The Path to Constitutional Democracy in South Africa

Before President F. W. de Klerk's epoch-making address on 2 February, 1990, anyone who predicted that within less than two years virtually all the major political parties and groupings in South Africa would be sitting around a conference table negotiating a new constitution, would have been dismissed as naive at best. Even more amazing is the substantial degree of consensus which has been achieved in what is a relatively short time, given the long history of conflict which preceded the dawning of the “new” South Africa. The focus of the negotiations is the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (commonly referred to by the acronym Codesa). A wide spectrum of political opinion is represented here (a total of 19 different organizations at the last count), although organizations and parties on both the extreme right, and the extreme left, have refused to participate. While the government, the National Party and the African National Congress (ANC) may be seen as the main players, the role played by even the most minor participants cannot be discounted, because of the emphasis that is placed on consensus by most of the parties involved

Constitution · Convention · Democracy · Government (linguistics) · Negotiation · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Human Rights and Development · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law · Legal Issues in South Africa · Public Administration

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