The political settlements in Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa cast victory in democratic elections as the principal rite de passage before power was to be transferred from the old regimes to the new. The rules of the game differed in all three cases. However, the thrust of the arrangements was that transitional elections were required not merely to elect new governments but to confirm popular acceptance of the new constitutional orders. Furthermore, whilst enabling newly elected governments to secure access to office, these elections would provide the opportunity for winning parties to make a political accommodation with both key constituencies of the old regime and other political competitors. Yet in the age of post-Cold War, ‘third wave’ democracy, it was necessary to do more than win one just election. Rather, it was necessary for NLMs, if they were to retain power with legitimacy, to perpetually renew their mandates via repeat victories in successive democratic elections.

This requirement was a potential paradox, for while liberation movements might lay claim to embodying ‘the nation’, post-transitional elections opened the possibility to demonstrations that, in electoral terms, they did not; in turn, loss of elections should, in constitutional terms, mean loss of power. Yet if for NLMs the logic of history dictated that they represented the nation, then electoral defeat would constitute a reversal of history, even while democratic experience worldwide demonstrates that it is quite customary for even highly popular governments to lose support over time.