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Articles on Democratic Alliance

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Members of shack-dwellers movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo protest the alleged theft of COVID-19 funds in Durban, South Africa. Photo by Darren Stewart/Gallo Images via Getty Images

Pressure groups offer the best hope for South Africa’s democracy

Extra-parliamentary politics forms part of a deeper defence that will give democracy more resilience in South Africa.
Abstention in the 2021 local government election was largely driven by a combination of individual and administrative barriers. Guillem Sartorio/AFP via Getty Images

Here are five factors that drove low voter turnout in South Africa’s 2021 elections

The South African electorate is becoming less tied to race and identity-based voting but are increasingly making a wider evaluation of the performance of political incumbents.
The Democratic Alliance has been accused of inflaming racial tensions in Phoenix. Local residents belonging to a protection group stand watch in July 2021 at the height of the violence. Photo by Marco Longari/AFP via Getty Images

What inflammatory election posters say about South Africa’s Democratic Alliance

The Democratic Alliance posters were not a bolt from the blue. They were consistent with messages the party’s current leadership has been sending out for some time.
Former Nelson Mandela Bay Mayor Athol Trollip, from the DA, third from left, and his deputy Mongameli Bobani, from the UDM, extreme right, help clean up a street in 2017. by Werner Hills/Foto24/Gallo Images/Getty Images

Marriages of inconvenience: the fraught politics of coalitions in South Africa

South Africa’s political parties would do well to learn from Ireland, where the three largest political parties negotiated a coalition treaty that stipulated mechanisms for conflict resolution.
A real problem for the Democratic Alliance is that it cannot hope to displace the dominant African National Congress. EFE-EPA/Kevin Sutherland

South Africa’s main opposition party caught in an unenviable political bind

The problem for the Democratic Alliance is not one of policy. There is real substance in its commitment to substituting racial criteria for overcoming historical disadvantage.

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