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Introduction

This year, I summoned what little is left of my attention span and picked up Acemoglu and Robinson's book The Narrow Corridor, in order to learn how exactly the inclusive institutions that make nations succeed come into existence. Unfortunately, due to heavy social media usage for the last decade, my attention span was not enough for me to actually finish the book. But I did at least learn that developing inclusive institutions requires a balance of forces:

• Centralising forces try to create a 'Leviathan' - a strong and capable state but with a risk of tyranny.
• Democratizing forces resist the creation of a Leviathan and favour equalizing norms, which can be surprisingly tyrannical and anarchic in the extreme.
• When there is a balance of forces, a shackled Leviathan emerges - a state capable enough to deliver, but constrained to deliver for the benefit of people
• The balance of forces is not a one time thing - it is something that is always being negotiated as each side (centralising and democratising) gain more power

In the last few weeks, a story has been developing in South Africa that has made me want to take another swing at reading The Narrow Corridor. 2026 is a local government election year, and the dynamics that Acemoglu identifies in the Narrow Corridor have driven South Africa's largest party, the African National Congress (ANC), into a crisis. In this post I'm going to take you through the ANC's campaign for this year's local government elections, and explain why I think modern South African politics is a perfect companion to a reading of Acemoglu and Robinson.

Part 1: The Next Mayor of Johannesburg

Chikane

The man in the photograph above is Reverend Frank Chikane. Chikane is an ANC veteran who was on the frontlines of protests against Apartheid. He so irked the regime that they poisoned him. Chikane later said that he had forgiven the men who had poisoned him.

Chikane is considered by many to be a decent man of good character, and it was encouraging when he was appointed to head the ANC's Integrity Commission in 2023. Chikane is associated with the reformist wing of the ANC.

Because of his character and reputation, the leadership of the ANC were hoping that he would be their candidate for mayor of Johannesburg. They were hoping he would rescue them from electoral defeat.

Coalitions

Many overseas observers have not properly recalibrated their understanding of South African politics. They still think the ANC wins every election. This is very outdated:

• The ANC lost its majorities in the big cities in 2016
• From 2016 to 2019, the ANC's liberal opposition, the Democratic Alliance (DA), governed Johannesburg
• There has not been an ANC mayor in the country's administrative capital, Pretoria, since 2016
• In 2024, the ANC lost its national majority, which has allowed parties like the DA to take a seat in cabinet as part of a coalition of competitors

The loss of the ANC's majority was deserved due to the corruption, maladministration and incompetence that gripped South Africa from the late 2000s throughout the 2010s under ANC governments.

But the coalitions have been extremely chaotic. The graphic below shows how:

• Even after the DA won over Johannesburg and other provinces, it was unable to keep them as their coalition agreements fell apart
• There was a revolving door of different mayors in many very important cities, as coalitions formed and fell apart
• Very small and otherwise irrelevant parties like AIC, Al Jama-ah and Northern Alliance were able to take the mayor's office by playing kingmaker between the opposing big parties

The ANC's pitch for the 2026 local government elections will be that yes, they deserved to lose power because they failed the people of South Africa. They own it, they apologise for it and they are implementing reforms. But the coalitions have brought chaos; ANC voters who have stayed home to punish the party should go to the polls and re-elect the ANC for the sake of stability if nothing else.

Zille

But the ANC knows that there is a real risk things could swing the other way: voters could consolidate around alternative parties, or opposition coalitions could stabilize and freeze them out of local government permanently.

In Johannesburg, the Democratic Alliance have brought out the big guns to take one final, big swing at winning an outright majority in Johannesburg. Helen Zille, the matriarch of the party, is running for mayor.

Notice that Cape Town is one of the few big cities that has not been touched by coalitions. The DA will be hoping to capture Johannesburg and Pretoria once and for all, and govern South Africa's 3 most important cities permanently. Zille has been running an excellent campaign and capturing lots of attention. That's why it's so important to get a person with the stature and credibility of Chikane to take her on.

Election Lists

To understand whether Chikane or Zille will win, you need to first understand how local government elections in South Africa work:

• Half of seats in the city council are given to ward councillors - the individuals who win the most votes in a first-past-the-post election in their local ward. Independents can and do run for wards, and they have had a growing and important effect in many municipalities.
• The other half of seats in the city council are proportional representation (PR) seats. In addition to their ward ballot, voters get a proportional representation ballot where they can select their preferred party. Each party must publish a list of names for their PR ballot. After the election, the IEC uses that list to give parties sufficient PR seats so that the council is broadly proportional.
• The council then elect the mayor. The voters do not directly elect the mayor.

Parties prefer to put key leaders like Zille or Chikane on the proportional list. They run city wide, and are basically guaranteed a seat after the election. If they were on the ward ballot, they could not lead the campaign because their main concern would be avoiding losing their ward.

Crisis

Now, here is the ANC's crisis: they forgot to put Chikane on the list.

It's actually worse than that.

Chikane was only one of 181 candidates whose names were not submitted across six municipalities in different provinces. In some of these municipalities, the party did not just forget a few names on the list - they forgot to submit the entire PR list. The graphic below highlights the impact

It is important to note that these seats account for less than 5% of the ANC's candidates nationwide. Also, in the case where an individual was left off a list (like Chikane) the party might be able to get them into council. PR seats belong to the party and PR councillors can be replaced in between elections. Chikane could be subbed into a PR seat and still be elected as mayor.

But this is still a big stuff-up. Consider the case of Mangaung. In 2024, they were one of only 3 metropolitan municipalities the ANC controlled. The ANC won 49% on the ward ballot and 51% on the PR ballot. This year, they forgot to submit the PR list and will only be able to compete for ward seats. They will lose Mangaung and it will be governed in coalition. Mangaung is the capital of the Free State province, where the ANC won 52% of votes in 2024. A discouraged local ANC in Mangaung could easily see them lose the province in 2029.

If you look at the cities the ANC controlled in the 2024 graphic above, there were only 3: Mangaung, Buffalo City and eThekwini. eThekwini (Durban) is in KZN province - Jacob Zuma's MK party will wipe the floor with ANC in eThekwini this year. If they lose Mangaung, that means the ANC will be left with only one metropolitan city under its control - Buffalo City.

If the ANC loses Free State province, they will be left w##ith solid majorities in only 3 provinces: Eastern Cape, Limpopo and North West. They currently also have a slim 51% majority in Mpumalanga province. Mpumalanga borders KZN: marginal growth in Zuma's MKP party will see the ANC lose its majority here too.

Even before this stuff up, the ANC was on track to govern only 1 city and 3 provinces with a majority in 2029. A mere 2 percentage point drop across the board would have guaranteed this. They needed to have a good local government election. So how did they mess this up so badly? Did they really just forget? Who is responsible for this mess?

Part 2: Cupcake

One month ago, Kenyan Tiktoker Crazy Kennar released a video comparing how different African countries relate to their Presidents. The skit is actually really good comparative politics in meme form.

In the skit, Rwandans are depicted jumping into action at a mere word by Paul Kagame. Kenyans basically bully their President: no matter what he does they say "You're still going home". Tanzanians are living in fear of their President. When she walks past, a Tanzanian shopkeeper stops singing "We need change" and starts singing how much he loves "Mama's Tanzania".

Kennar's South Africans, by contrast, are depicted fawning over their President. When Cyril Ramaphosa emerges from his car, they scream with excitement: "Hello Mr. Cupcake!". Ramaphosa's security detail corrects them and advises them gently to call him "Mr. President". When Ramaphosa starts talking about his policies, they say "Never mind that, tell us your gym routine!"

Believe it or not, this skit is based on real events. Someone really did call Cyril Ramaphosa 'Mr. Cupcake'. In fact, South Africans call Cyril Ramaphosa "Cupcake" all the time, even to his face.

The origins of Ramaphosa's nickname are wild, but most people don't really know or care where it came from - his nickname is Cupcake because that suits his vibe. See for example this video of Cupcake at a Women's Day conference.

The Negotiator

Cyril Ramaphosa is affable and laid back. He doesn't take himself too seriously and can be somewhat silly. He speaks slowly and tries to reach consensus. He is the person that anyone can work with. And even if everyone doesn't like him, he's the only person that everyone is willing to work with.

In the 1990s, the ANC was involved in negotiations with the National Party to end Apartheid. Cyril Ramaphosa rose to prominent at a key moment when negotiations had broken down. He famously took the National Party negotiator, Roelf Meyer, fishing. The negotiations were intense, but they worked things out and a new Constitution was signed.

Cyril's role as a negotiator and intermediary has also been recognized internationally. During the Irish peace process, he played a role in monitoring the disarmament of the IRA alongside former Finnish President Ahtisaari:

When Ahtisaari heard that the IRA wanted his old friend Cyril Ramaphosa, former secretary-general of the ANC, as the second weapons inspector, the deal was done. Yes, he was ready to take on the task. Ramaphosa was known to be exceptionally persuasive, as well as highly intelligent and personable.

This is who Cyril Ramaphosa is. He is a uniter. In some sense, you have to be in order to succeed in ANC politics. The most defining characteristic of the ANC is that it is an ideologically diverse, big tent party. Hardcore communists sit alongside neoliberal technocrats and genuine capitalists.

The Inclusive Origins of the ANC

The ANC is this way because of its earliest foundations. It was formed by journalists, lawyers, teachers and intellectuals from the educated stratum of Black South African stratum in the late 19th century. These people first engaged with each other through debate in the pages of newspapers and in what were essentially local reading clubs. As the threat from White Supremacy grew, these local clubs and associations gradually merged into regional associations which were often in competition with each other. Eventually, these regional blocs merged to form a single organization in 1912: the ANC.

The character of the ANC was fixed by its origins:

• Because the ANC was formed from multiple, competing organisations across geographical and ethnic lines, it had to embrace pluralism from the beginning
• Because the ANC was formed from literate classes, it valued written procedures, debate, formal offices and Constitutionalism
• Because the ANC was formed from simple reading clubs to begin with, it's deepest character is not revolutionary but moderate

These characteristics paid a crucial democratic dividend immediately:

• The ANC saw formal changes in leadership from the very beginning, rather than authoritarian structures like true revolutionary organization often have.
• It outlived its first generation. Because of its democratic character, its second generation of leaders (A.B. Xuma era) were able to reform and modernize the party after it stagnated.
• Nelson Mandela's generation came after, and changed the organization dramatically from being a moderate collection of intellectuals writing letters to a mass, democratic movement that engaged in civil disobedience. This led to a leftward shift in its vision for South Africa, including a deep social egalitarianism.

Over decades, the ANC was able to change to meet the moment, going from a relatively moderate and uptight intellectual organisation, to launching an armed resistance wing, and then, crucially, bringing armed resistance to a close and going into government.

All of this was possible, in my opinion, because of the institutional characteristics of the early ANC.

The Constitution

When Apartheid finally came to an end in the 90s, Nelson Mandela and the ANC negotiated an extraordinary Constitution. The fact that there was a written Constitution is itself a signature that the spirit of that early ANC lived on, 80 years later. The Constitution was negotiated at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA). Here, nationalists and ethnic interest groups from every community, liberals, communists, religious leaders and traditional leaders were all represented. The compromises they struck are what we call the South African Constitution today. Every little group takes credit for its favourite part of the Constitution, but the ANC was the glue that held it all together.

The Constitution has very strong liberal elements to it - an independent judiciary, independent state institutions like the Public Protector, and real respect for due process in law. It was also very progressive, with pro-LGBT protections, positive rights on welfare and provisions that require the government to redress the imbalances of the past and protect human rights. It even had some meaningful conservative/traditionalist elements: ethnic groups are given the right to self-determination, and the government must promote various indigenous languages and protect cultural practices that might make some liberals or progressives blush.

Only the ANC could have brokered the compromises required to end Apartheid. Only the ANC was capable of reaching across the entire country, into every community and geography and win enough votes to create a coherent, single state with legitimate support from a majority of citizens. Without the ANC, its compromises, its openness, its democracy and its diversity, South Africa would not just have broken apart, it would likely have balkanized in a bloody civil war. And Cyril Ramaphosa was a critical part of those negotiations.

But if the ANC and South Africa's Constitution is so wonderful, why is ANC-led South Africa so beset by corruption, incompetence and criminality?

The explanation that does not work is to invoke the idea that South Africa's liberties exist only on paper. 30 years into South Africa's democracy, we've achieved most of the markers of a liberal democracy (debate me in the comments). As a simple example, Reporters without Borders ranks South Africa 21st for Press Freedom, ahead of the U.S., France and New Zealand.

Instead, I would argue that it is the substantive democracy that exists in South Africa and in the ANC which both explains and drives the corruption. Democracy is not defined as 'good government'. It is instead defined in terms of how power and rights are distributed. Liberal democrats believe that this mostly has good, long-term properties. But that doesn't mean there aren't serious, short-term negative consequences or trade-offs.

Democracy and Corruption

(Editing note: Apologies for the length of this section. I tried to condense it but really struggled. This argument is the heart of a lot of what I believe about South African politics, so I had to make the argument in full here)

In order to grow quickly, a party has to incentivize political entrepreneurs. You do this by giving them real power in their local area, and allowing them to organise into genuinely powerful coalitions/factions in the party as a whole, as long as they are a loyal member of the team and continue to support the party if they lose at conference. "Do as you please in your political backyard, just as long as you bring votes to the party, disagree within conference and remain loyal to the party even after you lose" is how democracies actually work. I'm not talking about the passive median voter who consumes democratic options at the end of the process, during an election. I'm talking about how the sausage actually gets made. But another word for this system might be patronage. "Do what you want in your area, stay loyal to the party and we'll give you a slice of budget to reward your people" is corruption.

The political science book, The Logic of Political Survival and the CGP Grey Video Rules for Rulers explain how democracy can be understood as being continuous on a spectrum with authoritarianism. Both are patronage systems, defined only by the relative sizes of the recipients and producers of patronage. A democracy is a patronage system where the beneficiaries are numerous that the only way to 'pay everyone off' is through public goods like safer streets, a growing economy and a cleaner environment.

Another interesting perspective to consider is Ian Bremmer's The J-Curve. This idea says that as countries go from closed to open, the initial "opening up" period is actually destabilizing. In the decade since the ANC lost majority control of South Africa's big cities, things have mostly gotten worse, not better. City councils see changes in leadership every year, or multiple times within a year. Small political parties are able to play kingmaker, extracting power far out of proportion to the votes they actually win. But of course, the ANC itself is a coalition. The dynamics that define coalitional chaos existed in the pre-coalition era too: the ANC absorbed all this noise by being the only party willing to genuinely organise different groups under a single umbrella.

Finally, there is problem that in any a real democracy, people are presumed innocent until proven guilty and they have rights to due process. You can't just put a few names on a list, call them 'the bad guys', and then 'stop them' as many people seem to think. When then-Deputy President Jacob Zuma was accused of corruption, he was fired from his post by President Mbeki and charged by the National Prosecuting Authority. But the judge (who was certainly not an ANC deployee), let Zuma go because he found the charges unlawful and suspected there was political interference in the prosecution. It was a very technical point - he didn't declare Zuma innocent. But he did find he had rights to due process which had to be respected. Zuma went on the become President of the country and allegedly oversee a massive state capture campaign that bled South Africa dry. But he has still never been prosecuted. Every time charges come up, he appeals and appeals to run down the clock. As is his right.

Growing a political party always requires patronage - the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate does not change the basic economics of the problem. When you open a system up to different voices, you create the opportunity for gridlock, serious conflict and, in turn, for political opportunists to profit by cynical intermediation, which they use to fund their own patronage systems. It doesn't matter whether that happens after an election between parties or before an election within a big tent party. And when you give people meaningful rights and protections, you necessarily constrain your own ability to control for abuse and respond to criminality quickly.

Democracy really is destabilizing, at least at first.

Part 3: The Narrow Corridor

There is a joke you will sometimes see on South African Twitter:

The problem is not Cupcake. The problem is Ramaphosa.

This is usually posted by his critics when Cupcake does something adorable or endearing. His ability to charm people is disarming. But his political opponents know that no matter how charming he is, no matter how slowly he speaks and no matter how many people he includes in consultations, at the end of the day he usually wins.

Take electricity. Over the last 6 years, Ramaphosa's government has ended the electricity supply crisis that crippled the South African economy with rolling blackouts for years. The national utility, Eskom, has been unbundled and has lost its monopoly on generation.

Cupcake did not achieve this by pulling the big 'fix electricity lever' as soon as he came into office. Instead, he achieved it through a very long and arduous process of political maneuvering. For example, at one point South Africa had both a "Mining and Energy Minister" and an "Electricity Minister". President Ramaphosa could not just fire the Mining and Energy Minister, who was fairly hostile to renewables, because he has his own faction within the party and represents the legitimate desire of unionized coal workers to be protected from rapid shifts in energy technology. It took time and negotiation for Ramaphosa to find a compromise. The Electricity Minister was initially introduced as a temporary, emergency "Project Manager" to manage the crisis. But overtime the President shifted more and more powers over to him. After the 2024 election, he assumed control of all energy and electricity powers and is still in cabinet today, which was obviously the plan from the beginning.

Ramaphosa also took a first stab at reforming the ANC itself. The ANC implemented a "step aside" rule which says that if a leader is formally charged with a crime, they must resign from any state offices they hold. This rule led to the resignation of the Speaker of the South African Parliament herself, just before the 2024 election. It's one of those basic rules that you think should already have been in force, but just wasn't. It's a perfect example of how Ramaphosa operates: tiny, easy to ignore, high leverage actions.

For those on the left wing of the ANC and South African politics, the last 7 years have been a whiplash. Ramaphosa played the fool and made memes, and then one day we woke up living under a literal neoliberal coalition involving the Democratic Alliance, with magazines like The Economist praising the government for surrendering ever more state control to the private sector. The people who support Ramaphosa's goals complain that he is 'weak' and 'slow', while getting everything they want. The people on the losing end of all this know not to to be fooled by the Cupcake bit.

Leviathan

2026 will be the last election Cyril Ramaphosa presides over as ANC President. His term as ANC leader ends in 2027.

The ANC has lost so much support in local government that it is a crisis. Local government is where new people enter the political system. It is also the basic layer of coalition building and patronage - legitimate and illegitimate. Voters understand local government because it is visible and tangible. When local government fails, voters feel it and punish the party in charge. The failures in local government also genuinely affect the national government. For example, part of Eskom's financial woes are driven by the fact that municipalities have failed to reliably collect rates to pass on to the electricity. Many municipalities are in debt, and the ANC can't hide behind the coalition chaos argument because those municipalities where they govern in majority are often the worst.

So, towards the end of 2025, Ramaphosa called a big meeting of all the councillors in South Africa and stressed how important it was that they turn the ship around:

“This meeting is therefore a turning point for all of us. Let us do what we need to do,’’ Ramaphosa said. “Without you doing anything, we are dead; we might as well pack up.”

The President condemned corruption, patronage, laziness and arrogance, but failed to offer a clear plan on how the party would deal with such problems.

He clearly and openly acknowledged the failings and criminality in the ANC:

Ramaphosa said the ANC needed to move up the ladder in terms of performance. He said it hurt him deeply to see how the ANC had taken some municipalities backwards, with many of them failing financial audits.

“The audit outcomes are important. I’m told by the auditor general that the number of our financial statements are not even prepared at the council level but they are prepared outside. Even when they come back, they are often wrong.” he told councillors.

“The cooking of the books must end today. We must get people who can draft the books properly and present an audit outcome that is going to be online, with what is expected.”

He urged for improved compliance with spending regulations to ensure that money meant for service delivery reached citizens.

“We must ensure that when it comes to compliance, rules that are there are followed and those that we procure to, we must do a proper assessment, there’s proper review of whether they will be able to do the work,” Ramaphosa said.

And then he made a statement which, in my view, speaks very well of him as a politician and as a person. He explicitly praised the ANC's biggest rival, the DA, for its relative outperformance in local government and encouraged ANC councillors to benchmark themselves against the DA:

And those municipalities that do best are not ANC controlled municipalities. And I can name it here, because there is nothing wrong with competition: they are often DA controlled municipalities. We need to ask ourselves: what is it that they are doing that is better than what we are doing? And there is nothing wrong with us saying we want to go and see what Cape Town is doing, we want to go and see what Stellenbosch is doing... how do they craft everything. We need to be moving up the ladder of being good at what we do. We cannot forever be staying at the bottom. It hurts me deeply when I continue to see that our municipalities sometimes tend to move even backwards.

The news cycle that followed these statements covered the outrage and hurt from ANC councillors over the comments, which some outlets treated as a gaffe. Ramaphosa backtracked a few days and said some few words about how unequal the service delivery is in Cape Town, and how it still struggles with inequality. But it was obvious that he meant every word he said and it wasn't a gaffe. He was ready to crack the whip.

For several months, nothing happened, and the above criticisms were just words. And then, in April of 2026, the ANC announced changes to the process by which mayors would be selected for key municipalities:

• a nomination portal would be opened so that any South African citizen, ANC member or not, could nominate any other South African citizen, ANC member or not
• the selection of the mayoral candidates for key municipalities would be performed by a centralised committee, and not by the regional branches
• the mayoral candidates would be announced before the election

The last point may sound trivial, but the ANC traditionally did not name who would be their mayoral candidate during local elections. The party was guaranteed to win most elections. The mayor would usually be whoever was the regional leader at the time. And, if not, the mayor would be determined by insider politics within the party. The ANC's majorities in municipalities had shielded it from having to undertake public, transparent political selection processes.

The loss of the ANC's majorities had finally compelled the party to take competition seriously. And now the national body had taken it much further. For major municipalities, like Johannesburg, the selection of the mayor would no longer be left up to the regions. It would be done at the center of the party:

The party is formally launching its mayoral and councillor candidate selection process, and is introducing a “strengthened, centralised and competency-based” approach to the identification and deployment of executive leadership in key municipalities.

“These measures are designed to ensure that candidates are not only politically grounded, but possess the technical capability, administrative competence, ethical integrity and leadership capacity required to manage complex municipalities and deliver meaningful change,” he said.

ANC national officials will finalise and approve mayoral candidates based on their competence, credibility, and capacity to deliver on the party's transformation agenda.

This process, Mbalula added, would include creating strategic leadership teams in municipalities to ensure “stable, coherent, and effective governance”.

Cupcake had summoned the Leviathan.

Balance

The ANC said that it would make the announcement on the mayoral selection by June.

But June came and went without an announcement. Clearly, the party was still searching, still working through the nominations and still debating.

A final date was set for the announcement: August 22nd. On the day, the venue was ready to go. Big names, including President Ramaphosa himself, were in attendance. Everything was set for the big announcement.

And then it just didn't happen. At the last minute, the party changed course and announced that they would instead provide the shortlist of names for each mayoral position. In Johannesburg there were 3 names: Chikane; Morero, the current incumbent; and Masuku, the regional leader. The ANC had failed to meet its deadline.

Clearly, the branches were fighting back against the new, centralised process, and the party was caught in a stalemate:

The incredibly public event the ANC planned to announce its mayoral candidates for metros, only to have to cancel the announcement at the last second, must count as the most embarrassing incident of this election so far (there may well be more to come).

It shows so many things:

That regions were able to prevent the announcement in the first place, that they had the power to override the wishes of Luthuli House.

That Luthuli House was so weak that it could not prevail.

And crucially, that the people who arranged that event did not have a proper understanding of what was happening in their own party.

In other words, it shows that people at Luthuli House did not understand the true balance of power. Essentially, Luthuli House did not realise how weak it was compared with the regions.

The branches were rejecting the centralized process and the helicopter candidates that Cupcake planned to deploy to key cities.

And this finally explains why Mr. Chikane's name, along with the names and lists for multiple other municipalities was not submitted. It's because the stalemate was not resolved:

Facing a loss of up to 1,400 candidates in the 4 November local elections, ANC power brokers in provinces and regions have scuppered reform candidates supported by the party’s national leaders.

This has led to the list fight where the party failed to register 181 councillor candidates (130 proportional representatives and 51 ward candidates). It’s a tiny percentage of total candidate submissions, but the growing crisis shows the party’s centre is not holding as it becomes increasingly federalised.

From the point of view of the branches, what Cyril Ramaphosa is doing is an unacceptable usurpation of power. South Africa's political system already gives such little weight to local perspective. The only person in the whole South African government who is directly accountable to a voter is that voter's ward councillor. Ward councillor's are only half of the council of any given municipality. Every executive position in local, provincial and national government is appointed by the legislature and nobody in the provincial or national legislatures is directly elected from a constituency - it's all PR.

For Cyril Ramaphosa to say that the ANC's candidates for mayor of Johannesburg and other key municipalities should be selected by a central committee of the party, and that they are not even limited to selecting someone who is a member of the party, or even someone who is nominated by a member of the party, is profoundly anti-democratic.

Ramaphosa could make the argument that I did earlier: that the ANC's extreme openness has led to a lack of standards, and the devolved power has been abused. A professionalized, centralised process means that the small scale local government corruption which sustains larger corrupt operations can be cut off in one fell swoop. It also means that there is less incentive for political violence which has afflicted municipalities in the past as people compete for councillor positions. And for the ANC as a party, it means that they have a means to impose candidate quality early on in the political life of future ANC leaders - an easy way to rescue the party's long term future.

Both sides have good arguments.

Conclusion

Based on the history of the ANC, and based on the recent evidence of Cupcake's ability to compromise, to convene a coalition and to ultimately get what he wants, it is not unreasonable to believe that the ANC will figure this debate out. According to Acemoglu and Robinson Thought, if they do figure it out, then the ANC will (re-)enter The Narrow Corridor and become a sustainable, dynamic and highly effective organisation. It could also go the other way around. The stalemate could rip the party apart, the ANC could implode, and South African politics would be thrust into coalition chaos at every level.

Like the unfinished copy of The Narrow Corridor sitting on my coffee table, I have no idea how any of this will end. But that's what makes it all so interesting: we get to watch all of the dynamics described in that book play out in real-time in a democracy which is young, rapidly changing and still very far from equilibrium.

As of October 11th, the stalemate hasn't broken. With less than a month to go, we still do not know who the ANC's candidates for these decisive elections will be. And neither do the ANC.