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An aerial view of a polling station shows the long lines during South Africa's 1994 election

By Michael Boda

As South Africa prepares for only its second all-race national election, many observers wonder if the overall success of the National Assembly's first term can be sustained.

Proportional representation -- the electoral system that determines the makeup of the National Assembly -- has been credited with a reduction in the political violence that pervaded South Africa for nearly five decades. But the question remains as to whether this hallmark can be maintained.

From the late 1940s, when apartheid was introduced, until the first competitive election in April 1994, South Africans were regularly exposed to politically motivated conflict. While protests against apartheid were initially nonviolent -- with an alliance between the African National Congress and the South African Indian Congress employing mass civil disobedience -- violent outbreaks subsequently followed and intensified as internal pressure against apartheid grew.

State security agencies were responsible for widespread torture of those who opposed apartheid, while racial violence broke out as a result of these policies. In 1993, as many as 2,000 armed right-wing commandos stormed the ANC's headquarters in Johannesburg. Later that year, conflict arose between supporters of the Inkatha Freedom Party and the ANC in the Rand and Natal, with more than 100 people dying.

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Luc Dumont, on loan from Elections Canada to work with South Africa's Independent Election Commission in 1994, recalls that the fear of violence did not subside in the weeks before the election.

"It was on everyone's mind," he says. "We all feared that violence would put a stop to the elections."

In a paper recently published by the National Research Council, Ben Reilly and Andrew Reynolds suggest that the proportional representation system selected by South Africa has played an important role in reducing the amount of violence in that country since 1994.

"South Africa has been remarkably free of ethnic conflict in the post-apartheid period, bearing in mind its history of repressive laws," they note.

A proportional representation system, in which a party wins a share of legislative seats in rough proportion to its share of the popular vote, was favored initially during the inaugural meetings of the Convention for a Democratic South Africa, a multiparty forum created to seek agreement on a transitional government and constituent assembly.

Subsequently, after early reservations, both the ANC and National Party agreed on the system during the intense political negotiation that brought democracy to South Africa.

The ANC rejected the country's previous electoral system, in which the candidate with the most votes in a single-member geographic district takes the seat -- even though it would have captured an overwhelming number of seats under this method.

Ultimately, the electoral system chosen to select the members to South Africa's new National Assembly reflected the 1994 popular vote. Under this system, the ANC won a decisive majority, taking 252 of 400 seats -- a number far smaller than if the previous system had been in place.

Short the two-thirds seats necessary to change the country's interim constitution unilaterally, the ANC was necessarily inclusive as it worked to revise and complete a permanent constitution, signed on December 10, 1996, within the mandated time period.

A negotiated agreement in advance of the election also allowed for the creation of a "government of national unity" in which minority parties were given representation in the Cabinet, and parties with enough popular support were given deputy presidential posts.

The resulting diversity in the National Assembly allowed minority parties, such as the National Party and the Inkatha Freedom Party, to constructively contribute to South Africa's future direction. Had they been excluded from this important work, violent outbreaks may have been the result.

South Africa still has much to do before its democratic system can be declared "stable," however. Some analysts, such as Paul Graham, executive officer of the independent, non-government Institute for Democracy in South Africa, do not disagree with the initial effectiveness of the proportional representation system, but also suggest that conflict is likely to increase unless the system is adjusted to accommodate increasing constituency pressures.

The Independent Electoral Commission is charged with managing South Africa's elections at all government levels

"While the ... system acted as a symbol and guarantor of the rights of political and culturally defined minorities, experience in South Africa was that it weakened the link between individual voters and political representatives. As a result, a mixed system has been experimented with at the municipal level, and it is likely that attention will be given to a system which, while not losing the advantages of [proportional representation], will overcome this disadvantage," he states.

Nelson Mandela, South Africa's retiring president, offered support for fine-tuning the electoral system during the final sitting of the current Parliament. He wondered aloud "whether we need to re-examine our electoral system, so as to improve the nature of our relationship, as public representatives, with the voters."

For the time being, though, a majority of South Africans remain interested in using the ballot box and the current electoral system as a method for peaceful conflict management in their country. A recent poll demonstrates clearly that more than eight in 10 potential voters -- 86 percent -- say they are likely to vote.

Michael Boda is editor of Elections Today and deputy director of the F. Clifton White Resource Center at IFES, the International Foundation for Election Systems.