ABSTRACT
The suggestion that the ruling African National Congress (ANC) needs to complete a transition from a national liberation movement (NLM) to a democratic political party has been central to discussions about the quality of South Africa’s democracy. Often embedded in this discussion is the assumption that NLMs are ideological, centralist and authoritarian, whereas to perform competitively within a liberal democracy, parties need to become pluralistic, participatory and pragmatic. A second perspective suggests, in essence, that the ANC has sloughed off too much of its NLM character and has taken on too much of the character of a modern party; that is, it has abandoned the constraints of a transformative ideology, become too open to external forces and lost its popular class character. The two approaches concerned are that of the dominant party and what I shall term a Fanonesque perspective. Both provide for powerful analyses, yet they share a common weakness, in that both depict what is essentially a caricature of the ANC, rather than properly capturing its complex and contested nature. To move beyond the weaknesses of these perspectives, there is considerable value in revisiting some of the early literature on political parties in post-colonial Africa, which emphasises the successful adaptation of NLMs to post-colonial settings, including their capacity to
manage and incorporate a significant degree of internal diversity and dissent. I will illustrate this value by reference to the character of the ANC under Jacob Zuma.1
