Liberation movements as governments : understanding the ANC's quality of government

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Liberation struggles and the way liberation movements are organised can leave a lasting impact on post-liberation societies. This research project was conducted in order to research liberation movements as governments and how the quality of governance is affected in post-liberation societies when liberation movements become governments. The South African liberation movement is seen as having contributed to one of the most peaceful transitions of power on the African continent. However, the stigma surrounding liberation movements prompted a study of the South African liberation movement and to establish whether or not the ANC as ruling party has made a success of its governance of South Africa. This thesis uses South Africa as a case study to determine how quality of governance is affected when liberation movements become governments.This thesis focused on the lingering effects of the structure and organisation of liberation movements. It is thus an exploratory as well as descriptive study where the legacies of the South African liberation movement are investigated and where the ANC as a liberation movement is compared to the ANC as a ruling party. Using historical analysis to discover the structure and internal governance of the liberation movement, this thesis seeks to explain the legacies that still influence the ANC today after its transition from a liberation movement into a political party. To do this the thesis used the theoretical framework of quality of government taken from Rothstein and Teorell (2008), who define it as impartiality. These legacies of the South African liberation movement are believed to have had an impact on the quality of governance of the ANC as a ruling party in post-liberation South Africa. By researching the last twenty years of ANC rule in South Africa's post-liberation society, this thesis investigated the impartiality of government institutions in order to evaluate the quality of governance in South Africa, and thereby to discover what happens to the quality of governance when liberation movements become governments.The findings of this thesis indicate three conclusions. First, the legacies of the South African liberation movement still have a great influence on the modus operandi, the structure and the goals of the ANC today. Second, these legacies have contributed to the decline of the impartiality of government institutions, in particular through the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) project and its cadre deployment strategy, where appointments are made without the consideration of the principle of impartiality. The legacies of the South African liberation movement have thus had a negative impact on the quality of the ANC's governance. Finally, this thesis has found that in the case of South Africa, when the ANC as liberation movement took over as the ruling party in a post-liberation society, it negatively affected the quality of governance. Further research in this field is needed in order to compare these findings with other countries that have liberation histories so as to be able to generalise about other liberation movements and to improve the quality of governance in other countries.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University