Constitution-Making in the New South Africa

by Alexander Johnston

A review of the first phase of South Africa's transition from White minority rule. The main topics dealt with are the central constitutional issues of federalism versus the unitary state, and the search for a new electoral system. The central importance of the ANC to the process of political change is reflected in a chapter which discusses the challenges facing the movement as it re-establishes itself in South Africa, and its progress in meeting those challenges in the first phase of transition. One chapter discusses contending views of the post-apartheid political economy and another, problems of nation-building and the accommodation of minorities. There are two contributions on the crucially important topic of local bargaining on the shape of the post-apartheid city. Such talks will be vitally important in deciding how (and where) people live, and whether deals struck at national level will be workable. That political change in South Africa has moved as far and as fast as it has, is due in large measure to the profound and rapid change which marked the end of the 80s and beginning of the 90s elsewhere in the world. This international perspective is given its due weight in the book, with five chapters reflecting on, among other things, South Africa's "re-entry" into the international community, the ANC's foreign policy, and the changing place of South Africa in the perceptions of the West.

288 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1993