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Blog of the week

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I've been scouring the tubes for a decent South African political blog. I've found a few, but by far the best so far is Constitutionally Speaking, written by Pierre De Vos, a professor at Cape Town University. Check him out here crunching the numbers on a recent by-election in Cape Town. I also learned something--the city council of Cape Town is not ANC-run, rather it's the Democratic Alliance! Apparently there has been a shift of Coloured* support for the ANC in the last couple years:
First, the ANC’s support amongst “coloured” voters in the constituency collapsed dramatically. In the local government election the ANC attracted about 15% of the vote in these traditional working class communities. This collapsed to below 1% at some voting stations this week. The racial nationalism of Julius Malema and Jacob Zuma obviously holds no attraction for coloured voters in the Western Cape.

Second, the Independent Democrats (ID) did not contest the election and its voters did not stay home but voted for the DA. One can probably assume that this means support for the ID is collapsing and that its voters are now supporting the DA. Based on the results of this by-election the DA seems to have consolidated its support amongst working class coloured people in Cape Town.
Also check him out on toilets in the poor areas around Cape Town.

Any other suggestions for good South African political blogs?

*This is a term for mixed-race people that is not considered offensive here. It's more like a separate ethnicity than a catch-all term--a mixed baby wouldn't be automatically considered Coloured.
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Comments

  1. mikeJune 1, 2010 at 2:43 PM

    Pierre is reasonable, but do keep in mind his background - liberal, homosexual and pro ANC in many circumstances. In some of his pieces he lets is jugement get clouded by his own opinions and ends up making a very poor argument.

    ReplyDelete
  2. RyanJune 1, 2010 at 2:58 PM

    @mike: I was aware of that background, except for the pro-ANC bit. I find it unremarkable. He seems pretty critical of the ANC.

    Who would you recommend?

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJune 3, 2010 at 6:45 AM

    I am an avid reader of the Chirproom blog.. it's a great blog with people from the left and the right spectrum. It's nice to see an opinion from the DA or the Christian Democrats, or even COPE for a change.

    ReplyDelete

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