With the new pattern of coalition rule now established in several of its municipalities — including the Tshwane, Johannesburg and Nelson Mandela metros — SA has fully entered its "Italian season", a period of dramatic realignment in the face of state inertia, ruling party atrophy and social unrest. The season in Italy occurred four decades ago, in a very different time and space, heavily inflected by the Cold War. But to compare Italy over 1962-1969 to SA over recent years is instructive, for the similarities are startling. In 1962, Italy gained its first centre-Left government since 1947. The Italian political spectrum had been dominated in the post-war era by the centrist DA-like Christian Democrats (DC), but possessed powerful ANC-like Socialist (PSI) and Communist (PCI) parties. The PCI, though down to 1.54m members by 1966, remained a powerful mass party (the SACP probably peaked at only 30,000 in the 2000s). Unfettered to a nationalist movement, unlike the SACP, the PCI nevert...
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