Mandela's lost province: the African national congress and the Western Cape electorate in the 1994 South African elections

Abstract

The first democratic elections in South Africa, in April 1994, resulted in a victory for the African National Congress (ANC). In two major provinces, however, the ANC was defeated. In the Western Cape the ANC lost to the National Party (NP), and in KwaZulu/Natal it lost to the Inkatha Freedom Party. Most interpretations of the elections assert the pre‐eminence of race and ethnicity. Our analysis of the ANC and the elections in the Western Cape suggests that such interpretations underestimate firstly the significance of the parties’ election strategies and campaigns, at least in this province, and secondly (and more broadly) the complexity and variety of voters’ decision‐making. Political struggles within the ANC led it to adopt an election strategy which prioritised the large number of undecided coloured voters in the province, but did so in ways that limited the party's appeal to these target voters.