About this site

This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.

1994

Ø. Bophuthatswana incident – Viljoen, AWB: dumping Mangope.

Ø. Voter Education.

Ø. Election: the run up, the day, the counting, the irregularities and the final 'deal'.  The moving experience of the actual voting, the lines of people, etc.

Ø. Buthelezi joining in at the last minute.

Ø. What is more important: in countries like South Africa, countries on the way towards democratisation, is it more important that the outcome of an election be perceived to be legitimate by the people, by the community, and produce stability rather than to try and judge it on the sole criterion of whether it were free and fair?

Ø. Mandela's inauguration.

Ø. GNU

Ø. RDP - and no-one really understanding it.

Ø. Random strikes, large pay demands, part of the MK in rebellion, some former members of the SDU's running townships, forming gangs in townships, crime rates that are absolutely soaring to the point where there are more people being killed now than there were before liberation and the kind of simmering violence that is still there in KwaZulu, the volatility, the potential for it.

Ø. Central government slow to devolve power to the provinces – who were then blamed for non-delivery.

Ø. Rift between Buthelezi and the King.

Ø. Is Mandela the glue holding everything together?

Ø. Mandela choosing Mbeki as Deputy President instead of Ramaphosa.

Ø. No more 'nationalisation', now 'privatisation'.

Ø. Much talk about the forthcoming Truth  Commission.

Ø. Concerns about unemployment, the economy.

Ø. The gravy train - politicians' salaries.

Ø. How lives have changed (e.g. Premiers, MP's) and the adjustments.

Ø. How Cabinet works.

Ø. Controversial KZN land deal – one third of KZN handed over to the monarchy (signed by de Klerk).

Ø. Do whites understand the evil perpetrated on blacks?

This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. Return to theThis resource is hosted by the site.