African Affairs Advance Access originally published online on May 14, 2009
African Affairs 2009 108(432):391-412; doi:10.1093/afraf/adp021
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Comrades ‘Back on Track’? The Durability of the Tripartite Alliance in South Africa
Alexander Beresford (a.r.beresford{at}sms.ed.ac.uk) is a PhD candidate at the Centre of African Studies at the University of Edinburgh. I would like to thank my supervisors for their support and guidance, as well as Thomas Molony, the editors and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. The usual disclaimers apply.
The article examines the Tripartite Alliance in South Africa, drawing on in-depth interviews with members of the National Union of Mineworkers employed by Eskom, South Africa's electricity parastatal. The article challenges the widespread argument that the alliance is heading for an inevitable break-up by interrogating the resilience of workers’ support for the ANC. It is argued that workers continue to identify a broad range of aspirations with the party and that the ANC thus remains the primary figurehead of political and social change in these workers’ political imaginations. Exploring the attitudes of Eskom workers towards the ANC's presidential succession battle, it is shown that workers continue to hold the ANC as an organization to be sacrosanct: the failures of the ANC government were considered to result from the failure of individual leaders to meet their expectations of representation, mediation, and accountability within the post-apartheid democratic era, rather than any irredeemable ideological shortcoming of the ANC itself.