The African National Congress (ANC) organization at the grassroots
The author (vincentphd{at}yahoo.com) is currently completing a PhD in Political Science at the Centre d’Etude d’Afrique Noire (CEAN) of Bordeaux. He was a research fellow at the French Institute of South Africa (IFAS) in Johannesburg from November 2004 to December 2007. He wishes to thank Claire Bénit-Gbaffou, Aurélia Wa Kabwe–Segatti, Dominique Darbon, René Otayek, as well as Sara Dorman, Tim Kelsall and the two African Affairs reviewers.
This article provides a study of the African National Congress (ANC) local organization at party branch level. It focuses on the branches’ community activities, on their participation in party structures, and on the ANC political culture. It takes an organizational perspective on the study of political parties and refers to the mass party model. The ANC has a strong tradition of mass organization, and the ANC formal organization conforms to the mass party ideal-type: branches are meant to be active agents on the ground, while the party leadership is supposed to implement the membership's decisions. The ANC has developed a certain type of mass political culture, of popular politics. The article also shows how bottom-up decision-making processes concretely provide a certain level of influence to the members over the selection of leadership and the party's policies (even if through intermediary brokers). This article is a contribution to the renewed academic debates on African political parties and takes the stand that organizational and empirical approaches should be a priority.