ABSTRACT
This probability is based on assumptions about the salience of racial identity in South African politics. The ANC, the world’s oldest “liberation movement"1 has consolidated its status as the premier vehicle of black African aspirations, a seemingly sure-fire formula for electoral victory in a society with a history of racial polarisation, which prompts an inevitable tendency by the electorate to vote on largely racial lines.2
While the ANC brings together a wide array of interests and perspectives, it is held together by a common (largely black) response to racial domination, a point acknowledged by deputy President Thabo Mbeki who predicted, a year after the 1994 general election, that the ANC would dissolve only after the effects of racial supremacy and division were eradicated.3 He did not say, but no doubt assumed, that this would take at least a generation, during which the only credible challenge to the
