More Questions Than Answers For South Africa's Ramaphosa

James Hamill, WPR
If South Africa's first democratic election in 1994 provided what observers called a designer outcome in which the three major parties at the time all secured significant prizes, the country's sixth general election in early May was its polar opposite: a vote in which the three principal players all experienced setbacks and had reason to be disappointed. The 1994 electoral outcome helped stabilize the new political dispensation after apartheid. It remains to be seen if this year's result will usher in a new era of instability and fragmentation.