Political Parties in Africa: Challenges for Sustained Multiparty

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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.
International Idea 6. Since it gained independence in 1968, Mauritius has always been governed by a coalition of at least two parties. The coalition agreement takes shape before the elections in the form of a platform and programme which they present to the electorate. Unlike the case with other coalitions, the prime minister is not necessarily from the largest coalition partners—for example, in 1983 the prime minister’s party had only 15 per cent of the seats in parliament. The coalitions are often between political parties which are not ideologically coherent, and ethnic politics plays a more significant role in elections and coalitions than do party programmes and agendas. In fact it could be argued that coalition politics is ethnic politics, and therefore coalitions are more between ethnically-based political parties than between ethnic groups poised to control the government resources and personnel. Currently the government consists of a coalition of numerous political parties, including the Militant Socialist Movement (MSM), the Mauritian Militant Movement (MMM), and several others; the opposition is led by the Mauritian Labour Party (MLP) and the Mauritian Social Democratic Party (PMSD). Considering the large number of political parties in most of the African countries, there are at least four policy options to strengthen the existing party-to-party partnerships-cum-coalitions: • explicit support for party-to-party partnership; • working with and encouraging smaller political parties to create partnerships and go beyond partnerships towards mergers; • supporting the development of a legal framework to ensure that political parties do abide by democratic governance practice; and • exploring whether it is possible to use political party (financial) support as an instrument for creating, or at least not preventing, political party partnerships. 4.6 Regional and sub-regional networks and associations There are four regional (pan-African) and sub-regional institutionalized parliamentary groupings which can be used as starting points for supporting and encouraging pan-African or sub-regional party to-party partnerships. So far these parliamentary groups have been created by top–down decisions and they are therefore seen within the framework of regional and sub-regional parliamentary arrangements rather than as arrangements produced by the political parties themselves. They are: African Party and Electoral Systems
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5. Party Structures and Internal Or
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0 Chapter 1 Methodology
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No. Country Year of introduction 1
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Country Enforcement authority Benin
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Chapter 7 Conclusions and Recommend
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Acronyms and Abbreviations ACE Admi
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References and Select Bibliography
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Kadima, Denis, (ed.), The Politics
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—‘Building Political Parties: R
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About the Authors Per Nordlund is a
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Political Parties in Africa: Challenges for Sustained Multiparty

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