Minorities in the rainbow nation: The indian vote in 1994

South Africa’s first democratic non-racial elections took place on 27 April 1994. While there have been numerous papers analysing the results of the election, scant attention has been paid to the voting patterns of Indian South Africans in KwaZulu-Natal. Indian South Africans voted in significant numbers for the Minority Front at the provincial level, and the National Party at the central government level. This article uses middle-man theory and the notion of ‘cultural insiderism’, situated against the backdrop of the Indian community’s historic-political response to apartheid, to try to understand the voting preferences of Indian South Africans. The article will address the question of Indian identity formation in South Africa and its alignment in the April elections with political conservatism.