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 It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.

Freedom Alliance (FA)

The FA is a political pressure group consisting of the Afrikaner Volksfront, the Inkatha Freedom Party, the Ciskei and Bophuthatswana homeland governments, and the Conservative Party. It is viewed by many as a rather tenuous alliance of spoilers bonded by the maxim that 'an enemy of my enemy must be my friend'. All the members have at one stage or another pulled out of the multi-party negotiations process at the World Trade Centre, stating as their central reason the perception that the National Party and the African National Congress were pushing a predetermined agenda rough-shod past the other parties.

The founder members of the FA were originally all members of the Concerned South Africans group, which was disbanded in October 1993 only to re-emerge shortly afterwards with a new name.

Pushing a strong regional agenda, with some of its members subscribing to confederalism and others to federalism, the FA rejects the notion of a unitary state. Its founding manifesto states the following principles: the recognition of the right of self-determination; the protection and promotion of free-market enterprise and ownership; entrenched limitations of the power of the central government; and that Southern Africa be organised in member states which are primarily responsible for governance.

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.