A History of South Africa

by Leonard Thompson

  27. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report (hereafter cited as TRC Report), 5 vols. (Cape Town, 1998), 5:238. For a description of the work of the commission, see chapter 9.

  28. However, unlike the rulers of the Ciskei, Bophuthatswana, and Venda Homelands, Buthelezi had stopped short of accepting “independence” from the South African government.

  29. Mzala, Gatsha Buthelezi: Chief with a Double Agenda (London, 1988); Jack Shepherd Smith, Buthelezi: The Biography (Melville, S.A., 1988); Geor-gina Hamilton and Gerhard Mate, “The Inkatha Freedom Party,” Election ’94, 73–87; Ottaway, Chained Together, 114–22; Meredith, Nelson Mandela, 419–33; Waldmeir, Anatomy of a Miracle, 168–88; Guelke, South Africa in Transition, 89–111.

  30. See works cited in note 29 and TRC Report, 3:243–323.

  31. TRC Report, 3:708; Waldmeir, Anatomy of a Miracle, 176–80; Meredith, Nelson Mandela, 425–31.

  32. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 514; Meredith, Nelson Mandela, 410–13.

  33. Sampson, Mandela, 440–48; Meredith, Nelson Mandela, 458–65.

  34. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 515–17; Sampson, Mandela, 423–26; Meredith, Nelson Mandela, 445–57.

  35. Ottaway, Chained Together, 166–68.

  36. Meredith, Nelson Mandela, 444–57; Waldmeir, Anatomy of a Miracle, 191–95; Sampson, Mandela, 449–54.

  37. Race Relations Survey, 1991–92, 557–58.

  38. De Klerk, The Last Trek, 222–25; Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 519–21.

  39. Hermann Giliomee, “The National Party’s Campaign for a Liberation Election,” Election ‘94, 43–71; Waldmeir, Anatomy of a Miracle, 193–94.

  40. Tom Lodge, “The African National Congress and Its Allies,” Election ‘94, 23–42.

  41. Thus the title of David Ottaway’s book, Chained Together.

  42. De Klerk, The Last Trek, 232.

  43. Sparks, Tomorrow Is Another Country, 141–46, is an eyewitness account of this event.

  44. Ibid., 147–51; Meredith, Nelson Mandela, 471–73.

  45. Meredith, Nelson Mandela, 476–77. De Klerk (The Last Trek, 252–57) gives a very different account of his September 26 meeting with Mandela. See also Sparks, Tomorrow Is Another Country, 179–84.

  46. Joe Slovo, “Negotiations: What Room for Compromise?” African Communist (third quarter, 1992): 36–40; cited in Sparks, Tomorrow Is Another Country, 181–2.

  47. Meredith, Nelson Mandela, 479–80.

  48. Ibid., 481–84; Sparks, Tomorrow Is Another Country, 187–89.

  49. Sparks, Tomorrow Is Another Country, 90–92.

  50. Waldmeir, Anatomy of a Miracle, 225–32.

  51. De Klerk, The Last Trek, 291.

  52. Meredith, Nelson Mandela, 496.

  53. Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Act 200 of 1993.

  54. Sparks, Tomorrow Is Another Country, 219–25; Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 535–37.

  55. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 536.

  56. De Klerk, The Last Trek, 302–8.

  57. Meredith, Nelson Mandela, 506–13.

  58. De Klerk, The Last Trek, 313–16; Sparks, Tomorrow Is Another Country, 197–219; Waldmeir, Anatomy of a Miracle, 245–48; Guelke, South Africa in Transition, 67–88.

  59. Newsday, March 27, 1994.

  60. Meredith, Nelson Mandela, 513–14.

  61. Ibid., 512–15; de Klerk, The Last Trek, 320–27; Sparks, Tomorrow Is Another Country, 219–25; Waldmeir, Anatomy of a Miracle, 248–50.

  62. De Klerk, The Last Trek, 328–33; Giliomee, “The National Party’s Campaign for a Liberation Election,” 43–71.

  63. Lodge, “The African National Congress and Its Allies,” 23–42.

  64. Benjamin Pogrund, “South Africa Goes to the Polls,” Election ’94, 159–81; Sparks, Tomorrow Is Another Country, 226–28; Guelke, South Africa in Transition, 112–35; Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 538–40; R. W. Johnson, “The Election, the Count, and the Drama in KwaZulu/Natal,” in Launching Democracy in South Africa, 274–300. Meredith, Nelson Mandela, 515–17, is highly critical of the performance of the Independent Electoral Commission.

  65. Andrew Reynolds, “The Results,” Election ’94, 182–220; R. W. Johnson, “The 1994 Election: Outcome and Analysis,” and “How Free and Fair?” in Launching Democracy in South Africa, 301–52; John Jackson, “The 1994 Election: An Analysis,” in The New South Africa: Prospects for Domestic and International Security, ed. T. H. Toase and E. J. Yorke (New York, 1998), 3–16; Guelke, South Africa in Transition, 112–35.

  66. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 541.

  67. Mandela and de Klerk had shared the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize.

  Chapter 9: The New South Africa

  1. Human Development Report, 1997 (New York, 1997), 150, based on 1994 data. “The human development index measures the average achievements in a country in three basic dimensions of human development—longevity, knowledge and a decent standard of living” (14).

  2. The People of South Africa Population Census, 1996: Primary Tables (Pretoria, 1999). This was a far more elaborate South African census than its predecessors, especially in its collection of data on black South Africans. It found that the vast majority of white South Africans had full employment and lived in modern houses or apartments equipped with electricity, piped water, telephones, and flush toilets; by contrast, 42 percent of Africans of working age were unemployed, only 45 percent of the African population lived in modern buildings, and only 30 percent of African households had electricity, 20 percent had piped water, 11 percent had telephones, and 19 percent had flush or chemical toilets in their homes. Conditions were far worse among rural Africans than among the 59 percent of the African population who lived in urban or peri-urban areas, even though many urban Africans occupied shacks.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Race Relations Survey, 1993–94, 623, 648, 677–751; Economist, May 20, Dec. 3, 1994.

  5. Colin Bundy, “At War with the Future? Black South African Youth,” in South Africa: The Political Economy of Transformation, ed. Stephen John Stedman (Boulder, Colo., 1994), 47–64; David Everett and Elinor Sisulu, eds., Black Youth in Crisis (Braamfontein, S.A., 1992).

  6. Race Relations Survey, 1993–94, 300–301.

  7. Ibid., 297.

  8. Weekly Mail and Guardian (Johannesburg), Nov. 11, 1994; Intermittent Newsletter (Pretoria), Oct. 12, 1994, Dec. 5, 1994. The Mail and Guardian (Johannesburg) appears in two versions: the print edition, the Weekly Mail and Guardian, is published every Friday, and an electronic edition, the Daily Mail and Guardian, ZA*Now, has appeared since May 1996. For this daily electronic edition, and also for the electronic archive of the Weekly Mail and Guardian since 1994, see www.mg.co.za/mg/za/news.html.

  9. Intermittent Newsletter, Dec. 5, 1994.

  10. This Week in South Africa, Jan. 24–30, 1995. This Week in South Africa is a newsletter issued by the South African Consulate in New York.

  11. Economist, Dec. 24, 1994; Tony Haskins, The New South Africa: Business Prospects and Corporate Strategies (London, 1994); Race Relations Survey, 1993–94, 372; Jesmond Blumenfeld, “The Post-Apartheid Economy: Achievements, Problems, and Prospects,” in After Mandela: The 1999 South African Elections, ed. J. E. Spence (London, 1999), 33–48; Alan Ward, “Changes in the Political Economy of the New South Africa,” in The New South Africa: Prospects for Domestic and International Security, ed. F. H. Toase and E. J. Yorke (New York, 1998), 37–56.

  12. Thabo Mbeki, Africa: The Time Has Come (Johannesburg, 1998); Leonard Thompson, “Mbeki’s Uphill Challenge,” Foreign Affairs 78:6 (November–December 1999): 92.

  13. Speech in the National Council of Provinces, Aug. 7, 1998, cited by David Welsh, “The State of the Polity,” in After Mandela, 16.

  14. Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Act 108 of 1996. See also South African Survey, 1996–97, 517–44.

  15. F. W. de Klerk, The Last Trek: A New Beginning (London, 1998), 342–55; Anthony Sampson, Mandela: The Authorized Bi
ography (New York, 1999), 502, 526–27.

  16. South African Survey, 1997–98, 513–14.

  17. Ibid., 469–70.

  18. Stanley Uys, “The anc and Black Politics: The Buck Stops with Mbeki,” in After Mandela, 28.

  19. Welsh, “State of the Polity,” 19. See also J. E. Spence, “Introduction,” After Mandela, 1–6.

  20. Welsh, “State of the Polity,” 13.

  21. This Week in South Africa, Aug. 9–25, Oct. 11–17, 1994. In 1996, one of the white judges of the Constitutional Court resigned and was succeeded by an Asian; and the Supreme Court, which formerly consisted of an Appellate Division and Provincial Divisions, was replaced by the Supreme Court of Appeals and Provincial High Courts.

  22. Business Day (Johannesburg), Dec. 21, 1994.

  23. For background, see Jacklyn Cock, Colonels and Cadres: War and Gender in South Africa (Cape Town, 1991); Herbert M. Howe, “National Reconciliation and a New South African Defence Force,” and Jacklyn Cock, “The Dynamics of Transforming South Africa’s Defense Forces,” both in South Africa, 127–51.

  24. Weekly Mail and Guardian, Nov. 11, 1994, Feb. 4, 1995.

  25. Cited in Howe, “National Reconciliation,” 134.

  26. South African Survey, 1997–98, 77.

  27. For background on the police, see John D. Brewer, Black and Blue: Policing in South Africa (Oxford, 1994), and Gavin Cawthra, Policing South Africa: The South African Police and the Transition from Apartheid (London, 1994).

  28. South African Survey, 1995–96, 73–82; South African Survey, 1996–97, 90–97; South African Survey, 1997–98, 58–84.

  29. South African Survey, 1997–98, 494; Economist, Feb. 28, 1998.

  30. South African Survey, 1997–98, 496–97.

  31. South African Survey, 1996–97, 540, 585; South African Survey, 1997–98, 481.

  32. Sampson, Mandela, 512–16.

  33. Martin Meredith, Coming to Terms: South Africa’s Search for Truth (New York, 1999), 17–18.

  34. Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report (hereafter cited as TRC Report), 5 vols. (Cape Town, 1998); Antjie Krog, Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limit of Forgiveness in the New South Africa (New York, 1998); Meredith, Coming to Terms, 17–18; Sampson, Mandela, 521–25.

  35. Meredith, Coming to Terms, 17–18.

  36. Chairperson’s foreword in TRC Report, 1:1–23.

  37. TRC Report, 2:182.

  38. Meredith, Coming to Terms, 45–54.

  39. Ibid., 181–87; Krog, Country of My Skull, 346–54.

  40. Meredith, Coming to Terms, 187–99, 295–97. See also Krog, Country of My Skull, 135–39. De Klerk presented his own case in The Last Trek, 369–85.

  41. TRC Report, 5:223–34.

  42. TRC Report, 1:12–13, 2:325–99; Meredith, Coming to Terms, 203–19; Krog, Country of My Skull, 150–61. The trc also held extensive hearings that revealed that Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who Nelson Mandela divorced in 1996, was morally and politically accountable for many gross violations of human rights (Meredith, Coming to Terms, 223–70; Krog, Country of My Skull, 318–40; TRC report, 2:581); and other hearings that revealed the extent to which big business, Christian churches, the legal profession, and the medical profession had cooperated with the apartheid state (TRC Report, vol. 4).

  43. Krog, Country of My Skull, 275.

  44. TRC Report, 5:436–56.

  45. Meredith, Coming to Terms, 315–16, 318–19.

  46. Ibid., 304.

  47. Ibid., 306.

  48. Nevertheless, Tina Rosenberg, in “Confronting the Past,” in Coming to Terms, 325–70, considers that the South African trc was an improvement on attempts to come to terms with the past in other countries.

  49. On the South African economy during the Mandela presidency, see Blumenfeld, “The Post-Apartheid Economy: Achievements, Problems and Prospects,” 33–48; Ward, “Changes in the Political Economy of the New South Africa,” 37–56; Thomas A. Koelble, The Global Economy and Democracy in South Africa (New Brunswick, N.J., 1998).

  50. Koelble, Global Economy, 103–17.

  51. Ibid., 173–85.

  52. This Week in South Africa, Oct. 4–10, 1994.

  53. South African Survey, 1997–98, 222.

  54. Economist, June 11, 1994, May 20, 1995; New York Times, June 7, July 27, Sept. 23, 1994.

  55. South African Survey, 1996–97, 611–15.

  56. Ibid., 41.

  57. Ibid., 710–17; Blumenfeld, “Post-Apartheid Economy,” 42–44.

  58. Blumenfeld, “The Post-Apartheid Economy,” 44–48; Thompson, “Mbeki’s Uphill Challenge,” 85; Weekly Mail and Guardian, July 23, 1999.

  59. South African Survey, 1999–2000, 436–37.

  60. Koelble, Global Economy, 167.

  61. On the political consequences of gear see, besides Koelble, Gay W. Seidman, “Oppositional Identities in Brazil and South Africa,” in Comparative Perspectives on South Africa, ed. Ran Greenstein (Houndsmills, U.K., 1998), 252–58; Heri-bert Adam, Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, and Kogila Moodley, Comrades in Business (Cape Town, 1997); and South African Survey, 1999–2000, 32, 395, 507, 508.

  62. This Week in South Africa, Sept. 6–12, 1994, May 16–22, 1995.

  63. South African Survey, 1999–2000, 152–55.

  64. Ibid., 168.

  65. Ibid., 173–76, 158–61.

  66. Ibid., 188–89.

  67. Ibid., 411.

  68. “Up Bara Security,” Weekly Mail and Guardian, Apr. 2, 1999, www.mg.co.za; “Gauteng Health Services Near Collapse,” Daily Mail and Guardian, June 22, 1999, www.mg.co.za.

  69. South African Survey, 1999–2000, 218–23; “AIDS Makes South African Living Standards Plummet,” Business Report, July 20, 1999, www.iol.co.za; “aids the Top Killer in Africa,” Cape Times, July 23, 1999, www.inc.co.za; “Africa Bears the Brunt of the World’s AIDS Epidemic,” Daily Mail and Guardian, Sept. 11, 1999, www.mg.co.za.

  70. “aids Likely to Provoke a Rash of Crime,” Saturday Star, July 30, 1999, www.inc.co.za/online/saturday_star.

  71. “Black Picture Painted of Teacher Training Crisis,” Cape Argus, Dec. 19, 1999, www.africanews.org.

  72. South African Survey, 1999–2000, 109–13.

  73. “South African Students are Scientifically Illiterate,” Daily Mail and Guardian, Jan. 18, 2000, www.mg.co.za.

  74. Thompson, “Mbeki’s Uphill Challenge,” 90–91; South African Survey, 1999–2000, 136–44; “Cash-strapped Universities Face Closure,” Daily Mail and Guardian, July 31, 1999, www.africanews.org.

  75. “Asmal Declares Education ‘Emergency,’” Cape Argus, July 30, 1999, www.inc.co.za/online/cape_argus.

  76. “Crime Stats Queried,” Saturday Star, Feb. 14, 1998; The Star, May 5, 1999.

  77. South African Survey, 1999–2000, 50.

  78. The Star, May 5, 1999.

  79. Tom Lodge, “Political Corruption in South Africa,” African Affairs 97, no. 387 (1998): 157–87.

  80. Lodge, “Political Corruption in South Africa,” 187.

  81. Adam, van Zyl Slabbert, and Moodley, Comrades in Business, 181, 205.

  82. South African Survey, 1999–2000, 522.

  83. Address by President Nelson Mandela to Parliament, National Assembly, Cape Town, Feb. 5, 1999. www.anc.org.za.

  84. South African Survey, 1999–2000, 319–30.

  85. United Nations Development Program, Human Development Report 2000 (New York, 2000): 158–60.

  Chapter 10: Beyond the New South Africa

  1. Department of International Relations and Cooperation, Republic of South Africa, “The African Renaissance Statement of Deputy President, Thabo Mbeki, SABC, Gallagher Estate, Aug. 13, 1998, http://www.dfa.gov.za/docs/speeches/1998/mbek0813.htm.

  2. “Thabo’s Team from Asmal to Zuma,” Weekly Mail and Guardian, June 25, 1999, www.mg.co.za.

  3. Thabo Mbeki, Inaugural Speech as President of the Republic of South Africa, Pretoria, June 16, 1999, www.info.gov.za/speeches/1999/990617935a1002.htm.
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  4. Thabo Mbeki, State of the Nation Speech, National Assembly, Cape Town, June 25, 1999, http://www.dfa.gov.za/docs/speeches/1999/mbek0625.htm.

  5. Thabo Mbeki, State of the Nation Address at the Opening of Parliament, National Assembly, Cape Town, Feb. 4, 2000, http://www.dfa.gov.za/docs/speeches/2000/mbek0204.htm.

  6. South African Survey, 1999–2000, 342. On Mboweni’s background and politics, see Economist, Feb. 5, 2000.

  7. “Thabo Mbeki, Micro-manager,” Economist, July 15, 2000.

  8. “Mbeki’s Lean, Mean Ruling Machine,” Weekly Mail and Guardian, June 25, 1999.

  9. Thabo Mbeki, Address at the Welcome Ceremony of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, Aug. 25, 2002, http://www.dfa.gov.za/docs/speeches/2002/mbek0825.htm.

  10. Thabo Mbeki, Address of the President of the Republic of South Africa at the Opening of the World Summit for Sustainable Development, Johannesburg, Aug. 26, 2000, http://www.dfa.gov.za/docs/speeches/2002/mbek0826.htm.

  11. Act No. 2 of 2000, Republic of South Africa, Government Gazette, Vol. 416, No. 20852, Cape Town, Feb. 3, 2000, http://www.info.gov.za/view/DownloadFileAction?id=68186.

  12. R. Sorenson, “The Impact of South Africa’s Promotion of Access to Information Act After Three and a Half Years: A Perspective,” ESARBICA Journal 22 (2003).

  13. Open Democracy Advice Centre, Annual Report 2003.

  14. Tom Carter, “South Africa Probes Racism in Media,” Washington Times, Mar. 9, 2000, http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-60043579.html.

  15. “Sheena Duncan Resigns over Racism Probe,” Weekly Mail and Guardian, Feb. 25, 2000, www.mg.co.za.

  16. Soobramoney v. Minister of Health, KwaZulu-Natal, 1998 (1) SA 765 (CC).

  17. Thabo Mbeki, Remarks at Judicial Symposium, Aug. 1, 2003.

  18. “Masses Desert the SACP in Droves,” Africa News Online, May 17, 2000, www.africanews.org.

  19. “Alliance of Concern to COSATU Chief,” Business Day, July 14, 2000, www.africanews.org.

  20. South African History Online, “The New South Africa and the New National Party (1993–2005),” http://www.sahistory.org.za.

  21. Untitled article by Ed Stoddard, July 25, 2000, www.news.africa.com.