Making Sense of Intra-Party Conflict in South Africa. An Expanded Conceptual Roadmap: The Operating Environment, Transactional Movement, and Future Transactional States.

The 2024 South African General Election is only a few weeks away. Serious concerns have been raised about the organization strength and leadership quality of the African National Congress (ANC). The intensification of the power struggle between Jacob Zuma and the ANC leadership has not helped to allay these concerns. This provides strong motivation for trying to make sense of intra-party conflict within the South African political party system. Unfortunately, intra-party conflict is a thorny issue that can be difficult to understand, let alone explain, with the common ways of thinking about political parties. We can try to make sense of these phenomena through the internal actors, distribution of their party powers, and the hostile nature of their relations with one another. However, that only provides a largely one-dimensional account. What is needed is a systematic one. In search of progress, this article introduces an expanded set of concepts.