The End of Apartheid
South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy culminated in the April 1994 elections, but the process had begun four years earlier. President F.W. de Klerk's speech of 2 February 1990 announced Nelson Mandela's release and the unbanning of the ANC, PAC, and South African Communist Party — reversing decades of state policy. Mandela was released on 11 February 1990, after 27 years on Robben Island and Pollsmoor Prison. The negotiations that followed — CODESA I and II (1991-1992), the Record of Understanding (1992), and the Multi-Party Negotiating Process (1993) — produced the Interim Constitution that governed the April 1994 elections. The transition was managed by two parties that each made fundamental concessions: the ANC abandoned nationalisation and accepted property rights protections; the National Party accepted majority rule. The violence that threatened to derail the process — Inkatha-ANC clashes, right-wing Afrikaner bombings — was ultimately contained by the political momentum and the mutual recognition that civil war was the only alternative. South Africa's negotiated transition became a model studied by subsequent peace processes.
- Year: 1994 CE
- Category: Reform
