“This article investigates the challenges facing political parties for entrenching and institutionalising intra-party democracy. It is abundantly evident that since the 1990s, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region has undergone a democratic
transition from one-party political dispensation towards a democratic multiparty era, with the exception of a few countries. The key question to be posed is that if individual countries have indeed undergone a democratic transition at the national level, have the key institutions such as political parties also imbued a democratic culture and practice? The paper recognises this
transition at the national level of individual SADC states, but suggests that political parties still lag behind in terms of entrenching and institutionalising democracy within their own internal operations.”
