Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters NewMedia - November 25, 2004
Andrew Quinn

"The threat really is in the area of elections and thus the foundation of democratic governance," said Paul Graham, executive director of South Africa's Idasa think tank which conducted the research.

Sub-Saharan Africa, with just 10 percent of the world's population, is home to more than 60 percent of all HIV positive people with more than 25 million infected with the virus.

The region's economic powerhouse South Africa has the single largest HIV/AIDS caseload, with an estimated one out of nine South Africans infected.

The AIDS pandemic is striking just as many African countries take steps to shore up fragile democracies that replaced the dictatorships of the past.

This year five southern African countries are holding or have held elections.

Idasa's study centered on South Africa, which in April held its third democratic elections since apartheid ended in 1994. But it also examined several other southern African countries and found AIDS making its presence felt at the ballot box.

Idasa researcher Khabele Matlosa said that in both Zimbabwe and Zambia, which have British-style, first-past-the-post parliamentary electoral systems, by-elections were becoming increasingly common as more MPs die in office, many of them presumably from AIDS.

The by-elections are expensive -- Zambia's cost more than $200,000 apiece to organize -- and appear to work in favor of ruling parties which are better equipped than smaller opposition parties to contest individual seats, Matlosa said.

WHERE ARE THE VOTERS?

South Africa, like many other countries in the region, operates on a system of proportional representation which allocates political parties parliamentary seats according to the proportion of votes they receive in the election.

This system avoids the necessity of by-elections because parties may name replacement MPs to fill vacant seats.

But South Africa, too, is seeing the effects of HIV/AIDS in its electoral system -- mainly through increasing death rates among voting age people.

The Idasa study found sharp increases in mortality, in some regions by as much as 200 percent, among registered voters between the ages of 20-49.

While the jump in deaths cannot be attributed exclusively to AIDS, Idasa said the figures supported the hypothesis that the epidemic is cutting political participation.

"Increasing death rates in the voting age group could explain the downward trend in voter turnout over the last three elections," the authors of the report said.

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