From liberation movement to party machine? The ANC in South Africa

This article contributes to a growing literature on the character of leadership, democracy and governance espoused by post-liberation governments, focusing on the African National Congress (ANC) as a political party. The article provides a brief overview of the two most common approaches to analysing the ANC’s transition from a national liberation movement to a political party in an electoral democracy, the dominant party approach and what is termed the Fanonesque perspective. Neither is found to be wholly satisfactory, for largely the same reason – their tendency to present what is effectively a caricature of the ANC, by selectively highlighting features of its practices that conform to a pre-determined pathology, rather than acknowledging the ANC’s complexity, variability and essentially contested nature. In developing an alternative approach, the paper draws from an earlier body of literature on single- party–dominant states in post-independent Africa that was empirically driven and comparative in nature. Such an approach can help us develop a more realistic, less sensationalist interpretation of ANC rule in South Africa.