South Africa

The new political system was established by the interim constitution voted into law in late 1993 and officially implemented on April 27, 1994. The interim constitution provides for a Government of National Unity and for a five-year transition, during which the final constitution would be drafted by the Constitutional Assembly, consisting of the combined Senate and National Assembly. To understand fully the revolutionary nature of the new government and the direction that the political transition is likely to take in the long term, it is necessary to examine the evolution of the political system that was based on the principles and practices of apartheid.
Historical Background
The Union of South Africa became a self-governing dominion within the British Commonwealth on May 31, 1910, when four British dependencies were merged under the South Africa Act passed by the British Parliament in 1909. Unification was interpreted differently by British and by Afrikaner leaders, however. To the British, uniting the four dependencies was central to their imperialist philosophy of consolidating the empire; to many Afrikaners, unity represented a step toward weakening British imperial influence. Ironically, however, this act failed to unite South Africa in a real sense because by excluding the black majority from political participation, it fueled the discontent and the conflict that characterized the country's politics throughout the twentieth century.
The South Africa Act served as the Union of South Africa's constitution until 1961. Although the country was formally ruled by a governor general representing the Crown, its government was granted almost total independence in internal affairs. Britain's 1931 Statute of Westminster removed many constitutional limitations on all British dominions, and South Africa's corresponding legislation, the Status of Union Act of 1934, declared that no act of the British parliament could apply to South Africa unless accepted by the Union parliament.
South Africa officially became the Republic of South Africa on May 31, 1961, following a national referendum among the country's white voters on October 5, 1960. The constitution of 1961 was based largely on the South Africa Act, but it severed ties with the British Commonwealth of Nations, replacing the words "king," "queen," and "crown" with "state." The state president replaced the British monarch and governor general.
The 1961 constitution provided for a president, a prime minister, and an executive council (cabinet) with offices at Pretoria (where most of the administrative bureaucracy was located). A bicameral legislature was situated at Cape Town. The independent judiciary was headquartered at Bloemfontein.
The 1961 constitution maintained white political domination through an electoral system that denied blacks, coloureds, and Asians the right to vote for national office holders. Coloureds and Asians, but not blacks, won limited participation in ethnic affairs through, respectively, a Coloured Persons' Representative Council established in 1964 and a South African Indian Council established in 1968. Since 1951 the Bantu Authorities Act had restricted black political participation to homelands (also referred to as Bantustans) set aside for Africans. During the 1970s and the 1980s, four of the ten homelands were declared "independent" black states, while the remaining six were known as "self-governing" territories.
Following intense debate and a series of legislative revisions in the early 1980s, the new Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act (No. 110) of 1983 went into effect on September 22, 1984. It outlined a government led by a president, who served as head of state and chief executive, and a parliamentary system with increased coloured and Indian representation. The new, tricameral Parliament encompassed a (white) House of Assembly, a (coloured) House of Representatives, and an (Indian) House of Delegates. The president was selected by an eighty-eight-member electoral college consisting of fifty whites, twenty-five coloureds, and thirteen Indians, chosen by a majority vote in their respective houses of parliament. The president served for the duration of the parliament that selected him, normally a five-year term. The president could dissolve the parliament, or could extend it by up to six months beyond its five-year term.
The president shared executive authority with a cabinet, which he appointed from the tricameral parliament, and with a Ministers Council chosen by him from the majority in each house of parliament. In addition, the president relied on a sixty-member President's Council for advice on urgent matters and for resolution of differences among houses of parliament. The President's Council comprised twenty members from the House of Assembly, ten from the House of Representatives, five from the House of Delegates, fifteen nominated by the president, and ten nominated by opposition party leaders. The NP dominated the President's Council throughout the ten-year duration of the 1983 constitution.
The three-chambered parliament was based on a fundamental premise of the 1983 constitution, the distinction between a racial community's "own" affairs (encompassing education, health, housing, social welfare, local government, and some aspects of agriculture), and "general" affairs (encompassing defense, finance, foreign policy, justice, law and order, transport, commerce and industry, manpower, internal affairs, and overall agricultural policy). Thus, legislation "affecting the interests" of one community was deliberated upon by the appropriate house, but legislation on "general affairs" of importance to all races was handled by all three houses of parliament. Disagreements among houses of parliament on specific legislation could be resolved by the President's Council, giving the NP-dominated House of Assembly substantial weight in determining the outcome of all legislative debates. The president signed all legislation, and he also exercised administrative responsibility for black affairs.
The country was divided into four provinces--Cape of Good Hope Province (later, the Cape Province), Natal Province, the Transvaal, and the Orange Free State. The president appointed a provincial administrator for each province. Until the mid-1980s, the provincial administrator acted in consultation with a provincial council, which was elected by whites only. In July 1987, the provincial councils were replaced by eight multiracial regional services councils (RSCs)--four in the Transvaal, three in the Cape Province, and one in the Orange Free State. The RSCs were empowered to administer government regulations and to coordinate the provision of services to local communities.

The constitutional reforms of the early 1980s led to four phases of political change that, ultimately, irrevocably transformed the South African political system. First, the 1983 constitution's new political representation for coloureds and Indians made the glaring lack of participation by the country's black majority even more obvious. Even early discussions of the new constitution triggered widespread violent protests by antiapartheid activists. The escalating violence prompted the government to impose a series of states of emergency and forced both the government and many citizens to realize that promising future political reform regarding black political participation would no longer suffice; sweeping political reforms would be necessary, and the need for such reforms was becoming increasingly urgent.
The second phase of change was a series of secret meetings between NP officials and imprisoned ANC leaders. These began in July 1984, after Minister of Justice Hendrik "Kobie" Coetsee (representing President P.W. Botha) paid several unpublicized visits to ANC leader Nelson Mandela, who was then serving the twenty-first year of a life prison sentence. The government formalized these visits in May 1988 by establishing a committee to handle government contacts with Mandela and with other imprisoned or exiled ANC leaders. On July 5, 1989, in response to Mandela's request for high-level discussions of a possible negotiated settlement to the ANC's armed struggle, Botha and Mandela held their first face-to-face talks.
Botha resigned from office, owing to ill health, in August 1989, and in December, Mandela suggested a "road map" for future negotiations to the new president, F.W. de Klerk. Mandela's proposal outlined a power-sharing plan for the NP and its political rivals and embraced the spirit of compromise that would be needed to weather the political turbulence that lay ahead.
These talks led to the third, and most transforming, phase in recent politics, beginning with de Klerk's historic speech of February 2, 1990, in which he legalized more than thirty antiapartheid organizations; ordered the release of eight long-term political prisoners, including Mandela and ANC deputy president Walter Sisulu; removed many emergency regulations concerning the media and political detainees; and announced his intention to negotiate a new democratic constitution with his political opponents. In October of that year, the parliament took a symbolic step toward reform by repealing the Separate Amenities Act, an important legislative pillar of apartheid.
The fourth phase in the political transformation occurred as the NP government and the ANC leadership began to recognize their mutual dependence and the need for cooperation and compromise in embarking on constitutional negotiations. In this phase, their previously adversarial relationship was transformed through their discussions and their agreement on three accords--the Groote Schuur Minute (May 1990), the Pretoria Minute (August 1990), and the D.F. Malan Accord (February 1991). In these accords, ANC leaders pledged to suspend the armed struggle, the government agreed to release all political prisoners, and both sides agreed to pursue political reform through negotiation. On September 14, 1991, representatives of twenty-seven political parties, interest groups, and the national and homeland governments signed the National Peace Accord, agreeing to form a multiracial council, later called the Transitional Executive Council (TEC), to serve as temporary executive authority until democratic elections could be held.
Nearly three months after the signing of the historic peace accord, preliminary negotiations to agree on procedural rules began at the World Trade Center outside Johannesburg, as the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa). In September 1992, Mandela and de Klerk reached a Record of Understanding, formally committing both sides to accept a democratically elected, five-year interim Government of National Unity led by a political coalition. They also agreed that the center of government would remain in Pretoria and that the new state president would be chosen from the party winning the largest plurality of votes in nationwide nonracial elections. Any party that won at least 5 percent of the seats in parliament would be entitled to a place in the cabinet. The transitional, bicameral parliament was to be charged with drafting and adopting a new constitution. The ANC accepted the idea of sharing power with the NP during the transition. Assuming the ANC would win the elections, it would, as the majority party, exercise its prerogative on most matters, and the NP would serve as a junior partner in running the country.
These agreements on the transitional government represented important compromises by both the government and the ANC, and they helped to set new precedents for future negotiations. The NP won agreement on its refusal to give the new state president broad and extensive powers during the transition period. (Under the previous system, the president could override the views of minority parties.) At the same time, de Klerk compromised on his demand for a permanent consensus-style arrangement to be enshrined in any new constitution by agreeing to a five-year transitional government. The arrangement satisfied the NP demand for legally binding checks and balances to protect the country's white minority. The ANC, for its part, compromised on its earlier insistence on full and immediate majority rule, by agreeing to participate in a powersharing arrangement for at least five years. At the same time, many ANC leaders hoped that their party, as the dominant party in the transitional government, would win a sufficiently large majority to enable it to enact most of its policies, even without the consent of other parties.
Supporters on both sides viewed the Government of National Unity as the country's best hope for achieving long-term political and economic stability, for attracting much-needed foreign investment, and for limiting violence by both white and black extremists. One of the main criticisms of the proposed coalition government was that with the two major political rivals entering into a governing alliance, their small-party opponents would have little political maneuverability and would be forced into extraparliamentary protest.
By early 1994, a number of problems remained unresolved. The most crucial was the need to establish a broad consensus among the political parties over the basic principles to be embodied in a new constitution. The negotiators had yet to reach agreement on the powers and the functions of the three commissions responsible for overseeing the transition--the TEC, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), and the Independent Media Commission that would be charged with ensuring media fairness. Other problems concerned the operations of the interim government--such as joint ANC-NP control over the country's security forces and the integration of the ANC's and PAC's paramilitary wings into the new national army.
The ANC and Inkatha still had to resolve their civil war in Natal and KwaZulu, where more than 10,000 people had been killed in a decade of ethnic and political violence. The large Zulu population (of about 8 million) was split between supporters of the ANC and Inkatha, and Inkatha itself was split between the conflicting interests of IFP leader Buthelezi and the traditional Zulu monarch, King Goodwill Zwelithini.
The Interim Constitution
The interim constitution--The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1993 (Act No. 200)--was ratified on December 22, 1993, and implemented on April 27, 1994. It provides a framework for governing for five years, while a new constitution, to be implemented by 1999, was drafted by the Constitutional Assembly. The final constitution had to comply with the principles embodied in the interim constitution, including a commitment to a multiparty democracy based on universal adult franchise, individual rights without discrimination, and separation of the powers of government.
The interim constitution consists of a preamble, fifteen chapters containing 251 sections, and seven attachments. It contains a chapter on fundamental rights, and it requires a constitutional court to invalidate any new law or government action that might unreasonably restrict these basic human freedoms. The guaranteed freedoms include the right to life and human dignity, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, the right of free association, language and cultural rights, and other internationally accepted human rights. Key provisions are proportional party representation in the legislature with representatives to be selected from lists of party delegates; a bicameral parliament comprising a 400-seat National Assembly and a Senate consisting of ten members chosen by each of the nine provinces; and a Constitutional Assembly made up of both houses of parliament. The interim constitution requires that the draft of the final constitution be prepared within two years and that the draft be approved by two-thirds of the legislators and by the Constitutional Court.
The interim constitution also defines the government's authority; reaffirms its sovereignty, the supremacy of the constitution, and existing national symbols; and defines the national executive (a president, at least two deputy presidents, and the cabinet), the judicial system (the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court, and lower-level courts), the Office of the Public Protector, the Human Rights Commission, the Commission on Gender Equality, the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights, and the Public Service Commission. Further provisions relate to the police and security establishment; the continuation or repeal of existing laws and international agreements; and arrangements for legislative, executive, public service, legal, financial, and other administrative bodies. Schedules attached to the interim constitution describe the nation's nine new provinces, including areas still under contention; the electoral system; oaths and affirmations of office; the procedure for electing the president; and the authority of provincial legislatures.
Drafting a Final Constitution
On May 8, 1996, the Constitutional Assembly completed two years of work on a draft of a final constitution, intended to replace the interim constitution of 1993 by the year 1999. The draft embodied many of the provisions contained in the interim constitution, but some of the differences between them were controversial. In the final constitution, the Government of National Unity is replaced by a majoritarian government--an arrangement referred to by its critics as "winner-take-all" in national elections. Instead of requiring political parties to share executive power, the final constitution would enable the majority party to appoint cabinet members and other officials without necessarily consulting the minority parties that would be represented in the National Assembly.
The draft final constitution in 1996 also proposes changes in the country's legislative structure. The National Assembly would continue to be the country's only directly elected house of parliament, but the Senate would be replaced by a National Council of Provinces. Like its predecessor, the new council would consist of legislators chosen to represent each of the country's nine provinces. The new council would include some temporary delegates from each province, however, so some legislators would rotate between the National Council of Provinces and the provincial legislatures from which they were chosen.
Negotiators in the early 1990s had agreed that the 1996 draft constitution would be submitted to the Constitutional Court to ensure that it conformed to agreed-upon constitutional principles, such as the commitment to a multiparty democracy, based on universal franchise without discrimination. In May 1996, however, the Constitutional Court did not immediately approve the draft as received; instead, it referred the document back to the Constitutional Assembly for revision and clarification of specific provisions. Chief among its concerns were the need to clarify references to the powers that would devolve to the provincial legislatures and the rights of organized labor and management in an industrial dispute. The Constitutional Assembly was revising the draft constitution as of mid-1996.
Even before it was approved or implemented, the draft constitution had an immediate impact on the structure of government in 1996. Just one day after the draft had been completed by the Constitutional Assembly, the National Party declared its intention to resign from the Government of National Unity, effective June 30, 1996. In the weeks leading up to the NP's formal departure from the executive branch, NP leaders repeatedly tried to assure voters that the party would play a constructive role in politics as a loyal critic of the ANC-led government. President Mandela, too, accepted the NP departure as a sign of a "maturing democracy." NP legislators continued to serve in the National Assembly and in the Senate.
The President
Under the interim constitution, executive authority is vested in the president, deputy presidents, and a cabinet chosen by the president in consultation with party leaders (see fig. 19). The executive offices are based in the administrative capital, Pretoria. The directly elected National Assembly elects the president from among its members and can remove the president from office by a vote of no-confidence or by impeachment. The president's primary responsibilities are to uphold, to defend, and to respect the constitution; to appoint cabinet members; to convene cabinet meetings; to refer bills back to the legislators or forward them to the Constitutional Court when constitutionality is in question; to summon the National Assembly for urgent matters; to appoint commissions of inquiry; to appoint ambassadors; and to accredit foreign diplomats.
According to the interim constitution, any party winning more than 20 percent of the popular vote is entitled to name a deputy president. If only one party or no party wins that percentage of votes, each of the two parties with the largest numbers of votes selects a deputy president. The deputy presidents' primary responsibilities are to assist the president in the duties of the executive and to succeed the president in the event of absence, incapacitation, or vacancy in that office. In 1994 the NP named outgoing president F. W. de Klerk and the ANC named Thabo Mbeki to serve as deputy presidents.
The Cabinet
The cabinet shares executive authority with the president and his deputies, and its members are appointed by the president in consultation with party leaders. Under the interim constitution, cabinet appointments reflect the relative strength of political parties; each party winning more than 5 percent of the popular vote is entitled to a proportional number of cabinet portfolios. In May 1994, the ANC was allocated seventeen cabinet portfolios, and a minister without portfolio was from the ANC. The NP was allocated six cabinet portfolios, and the IFP, three. After NP Minister of Finance Derek Keys resigned in July 1994, that post was designated "nonpartisan," and a new portfolio, General Services, was allocated to the NP in December 1994.
The president, in consultation with national party leaders, appoints a minister and deputy minister to manage each cabinet portfolio. In most ministries, a department staffed by government employees assists the ministry in the implementation of national policy. For example, the Department of Education, within the Ministry of Education, assists in implementing national educational policy. Each department is headed by a director general, who is generally a career government employee.
The cabinet customarily travels between the administrative capital, Pretoria, and the legislative capital, Cape Town, while the parliament is in session. The transitional cabinet's first session on May 23, 1994, took place in Cape Town. The president is required to consult with the cabinet and to gain the approval of two-thirds of the cabinet on issues of fundamental importance, but most cabinet decisions are reached by consensus.
The diversity represented in the new cabinet in 1994 was a major departure from earlier administrations (see table 16, Appendix). The ANC held key portfolios, such as foreign affairs, defense, safety and security, justice, and land affairs, and had strong deputy ministers in finance, home affairs, provincial affairs, and agriculture. The ANC appointees included older contemporaries of President Mandela, middle-aged former exiles, and younger antiapartheid activists of the 1980s. There were three women in the senior executive ranks--two women cabinet ministers and one woman deputy minister.
Other sharp breaks with the past were the reorganization and the renaming of several ministries. For example, in 1994 the Ministry of Law and Order became the Ministry of Safety and Security, and the Ministry of Information was subsumed under the Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications, and Broadcasting. In addition, the apartheid-based distinction between a racial community's "own" affairs and "general" affairs was abolished.
One of the new government's most controversial cabinet appointments was the minister of foreign affairs, Alfred Nzo, a veteran of the antiapartheid struggle who had little foreign affairs background. Nzo's deputy, Aziz Pahad, had been considered effective in managing the ANC foreign affairs department during the preelection period, and new Deputy President Mbeki planned to maintain close oversight of the foreign affairs portfolio. Another controversial ANC appointment was that of Winnie Mandela, President Mandela's estranged wife, as deputy minister of arts, culture, science, and technology. In March 1995, the president removed Mrs. Mandela from her post as deputy minister, citing insubordination as the cause for her dismissal. (After a legal challenge of his action, Mrs. Mandela resigned from the post.)
Cabinet ministers from the NP included some of the previous government's most experienced members. Important portfolios were assigned to Keys, who retained the finance portfolio until his resignation, and to constitutional negotiators Roelf Meyer (Ministry of Provincial Affairs and Constitutional Development) and Dawie de Villiers (Ministry of Environmental Affairs and Tourism). Veteran minister Roelof "Pik" Botha was appointed Minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs.
To appease and to accommodate Mandela's rival, the IFP leader, Zulu Chief Buthelezi, he was appointed minister of home affairs. His duties include managing elections and internal issues, several of which affect his IFP stronghold in KwaZulu-Natal. Buthelezi also shares responsibility for resolving the country's growing problem of illegal immigration from neighboring states.
Parliament
Under the interim constitution of 1993, legislative authority is vested in a bicameral parliament consisting of the National Assembly (lower house) and the Senate (upper house), based in the country's legislative capital, Cape Town. Members of the National Assembly are chosen by proportional representation: constitutionally, 200 of the 400 assembly delegates are chosen from party lists of national candidates, and 200 are chosen from lists of candidates representing specific provinces. The 200 selected from provincial party lists are allocated in the following proportions: Eastern Cape 28, Free State 14, Gauteng 44, KwaZulu-Natal 42, Mpumalanga 11, Northern Cape 4, Northern Province 25, North-West Province 12, and Western Cape 20.
In 1994 individual delegates could choose to run as national or provincial party delegates. Provincial party leaders submitted lists of delegates after elections or party caucuses in each province. A candidate nominated on a provincial list had to be a resident of that province, although exceptions were made for parties that listed only one nonresident candidate, or for cases in which fewer than 10 percent of the party's nominees lived outside the province. The assembly delegates elected a speaker and deputy speaker to preside over their deliberations. The speaker and the deputy speaker retained their parliamentary seats but could not vote, except in the case of a tie.
The Senate consists of ten members from each of the nine provinces, selected by the provincial legislature on the basis of proportional representation, to reflect party strength in each province. The president and the two deputy presidents preside over the Senate and are also members of the Senate. Although not granted a deliberative vote, they can vote in case of a tie.
The bicameral parliament is empowered not only to pass laws, but, in its additional role as the Constitutional Assembly, to draft and to adopt the final constitution, which had to be completed in 1996. Although intended to serve as the interim legislature for five years, parliament may be dissolved at any time by presidential decree, followed by new parliamentary elections.
The interim constitution requires ordinary bills introduced in either house of parliament to be voted on by both houses. If one house passes a bill and the other rejects it, the bill is referred to a joint committee from both houses. Both houses approve bills affecting the powers and the boundaries of provinces; the appropriate provincial legislature also must approve any bill affecting the powers and the boundaries of that province. Both houses deal with bills appropriating revenue or imposing taxes, and in case of a conflict between houses on any bill, the decision of the National Assembly prevails.
In accordance with the interim constitution, parliament generally convenes from January to June each year in Cape Town, although a briefer session may be called later in the year if needed. All members of the government plus many of the departmental secretaries and heads of other executive agencies reside in Cape Town when parliament is in session.
Reflecting the far-reaching changes in the new political system, the new parliament in 1994, unlike its predecessor, adopted an informal dress code--many new members dispensed with the conventional Western suit and instead wore kaftans or safari suits. For the first time as well, some speeches in parliament were delivered in African languages, with a bevy of translators assembled to render them in English or Afrikaans.
Volkstaat Council
In November 1994, the Volkstaat Council Act (No. 30) of 1994 established a Volkstaat Council within the legislative branch of the government to investigate the possibility of establishing an Afrikaner state within South Africa. The twenty members of the council were elected by a joint session of the National Assembly and the Senate. The functions of the council are to gather information concerning possible powers, boundaries, and structures of such a state; to study the feasibility of these; and to submit recommendations to the joint National Assembly and Senate. The Volkstaat Council began deliberations in early 1995. Its formal proposals had not been presented as of mid-1996.
Until 1994 South Africa was divided administratively into four provinces, the Cape Province, Natal Province, the Transvaal, and the Orange Free State; six "self-governing" homelands, Gazankulu, KaNgwane, KwaNdebele, KwaZulu, Lebowa, and QwaQwa; and four "independent" homelands or "sovereign independent states," Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda, and Ciskei (see fig. 11). The government estimated in the early 1990s that 44 percent of the country's total population resided in the ten homelands, which formed less than 14 percent of the total land area. A 1992 study by the Urban Foundation, a South African research organization, concluded that this high population density--several hundred persons per square kilometer in some areas--greatly exacerbated socioeconomic and political problems in the homelands.
To resolve these problems, government and ANC negotiators redrew the country's internal boundaries, dissolving the homeland boundaries and forming nine new provinces (see fig. 1). The demarcation process began in May 1993, when the Multiparty Negotiating Council appointed a 150-member Commission on the Demarcation of States/Provinces/Regions, with instructions to hold a public hearing and to submit recommendations to the council. After receiving 304 written reports and hearing eighty oral witnesses, the commission recommended the formation of nine provinces, with a few disputed borders to be reconsidered at a later date. These recommendations were incorporated into the interim constitution, and the homelands were officially dissolved on April 27, 1994.
The interim constitution assigns authority in each of the nine provinces to a provincial executive, or premier, and a legislative assembly. The premier, elected by the legislators, selects a council, or cabinet, based on proportional representation of political parties (see table 17, Appendix). Provincial legislatures have between thirty and 100 members, although within those limits, the size of the legislature is proportional to the number of votes cast in the province--i.e., the total is divided by 50,000, and that number is added to the base of thirty delegates (see table 18, Appendix). Thus, at both the provincial and the national levels, voters select a political party they wish to have represent them rather than a specific individual to serve as legislator. The legislators are chosen on the basis of proportional representation from lists of party representatives.
The capitals of the new provinces are Cape Town (Western Cape), Kimberley (Northern Cape), Bisho (Eastern Cape), Bloemfontein (Free State), Nelspruit (Mpumalanga), Pietersburg (Northern Province), Johannesburg (Gauteng), and Mmabatho (North-West Province). The capital of KwaZulu-Natal was not yet decided, between Ulundi and Pietermaritzburg, as of 1996.
As the 1994 elections approached, the government amended the interim constitution to strengthen the power of the provincial governments, largely in an attempt to appease Zulu and Afrikaner separatists. These new measures uphold the general principle of "self-determination," to the extent that people of a common culture are allowed to establish a "territorial homeland" where their language and traditions can be maintained. They also stipulate that the resulting homeland must have broad popular support within its boundaries and its policies may not be racially or ethnically discriminatory. The amendments also assign to the provincial authorities the power to levy taxes and to formulate a provincial constitution, as long as they do not violate constitutional provisions concerning fundamental rights. Furthermore, to satisfy Zulu aspirations, the negotiators adopted the name KwaZulu-Natal for the former Natal Province and agreed to allow the Zulu king to retain his honorary crown and to continue to receive his salary from the central government.
Although the new provincial administrations assumed power immediately after the April 1994 elections, many of them were unable to deliver government services to their constituents in the months following the elections. Provincial authority had not yet been fully defined, and many provincial and local-level offices and procedures continued to be under the control of apartheid-era civil servants. Throughout 1995, several provincial administrators demanded more autonomy and more financial support from the central government, and this issue delayed agreement on a draft of the final constitution in 1996.
One of the last steps in the creation of the new political system was the establishment of new local government institutions below the provincial level. The government planned for elections in 1995 to replace the existing all-white city councils with nonracial, democratically chosen municipal governments and to establish multiracial local councils in rural districts. The Local Government Transition Act (No. 209) of 1993 required 40 percent of local government members to be elected by a system of proportional representation using a party list system, and 60 percent to represent individual localities. The interim constitution specified that the existing local governments in 1994 would continue in place until the new elections were held.
On November 1, 1995, local government elections were held in all areas of the country except KwaZulu-Natal and some parts of the Western Cape. The elections put in place municipal and rural councils, replacing the bureaucratic infrastructure that had existed since the apartheid era. The elections were successfully held in 686 constituencies, although only about 52 percent of the registered electorate turned out to vote. The ANC won seats on all 686 councils, and it won a majority of the seats on 387 councils. The NP won a majority of seats on forty-five councils. The Freedom Front won control over one local council. Independent or nonpartisan candidates won a majority of seats on at least forty-two councils. A few elections were finally decided in byelections held in early 1996. In KwaZulu-Natal and areas of the Western Cape, the local government elections were postponed until mid-1996.
The Legal System South Africa Table of ContentsSouth Africa's legal system, like the rest of the political system, was radically transformed as the apartheid-based constitutional system was restructured during the early 1990s. Nevertheless, many laws unrelated to apartheid continued to be rooted in the old legal system. Thus, the justice system after 1994 reflected elements of both the apartheid-era system and nondiscriminatory reforms.The Apartheid-Era Legal SystemThe principles embodied in the legal system were adapted from Roman-Dutch law with an admixture of English law introduced after 1806. The influence of English law is most pronounced in criminal legal procedures, in constitutional or statutory law, and in corporate and mercantile law. Roman-Dutch law predominates in private law--for example, the law of persons, of property, of succession, and the law of sale and lease. Despite the influence of these universally accepted laws, however, a prominent feature of the former legal system was the pervasive role of discriminatory apartheid-based laws, regulations, and codes (see The Legislative Implementation of Apartheid, ch. 1), and the extensive judicial apparatus required to enforce them.Judicial authority is vested in the state, and the minister of justice is responsible for administering the justice system. The president appoints the attorneys general, who order public prosecutions on behalf of the state, and whose authority in the lower courts is delegated to public prosecutors. Similarly, the president also appoints judges from among members of the bar. Until the 1990s, all judges were white. The legal profession is divided broadly, as in Britain, into advocates (barristers) and attorneys (solicitors); only the former can plead a case in a higher court.The judicial system is headed by the Supreme Court, the decisions and interpretations of which are considered an important source of the law. The Supreme Court comprises an Appellate Division and six provincial divisions. Each provincial division encompasses a judge president, three local divisions presided over by judges, and magisterial divisions presided over by magistrates. Separate traditional courts administer African traditional law and custom; they are presided over by traditional leaders, often chiefs or respected elders.The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court is the highest court in the country and is seated in Bloemfontein, the country's judicial capital. The Appellate Division is composed of the chief justice and the judges of appeal, whose number varies, as determined by the president. Supreme Court members can be removed only on grounds of misbehavior or incapacity. The Appellate Division's decisions are binding on all lower courts, as are the decisions--within their areas of jurisdiction--of the provincial and the local divisions. Lower courts, which are presided over by civil service magistrates, have limited jurisdiction in civil and criminal cases. In 1995, there were 309 district magistrates' offices, presided over by 1,014 magistrates, 1,196 prosecutors, and 3,717 officers.The Legal Aid Society, an independent statutory body, provides advice and assistance to indigent persons. Other programs offer aid or rehabilitation to prisoners. Until the mid-1990s, a few private voluntary organizations, such as Black Sash, offered legal assistance to people who faced legal problems arising out of the pass laws or other apartheid-era legislation.The New Legal SystemThe postapartheid legal system introduced by the interim constitution of 1993 embodies the supreme law of the land and is binding on all judicial organs of the state. It establishes an independent judiciary, including a Constitutional Court with the power to review and to abolish legislation inconsistent with the constitution. It includes provisions not found in apartheid-era laws, such as a prohibition on all forms of discrimination and an emphasis on individual rights. These rights include "equality before the law and equal protection of the law"; freedom of expression, assembly, demonstration, petition, and association; the right to "choose a place of residence anywhere in the national territory"; the right not to be deprived of citizenship without justification; full political rights; full access to the courts; and fair and lawful administrative justice mechanisms, including rights concerning detention, arrest, and accusation. Other provisions provide for specific rights in areas such as economic activity, labor relations, property, environment, children, language and culture, education, and conditions under which a state of emergency can be declared.In 1994 the government established the new Constitutional Court, a Human Rights Commission, and a Judicial Services Commission that forwarded to the president its ten nominees to the Constitutional Court. Legislation in 1994 also set forth operating procedures for these bodies and established the Office of the Public Protector (public defender).The new legal system also deals with the consequences of apartheid-related abuses and crimes, although it aims primarily to promote a spirit of national reconciliation and a new "culture of human rights," rather than to resolve long-standing grievances. In June 1994, the government announced that a Truth and Reconciliation Commission would investigate accusations of human rights abuses and political crimes by both supporters and opponents of apartheid, and that it would consider related issues such as amnesty and reparation to survivors and their dependents. The government established guidelines for the commission's operations in 1994 and 1995, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission began hearing testimony by both victims and perpetrators of apartheid-era violence in early 1996. |

The 1994 Elections South Africa Table of ContentsUntil the nonracial elections in April 1994, the laws of apartheid governed elections. An elections administrator, or chief electoral officer, prepared a list based on the population registry of people who were qualified to register as voters. They had to be more than eighteen years of age and, under the 1983 constitution, to belong to one of the constituencies of the three racially based houses of parliament--white, coloured, and Indian. In the 1989 parliamentary election, for example, only 2,176,481 votes were cast, out of 3,170,667 registered voters and a total population of almost 28 million.In the April 1994 national and provincial elections, nineteen political parties, representing the country's diverse constituencies, participated in the electoral process. Each voter received two ballots and cast two votes (enabling each voter to choose different parties at the national and the provincial levels). Voters selected a political party, not an individual candidate, to represent them in the National Assembly and in the provincial legislature. Each party had prepared ranked lists of delegates for the national and the provincial legislatures. Political parties gained seats in each body proportionally, according to the number of votes each party received, and party delegates became legislators based on their ranking on the appropriate list.The number of eligible voters in 1994 was estimated at 21.7 million--about 16 million of whom had never voted before. In a radical departure from previous electoral practice, no formal voter register was prepared; instead, voters were asked to present identity books as proof of citizenship, and even this requirement was enforced with flexibility. Officials had determined before the elections that about 2.5 million people--mostly blacks--lacked identity books, and most of these were given temporary identity papers. For most residents of the homelands, valid travel documents were accepted as legal identification.The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) created a state electoral fund with an estimated 22 million rands (for value of the rand--see Glossary) to finance the April 1994 elections. Half of that amount was distributed among participating political parties before the election, and the balance afterward. The first payment was made in late March 1994 to nine parties that had submitted documentation of popular support.During the campaign, political parties were hampered by several factors. One of the major challenges was the need to educate the electorate, particularly those who had never voted before, in basic elements of democracy and electoral procedures. For example, there was a great deal of skepticism about democratic practices--such as the secret ballot--particularly in rural areas where literacy rates are low, and where traditional leaders and white employers had often manipulated political participation in the past. In addition, the political violence leading up to the elections threatened to keep many potential first-time voters away from the polls. ANC voters felt especially vulnerable in KwaZulu, Bophuthatswana, and Ciskei, where the apartheid-era homeland leaders and security forces had harassed and intimidated ANC supporters. Similarly, in ANC-controlled areas, some of that party's activists intimidated IFP, NP, and even liberal Democratic Party (DP) organizers and disrupted their campaign rallies, despite ANC leaders' pleas for tolerance. Finally, the election posed a logistical nightmare for the IEC, which had to accommodate the IFP's last-minute decision to participate in the elections and add the party's name to the ballots. The IEC helped monitor the more-than-9,000 polling stations and was responsible for verifying the vote count before it was announced.The IEC reported that it had counted 19,726,579 ballots and rejected 193,081 as invalid. The voting was declared generally free and fair. Observer missions from the United Nations (UN), British Commonwealth, European Union (EU--see Glossary), and Organization of African Unity (OAU) issued this statement: "South Africans' confidence in the secrecy of the ballot was manifest and they were able to participate freely in the elections. The outcome of the elections reflects the will of the people of South Africa."Seven political parties won seats in the National Assembly, the ANC, 252 seats (representing 62.6 percent of the popular vote); the NP, 82 seats (20.4 percent); the IFP, 43 seats (10.5 percent); the Freedom Front (FF), 9 seats (2.2 percent); the DP, 7 seats (1.7 percent); the PAC, 5 seats (1.2 percent); and the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP), 2 seats (0.5 percent). Twelve other parties received too few votes to be represented in the National Assembly. Each of the seven major parties also won representation in at least one of the nine provincial legislatures. The ANC won a majority in seven provincial legislatures. The NP won a majority in the Western Cape; and the IFP did so in KwaZulu-Natal. |

Political Parties South Africa Table of ContentsSouth Africa's political party system underwent radical transformation in the early 1990s when previously illegal parties were unbanned and participated in the April 1994 elections. In what international observers called a "developing multiparty system," parties were challenged to become all-inclusive and not to limit their appeal to their traditional constituent groups. They also had to reorient themselves to participate in the bicameral multiracial legislature rather than the previous tricameral apartheid-based parliament. The most successful of the parties in the April 1994 elections (and the South African Communist Party) are described below, in order of decreasing parliamentary strength.African National CongressThe African National Congress (ANC) was founded in 1912 as the South African Native National Congress, under the leadership of Dr. Pixley Ka Isaka Seme, a Durban attorney. It was renamed the African National Congress in 1923. Although the ANC cooperated to some degree with the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA--later, in 1953, the South African Communist Party, or SACP) in the early 1920s, cooperation ceased in 1927 when some traditional African leaders opposed white-led communist involvement in the black nationalist movement. In the 1930s, the ANC's influence declined, primarily because it was unsuccessful in representing black grievances and was weakened by factionalism and leadership disarray. The ANC's revival in the 1940s was largely the result of a dynamic group of young leaders--including Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, and Anton Lembede--who were influenced by a pan-African version of black nationalism. In 1943 they established the ANC Youth League to mobilize mass protest against racial discrimination. Following the rise to power of the NP in 1948 and its implementation of strict apartheid laws, the ANC, with many of the Youth League founders then in leadership positions, responded by launching a series of countrywide defiance campaigns. This activism invigorated the ANC and resulted in the movement's growth from 7,000 to some 100,000 dues-paying members in 1952.In the mid-1950s, the ANC formed the Congress Alliance with other antiapartheid organizations to oppose the white state. On June 26, 1955, alliance members adopted the Freedom Charter, which advocated the creation of a nonsocialist multiracial society, but the debate over the charter widened an ideological rift in the ANC between Charterists and Africanists, concerning the question of multiracialism. A few activists opposed the ANC's inclusive policies and established the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) in 1959 to press for black political control.The government declared the ANC an illegal organization on April 8, 1960, as part of a government crackdown and state of emergency following violent antiapartheid incidents at Sharpeville and Langa. The ANC went underground, many of its cadres left South Africa for exile in neighboring states, and its leaders adopted armed struggle as a means of achieving their goals. In 1961 ANC and SACP leaders created a joint military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation," also known as Umkhonto, MK). The principle of armed struggle through guerrilla warfare to overthrow the South African regime superseded the goal of gaining political rights for all citizens. ANC sabotage and attacks between 1960 and 1962 led to the arrest of many party leaders. At the 1963 trial that became renowned as "the Rivonia trial," Mandela, Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, and others were convicted of treason and were sentenced to life terms in prison. Most ANC leaders fled the country, established ANC headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia, and continued their struggle against the Pretoria regime.Over the years, the ANC built up a strong support network in many Western and Eastern-bloc states, in cooperation with overseas antiapartheid groups. Although certain Western states, particularly Scandinavian countries, provided financial support, the ANC's logistical support, including the supply of weapons, came from the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). The ANC also attained observer status at the UN and during the 1980s broadened its diplomatic ties with Western states.The ANC's leadership structure consists of the president, deputy president, secretary general, deputy secretary general, and treasurer general. A ninety-member National Executive Committee (NEC) consults with senior officers and influences decisions on important issues. A twenty-six-member National Working Committee (NWC), chosen from the NEC, oversees day-to-day decision making and administration and manages the party's functional departments. The seven appointed members of the President's Committee serve as presidential advisers and assistants.The ANC's annual national conference brings together more than 1,300 representatives, whose functions are to elect the NEC and to nominate delegates to the party's National Assembly, which meets every five years. At a working level, the party has nine national departments--Information and Research, Manpower and Development, Foreign Affairs, Youth, Political Education, Information and Publicity, Finance, Religious Affairs, and Women--as well as branches in each of the provinces.In the early 1990s, the ANC took a number of steps to broaden its political base. It reactivated the ANC Youth League in order to bridge the generational gap between its older leaders and young members. In addition, propelled by the many politically active women in the organization, the ANC reactivated its Women's League in order to promote women's rights nationwide. The ANC Youth League and the ANC Women's League work in cooperation with the corresponding departments within the ANC.Although the ANC primarily represents the interests of the majority black population, its membership is open to whites, coloureds, and Asians, as well. It had appealed to all races to join in 1969, and a substantial number of white liberals did join during the 1970s and the 1980s. In April 1991, five white members of parliament representing the Democratic Party left that party to join the ANC, giving the ANC official parliamentary representation for the first time in the all-white House of Assembly.Until the ANC and the NP-led government entered into negotiations over the country's political future in 1991, the ANC's ideological platform for opposing apartheid ranged from Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi's strategy of passive resistance (in the early 1900s), to pan-Africanism (in the 1940s), to the Freedom Charter in 1955. In 1969 the ANC adopted an official policy advocating armed struggle to gain political control of the state, and in 1988 it promulgated the Constitutional Guidelines for a Democratic South Africa, derived from the Freedom Charter of the 1950s. These guidelines called for a nonracial democratic state based on universal franchise. In August 1989, the ANC adopted the Harare Declaration, advocating multiparty negotiations to arrive at a new form of government, giving strong emphasis to the concept of individual rights.The ANC's major political partner throughout most of the apartheid era was the SACP. SACP leaders helped the ANC to secure the support of communist and socialist governments during its period of exile, played important roles in ANC policy formulation, and helped to consolidate support for the ANC in the labor movement. The SACP at times played a moderating role in the ANC, too; for example, in early 1993 SACP chair Joe Slovo drafted the ANC's proposals, couched in a "sunset clause," to compromise and to share power with the NP. Slovo's position was that compromise was necessary because the party was "not dealing with a defeated enemy," but with the NP as a minority party.Although the ANC became the country's dominant political party in 1994, it still faced a number of long-term problems. The issue of political succession had yet to be resolved. President Mandela and other senior party leaders were members of the older generation, whose active leadership years were drawing to a close. Mandela had pledged he would not seek reelection in 1999. His most likely successors--Thabo Mbeki, the former ANC secretary for international affairs, and Cyril Ramaphosa, ANC secretary general since 1991--had not demonstrated the decades of practiced leadership of their seniors.As the dominant party in the national unity government, the ANC had to balance the need to co-manage (along with the NP) the country's finances to facilitate economic growth against its long-standing affiliation with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the labor confederation known for vigorously defending workers' interests against those of the previous government. The ANC also had to overcome its image as a violator of human rights after its leaders acknowledged there had been instances of torture, execution, and abuse of dissidents in its exile camps and in some black townships during the antiapartheid struggle. In 1993 the party apologized for past abuses, but it refused to punish its human rights violators or to pay compensation to the victims or their families.In 1994 the ANC proposed a number of controversial cabinet appointments, adding to the difficulties inherent in transforming itself from a former liberation movement into a broad-based political party. A notable case was that of Winnie Mandela, who had earlier been regarded as South Africa's "first lady of liberation." She had staged a political comeback after being stripped of her official posts in the ANC and after being shunned by many black leaders because of her 1991 conviction for her part in a kidnapping that had resulted in a death. Her five-year jail sentence was set aside for a fine, but she was subsequently removed from the ANC's NEC and as head of its Welfare Department.Mrs. Mandela went on to organize an independent power base in the restive and impoverished squatter camps, where she was respected for her activism on behalf of the poor. In some communities, Mrs. Mandela was able to capitalize on the widespread distrust of government that extended even to black leaders like Nelson Mandela. During the preelection negotiations, she had criticized power-sharing proposals as a deal between "the elite of the oppressed and the oppressors" and had charged ANC leaders with "the distortion of a noble goal in favor of a short-cut route to parliament by a handful of individuals." But while she chided ANC leaders for their new-found "embourgeoisement," Mrs. Mandela continued to live in relative luxury in the Johannesburg township of Soweto. Even after she fell out of favor with the government led by her husband in 1994, she remained popular, especially among the poor and unemployed. Her defiance of the government led to her removal from office in March 1995.South African Communist PartyIn 1994 the South African Communist Party (SACP) was not an independent political entity, but a strong faction within the ANC, where its members held important leadership positions. Former party leaders, Joe Slovo and Chris Hani, for example, had both served as chief of staff of the ANC's military wing and on its most important committees. The SACP won strong representation in the National Assembly in 1994, not by participating openly in the April 1994 elections, but by having SACP members well represented among delegates from the ANC.The SACP was originally founded as the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) in July 1921 in Cape Town. The CPSA was formed out of the merger of several leftist organizations, including the International Socialist League (ISL), the Social Democratic Federation, the Durban Marxist Club, the Cape Communist Party, and the Jewish Socialist Society. The CPSA affiliated with the Communist International (Comintern), headquartered in Moscow, which provided it with political direction, although some party factions opposed Moscow's intervention in South African affairs.Although whites dominated the party in the 1920s, some CPSA leaders attempted to strengthen its reputation as an indigenous communist organization by increasing its African membership and orientation. David Ivon Jones and Sidney Percival Bunting, formerly of the ISL, translated the concept of social revolution into a struggle for a "black republic" and a "democratic native republic, with equal rights for all races." The major stumbling block they encountered was the belief, inherent in Marxist dogma, that all workers fundamentally share the same interests. In South Africa, white workers generally felt they had little in common with their black counterparts and feared that any improvements for black workers would reduce their own status and income.Despite efforts at Africanization, the CPSA failed to establish strong ties with black political organizations, many of which were dominated by traditional tribal leaders. In 1928, for example, the ANC denounced the "fraternization" between the ANC and the CPSA. ANC President James T. Gumede was removed from office in 1930, after trying to educate ANC members about Marxism. Even as the CPSA gradually succeeded in recruiting more black members, its leadership continued to be white. For this reason, two ANC Youth League leaders in the 1940s--Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu--opposed any alliance between the ANC and the CPSA at that time.CPSA members were divided over the increasing Comintern intervention in local affairs. Moscow urged the CPSA and all communist parties to continue to be small, revolutionary elite organizations, and to rid the party of alleged "rightist" elements. In 1931 a new Stalinist faction, led by Douglas Wolton, Molly Wolton, and Lazar Bach, assumed leadership roles in the CPSA and proceeded to purge the party of many white leaders. In the internal upheaval that followed, the party lost black support, too, and weakened its ties to labor. As its leadership ranks were "Stalinized" and leading party activists fled the country, CPSA membership dropped from an estimated 1,750 members in 1928 to about 150 in 1933. Racial divisions continued to exist between the predominantly white leadership and the largely black membership ranks.At the outset of World War II, the CPSA opposed efforts to counter the Nazi threat, primarily because of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, which led to Soviet neutrality. Party members campaigned against military recruitment of blacks (and Indians) in South Africa, arguing that the "natives" should not be sacrificed to perpetuate their own exploitation. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the CPSA echoed Moscow's shift to support the anti-Nazi campaign, and the South African government responded by releasing some CPSA activists from detention and permitting political activities in support of the war effort.By the mid-1940s, CPSA membership was increasing, and the party had gained influence after a few CPSA members (all white) won political office. After the 1948 NP election victory, however, the government quickly restricted black political activity and in 1950 banned the CPSA. The party went underground temporarily but also strengthened its ties to local nationalist organizations, such as the ANC. During the years it was banned, while the ANC continued to operate legally, the CPSA viewed the ANC as the primary expression of black aspirations for a multiracial socialist state under eventual communist leadership. The Comintern's Sixth Congress declared that "the CPSA could now play an active role in the ANC." The party re-emerged in 1953 under the leadership of Joe Slovo and his wife, Ruth First, and changed its name to the SACP.The SACP and the ANC in the 1950s held similar views about policy and tactics as embodied in the ANC's Freedom Charter; in addition, they both advocated the use of guerrilla warfare against the apartheid regime in order to bring about the dual-phase revolution of political liberation followed by economic transformation. Party members reportedly persuaded the ANC to abandon African nationalism in favor of nonracialism, however, although the SACP, unlike the ANC, viewed the primary objective of the revolution as the creation of a socialist state. After many leaders of both organizations were arrested in 1963, both the SACP and the ANC shifted their political and military bases of operations to neighboring African states.The close ties between the SACP and the ANC, particularly the predominance of SACP members in the ANC, have always been controversial, and in 1959 prompted a split by black nationalists from the ANC to form the militant Africanist, anticommunist PAC. The SACP-ANC relationship evolved into a symbiosis, derived in part from their dual memberships and overlapping leadership ranks. Throughout the 1980s, for example, the SACP was well represented on the ANC's NEC and in other key ANC positions, and in ANC-affiliated labor organizations, such as COSATU.When the SACP was unbanned in February 1990, its strength was difficult to estimate because many party members had been underground for years. In July 1990, a party spokesman publicized the names of twenty-two SACP members who were prominent in national politics but said that the names of others would remain secret. In 1991 SACP leaders estimated that the party had 10,000 dues-paying members, but refused to publish the party's membership rolls.SACP chairman Joe Slovo was the most prominent party member in government in 1994. Slovo was a trained lawyer and advocate, a member of the Johannesburg Bar, and one of the original members of MK, the ANC military wing. He served on the ANC's revolutionary council from 1969 until it was disbanded in 1983, became the first white member of the ANC's NEC in 1985, and served as MK chief of staff until April 1987. He was appointed SACP general secretary in 1986, following the death of Moses Madhiba, and continued in that post until 1991, when he became party chairman. Slovo was appointed minister of housing in the Government of National Unity in May 1994 and served in that post until his death in January 1995.Slovo had been a hard-line communist, a Stalinist, when he joined the party in the 1940s, but along with others in the SACP had followed Moscow's 1980s reforms. By 1987 Slovo and his associates espoused the creation of a multiparty state with a mixed economy, and sought to broaden the party's membership base. This liberal philosophy might have explained the SACP's large representation among ANC leaders in the 1990s. The collapse of the Soviet system in the late 1980s had weakened the SACP's outside support and appeared to have weakened the appeal of the socialist ideals the party espoused for South Africa. Party activists believed, nonetheless, that the remaining economic disparities among racial groups provided fertile ground for SACP recruitment in the 1990s.SACP leaders, considerably weakened by the murder of Chris Hani in 1993, debated the possibility that the party no longer represented a political asset to the ANC, as they prepared for the April 1994 elections. They realized that the SACP could do little to help the ANC broaden its popular support beyond its liberation allies, and public opinion polls gave the SACP, alone, strong support among only about 5 percent of voters. By including a large number of SACP members among the electoral delegates representing the ANC in the April 1994 elections, however, the SACP was able to gain significantly more representation in the national and provincial legislatures and more key posts in the government than it would have, had it run independently.National PartyIn the early 1990s, the National Party (NP), led by President de Klerk, led the white community in radically transforming the apartheid system and ushering in nonracial democracy. This process also served to transform the NP into a modern democratic party, while at the same time depriving it of the uninterrupted political dominance it had enjoyed for some forty-five years.The present-day NP emerged out of Afrikaner organizations of the early 1900s. Founded by General J.B.M. Hertzog in January 1914 as an expression of Afrikaner ideology and ethnic nationalism, the NP sought to strengthen racial separation and to oppose British rule in South Africa. The NP, in alliance with the Labour Party--a white organization led by Colonel F.H.P. Creswell--defeated General Jan C. Smuts's ruling South African Party (SAP) in parliamentary elections in 1924. In 1933 the NP formed an alliance with the SAP, and the alliance was formalized in 1934 as the United South Africa National Party, or the United Party (UP). The merger prompted staunch segregationists from Cape Town to establish the Purified National Party under the leadership of Daniel F. (D.F.) Malan, to counteract the UP's relatively moderate positions on race. The UP ruled until it was unexpectedly defeated by Malan's party (then known as the Reunited National Party, owing to a reconciliation with a conservative faction of the UP) in parliamentary elections in May 1948. After the 1948 elections, the victorious alliance--again under the banner of the NP--ruled without interruption until April 1994.The NP's dominance over political and security organizations gave it a vast patronage pool for its mostly Afrikaner constituency. Numerous cultural, social, economic, and religious organizations also furthered Afrikaner interests, including the Afrikaner Broederbond (later Broederbond, or Brotherhood), Nasionale Pers (National Press), South African National Life Assurance Company (Sanlam), the Voortrekkers (a scouting organization), the Federation of Afrikaner Cultural Organisations (Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurvereniginge--FAK), Helpmekaar (an Afrikaner social service organization, roughly translated "mutual aid"), and Volkskas (People's Bank).Although the party did not publish membership figures, much was known about its organization--a federal structure divided into four provincial parties, linked through a Federal Council. At the lowest level were the party's local branches, consisting of 500 or fewer members. Local branches in rural areas reported to a District Council, which comprised a leader, a deputy leader, a secretary, and elected representatives from each local branch in the district. In addition, local branches elected Constituency Divisional Councils. Above each divisional council were a Head Council, a Provincial Congress that met annually, and a provincial leader. At the apex of the NP was the thirty-seven-member Federal Council that met at least once a year. The national leader of the NP, who until 1994 was also the state president, was elected by the party's parliamentary delegates in caucus.Under P.W. Botha's leadership in the 1980s, the NP began to change directions, first to reform, and then to dismantle, apartheid. Although these reform initiatives led to a number of splits within the NP, the reformist wing (referred to in party parlance as verligte , or "enlightened") was sufficiently strong, its parliamentary delegation sufficiently disciplined, and its national leadership sufficiently cohesive to enable the party to remain in power as its members vigorously debated the question of reform. The NP quickly recovered after its conservative faction, led by Transvaal NP leader Andries Treurnicht, abandoned the party in February 1982 in protest against the proposed "power-sharing" constitution that established the tricameral parliament. Treurnicht launched the Conservative Party (CP), which gained immediate parliamentary representation through the conversion of seventeen NP members of parliament. The NP nonetheless retained its majority in the next elections in 1987.The most dramatic changes in the NP began in 1989, when President Botha relinquished his party leadership following a stroke and was replaced by then Minister of Education F.W. de Klerk. De Klerk committed himself to establishing a new postapartheid South Africa, over the objections of Botha, who had retained his position as president. The NP's Federal Council in June 1989 went on to pass a five-year plan to reform apartheid. As de Klerk and Foreign Minister Roelof ("Pik") Botha prepared to discuss their planned political reforms with Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda later that year, President Botha objected to the pace of the proposed reforms, and he opposed any plan to hold discussions with Kaunda. In August 1989, his intransigence finally prompted the cabinet to ask him to resign. He did so in a televised broadcast, and de Klerk succeeded him as president. In national elections in September 1989, the NP under de Klerk's leadership remained in power both in the national House of Assembly and in the provincial legislatures, and de Klerk was confirmed as president for another five-year term.The NP then spearheaded the reform process that paved the way for the postapartheid political system (see Constitutional Change, this ch.). The NP also sought to project a new party image. In 1990 it launched a nationwide recruitment drive for new members of all races, appointed a new management council and new regional secretaries to oversee its reforms, and established new training programs for party leaders, to emphasize racial tolerance. These changes broadened the party's parliamentary support. In May 1991, five MPs deserted the Labour Party, which since 1965 had represented the interests of the coloured community, to join the NP delegation. Their view that the new NP best represented the interests of their community was rejected by most of the Labour Party, but the NP continued to seek the support of the roughly 1.6 million voters in the coloured community.As the April 1994 elections approached, the party tried new approaches to win support among the country's black majority. One of its campaign tactics was to emphasize its active role in dismantling apartheid and to portray itself as the liberator of the country's black population. The NP also portrayed the ANC as intolerant of political dissent.The NP failed to gain many black votes in the April 1994 elections but nonetheless won the second-largest vote--20.4 percent of the total, gaining eighty-two seats in the National Assembly. The NP won a majority in the Western Cape, garnered the second-largest vote in seven provinces, and ranked third in KwaZulu-Natal. Despite its second-place performance in the elections, the NP--by virtue of its long-term political dominance--still exerts strong influence in the state bureaucracy and the country's security forces.Inkatha Freedom PartyThe Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP, also Inkatha) is a Zulu-based political party, based in its ethnic stronghold, KwaZulu-Natal. It is the ANC's main rival in the black community. Between 1970 and 1990, Inkatha portrayed itself as a moderate and democratic organization, contrasting its views with extremist positions within the ANC. But in the early 1990s, the IFP became increasingly intransigent in its efforts to preserve its traditional power base in KwaZulu, while the rest of the country was moving closer to nonracial democracy under the now moderate NP and ANC leadership.Inkatha was originally established in 1922 as a cultural movement to promote the Zulu heritage. It was rejuvenated in 1928 by the Zulu king, Solomon ka Dinuzulu, as Inkatha ya kwa Zulu (Organization of the Zulu). During this phase, controversy arose over the party's activities. For example, critics claimed that funds collected from Natal's impoverished black population were misused to pay for King Solomon's lavish life-style. Others suggested that the organization's 1928 constitution, written by a white lawyer from Durban at the urging of white businessmen in Natal, was intended to ensure that the party would express the interests of the traditional tribal elites, the conservative black petite bourgeoisie, and a few white power brokers. After a period of relative inactivity, and following an unsuccessful attempt to revive it in 1959, Inkatha ya kwa Zulu was reestablished as a political organization in March 1975 by KwaZulu's chief minister, Mangosuthu (Gatsha) Buthelezi. Buthelezi renamed the organization Inkatha Yenkululeko Yesizwe (National Cultural Liberation Movement). In August 1990, following the unbanning of antiapartheid organizations, Inkatha proclaimed itself a political party, the IFP, with membership open to all races.From its primarily Zulu political base, Inkatha has played an important role in national politics. In 1977 it was the largest legal black movement in the country, having an estimated 120,000 members; by the late 1980s, its leaders estimated their membership at 1.5 million (considered highly inflated by the inclusion of the party's 600,000-member Youth Brigade and 500,000-member Women's Brigade). It has never managed to recruit many members outside the Zulu community, however.The IFP in the 1990s is a tightly knit and authoritarian organization, dominated by Buthelezi. Its political structure consists of local branches organized into regions and provinces. The IFP's four provincial councils are led by the IFP National Council. Provincial delegates elect representatives to the annual general conference, where delegates to the National Council are elected each year. The IFP's power base is rooted in three sources--the former KwaZulu homeland bureaucracy, which the party controlled by virtue of its dominance over the local legislature and provincial government; the Zulu traditional leaders--i.e., chiefs and headmen; and the Zulu population, including the inhabitants of large squatter settlements near several cities, especially Johannesburg and Durban.Although Inkatha and the ANC had close ties in the early 1970s, their relationship deteriorated after that. Inkatha became especially threatened by ANC organizing efforts among educated and urban Zulus. The ANC criticized Buthelezi for becoming the leader of the KwaZulu homeland, and thereby accepting the government's demographic manipulation for apartheid purposes. The ANC pressed for a more militant antiapartheid campaign and waged a propaganda war against Buthelezi, demonizing him as a "stooge" of apartheid. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, this rivalry degenerated into violent conflict, spilling over into townships and rural areas, and claiming the lives of thousands of black South Africans.Some Western observers and South African political leaders hoped that the IFP, rooted in Zulu tradition and Western in its outlook in support of a federalist democracy and free enterprise, would attract moderate South African blacks to its ranks. That prospect dimmed in the climate of escalating violence leading up to the 1994 elections. Buthelezi protested against his being sidelined by what he considered "ANC-NP collusion" in the negotiating process, and in early 1994 he announced that the IFP would boycott the country's first free elections.The IFP ultimately participated in the elections, after the ANC and the NP agreed to consider international mediation on the issue of provincial autonomy and agreed to reinforce the status of Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini and the Zulu homeland. The party's late entry cost it popular support at the polls, however. The IFP managed to win barely one-half of the vote in Natal and only 10.5 percent of the nationwide vote, with most of its support in KwaZulu and the area around Johannesburg.The IFP's commitment to Zulu autonomy remained strong after the elections. In May 1994, at a caucus of the KwaZulu legislative assembly, Inkatha formed a new society called Iso Lesizwe, or Eye of the Nation, with Chief Buthelezi as its president. The new organization dedicated itself to pursuing Zulu autonomy "within the parameters of democratic and pluralistic forms of government and along with all the other peoples living in the ancestral territory of the Zulu nation." Debate over this issue intensified in 1995 and 1996.Freedom FrontThe Freedom Front (FF) is a right-wing Afrikaner political party established in March 1994, following a split among extremist organizations, to ensure a proapartheid presence in the April elections. It is a successor to the Afrikaner Volksfront (AVF), which was founded by General Constand Viljoen, who had also served as chief of the South African Defence Force (SADF) until November 1985. Viljoen emerged from retirement in 1991 to lead a group of right-wing former generals in forming an alliance of Afrikaner parties. As the AVF, the alliance included the White Protection Movement (Blanke Bevrydingsbeweging--BBB), the Boerestaat Party (Boer State Party, the military wing of which was known as the the Boer Resistance Movement, or the Boere Weerstandsbeweging--BWB), the Conservative Party of South Africa (CP), the Reconstituted National Party (Herstigte Nasionale Party--HNP), the Oranjewerkers (Orange Workers), and the Republic Unity Movement. The AVF's objective was to unify the extreme right and to advocate the formation of a volkstaat , an autonomous Afrikaner nation-state, in a postapartheid South Africa. However, even some AVF leaders were troubled by the violent racism and political extremism of some members of the front. Their refusal to participate in the nation's first nonracial elections weakened the movement, and in March 1994 General Viljoen and his allies broke away to form the FF.Much of the support for the FF comes from farmers' organizations in the former Transvaal and the Free State. Among the FF's leaders are several former Conservative Party members of parliament, former high-ranking military officers, and a former chairman of the Broederbond.In the 1994 elections, the FF received only 2.2 percent of the vote, gaining nine National Assembly seats. The party performed best in Gauteng, where some 40 percent of its votes were cast. Its participation in the elections helped to legitimize the electoral process and thus to neutralize the violent threat that the extremist right-wing extraparliamentary forces could have posed to the new political system. In doing so, it bolstered the standing of Viljoen and others who sought to preserve Afrikaner cultural autonomy through nonviolent means.Other Political PartiesThe Democratic Party (DP) was established in April 1989 as a liberal, centrist party. It was formed as an amalgamation of four liberal political groupings, the most important of which was the recently disbanded Progressive Federal Party (PFP), led by Zach de Beer. The coalition also included the Independent Party (IP), led by Dennis Worrall; the National Democratic Movement (NDM), led by Wynand Malan; and a group of reform-minded Afrikaners dubbed the "fourth force." The DP then became the primary left-of-center parliamentary opposition to the NP. It won 20 percent of white support in the 1989 general election, giving it thirty-three parliamentary seats.The DP advocated the abolition of apartheid and the creation of a nonracial social democratic state through the protection of human rights, a government based on proportional party representation and universal suffrage, an independent judiciary, collective bargaining in industrial relations, and economic growth through individual entrepreneurship. Ironically, the NP adopted some of the DP's notions about reforming the apartheid state in 1989 and 1990, thus depriving the DP of some of its political base. A few DP leaders advocated an alliance with the ANC; others favored joining the NP; and the embattled center--led by the party's leader de Beer--sought to develop a distinctive, liberal, centrist image that would serve to mediate between the ANC and the NP. At the same time, the DP sought, without much success, to expand its support among all racial groups.In preparation for the April 1994 elections, the DP's economic program gave top priority to creating jobs in a "free market economy with a social conscience," while rejecting the "nationalization of privately owned businesses and the expropriation of property for political purposes." The DP also opposed "economic populism," socialism, and the "politicization of education, housing, and social services." Its political program criticized the interim constitution for failing to eliminate laws that allowed detention without trial, and for failing to ensure the political independence of the media. The DP also opposed the antidefection clauses in the interim constitution, which made it difficult for members of parliament to break ranks and vote against the dictates of their party leaders. The DP called, instead, for a constitution based on individual rights, property rights, press freedom, women's rights, proportional representation within constituencies, federalism, devolution of federal powers to the provinces, and the direct election of senators by the provincial electorates.In the 1994 elections, the DP's performance was considered disastrous, as it won only 1.7 percent of the vote and gained only seven seats in the National Assembly. The voting results revealed that it had failed to broaden its urban, middle-class, and English-speaking white base. It had won only about 3 percent of the coloured vote in the Western Cape, a comparable percentage of the Indian vote in KwaZulu-Natal, and no significant black support.The Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) was established in April 1959 by ANC dissidents who opposed that group's multiracial orientation and advocated black liberation within an exclusively black nationalist context. The party was founded in the black townships of Orlando and Soweto, outside Johannesburg, where it has received most of its support. The government declared the PAC an "unlawful" organization in 1960, because it advocated violent rebellion against the government. Like the ANC, the PAC was recognized by the United Nations (UN) and by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) as an official South African liberation movement. It was unbanned on February 2, 1990.As advocates of the black liberation struggle, the PAC's founders criticized the ANC for diluting black nationalism by accepting white members (and Asians and coloureds). The PAC also opposed the ANC's alliance with the SACP because most PAC leaders rejected Marxist economic dogma (although the PAC had advocated some Maoist tenets in the late 1960s). Instead, the PAC advocated an indigenous form of African "communalism." It rejected the ANC's Freedom Charter because the charter sought to guarantee minority rights in a future postapartheid state, and issued instead the Azanian Manifesto in 1959. The manifesto promoted armed struggle by black South Africans as the only means of seizing power, overthrowing capitalism, and restoring their birthright of African landownership. Finally, unlike the ANC, which engaged in extensive political organizing through formal party structures, the PAC believed in the inevitability of national liberation through the spontaneous revolt of the masses.From 1960 to 1990, the PAC's activities ranged from mass action campaigns, such as a campaign in 1960 to overcome what it termed "black psychological subservience to whites," to protests against the hated pass laws that required black South Africans to carry identity documents. One such demonstration in March 1960 led to at least sixty-seven deaths at police hands and more than 11,000 arrests in subsequent disturbances. The PAC's military wing, the Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA)--then known by the name "Poqo" (loosely translated "blacks only")--also engaged in an underground armed struggle against white-dominated political and cultural institutions (see Consolidating Apartheid in the 1960s, ch. 1).After the PAC was banned in 1960, the organization went underground, with headquarters located in Maseru, Lesotho. It was led by an executive committee, the members of which had either evaded arrest or been released from prison. The PAC's senior leaders included its charismatic founder, Robert Sobukwe; acting president Potlako Leballo, who resigned under pressure in 1979; Vusumazi Make, who succeeded Leballo; John Pokela, who became leader in 1981; Johnson Mlambo, who succeeded Pokela as chairman in 1985; and Clarence Makwetu, who became president in 1990.Following the PAC's unbanning in 1990, it reorganized as a legal political party, although its military wing continued to operate underground until 1994. Its internal organization consisted of a thirty-five-member National Executive Committee led by President Makwetu, first deputy president Johnson Mlambo, second deputy president Dikgang Moseneki, and general secretary Benny Alexander.The PAC has eight working committees and a five-member National Coordinating Committee. Its members are organized into 105 local branches nationwide. Affiliated organizations include the Azanian National Youth Unity (Azanyu), a youth wing; the All African Student Committee (Aasac); the National Council of Trade Unions (Nactu); the African Organisation for Women (AOW); the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM); the Sobukwe Forum, a London-based faction; and the Pan-Africanist Students' Organisation (PASO), which has branches at several South African universities.Although the PAC played little role in the multiparty negotiations during 1993 and early 1994, it formally suspended its armed struggle in early 1994 and agreed to participate in the April elections. It gained only 1.2 percent of the national vote, receiving five seats in the National Assembly, and it won one seat in each of three provincial legislatures--in Gauteng (then Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging--PWV), KwaZulu-Natal, and the Eastern Cape.Several other political parties participated in the 1994 elections, although, with the exception of the African Christian Democratic Party (which gained two seats in the National Assembly and seats in three of the nine provincial legislatures), none received more than 1 percent of the vote. These parties included the Sports Organisation for Collective Contributions and Equal Rights (SOCCER), the Keep It Straight and Simple Party (KISS), the Women's Rights Peace Party (WRPP), the Worker's List Party (WLP), the Ximoko Progressive Party (XPP), the Africa Muslim Party (AMP), the African Democratic Movement (ADM), the African Moderates Congress Party (AMCP), the Dikwankwetla Party of South Africa (DPSA), the Federal Party (FP), the Luso-South Africa Party (LUSAP), and the Minority Front (MF). |

Interest Groups South Africa Table of ContentsInterest groups have played a significant role in South African politics, although until apartheid was abolished the primary criterion for interest articulation was race, more often than economic issues. Interest groups work to achieve the goals of a particular ethnic community (Afrikaner, Xhosa, Zulu), racial group (white, black, coloured, or Indian), or other category of persons sharing a common goal. Leonard Thompson and Andrew Prior, in their book South African Politics , describe apartheid-era attempts by groups such as the Afrikaner Broederbond to win political influence in the parliament and the executive branch in order to maintain the status quo, while others, such as trade unions, sought to change labor relations and economic policy. Still other interest groups, such as the South African Media Council, had specific goals, in this case the establishment of a free and independent press. Finally, several organizations that were effectively banned from the political arena, such as the United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM), continued to function as political interest groups during the apartheid era.Within this system, the Afrikaner interest groups were the most influential, as they constituted an element in the country's ruling elite. After apartheid was abolished, however, interest-group politics began to change. Many organizations abandoned their ethnically based, secretive, extraparliamentary, or underground characteristics to meet the challenges of the new nonracial, open, and democratic political order.Afrikaner BroederbondThe Afrikaner Broederbond (later Broederbond, or Brotherhood) was the most important apartheid-era interest group in South Africa. Functioning for almost sixty years as an elite, exclusively Afrikaner, secret society, the Broederbond gradually shifted its perspective on the future and supported the political reform process beginning in the early 1980s.Founded in 1918, the Broederbond became a secret organization in 1921 and dedicated itself to advancing Afrikaner political, cultural, and economic interests. Membership was restricted to white Afrikaner males who passed a rigorous selection process. One of the group's primary goals was to place Afrikaner nationalists in key political positions and to establish other organizations to further Afrikaner interests. With members of the Broederbond in key leadership positions, the NP government often promoted the interests of the group.The Broederbond's organizational structure and political strategy were first publicly disclosed in the late 1970s by Hennie Serfontein, an Afrikaner journalist who devoted much of his career to investigating the organization. According to internal Broederbond documents, in 1993 the society reportedly had 20,074 members--one of the highest figures in its history--organized into twelve regions and 1,392 branches, or cells. Branches varied in size from five to twenty members, and central committees in towns and cities coordinated branch activities. Branch cells selected representatives to regional councils, the next higher level of organization. Top policy-making authority was vested in the National Congress (Bondsraad), which met every two years and elected the organization's senior executive authorities, the Broederbond chairman and the Executive Council. The Executive Council served for two years; in 1993 it had eighteen members.The Broederbond played an important role in transforming apartheid. Major governmental policy shifts in areas such as education and sports were first tested in Broederbond discussions before being aired in parliamentary debate. Then in November 1993, in preparation for the postapartheid political system, the Broederbond adopted a new constitution that radically transformed the previously clandestine organization. The Broederbond changed its name to the Afrikanerbond, removed its cloak of secrecy, and abolished its Afrikaner male exclusivity by permitting women and all racial groups to join. Some membership restrictions remained--new entrants had to speak Afrikaans, had to subscribe to the organization's constitution, and had to be approved by the other members. These restrictions helped to ensure the continued importance of Afrikaner interests and identity.United Democratic FrontThe United Democratic Front (UDF) was an extraparliamentary organization established in 1983, primarily in opposition to the government's constitutional proposals of that year. It served as an umbrella organization of antiapartheid groups. Membership was open to any organization that endorsed the principles of the ANC's Freedom Charter. Affiliates of the UDF included the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the South African National Student Congress (Sansco), the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), and the Congress of South African Students (COSAS).Following clashes with the government, the UDF was effectively banned--i.e., its political activities were proscribed--under the terms of the emergency regulations of February 24, 1988, and many of its affiliates were reorganized under the guise of a new political coalition. The UDF disbanded on August 20, 1991, declaring that its major objectives had been fulfilled.Mass Democratic MovementThe Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) was the name of an informal coalition of antiapartheid groups during the 1970s and early 1980s. As a formal organization, the MDM was established as an antiapartheid successor to the UDF after the 1988 emergency restrictions effectively banned the UDF and several other opposition groups. Even after 1988, the MDM was a temporary loose coalition of antiapartheid activists with no permanent constitution, no official membership rolls, no national or regional governing body, and no officeholders. Like the UDF, the MDM drew much of its support from the black community; a condition for affiliation with the MDM was adherence to the provisions of the ANC's Freedom Charter.The MDM gained prominence in 1989, when it organized a campaign of civil disobedience in anticipation of national elections scheduled to take place in September of that year. Defying the state-of-emergency regulations in effect at the time, several hundred black protesters entered "whites-only" hospitals and beaches. During that month, people of all races marched peacefully in several cities to protest against police brutality and repressive legislation. When the UDF was unbanned in February 1990, most MDM leaders and many members rejoined their former organizations.Trade UnionsLabor activism dates back to the 1840s, when the first unions were formed. Most major industrial unions were organized after World War I either to support or to oppose racial privileges claimed by whites. Black and communist organizations formed antiapartheid unions to abolish racist policies in the workplace; most proapartheid unions were formed by government forces to support discriminatory labor practices. During the apartheid era, membership in most trade unions was based on race, and until 1979, the government did not recognize black unions or grant them labor law protection. In 1977, for example, out of 172 registered trade unions that were eligible to bargain collectively, eighty-three were white, forty-eight were coloured, and forty-one were open to whites, coloureds, and Asians. Among the proapartheid and all-white unions were the White Workers' Protection Association (Blankewerkersbeskermingsbond), the Mineworkers' Union, and larger coordinating bodies such as the South African Confederation of Labour.The South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), formed in the early 1950s, became the leader of the antiapartheid struggle in the labor movement. The government often arrested and harassed its leaders for political agitation. During the 1970s, however, the government recognized the need to exert greater control over labor activities and to improve government-union relations. In 1977 it established the Commission of Inquiry into Labour Legislation, headed by Professor Nicolas Wiehahn. The Wiehahn Commission recommended the legalization of black unions, in part to bring labor militants under government control. The government recognized black unions in 1979 and granted them limited collective bargaining rights. In the same year, the government established a National Manpower Commission, with representatives from labor, business, and government, to advise policy makers on labor issues.During the 1980s, business owners and management organizations, such as the Afrikaner Trade Institute (Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut--AHI), which had represented Afrikaner commercial interests since the 1940s, were forced to negotiate with black labor leaders for the first time. To adapt to the new labor environment, they established the South African Employers' Consultative Committee on Labour Affairs (SACCOLA) to represent the owners in lobbying and collective bargaining sessions.Black union membership soared during the 1980s. New labor confederations included the nonracial COSATU, which was affiliated with the ANC and the SACP; the PAC-affiliated National Council of Trade Unions (Nactu); and the IFP-affiliated United Workers Union of South Africa (UWUSA). By 1990 COSATU, the largest of these, had more than thirty union affiliates with more than 1 million members.Efforts to begin dismantling apartheid during the early 1990s meant that union leaders were pressed to represent workers' interests more vigorously in the changing economic environment. Although the largest unions had been strong ANC supporters in the past--and were vital to ANC efforts to mobilize popular demonstrations against apartheid--they began to clash with ANC party officials and with government leaders in 1994 and 1995. Some union members feared that workers' interests would be overlooked in the effort to implement economic development plans in the postapartheid era. |

Political Elites South Africa Table of ContentsAlthough change was evident at all levels of society as South Africa began to dismantle apartheid during the 1990s, particularly dramatic changes were occurring in the country's political and social leadership. Not only were new leaders emerging on the national level, but shifts were also occurring within political organizations, as new political expectations and aspirations arose and as new demands were placed on political leaders at all levels.Since 1948 the country's governing class, the political elite, had been dominated by Afrikaners. Afrikaners held most high positions in government, including the legislature, the judiciary, the cabinet, and the senior ranks of the military and security services. Afrikaners also came to dominate the larger community of leaders, the power elite, by assuming important roles in the civil service bureaucracy, and to a lesser extent in business, the universities, and the media. Afrikaner dominance was reinforced by the rules of apartheid, in large part because the government's security and intelligence services helped to enforce the rules of apartheid through other institutions.In general, during the apartheid era, English-speaking whites were less important in the political and power elites. They played only secondary roles in most areas of government. English speakers were, nevertheless, prominent in commerce and industry, where the Afrikaners' success had lagged behind their political achievements, as is explained by Thompson and Prior. By the 1980s, English-speaking whites also held important positions in universities and the media, and in a few areas of government.In the early 1990s, these political and power elites were evolving, as is demonstrated in the authoritative survey of elites, Who's Who in South African Politics , by the South African writer Shelagh Gastrow. Gastrow divided South Africa's dominant political leaders into four major categories: political leaders within the Afrikaner community, most associated with the NP; an older generation of black opposition leaders, most within the ANC; a younger generation of leaders emerging from the Black Consciousness Movement; and a new group of labor leaders who had risen to prominence as the trade union movement strengthened during the 1970s and 1980s. A fifth category might be added--according to South African political scientist Roger Southall, who reviewed Gastrow's book--the small number of white political leaders who attempted to reshape white politics along nonracial, democratic lines.A subsequent revised edition of Gastrow's book identified 118 individuals--110 men and only eight women--as constituting South Africa's evolving political elite in 1992. Among the obvious changes occurring at that time was the emergence of formerly imprisoned, exiled, or banned opposition leaders, who had been released from prison or had been legally recognized since early 1990. They could then be legally quoted in the country's media, and their ideas were being widely disseminated. In addition, new challengers arose to replace formerly entrenched leaders, especially conservative blacks, coloureds, and Indians who had gained office through various forms of state patronage in the black homelands or in other institutions of government.Changes were also occurring within the senior ranks of the organizations from which the country's new leaders had emerged. As the ANC, for example, was forced to cooperate with former opponents, especially the NP, in pursuing national goals, new alliances and friendships were formed, shaped in part by a pragmatic appraisal of the political realities of the time. In addition, former opposition groups--especially the ANC--began to revise their rhetoric from that of guerrilla opponents of government, or "states in exile," to adapt to their new positions of responsibility. The ANC's best educated, skilled technocrats, capable of managing governmental and other bureaucracies, were gaining particular prominence.At the same time, a greater distance was developing between these educated elites and the less educated rank-and-file within their own organizations. In particular, there was a growing distance between the ANC and its radical youth wing in late 1994 and 1995. There was also a growing distance between the ANC leadership and their former ally, the South African Communist Party (SACP). Ties between these two organizations had not only been close in the past; their membership and leadership rolls had overlapped.In some cases, the new elites appeared to have more in common with members of rival political organizations than with their organization's own members. Several new government leaders, for example, were drawn from traditional African elites--royal families, chiefs, and influential clans. President Mandela, while a university-trained lawyer, is also a descendant of a leading family among the Thembu (Tembu), a Xhosa subgroup. Like Mandela, the prominent Zulu leader and minister of home affairs, Mangosuthu (Gatsha) Buthelezi, is university-educated and the product of aristocratic origins. Buthelezi, a member of the Zulu royal family, is also a chief within the Buthelezi sub-group (also, "tribe") of the Zulu.Other members of South Africa's new government also represent ethnic elites. For example, the minister of public enterprises in 1995, Stella Sigcau, is the daughter of a well-known Pondo paramount chief, Botha Sigcau. Stella Sigcau also had served as chief minister in the Transkei government during the early 1980s.Many former ANC officials who were in government office in the mid-1990s had worked to overcome factional differences based on ethnicity during the apartheid era. Although the ANC is often stereotyped as "Xhosa-dominated," and a number of its officers are Xhosa, several ethnic groups have been represented in the ANC's senior ranks. Thomas Nkobi, treasurer general from 1973 through the early 1990s, represents a subgroup within the Zimbabwe-based Shona people. Former Secretary General Cyril Ramaphosa and National Working Committee member Sydney Mufamadi are Venda (VaVenda--see Ethnic Groups and Language, ch. 2). Ramaphosa's former deputy, Jacob Zuma, is one of several Zulu leaders who rose to prominence within the ANC. The ANC's former security and intelligence specialist, Patrick "Terror" Lekota, and former MK leader Joe Modise are Sotho (BaSotho). Several popular regional leaders are Tswana (BaTswana). In general, these leaders have rejected arguments that favored the use of ethnicity to define political factions.Age differences appeared more divisive than ethnicity within the ANC during the early and the mid-1990s. There were heated debates over questions of political succession, as the ANC's aging leaders--many over the age of seventy--faced challenges from the generations below them. Nelson Mandela was seventy-five years old when he was elected president in 1994, and several other ANC leaders were more than seventy years of age. Their most likely successors--especially Mbeki, Ramaphosa, Zuma, and the ANC's former director of intelligence, "Mac" Maharaj--were roughly two decades younger. Some of the ANC's younger militants threatened revolt against senior party figures in the early months of the new government, as their demands for jobs, homes, and improved living standards continued to be unmet. Criticism of the "older generation" was fueled in late 1994 and early 1995, when the president's former wife, Winnie Mandela, clashed with the government and was ousted as a deputy minister, as she championed the grievances of the ANC's militant youth.As the apartheid system was being dismantled, some members of the Afrikaner elite in government, the civil service, and the security services reacted with impressive flexibility. By adapting quickly to the new environment, many of them not only retained their valued positions in the bureaucracy but also won new respect from former adversaries. As the ANC assumed responsibility for the security establishment, the police, and the intelligence services, ANC leaders were often able to work closely and cooperatively with Afrikaners who had once been so effective in excluding blacks from the political process.The shift in power and influence among the country's political elites had begun well before the April 1994 elections. An important arena in which this power shift occurred was that of the political negotiations concerning the interim constitution of 1993. During those negotiations, as difficult and unpromising as they sometimes appeared, then-governing whites began, some for the first time, to view their black counterparts as legitimate partners in the decision-making process. At the same time, many black leaders adjusted smoothly to the new climate of political tolerance. |

Media South Africa Table of ContentsSouth Africa's communications media were radically transformed by the political reforms sweeping the country in the 1990s. The most fundamental changes were the gradual easing of government censorship and its abolition in the interim constitution. In spite of frequent government censorship under apartheid, however, South Africans had received news reports through numerous publications and broadcasts.Under apartheid, a vast array of legislation and regulations had imposed limits on the media. The South African Press Council, for example, had the power to fine newspaper editors for defying emergency regulations, which often barred coverage of political events. Under emergency regulations in the 1980s, journalists were forbidden to report on banned organizations and people; the media were prohibited from reporting events relating to "state security," such as protests and demonstrations. The public then had to rely on the government's Bureau of Information for official reports of political events. And for violating emergency regulations, some journalists were detained--even without being charged--and newspapers were temporarily suspended. Some editors and reporters were prosecuted, and foreign journalists were expelled or refused entry visas. Similarly, the Publications Control Board, under the Publications Act (No. 42) of 1974, censored certain books and movies, especially those dealing with race relations.In the early 1990s as part of the government's pledge to reform apartheid, many of the emergency regulations relating to the media were removed. Thus, the Protection of Information Act of 1982, which imposed penalties on publications that violated national security, was repealed in February 1990 and less stringent guidelines for protecting sensitive information were established. Thereafter, the press, including numerous mainstream and alternative publications, was generally independent, criticizing both the government in power and the various opposition parties involved in the political transformation.Radio and TelevisionSouth Africa has an estimated 12.1 million radio receivers and more than 3.5 million television sets in the mid-1990s. Radio and television broadcasting (with the exception of M-Net, a privately owned, subscriber-based cable television service) is controlled by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), a statutory body that obtains its revenue from licenses and advertising. It operates twenty-two domestic radio broadcasting services in eleven languages through SABC-Radio, one external radio broadcasting service in seven languages through Channel Africa Radio, and two television channels that broadcast in seven languages through SABC-Television. Although M-Net was the only privately owned television network (with more than 880,000 subscribers), there were at least six privately owned commercial radio stations by 1996.The most fundamental change in the role of the media in the mid-1990s took place in the SABC, which had been controlled by NP-led governments and had generally expressed government views. In April 1993, a new twenty-five-member SABC board began to prepare the SABC for the postapartheid era as an independent, autonomous, and impartial broadcasting authority. President de Klerk relinquished the right to appoint its board members, and the members of the board were selected publicly for the first time, after an independent judicial panel had screened the nominees to ensure political neutrality. Ironically, however, as a reflection of the new balance of forces in the country, an estimated nineteen of the twenty-five new board members were ANC members or were generally believed to be ANC supporters, and new complaints of political bias in the media began to emerge.Another major change in the broadcasting system was the establishment of the Independent Broadcasting Authority in January 1994, as authorized by the Independent Broadcasting Authority Act (No. 153) of 1993. The authority consists of a seven-member panel, appointed by the minister of home affairs after a period of public discussion and nominations. The authority in 1994 required all broadcasters to reapply for operating licenses. It issued temporary licenses to most, and it obtained court orders to close down a few broadcast stations that had not applied for licenses. Permanent licenses were issued in 1995, after five months of public hearings and debate over the rules of broadcasting in South Africa.Newspapers, Magazines, and JournalsMore than 5,000 newspapers, magazines, and journals were registered with the South African Department of Home Affairs by January 1994; sixty-six new ones registered in that year, and registration was no longer required after 1994. As in other nations, newspaper and magazine publishers are organized into corporate groupings. Major corporations include the Argus Printing and Publishing Company, Perskor, and Times Media. Newspapers are printed in English, Afrikaans, and several African languages. The country's two national newspapers, which are printed on Sundays, are the Sunday Times and Rapport . Both are printed in several cities, simultaneously. The Sunday Times had a circulation of about 524,164 in 1995, and Rapport , about 396,974. Other major newspapers (and 1995 circulation figures) are City Press(262,203), The Sowetan (204,219), and The Star (199,753) (see table 19, Appendix).South Africa has more than 300 consumer magazines and 500 trade, technical, and professional publications. Huisgenoot , a weekly Afrikaans publication, sold more than 520,000 issues in 1995, while You , its English counterpart, sold nearly 300,000 issues. The leading business and political magazine is the weekly Financial Mail , with approximately 32,000 subscribers.The South African Press Association (SAPA) is the country's national news agency. It is a forty-member nonprofit cooperative, engaged in foreign and domestic news-gathering and distribution. Foreign news agencies operating in South Africa include Agence France Presse, Associated Press, Reuters, and United Press International. |

oreign Relations South Africa Table of ContentsThe Ministry of Foreign Affairs is responsible for South African foreign policy decisions. The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs conducts liaison with foreign governments and international organizations on all matters affecting official relations. These relations are conducted through foreign government officials, through diplomats accredited to South Africa, and through South Africa's accredited embassies, consulates, and other missions abroad. Until the early 1990s, the DFA and the diplomatic corps competed against numerous counterestablishment "diplomatic services" run by antiapartheid organizations in exile, especially the ANC. The aim of these parallel communication channels was to isolate the South African government within the international community as a means of pressuring Pretoria to abolish apartheid.After the abolition of apartheid and the inauguration of the democratically elected Government of National Unity, South Africa's foreign relations were dramatically transformed. The country's diplomatic isolation ended, and existing relations with other countries and with international organizations improved. South Africa reestablished diplomatic and trade relations with many countries, particularly in Africa, and established new relations with some former sanctions "hardliners," such as India, Pakistan, Bahrain, Malaysia, Jordan, Libya, and Cuba. Several regional and international organizations invited South Africa to join, or to reactivate its membership, including the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and the United Nations (UN). In addition, South Africa participated in international and bilateral sport, academic, and scientific activities, often for the first time in decades. Relations with the countries of the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and Central Europe improved. South Africa had full diplomatic ties with thirty-nine countries in 1990; that number increased to sixty-nine in 1993, and to at least 147 in 1995.After the April 1994 elections, President Mandela appointed two ANC members, Alfred Nzo and Aziz Pahad, as minister and deputy minister of foreign affairs. He refused to make immediate sweeping changes in the diplomatic corps. The pillars of South Africa's future foreign policy had been enunciated by Mandela in late 1993, in an article published in Foreign Affairs . These principles are the promotion of human rights and democracy; respect for justice and international law in interstate relations; the achievement of peace through "internationally agreed and nonviolent mechanisms, including effective arms-control regimes"; incorporation of African concerns and interests into foreign policy choices; and economic development based on "cooperation in an interdependent world." In southern Africa, Mandela denounced South Africa's earlier economic domination of the region and its deliberate destabilization of neighboring states. Instead, Mandela called for "cooperation in regional construction, infrastructure and resource development projects . . . in virtually every sector and area." Finally, Mandela advocated the full reintegration of South Africa into global trade networks.These foreign policy principles were being implemented even before Mandela's inauguration. For example, in early 1994 de Klerk and Mandela, along with the presidents of Botswana and Zimbabwe, helped mediate an end to a military revolt in neighboring Lesotho. In mid-1994, South Africa provided its first assistance to a UN peacekeeping operation when it supplied hospital equipment for Rwanda. Also in 1994, President Mandela agreed to help resolve the intractable civil war in Angola, although he cautioned against unrealistically high expectations in this and other deep-rooted political and ethnic conflicts. |

Relations with African States South Africa Table of ContentsOfficial delegations from almost every other African state visited Pretoria in 1992 or 1993 to discuss ways to strengthen bilateral ties. South Africa's estimated 100 assistance projects in twenty-two African countries in 1991 more than doubled by 1994 and provided technical aid and training in agriculture, wildlife conservation, education, and health care. The effects of the early-1990s drought in southern Africa would have been even more devastating to the region's agriculture and wildlife if South Africa had not provided transportation and food assistance to its neighbors.The change in South Africa's regional standing was dramatically marked by its admission to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in August 1994. The twelve-member organization (also including Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe) aims to promote regional cooperation in economic development and security affairs. The SADC annual meeting of heads of state and government was held in Johannesburg on August 28, 1995. The assembled leaders agreed to create a regional common market with the elimination of all internal trade barriers by the year 2000. They also signed an agreement to share water resources among SADC member nations.Almost all African countries had depended on South African trade even during the sanctions era, despite their strong rhetorical condemnation of the apartheid regime. In 1991 South Africa's trade with the rest of the continent was at least US$3.5 billion, and this figure increased steadily as apartheid was being dismantled.For the five landlocked countries of southern Africa (Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Zambia, and Malawi), South Africa's well-developed system of roads, railroads, and port facilities provides a vital trade link. The Southern African Customs Union (SACU), headquartered in South Africa, provides a common customs area, including Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Namibia (see Foreign Trade, ch. 3).BotswanaRelations with Botswana were normalized in the early 1990s, after a period of strained ties in the 1980s. The most contentious issue between the two countries had been Botswana's willingness to provide safe haven for the ANC military wing, MK, and, to a lesser extent, for other opposition groups such as the Black Consciousness Movement of Azania (BCMA--the external wing of the Black Consciousness Movement). Although Botswana officially prohibited ANC use of its territory as a base for attacks against South Africa, the ANC violated this policy during the 1980s, provoking several small-scale raids by the South African Defence Forces (SADF) against ANC bases in Botswana. At the same time, although Botswana joined in the international condemnation of apartheid, its geographic and economic vulnerability deterred it from imposing economic sanctions against South Africa, with whom it maintained extensive but unpublicized trade relations.Relations improved in the early 1990s, as apartheid was gradually dismantled. ANC camps in Botswana were closed in 1991 and 1992, as several hundred political exiles returned to South Africa under a program administered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).LesothoUntil the 1960s, several South African governments pressed for the incorporation of Lesotho, then a British protectorate, into the Union of South Africa. As a landlocked country completely surrounded by South Africa, Lesotho depended heavily on South Africa for its economic well-being. After Lesotho became independent in October 1966, South Africa played a major role in the country's internal affairs--for example, by supporting the new government led by Chief Leabua Jonathan.Tensions between the two countries rose in the 1970s because of Lesotho's criticism of South Africa at the UN and at the OAU, its support for the ANC, its provision of safe haven to antiapartheid fighters such as MK, and its close ties to a number of socialist countries. Relations became severely strained in April 1983, when the Jonathan government announced that Lesotho was at war with South Africa, and again in 1984, when Lesotho refused to sign a nonaggression pact with South Africa. In response, South Africa impounded shipments of arms to Lesotho, threatened economic sanctions, and suspended talks concerning the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (a thirty-year cooperative engineering venture that would supply water to South Africa and provide electric power and financial compensation to Lesotho). Tensions eased in 1984, as some ANC forces withdrew from Lesotho, but in 1985 new tensions prompted Pretoria to step up security measures along the border between the two countrries.In early 1986, South Africa backed a military coup in Maseru, bringing into power a government more sympathetic to Pretoria's security interests. Lesotho expelled several ANC members and technicians from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), whom Pretoria considered a menace, and relations between the two nations improved. Work on the Highlands Water Project resumed, and in 1987 they established a joint trade mission. Relations continued to improve after that, and the countries established full diplomatic ties in May 1992. Pretoria recognized the outcome of Lesotho's March 1993 elections, the first in twenty-two years.In January 1994, Lesotho's democratically elected civilian government sought South African assistance in quelling an army mutiny over pay and conditions of service in the Lesotho Defence Forces. Pretoria refused to intervene directly, but threatened to seal off Lesotho's borders, which would have blocked vital commercial transportation to and from Maseru. De Klerk and Mandela, together with the presidents of Zimbabwe and Botswana, urged both sides to negotiate an end to the crisis, a move that represented the likely pattern of postapartheid diplomacy in southern Africa.SwazilandSouth Africa's relations with the Kingdom of Swaziland, one of Africa's smallest nations--which South Africa surrounds on the north, west, and south--were shaped by the kingdom's complete dependence on its powerful neighbor for its economic and political well-being. During the 1970s and early 1980s, although Swaziland claimed to be neutral in the East-West conflict, it was actually pro-Western and maintained strong relations with South Africa, including clandestine cooperation in economic and security matters. South Africa invested heavily in Swaziland's economy, and Swaziland joined the Pretoria-dominated SACU. During the 1980s, some South African businesses also used Swazi territory as a transshipment point in order to circumvent international sanctions on South Africa. Relying on a secret security agreement with South Africa in 1982, Swazi officials harassed ANC representatives in the capital, Mbabane, and eventually expelled them from Swaziland. South African security forces, operating undercover, also carried out operations against the ANC on Swazi territory. Throughout this time, part of the Swazi royal family quietly sought the reintegration of Swazi-occupied territory in South Africa into their kingdom.In June 1993, South Africa and Swaziland signed a judicial agreement providing for South African judges, magistrates, and prosecutors to serve in Swaziland's courts. South Africa also agreed to provide training for Swazi court personnel. In August 1995, the two countries signed an agreement to cooperate in anti-crime and anti-smuggling efforts along their common border.ZimbabweBilateral relations between South Africa and Zimbabwe improved substantially as apartheid legally ended. In December 1993, the foreign ministers of both countries met for the first time to discuss ways to improve bilateral ties. Tensions between the two countries had been high since 1965, when South Africa demonstrated tacit support for the unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) by white-dominated Rhodesia (Southern Rhodesia), a former British colony. South Africa also had assisted the new regime led by Prime Minister Ian Smith for almost fourteen years, until it was brought down by a combination of guerrilla war and international pressure.After Rhodesia's independence as Zimbabwe, the government in Harare supported mandatory sanctions against South Africa and provided political, diplomatic, and military support to the ANC in its armed struggle. Zimbabwe also provided military assistance, including troops, for Maputo's struggle against South African-supported insurgents in the Mozambican National Resistance (Resistência Nacional Moçambicana--MNR or RENAMO). SADF troops retaliated against Harare, with two raids on alleged ANC bases in the capital in 1986 and 1987, and bomb explosions in Harare in October 1987 and in Bulawayo in January 1988.Relations between the two countries began to stabilize in 1990, after Mandela was released from prison and South Africa moved toward constitutional reform. Even before international sanctions against South Africa were lifted, a number of unpublicized ministerial contacts took place to discuss matters of trade and transport. President de Klerk and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe met publicly for the first time on January 27, 1994, when de Klerk, Mandela, Mugabe, and Botswana's President Quett Masire joined together in urging a peaceful resolution to a military mutiny in Lesotho.President Mandela visited Harare in early 1995. The two countries debated trade issues throughout the year, primarily centered around efforts to dismantle apartheid-era tariffs. In November 1995, a ceremony attended by presidents Mandela and Mugabe marked the opening of a new bridge linking the two countries, across the Limpopo River.NamibiaSouth Africa's relations with Namibia (formerly South-West Africa) were normalized following the 1988 agreement that paved the way for the solution to the interlinked conflicts in Namibia and Angola. Prior to this agreement, Namibia had been under South Africa's control since 1919, when Pretoria received the League of Nations mandate over the territory then known as South-West Africa. In 1946 the UN refused South Africa's request to annex the territory. In 1964 South Africa introduced apartheid in South-West Africa (Pretoria had granted Europeans living there limited self-governing privileges since 1925).The United Nations General Assembly in 1966 voted to revoke South Africa's mandate and to place the territory under direct UN administration. South Africa refused to recognize this UN resolution until 1985, when President Botha ceded administrative control to the territory's interim government. South Africa allowed a UN peacekeeping force and an administrator to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 435 (1978), establishing the United Nations Transitional Assistance Group (UNTAG) in Namibia. Finally, on December 22, 1988, South Africa signed an agreement linking its withdrawal from the disputed territory to an end to Soviet and Cuban involvement in the long civil war in neighboring Angola. Namibia's new government, led by the South-West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO), was elected in a landslide victory in November 1989.After Namibia's independence in March 1990, South Africa and Namibia established diplomatic ties, but relations between the two countries were uneasy, in part because many of Namibia's senior government officials had been leaders in the guerrilla war to oust South Africa from their country. Namibia nonetheless joined the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) and continued to be almost totally dependent on South Africa in trade and investment. In 1992, for example, 90 percent of Namibia's imports came from South Africa, and South Africa purchased 30 percent of Namibia's exports. Relations improved as apartheid was dismantled.The two countries established a Joint Administrative Authority to manage the port facilities at Walvis Bay, Namibia's only deep-water port, which had remained under South African control after Namibian independence. Under pressure from the ANC, South Africa then agreed to transfer control over the port enclave to Windhoek before the 1994 elections. Namibia finally assumed control over Walvis Bay on March 1, 1994.The prospects for multiracial democracy in South Africa prompted Namibia to sign a series of bilateral agreements with Pretoria in anticipation of the close ties they hoped to maintain through the rest of the 1990s. One of these, signed in 1992, pledged cooperation in supplying water to arid regions of both countries along their common border. In December 1994, President Mandela announced his government's decision to write off Namibia's debt, an estimated US$190 million owed to South Africa. He also transferred most South African state property in Namibia to Namibian government ownership.MozambiqueAfter Mozambique's independence from Portugal in 1975, relations between South Africa and Mozambique were shaped by the rise to power of the revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique--FRELIMO) government, and in particular, by FRELIMO's commitment to support regional liberation movements. South Africa provided covert military assistance to the anti-FRELIMO insurgency, RENAMO. In an attempt to curtail South Africa's intervention, Maputo entered into negotiations with Pretoria in late 1983, resulting in a non-aggression pact, the Nkomati Accord, in 1984. This accord committed both countries to end their assistance to each other's opposition movements, and to establish a joint security commission to monitor implementation of the pact. South Africa continued to assist RENAMO, however, and relations between the two countries worsened.After unsubstantiated allegations of South African involvement in the death (in a plane crash) of Mozambican president Samora Machel in October 1986, demonstrators attacked the South African trade mission in Maputo. Pretoria threatened to retaliate by banning Mozambican migrant laborers from South Africa's mines, but this plan was not implemented. Even after South African security forces raided ANC bases around Maputo in 1987, presidents Botha and Joaquim Chissano met to try to revive the Nkomati Accord. They agreed to establish a joint commission on cooperation and development, whereby South Africa would protect Mozambique's Cahora Bassa power lines, which had been targets of RENAMO sabotage, and would assist in improving Maputo's harbor as well as road and rail links with South Africa.Relations continued to improve in 1989 following a South African initiative to help resolve Mozambique's civil war. Although both Chissano and RENAMO leader Afonso Dhlakama rejected Pretoria's proposal of United States mediation in Mozambique, Pretoria nonetheless played an important role in persuading the two men to pursue a negotiated peace. South African president de Klerk, Zimbabwe's president Mugabe, and other regional leaders urged Mozambique's warring parties to sign a peace agreement and, after they did so in October 1992, to prepare for democratic elections. In December 1992, the UN began deploying 7,500 troops for the UN Operation in Mozambique (UNOMOZ), and the date for Mozambique's first multiparty elections was finally set for October 1994.In 1993 South Africa and Mozambique agreed to formalize their trade missions in each other's capitals and to upgrade diplomatic ties. Late that year, the two countries agreed to cooperate in repatriating more than 350,000 Mozambicans who had sought refuge in South Africa--some of the more than 800,000 Mozambican refugees scattered throughout the region. The UNHCR reported that refugees continued returning to Mozambique throughout 1994 as the elections approached.After South Africa's April 1994 elections, Deputy President Mbeki opened communication channels with RENAMO leaders, including Dhlakama, in an effort to help preserve the fragile peace in Mozambique. President Mandela made his first official state visit to the country on July 20, 1994, and he emphasized the challenges both countries faced in strengthening democratic institutions. The two governments signed agreements establishing a joint cooperation commission to pursue shared development goals in agriculture, security, transportation, and medicine.In 1996 the two countries began to implement a South African proposal for a small group of South African farmers to settle and farm land in Mozambique. The proposal had originated in the desire of a few Afrikaner farmers to leave South Africa, and both governments viewed it as a possible means of improving the agricultural infrastructure in Mozambique and of providing jobs for farm laborers there. For Pretoria, the proposal held some promise of reducing the influx of farm workers into South Africa.ZambiaSouth African-Zambian relations until 1990 were shaped by Zambia's support for antiapartheid movements inside South Africa, by its agreement to allow anti-South African SWAPO guerrillas to operate from Zambia's territory, and by its anti-RENAMO assistance to government forces in Mozambique. As one of the leaders of the frontline states against South Africa, Zambia provided safe haven for the ANC, which had its headquarters in Lusaka, prompting military reprisals by South Africa in the late 1980s. Relations between the two countries improved as apartheid was being dismantled in the early 1990s, leading to several visits by the two countries' leaders. Then-president Kaunda visited South Africa for the first time in February 1992, and the two countries established diplomatic ties and began to normalize trade relations later that year. (Zambia was already South Africa's second largest African trading partner.) President de Klerk visited Lusaka in mid-1993, the first visit by a South African head of state. In 1994 South Africa continued to be the most important source of Zambian imports--mostly machinery and manufactured goods--and the two countries were exploring new avenues for trade during the rest of the 1990s.AngolaSouth Africa has long-standing geographic, commercial, and political ties with Angola, which became independent from Portugal in November 1975. Until the early 1990s, relations between the two countries were strained, however, owing primarily to South Africa's extensive military support for the insurgent movement in Angola. The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola--UNITA), led by Jonas Savimbi, had waged a sixteen-year war against the Marxist-led government in Luanda. Pretoria became Savimbi's patron principally because it feared the threat of Soviet and Cuban expansionism, but by the late 1980s, a new geostrategic environment was emerging in the region. The Cold War ended, accompanied by the collapse of Angola's superpower patron, the former Soviet Union; Cuban forces withdrew from Angola as part of the 1988 Angola-Namibia Accord, and the Angolan civil war ended tentatively, with a peace agreement in May 1991.Angola's first democratic elections in September 1992 failed, after Savimbi refused to accept his electoral defeat and the war resumed. Pretoria then supported a negotiated outcome to the festering civil war, although a few South Africans (said to be operating outside Pretoria's control) continued their support to Savimbi.Relations between South Africa and Angola deteriorated after Pretoria withdrew its diplomatic representation from Luanda in late 1992. Early in 1993, however, both governments again began working to normalize diplomatic ties, and Pretoria promised to crack down on private channels of assistance from South Africa to Savimbi. Although de Klerk announced that South Africa would grant recognition only after a fully representative government had been installed in Luanda, Pretoria reopened its offices in Luanda and upgraded diplomatic ties in mid-1993. The two countries established full diplomatic relations on May 27, 1994, and Luanda appointed an ambassador to South Africa later that year.In June 1994, President Mandela agreed to requests by UN Special Envoy to Angola, Alioune Blondin Beye, to attend talks with Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos and Savimbi in an effort to end the fighting in Angola. Pretoria initially provided the venue for talks between dos Santos and President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, as dos Santos sought an end to Zairian assistance to UNITA. Finally, in November 1994, Mandela witnessed an agreement between dos Santos and Savimbi to end the fighting in Angola and to begin rebuilding the country, and the slow process of disarming rebel fighters began in 1995.KenyaSouth Africa had long maintained relatively cordial relations with Kenya, one of Africa's leading pro-Western governments, although until 1990 these ties were mostly unpublicized and centered around trade. The nature of their relations changed in November 1990 when South Africa's minister of foreign affairs, Pik Botha, visited Kenya in the first publicized ministerial-level contact between the two countries since 1960. Relations were further consolidated when President de Klerk visited Kenya in June 1991, and Kenyan president Daniel Arap Moi visited Cape Town in June 1992--the first visit to South Africa by an African head of state.In addition to strong trade ties in the mid-1990s, South Africa and Kenya share the desire to promote cooperation among countries of the Indian Ocean Rim (IOR). In March 1995, delegations from both countries, along with representatives of Australia, India, Oman, and Singapore, met in Mauritius to discuss ways to strengthen trade, investment, and economic cooperation among IOR member states.NigeriaNigeria maintained a hostile attitude toward South Africa for more than thirty years until the early 1990s. Then the new political environment led to President de Klerk's visit to Nigeria in April 1992 to discuss bilateral issues, primarily trade. South Africa and Nigeria established diplomatic relations in mid-1994.President Mandela was among the small number of world leaders who in late 1995 appealed to Nigeria's military head of state, General Sani Abacha, to spare the lives of the writer and environmental activist Ken Sarowiwa and eight others convicted of inciting violence that resulted in several deaths in Nigeria. After Sarowiwa and the others were executed on November 10, 1995, Mandela called for international sanctions against the Abacha government. South African officials later dropped this demand, deferring to the OAU, which was reluctant to impose sanctions against a member state. |

Relations with the United States South Africa Table of ContentsAlthough the United States joined the international community in 1986 in imposing economic sanctions against South Africa, earlier United States interests had been driven largely by the aim of reducing Soviet influence in southern Africa. United States officials had viewed South Africa as an important Western geostrategic bulwark in an unstable region. All United States administrations during the 1970s and the 1980s condemned apartheid, but they were generally opposed to broad economic sanctions, often arguing that the most severe impacts of such sanctions would be felt by the same segment of the population that was most disadvantaged by apartheid. The Carter administration (1977-81), however, adopted a tougher line toward Pretoria, viewing African nationalism as a driving force in the region that was compatible with United States interests.The United States had imposed an arms embargo on Pretoria in 1964 and had joined the international consensus in refusing to recognize the "independence" of four of South Africa's black homelands between 1976 and 1984. The 1983 Gramm Amendment opposed the extension of International Monetary Fund (IMF--see Glossary) credits to "any country practicing apartheid." The 1985 Export Administration Amendment Act barred United States exports to South Africa's military and police, except for humanitarian supplies and medical equipment.The United States maintained formal diplomatic relations with Pretoria throughout the apartheid era. The United States was still South Africa's second largest trading partner, with exports and imports valued at more than US$1.6 billion per year, during most of the sanctions years.United States administrations tried to influence South African governments by working with them discreetly in a strategy called "constructive engagement" during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Guided primarily by Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Chester Crocker, the United States emphasized its common strategic interests with South Africa and insisted on unilateral rather than multilateral negotiations over South Africa's future (i.e., negotiations between the government and its opposition, as opposed to negotiations participated in by outside interests). One of the arguments against sweeping sanctions at the time was that United States officials hoped to maintain the small degree of influence they may have had in pressing for political reforms.The United States also sought to bring about regional change through peaceful and democratic means and vigorously supported the negotiations for Namibian independence from South Africa. This policy approach ultimately paved the way for the 1988 agreement that linked the withdrawal of South African troops from Namibia with the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola, in a process that culminated in Namibia's first democratic elections in 1989 and independence in March 1990.With the passage of the United States Comprehensive Antiapartheid Act (CAAA) over a presidential veto in 1986, the United States Congress established an elaborate sanctions structure prohibiting future investments, bank loans, and some forms of trade with South Africa. More than 200 of the 280 United States companies in South Africa sold all, or part of, their operations there, and many of those remaining adhered to business principles intended to ameliorate the effects of apartheid. The CAAA called on the United States president to report to Congress each year on the state of apartheid in South Africa, in order to assess the need for further legislation. In 1987 the Intelligence Authorization Act prohibited intelligence sharing between the two countries. By 1990, twenty-seven state governments, ninety cities, and twenty-four counties had also imposed sanctions against South Africa or divestment measures on their own citizens' South African holdings.In July 1991, United States President George Bush declared South Africa's progress toward democracy "irreversible," and the United States began to lift sanctions imposed under the 1986 CAAA. Most IMF and military-related bans remained in force until after the 1994 elections. A few city and county-level restrictions on dealings with South Africa remained on the books even after 1994.In early 1994, Washington contributed US$10 million to assist the electoral process in South Africa, including election observers and technical assistance to parties participating in the elections. After the elections, the administration of President William J. Clinton announced a US$600 million, three-year aid, trade, and investment package for South Africa. The United States also promised to support the participation of international lending institutions, such as the IMF, in reconstructing the South African economy.Minor strains emerged in South Africa's relations with the United States after the elections, however. President Mandela was critical of the United States on several fronts, including the level of economic assistance offered to help recover from apartheid. Another source of tension arose out of a 1991 indictment by a United States court against South Africa's state-owned Armscor (Armaments Corporation of South Africa). The case concerned apparent violations of United States arms export controls during the 1980s. South African officials in 1994 requested that the indictment be dropped, noting that the target of sanctions--the apartheid regime--had been removed from power. United States officials refused to intervene in the judicial process, however, and the case was finally settled without public clamor in 1996.Washington placed South Africa on a "trade watch" list in 1996, referring to apparent trademark violations that were being adjudicated in South African courts. These and other relatively minor disagreements might have been resolved fairly amicably, had they not taken place against the backdrop of anti-American rhetoric by South African officials on several occasions. For example, in his determination to maintain his government's sovereignty and freedom from outside interference, President Mandela repeatedly emphasized his loyalty and gratitude to countries that had staunchly opposed apartheid during the 1970s and 1980s. Among these countries were Cuba, Libya, and Iran, which the United States considered international outcasts or state sponsors of terrorism.Pretoria has championed the cause of ending the thirty-year-old trade embargo against Cuba, in defiance of the United States, and South Africa hosted a conference to promote African-Cuban solidarity in October 1995. Pretoria also forged several new cooperation agreements with Iran in 1995 and 1996, and increased its oil purchases from Iran, over United States objections. President Mandela proclaimed South Africa's solidarity with Libya and welcomed that country's leader on a visit to South Africa in late 1995.Despite these strains, South Africa and the United States are pursuing closer ties in many areas. More than 500 United States companies have more than US$5 billion in direct investments in South Africa in the mid-1990s, and trade between the two countries is increasing steadily. In March 1995, Washington and Pretoria established a United States-South Africa Binational Commission to improve communication and cooperation. (The United States has similar commissions with Egypt, Russia, and Mexico.) The commission is co-chaired by United States vice president Albert Gore and South African deputy president Thabo Mbeki. It has six committees to investigate avenues for cooperation in agriculture, business, environment and water resources, human resources and education, science and technology, and sustainable energy resources. |

Relations with Other Countries South Africa Table of ContentsEuropean UnionThe twelve-member European Union (EU) was South Africa's leading trading partner in the early 1990s, purchasing almost 40 percent of its exports in most years. European (including British) direct investment in South Africa had reached US$17 billion, or 52 percent of all foreign investment in South Africa, by 1992. By the mid-1990s, the EU could promise South Africa one of the world's largest markets for South African exports. The EU also proposed a variety of loans and grants on preferential terms for South Africa in the 1990s, as well as a US$122 million aid program for priority needs such as education, health, job creation, and human rights.South Africa's closest European ties have been with Britain, particularly with its Conservative Party-led governments. More than 800,000 white South Africans retained the right to live in Britain, although official ties weakened after South Africa left the British Commonwealth in 1961 (see Apartheid, 1948-76, ch. 1). Britain supported the 1977 Commonwealth decision to discourage sporting links with South Africa to register international disapproval of apartheid, but Britain's refusal to impose broader sanctions came under attack at subsequent Commonwealth heads of government meetings, especially in 1985, 1987, and 1989. In September 1994, British Prime Minister John Major, on a visit to Pretoria, promised a new investment protection treaty that would further strengthen commercial ties.France played little role in South Africa before the 1990s. Trade between the two countries was increasing during the decade, however. South Africa imports roughly US$1 billion in French products a year, and at least 125 French companies operate in South Africa. French president François Mitterrand paid his first visit to South Africa on July 5, 1994, when the two nations signed an agreement aimed at strengthening commercial ties through long-term loans, subsidies, and technical assistance programs. Sectoral goals for these programs include strengthening cooperation between the private and public sectors, urban and rural development, financial reconstruction, and environmental protection.Russian FederationPretoria severed diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union in 1956, largely because of Moscow's support for the SACP. In 1964 the Soviet Union began to deliver arms to ANC military training camps in Tanzania, and this support continued through the early 1980s. Then in 1986, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev denounced the idea of a revolutionary takeover in South Africa and advocated a negotiated settlement between Pretoria and its opponents. Officials from the two countries then sought improved commercial and diplomatic relations.In July 1990, the South African mining conglomerate, De Beers Consolidated Mines, advanced a US$1-billion loan to the Soviet Union as part of an agreement for that company to serve as the exclusive exporter of Soviet rough diamonds. In August of that year, South Africa's minister of trade and industry, Kent Durr, visited Moscow to discuss possible South African assistance in the cleanup of the former Soviet nuclear site at Chernobyl. In early 1991, the two countries agreed to open interest sections in the Austrian embassies in each other's capitals, and Pretoria appointed its first trade representative to Russia a year later. Diplomatic ties were established in February 1992, and the first ambassador to South Africa of the new Russian Federation arrived in Pretoria in December 1992. At the time, the two countries hoped to develop trade ties, especially in military hardware, although they were competitors in some areas of international arms trade.IranIn early 1994, after a fifteen-year break, the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs began preparing to reestablish formal ties by ending the oil embargo against South Africa. Iran had been South Africa's primary oil supplier until the fall of the shah in 1979, when open economic and political ties were suspended. Limited economic relations continued between the two countries, although at a discreet level. For example, the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) continued to maintain its 17.5 percent share in the Sasolburg refinery of the National Petroleum Refiners of South Africa, even after other ties between the two countries were suspended. In 1995 and 1996, South Africa pressed for closer ties to Iran, both to acquire oil imports on favorable terms and to demonstrate Pretoria's willingness and ability to defy United States pressures to shun Iran.IsraelOne of the most hidden but critical of South Africa's strategic relationships during the apartheid era was that with Israel, including both the Labor and the Likud governments. Israel officially opposed the apartheid system, but it also opposed broad international sanctions against Pretoria. For strategic reasons, much of the debate in Israeli government circles stressed coordinating ties to Pretoria within the framework of the tripartite relationship among Jerusalem, the United States (Israel's primary benefactor), and South Africa. Israel was also opposed to international embargoes in general, largely as a consequence of its own vulnerability to UN and other international sanctions.South Africa and Israel had collaborated on military training, weapons development, and weapons production for years before broad sanctions were imposed in the late 1980s. Military cooperation continued despite the arms embargo and other trade restrictions imposed by the United States and much of Western Europe. Israel and several other countries discreetly traded with, and purchased enriched uranium from, South Africa throughout the 1980s. Romania's former president Nicolae Ceausescu, for example, used Israel as the "middleman" for exports to South Africa. In a few cases, joint ventures between Israel and South Africa helped to reduce the impact of sanctions on South African businesses.The Israeli interest in South Africa sprang in part from the presence in South Africa of about 110,000 Jews, including at least 15,000 Israeli citizens. Israeli leaders sometimes justified trade with South Africa as support for the South African Jewish community, and South Africa provided a market for some of Israel's military exports. Israel's arms trade with South Africa was estimated at between US$400 million and US$800 million annually (see Arms Trade and the Defense Industry, ch. 5). In 1986 Israel also imported approximately US$181 million in goods, mainly coal, from South Africa, and exported to South Africa nonmilitary products worth about US$58.8 million.In 1987 Israel took steps to reduce its military ties to South Africa to bring its policies in line with those of the United States and Western Europe. Then Minister of Foreign Affairs Shimon Peres announced the Israeli plan to ban new military sales contracts with South Africa, to reduce cultural and tourism ties, to appoint a committee to study sanctions proposals, and to condemn apartheid--which Peres characterized as "a policy totally rejected by all human beings." Israel also established educational programs in Israel for black South Africans. Nevertheless, through the early 1990s, several secret treaties remained in force, continuing the military relationship between the two countries and their joint research in missile development and nuclear technology.Relations with Other CountriesIn the early 1990s, South Africa began establishing or reestablishing ties with many other countries. Algeria, Bulgaria, Italy, Libya, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden, Thailand, and Tunisia announced the end of trade sanctions against South Africa in 1991 and 1992, paving the way for full diplomatic relations. Representatives of 169 countries attended President Mandela's inauguration in May 1994; by 1995 South Africa had ties to at least 147 countries.Among the many countries that were eager for closer ties to South Africa in the mid-1990s were the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan and the People's Republic of China (PRC). South Africa and the ROC had maintained ties during the apartheid era, partly because both were virtual outcasts from the international community. The PRC had been strongly critical of apartheid but had been cool toward the ANC (generally supporting the PAC). In the 1990s, President Mandela expressed South Africa's desire to maintain longstanding ties to the ROC and to establish diplomatic relations with the PRC. In response to PRC objections to proposals of dual recognition, Mandela suggested that the question of sovereignty should be decided between Taipei and Beijing, rather than being left to other countries to choose between them.With one of the strongest economies in the world, the ROC has been an important source of investment, trade, and tourism for South Africa. Taiwanese investments in South Africa, for example, exceeded R1.4 billion in 1994, according to South African reports, and the ROC was then one of South Africa's six largest trading partners. In addition, Taipei made significant contributions to South Africa's Reconstruction and Development Programme and to other areas of development.The PRC--with lower levels of investment, trade, and development assistance to South Africa--nonetheless represents a population of more than 1.2 billion people in the 1990s. In addition, Beijing holds a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council and is recognized by most other countries as the legitimate representative of the Chinese people. With the expected transfer of control over Hong Kong to Beijing in 1997, some South African officials argued forcefully for strengthening ties between South Africa and the PRC, even at the expense of ties to the ROC. Opponents argued, in response, that Taiwan's record of commitment to South Africa and Beijing's record of disregard for international norms concerning human rights favored recognition of the ROC over the PRC, at least in the mid-1990s. |

International Organizations South Africa Table of ContentsThe year 1994 marked a watershed in South Africa's international relations, as it was welcomed into regional and international organizations, such as the UN, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the Nonaligned Movement, and many others. The UN already had played an important role in South Africa's transition to democracy beginning in August 1992, when United Nations Security Council Resolution 772 authorized the United Nations Observer Mission in South Africa (UNOMSA) to help quell political violence. UNOMSA deployed thirty members in November of that year, and increased the number to 1,800 to oversee the April 1994 elections.On May 25, 1994, the United Nations Security Council lifted the last of its punitive measures, the arms embargo of November 1977, known as Security Council Resolution 418 (strengthened in December 1984 as Security Council Resolution 558). Pretoria then refused to pay roughly US$100 million in dues and annual payments for the years its UN participation had been suspended. In 1995 the UN waived most of this amount, stating the Pretoria was not obliged to make back-payments on behalf of the apartheid regime.President Mandela addressed the OAU summit in Tunis in June 1994, when South Africa assumed its seat in that organization for the first time. He emphasized his support for other African leaders and South Africa's solidarity with African interests. Also in June 1994, South Africa rejoined the British Commonwealth of Nations, which included fifty-one former British colonies. This action followed a thirty-three-year absence that had begun when South Africa declared itself a republic in 1961.South Africa became the eleventh member of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) on August 29, 1994, when Deputy President Thabo Mbeki attended a SADC meeting at the organization's headquarters in Gaborone, Botswana. SADC's predecessor, the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC), had been established in 1979 to attempt to reduce regional economic dependence on South Africa. In 1992 SADCC's ten member states agreed to reorganize as SADC in order to strengthen regional ties and to work toward the formation of a regional common market.On September 21, 1994, South Africa became the twenty-fourth member of the South Atlantic Peace and Cooperation Zone and attended that organization's meeting in Brasilia. South Africa also signed a declaration affirming the South Atlantic as a nuclear-weapons-free zone as well as agreements on trade and environmental protection in the region.South African leaders in early 1996 were working to capitalize on the universal goodwill that had greeted their country's establishment of multiracial democracy in 1994 and its emergence from international pariah status. It was evident, at the same time, that some of the ANC's former staunch defenders in Africa were expecting concessions and assistance from the new government in Pretoria, in recognition of the decades of support South Africa's new leaders had received during their struggle to end apartheid. |