Preparing for power
The paths pursued by a reformist National Party (NP) leadership and the African National Congress (ANC) intersected at an awkward historic moment. January 1990 arrived with the ANC at the head of a huge mass movement that had drawn into its slipstream noted public figures. Though it was still illegal, during the 1980s the ANC inspired a significant network of civil society formations, a front of democratic organisations and activists who accepted its leadership. After 1976 the ANC succeeded in placing itself at the head of organised radical opposition inside the country. It had won international legitimacy while isolating the apartheid regime politically from actual and potential sources of support in the international community. It succeeded in having limited economic sanctions imposed on South Africa and at the end of 1989 the international financial institutions refused to extend apartheid South Africa further credit. The ANC's programme, the Freedom Charter, had won widespread support from black (and some white) South Africans and been adopted by both the United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). A sustained insurrectionary climate inside the country in the 1980s inspired the ANC leadership to adopt a strategy implemented at the time as Operation Vulindlela.
Explaining his government's decision to legalise the ANC, the Pan African Congress (PAC), the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the other political movements and parties that the NP had banned over the previous four decades, F.W. De Klerk has told numerous audiences that he felt comfortable about it because the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe implied that South Africa would not be overrun by communist states. De Klerk, the constituency of white voters and opinion-makers he represented doubtless took comfort in that. But it is evident that the Afrikaner political elite had grasped the nettle of reform some years prior to December 1989.
Addressing a meeting of apartheid-regime strategists during the early 1980s, Samuel Huntington of Harvard University decried the absence of ‘a Lenin of reform’ who would give as ‘intense attention’ to the strategy and tactics of reform as that which ‘Lenin devoted to the strategy and tactics of revolution’. Reform in South Africa, Huntington advised his audience, would be the most effective means of preempting revolution. The explicit purpose of reform should be counter-revolutionary, and if properly managed, would place the white minority in a position to codetermine the future of South Africa with its perceived revolutionary enemies.
In Paris, in November 1989, an Afrikaner intellectual with links to the Broederbond announced that it was De Klerk's intention to challenge the ANC on the political terrain. Legalisation, he implied, would create an environment in which credible negotiations could unfold, with De Klerk's prospective interlocutors given the political space to interact with and receive mandates from their constituency. De Klerk's 2 February 1990 speech did not come therefore, as a complete surprise to the ANC leadership. Of greater concern was the limited character of the reforms he had announced. But the ball was now clearly in the ANC's court and it had to respond.
After the first post-unbanning summit at Groote Schuur, the ANC determined that its key strategic goal was to have power transferred from the NP government as swiftly as possible. Consequently, the strategic debate within the ANC quickly came to centre on the confidence-building steps required for negotiations. Shortly after Mandela's return from a tour of the US, the National Executive Committee (NEC) took the decision to suspend all armed actions unilaterally. Matters might have moved very quickly to discussion of the repatriation of refugees and trained combatants but for the Security Police's arrest of Mac Maharaj, the internal coordinator of Operation Vulindlela. Shortly thereafter De Klerk advised Mandela that he had plans to arrest Jacob Zuma and was rescinding the indemnities granted to Chris Hani and Ronnie Kasrils. In briefings to the media Foreign Minister ‘Pik’ Botha tried to explain De Klerk's actions as a response to a communist conspiracy within the ANC's alliance which had not embraced negotiations but were intent on an insurrection.
The ANC leadership read this as an attempt to sow division between it and the SACP. For its part, once again a legal organisation, the SACP proceeded with plans for its first mass rally in 40 years. (In 1950 when it was banned, the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) became the first communist party ever to disband when it was proscribed.) At the SACP's first mass rally, held on 29 July 1990, it became clear that South Africa had inscribed yet another unprecedented occurrence in the annals of communism; at least 50% of the members of the Central Committee it had elected a year previously had resigned from the party once it became legal. With three of its leaders declared virtual outlaws so soon after returning home, it became clear that the course the ANC sought to pursue would not be an easy one. But after that initial hiccup, by June 1991 it appeared that all the hurdles had been cleared and that negotiations could begin in earnest. Both sides had taken the lessons of that first year to heart. There were evidently powerful pockets of opposition to De Klerk's course among both the white electorate and within the security services. The next three years witnessed a wave of unprecedented violence, orchestrated by the die-hard element in the apartheid regime's security services who hoped to derail the negotiation process or precipitate all-out war. In December 1991 the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) held its first session. Negotiations stumbled along for the following two years. The ANC suspended talks twice in response to the violence. Even after they resumed as CODESA II, scepticism that they could stay on course continued to dog them. The assassination of Chris Hani in April 1993 concentrated the minds of all the key players on the dangers that could arise from continued uncertainty. The ANC was able to demonstrate its immense moral authority in the tense week that ensued by keeping a firm grip on the seething anger gripping the African townships. For a short while it appeared that a combination of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), the Bophuthatswana homeland government and far-right white formations might prevent a pan-South African general election. But Bophuthatswana collapsed ignominiously when the people of Mafeking and MmaBatho rebelled, and the IFP agreed to participate in the elections at the eleventh hour.
27 April 1994 was the outcome of tough-minded decision making on both sides of the conflict. In order to take on the ANC on the political terrain the National Party (NP) had to change or reinvent itself. Towards the end of 1990, the NP announced that it would open its membership to persons other than whites. As negotiations progressed, the NP also revised its standpoint on two issues. Having amassed power over the years by ruthlessly wielding the instruments of a unitary state, by the 1980s the NP's strategists were expressing a preference for consociationalism. This option, they argued, was particularly attractive for South Africa as it took account of the deeply fractured character of the society and its multi-racial features. In 1990 the NP positioned itself as the champion of group rights. By 1994 it had abandoned that platform.
On its side, after heated internal debates, the ANC had accepted the idea of a convention of all political parties, including those from the homelands and the tricameral parliament. To improve its own representation at CODESA it connived at the farcical resurrection of the Natal and Transvaal Indian Congresses (NIC-TIC), all of whose members were card-carrying members of the ANC. It had also made a major concession to the incumbent state bureaucracy, a key NP constituency, by adopting the ‘Sunset Clauses’ guaranteeing their jobs for the immediate future. The compromise on an interim constitution was the most significant considering the ANC's prior insistence on a constitution legitimated by an elected Constituent Assembly. A remarkable consensus emerged quite early in the negotiations about making the electoral system as inclusive as possible and on the need for a Constitutional Court. By 1994, a successful transition of power had been achieved and the trappings of a democratic order put in place.
The ANC in power
For over 90 years, the ANC as a political movement has demonstrated a capacity to adapt to, and remain relevant in the face of, sweeping changes that have taken place not only in Africa, but also in the rest of the world. Originally founded in 1912 as a body of respectable and very respectful black subjects, who regarded their organisation as a loyal opposition designed to give ‘… expression to representative opinion …’ and to assist the government ‘… formulate a standard policy on Native Affairs …’, the ANC had evolved by the 1980s into a revolutionary national movement whose principal objective was the seizure of political power. The 1990s required of the ANC that it transform itself again into a party of government able to administer Africa's wealthiest economy but also one of its most diverse societies. To arrive at that point, the ANC underwent repeated redefinition and a profound metamorphosis.
The ANC was shaped by South Africa's 20th century history as much as it helped shape it. Born in response to the racist constitution of the Union of South Africa that excluded Africans, Coloureds and Indians from the country's political institutions, the ANC at first regarded itself as a movement of the African people, pursuing African objectives. In the course of the struggle for democracy, the need for alliances and pacts became evident, persuading the ANC leadership to seek allies and establish ties with like-minded bodies among Whites, Coloureds and Indians; thus was forged the Congress movement of the 1950s. Over and above specifically African aspirations, the ANC repositioned itself as a movement striving for democracy and an end to white racial domination. By 1990, it had become a nonracial movement for all South African democrats, counting amongst its leadership and ranks South Africans of all races.
After the publication in 1960 of Nimrod Mkele's The Emergent African Middle Class, it was generally accepted that, despite differences in lifestyle, life chances and incomes, the shared burden of national oppression would persuade the African petty bourgeoisie and the majority of African working people to make common cause. By extension, the same was assumed to apply among Coloureds and Indians, as well as between Africans and the two black minority groups. These assumptions were the cornerstones of liberation movement strategy and the gravamen of Joe Slovo's 1977 thesis which argued against the likelihood of any accommodation because the disabilities of the black elite would oblige it to seek radical solutions. When the ANC assumed political office in May 1994, the negotiation process had already disproved one leg of Slovo's thesis. In 1992, Slovo himself had proposed a middle course, the so-called ‘sunset clauses’, that envisaged the exit of the incumbent civil service by attrition. The elections too, had established that the disenfranchised black population was far more heterogeneous than ANC strategists had realised. Significant segments of the Coloured and Indian working classes had voted for the party of apartheid, and though the majority of Indians had been prepared to follow the ANC's lead by boycotting the tri-cameral elections, that did not translate into electoral support for the ANC in 1994. The election results confirmed the ethnic-regional character of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) but had also demonstrated its strength in rural KwaZulu-Natal.
The ANC-led government was constituted to take account of a number of tough realities. Though it had won the elections by a landslide, the ANC assumed political office with little power other than control of the majority of ministries. The upper reaches of the security services were still in the hands of apartheid appointees, as was the civil service. Mandela deliberately appointed Derek Keys, a former NP Minister, as Minister of Finance to reassure an uncertain South African and corporate sector. Carefully measured actions and studied moderation, in both rhetoric and action, helped reassure skittish investors and international markets. South Africa experienced a decade of social peace underpinned by political stability thanks to such circumspection.
Governing together with the NP and the IFP in a Government of National Unity (GNU), the ANC confounded its detractors with its pragmatism. During his inaugural address to Parliament, Nelson Mandela set the tone for his government by quoting the Afrikaans poetess, Ingrid Jonker. The symbolism of that action was not lost on observers; she had in the 1970s committed suicide in despair about apartheid and the future of South Africa. Mandela was calling on the country to put the past behind it, seize the moment of hope and focus on the future.
The ANC had anticipated the challenges of governing and had drawn up an elaborate Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) based on an assessment of what would be required to address huge apartheid-created social deficits. The realities of political office soon made it clear that leveraging the resources for reconstruction and growth would not be easy. The post-Cold War environment brought with it a demonisation of state intervention. The state sector was concentrated in key delivery areas – utilities, posts and telecommunications, and public transport. Though the RDP had called for ‘right sizing’ of South Africa's hugely inflated state-owned sector, ANC policy makers soon discovered that they were expected to dismember it. The restructuring of state assets thus became a crucial aspect of government policy.
Motivated by an ambitious White Paper, telecommunications is the only sector that has been successfully restructured by inviting the participation of two strategic equity partners. During the last six years, SA Telkom has carried out an impressive rollout of telephone lines into previously deprived and neglected areas. Opinion surveys in 1998 and 2003 indicate that the improvement of communications is recognised as one of the ANC government's most notable achievements.
After two years as part of the GNU and shortly after the adoption of the new Constitution, the NP decided in June 1996 to withdraw from it. The NP's decision signalled a desire to mark out a position to the right of the ANC-led government and its hope to profit from oft-expressed white anxieties about the consequences of democracy. In less than two months, the NP changed both its leader and its name when Marthinus van Schalkwyk was elected leader of the New National Party.
The remaking of the ANC as a party of Government
Hegel once wrote that a political party becomes real only when it divides. That profoundly dialectical statement will strike many as odd. But, its profundity lies precisely in its paradoxical nature. Provided that it is not brain dead, as a political movement grows, its inner contradictions inevitably begin to unfold. But as these unfold, so too are the movement and its ideas enriched and its political and intellectual life made more vital.
Members of the ANC should take comfort from Hegel's view because it so closely approximates their lived political experience. The tired analogy of the ANC as a broad church can prove useful here in trying to understand the ironies of the debates that have so often taken place in recent years within it and among its alliance partners.
A corpus of religious values holds a church together much as a common programme is the standard beneath which the political faithful are rallied. That programme defines the boundaries of intra-movement debate. Contenders in any dispute each seek legitimacy by an appeal to its authority, but each is expected to respect the bona fides of the others. Episcopates in both the Catholic and the Protestant churches have been prepared to accommodate heterodox thought within their folds, provided it could be contained or co-opted. Thus was many a potential heresy tamed. In the ANC, in contrast, within the living memory of many veterans, heterodoxy has regularly become the new orthodoxy. The dissident voice, the innovative strategy and the critical ideas have won the argument in the movement on several occasions. While this offers conservatives little comfort, it would be a rash radical who sought to employ it as justification for reckless behaviour.
Any serious political movement necessarily requires its adherents to act collectively on the decisive issues. The whips in a parliamentary party are assigned precisely that role. Movements that have been forced to operate illegally place greater emphasis on discipline, because any breach can result in arrests and even the suppression of the movement itself. Theoretically, such discipline does not extend to the inner political life of the movement, but there have been numerous instances when the requirements of discipline have been abused to repress debate and critical thought. Prior to March 1960 when it was banned, ANC practice, as the reams of paper used up in inner-ANC debates will testify, was to encourage optimal debate within its structures until a collective decision had been arrived at. After that, the minority view was expected to submit to the majority. Highly vocal dissenting minorities, like the ‘Africanists’ of the 1950s, survived for years as ginger groups within the ANC before they walked out in frustration. The communist movement coined the term ‘democratic centralism’ to describe this practice, which recognised the inevitability of a diversity of viewpoints, but also insisted that they should not impair the movement's capacity for united action.
Security considerations, distances between centres and the dispersal of its membership across the globe severely undermined the ANC's ability to operate in this way during its 30 years of illegal operations. The militarisation of the movement as a result of the armed struggle also tilted the balance away from consultative practices. But even within those limitations, the movement sought to keep alive a tradition of internal debate and discussion that found expression in its publications, conference documents and other records. Feminism, for example, was disdained or derided in the ANC of the late 1960s. But it is firmly rooted within the movement today. Acceptance of same-sex relationships had to be fought for in heated debates. No strategic shifts came as a surprise to ANC members and supporters because, in most cases, their views had been widely canvassed beforehand. The relative absence of destabilising upheavals that might have led to disintegration attests to the skill with which such issues were managed. While unity was never conflated with uniformity, the crystallisation of factions was also firmly resisted.
Achieving the delicate balance that enables a movement to maintain continuity while remaining open to new initiatives and even heretic ideas is a challenge even at the best of times. Strong leaders are often tempted to assert their wills. There were two occasions post-1990 when even Nelson Mandela was unable to muster the necessary support among the ANC's leadership for his views to prevail. There were numerous other, less publicised, occasions when he was over-ruled by the executive. Thabo Mbeki initially tabled the central ideas in Joe Slovo's strategic initiative, the ‘sunset clauses’. Mbeki lost the argument on that occasion. Despite Slovo's prestige, the initiative he authored was hotly contested and radically amended before it was adopted by the ANC. After its legalisation, the ANC and its key strategic partners, the SACP and COSATU, have often appeared as bodies seething with fractious internal conflicts. But perhaps this capacity, even willingness, to enter into robust debate is a quality to be cherished rather than sneered at. Devoting time and resources to intra-movement debates, arguments and ideological polemics often looks messy and even divisive. But after a decision is taken, most members are confident that every possible option has been examined and they also feel a sense of ownership of the policy positions adopted. The ANC in government sought to reaffirm this aspect of its organisational culture. It reformed the workings of the national parliament by opening up all its plenaries and committee meetings to members of the public and the media. Stressing accountability and transparency, it piloted the adoption of codes of ethics for both parliamentarians and members of the executive. But governing a country has reinforced the centripetal tendencies in the movement's culture, giving countervailing the impression of power centralised in the presidency. Powerful trends are, however, also evident. The NEC meets once every two months, usually according to a pre-determined schedule which permits members to plan their attendance with greater certainty. Participation in its plenaries has also been expanded to include non-elected national government Ministers and Deputy Ministers.
Participating in two general elections and a host of local government elections the ANC has introduced many new concepts to South African electioneering. Compelled to master the skills of modern elections very quickly in 1994, the ANC learnt the use of opinion surveys and focus groups. Borrowing from its own past experience, specifically during the campaign for the Congress of the People in 1955, the ANC introduced the People's Forum during its 1994 election campaign. Such forums were conceived as town hall meetings which would afford members of the general public the opportunity to question ANC leaders on any aspect of its election platform. They proved hugely successful in bridging the social distance between politicians and the citizen. The degree of interaction at such forums increased the sense of identification with a party that was prepared to listen and did not insist on talking to the electorate all the time. The People's Forum has now become part of the ANC's elections repertoire and has been adopted also by the Presidency which refers to its gatherings as imbizo.
But as a party of government, rather than an illegal liberation movement, membership of which entailed risks of imprisonment or even death, membership of the ANC today could open up career opportunities. Apart from the activists who surfaced in 1990 and could now openly affiliate to the ANC, the movement is attracting into its ranks many in search of political careers. The appetites of many old militants for the good things in life have also been whetted after decades of denial. A measure of the problem is repeated allegations of the misuse of state funds levelled against ANC local councillors and government officials. The need to fill civil service posts with personnel loyal to the ANC's vision has inevitably transformed many capable grassroots' activists into state bureaucrats, depriving the movement of the calibre of membership who were the driving force in its local structures.
Being in power is visibly changing the character of the ANC. Whereas in the past ANC networks linked one to the movers and shakers among organisations representing the disadvantaged, the poor and the disinherited, today they can also give you access to the leading corporate boardrooms, the cabinet, top civil servants and members of the political elite. This was reflected in the ANC's own recasting of its strategy and tactics at its 1997 national conference, that marked the passing of the baton from Mandela to Mbeki. On that occasion, the black middle strata, who had received scant attention in previous strategy and tactics documents, were elevated to the status of one of the motive forces of the National Democratic Revolution. A rather vague Black Economic Empowerment project was also flagged at that conference. The fleshing out of the project since 1997 has given rise to fears amongst many that the ANC has adopted the creation of a black bourgeoisie as one of its principal objectives for the medium term.
The ANC's second term
The ANC went to the hustings in 1999 very confident of winning by a landslide. The upshot was that it won just one percentage point shy of a two-thirds majority. The most salient feature of the 1999 elections, however, was the collapse of the New National Party, despite its make-over as the New National Party after it walked out of the GNU in 1996. The Democratic Party, under Tony Leon's leadership, emerged as the party of white discontent.
Thabo Mbeki assumed the presidency having acted as de facto President for some years as Nelson Mandela gradually disengaged himself from day-to-day government business. He led the ANC to a magnificent electoral victory that left the opposition in disarray. No other party managed to garner more than ten per cent of the poll and instead of the six opposition parties of the first democratic parliament, there are now ten even smaller groupings. The ANC again offered the IFP seats in the executive though its majority did not require it to find coalition partners. A portent of what has become a feature of Mbeki's incumbency raised its head in the NEC of the ANC during 1994. Reacting rather testily to an editorial in the SACP's news-sheet Umsebenzi, Nelson Mandela castigated the SACP as an unworthy organisation, which owed its place in democratic South Africa to the ANC. Instead of defending the SACP, its former Chairman, Joe Slovo, and its then General Secretary, Charles Nqakula, retreated before Mandela's attack and apologised for the offending article.
Relations between the ANC and its communist ally have deteriorated even further and faster under Mbeki's presidency. Neither COSATU nor the SACP had become reconciled to the adoption the Growth and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy piloted through Cabinet during Mandela's incumbency. As the ANC government proceeded with its speedier implementation after 1999, repeated exchanges between the ANC leadership and its allies ensued. These escalated as the policy areas of difference between the ANC and its allies seemed to multiply. By 2001, these included not only the restructuring of state assets, but also the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
Perhaps over-confident that it could win over the rank-and-file members of COSATU affiliates, the ANC leadership took the issues that divided the alliance partners to both COSATU and SACP conferences. The SACP came in for particularly harsh criticism and was repeatedly warned that it was straying from the course pioneered by its previous leaders, J.B. Marks and Moses Kotane, who had been content to allow the SACP to survive as a secret communist network operating within the ANC, but with no independent profile. When the SACP was legalised in 1990, it shed a fair number of its erstwhile members. Consequently there was a massive intake of new members, drawn from the trade unions, the civics and other mass organisations after the SACP's first internal congress in 1992. Buoyed by the popularity of its General Secretary, Chris Hani, the SACP grew fast, reaching a high point of 89,000 paid-up members in 2002. It also underwent a period of intense internal discussion about its future role, especially in the light of the collapse of Soviet socialism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The outcome of these discussions was a decision that, as the party of socialism, it should begin to carve out an identity distinct from both the ANC and the failed socialist projects in Eastern Europe. To achieve the former, it did not project itself as the vanguard of the second phase of the revolution but instead, spoke boldly about the particular interests of the working class within the alliance. It appealed to the rich vein of indigenous South African radicalism to which South Africa's communists had made a distinctive contribution. Unaccustomed to an SACP that not only differed with, but publicly criticised, positions adopted by the leadership, many in the ANC reacted very negatively to the positions the SACP pronounced. By January 2002 it was not uncommon to hear the epithet ‘ultra-leftist’ applied to the SACP's leadership. This reached its nadir when two fairly senior ANC leaders, Josiah Jele and Jabu Moleketi, penned a polemic directed against the SACP's leadership. Both sides to this acrimonious quarrel pulled back from the brink towards mid-2002. An ANC policy conference, in anticipation of the national conference, resulted in a wide-ranging consensus on most issues. At the national conference that December, all the delegates from the president down reaffirmed the importance of the tripartite alliance.
There is little dissent within the ANC over the area of foreign affairs where the Mbeki-led government has made its most decisive mark. With an energetic Foreign Minister in the person of Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, South Africa has been punching way above its weight. Mbeki's presidency, or rather his foreign-policy profile, has been facilitated by South Africa's assumption of the headship of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and of the Commonwealth. When the OAU changed itself into the African Union (AU) in 2002, South Africa also became chair of that continental body. In addition, in the first three years of Mbeki's tenure, South Africa has hosted four major international conferences - that of the Commonwealth, the World Conference Against Racism, the World Summit on Sustainable Development and lastly the African Union.
South African foreign policy has as its central plank the creating of space for Africa and its people to define their own future by exploring and offering viable, indigenously-evolved, alternative agendas to those imposed on our continent by former colonial powers and their allies. Africa has also adopted new and farreaching human rights instruments during the past four years. Though the rights contained in these charters are in the main aspirational, they are indicative of and will reinforce the growing trend toward democratic governance on the continent. Progress towards democratisation on the continent is still very uneven but the struggles of ordinary citizens and political activists have gained momentum during this time and could result in the creation and extension of democratic space in African societies.
The ANC's second term started with a bold foreign-policy initiative in the Congo when Nelson Mandela attempted to arrange a relatively peaceful transfer of power. South Africa became even more deeply entangled after Mobutu fled, and Laurent Kabila assumed power in Kinshasa, backed by Uganda and Rwanda. South African diplomacy at first sought to minimise the capacity of non-African powers to interfere in the Congo so as to give the Congolese and their neighbours a chance to resolve their problems. The upshot was rather different from what had been hoped for. Uganda and Rwanda had been drawn into the effort to get rid of Mobutu in pursuance of their own interests. Unable to secure these from Laurent Kabilia, whom they had assisted to power, both countries sought to use armed Congolese factions close to them to overthrow Kabila's government. That had inspired President Mugabe of Zimbabwe to seek a multi-state SADC intervention, in support of Laurent Kabila's beleagured government. South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique and Malawi refused to become involved, but Namibia and Angola sent troops and equipment.
From day one of his presidency, Mbeki tried to find a solution to the Congo crisis. After three years of talks, interrupted by outbreaks of terrible bloodletting, the Congo factions agreed to constitute a government of national unity in December 2002. South Africa had invested millions of rands to keep the negotiations afloat but in the end was unable to exclude non-African powers. When the fragile peace in Eastern Congo threatened to unravel in 2003, South Africa was compelled to accept the introduction of French troops to keep the warring factions apart.
As Deputy President, Mbeki had nailed his colours to the mast of an African Renaissance. When he assumed the presidency it was expected that this vision would be further fleshed out. The arrival of the new millennium, six months after he became president, offered a golden opportunity. Working with the Presidents of Algeria and Nigeria, he crafted what was at first named the Millennium African Project or MAP. This was conceived as an ambitious programme for African economic development premised on good governance and rapid economic growth driven by massive inflows of direct foreign investment. The Presidents of Egypt and Senegal were subsequently also drawn in and the projects were redesigned to take account of their contributions. It was then renamed the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) with roughly the same features. Mbeki took the lead in canvassing and winning support for NEPAD among the political leaders of the developed world. Despite extremely parsimonious commitments from G8 summits in Canada and France, there is still optimism that the developed economies will come to the party.
Conclusion
During its first five years under Mandela's presidency, the ANC's main aim was the consolidation of the democratic breakthrough and ensuring that the majority of South Africans bought into their newly-won democracy. The 1999 elections seemed to confirm that it achieved that objective.
27 April 1994 completely transformed the South African political landscape. The African majority – some 77% of the total population at last count – are now the decisive factor in electoral politics. No political party can hope to prosper except by addressing the needs and aspirations of that majority. Reducing the gap between rich and poor remains the priority issue on the national agenda. Apartheid, and not the ANC's rhetoric, has determined that this line of cleavage will in large measure coincide with race. Addressing a graduating class at Howard University in Washington, DC, in June 1965, President Lyndon Johnson, declared:
But freedom is not enough. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of the race and then say, you are free to compete with all the others, and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.