Against the Tide by Steven Friedman

Treating all parties which have joined the coalition equally sounds fair. But it isn't. The small parties are small because very few people voted for them. To treat them the same as much bigger parties shows contempt for voters. It also repeats a trick the apartheid government's negotiators used to try to avoid majority rule.

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Steven Friedman is a public commentator and an academic, currently employed as a Research Professor at the University of Johannesburg. He has been writing on South African politics for the entire democratic period both as a scholar and public commentator. He has published books on South Africa’s transition to democracy, the role of the trade union movement, and current South African politics. He has also written columns and articles for several South African newspapers. His writing seeks to use academic research to shed light on current politics but to ensure that this is conveyed in a way easily understood by people who have no academic training.