Political Parties in Africa: Challenges for Sustained Multiparty

Political Parties in Africa: Challenges for Sustained Multiparty Democracy
4. In Ethiopia, the struggle against the dictatorial regime of Mengistu Haile
Mariam (1974–91) culminated in the opening up of the political space for
some competitive politics under the banner of ethnic-federalism. The country
has no political parties in the common modern sense of the word, but there are
ethnic organizations which compete for seats in the House of Representatives.
Since its first multi-ethnic competitive election in 1994, Ethiopia has been
ruled by a multi-ethnic coalition dominated by the Tigray People’s Liberation
Front (TPLF), called the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic
Forces (EPRDF). The EPRDF consists of more than a dozen ethnicallybased
liberation fronts, the most prominent among them being the Ethiopian
People’s Democratic Movement (EPDM), the Oromo People’s Democratic
Organization (OPDO), and the Ethiopian Democratic Officers Revolutionary
Movement (ERODM). Despite criticisms of the quasi-democratic nature of
this coalition, it has managed to generate a certain degree of political stability
by absorbing large numbers of minority ethnic groups which would have hardly
been represented in the House of Representatives if their votes had not been
pooled together during elections.
5. South Africa is another case where a party coalition was instrumental during
the transition to multiparty democracy. The alliance between the African
National Congress (ANC), the Congress of South African Trade Unions
(COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP) was forged as an
institutional mechanism for creating an inclusive political mechanism to end
apartheid and to see South Africa through to multiparty democracy. Kadima
(2006) comments that the glues that keep the Tripartite Alliance together are
probably the long tradition of working together under difficult circumstances,
the power and job opportunities provided by the ANC, and the adoption of
and adhesion by some key leaders of COSATU and SACP themselves to neoliberalism
ideology to the detriment of the socialist ideals. Despite discomfort
with some ANC policies, the Tripartite Alliance decided to remain together
and influence each other from inside. In the same tradition, South Africa’s first
government of national unity was a coalition between the ANC, the National
Party (NP) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). The Democratic Alliance
(DA) was formed in June 2000 and comprised initially the Democratic Party
(DP), the New National Party (NNP, the former NP), and the Federal Alliance.
The split of the Alliance in 2003 into a number of squabbling factions revealed
the inability of the opposition parties to unite in the face of ANC–Tripartite
political dominance. In 2003, the ANC and the NNP supported an item of
legislation on floor-crossing, which the smaller political parties considered
detrimental to democracy and a source of instability. In the case of South Africa
we notice a sense of maturity in terms of temporary as well as long-term partyto-party
partnerships.