The parties of 1994

The seven that entered the National Assembly

African National Congress

Led by Nelson Mandela. The ANC had been banned from 1960 to 1990. It went into the election in alliance with the South African Communist Party and the union federation Cosatu, and it campaigned for a single democratic state and a programme of reconstruction. It won 12,237,655 votes, 62.65 percent, and 252 seats. That was a majority, and it was 15 seats short of the two-thirds that could have written the final constitution alone. Mandela was elected president by the new assembly on 9 May.

National Party

Led by F. W. de Klerk, state president until the inauguration. The party had governed since 1948 and had built apartheid. By 1994 it was campaigning as the party that had negotiated that system away, arguing for power-sharing, property rights, and protections for minorities. It won 3,983,690 votes, 20.39 percent, and 82 seats, enough for cabinet seats and for de Klerk to become a deputy president alongside Thabo Mbeki. It also won the Western Cape.

Inkatha Freedom Party

Led by Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Inkatha had its base in KwaZulu and among Zulu speakers on the Reef, and it argued for a federal state and for the standing of the Zulu kingdom. It joined the election on 19 April, after threatening to boycott. It won 2,058,294 votes, 10.54 percent, and 43 seats, and it won the KwaZulu-Natal legislature. Buthelezi became minister of home affairs.

Freedom Front

Led by the former defence-force chief Constand Viljoen, and also called the Vryheidsfront. It was the electoral home of conservative Afrikaners who chose the ballot over an insurrection, and it sought Afrikaner self-determination. It won 424,555 votes, 2.17 percent, and 9 seats, below the line for a cabinet post.

Democratic Party

Led by Zach de Beer. The DP came out of the liberal parliamentary opposition, in the line of the Progressive Federal Party. It stood for civil liberties and a market economy, and it was small in 1994: 338,426 votes, 1.73 percent, and 7 seats. It would become much larger later, as the Democratic Alliance, which is a different election.

Pan Africanist Congress of Azania

Led by Clarence Makwetu. The PAC had broken with the ANC in 1959 over Africanism, and its slogan was “Izwe Lethu”, the land is ours. It had been sceptical of the negotiated transition and still stood. It won 243,478 votes, 1.25 percent, and 5 seats.

African Christian Democratic Party

Led by Kenneth Meshoe, and founded in 1993. A Christian democratic list. It won 88,104 votes, 0.45 percent, and 2 seats, the smallest haul that still produced members of parliament. The next party, on 34,466 votes, won none.

The twelve that won no national seats

Together they took 159,296 votes. One of them, the Minority Front, led by Amichand Rajbansi, won a single seat in the KwaZulu-Natal legislature even though it won none in the National Assembly.

Other names appeared only on provincial ballots, among them a Green Party and an Islamic Party. They are not in the national table. For the seat totals, go to the results.