CODESA Negotiations Deep Dive

The Road to CODESA

The Convention for a Democratic South Africa did not emerge from a single moment of enlightenment. It was the product of years of secret negotiations, mutual exhaustion, and calculated risk-taking. The groundwork began as early as 1985, when the apartheid government — facing economic sanctions, a township revolt, and military stalemate in Angola — first sent emissaries to speak with Mandela in prison.

By 1990, President F.W. de Klerk had unbanned the ANC, released Mandela, and lifted the state of emergency. But unbanning the ANC was not the same as handing over power. De Klerk envisioned a power-sharing arrangement that would protect the white minority's economic and political interests indefinitely. Mandela and the ANC demanded majority rule — one person, one vote — with no vetoes for minority groups. Bridging this gap would take four years of negotiations that repeatedly came to the brink of collapse.

CODESA I and CODESA II

CODESA I convened on December 20, 1991, at the World Trade Centre in Kempton Park, near Johannesburg. Nineteen political parties and organizations participated, though notable absences included the Pan Africanist Congress and the Inkatha Freedom Party's Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who boycotted over procedural disagreements. Five working groups were established to address constitutional principles, transitional arrangements, the future of the homelands, time frames, and an enabling climate for free political activity.

CODESA II, in May 1992, collapsed when the ANC and the National Party could not agree on the percentage of votes needed to approve clauses in the new constitution. The National Party wanted a 75% threshold — effectively a minority veto — while the ANC insisted on a simple two-thirds majority. Negotiations broke down entirely after the Boipatong massacre on June 17, 1992, when attackers linked to the Inkatha Freedom Party killed 45 residents of an ANC-supporting township. Mandela accused the government of complicity and withdrew from talks.

The impasse was broken by the Bisho massacre in September 1992, when Ciskei homeland troops fired on ANC demonstrators, killing 28. The escalating violence convinced both sides that continued stalemate risked a full-scale civil war. Mandela and de Klerk met privately and agreed to resume negotiations, this time through a new format: the Multi-Party Negotiating Process.

The Interim Constitution

The Multi-Party Negotiating Process produced an interim constitution in November 1993, which would govern South Africa's first democratic elections in April 1994 and remain in force while a final constitution was drafted by the newly elected parliament sitting as a Constitutional Assembly.

The interim constitution was a remarkable document. It included a justiciable Bill of Rights, an independent judiciary, a Constitutional Court, and 34 constitutional principles that the final constitution would have to satisfy. It established a framework of cooperative governance between national, provincial, and local government. And it created the mechanism for the peaceful transfer of power: a Government of National Unity that would last five years.

The CODESA process demonstrated something that few thought possible: that a deeply divided society, on the brink of civil war, could negotiate its way to democracy. It required extraordinary patience, strategic compromise, and the willingness of both sides to accept less than their ideal outcome in exchange for a peaceful future.