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.

In fact, the negotiations began as early as 1985, when secret meetings commenced between the imprisoned Nelson Mandela and NP justice minister Kobie Coetsee at the behest of then-president P. W. Botha. These meet, ings, which were later branded “talks about talks” to reflect their prelimi_ nary and exploratory nature, actually lasted several years and coincided with the rapidly deteriorating economic and political environment in South Africa at the time. Mandela and Botha finally met in July 1989, although the two men were unable to arrive at a mutually acceptable program. Mandela insisted on a number of state actions, including the unbanning of the ANC and other organizations, the unconditional release of political prisoners, and a plan for majority rule. Botha also sought more concessions than Mandela was willing to grant, such as the renunciation of the armed struggle.

When Botha suffered a stroke in 1989, the elevation of Frederik W. de Klerk to the South African presidency in September 1989 proved to be a watershed event. De Klerk, previously education minister, and a devoted member of the National Party, was an unlikely candidate for change, yet he proved instrumental in paving the way for the transition to majority rule. With only limited consultation with his party, de Klerk removed the nearly three-decade-old bans on the Pan-Africanist Congress, the ANC, and the South African Communist Party (SACP) on February 2, 1990. He released Mandela unconditionally on February 11, 1990, after twenty-seven years of imprisonment, having earlier released most of Mandela’s compatriots.

What followed was more than three years of negotiations between, principally, the ANC and the NP, although other parties joined in these discussions. The negotiations between the ANC and NP were punctuated by repeated clashes and suspensions and occasionally public accusations that one or the other party was acting in bad faith. Moreover, this very fragile period was overshadowed by a worsening security environment, growing community violence, and accusations, later substantiated, that the state was instigating conflicts in the black community, especially between the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party, the Zulu nationalist organization based in the KwaZulu “homeland.”

Various explanations have been advanced for why the parties initiated—and more importantly, continued with—negotiations, despite the considerable hurdles. Hermann Giliomee argues that demographic pressures (namely the growing black population relative to whites), economic stagnation, and swelling black resistance undermined the prior stability of the apartheid state beginning in the 1980s, thereby forcing the regime to capitulate in the early 1990s. Thus, as things began to unravel, Np elites such as President de Klerk and Minister of Constitutional Development and of Communication Roelf Meyer (who served as the National Party’s chief negotiator in the constitutional negotiations) became less interested in the ethnic entrepreneurship that had underpinned apartheid’s logic, and more interested in negotiating a position for themselves; indeed, de Klerk and Meyer, among others, retained government positions after the transition.

Taking a less personalist approach, du Toit contends that “both the NP and the ANC saw themselves as the ascendant power in the negotiating process. . . . Neither considered the other to be an equal.” In other words, in the initial period, both parties thought they could win: the ANC because of its numerical superiority, and the NP because of its control over tne state apparatus and later its perception that it could counter ANC support by appealing to the predominantly Afrikaans-speaking Coloured community and building tacit alliances with the IFP. Conversely, Timothy Sisk argues that power symmetries actually existed between the parties, and that de Klerk in particular recognized that neither side could impose its solution on the other; he was simply more pragmatic than his predecessors.

Businesses that contribute directly to community development must consult with the intended beneficiaries before supplying them with benefits that may be inappropriate or unappreciated.

Accountability

The measured entity must hold the organisation through which it directs the socio-economic development accountable for that money. For instance, if a contribution is made to an HIV/Aids orphanage and the management of that orphanage uses 85% of the funds irresponsibly, leaving nothing to the benefit of the children, the contribution lacks substance.

The measured entity must follow up the investment to ensure that it meets the requirements needed for recognition on the BEE scorecard. If the verification agency discovers abuse of funds in this matter, it could determine that there is no substance behind the contribution because the beneficiaries are not receiving benefit and therefore not grant the points to the contributor.

BEE Grants

Socio-economic development and enterprise development are measured cumulatively. Some companies have approached this issue by giving a one-off, upfront grant to a charity, which then has to manage the money over the next few years. Generally, charities are not set up to invest and manage money. A one-off grant also creates high expectations, which are often not sustainable.

For BEE purposes it is more effective to issue a grant on a staggered- performance basis. The contributing business should provide the charity with an annual grant over a period of, say, five years and make it conditional on the achievement of preset objectives. The grant will now support the sustainability of the beneficiaries.

BEE Sustainability

Businesses are often fickle in determining which charity to support. They tend to move from one charity to the next as each one comes in vogue. This year, Nkosi Haven may have been the flavour of the month, last year it was NOAH, and the year before it was the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund.

Supporting a “fashionable” charity may get the entity more recognition in the public eye, but charity-hopping does little to bring sustainable benefit to those people the contributor is supposedly trying to help.

It is more appropriate to identify a particular cause and then investigate charities that can implement that cause effectively. One should take a long-term view and support those charities for a sustained period, but with performance conditions attached. Short-term interventions rarely have long-term, lasting impact.

BEE Education

Education is important for businesses to develop an employee pipeline. A lot of businesses complain about not being able to source sufficient Black candidates to meet the targets of employment equity and Black management. Taking into account that BEE is a process, the solution to this dilemma would start with developing a pipeline to generate prospective employees.

The pipeline can start through socio-economic development in the form of bursaries for schoolchildren and students. A bursary on its own will not necessarily be effective. However, making a bursary conditional upon the learners or students doing holiday work for the company will expose them to the practical environment of their training.

Most Black people have never been exposed to different careers in an operational capacity. Holiday work provides an appropriate bridge. Black children living in former locations are rarely exposed to professions such as engineering, accounting, banking and sciences. Most of them would be familiar with running a spaza shop or a subsistence type of business.

A white child generally grows up in the environment he or she is likely to work in one day. For example, a child whose parent is a practising architect would be exposed to architectural plans, building sites and books on design.

Practical education is not available in all schools and environments. Assuming both children mentioned above want to become property developers, the white child has a significant head-start. Skills development of children becomes necessary to reduce the lack of exposure experienced by the Black child.

Smaller businesses are often in a position to bridge this divide by offering schoolchildren and students holiday work. Consider the relationship of a small business owner and his or her employees. The business owner often has an idea of the success and failures of employees‘ children. Where an employee’s child shows aptitude, provide that child with holiday work or a bursary to study further.

Holiday work helps develop loyalty to a company, particularly where the learners and students are exposed to participation in core activities.

The cost of developing these candidates does not form part of skills development because the candidates are not employees. For BEE purposes, costs in this regard are recognised under socio-economic development.