between a

266

Cross-Country Comparisons TABLE 8.19. Electoral system choice in emerging democracies: negotiation timespan, transition type, and external actors Timespan—negotiations— transition to democracy

Malawi

March 1992"-May 1994 (26 months) June 1990b-0ctober 1991 Zambia (17 months) 1978'-1989 Namibia (11 years) 1987d-1994 South Africa (7 years) Zimbabwe 1971e-1980 (9 years)

Transition type

External actors

Electoral system choice

One party statemultiparty democracy One party statemultiparty democracy Minority white regimemultiparty democracy Minority white regimemultiparty democracy Minority white regimemultiparty democracy

None

Plurality

None

Plurality

UN

SMD PR

South Africa None

PR

UK

PR

SMD

a

Catholic bishops' letter openly criticizes Banda's rule. Kaunda announces a referendum on multipartyism. c South African government agree to UN plan for military withdrawal and a transition to independence. d First contacts between an imprisoned Mandela and the apartheid government of P. W. Botha. e Muzorewa and Sithole join 'Pearce Commission'. b

one-party state (not racially based) and a multiparty democracy; (iii) there are no external actors playing a major role in the institutional choice bargaining process. Conversely, proportional representation systems are chosen when; (i) the timespan of negotiation between regimes and liberation movements is long—a matter of years; (ii) the switch is between authoritarian minority rule (based on race) and multiparty democracy; (iii) external actors have a substantial influence in drafting the new constitution (the exception being South Africa). The first temporal variable can be explained by the fact that long drawn out negotiations provide negotiating parties with more time to gather evidence on the consequences of institutional design and thus they are better able to choose systems which will not only benefit them but are likely to engender domestic stability in the long run. The fact that Malawi and Zambia moved so quickly to multiparty democracy did not enable UNIP and AFORD, in particular, to appreciate the ways in which they would be disadvantaged by plurality SMD. If the South Africans had held their elections immediately upon the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990 the ANC would have been more likely to propose plurality SMD and the National Party would have been far more likely to accept it. Clearly, the nature of the transition is also important to the resulting institutional choices. The presence of economically and politically powerful white minorities in South Africa, Namibia, and


267

Zimbabwe made the adoption of PR far more likely because all three communities were numerically small but were powerful enough to insist on access to structures of representation. In Malawi and Zambia the issues of race and ethnicity were less salient to the transition. Finally, the presence of external actors can compound the pressures for inclusive, rather than exclusionary majoritarian, structures. The United Kingdom gave white Zimbabweans more leverage in Zimbabwe while South Africa did the same for whites in Namibia. As Table 8.19 shows, an institutional choice analysis can often succinctly explain the dynamics which lead to variable electoral system design, even when such choices prove to be destabilizing in the long run.

10. Conclusions Chapter 8 demonstrates that, in the context of institutional design in southern Africa, proportional representation systems outperform their plurality-majority alternatives in almost all the categories of analysis. They avoid 'freezing the party system' and thus retain incentives for minority parties to remain pro-system and loyal to the constitutional dispensation. PR provides substantially lower indices of disproportionality, which leads to broader and more inclusive parliaments. Furthermore, it avoids the vagaries of plurality-majority systems which can manufacture parliamentary majorities for parties which have only achieved a plurality of the popular vote. Finally, PR constructs give rise to more diverse legislatures representing both ideological and ascriptive cleavages within southern African societies. Empirically plurality tends toward exclusion rather than inclusion which mitigates against the very confidence-building ground rules essential for democracy to take root in a fragile new state.

9 Conclusion: The Case for Democratic Optimism As we approach the new millennium, a clear pattern is emerging suggesting that, contrary to the apocalyptic predictions of societal breakdown across sub-Saharan Africa,1 those countries with institutional mechanisms which create an atmosphere of inclusion are doing considerably better than those states which have opted for more exclusionary structures. Strong evidence suggests that presidencies, plurality SMD electoral systems, and majoritarianism combine to create the democratic cousin of Hobbes's all-powerful Leviathan state, thus leaning towards an ethos of exclusion. In contrast, parliamentarism, proportional representation, and power-sharing structures provide the foundational level of inclusion needed by precariously divided societies to pull themselves out of the maelstrom of ethnic conflict and democratic instability (see Fig. 9.1). South Africa and Namibia best exemplify the inclusive typology and they have performed well on a number of fronts since multiparty democracy was introduced in 1994 and 1989 respectively. Ethnic and racial accommodation have dramatically improved when compared to the bad old days of the apartheid regime. Moreover, the trajectory of accommodation and reconciliation, with some notable hiccups, continues to move in a positive direction. Their respective economies are the strongest in the region, registering growth rates between 3 and 4 per cent, and inflation rates of 9 and 12 per cent, which are among the lowest on the continent. In an editorial, The Economist magazine argued that 'the governments that have fared best in terms of economic and administrative reform are wary of western-style democracy or reject it altogether'. In this case, 'western-style' is a synonym for Anglo-American majoritarianism. While crime remains a serious problem, political violence has declined dramatically in both countries. Even with the continuing instability in the KwaZulu-Natal region of South Africa, the number of deaths resulting from political violence is now only a tenth of what it was in

Conclusion

269

FIG. 9.1. The consequences of democratic type

1993. Both in South Africa and Namibia, civil society is strong, and civil liberties and human rights are sturdy (at least in comparison with the rest of Africa). Also, despite substantial obstacles to wealth and land redistribution, no immediate threats to democratic consolidation appear on the horizon. Drawing on the lessons from these success stories, it has become widely accepted that the only realistic solution for settling the horrific problems of the war-torn, divided societies of Africa is the institution of inclusive arrangements. Ann Reid of the US State Department notes that 'most of the African wars of the past 35 years of independence have roots in a winner-take-all approach to politics. One ethnic group or coalition of groups dominates an African government and excludes other groups, intensifying ethnic tensions and generating violence.. .. [thus] the key to conflict resolution in a multi-ethnic African state is a political deal that gives a share of power to each of the major ethnic groups.'2 Along with Sierra Leone and Liberia, Mozambique was able to end her bloody civil war through institutional arrangements which were acceptable to both Frelimo and Rename. PR, federalism, and the possibility of executive power-sharing enabled both sides to opt for the positive sum strategy of democratic competition. Furthermore, in the long run, power-sharing arrangements are the only solutions to the crises of Angola, Burundi, and Rwanda. Clearly, immediate prospects are more promising in Angola, where the dos Santos government is trying to negotiate a political role for Jonas Savimbi and UNITA. While there are a number of good reasons why fledgeling democracies should adopt inclusive constitutional arrangements,3 at the end of the day the most persuasive argument for power-sharing structures

270

Conclusion

is that the alternative is nearly always a catastrophic breakdown of the state and society. Whether it be in Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, or Somalia, the failure to respect and reassure all significant component parts of the nation has resulted in bloody conflict. Only in Botswana has majoritarianism democracy endured, due primarily to the unusual homogeneity of the Tswana population. Botswana's leaders, Seretse Khama, and later Ketumile Masire, at the helm of a strong but ethnically neutral state, have managed to bypass winner-take-all electoral structures to incorporate local leaders and powerful interest groups. Even so, government has never changed hands in Botswana and the opposition has been seriously disadvantaged by the electoral system for over thirty years. Admittedly, there have been constitutional settlements which attempted to facilitate a degree of inclusion, but they failed to bring about long-term political stability or democratic consolidation. Events in Liberia, Rwanda, and Angola all illustrate that the structures of inclusion have to be complete and extensive for power-sharing solutions to work. For eight months before the chaotic events of April 1996 Liberia was governed by a transitional council led by three main faction leaders. That the council fell apart was in no small part testament to the fact that the international mediators who had brokered the 'Abuja' agreement prioritized the interests of certain combatants while overlooking both the representation of other potentially violent groups and, perhaps most importantly, the peaceful Liberian majority. Liberia's 1996 disintegration was precipitated by the exclusion of D. Roosevelt Johnson, de facto leader of the Krahn ethnic group, from the Council of State. As a result of this slap in the face Roosevelt began to marshal alienated Krahn soldiers, many of whom were children, which prompted Charles Taylor's pre-emptive strike upon Roosevelt's compound in April of that year. Without doubt, the 'warlords', typified by Taylor and Johnson, had to be included within the power-sharing structures. However, by leaving out the stabilizing representatives of Liberian civil society, e.g. church groups, journalists, academics, businesspeople, and the judiciary, they precluded the interim arrangements from ever laying the foundations for long-term stability. As of March 1998 the prospects for stability in Liberia are markedly higher. After winning presidential elections by a wide margin in July 1997 Charles Taylor invited a number of leading opposition figures into his cabinet and other official positions. The PR electoral system guaranteed a body of opposition legislators in the Assembly even though Taylor's National Patriotic Party won 75 per cent of the popular vote. In neighbouring Sierra Leone,

Conclusion

271

civil society similarly and remarkably endured years of conflict, but in that transition, civil society leaders were brought in as partners in the negotiations to construct the new constitutional dispensation. President Kabbah's democratic government elected in February-March 1996 was interrupted by the military coup of May 1997-February 1998 (illustrating that even the best-laid 'inclusive' institutional structures cannot always resist the whims of a disgruntled military) but the newly reinstalled civilian government of unity does have the foundation of popular support. The lesson from these two divergent experiences is that mere power-sharing between those who make war is not enough. The constituent groups that come to the table need either to have had their legitimacy tested at the ballot box, or the negotiations must include a wide spectrum of more obviously representative groups, as was the case in the negotiation councils which oversaw the transition to a democratic South Africa. Michael Chege argues that the strongest hope for democracy in Africa is the 'politically committed and well-educated members of civic and opposition groups whose belief in the continent's capacity for better government is unshakable'.4 In Rwanda, President Habyarimana attempted to play off hardline Hutus within his own party against the Tutsi leadership of the insurgent RPF. In August 1993, Habyarimana offered to transfer his power to a consensus cabinet comprised of both Hutus and Tutsis, but a major Hutu extremist party was excluded from government and the RPF hung on to the belief that they could win everything in a zero-sum game if they could only bring down the President. The excluded Hutu extremists felt increasingly threatened by the President's approaches to the Tutsi leaders, and in April 1994 they shot down the President's plane. The nation returned to violent ethnic conflict. Finally, Reid notes that the collapse of the Bicesse peace accords in Angola was due to the failure to implement the whole range of accommodatory structures: The focus at Bicesse was elections, not power-sharing. The Angolan government constitution, which concentrated power in the presidency, remained in place, and both dos Santos and Savimbi competed for the only prize worth having. Although the legislature was elected by proportional representation, it was regarded as a rubberstamp for presidential decisions. The two antagonists gave only lip service to a coalition government; after dos Santos' victory, he made a derisory offer of minor ministries to UNITA. Washington and Moscow each believed that its client would win the presidency. Little attention was given to the possibility that the loser would opt out of the political transition and resume fighting.5

Most of the attempts at power-sharing which have failed have evinced deep flaws. However, it must be noted that sometimes, as in

272

Conclusion

Somalia, the pressures for violent conflict are simply too strong, with the disintegration of society gone too far. These countries are not hopeless 'basket cases', but they do require stronger medicine than constitutionalism can provide. At the end of the day, while appropriate constitutional arrangements are central to the politics of accommodation, they are not a panacea: they can be overwhelmed by the most extreme forms of division, lawlessness, and societal breakdown.

1. Are Elections Nothing More than Ethnic and Racial Censuses in Africa? As stressed throughout this work, appropriate constitutional design is ultimately contextual and rests on the nuances of a nation's unique social cleavages. The nature of division within a society is revealed, in part, by the extent to which ethnicity correlates with party support and voting behaviour. That factor will often determine whether institutional engineering is able to dissipate ethnic conflict or merely contain it. The current trend is to characterize multiparty elections in Africa as nothing more than ethnic or racial censuses. Horowitz has characterized such voting as simply the registration of ethnic affiliation, with the voter's choice essentially pre-empted at birth. Ethnic voters are those individuals who 'choose, in effect, not to choose but to give their vote predictably on an ethnic basis to an ethnically denned party'.6 Howard French, in a New York Times piece titled 'Can African Democracy Survive Ethnic Voting', argued that 'the emotional pull of allegiances based on tribe, language and region remains far stronger than appeals based on policies and platforms'.7 Also, as The Economist has noted, it is hard to deny that in Africa parties tend to divide voters along ethnic lines.8 French contends that the prevalence of ethnic voting has meant that 'in countries as diverse as Ivory Coast and Zambia, Kenya and multi-racial South Africa political parties have been turning elections into contests of ethnic solidarity that all too often leave the winners in a position of formidable strength, and the losers feeling dangerously vulnerable'.9 Chege takes the argument even further, saying that most elections in Africa are 'characterized by ethnic block voting, sometimes without reference to issues. In Kenya and Malawi, at least one-fourth of the electorate voted for the incumbent autocrat merely because he was their ethnic group's favorite son.'10 Clearly, if such ethnic allegiances are primordial, and therefore rigid, then a specific type of power-sharing which recognizes and accommodates interests based on ascriptive communal traits, rather than

Conclusion

273

individual ideological ones, is needed to manage competing claims for scarce resources. Those primordial ties would make institutional mechanisms which promote cross-cutting cleavages redundant. If ethnic identities and voting behaviours are fixed, then there is no space for institutional incentives aimed at accommodation to work. Nevertheless, while it is true that from Kenya to Sierra Leone, Angola to Uganda, there are indeed correlations between voting behaviour and ethnicity, the causation is far more complex. It is far from clear that 'primordial ethnicity', i.e. the knee-jerk reaction to vote for 'your group's party' regardless of individual self-interest, is the chief explanation of these correlations. More often than not, ethnicity has become a proxy for other things; a semi-artificial construct which has its roots in community but has been twisted out of all recognition, or what Robert Price calls the antagonistic 'politics of communalism'— ethnicity which has been politicized and exploited to serve entrepreneurial ends.11 In the case of Sierra Leone, Jimmy D. Kandeh has shown that dominant local elites, masquerading as 'cultural politicians', shaped and mobilized ethnicity to serve their interests.12 Bill Berkeley describes Kenya as 'an all too typical study in the use of ethnicity as an instrument of tyranny'. He quotes an opposition lawyer who describes how Daniel arap-Moi 'consistently pursued policies that encouraged various ethnic groups to think of themselves as different, not as one nation'.13 In Uganda, President Museveni has used the fear of tribalism as an excuse to avoid multipartyism, despite the fact that during both colonial and post-colonial eras, strategies to control and carve up the state were based upon the hostile mobilization of ethnic identities. Indeed, as I described in Chapter 4, recent events in Malawi act as a counterfactual to the primordial ethnicity thesis, and offer an example of how political affiliations play out differently when incentive structures are altered. Because ethnic conflict is not predetermined in Africa and is often a proxy for other interests, incentives can be created for other cleavages to emerge as ethnic divides become less salient. In South Africa, the rules of the game encouraged parties to appeal across ethnic boundaries. As Price notes, South Africa has been remarkably free of ethnic conflict in the post-apartheid period, bearing in mind its history of repressive racial laws. Challenging conventional wisdom, he argues that 'the South African case is important for the contemporary study of ethnicity in politics precisely because it is an ethnically heterogeneous society without significant ethnic conflict'.14 The ethnic mobilization which has taken place was conducted by the Inkatha Freedom Party of Mangosuthu Buthelezi and indeed, on the face of it, this is a textbook

274

Conclusion

case of politicized ethnicity. Originally crafted as the internal wing of the ANC, in the 1970s Inkatha was systematically converted into a force, not to serve the liberation movement, but to propel Buthelezi's ego onto centre stage. By politicizing and cynically mobilizing a certain notion of'traditional Zulu identity', Buthelezi created a power-base from which he could mount his 'ethnic blackmail' strategy—a strategy which has proven to be remarkably successful to the present day. What occurs in KwaZulu-Natal cannot be described as ethnic conflict, however, as the ANC versus Inkatha divide is one of Zulu against Zulu and district against district, not Zulu against white or even Zulu against Xhosa. The election of April 1994 also lent credence to the claim that the inclusive institutional incentives of the interim constitution helped make politicized ethnicity far less salient. All parties (bar the Afrikaner Freedom Front and the National Party in the Western Cape) strove to appeal across ethnic divides, and the ANC, NP, IFP, DP, and PAC presented multi-ethnic and multi-racial lists of parliamentary candidates. In a 1994 post-election survey, the Institute for Democracy in South Africa found that only 3 per cent of voters claimed to have based their political affiliations on ethnic identity.15

2. Inclusion in Practice: The Nuts and Bolts of Constitutional Design As noted earlier there are majoritarian 'democracies' in Africa which have not yet fallen into the maelstrom of violent ethnic conflict but their prospects look far worse than their power-sharing counterparts. Indeed, Schwarz is half-correct when he says that 'democracy. . . encourages competition for power and benefits among contesting groups [and] actually exacerbates internal tensions and conflicts',16 but only half-correct. What he is referring to is Anglo-American majoritarian democracy which provides incentives for political entrepreneurs to mobilize supporters around exclusionary notions of ethnicity, regionalism, language, or religion. In Zambia, Malawi, and Kenya ethnic hostilities have increased, and become electorally codified, as elite entrepreneurs react to the new incentives of a winner-take-all multiparty constitutional dispensation. Frederick Chiluba's Zambian Movement for MultiParty Democracy came to power in 1991 riding a multi-ethnic backlash against Kenneth Kaunda's failed one-party state, but Chiluba's administration quickly opened up ethnic and regional divides which had been successfully contained by Kaunda's policy of 'regional balancing'. The majoritarian electoral system provided the incentives for increased ethnic mobilization and polarization. As a result Zambia went ahead

Conclusion

275

with multiparty elections in November 1996 with a fragmented and ethnically based party system. Chiluba's cabinet is increasingly dominated by Bemba ministers and the deeply flawed 1996 general elections did not merely illustrate general alienation from the political system (only 28 per cent of the voting age population turned out to vote) but Kenneth Kaunda's Nyanja-based UNIP retained the sympathies of the Eastern Region even though they boycotted the official vote.17 From the previous discussion three things become clear. First, in fledgeling African democracies ethnicity is powerful, but more often than not it has been moulded and exploited to serve elite ends. Second, majoritarianism accentuates those incentives for ethnic polarization. Third, institutions which encourage accommodation are a better choice. However, short-term power-sharing structures must recognize the existing parties competing for power, and that often such parties explicitly mobilize electoral support around ethnic appeals. Therein lies the conundrum. If the solution requires inclusion, and that inclusion rewards parties which are based on ethnic ties, how do these fragile democracies design inclusive power-sharing structures which do not entrench those ethnic divides—divides which preclude the prospects for party systems based on ideology, which evidence suggests would be more enduring? The solution is to reconceptualize what power-sharing means and give those structures a spin which promotes cross-cutting cleavages across ethnic divides. For example, solutions should avoid 'group rights' and 'cultural vetoes'—those are better taken care of by bills of individual rights. Similarly, there are dangers in types of federalism which amount to little more than partition, where a regionally dominant ethnic group exercises hegemonic power over one area (i.e. the IFF in KwaZulu). What should be implemented are PR electoral systems which encourage parties to reach out beyond their home bases, and consensus cabinets which include all significant political actors, while avoiding the ultra-majoritarianism of directly elected presidents. In the short term, political parties may still mobilize around ethnic issues, but those interests will be co-opted and reassured in the inclusive dispensation. In the long term, as evidenced in South Africa where parties are clearly becoming less ethnically and racially exclusive, such incentives may ultimately begin to break down antagonistic communal loyalties.

Appendix

Crafting Districts for Re-runs Re-running the Malawian, Zambian, and Zimbabwean plurality elections under alternative electoral system formulas is more straightforward than in the South African and Namibian cases because the single-member constituency results give an authoritative data basis for assessing the alternative vote in single-member districts and different forms of list PR. Malawi. The 177 constituencies used to elect members of Malawi's parliament were clustered into 25 administrative districts, which provide excellent multi-member districts for the alternative vote MMD and provincial list PR re-runs. These HMDs range in size from four members to eleven. I have split the capital of Lilongwe into three constituencies of six, six, and five members. For the purposes of the alternative vote preference methods I have assumed that supporters of the UDF would be more likely to transfer their votes to AFORD rather than the MCP and likewise AFORD voters would choose a UDF candidate as their second preference. As noted in Chapter 3, it is quite clear that Malawians were split into two camps in the May elections: either for Banda and the traditional ruling party, or against it and for the opposition and multiparty democracy. This second group was then subdivided (along regional lines) between the UDF and AFORD. Indeed, in the referendum on one-party rule in June of 1993 the UDF and AFORD joined together (although not always harmoniously) to campaign for a 'multiparty democracy' vote. The comparison between the results of the 1993 referendum and 1994 general election clearly illustrates how Malawian politics evolved from 'the opposition versus the MCP' in 1993, into 'the UDF and AFORD versus the MCP' in 1994. For the national and provincial list PR re-runs, results have been calculated using the same Droop quota as used in South Africa. The national list PR result takes the entire country (all 177 constituencies) as one constituency (a la Israel, Namibia, and the Netherlands) and the provincial results are based on the three regions acting as multi-member constituencies. Zambia. The design of Zambia's 150 single-member districts may have been flawed in a number of respects—as noted in Chapter 3 the largest constituencies had nine times as many voters as the smallest—but they were also drawn from nine provinces in which the seat apportionment was more faithful to population and voter distribution. These nine provinces (ranging in size from the Copperbelt with twenty-two seats to the North-Western Province with twelve seats) therefore provide an adequate basis for designing provincial list PR districts and smaller multi-member districts for the alternative vote. In the the first elections of 1991 huge majorities built up by the United National

Crafting Districts for the Re-runs

277

TABLE A.I. A comparison of the 1993 referendum and 1994 general election in Malawi Votes

National (%)

1,088,473 1,993,996 3,082,469

35.31 64.69 100.00

992,768 1,928,902 2,921,670

33.65 65.38 100.00

Referendum— 1993 One-party (MCP) Multiparty (UDF and AFORD) Total

General election—1994 MCP

UDF and AFORD Total

Independence Party (UNIP) in the Eastern Province and the Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (MMD) in the rest of the country meant that voters' second preferences were irrelevant under either system. Not one of the 150 constituencies was won by a plurality rather than a majority and if the alternative vote had been used in larger multi-member districts the absolute majorities would have been inflated even further. The only provinces not swept by a single party were in the Lusaka, Northern, and North-Western Provinces, but here UNIP's 14 to 30 per cent of the vote was not enough to take any reasonably sized multi-member district. In 1996 twenty-eight seats were won on a plurality of the vote and in these cases I have made the assumption that on balance opposition party (ZDC, NP, NLP, AZ) votes would be more likely to transfer to the candidate of another opposition party rather than the candidate of the MMD. Where the transfers of independent voters could have altered the final result I have left the SMD plurality winner intact as it is too speculative to guess where such transfers might have gone. While many of these independent candidates were hostile to the government, in most cases they had represented the MMD until very recently. As in 1991, if the electoral system had been the alternative vote in multi-member districts the MMD would have swept the board, the opposition NP being the only other successful party, picking up a six-member seat in the North-West Province. As in Malawi the national list PR results have been calculated under the Droop largest remainder method from the aggregated votes for all 150 constituencies, while the provincial results are based on the nine provinces acting as multi-member constituencies. Zimbabwe. In 1985 ballot results for the eighty common voters' roll singlemember district seats were reported by eight districts (although these districts were slightly different from the previous electoral districts used for the PR election of 1980). Only one seat, Chipinge in Manicaland, was not won with an absolute majority but here Ndabaningi Sithole of ZANU-N would have needed only two transfers out of the PF-ZAPU candidate's 838 votes to transform that plurality victory into an alternative vote absolute majority victory—I assume

278

Appendix

Sithole would have achieved this. Similarly, there is little need to speculate about second preferences for the AV-MMD re-running. Both the AV-MMD and provincial list PR re-runnings have used the real-life eight reporting districts as a basis of analysis. For the elections of 1990 and 1995, the number of elected members of parliament increased from 80 to 120, but the boundaries of the eight districts remained largely the same. In 1990 there were three seats won with a plurality which could have changed hands under the AV-SMD re-run. Within these three seats I have made the assumption that voters of the opposition ZUM, ZANU-N, or UANC parties would be more likely to transfer their votes to another 'opposition' party than to the candidate of the governing ZANU (PF). In 1995 ZANU PF dominance meant that not a single seat was won with less than an absolute majority. As in previous re-runs, AV-MMD and provincial list PR results have been calculated on the basis of the eight regions outlined in the Appendix. In the 1980 'white roll' elections for twenty single-member seats the Rhodesian Front (RF) of Ian Smith won every seat, with fourteen of them unopposed. This renders a re-running of the results unnecessary because no alternative political party was available to take seats under a PR system, and none of the six independent candidates gained enough votes to stop the RF candidate gaining an absolute majority (and thus allowing for the possibility that AV-SMD might have made a difference). But the 1985 entry of the Independent Zimbabwe Group (IZG) into competitive white politics (see Chapter 5) means that re-running this election under AV-SMD and national list PR does prove informative. Three seats were won with a plurality (all won by the renamed Rhodesian Front, now the Conservative Alliance of Zimbabwe (CAZ)) and here I have assessed where the third placed independent candidates' votes were more likely to go. The PR results are calculated on the basis of one twentymember national constituency. For the 1980 common roll election held under PR rules in eight multimember districts, I have relied upon the district-level breakdown of the results and the evidence of the geographic concentration of party support. The hegemonic dominance of ZANU (PF) in Shona-speaking areas and PF-ZAPU in Matabeleland meant that there were no plurality SMD seats which would have been affected by AV-SMD. For the plurality SMD re-run in the Midlands district (the only somewhat competitive region of the country) I have assumed that ZANU (PF)'s 60 per cent of the vote, and PF-ZAPU's 30 per cent, was again concentrated in the distinct Shona- and Ndebele-speaking areas of the Midlands. This would have led to eight seats being won by Mugabe's ZANU and four seats by Nkomo's ZAPU. South Africa. For the PR election case studies of South Africa and Namibia crafting districts is a little more complicated as now large areas need to be reduced down to smaller geographically contiguous single-member constituencies. However, it is possible to use previous administrative boundaries and detailed counting district data to define reasonable SMDs which are of roughly equal size and have geographic integrity. In South Africa, by taking the district-level voting results supplied by the IEC, and applying them to the 361 magisterial districts illustrated in Voting for a New South Africa,1


279

I created 400 single-member constituencies which adhere to the following guidelines: Constituencies are: (i) contiguous and based on current administrative boundaries; (ii) of roughly equal size, where the average number of voters is 48,834; (iii) based within the nine provinces, each province having as many singlemember districts as was apportioned under the real electoral system, April 1994. In some cases the voting data were given for areas which were entitled to more than one single-member district. In the majority of these cases the counting district covered only two or three SMDs and here party vote totals were merely divided by the number of districts, assuming that party voting within a geographical area of 80,000-150,000 electors would be more consistently dispersed than not. However, in the cases of larger districts, e.g. Johannesburg (25 seats), Pretoria (13), Randburg (5), Roodepoort (4), Germiston (3) in the PWV area; Durban (11), Pietermaritzburg (7), Pinetown (5) in KwaZulu-Natal; Wynberg (7), Mitchell's Plain (6) in the Western Cape; and Bloemfontein (5) in the Orange Free State, seats have been awarded in proportion to party vote across the larger counting district. This method was used because these urban conurbations are composed of homogeneous pockets, constituted along the lines of ethnicity, wealth, and party identification, within the larger heterogeneous administrative area. For example, Pretoria, which reported 655,385 valid votes, has 'white areas' interspersed with 'black townships', and very few mixed areas. Forty-eight per cent of the total poll went for the ANC with the NP gaining 37 per cent. We know that nationally the ANC won very few white votes and the NP very few black ones,2 and so we can then extrapolate that the NP won the 'white districts' of Pretoria (three-sevenths of the total) with the ANC taking the other four-sevenths which were predominantly 'black districts'. The reasoning used to decide how constituencies would have been won within larger counting districts reflects the fact that the SMD plurality system provided relatively proportional results in the National Assembly overall. In this sense Pretoria was merely a microcosm of the whole country, which demonstrated high degrees of geographically concentrated party support. The detailed constituency breakdown cited here can indeed be disputed and alternative constituency boundaries could be drawn. But it is my contention that due to the patterns of party support any redrawing of these constituencies, which remained true to the logical guidelines I have outlined previously, would produce highly similar overall results. For the majoritarian AV-SMD simulation I have used the same plurality SMDs as previously outlined and then assessed whether the seat would have changed hands if the alternative vote had been in operation. Three hundred and eighty-three (96 per cent) of the seats were won with an absolute majority (over 50 per cent plus one) and therefore the plurality winner would have also been the AV winner. In total only 17 seats (4 per cent) were won with a plurality (less than 50 per cent of the vote), leaving open the possibility of a second placed party overcoming the plurality leader with the vote transfers of other unsuccessful parties. In assessing the likely second preferences of

280

Appendix

losing party supporters I have used polling evidence from the eight Launching Democracy Institute for Multi-Party Democracy reports from November 1993-February 1994. But in most cases the likely AV outcome in these 17 constituencies was easy to predict (i.e. the ANC had 49 per cent of the vote with the NP on 35 per cent and the PAC 4 per cent, or the NP led with 45 per cent and could rely upon receiving a substantial share of a FF/DP transfer totalling up to 10 per cent). The South African counting district data enable us to run an even more accurate AV-MMD simulation than for plurality because the larger districts do not need to be broken down into smaller SMDs. I have maintained the constituency guidelines outlined earlier and created what I believe to be logical, contiguous districts that remain within provincial boundaries. Similarly, where a MMD was won with a plurality rather than a majority I have used the same data and rationale as cited for AV-SMD to assess if the second placed party could have leapfrogged the plurality winner and thereby won the constituency. One further assumption is needed here, as AV-MMD requires the voter to vote for a number of candidates. Voters have the choice of voting for all the candidates of a single party or they may split their votes between the candidates of two or more parties. My assumption is that, on balance, South African voters would have been more likely to vote 'straight party ticket' rather than splitting their votes between a number of different party candidates. This again goes back to my premiss that there was particularly high voter party identification in these first democratic elections. As noted earlier, the actual results of the South African National Assembly election were calculated on the basis of a 400-seat constituency by the Droop quota and largest remainder method. The one slight list PR adaptation I have shown results for in Table 7.10 is for constituency-based list PR without any provision for national or compensatory seats. This I have titled 'provincial PR' because party seats won are calculated by province and then combined to give each party's national total. I assume each province receives an equivalent proportion of the seats to its actual entitlement in the 1994 elections.3 Namibia. The same base methodology previously outlined for re-running the South African elections was utilized for Namibia. In 1989 the country was split into 23 electoral districts of varying size: these areas then formed the basis of drawing 72 single-member districts which averaged 9,317 votes cast. Through a process of splitting some EDs and combining others, constituencies were crafted which retained compactness and contiguity and did not deviate too greatly from the mean size (in the smallest district (Hereroland North) 7,802 votes were cast, in the largest (Kaokoland) 12,794 were cast). As in the South African case some EDs reported data covering many hypothesized constituencies. For the largest ED, Ovamboland, containing 26 districts, this was not a problem as SWAPO's 92 per cent of the vote made it clear that they would sweep every SMD in the region, but for some of the smaller multi-member EDs a more nuanced analysis and projection was needed. For example, in the Kavango ED which consisted of seven single-member districts SWAPO won 50 per cent of the popular vote and the DTA won 40 per cent. The clear evidence outlined in Chapter 4 suggests that SWAPO won urban


281

areas within this, and other regions while the DTA won the more rural outlying areas. Therefore, and in line with evidence from actual plurality SMD elections in Africa, I have awarded the Kavango seats proportionally: four went to SWAPO while three went to the DTA. Thirteen of the 72 seats were won by pluralities and thus could have switched hands under AV-MMD. For this simulation I assumed that the ACN and FCN supporters would have been more likely to transfer their votes to the DTA than to SWAPO, while the UDF votes would have been roughly split between the two main contenders. The AV-MMD re-runnings were based on the twenty-three electoral districts being consolidated into ten multi-member districts ranging from three members in size (Swakopmund and Caprivi) to twenty-six members (Ovamboland).4 As in the South African AV-MMD simulation the assumption of 'straight party ticket' voting was made. The 'provincial list PR' calculations were also based on these ten districts. The re-running of the 1994 elections was made considerably easier by the 23 old South-West African electoral districts being replaced by 13 new regional districts, in turn broken down into a total of 95 subdistricts (councilmanic districts). These were the constituencies used for the 'first-pastthe-post' local government Namibian elections of 1992. Of particular use to this exercise was the breaking down of the huge Ovamboland district into four smaller areas (Ohangwena, Omusati, Oshana, and Oshikoto). Polling data reported for the 95 subdistricts then gives us an excellent basis for crafting 72 parliamentary SMDs. The average simulated district reported 6,800 votes with the largest being Sesfontein, Khorixas, Kamanjab, and Outjo with 9,708 votes and the smallest Soweto, with 4,200 votes. Six constituencies were won with a plurality (three SWAPO, two DTA, one UDF) and in these second preferences were calculated along the same lines as the 1989 exercise although in this election the ACN had been renamed the Monitor Action Group (MAG). AV-MMD and provincial list PR results were calculated around the new thirteen multi-member districts and as in 1989 the national list PR results were re-run using a Droop largest remainder quota as opposed to the Hare method actually used.

Notes

INTRODUCTION 1. Although in approximately half of these cases electoral competition has not yet been accompanied by the other prerequisites of polyarchy. Freedom House classified only nine African nations as fully democratic, or 'free' in February 1996 (see Ch. 1). 2. Botswana has had competitive multiparty elections since 1966, although the BDP has never lost power. Senegal has been partly democratic since 1983, Mauritius since 1976, and the Gambia had a functioning multiparty system between 1966 and 1992. 3. In 1995 it was estimated that 9.5 million Africans either had the HIV virus which causes AIDS, or the disease itself (Washington Post (17 Mar. 1995), A41). It was estimated in 1996 that 10% of the South African population and 17% of the Zambian and Zimbabwean population were infected with HIV (New York Times (7 June 1996), A3) while the figure for Malawi is much higher (see New York Times (6 June 1995), A3). Sub-Saharan Africa is also enduring the re-emergence of a number of other health epidemics. For example, meningitis infected 100,000, and killed 10,000, West Africans in the first three months of 1996 (New York Times (7 May 1996), Al) and South Africa has the worst tuberculosis problem in the world with a rate of 311 cases per 100,000 people (New York Times (26 June 1996), A4). 4. In Minorities at Risk (1993) Ted Gurr notes that 'Africa south of the Sahara has the greatest concentration of minorities at risk, seventy-four groups and more than 42 per cent of the regional population.' Of the 114 'communal groups in rebellion' between 1945 and 1989, 40 (or 35%) were from sub-Saharan Africa—more than any other region (315 and 99). 5. The ten countries usually defined as being in southern Africa are: Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland Zambia, and Zimbabwe. 6. This work unashamedly rests on the premiss that 'democracies' (of whatever type) are 'better' than those regimes which cannot be classified as democratic. This goes beyond the desirability of holding leaders politically accountable through elections, to the basic underpinning virtues of humanity. Properly functioning democracy enhances personal dignity, in a way directly opposite to the indignity visited upon the citizens of authoritarian regimes; it promotes interpersonal decency, as disputes are resolved through negotiation rather than force; and above all it is the only form of government which can provide for social justice. Often 'democracies' are

Notes to pages 2-4

283

socially unjust, but justice will never come about under totalitarianism, authoritarianism, or personalized dictatorship. Finally, the weight of academic research suggests that democracies are less likely to be at war (whether domestically or internationally). It is true that there is some evidence to suggest that in the unstable 'transitional phase of democratization' nation states may be more susceptible to conflict (see Mansfield and Snyder 1995), but once 'consolidated' war-proneness declines dramatically. In sum it is appropriate to paraphrase Winston Churchill, to argue that democracy is the worst form of government known to humankind—bar everything else. 1. While Angola, Lesotho, Mozambique, and Swaziland have recently moved towards multiparty electoral competition, and Botswana has held relatively free and fair democratic elections since 1966 (and data from those elections are used within the comparative sections of this book) I have not concentrated upon these countries for a number of reasons. The democratization processes in Angola and Mozambique remain enormously unstable and difficult to judge while Lesotho and Swaziland are really too small to be useful comparisons for the case studies chosen. Botswana does provide useful evidence of how majoritarian institutions work in a relatively homogeneous African nation state (and indeed I use Botswanan election results extensively in Chs. 6 and 7) but the mere fact of having experienced over thirty years of 'democracy', and her Tswanan homogeneity, make Botswana atypical in the southern African context of new institutional design. One should also be careful not to view Botswana's undoubted comparative continental success through rose-tinted glasses. Kenneth Good notes that 'despite a competitive party system and regular free and fair elections, Botwana's polity has been characterized for almost 30 years by considerable authoritarianism focused on the extensive powers of the Presidency and based upon a hierarchical and highly inequitable society' (Good 1996a: 53). See also Good 19966. 8. Lijphart 1971: 685. 9. Ibid. 688. 10. Namibia 1989 and 1994, South Africa 1994, and Zimbabwe 1980 (four election observations). 11. Malawi 1994, Zambia 1991 and 1996, Zimbabwe (common roll) 1985, 1990, 1995, (white roll) 1980, 1985 (eight election observations). 12. Although President Nujoma was first appointed to that position by the National Assembly in 1990, and not directly elected until 1994. 13. Robert Mugabe was Prime Minister from 1980 to 1987. 14. Although Nelson Mandela is 'Executive State President' in the South African Government of National Unity, he is actually a Prime Minister with classic prime ministerial powers (see Ch. 2). 15. See Ch. 9. 16. Sklar 1991: 83-110. 17. Ibid. 83. 18. Ibid. 84. 19. Along with being co-editor of the Journal of Democracy, co-director of NED's National Forum for Democratic Studies, and co-editor of Politics

284

20. 21. 22. 23.

24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30.

Notes to pages 4-5

in Developing Countries: Comparing Experiences with Democracy (1995), The Global Resurgence of Democracy (1993), and Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict, and Democracy (1994), Diamond has written extensively on Africa. See 'Roots of Failure: Seeds of Hope', in Democracy in Developing Countries: Africa (volume ii, 1988) and Class, Ethnicity and Democracy in Nigeria: The Failure of the First Republic (1988). See Callaghy 1984. See Laitin 1986. Ibid. 85. As recently as 1991 Adam Przeworski noted, much to his surprise, that 'we do not have sufficiently reliable empirical knowledge to answer questions about institutional design. We have intuitions about the impact of presidentialism versus parliamentaryism, we know the effects of various electoral systems, and we tend to believe that an independent judiciary is an important arbitrating force in the face of conflicts, but our current empirical knowledge leaves a broad margin for disagreements about institutional design' (1991: 35). I hope that this study will, to some small degree, provide that empirical knowledge which Przeworski seeks. The project is also responsive to Larry Diamond's suggestion that, when it comes to the study of African democratization, 'there is a tremendous need and scope for political and institutional learning across cases, both about techniques of electoral administration and monitoring, the effects of different electoral systems and rules, the viability of different rules, and the comparative knowledge within Africa of these institutional choices'. Comments to the symposium Elections and Conflict Resolution in Africa, held at the US Institute of Peace, June 1995. As quoted in Sisk and Reynolds 1998. For example: Przeworski 1991; Higley and Gunther 1992; Mainwaring, O'Donnell, and Valenzuela 1992; Gunther, Diamandouros, and Puhle 1995; Mainwaring and Scully 1995; Linz and Stepan 19966; Farer 1996. Chief among these is Timothy Sisk's excellent Democratization in South Africa (1995). See Lijphart 1985 and Horowitz 1991. Pioneered by Lijphart, Grofman, Shugart, Taagepera, and Rae. I must also note the related and ongoing work of Shaheen Mozaffar and James Scarritt. Here, along with Lijphart and Horowitz, I include Giovanni Sartori who, while never dealing explicitly with Africa, has offered a number of important guidelines to those designing constitutions in divided societies. See Sartori 1994. However, this approach does not by necessity negate the value of cultural sensitivity. I take to heart Jean-Jacques Rousseau's warning that 'One must know thoroughly the nation for which one is building; otherwise the final product, however excellent it may be in itself, will prove imperfect when it is acted upon—the more certainly if the nation be already formed, with its tastes, customs, prejudices, and failings too deeply rooted to be stifled by new plantings' (Rousseau 1985).

Notes to pages 5-12 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53. 54.

285

See Diamond, Lipset, and Linz 1995, and Lipset 1995. For example Linz and Valenzuela 1994. See Horowitz 1991: pp. xii-xiii. The case of New Zealand is of particular interest as the electoral system was switched from plurality to PR in 1993 partly because of a desire better to represent the Maori population in parliament. At least on this level the switch proved to be a great success. While the number of reserved seats for Maori only increased from four to five the number of Maori members of parliament increased from six to fifteen. Two more Pacific Islanders joined one colleague already in the House and the first ever Asian MP was elected. In actuality the perception of inclusion may be erroneous but this is a question for later. Vail, on Horowitz 1991 dust jacket. In this section I deal with institutions as one aspect of constitutional design, rather than with constitutionalism in its own right. This is not to understate the importance of generating a political culture which respects constitutionalism. See Murphy 1993, Nolutshungu 1993, and Okoth-Ogendo 1993, all in Greenberg et al. 1993, and Sartori 1994: 199-200. Scarritt and Mozaffar 1996: 3. March and Olsen 1984: 747. See also Koelble 1995: 232 and Vanhanen 1992: 6. Ibid. 739. Ibid. This view is echoed by Douglas North, who has argued that institutions are created by rational, utility-maximizing individuals, but once they exist they set parameters and have agency themselves (see Koelble 1995: 232). Koelble 1995: 233. March and Olsen 1984: 740. Przeworski 1991: 13. Ibid. 14, 26-8. Powell 1983: 54. Diamond, Linz, and Lipset 1995: 33. Vanhanen 1990: 7. Scarritt and Mozaffar 1996: 3. See Putnam, 1993. See Putnam 1995. Of course there are exceptions. For example, South African sport is now slightly, but only slightly, more integrated than it was ten years ago, mixed residential areas do exist, and there is a growing black middle class. But there are still distinct black and white societies in South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe, and even more distinct rich and poor societies in all five case study countries. For example the Weekly Mail remains a 'liberal white paper', Die Burger is a conservative Afrikaans (both white and coloured) paper, and the Sowetan dominates the black South African readership. Sisk 1995: 5.

286 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

64. 65.

66. 67.

68.

69.

70.

Azotes to pages 12-14

Horowitz 1991: 280-1. Sartori 1994: 203. Sisk 1995: 18. Elster and Slagstad 1988: 304. Sartori 1994: 200. See Arendt 1958, Diamond 1994, Schmitter 1992, and Eisenstadt 1995. See Lipset 1994, Schmitter 1992 and 19946, Welfling 1973, and Collier 1978. See Scarritt 1993, Diamond, Linz, and Lipset 1995, du Toit 1995, Bienen and Herbst 1991, and Wunsch and Oluwu 1990. e.g. the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. For literature dealing with the broad topic of economic development and democratization begin with Lipset's 'Some Social Requisites of Democracy' (1959), which followed in the tradition of Weber, Durkheim, and Marx in finding a strong causal link between democracy and economic development, laying the basis for much of the field which became known as modernization theory. Other works include: Bates 1989 and 1991, Lindblom 1977, Schmitter 19946, Huntington 1991a, Decalo 1992, Przeworski and Limongi 1993, Michaels 1993, and Lemarchand 1992. See Schmitter 19946, Munslow 1994, Huntington 19916, and Diamond 1995. See for example Diamond's discussion of 'praetorianism' in Nigeria. Diamond 1995 and Huntington's 'Guidelines for Democratizers 5: Curbing Military Power, Promoting Military Professionalism', 1991. McGowan and Thompson estimate that there were sixty successful military coups in Africa between 1956 and 1985 (McGowan and Thompson 1986). Chege cites the military's involvement in toppling democratic governments in both Burundi and Nigeria in 1993. See also Chege 1995, Conteh-Morgan 1994, Decalo 1992: 25, Huntington 1995, Diamond, Linz, and Lipset 1995, Venter 1994, Cilliers 1995, Joseph 1991, Diamond 19886. See Kaplan 1994, 1996, Diamond, Linz, and Lipset 1995, Finan 1996, and Reno 1996. See Diamond 1988a, Huntington 1991a, Collier and Collier 1991, Chege 1995, and Lipset 1995. Huntington argues that 'Economic development makes democracy possible; political leadership makes it real' (Huntington 1991a: 316). Former British colonies are more likely to have inherited the institutions of a 'Westminster' system (plurality SMD electoral systems, and parliamentary government—or at least restrained presidencies), while former French colonies are more likely to have presidents and two-ballot electoral systems. Zambia and Malawi followed this pattern but South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe, to varying degrees, did not. See Munslow 1994, Diamond 1988a, Collier 1982, Mazuri 1983, and Lipset 1995. Karl and Schmitter note that the type of democracy a nation grows will depend significantly on the mode of transition from autocracy (Karl and Schmitter 1991). See also Huntington 1991a, Share and Mainwaring 1986, Lemarchand 1995, and Diamond 1988a. See, for example, Keenan 1977.

Notes to pages 14-21

287

71. Ake 1995: 27. 72. This was true in Kenya, the Central African Republic, and Nigeria, but only partially true in Malawi and Zambia. 73. Ake 1995: 28. 74. Ibid. 33. 75. Ibid. 29. 76. Ibid. 32. 77. Comments to the symposium 'Elections and Conflict Resolution in Africa' held at the US Institute of Peace, June 1995. As quoted in Sisk and Reynolds 1998. 78. Munslow 1994: 484. 79. Ibid. 488. 80. Ibid. 487. 81. Kaplan 1994: 59. 82. Keenan 1977: 41-3. 83. Schwarz 1995: 66. 84. Ibid. 67. 85. Nyerere 1970: 216-21. 86. Ibid. 218. 87. As Nolutshungu notes, 'this view of "African culture" . . . was always most firmly held by those who were in power or close to it, and has since come under considerable public criticism' (Nolutshungu 1993: 370). 88. See Davidson 1992. 89. Decalo 1992: 35. 90. Nolutshungu 1993: 370. 91. See Lijphart 1977, 1984, 1994a, and Lijphart and Grofman 1984. 92. See Taagepera and Shugart 1989. 93. See Grofman 1982 and Grofman and Lijphart 1986. 94. See Shugart and Carey 1992: 163. 95. See Duverger 1954. 96. Sisk and Reynolds 1998.

CHAPTER 1 1. 2. 3. 4.

Lijphart 1977: 4. Dahl 1971: 3. As summarized by Lijphart 1984: 2. Shapiro notes that most recent discussions of democracy have concentrated on procedural definitions rather than 'substantive' conceptions of the public good. Huntington, Przeworski, Horowitz, di Palma, and Dahl all follow in the footsteps of Schumpter's 1942 definition of democracy as 'that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people's vote'. See Shapiro 1993: 121-50. 5. Lipset 1995: p. Iv.

288 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.


Schmitter and Karl 1991. Ibid. 81. Ibid. 82. Przeworski 1991: 12. Schmitter and Karl 1991: 78. O'Donnell 1994: 59. Ibid. 62. They take 'violence' to mean 'behaviors designed to cause physically injury or damage, but... also behaviors that violate institutional and legal expectations of the legitimate means of political change, since regimes may be deposed by the threat of violence, or by unconstitutional takeovers that do not involve physical injury' (Morrison and Stevenson 1972: 84). 14. Lijphart 1977: 4. 15. Lipset goes as far as to say that democracy 'can be seen as a means of facilitating stability' (Lipset 1995: p. Ixvi). 16. Linz and Stepan 1996a. 17. Przeworski 1991: 26. 18. See Lipset 1995 for a discussion of this concept. 19. Lipset 1995: p. Ixv. 20. Przeworski 1991: 32-3 and 37. 21. Diamond, Linz, and Lipset 1995: 52. 22. Vanhanen 1990: 11-17. See also Inkeles 1993 and Beetham 1994. 23. Amnesty International Report (1993). 24. Du Toit 1995: 132. 25. Dropping 30 places to 130/173 in the United Nations Development Program's Human Development Index (1993). 26. Ihonvbere 1995: 17. 27. Under Banda between 1991-4 the inflation rate averaged 16%, by 1996 it had reached 40%. 28. Van Buren 1995: 1038. 29. Lindeke cites a 1994 survey conducted by the National Planning Commission which found that the top 1% of the population account for 13% of the total spending while the bottom 50% consume the same (Lindeke 1994: 11). 30. Sparks 1995: 664. Lindeke concurs: 'Overall, the economic results (with the exception of employment) have been positive in light of recessions, droughts, and the enormous tasks of transformation faced by the new government' (Lindeke 1994: 14). 31. Transparency International, the worldwide business corruption watchdog, placed South Africa squarely in the middle of its corruption survey of 54 countries in 1996. South Africa came 23rd with a score of 5.68 (where 0 means the country is perceived to be totally corrupt and 10 means totally clean)—just behind Portugal and Chile and just above Poland and the Czech Republic. 32. Katzen 1995: 856 and New York Times (3 May 1996), A6. 33. New York Times (3 May 1996), A6. 34. Brent 1996: 125.


289

35. Ibid. 126. 36. Otherwise known as a semi-democracy or formal-democracy. 37. Freedom House classify the degree of freedom on the basis of composite raw scores for both civil liberties and political rights. These translate approximately into: 2—5=free, 6-ll=partly free, 12-14=not free. 38. See Murphy 1993: 4. 39. Boutros-Ghali 1995: 22. 40. Schudson 1995: 27. 41. Ibid. 28. 42. Davidson 1995: 53-60. 43. Although Zimbabwe runs a close second. 44. As reported in the Weekly Mail and Guardian (8-14 Mar. 1996), 5. 45. Saunders 1995: 23. 46. Herbst 1995: 1410. 47. As quoted in Africa Research Bulletin (Aug. 1993), 11133. 48. Malawi News Online, 28 June 1996. 49. Constitution of the Republic of Namibia, article 21 (1) (a). 50. See Forrest 1994: 96 and 1995: 869. 51. Lindeke 1995: 22. 52. See the Weekly Mail and Guardian (26 April-2 May), 24. 53. Ibid. 54. Silke and Schrire 1994: 121. 55. Ibid. 56. Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, article 16 (1) (a). 57. Ibid., article 16 (2) (a-c). 58. In the 1996 US presidential elections only 37% of the VAP population voted and President Clinton's 49% share represented only 18% of the VAP. 59. This is in line with Robert Jackman's methodology in the article 'Political Institutions and Voter Turnout in the Industrial Democracies' (1987). 60. Which should have been 87% as I neglected to include spoilt ballots. I am indebted to R. W. Johnson for pointing this out. See Reynolds 1994: 187. 61. As released by the Independent Electoral Commission. 62. Hundreds of thousands of Americans claim to have been at Woodstock; they weren't. 63. Williams 1995: 1012. 64. Bjornlund, Garber, and Gibson 1992: 17. 65. Roberts 1996: 1013. 66. Bratton 1992: 83. 67. Chiluko 1993: 97. 68. Bratton 1992: 85. Although it must be noted that by 1995 Kaunda was saying that 'multi-party democracy is here to stay' and what was needed was a 'government of national unity to save the country from total collapse' (Weekly Mail, 1995). 69. Chikulo 1993: 97. 70. Africa Research Bulletin (July 1993), 11097. 71. Ibid. (Sept. 1994), 11508.

290


72. Which was seen by some as a 'too little, too late' ethnic balancing strategy undertaken by Chiluba. 73. Kaspin 1995: 601. 74. Nkonde, Ngoni, and Tonga in the North; Ngoni and Yao in the Centre; and Nyanja, Lomwe, and Sena in the South. See Kaspin 1995: 598-602. 75. Kaspin's phrase usefully sums up the strategy, 1995: 604. 76. See Vail and White 1989: 183. 77. Kaspin 1995: 608. 78. Ibid. 619-20. 79. Weekly Mail, 23-9 Feb. 1996. 80. Malawi News On-Line, 22 Mar. 1996. 81. See Forrest 1994: 88 and Cliffe et al. 1994: 13-14. 82. See Saunders 1995: 659 and Forrest 1994: 91. 83. Saunders 1995: 660. 84. Lindeke 1994: 5. 85. Forrest 1994: 92. 86. Ibid. 97. 87. Lindeke 1994: 6-8. 88. Forrest 1994: 97. 89. Lindeke 1994: 17. 90. Africa Research Bulletin (1993), 11123. 91. Ibid. 11228. 92. A view supported by Potgieter 1991. 93. See Lindeke and Wanzala 1994, Lindeke, Wanzala, and Tonchi 1992, Forrest 1994. 94. Lindeke 1994: 20. 95. Arenstein 1990: 14. 96. Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSiswati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele, isiXhosa, and isiZulu. Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (May 1996), article 6 (1). 97. For some of the best descriptions of life and ethnicity under apartheid see: Pogrund 1990; Modisane 1986; Malan 1990; Paton 1948; Mandela 1994; Sparks 1990; Wilson and Ramphele 1989. 98. Often, due to the randomness and politicized nature of the Population Registration Act, children and parents were classified into different population groups, meaning that it was illegal for families to live together in the same house. 99. As shown in Ch. 6 the National Party's vote was majority non-white in the April 1994 general elections. 100. Citizen (5 June 1996), 8. 101. While Chester Williams was the only non-white member of the national team, he was the 'poster boy' of the entire nation. 102. In the face of many observers' predictions that it was just a flash in the pan in 1994, coloured support for the National Party in the Western Cape (with minor exceptions) held up in the local elections of 1995-6. 103. Particularly so in the Cape and Gauteng Regions. 104. See Sylvester 1991: 138.

Notes to pages 52-66 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116.

291

See Sithole 1995: 142-3. Ibid. 141. See Ch. 5. Mugabe, public speech, Harare, 9 March 1980. Herbst 1995: 1410 and du Toit 1995: 132. Herbst 1995: 1410 and du Toit 1995: 132. Sithole 1995: 146. Ibid. 154 and 149. Africa Research Bulletin (June 1994), 11488. Ibid. (Nov. 1994), 11628. Sylvester 1991: 140. Africa Research Bulletin (May 1995), 11820.

CHAPTER 2 1. Lijphart notes that segmental cleavages may be 'of a religious, ideological, linguistic, regional, cultural, racial, or ethnic nature [and in plural societies] political parties, interest groups, media of communication, schools, and voluntary associations tend to be organized along the lines of such segmental cleavages' (Lijphart 1977: 3-4). 2. See Pitkin 1967, and Ch. 8. 3. See Guinier 1994. 4. Sisk 1996. 5. Przeworski 1991: 36. 6. See, for example, Horowitz 1991, Sisk 1996, Przeworski 1991, Lijphart 1977, Lewis 1965, and Gurr 1993. 7. May 1996. 8. Grofman and Davidson 1992: 314. 9. Magagna 1988: 442. 10. See Ch. 4. 11. The whole area of 'democratic conditionality' when it comes to supporting democratization is an increasingly influential but highly under-studied field. 12. Przeworski 1991: 26. 13. See Reilly 1997a and 19976. 14. Excluding those transitions from highly racially restricted to non-racial democracy in South Africa and Namibia. 15. Although in 1980 the proportionality of the system was limited by the small district magnitude (8) and the high legal threshold of representation imposed in those districts (10%). 16. The first five surplus seats were awarded through the Droop formula, and the remaining two by the D'Hondt quota. 17. With the possibility that the National Assembly could be reduced to less than 400, but more than 350 members.

292 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.


See Lijphart 1994a. Namibian Constitution, article 49. South African Constitution, article 46 (1) (d). Yale University Press, 1984. Lijphart 1984: 3-4. For example, lack of data means that I am unable to measure the degree effusion of power by average cabinet durability and centralization in terms of the central government's share of tax receipts. In the 1985 general elections 80 MPs were elected by plurality SMD from the common voters' roll while 20 MPs came from constituencies based on the white roll. After the abolition of reserved seats in 1987, 120 MPs were directly elected from a common roll in 1990 and 1995. Robert Mugabe was selected by an electoral college to be the first executive president in December 1987. He served out the remaining three years of the parliamentary term of office and in 1990 he was directly elected as President. Abolished in September 1987. Moi's KANU government in Kenya 1993-7 would score a perfectly majoritarian -2 on the scale. While the DTA ultimately turned down the cabinet spot offered to them President Nujoma did appoint ministers from outside of the SWAPO ranks. See Ch. 5. Lijphart 1984: 24-5. At first glance this appears counter-intuitive as presidencies are often considered to be extremely majoritarian institutions. Indeed, single-person executives are, but if a president's powers are balanced against a powerful legislature then one of the key component parts of consensual democracy (i.e. restraints on majority rule) has a better chance of being fulfilled. Hypothetically, a 'collegial presidency' would score 2 if its powers were similarly equal to the legislature (see Lijphart 1984: 33-4 and Shugart and Carey 1992: 20-1). O'Donnell 1994: 59. Shugart and Carey 1992: 24, 73-4. In the case of South Africa the Senate will become the 'National Council of Provinces' in 1999. Sylvester 1991: 87. Out of the 40 Senators, 14 were elected by common roll MPs, 10 by white roll MPs, 10 by the Council of Chiefs, and 6 were appointed by the Senate. See du Toit 1995: 120. Explicitly identified as women's organizations, the disabled, health and education groups, business and farming sectors, and trade unions. Malawian Constitution, 68 (c) (i). Watts 1994: 140. Malawian Constitution (70). Forrest 1995: 869. Blondel 1968: 184-7. The Zimbabwean distinction is perhaps made clearer if one considers the percentage party shares of parliament. In 1980 (classified as a


293

multiparty-dominant party situation) the split was as follows: 57 : 20 : 20 : 3. While in the three plurality elections (classified as one-party dominant) the split was as follows: 1985—64 : 15 : 15 : 4 : 1 : 1; 1990—97 : 2 : 1; 1995—97 : 2 : 1. 42. Lijphart found the socio-economic dimension was of medium salience in only Canada, Ireland, and the United States, out of his twenty-two countries. In all other countries the dimension was of high salience to the party system. 43. See Lijphart 1984: 129 and Harmel and Janda 1976: 33-5. 44. See Ch. 5. 45. Primarily supported by Ndau (Shona) Zimbabweans. 46. See 'The Republic of South Africa 1994 General Election: National Results by Province/District' (Johannesburg: Election Administration Directorate IEC, 26 May 1994). 47. Lijphart 1984: 137. 48. See Chs. 2, 7, and 8, for discussions of electoral system effects on party campaigning styles and the electorate's access to representatives. 49. For example the Australian alternative vote and French two-ballot system (see Ch. 3). 50. Riker 1975: 101. 51. Lijphart 1984: 170-1. 52. Ibid. 179. 53. If a constitutional amendment passes in the National Assembly but fails in the National Council then the president may refer the issue to a national referendum. If it then receives two-thirds support the National Council's blocking power is overcome. Namibian Constitution, article 132 (3). 54. See Lindeke 1994: 5-6 and 1995: 12-13; and Forrest 1995: 869. 55. South African Constitution, schedule 4 (A). 56. Ibid. 5 (A). 57. See Lijphart 1984: 19. 58. 'Judicial review means that the judicial branch of government reviews the constitutionality of laws and actions in the regular course of the adjudication process, as in the United States. Constitutional review means that either a separate body within the judicial system or a body outside the judicial system is charged with reviewing the constitutionality of laws and actions.' See Maddex 1995. 59. See Linz and Valenzuela 1994 and Lijphart 19926. See the discussion in Ch. 4. 60. Shugart and Carey 1992: 2. 61. Ibid. 1. 62. Lijphart 19946. 63. Shugart and Carey 1992: 19. 64. Ibid. 24. 65. Ibid. 66. Duverger 1980: 161. 67. See Shugart and Carey 1992: 73-4.

294


68. Although Chiluba and Nujoma have to stand for re-election as well if they follow this course of action. 69. Zambian Constitution 1991, article 34. 70. Namibian Constitution, article 28. 71. Shugart and Carey 1992: 150. 72. This, however, is not unusual. Shugart and Carey identify Austria, Bulgaria, Finland, Haiti, Ireland, Peru, and Venezuela as similarly having presidents with no direct legislative power. See ibid. 155. 73. On the second 'separate survival' dimension the 'dissolution' score is reversed because a maximum presidential power of dissolution (of 4) would imply executive-legislative dependency rather than separation. See ibid. 158-62.

CHAPTER 3 1. For a more detailed discussion of the art of electoral system design see Keynolds et al. 1997. 2. Sartori argues that 'Not only are electoral systems the most manipulative instrument of politics; they also shape the party system and affect the spectrum of representation' (Sartori 1994: p. ix). Sisk stresses the electoral system's impact on conflict resolution. 'An appropriate electoral system in a divided society is arguably the most important mechanism through which parties in conflict can adopt a democratic conflict-regulating practice' (Sisk and Reynolds 1998: 58). 3. See Horowitz 1991; Lijphart 1977 and 1984; Sartori 1968 and 1994;and Sisk 1996. 4. Lijphart 1995a: 412. See also Sartori's interesting discussion of the importance of electoral systems, 1994: 27-52. 5. Although a number of new democracies are experimenting with 'parallel' or mixed systems which combine both PR lists and single-member constituencies. See Reynolds et al. 1997: 55. 6. Although in French parliamentary elections any candidate surmounting a 12.5% threshold may go forward to the second ballot, at which time it is possible to win with a plurality of the vote. 7. Lijphart 19956: 1010-15. 8. For her 1996 parliamentary elections New Zealand moved to the mixed member (German) form of proportional representation. 9. Although the system is also used in the small Pacific island nation of Nauru and the twenty 'white roll' seats in the Zimbabwe-Rhodesia elections o 1979 were elected using the alternative vote. 10. For a more detailed overview of the diffusion of electoral systems see Reynolds et al. 1997. 11. Maphai argues that 'a system designed to fulfill one function may frustrate other, equally important, functions. For example, an electoral system designed for maximum inclusiveness, such as proportional representation,

Notes to pages 92-7

12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

295

may be the least effective for generating accountability. Similarly, PR may lead to an incapacitated government, unable to effect the muchneeded socio-economic policies' (Maphai 1996: 9). These arguments will be addressed later. Zimmerman cites six related criteria needed for an electoral system to give 'fair representation'. Those are; effectiveness of ballots cast, maximization of participation, the representation of competing interests, the maximization of access to decision makers, equity in group members' representation, and legitimization of the legislative body. See Zimmerman 1992: 9—11. See Lipset 1995. See Jung and Shapiro 1995. See the ongoing debate within the Journal of Democracy: Lijphart 1991a; Lardeyret 1991; Quade 1991; Gladdish 1993; Bogdanor 1993; Sisk 1993; Barkan 1995; Reynolds 19956. Lewis 1965: 71. Ibid. 72. Lijphart 1991a: 81. Sisk 1993: 88. Lardeyret 1991: 35. Ibid. Horowitz 1991: 167. I shall address the Horowitz proposal in more detail a little later. See Rae 1967, Jung and Shapiro 1995, and Lipset 1995. Cherry goes so far as to say that PR is inherently undemocratic, 1994. See Downs 1957 and Lardeyret 1991. Although, even Ferdinand Hermens, an arch supporter of plurality, notes that the system does not always provide an adequate parliamentary opposition. See Hermens 1984: 29. Lardeyret 1991: 32-3. Although, in the case of Kenya, Anyang Nyong"o has questioned this assumption. He argues that 'single constituency representation is inadequate as a method of reflecting the preferences of the people in a democratic election. . .. [As] the demands of single constituency politics makes opposition representation, especially where the challengers fail to capture power in spite of popular support, particularly difficult. .. On resuming power the authoritarian party begins to run the system as if no change had occurred in the process of representation. In other words, there may indeed be multiple parties in society, but the political process carries on under the rules of the one-party regime' (Anyang Nyong"o 1994: 2 and 12). Sartori 1994: 57. See the discussion in Ch. 8. Bogdanor 1984: 44. Such has long been the fate of the Liberal (Liberal Democratic) Party in the UK. See Ch. 8. See Ch. 9. Lijphart, Grofman, and Lakeman have all noted that multi-member districts with five members or more are effectively immune to gerrymandering.

296


34. The party coming second in the popular vote has won the most seats twice in British general elections (1951 and 1974) and twice in New Zealand (1978 and 1981). 35. For a fuller discussion of this question, see Ch. 2. 36. Lijphart 1991a: 81. 37. Sartori 1994: 10. 38. Sartori 1994. 39. Hermens 1972. 40. Lardeyret 1991: 32. 41. Natal Witness editorial, 18 Aug. 1994. 42. Ibid. 43. See R. Calland and P. Merton, Parliamentary Whip (IDASA, May 1996), 3. 44. Faure correctly notes that the practice of post-hoc allocation of MPs to geographic areas or interest groups is 'a poor substitute to real constituency representation and proper accountability to voters' (Faure 1996: 2). 45. The South African Parliamentary Monitoring Service found 'overwhelming support' among two-thirds of all political parties for a mixed electoral system that included elements of both constituency and proportional representation. See Faure 1996. 46. For the elections of 2004. The April 1994 electoral system will be retained for the 1999 elections. See discussion in Chapter 2. 47. In Voting for a New South Africa I advocated a formula, akin to the Finnish system, where 300 members of the South African National Assembly would be elected from MMDs ranging between five and twelve members in size and voters could choose between candidates as well as parties. Parties would win seats in proportion to the votes they received but those seats would be filled by their most popular individual candidates. To ensure overall parliamentary proportionality 100 seats would be reserved to 'top-up' each party's share, but in order partially to remove the problems of detachment these additional members would be drawn from each party's most successful losing candidates. This system is by no means perfect but it retains overall proportionality in parliament and simplicity for the voter, while at the same time improving geographical accountability and the diversity of representation within regions. As an added benefit the fact that minority votes are not 'wasted', as in plurality SMD, might encourage minority parties within regions where one ethnicity or linguistic group is in the majority. See Reynolds 1993a. 48. See Lakeman 1974 for a detailed discussion of the benefits of STV, and Reynolds 1993a for a discussion of its applicability to South Africa. 49. Personal communication with author, 27 Nov. 1990. 50. Meadowcroft 1990: 4. 51. Lakeman, personal communication with author, 27 Nov. 1990. 52. See Ch. 9. 53. Horowitz 1991: dust jacket. 54. Ibid. 171. 55. Ibid. 194.

Notes to pages 102-11 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

297

Ibid. 195. See Lijphart 19916. Rokkan 1970: 151. Horowitz 1991: 166. Rae 1967: 108. Lijphart 1991a: 96. Wright 1986: 131. Sartori 1994: 61-9. See Ch. 9. Sartori 1994: 73.

CHAPTER 4 1. See Ch. 2. 2. Lustick argues that we should recognize another common model of restraining conflict in divided societies and that is control. 'A relationship in which the superior power of one segment is mobilized to enforce stability by constraining the political actions and opportunities of another segment or segments' (Lustick 1979: 328). 3. This view is most clearly found in Jung and Shapiro 1995 and Connors 1996. 4. Sisk notes that while simple majority rule may be the fairest from a theoretical point of view the scholarly consensus recognizes the principle's limitations in divided societies. Sisk and Reynolds 1998: 32. 5. Horowitz 1985: 629. 6. India can also be seen as a case of qualified majoritarianism as there is a high degree of ethnic balancing in both government and the bureaucracy. See Lijphart 1996. 7. Sisk and Reynolds 1998: 41. 8. For example, in Nigeria in 1979 a winning presidential candidate was required to win a national plurality of the votes and at least 25% of the votes in 13 of the 19 states. In 1989, any successful candidate had to win a plurality of the national votes, and not less than one-third of the votes in at least two-thirds of the states. See Sisk and Reynolds 1998: 55. 9. See Ch. 9. 10. Sisk and Reynolds 1998. Indeed, Horowitz himself implies that his proposals are majoritarian variant in arguing that the task is not to choose between majoritarian and consociational democracy but 'to choose between two kinds of majoritarian democracy: a majoritarian democracy that will produce racially or ethnically defined majorities and minorities [pure majoritarianism] or a majoritarian democracy that will produce more fluid, shifting majorities that do not lock ascriptive minorities firmly out of power [integrative majoritarianism]' (Horowitz 1991: 176). 11. See Ch. 9. 12. Lijphart 1977: 25.

298


13. Riker 1962: 32-3. In two types of societies zero-sum rules clearly do not apply, (i) homogeneous societies with a high degree of consensus where common advantages are taken for granted, and (ii) their polar opposites, societies marked by extreme internal antagonisms and hostilities. See Lijphart 1977: 27. 14. Rousseau 1985: 107. 15. Most notably in times of war, as in Britain, and times of internal upheaval, as in West Germany in the 1970s. 16. See Ch. 8. 17. Calhoun 1953: 28. 18. In the first year of the South African Government of National Unity only three decisions were taken by a majority vote within the multi-party cabinet. All other decisions were reached by consensus. 19. Lijphart 1977: 42. 20. Lijphart 1985: 119-26. 21. Lijphart graded South Africa as having: (1) no majority segment (very favourable), (2) segments of roughly equal size (favourable), (3) more than five segments, but still a manageable number (unfavourable), (4) not too large population (favourable), (5) external threats (neither favourable nor unfavourable), (6) a relatively strong loyalty to the nation state (favourable), (7) high socio-economic inequality (very unfavourable), (8) geographically concentrated, but still interspersed segments (unfavourable), (9) a mixed pattern of accommodatory traditions (neither favourable nor unfavourable). In sum South Africa scored +1 (on a possible -18 to +18 range) leaving conditions for consociationalism on a par with Belgium, Malaysia, and Lebanon, better than Cyprus, and worse than Switzerland. Lijphart 1985: 120. 22. Lijphart said in 1985, 'In South Africa it is ... highly probable—nay, virtually certain—that the ethnic factor will reassert itself under conditions of free association and open electoral competition. It is highly unlikely that blacks and whites will confront each other as monolithic entities' (Lijphart 1985: 122). 23. See Ch. 6. 24. See the section on ethnic accommodation in Ch. 1. 25. See Lijphart 1985: 120. 26. Ibid. 273. 27. Ibid. 277. 28. Ibid. 277-8. 29. Welsh 19946: 17-20. 30. See Booyson 1995: 30. Booyson argues that in 1995 opposition politics in South Africa was vibrant and not just confined to the parliamentary arena. 31. African National Congress 1995: 2. 32. Jung and Shapiro 1995: 277. 33. Nordlinger 1972: 32. 34. Cherry 1994: 613. 35. Ibid. 94. 36. Boynton and Kwon 1978: 25.

Notes to pages 118-31 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

299

Maphai 1996: 70. Barry 1975: 411. Lijphart 1985: 99. Nolutshungu 1982: 31. Ibid. 100. Maphai 1996: 79. Ibid. 79. Friedman 1994: 2 (emphasis added). See Cherry 1994. Lijphart 1985: 13. Connors argues that in South Africa consociationalism 'rather than mitigating ethnic conflict, could only wittingly or unwittingly provide a basis for ethnic mobilization by providing segmental leaders with a permanent platform' (1996: 426). 48. Nagata 1979: 506. 49. Price 1995. 50. The following discussion is drawn from Lijphart 1989: 39-41. 51. Ibid. 40. 52. Ibid. 41. 53. I will not delve into the intricacies of the single transferable vote here. For a much fuller discussion of the appropriateness of STV for South Africa see Reynolds 1993a. 54. See Lijphart 1994c. 55. See Jung and Shapiro 1995. 56. Lijphart 1991a: 72. 57. Shugart and Carey 1992: 28-43. 58. Reid 1993: 2. 59. Campbell 1994: 182. 60. Quoted in Cliffe et al. 1994: 208. 61. Shugart and Carey 1992: 49-51 (emphasis added). 62. Mainwaring 1993: 200. 63. In 1996, in the face of Kaunda's boycott, Chiluba carried all nine provinces. His lowest vote came in the North-Western Province with 50.2% of the popular vote. 64. Banda won 64% in the Central Region, 16% in the South and 7% in the North. Muluzi won 88% in the North, 7% in the Centre and 5% in the South. 65. Sisk and Reynolds 1998: 55. 66. Achen notes that 'demographics are clues' to voting behaviour 'not hypotheses' (Achen 1992: 209). 67. I shall also refer to this theory as the 'ethnic census' or 'racial census' theory of voting behaviour in which 'ethnic parties' are those which derive an overwhelming proportion of their overall support from one ethnic group, or cluster of groups to the exclusion of others. See Horowitz 1985: 295 and the useful discussion of the concept in Mattes and Gouws 1998. 68. Potgieter 1991: 39. 69. Mattes and Gouws 1998.

300


70. Rose and Unwin 1969: 128. 71. See Giliomee 1994 and 1995, Schlemmer 1994, Johnson and Schlemmer 1996, and Welsh 1994a. 72. Most notably Johnson and Schlemmer. 73. Johnson and Schlemmer 1996: 319. 74. These figures, and those which follow, are based on the Institute for Multi-Party Democracy's post-election survey, as reported by Mattes and Gouws 1998, and Reynolds 1994: 182-220. 75. Potgieter 1991: 40. 76. See Weiland 1995. 77. Lindeke et al. 1992: 121. 78. Ibid. 129. 79. Ibid. 136. 80. See Ch. 1. 81. See Kaspin 1995: 614. 82. Ibid. 83. Ibid. 614-15. 84. A combination of the Swiss and South African executive arrangements. 85. However, see Reynolds (1993a) for an objection to this argument.

CHAPTER 5 1. Including Zimbabwe's 1980 election held under PR rules. 2. Malawi 1994, Namibia 1989 and 1994, South Africa 1994, Zambia 1991, and Zimbabwe 1980, 1985, 1990, and 1995 (including the separate 'white voters' roll' elections of 1980 and 1985). 3. See Chs. 2 and 6. 4. Orton Chirwa was Malawi's first Attorney-General, who fell out of favour with Hastings Banda and was forced to flee to Tanzania in 1966. However in 1981 he, and his wife and son, were kidnapped by Malawian government agents while on a visit to eastern Zambia. Orton's son was held incommunicado until 1984, but he and Vera Chirwa were tried on the charges of treason for supposedly plotting to overthrow the government. Both were convicted and sentenced to death, but an international outcry prompted Banda to commute their sentences to life imprisonment. Sadly for Orton Chirwa this proved to be the case as he died in his cell in Zomba prison on 21 October 1992; Vera Chirwa was released in January of 1993. 5. An official of the Southern African Trade Union Co-ordinating Council. 6. The international aid to Malawi totalled approximately $70 million in 1992. 7. EIU Country Profile (1989-1990). 8. Africa Research Bulletin (Sept. 1992), 10716. 9. 70,979 or 2% of the votes were judged voided because of 'discrepancies'. See Africa Report (Sept.-Oct. 1993), 50.


301

10. BBC Radio World Service, 16 June 1993. 11. To my knowledge the only discussion of this question was my own paper 'Designing Electoral Laws for the New Malawi', presented at the annual meeting of the African Studies Association in Boston, Dec. 1993. The analysis of the likely workings of plurality and proposals for a district-based list PR system were widely circulated among high-ranking members of the Alliance for Democracy (AFORD), but while sympathetic to the arguments and mindful of the disadvantages they might be faced with in a plurality system, they did not subsequently explicitly campaign for PR in the negotiations. The issue was also discussed with AFORD members during my field work in Malawi in August-September 1993. 12. Africa Research Bulletin (May 1994), 11434. 13. Ibid. 14. van Donge 1995: 238. 15. Venter 1994: 173-4. 16. See van Donge 1995: 249. 17. Ibid. 240. 18. Although the MCP still held on to these seats they did so with drastically reduced majorities. Ntchisi North was won with a 9% majority and the North-East (where Malewezi actually stood) by less than 900 votes. In comparison Ntchisi South, where no well-known UDF (or MCP) candidate stood, was won by the MCP by a majority of 9,000 votes. 19. van Donge 1995: 256. 20. Bjornlund, Garber, and Gibson 1992: 22. 21. Ibid. 22. Chikulo 1993: 88. 23. Bjornlund, Garber, and Gibson 1992: 26. 24. As quoted in Chikulo 1993: 88. 25. Bjornlund, Garber, and Gibson 1992: 23. 26. Bjornlund, Bratton, and Gibson 1992: 415. 27. Ibid. 28. Comments to the conference 'Electoral Systems for Emerging Democracies: Experiences and Suggestions', 12-15 Nov. 1996, S0rup Herregaard, Denmark. 29. Bjornlund, Garber, and Gibson 1992: 4. 30. Bjornlund, Bratton, and Gibson 1992: 423. 31. Panter-Brick 1994: 235. 32. The Times of Zambia and the Zambian Daily Mail. 33. Panter-Brick 1994: 237. 34. Bjornlund, Garber, and Gibson 1992: 45. 35. Bjornlund, Bratton, and Gibson 1992: 422. 36. Southern Africa 1992: 2. As quoted in Chikulo 1993: 95 (emphasis in original). 37. The turnout figure was closer to 15% of the voting age population in UNIP's Eastern Province stronghold. 38. Machona and Phiri 1996: 1. 39. 'Zambian Presidential Poll not Corrupt, OAU', Reuters, 2 Dec. 1996.

302 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

Notes to pages 156-67 Chikulo 1993: 95. Bjornlund, Bratton, and Gibson 1992: 42 Burnell 1995: 40 Chikulo 1993: 99. Ibid. Mwiinga 1994: 60. See Ch. 1. Excluding those transitions from highly racially restricted to non-racial democracy in South Africa and Namibia. More detailed descriptions of colonial rule and the transition to independence in Zimbabwe can be found in Herbst 1990: 13-36; Sylvester 1991: 1-60; and Stoneman and Cliffe 1989: 16-33. Herbst 1990: 14. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 25. The acronym of the Zimbabwe African National Union has undergone three metamorphoses. During the civil war (and before independence) the party was part of the patriotic front known as ZANU-PF. Between 1980 and 1987 the alliance with ZAPU had gone but they remained known as ZANU (PF). Since 1987 and the merger of ZANU and ZAPU the party has become known as ZANU PF. Stoneman and Cliffe 1989: 19. Ibid. 20 and 23. Sithole had been deposed as President of ZANU in the early 1970s and his rump party had laid claim to the ZANU name. Stoneman and Cliffe 1989: 30. See Ch. 7. Meldrum 1995: 63 SAPA-Reuter, 6 Apr. 199 Moyo 1992: 162-3. Stoneman and Cliffe 1989: 30. Ibid. 32. As quoted in Sithole 1986: 85. Stoneman and Cliffe 1989: 34, cite K. Cole and K. Flower to support the thesis that the three attempts on Mugabe's life were organized by Rhodesian special forces. Sithole 1986: 85. As quoted in Sithole 1986: 92. Ibid. Moyo 1992: 75. Ibid. 78. Ibid. 79. Ibid. 82. Ibid. 82-3. Ibid. 146. Meldrum 1995: 62. Ibid. 63.


303

76. Inter Press Service, Harare, 28 Feb. 1995. 77. Meldrum 1995: 62. 78. Africa Confidential (14 Apr. 1995), 6. 79. Sylvester 1991: 69. 80. Sithole 1986: 84. 81. Ibid. 82. In fact these twenty seats were elected by 103,000 registered white, coloured, and Asian voters. Whites outnumbered Asians and coloureds by three to one. 83. The Herald (9 Feb. 1980), 9. 84. Sithole 1986: 89. 85. Moyo 1992: 23. 86. Sithole 1986: 94. 87. Moyo 1992: 28 88. Stoneman and Cliffe 1989: 48. 89. Ibid. 48-9. 90. Sithole 1986: 93. 91. Sylvester 1991: 79. 92. Sithole 1986: 92. 93. Under the Lancaster House agreement they were to have expired in 1990 anyway. 94. Moyo 1992: 21-2. 95. Ibid. 145. 96. See Sylvester 1991: 90. 97. Meldrum 1995: 62. 98. See Moyo 1992: 148-56. 99. Africa Confidential (14 Apr. 1995), 6. 100. South African Press Association report, 24 Feb. 1995. 101. Ibid. 102. Sapa-Reuter, 6 Apr. 1995. 103. Africa Research Bulletin (Apr. 1995), 11820. 104. Africa Confidential (14 Apr. 1995), 5.

CHAPTER 6 1. The first five surplus seats were awarded through the Droop formula, and the remaining two by the D'Hondt quota. 2. The best and most nuanced discussion of the transition to democracy in South Africa is Timothy Sisk's Democratization in South Africa (1995). 3. As quoted in Sisk 1995: 189. 4. Sisk 1995: 188. 5. Ibid. 190. 6. Ibid. 7. National Party 1991. 8. See Table 7.8.

304 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.


Olivier 1992: 2. As quoted in Sisk 1995: 162. Desai estimated PAC support to be at 3-4% in 1991. Sisk 1995: 161. Asmal 1990: 17. I need not delve too deeply into the voting process here—Benjamin Pogrund's chapter 'South Africa Goes to the Polls', in Election '94 South Africa (1994) offers the best commentary of the events of 27, 28, and 29 April. 14. Hamilton and Mare 1994: 86. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 87. 17. For a detailed discussion of the 1994 South African election results see Reynolds 1994: 182-220. 18. The highest being the Conservative Party's 54% of the vote in 1935. 19. See Lijphart 19956. 20. Cliffe et al. 1994: 34. Cliffe headed a team of researchers which observed, compiled data, and analysed the 1989 Namibian electoral process. Their work is one of the most useful and comprehensive guides to the early days of multiparty democracy in Namibia, and thus will be extensively referenced in this work. Cliffe's team included Namibian, Botswanan, and British scholars: Ray Bush, Jenny Lindsay, Brian Mokopakgosi, Donna Pankhurst, and Balefi Tsie. 21. Ibid. 48. 22. Ibid. 56. 23. Ibid. 61. 24. Ibid. 65. 25. Forging the World's Youngest Democracy (Namibia, UN Chronicle, Mar. 1990). 26. P. Baran as cited in Cliffe et al. 1994. 27. Potgieter 1991: 33. 28. Cliffe et al. 1994: 116. 29. Ibid. 202-3. 30. Ibid. 203. 31. As quoted in Potgieter 1991: 37. 32. Ibid. 36. 33. As quoted in Lindeke, Wanzala, and Tonchi 1992: 131. 34. Cliffe et al. 1994: 133. 35. Potgieter 1991: 38. 36. Ibid. 37. Lindeke, Wanzala, and Tonchi 1992: 130. 38. Ibid. 133. 39. Weiland 1995: 351. 40. Ibid. 351-2. 41. Potgieter 1991: 44. 42. Ibid. 34. 43. Cliffe et al. 1994: 185. 44. Potgieter 1991: 35.

Notes to pages 198-232 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

305

Ibid. Lindeke, Wanzala, and Tonchi 1992: 128. Cliffe et al. 1994: 186. Ibid. 193. Weiland 1995: 357. Ibid. 349. Ibid. 352. Ibid. 354. Ibid. 355. Ibid. Ibid.

CHAPTER 7 1. A rarely used electoral system (for a fuller discussion of the workings of the system see Wright 1984). 2. Although the correlation of ethnicity to voting behaviour should not necessarily be read as causation. See the arguments made in Chs. 2 and 4. Nevertheless, regardless of the way in which southern Africans decide their party loyalty, such loyalty in democratic elections is universally strong. 3. See Laakso and Taagepera 1979: 3-27. 4. Chikulo 1993: 91. 5. Sithole 1986: 84. 6. Inter Press Service, Harare, 12 Jan. 1995. 7. Meldrum 1995: 60. 8. Mattes and Gouws 1998. 9. Pendleton et al. 1993: 19. 10. Weiland 1995: 355. 11. I am grateful to James McGregor of the US Information Agency for bringing this objection to my attention. 12. See Moyo 1992. 13. The leader of AFORD, Chakufwa Chihana, was made a Second VicePresident and Minister of Irrigation and Water Development, Dr Mapopo Chipeta Minister of Agriculture, and Dr Matebo Mzunda Minister of Environmental Affairs. Africa Research Bulletin (Sept. 1994), 11572-3. 14. See Ch. 5. 15. Butler 1983: 59.

CHAPTER 8 1. See Rae and Taylor 1970: 1-5. 2. Jung and Shapiro 1995.

306 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29.

30.

31.


Ibid. 274. Mattes and Gouws 1998. Barkan 1995: 106-16. Ibid. 107. Ibid. Lijphart 1994a: appendix. Ibid. Adams 1852-65: iv. 284, as cited in Pitkin 1967: 60. Pitkin 1969: 10. Examples of ascriptive traits include, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation; attitudinal traits are based on opinions and ideology; and behavioural traits are based on organizational (e.g. union) membership and voting patterns. See Rae and Taylor 1970: 1-5. Grofman et al. 1982: 98. Ibid. Ibid. See Lakeman 1974; Norris 1985; Norris and Lovenduski 1995; Rule 1981, 1987, and 1994a; Rule and Zimmerman 1992, 1994. Taagepera 1994: 244. Rule 1994a: 15. Ibid. See Lovenduski and Norris 1993 and Rule and Zimmerman 1994. Norris 1993: 312. Rule 19946: 689. Taagepera 1994: 235. Barkan 1995: 108. See Ch. 3. See Reynolds 1994: 194. I shall use these two terms interchangeably to mean any rejected ballot paper—however, the ambiguity of the expression 'spoilt ballot' best described rejected ballots which can be identified, only by quasi-experiment, as protests or errors. However, Power and Roberts did find that 'literacy rates proved especially important in explaining invalid ballots for the (Brazilian) lower house' (1995: 816). For example the consultancy wing of the Electoral Reform Society of Great Britain and Ireland have been developing for trials a 'peel and stick' version of STV which can be utilized by communities with illiterate members. Austria (1945), 1.1%; Germany (1949), 3.1%; Ireland (1922), 3.2%; Israel (1949), 1.2%; Italy (1946), 7.7%; Malawi (1994), 2.3%; Namibia (1989), 1.4% Portugal (1975), 6.9%; South Africa (1994), 1.0%; Spain (1975), 1.7%; Zambia (1991), 3.4%, Zimbabwe (1980), 2.0%. Mackie and Rose 1982 and author's calculations. Nevertheless it must be noted that wasted votes may still have an impact upon a nation's political dynamic regardless of whether they count or not.

Notes to pages 257-80 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

307

Horowitz 1991: 191. Ibid. 164. Ibid. 201. Ibid. 182. Rose 1976: 78. Horowitz 1991: 194. Wright 1984: 131. Sisk 1995: 6. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 285. March 1992 to May 1994. See Introduction. Effectively from 1978 (when the South African government agreed to a UN plan for the transition to independence) to 1989.

CHAPTER 9 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

See Kaplan 1994 and 1996 and Schwarz 1995. Reid 1995: 1. See Ch. 2. Chege 1995: 49. Reid 1993. Horowitz 1985: 319-24. French 1996: A4. 'Democracy African Style', The Economist (3 Feb. 1996), 17. French 1996: A5. Chege 1995: 50. Price 1997. See Kandeh 1992. Berkeley 1996: 32. Price 1995: 4. Mattes and Gouws 1998. Schwarz 1995: 66. Turnout was lowest in the Eastern Province—37% of a voters' roll which in itself represented less than half of the eligible electorate of the region.

APPENDIX 1. Reynolds 1993a: 79-103. 2. See Reynolds 1994 and Mattes and Gouws 1998. 3. e.g. each province would receive the following number of seats: Western Cape (42), Eastern Cape (56), Northern Cape (8), KwaZulu-Natal (80), Orange

308

Note to page 281

Free State (30), North West (30), Northern Transvaal (40), Eastern Transvaal (28), Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging (86). 4. In practice Ovamboland would have been split up into smaller MMDs for the alternative vote, but SWAPO's electoral dominance in that region makes such a detailed analysis irrelevant. With 92% of the vote they would have taken every seat no matter how the boundaries were delimited.

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Index

abstentions 255 accessibility, see voter accessibility accommodation: consociationalism and 118-19, 120 ethnic accommodation 40-55, 59, 275 accountability 92, 249, 251 ACN, see National Christian Action (ACN), Namibia African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) 74, 90 election results 114, 190 plurality SMD system effects 234 re-run of elections 223-4, 226 African Moderate Congress Party (AMCP) 240 African Muslim Party (AMP) 240 African National Congress (ANC), South Africa 25, 50-1, 75-6, 182-3, 210 election results 188-9, 208 electoral system choice 101, 183-4, 262, 266 electoral system significance 239 inclusiveness 60 institutional choice analysis 262 media freedom and 36-7 opposition to 117 re-run of elections 208, 222, 224-6 voting behaviour and 134 Agenda for Zambia (AZ) 159 Ahtisari, Martti 195 Ake, Claude 14-15 Algeria 108 Alliance for Democracy (AFORD), Malawi 45-6, 60, 69, 144 election results 147-9, 206 institutional choice analysis 262-3, 301 n. 11 re-run of elections 206, 212-13 voting behaviour and 137 alternative vote 90, 94, 101-3, 109-10, 128-9, 294 n. 9 benefits of 255 in hypothetical action 257-61

Andersen, Chris 170, 173 Angola 108, 126, 273, 283 n. 7 apartheid 49-50 arap-Moi, Daniel 16, 97, 273 Arenstein, R. 49 Asmal, Kader 183-4, 187 Auret, Michel 164 Australia, alternative vote 258-9 Azanian People's Organization (AZAPO) 186, 223 Banda, Hastings Kamuzu 34-5, 60, 74, 142-5 election results 147-9, 299 n. 64 regionalism and 44-5 see also Malawian Congress Party Barkan, Joel 234-6 Barry, Brian 118 Bemba, Zambia 42, 136-7 Berkeley, Bill 273 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India 98 bicameralism 70-1, 77 Bjornlund, Eric 42 Blondel, Jean 71 Boka, Roger 54 Bosnia 108, 120 Botha, Pik 182, 193, 195, 263 Botswana 270, 283 n. 7 Boutros-Ghali, Boutros 32 Boyton, G. R. 62-3, 118 Bratton, Michael 42 Brent, R. Stephen 31 Brink, Andre 50 Burnell, Peter 157 Buthelezi, Mangosuthu 74, 76, 118 electoral system choice 185 ethnic mobilization 273-4 see also Inkatha Freedom Party (IFF) Butler, David 224 Calhoun, John C. 112 Campbell, Ian 126 Carey, John 70, 83, 85, 126, 128

332

Index

centripetalism 109 Chakuamba, Gwanda 149 Chege, Michael 271, 272 Cherry, Janet 118 Chihana, Chakufwa 45, 143-5, 305 n. 13 election results 149 see also Alliance for Democracy (AFORD), Malawi Chikulo, B. C. 43, 156, 158, 207 Chiluba, Frederick 25, 28, 40, 74-5, 128-9, 150-1 election fairness 153—6 ethnic relations and 42-4, 274-5 presidential powers 85 press freedom and 32-3 see also Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (MMD), Zambia Chimurenga Wars, Zimbabwe 160 Chirwa, Orton 300 n. 4 civil liberties 30, 31, 289 n. 37 Cliffe, Lionel 161, 169, 172, 192-5, 198, 304 n. 20 coalitions 68, 111 see also power-sharing governments communication 11—12 media freedom 31—7 concurrent majority principle 112 Congress Party, India 98 consensual governments, see consociational power-sharing; integrative consensual powersharing; power-sharing governments Conservative Alliance of Zimbabwe (CAZ) 172-3 re-run of elections 218 see also Rhodesian Front consociational power-sharing 5, 6, 62-3, 107, 110-21 challenges to consociational theory and practice 116-20, 299 n. 47 conditions for 113-15 distinction from integrative consensual power-sharing 122, 124 need for 120-1 constitution 5, 6, 78-9 importance of 9-10 see also democratic type; institutional design constitutional engineering 12-13, 261 Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) 182-3

corruption 288 n. 31 cultural-ethnic issues 74 Dahl, Robert 20-1, 24, 116 Davidson, Basil 17 Davidson, Chandler 60 Davidson, Joe 32 de Klerk, F. W. 50, 60, 74, 182 election results 189 see also National Party (NP), South Africa Decalo, Samuel 17 delegative democracy 21-2, 69 democracy 63, 282 n. 6, 287 n. 4 definitions of 20-2 delegative democracy 21-2 democratic consolidation 2-5, 22-4 relevance of for Africa 14-17 see also democratic type Democratic Coalition of Namibia (DCN) 67, 191, 199, 241 re-run of elections 229-30 democratic consolidation 2-5, 22-4 see also democratization Democratic Party (DP), South Africa 62, 74, 117, 134 election results 190 electoral system choice 185-6 re-run of elections 223-5 Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (DTA), Namibia 62, 74, 127 election fairness 195-6 election results 196-201 institutional choice analysis 263 re-run of elections 226-30 voting behaviour and 134-5 democratic type 2-3, 6, 67-83, 105, 286 n. 69 coalitions versus concentrations of executive power 68-9 consequences of 268, 269 constitutions 78-9 electoral system 76-7 fusion or separation of powers 69-70 issues dimensions of partisan conflict 72, 73-6 judicial review 78-9, 293 n. 58 Malawi 69, 70-1, 73-82, 125 minority vetoes 78—9 Namibia 69-82, 125, 263 South Africa 68-79, 82, 114, 116-20, 123-5, 262 type of party system 71-3

Index unicameralism or bicameralism 70-1 unitary versus federal government 77-8 Zambia 68-80, 125 Zimbabwe 68-82, 108, 125 see also institutional choice; majoritarianism; power-sharing governments democratization 1-5, 14 democratic conditionality 291 n. 11 institutions and 10-12 Malawi 142-5 measurement of, see democratization indicators Namibia 191-2 political stability and 22 problems with in Africa 14-16 South Africa 182-3 Zambia 150-1 Zimbabwe 160-2 democratization indicators 24-57 economic indicators 27-31 electoral indicators 37-40, 41 ethnic accommodation 40-55 media freedom and influence 31-7 political rights and civil liberties 30, 31 political violence 25-6 Desai, Barney 186 descriptive representation 231-2, 241-9 ethnic diversity in southern African parliaments 245-9 women in southern African parliaments 243-5 D'Hondt formula 90, 241 Diamond, Larry 10, 15, 23-4, 284 n. 24 disproportionality, indices of 234-6, 237 alternative vote 258 see also proportional representation; proportionality Dongo, Margaret 167, 175, 176, 220 dos Santos, Jose Eduardo 108, 126 double ballot, see two-ballot electoral system Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), Tamil Nadu 98 Droop quota 66, 90, 228, 230, 240-1 du Toit, Pierre 53 Dumbutshena, Enoch 167, 176 Duverger's hypothesis 205

333

economic indicators of democratization 27-31, 268 education, South Africa 51 elections: fallacy of electoralism 21 as problem for democracy 14-15 see also electoral indicators; electoral systems electoral indicators 37-40 spoilt ballots 40, 41 turnout 37-40 electoral systems 2, 64-7, 265-7, 286 n. 68 classification of 76-7 criteria system should aim to fulfil 91-2, 295 n. 12 effect on government administration 238, 239 importance of 6, 89-90, 93-4, 294 n. 2 Malawi 64, 77, 141-2, 145-6, 262-3 Namibia 66-7, 77, 190-1, 193-4, 263-4 range of 89-91, 294 n. 11 South Africa 66-7, 77, 100-3, 183-7, 262, 266-7 voting systems 252-5 Zambia 64-6, 77, 151-2, 264 Zimbabwe 66, 77, 91, 159-60, 162-4, 264-6 see also alternative vote; institutional choice; plurality single member districts; proportional representation; single transferable vote; two-ballot systems Elster, Jon 12 ethnic accommodation 40-55, 59, 275 Malawi 44-6 Namibia 46-9, 268 South Africa 49-52, 268 Zambia 42-4 Zimbabwe 52-5, 169, 172, 181 ethnic diversity in parliaments 245-9 ethnic voting 74, 121, 130-8, 272-4, 299 n. 67, 305 n. 2 exclusion 6-8, 64 see also inclusiveness executive type 2, 6, 83-8 Malawi 85, 87, 126-9 Namibia 85, 87-8, 126-8 South Africa 126-9 Zambia 85-7, 128-9 Zimbabwe 85, 87-8, 126-8

334

Index

executive type (cont.): see also parliamentary systems; presidential systems (FCN) Federal Convention of Namibia 134 re-run of elections 226, 228 federalism 77-8, 109, 117-18 Federation of Rhodesia 150, 161 first-past-the-post electoral system, see plurality single member districts floating vote 111-12 foreign policy issue 75-6 Forrest, Joshua Bernard 35, 47-9, 71 Forum party, Zimbabwe 136, 176 Freedom Front, South Africa 62, 74, 75, 114, 134 election results 189 re-run of elections 223-6 French, Howard 272 Friedman, Steven 120 frozen party systems 232-4 Garoeb, Justus 48 Gouws, Amanda 130, 234 Government of National Unity (GNU), South Africa 25, 42, 117, 124, 234 inclusiveness 60 grand coalitions 68, 111 see also power-sharing governments Grofman, Bernard 60, 242 Groth, Siegfried 36 Guinier, Lani 59 Gurr, Ted 282 n. 4 Gwala, Harry 188 Habyarimana, Juvenal 271 Hamilton, Georgina 188 Hare quota 66, 90, 190, 228, 230, 240-1 health epidemics 282 n. 3 Herbst, Jeffrey 34, 53, 160, 161 Hermens, Ferdinand 99, 295 n. 25 Horowitz, Donald L. 12, 59, 94, 101-2, 105, 108-10, 128, 131, 213, 225, 257-61, 272 Horowitz Proposal, see alternative vote Ihonvbere, Julius O. 28 illiteracy significance for voting system choice 252-5 inclusiveness 3, 6-8, 58-64, 231-2, 268-70 intrinsic value of 60-1

non-political modes of 61-2 perceived inclusion 58-9 relationship with explanatory variables 62-4 Independent Broadcasting Authority, South Africa 36 Independent Zimbabwe Group (IZG) 172-3 re-run of elections 218 indices of disproportionality 234-6, 237 alternative vote 258 see also proportional representation; proportionality Inkatha Freedom Party (IFF), South Africa 25, 50, 62, 76 election results 114, 189 electoral system choice 185 ethnic mobilization 273-4 as opposition to ANC 117 re-run of elections 208, 224, 225 voting behaviour and 134 institutional choice 12-13, 261-7 Malawi 262-3 Namibia 263-4 South Africa 261-2 Zambia 264 Zimbabwe 264-5 see also electoral systems institutional design 5, 284 n. 23 democratization and 10-12 importance of 9 inclusiveness 7-8 policy consequences of 9—10 integrative consensual power-sharing 5, 6, 107, 121-5 integrative majoritarianism 105, 109-10 Ivory Coast 272 Jehovah's Witnesses, persecution of 74 Johnson, R. W. 37, 39, 208 judicial review 78-9, 293 n. 58 Jung, Courtney 116, 117, 123, 232 Kabbah, Ahmad Tejan 271 Kaleso, Peter 149 Kamba, Walker 165 Kandeh, Jimmy D. 273 Kapita, Ben 159 Kaplan, Robert D. 16 Kapwewe, Simon 42, 150 Karl, Terry 21

Index Kaspin, Deborah 44, 137-8 Kaunda, Kenneth David 25, 28, 42, 74, 75, 150-1, 210 election fairness 153—4 election results 156, 158 ethnic relations and 44 see also United National Independence Party (UNIP), Zambia Keenan, George 16 Kenya 295 n. 27 ethnic voting 272-3 Khama, Seretse 270 Koelble, Thomas 9 Kombayi, Patrick 166 Kriegler, Johann 187, 188 Kwon, W. H. 62-3, 118 Lakeman, Enid 100 Lancaster House agreement 25, 61, 108, 163, 264 Lardeyret, Guy 93-4, 99 Leahy, John 143 Lebanon 120 Lesotho 283 n. 7 Lewis, W. Arthur 93 Liberia 108, 270 Lijphart, Arend 2, 20, 22, 59, 67-8, 70, 73, 75, 77, 93, 102, 111-13, 118, 120, 122, 123, 126, 235 Lindeke, William A. 35, 47-9, 135, 195, 198 Linz, Juan 10, 23-4 Lipset, Seymour Martin 10, 20, 23-4 Lozi, Zambia 42, 43, 136-7 McNally, Nick 170 Magagna, Victor 62 Mainwaring, Scott 128 majoritarianism 2-3, 67, 81, 105-10, 297 n. 10 consequences of 270, 274-5 exclusion and 64 frozen party systems and 232-4 integrative majoritarianism 105, 109-10 modified majoritarianism 262, 263 qualified majoritarianism 105, 108-9, 110 see also democratic type Makumbe, John 208 Makuta, Friday 144 Malan, D. F. 49, 97 Malawi 141-9, 177

335

conditions for consociationalism 115 democratic type 69, 70-1, 73-82, 125 democratization 142-5 economic indicators 27-8 election results 142, 147-9, 277 electoral indictors 40 electoral system 64, 77, 141-2, 145-6, 266-7 ethnic diversity in parliament 248 ethnic relations 44-6 ethnic voting 272, 273 executive formation related to electoral system 239 executive type 85, 87, 126-9 fairness of elections 146-7 inclusiveness 60, 61 index of disproportionality 235-6 institutional choice analysis 262-3 languages 44-5 media freedom 34-5 number of parties 210 political rights 31 political violence 25 re-run of elections 205-6, 211-13, 258, 276 regionalism 44-6, 74, 137-8, 147-9, 251 voting behaviour 137-8 Malawian Broadcasting Corporation 35 Malawian Congress Party (MCP) 45, 60, 143-5 election fairness 146-7 election results 147-9, 206, 301 n. 18 institutional choice analysis 262-3 media freedom and 35 persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses 74 voting behaviour and 137 Malewzi, Justin 149 Malinga, Joshua 54, 181 Mandaza, Ibbo 176 Mandela, Nelson 31, 60, 74, 129 election results 188 powers 85 release of 182 see also African National Congress (ANC), South Africa Maphai, Vincent 118, 119 March, James 9 Mare, Gerhard 188 marginal seats 222, 233-4

336

Index

Masire, Ketumile 270 Mass Media Trust, Zimbabwe 34 Mattes, Robert B. 130, 234 Mbikusita-Lewanika, Akashambatwa 159 Meadowcroft, Michael 100 media freedom 31-7, 155 Meyer, Roelf 99, 185 minority vetoes 78-9, 111 Mkandawire, Ian 46 M'membe, Fred 33 modified majoritarianism 262, 263 Monitor Action Group (MAG), Namibia 67, 191, 241 Morrison, D. G. 22 Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (MMD), Zambia 28, 75, 79-80, 151, 210 election fairness 153-6 election results 156-8, 207 electoral system choice 152, 264 ethnic relations and 42—4, 274-5 institutional choice analysis 264 media freedom and 32-3 re-run of elections 207, 214-15 voting behaviour and 136-7 Moyo, Jonathan 164, 166-7, 172, 173-4 Mozaffar, Shaheen 10 Mozambique 108, 283 n. 7 Msoso, Anastazia 145, 146 Mudge, Dirk 127 see also Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (DTA), Namibia Mugabe, Robert 29, 40, 74-6, 127-9, 292 n. 25 election fairness and 165 election results 168-81 electoral system choice 164 ethnic relations and 52-4, 74 media freedom and 34 presidential powers 85, 87 see also Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) Mulemba, Humphrey 158 Muluzi, Bakili 28, 35, 45-6, 127, 129 election results 147, 149 electoral system significance 239 presidential powers 85 see also United Democratic Front (UDF), Malawi Mung'omba, Dean 159 Munslow, Barry 15-16 Munthali, Machipisa 149

Museveni, Yoweri 16, 273 mutual veto 111, 112 Muyongo, Mushake 199 see also Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (DTA), Namibia Muzenda, Simon 166, 176 Muzorewa, Abel 52, 136, 162, 167 see also United African National Council (UANC), Zimbabwe Mwaanga, Vernon 44 Mwanajiti, Ngande 156 Mwanawasa, Levy 43 Mwiinga, Jowie 158 Nagata, Judith 121 Namibia 190-202 conditions for consociationalism 114-15 democratic type 69-82, 125, 263 democratization 191-2 economic indicators 27, 29, 268 election results 196-202 electoral indicators 39-40 electoral system 66-7, 77, 190-1, 193-4, 263-4, 266-7 ethnic relations 46-9, 268 executive type 85, 87-8, 126-8 fairness of elections 194-6 inclusiveness 60, 61, 62, 268, 269 index of disproportionality 235 institutional choice analysis 263-4 media freedom 35-6 political rights 31 political violence 25, 268 proportional representation type significance 240-1 re-run of elections 209, 226-30, 259, 280-1 regionalism 251 voting behaviour 130, 134-5 Namibia National Front (NNF) 67, 134, 190, 241 re-run of elections 226, 228 National Christian Action (ACN), Namibia 134, 198 re-run of elections 226, 228 National Consultative Council (NCC), Malawi 145 National Lima Party (NLP), Zambia 159 National Party (NP), South Africa 50-1, 62, 74, 76 election results 114, 189 electoral system choice 185

Index inclusiveness 60 as opposition to ANC 117 re-run of elections 208, 222, 224-5 voting behaviour and 131, 134 National Party (NP), Zambia 43, 158-9 National Patriotic Front (NPF), Namibia 134, 199 Nationalist-Afrikaner coalition, South Africa 97 Ncube, Trevor 34 Ndebele, Zimbabwe 52-5, 247-8 voting behaviour 135-6, 169, 172 New Zealand 285 n. 34 Nigeria 126, 297 n. 8 Nkomo, Joshua 127-8, 161, 170-4 ethnic relations and 52-4 see also Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) Nolutshungu, Samuel C. 17, 119 North, Douglas 285 n. 41 re-run of elections 226, 228 Nujoma, Sam 29, 36, 60, 127, 128, 200 presidential powers 85 see also South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO), Namibia Nyanja, Zambia 42, 136-7 Nyerere, Julius 16 Nyong'o, Anyang 295 n. 27 O'Donnell, Guillermo 21-2, 69 Olivier, N. J. J. 186 Olsen, Johan 9 O'Lynn, Bryan 194 one-party states 233—4 opposition: consociationalism and 116, 117 majoritarianism and 232-4 Ovambo, Namibia 46-9 voting behaviour 134-5, 197-9, 209 Ovambo People's Organization (OPO), Namibia 135 Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), South Africa 62, 75, 182 election results 190 electoral system choice 186 re-run of elections 223-5 voting behaviour and 134 parliamentary systems 2, 69-70, 84 definitions 83-5 see also executive type

337

partisan conflict, issues dimensions of 72, 73-6 cultural-ethnic 74 foreign policy 75-6 post-materialism 76 regime support 75 religion 73-4 socio-economic 73, 293 n. 42 urban versus rural 74-5 Pendleton, Wade 209 perceived inclusion 58-9 PF ZAPU, see Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) Pitkin, Hanna F. 241 plurality single member districts (SMD) 2, 76-7, 90-1, 265-6 advantages of 94-5 disadvantages of 95-7, 235-6 frozen party systems and 232-4 indices of disproportionality 235-6, 237 regionalism and 249-51 wasted votes and 256 see also electoral systems political rights 30, 31, 289 n. 37 political stability 22 consociationalism and 118 democratization and 22 political violence 288 n. 13 as indicator of democratization 25-6 Malawi 25 Namibia 25, 268 South Africa 25, 26, 51, 268 Zambia 25, 153 Zimbabwe 25, 53, 165-7 positive sum games 63 post-materialism issue 76 Potgieter, P. J. J. S. 130, 135, 194, 198, 199 power-sharing governments 2-3, 67, 81, 105-7, 110-25 arguments for 269-70 integrative consensual powersharing 5, 6, 107, 121-5 see also consociational powersharing; democratic type premier-presidentialism 85, 128 presidential systems 2, 69-70, 84, 292 n. 31 definitions 83-5 presidential powers 83-8 relevance of 125—9 see also executive type

338

Index

presidential-parliamentarism 83 Press Corporation Limited, Malawi 34 press freedom 31-7 Price, Robert 121, 273 proportional representation (PR) 2, 76, 90-1, 266-7 accountability and 249, 251 advantages of 97-8 allocation of seats 90 disadvantages of 98-9, 234-6 indices of disproportionality 235-6, 237 PR type significance 239-41 remedying the problems of 99-101 threshold for representation 66, 67, 90, 187, 240 wasted votes and 256 see also electoral systems proportionality 111, 112, 235 alternative vote 258-9 Przeworski, Adam 9, 21, 23, 59, 63, 262, 284 n. 23

representation 58, 77, 231-2, 295 n. 12 see also descriptive representation; inclusiveness Rhodesia: election results 170, 172 Federation of 150, 161 political rights 31 see also Zimbabwe Rhodesian civil war (1972-80) 25 Rhodesian Front (RF) 53, 73, 75, 76, 161, 162, 221 see also Conservative Alliance of Zimbabwe (CAZ) Riker, William 77, 111 Rokkan, Stein 102 Roosevelt Johnson, D. 270 Rose, Richard 131, 258 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 111, 284 n. 30 rural-urban divide 74-5 Rusike, Elias 34 Rwanda 271

qualified majoritarianism 105, 108-9, 110

Sainte-Lague formula 90, 240 Sartori, Giovanni 12, 95, 98, 103, 284 n. 29 Saunders, Richard 34 Savimbi, Jonas 108, 126 Scarritt, James 10 Schlemmer, Lawrence 208 Schmitter, Philippe C. 21 Schudson, Michael 32 Schwarz, Benjamin 16, 274 Scott, Guy 159 segmental autonomy 111, 115, 117-18 Sekaike, Tonic 176 Shapiro, Ian 116, 117, 123, 232 Shona, Zimbabwe 52-5, 115, 127-8, 247-8 voting behaviour 135-6, 169, 172 Shugart, Matthew S. 70, 83, 85, 126, 128 Sierra Leone 108, 163, 270-1, 273 single member district plurality, see plurality single member districts single transferable vote 90, 100, 186, 255 South Africa 100, 186 Sisk, Timothy D. 12, 59, 93, 129, 184, 261 Sisulu, Zwelakhe 36 Sithole, Masipula 53-4, 168-9, 172

racial parties 131, 132-3 racial voting 272-4 Rae, Douglas 102 re-running elections under alternative systems: alternative electoral systems chosen 204 crafting districts for 276-81 first order objections 204-11 importance of 203-4 Malawi 205-6, 211-13, 276 Namibia 209, 226-30, 280-1 South Africa 208-9, 222-6, 278-80 underlying assumptions 204-11 Zambia 206-7, 213-16, 276-7 Zimbabwe 207-8, 216-22, 277-8 regime support issue 75 regionalism 74, 131, 132-3, 249-51 Malawi 44-6, 74, 137-8, 147-9, 251 Namibia 251 single member districts and 249—51 South Africa 251 Zambia 42-4, 156, 251 Reid, Ann 126, 269, 271 religious issues 73-4 reopen nominations 255

Index Sithole, Ndabaningi 162, 175-6 see also Zimbabwe African National Union-Ndonga Sklar, Richard 3-4 Smith, Ian 53, 74, 161, 167 election results 170, 172-3 see also Rhodesian Front Smut, Jan 97 socio-economic issues 73, 293 n. 42 Somalia 272 South Africa 182-90, 201 alternative vote proposal 101-3, 258 conditions for consociationalism 298 n 21 democratic type 68-79, 82, 114, 116-20, 123-5, 262 democratization 182-3 economic indicators 27, 29-31, 268 election results 183, 188-90 electoral indicators 37-9, 40 electoral system 66-7, 77, 100-3, 183-7, 262, 266-7 ethnic diversity in parliament 245-7 ethnic relations 49-52, 268 ethnic voting 272, 273-4 executive formation related to electoral system 239 executive type 126-9 fairness of elections 187-8 inclusiveness 60, 61-2, 268-9 index of disproportionality 235-6 institutional choice analysis 261-2 media freedom 36-7 plurality SMD system effects 234 political rights 31 political violence 25, 26, 51, 268 proportional representation type significance 240 re-run of elections 208-9, 222-6, 259, 278-80 regionalism 251 voter accessibility 252-3 voting behaviour 131-4 South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) 36 South African Communist Party (SACP) 182, 210 South African Defence Force (SADF) 47, 192 South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO), Namibia 47-9, 74, 115, 191-2 election fairness 195-6 election results 196-202

339

electoral system choice 193-4, 263 institutional choice analysis 263 media freedom and 35-6 re-run of elections 209, 226-30 voting behaviour and 134-5 Sparks, Donald 29 spoilt ballots 40, 41, 252-5, 306 n. 27 Stamps, Timothy 170 Stevenson, H. M. 22 Stoneman, Colin 161, 169, 172 Suzman, Helen 223 Swaziland 283 n. 7 Sylvester, Christine 54, 168 Taagepera, Rein 243, 246 Taylor, Charles 270 Tekere, Edgar 166-7, 174 see also Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM) Tembo, John 144, 145 threshold for representation 66, 67, 90, 187, 240 Tonchi, Victor 49, 135, 195, 198 Tonga, Zambia 42, 136 Totemeyer, Gerhard 196 Transnational Government of National Unity (TGNU), Namibia 47 Tungamirai, Josiah 176 turnout 37-40 see also voter accessibility Tutu, Desmond 51-2 two-ballot electoral system 90, 103 Uganda, ethnic voting 273 unicameralism 70—1, 77 Unionist-Labour coalition, South Africa 97 unitary government 77-8 United African National Council (UANC), Zimbabwe 52, 136 election results 162, 168, 171 re-run of plurality SMD elections 217, 219 re-run of PR elections 220-1 United Democratic Front (UDF), Malawi 45-6, 60, 69, 144 election results 147-9, 206 institutional choice analysis 262—3 re-run of elections 206, 211-12 voting behaviour and 137-8 United Democratic Front (UDF), Namibia 62, 134, 211 election results 198, 199 re-run of elections 226-30

340

Index

United National Independence Party (UNIP), Zambia 28, 75, 150-1, 210 election fairness 153-6 election results 156-8, 207 electoral system choice 152, 264 ethnic relations and 42, 274—5 institutional choice analysis 264 re-run of elections 207, 214-15 voting behaviour and 136-7 United People's Party (UPP), Zambia 42, 150-1 Unwin, Derek 131 urban-rural divide 74-5 Vail, Leroy 101 van Donge, Jan Kees 146 Vanhanen, Tatu 24 variables, definition of 6—8 Venter, Denis 146 vetoes 78-9, 111, 112 Viljoen, Constand 189-90 see also Freedom Front Viljoen, Gerrit 185 violence, see political violence vote-pooling 94, 109 voter accessibility 92, 252-6 spoilt ballots 40, 41, 252-5 wasted votes 96, 98, 255-6 voting behaviour 121, 123, 130-8, 169, 172 see also ethnic voting Wanzala, Winnie 49, 135, 195, 198 wasted votes 96, 98, 255-6 Weber, Max 23 Weiland, Heribert 199-200, 202, 209 Welsh, David 185-6 white ministers in black majority cabinets 248, 249 Williams, Chester 290 n. 102 women in southern African parliaments 243-5 Wright, Jack F. H. 102-3 yellow dog syndrome 249-50 Yeta, Inyambo 154 Zambia 150-9 conditions for consociationalism 115 democratic type 68-80, 125 democratization 150—1 economic indicators 28 election results (1991) 156-8, 276-7 election results (1996) 158-9, 277

electoral indicators 39-40 electoral system 64-6, 77, 151-2, 264, 266-7 ethnic accommodation 42—4 ethnic relations 42—4 ethnic voting 272 executive type 85-7, 128-9 fairness of elections 152—6 institutional choice analysis 264 media freedom 32-3, 155 political rights 31 political violence 25, 153 re-run of elections 206-7, 214-16, 276-7 regionalism 42-4, 156, 251 voting behaviour 136-7 Zambia Democratic Congress (ZDC) 159 Zambia Independent Monitoring Team (ZIMT) 156 Zambia Voting Observation Team 153 zero-sum games 63, 108, 111, 298 n. 13 Zimbabwe 159-81 conditions for consociationalism 114-15 democratic type 68-82, 108, 125 democratization 160-2 economic indicators 28-9 election results 168-81, 277-8 electoral indicators 39-40 electoral system 66, 77, 91, 159-60, 162-4, 264-7 ethnic diversity in parliament 247-8 ethnic relations 52-5, 169, 172, 181 executive formation related to electoral system 239 executive type 85, 87-8, 126-8 fairness of elections 164—7 inclusiveness 61-2 index of disproportionality 235-6 institutional choice analysis 264-5 media freedom 33-4 number of parties 211 political rights 31 political violence 25, 53, 165—7 re-run of plurality SMD elections 207-8, 216-20, 258, 277-8 re-run of PR elections 207, 220-2, 278 spoilt ballots 253 voting behaviour 135-6, 169, 172, 181 see also Rhodesia

Index Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) 75, 161-2 election fairness 165 election results 168—81 electoral system choice 163, 265 ethnic relations 52-5 media freedom and 34 Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front) (ZANU-PF) 25, 76, 80, 127, 248, 302 n. 52 election fairness 164-7 election results 168-81, 207-8 electoral system choice 164 electoral system significance 239 formation of 53-5 re-run of plurality SMD elections 207-8, 217-20 re-run of PR elections 207, 220-2 voting behaviour and 136 Zimbabwe African National UnionNdonga (ZANU-Ndonga) 74, 136

341

election results 168, 174, 175-6 re-run of plurality SMD elections 218-19 re-run of PR elections 220-1 Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) 75, 127, 161-2, 248 election results 168-73, 207 electoral system choice 163—4, 265 ethnic relations 52-5 re-run of plurality SMD elections 207, 217 re-run of PR elections 207, 220-1 voting behaviour and 136 Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM) 54, 74, 136 election fairness 166-7 election results 174-5 re-run of plurality SMD elections 218-19 Zimpapers 34 Zulu, Alfred 152, 156 Zvobgo, Edison 165, 176

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