Ever since the end of apartheid it was clear that the ANC would win every election it contested until it split, its role in the liberation struggle determined that. But this one party dominance was always going to be a bad thing for South Africa; a fully functioning democracy requires competition between political parties—a party that knows it will win at the ballot box whatever it does becomes detached from the peoples’ concerns and corrupt.
I hadn’t paid much attention to the recent split in the ANC as the numbers of defectors seemed too small to make much of a difference. But Donald G. McNeil Jr., who was the New York Times’ South Africa correspondent, argues that it could be more important than people have realised depending on who it could attract to join it. McNeil speculates that “the unthinkable — an endorsement of the new party by Archbishop Tutu or even by Mr.
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