BEE Partner, South Africa Economy Watch

In any event, while perceived power symmetries may explain the willingness of both the ANC and the NP to enter into negotiations, the balance of power eventually shifted quite clearly to the ANC. The National Party sought, for example, a guaranteed white veto in the legislature (similar to that assured in Zimbabwe’s 1979 negotiations), and a leading role in writing the final constitution. However, when the “Record of Understanding” that would guide the transition process was signed by the ANC and NP on September 26, 1992, it was on terms overwhelmingly favorable to the ANC: it rejected the white veto and stipulated that the final constitution was to be written by an elected assembly. Having failed to gain concessions from its numerically superior rival that might preserve elements of white power, the NP’s electoral defeat was already ensured by 1993, when the election date was set for April 27, 1994. Clearly, de Klerk and his negotiators did not intend to lose power for the Afrikaner population. Indeed, as Giliomee suggests, they simply lost control of the process in the face of superior ANC tactics.

The importance of Mandela and de Klerk as individual agents cannot be underestimated. Although negotiations with the ANC were initiated under de Klerk’s predecessor, it is unlikely that P. W. Botha could have carried them through. Both by demeanor and by professional background in the government’s security and defense arms, Botha was scarcely a conciliator. Moreover, in the view of some analysts, the conflict was insufficiently “ripe” for resolution until the early 1990s, when domestic and international circumstances necessitated movement.

Mandela, for his part, was indispensable in the negotiation and transition. He compromised where necessary, such as by agreeing to “suspend” the ANC’s armed struggle; however, he refused to renounce violence until the NP’s commitment to the process was clear. Mandela was also implacable when it came to other dimensions of the negotiations, such as setting the dates for the election and the writing of the constitution. Other individuals were also instrumental in achieving a peaceful outcome. Indeed, the finer details of the negotiation were hammered out not by Mandela and de Klerk, but by their subordinates. The ANC’s Cyril Ramaphosa and the NP’s Roelf Meyer held some forty meetings between June and September 1992 when wider interparty negotiations had stalled. Thus, at multiple levels, leadership was essential to keeping the project on track. The ANC won the April 1994 elections overwhelmingly with 62.65 percent of the vote, against 20.31 percent and 10.54 percent for the NP and IFP, its nearest rivals, respectively. With that, South Africa witnessed a remarkable transfer of power to majority rule.

The first postapartheid government, as stipulated in the 1993 interim constitution, was to be a government of national unity. The GNU was an essential, if largely symbolic, aspect of the negotiated settlement. The ANC formed the majority, and seven of the twenty-seven cabinet posts were awarded to the NP (in addition, F. W. de Klerk was appointed second deputy president), and three to the IFP, proportionally on the basis of each party’s electoral performance. The GNU offered to both the population and the international community a picture of peaceful transfer of power, of power sharing and cooperation, and of reconciliation between former adversaries. In other words, it was a vision of the country, and its future, that all members of the new the government were desperate to present to the wider populace, particularly following the violence that had accompanied the 1990-1994 transition period.6

However, the three-party GNU endured for only two of its anticipated five years; in June 1996 the National Party withdrew from the government over disagreements with the ANC. Following the passage of the “final” constitution by the Constituent Assembly, and dissatisfied with the ANC refusal to extend the GNU beyond the 1999 elections, the National Party determined that its prospects were better as a formal opposition party than as a member of the GNU. As discussed below, the NP never regained its strength or its share of the vote subsequently. Nonetheless, its withdrawal from the GNU helped to usher in a period of more conventional opposition politics in South Africa and a period in which observers began to look more critically at the nature of the “miracle” and the country’s prospects for reconciliation, for growth and economic revitalization, and for good governance in South Africa’s fragile but much heralded democracy.

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