ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that support to political parties is only one relatively limited aspect of democracy assistance strategies pursued in southern Africa since the early 1990s. It examines that there is a developing crisis of democracy in southern Africa which is characterised, first, by an increasingly explicit clash between an authoritarian culture of national liberation and hopes for participatory democracy. Second is by a closely related model of state power which, even if obscured under democratic garb, entrenches elites and promotes highly unequal patterns of accumulation and development. The complicity of major Western governments, multinational corporations and conservative parties and organisations in the maintenance of white supremacy and apartheid in southern Africa is well known. Donor pressure for market reforms to state dominated economies has been strongly linked since the early 1990s to pressure for political liberalisation, multi-partyism and 'good governance'. Support for 'free and fair' elections has been central to democracy assistance in southern Africa.
