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South Africa-Twenty Years into Democracy _ The march to the 2014 elections

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This chapter explores xenophobic or Afrophobic language and its effects in perpetuating violence, hatred, and fear on non-South Africans. For decades, South Africa was subjected to colonial and apartheid regimes underpinned by governance ethos based on divisive policies that discriminate people based on race, gender, ethnicity, and place of origin. It argues that the derogatory language/vocabulary such as ‘amakwerekwere' migrants, ‘amagrigamba', ‘abelokufika', and aliens is used to describe and perpetuate xenophobia-Afrophobia. The author concludes that the daily articulation of derogatory labels does not only perpetuate xenophobic hatred and violence against fellow Africans (Afrophobia), but it also becomes the basis for the re-enforcement of oppressive, discriminatory, and violent tendencies of the past.
Chapter
This chapter analyses democratic electoral systems and their impact on advancing democratic governance and development in Africa. This includes the dynamics and rationale for choosing a particular electoral system over the other(s) and the results of such decisions to the electoral and representative democracy. The electoral systems famous in political science are proportional representation (PR) and constituency based, as well as the mixed electoral system. In this chapter, various electoral systems have been deliberated on in the context of electoral democracy and its democratization process. Thus, considering the denial and exclusion of the majority to full citizenship and democratic governance during the colonial and apartheid regimes. The chapter uses country-based case studies to demonstrate the importance of the electoral democratic system in fostering democratic good governance and development in Africa.
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