Outside the Ballot Box: preconditions for elections in Southern Africa 2005/ 6

(Edited by Jeanette Minnie, and published by MISA on behalf of the PEPSA Consortium. ISBN: 9916-62-13-8)

Fourteen authors have collaborated in producing this second edition of Outside the Ballot Box. Last year, when eight authors participated, the main focus was on national elections and good electoral practice as a major instrument of democratisation in the SADC region.

This year, the main focus is on civil society as an instrument of democratisation. In addition, three articles were commissioned to discuss key problem areas that affect the region as a whole: the nature of liberation movements as governments, the struggle for gender equality in governance, and the lack of harmonised instruments to guide and assess elections.

By virtue of its theme, any discussion on the legacy of rule by liberation movements will be polemical in nature, and I invited the author of this article to tackle the subject head on. It explores the mindset of liberation movements as governments in the SADC region – those movements whose leaders and supporters fought and died, suffered torture and were separated from their loved ones through exile or imprisonment, in some instances for decades, to break the stranglehold of colonial racist rule in our part of Africa...

So it is with trepidation that we take issue with them now, in a new arena called democratisation, in which no political party or person has a historical right to rule, either as a matter of birthright or as a logical result of liberation struggle. 

A PDF version of the book is available here [1.4MB].

For more information, contact publications@osisa.org.