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Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy
23 May 2024

South Africa: Democracy & the Promise of Redistribution

This episode of Who is Voting in 2024?  focuses on the legacies of apartheid in South Africa with guests Mbongeseni Buthelezi and Matias Lopez.

South Africa will be holding national and provincial elections on May 29. Significantly, this year marks the 30th anniversary of the country’s 1994 election, which was the first to be held after the fall of the apartheid regime. Yet democratic South Africa reproduces many of the inequalities and power structures that characterized apartheid, with much of the farmland and other wealth still owned by minority whites. 

What does this mean for the African National Congress (ANC), the ruling party since 1994? In this episode of Who is Voting in 2024? Laura Bullon-Cassis speaks to Professor Mbongeseni Buthelezi of the University of Johannesburg, and Matias Lopez, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy. 

This episode is linked to the SNIS project "Democracy and Redistribution in the Global South: From Fear to Policy", co-led by Matias Lopez.

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Listen to the episode HERE.