Federalism in South Africa: Origins, operation, and its contemporary (ir)relevance
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Date
2024
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University of the Western Cape
Abstract
Following the end of apartheid in the early 1990s in South Africa, negotiations between major political groups of the country produced the Interim Constitution of 1993 approved by the Multi-Party Negotiating Council, which resulted in the country’s first democratic and multi-racial elections in 1994. The current 1996 Constitution was prepared during the transition period in line with the Constitutional Principles of the Interim Constitution. There are federal principles entrenched both in the Interim Constitution and Final Constitution which make South Africa a federal state. However, the operation of federalism in South Africa is not clear because the ANC government is anti-federalism, hence, it governs the country as though it were a unitary state. The DA-led Western Cape provincial government has introduced a Provincial Powers Bill that aims at increasing provincial powers. The study traces the origins of federalism in South Africa and examines its operation and contemporary (ir)relevance in today’s South Africa, against the background of a federal government that operates as a unitary state and the desires of the DA-led Western Cape province to obtain more powers.
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Keywords
Federalism, South African Constitution, Provincial Autonomy, Cooperative Government, Centralised Government