South Africa Culture

Geography

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South Africa occupies the southern tip of the African continent, stretching from 22°S to 35°S latitude and from 17°E to 33°E longitude. The northeastern corner of the country lies within the tropics, astride the Tropic of Capricorn. South Africa covers 1.2 million square kilometers of land, one-seventh the area of the United States, or roughly twice the area of Texas. Nearly 4,900 kilometers of international boundaries separate South Africa from Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Swaziland--from northwest to northeast--and South Africa completely surrounds the small nation of Lesotho. In addition, the 2,881-kilometer coastline borders the Atlantic Ocean on the west and the Indian Ocean on the south and east. South Africa's extraterritorial holdings include Robben Island, Dassen Island, and Bird Island in the Atlantic Ocean, and Prince Edward Island and Marion Island about 1,920 kilometers southeast of Cape Town in the Indian Ocean. Marion Island, at 46°S latitude, is the site of an important weather research station.

South Africa forms a distinct region, or subcontinent, divided from the rest of Africa by the rivers that mark its northern border. In the northwest, the Orange River cuts through the Namib Desert and divides South Africa from Namibia. In the east, the Limpopo River traverses large areas of arid grassland along the common border with Zimbabwe and southeastern Botswana. Between these two, the Molopo River winds through the southern basin of the Kalahari Desert, also dividing South Africa from Botswana. Populations have moved across these rivers almost continuously over the centuries, but, in general, the northern border region of South Africa is sparsely populated.

The geological substratum of the subcontinent was formed at least 3.8 billion years ago, according to geologists, and most of the country's natural features evolved into their present form more than 200 million years ago. Especially since the early twentieth-century writings of Alfred Wegener, geologists have hypothesized that South Africa was once part of a large land mass, now known as Gondwana, or Gondwanaland, that slowly fractured along the African coastline millions of years ago. Theories of such a supercontinent are bolstered by geological continuities and mineral similarities between South Africa and South America, by fossil similarities between South Africa and the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar, and by the sharp escarpments, or geological fractures, that encircle most of southern Africa near the coast.

The ancient rock substratum is overlain by sedimentary and volcanic rock formations. Because ground cover is sparse, only about 11 percent of the land in South Africa is arable. More than 20 percent of the land is too arid or the soil is too poor for any agricultural activity without irrigation; roughly 66 percent is suitable only for livestock grazing. Even the thin soil cover has been severely eroded, especially in the country's most overpopulated and impoverished rural areas. The relatively poor land conceals enormous wealth in minerals, however, including gold, diamonds, copper, platinum, asbestos, and coal.

Geographic Regions

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Like much of the African continent, South Africa's landscape is dominated by a high plateau in the interior, surrounded by a narrow strip of coastal lowlands. Unlike most of Africa, however, the perimeter of South Africa's inland plateau rises abruptly to form a series of mountain ranges before dropping to sea level. These mountains, known as the Great Escarpment, vary between 2,000 meters and 3,300 meters in elevation. The coastline is fairly regular and has few natural harbors. Each of the dominant land features--the inland plateau, the encircling mountain ranges, and the coastal lowlands--exhibits a wide range of variation in topography and in natural resources.

The interior plateau consists of a series of rolling grasslands ("veld," in Afrikaans), arising out of the Kalahari Desert in the north. The largest subregion in the plateau is the 1,200-meter to 1,800-meter-high central area known as the Highveld. The Highveld stretches from Western Cape province to the northeast, encompassing the entire Free State (formerly, Orange Free State). In the north, it rises into a series of rock formations known as the Witwatersrand (literally, "Ridge of White Waters" in Afrikaans, commonly shortened to Rand--see Glossary). The Rand is a ridge of gold-bearing rock, roughly 100 kilometers by thirty-seven kilometers, that serves as a watershed for numerous rivers and streams. It is also the site of the world's largest proven gold deposits and the country's leading industrial city, Johannesburg.

North of the Witwatersrand is a dry savanna subregion, known as the Bushveld, characterized by open grasslands with scattered trees and bushes. Elevation varies between 600 meters and about 900 meters above sea level. The Bushveld, like the Rand, houses a virtual treasure chest of minerals, one of the largest and best known layered igneous (volcanic) mineral complexes in the world. Covering an area roughly 350 kilometers by 150 kilometers, the Bushveld has extensive deposits of platinum and chromium and significant reserves of copper, fluorspar, gold, nickel, and iron.

Along the northern edge of the Bushveld, the plains rise to a series of high plateaus and low mountain ranges, which form the southern edge of the Limpopo River Valley in Northern Province. These mountains include the Waterberg and the Strypoortberg ranges, and, in the far north, the Soutpansberg Mountains. The Soutpansberg range reaches an elevation of 1,700 meters before dropping off into the Limpopo River Valley and the border between South Africa and Zimbabwe. The Kruger National Park, which is known for its diverse terrain and wildlife, abuts most of the north-south border with Mozambique.

West of the Bushveld is the southern basin of the Kalahari Desert, which borders Namibia and Botswana at an elevation of 600 meters to 900 meters. Farther south, the Southern Namib Desert stretches south from Namibia along the Atlantic coastline. Between these two deserts lies the Cape Middleveld subregion, an arid expanse of undulating plains that sometimes reaches an elevation of 900 meters. The Cape Middleveld is also characterized by large depressions, or "pans," where rainfall collects, providing sustenance for a variety of plants and animals.

The southern border of the Highveld rises to form the Great Escarpment, the semicircle of mountain ranges roughly paralleling South Africa's coastline. The Drakensberg Mountains, the country's largest mountain range, dominate the southern and the eastern border of the Highveld from the Eastern Cape province to the border with Swaziland. The highest peaks of the Drakensberg Mountains in KwaZulu-Natal exceed 3,300 meters and are even higher in Lesotho, which is known as the "Mountain Kingdom."

In the west and the southwest, the Cape Ranges, the country's only "fold mountains"--formed by the folding of the continental crust--form an "L," where the north-south ranges meet several east-west ranges. The north-south Cape Ranges, paralleling the Atlantic coastline, include the Cedarberg Mountains, the Witsenberg Mountains, and the Great Winterhoek Mountains, and have peaks close to 2,000 meters high. The east-west ranges, paralleling the southern coastline, include the Swartberg Mountains and the Langeberg Mountains, with peaks exceeding 2,200 meters.

The Cape Ranges are separated from the Highveld by a narrow strip of semidesert, known as the Great Karoo (Karoo is a Khoisan term for "land of thirst"). Lying between 450 meters and 750 meters above sea level, the Great Karoo is crossed by several rivers that have carved canyons and valleys in their southward descent from the Highveld into the ocean. Another narrow strip of arid savanna lies south of the Great Karoo, between the Swartberg Mountains and the Langeberg Mountains. This high plain, known as the Little Karoo, has a more temperate climate and more diverse flora and fauna than the Great Karoo.

The narrow coastal strip between the Great Escarpment and the ocean, called the Lowveld, varies in width from about sixty kilometers to more than 200 kilometers. Beyond the coastline, the continental shelf is narrow in the west but widens along the south coast, where exploitable deposits of oil and natural gas have been found. The south coast is also an important spawning ground for many species of fish that eventually migrate to the Atlantic Ocean fishing zones.

Lakes and Rivers

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Water shortages are a chronic and severe problem in much of South Africa. The country has no commercially navigable rivers and no significant natural lakes. Along the coastline are several large lagoons and estuarine lakes, such as Lake Saint Lucia in KwaZulu-Natal. The government has created several artificial lakes, primarily for agricultural irrigation.

South Africa's largest river, the Orange River, rises in the Drakensberg Mountains and flows to the west and northwest, draining the highlands of Lesotho before being joined by the Caledon River between the Eastern Cape province and the Free State. The Orange River forms the border with Namibia before emptying into the Atlantic Ocean.

The major tributary of the Orange River, the Vaal ("foul"--for its murky cast) River, rises in the Drakensbergs and flows westward, joining the Orange River from the north in Northern Cape province. Together, the Orange and the Vaal rivers drain almost two-thirds of the interior plateau of South Africa. Other major rivers are the Breede River, the Komati River, the Olifants River, the Tugela River, and the Umzimvubu River, which run fairly short distances from the interior plateau to the ocean, and the Limpopo and Molopo rivers along the northern border with Botswana and Zimbabwe.

Climate and Rainfall

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Climatic conditions generally range from Mediterranean in the southwestern corner of the country to temperate in the interior plateau, and subtropical in the northeast. A small area in the northwest has a desert climate. Most of the country has warm, sunny days and cool nights. Rainfall generally occurs during summer (November through March), although in the southwest, around the Cape of Good Hope, rainfall often occurs in winter (June through August). Temperatures are influenced by variations in elevation, terrain, and ocean currents more than latitude.

Temperature and rainfall patterns vary in response to the movement of a high-pressure belt that circles the globe between 25° and 30° south latitude during the winter and low-pressure systems that occur during summer. There is very little difference in average temperatures from south to north, however, in part because the inland plateau rises slightly in the northeast. For example, the average annual temperature in Cape Town is 17°C, and in Pretoria, 17.5°C, although these cities are separated by almost ten degrees of latitude. Maximum temperatures often exceed 32°C in the summer, and reach 38°C in some areas of the far north. The country's highest recorded temperatures, close to 48°C, have occurred in both the Northern Cape and Mpumalanga (formerly Eastern Transvaal).

Frost occurs in high altitudes during the winter months. The coldest temperatures have been recorded about 250 kilometers northeast of Cape Town, where the average annual minimum temperature is -6.1°C. Record snowfalls (almost fifty centimeters) occurred in July 1994 in mountainous areas bordering Lesotho.

Climatic conditions vary noticeably between east and west, largely in response to the warm Agulhas ocean current, which sweeps southward along the Indian Ocean coastline in the east for several months of the year, and the cold Benguela current, which sweeps northward along the Atlantic Ocean coastline in the west. Air temperatures in Durban, on the Indian Ocean, average nearly 6°C warmer than temperatures at the same latitude on the Atlantic Ocean coast. The effects of these two currents can be seen even at the narrow peninsula of the Cape of Good Hope, where water temperatures average 4°C higher on the east side than on the west.

Rainfall varies considerably from west to east. In the northwest, annual rainfall often remains below 200 millimeters. Much of the eastern Highveld, in contrast, receives 500 millimeters to 900 millimeters of rainfall per year; occasionally, rainfall there exceeds 2,000 millimeters. A large area of the center of the country receives about 400 millimeters of rain, on average, and there are wide variations closer to the coast. The 400-millimeter "rainfall line" has been significant because land east of the rainfall line is generally suitable for growing crops, and land west of the rainfall line, only for livestock grazing or crop cultivation on irrigated land

Environmental Trends

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South Africa has a wealth of natural resources, but also some severe environmental problems. The mainstay of the economy, the mining industry, has introduced environmental concerns, and mineowners have taken some steps in recent years to minimize the damage from this enterprise (see Environmental Protection and Tourism, ch. 3). Agriculture suffers from both land and water shortages, and commercial farming practices have taken a toll on the land. Energy production, too, has often contributed to environmental neglect.

Because of the generally steep grade of the Great Escarpment as it descends from the interior to the coastal lowlands, many of South Africa's rivers have an unusually high rate of runoff and contribute to serious soil erosion. In addition, water consumption needs and irrigation for agriculture have required building numerous dams. As of the mid-1990s, the country has 519 dams with a total capacity of 50 billion cubic meters. Water management engineers estimate that the Vaal River, which provides most of the water for the industrial hub around the Witwatersrand, has reached its maximum capacity for water utilization.

The Lesotho Highlands Water Project, the largest hydroelectric project ever undertaken in Africa, is a thirty-year joint endeavor between South Africa and Lesotho that is due for completion in the year 2020. Through a series of dams on the headwaters of the Orange River, it will alleviate water shortages in South Africa and is expected to provide enough electrical power to enable Lesotho to become virtually self-sufficient in energy.

Much of the land in South Africa has been seriously overgrazed and overcultivated. During the apartheid era, black African farmers were denied many government benefits, such as fertilizers, which were available to white farmers. Settlement patterns, too, have contributed to land degradation, particularly in overcrowded black homelands, and the inadequate and poorly administered homelands' budgets have allowed few improvements in land use.

The environmental impacts of the mining industry have been devastating to some areas of the Witwatersrand, the country's most densely populated region. Some of the gold deposits located here have been mined for more than a century. According to South African geographer Malcolm Lupton and South African urban planning expert Tony Wolfson, mine shafts--the deepest is 3,793 meters--have made hillsides and ridges less stable. Pumping water from subterranean aquifers has caused the natural water table to subside, and the resulting cavities within the dolomite rock formations that overlie many gold deposits sometimes collapse, causing sinkholes. Moreover, these impacts of the mining industry could worsen over time.

Industrial wastes and pollutants are another mining-related environmental hazard. Solid wastes produced by the separation of gold from ore are placed in dumps, and liquid wastes are collected in pits, called slimes dams. Both of these contain small amounts of radioactive uranium. Radon gas emitted by the uranium poses a health threat when inhaled and can contribute to lung cancer and other ailments. Furthermore, the dust from mine dumps can contribute to respiratory diseases, such as silicosis.

Acids and chemicals used to reduce the ore to gold also leave dangerous contaminants in the water table. Streams around Johannesburg townships, such as Soweto, have been found to contain uranium, sulfates, cyanide, and arsenic. Land near mining operations is sometimes rendered "sterile" or too contaminated for farming, and efforts to reclaim the land have often proved too costly for industry or government.

Air pollution is a serious problem in some areas. Most homes lack electricity in the mid-1990s, and coal is used for cooking and heating. Air-quality tests have revealed high levels of particulate pollution, as a result, especially during cold weather. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported in the early 1990s that air-quality measurements in Soweto and surrounding townships outside Johannesburg exceeded recommended levels of particulate pollution for at least three months of the year. Other studies suggest that air pollution contributes to child health problems, especially respiratory ailments, in densely populated areas.

Electricity for industrial and commercial use and for consumption in urban areas is often produced in coal-burning power stations. These electric power stations lack sulfur "scrubbers," and air-quality surveys have shown that they emit as much as 1.2 million tons of sulfur dioxide a year. A 1991 government-appointed panel of researchers reported that South Africa had contributed about 2 percent of the so-called greenhouse gases in the global environment.

Many government officials in 1995 had been among the strongest critics of earlier governments, and a frequent topic of criticism was environmental neglect. Preserving the environment, therefore, was important in the mid-1990s, but financial constraints were limiting the government's ability to enact or implement such measures. Economic development and improved living standards among the poor appeared likely to outweigh long-range environmental concerns for at least the remainder of the 1990s.

The Society

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SOCIETY IS STILL BEING FORMED in South Africa in the 1990s. The region's earliest cultures have long since been displaced, and most people living in South Africa today are descendants of Africans who came to the region in the first millennium A.D. These early populations did not remain in one place over the centuries, however. Instead, their settlement patterns changed as numerous small chiefdoms were thrown into upheaval by increasing conflicts over land, the arrival of European settlers after the seventeenth century, and nineteenth-century Zulu expansionism. During the twentieth century, several million South Africans were displaced by the government, especially after the country's system of apartheid (see Glossary) invalidated many of their land claims.

South Africa's turbulent social history should not obscure the fact that this region probably was home to some of the earliest humans on earth. Archaeological evidence suggests that human populations evolved in the broad region of south central and eastern Africa, perhaps as early as 2 million years ago, but at least 200,000 years ago. Fossil remains of Homo sapiens in eastern South Africa have been tentatively dated to 50,000 years ago, and other remains show evidence of iron smelting about 1,700 years ago in the area that became the northern Transvaal. The evolutionary links between the earliest inhabitants and twentieth-century African populations are not well known, but it is clear that San and Khoikhoi (also called Khoi) peoples have been in southern Africa longer than any other living population.

San hunters and gatherers and Khoikhoi herdsmen, known together as Khoisan because of cultural and linguistic similarities, were called "Bushmen" and "Hottentots" by early European settlers. Both of these terms are considered pejorative in the late twentieth century and are seldom used. Most of the nearly 3 million South Africans of mixed-race ancestry (so-called "coloureds") are descendants of Khoisan peoples and Europeans over the past three centuries.

Bantu language speakers who arrived in southern Africa from the north during the first millennium A.D. displaced or killed some Khoisan peoples they encountered, but they allowed many others to live among them peacefully. Most Bantu societies were organized into villages and chiefdoms, and their economies relied primarily on livestock and crop cultivation. Their early ethnic identities were fluid and shifted according to political and social demands. For example, the Nguni or Nguni speakers, one of the largest Bantu language groups, have been a diverse and expanding population for several centuries. When groups clashed with one another, or their communities became too large, their political identity could easily shift to emphasize their loyalty to a specific leader or descent from a specific forebear.

Historians believe that the ancestors of the Nguni-speaking Xhosa peoples were the first Bantu speakers to reach the southern tip of the continent. The Zulu, a related group of small chiefdoms, arrived soon after, and by the early nineteenth century they had evolved into a large, predatory kingdom. Zulu armies displaced or destroyed many small chiefdoms, and in the upheaval some of those who fled north probably retraced the pathways their ancestors had used centuries earlier as they moved into the region. Others were subjugated and assimilated into Zulu society, and a few--the forebears of today's Swazi and Sotho peoples--resisted Zulu advances and withdrew into mountainous regions that would later become independent nations.

European travelers and explorers visited southern Africa over the centuries and, after the mid-seventeenth century, began settling near the Cape of Good Hope. Dutch immigrants moved inland from the coast in search of farmland and independence, especially during the nineteenth century, when their migration became known as the "Great Trek." British merchants, farmers, and missionaries arrived in large numbers during the nineteenth century. Asians, including merchants and traders as well as laborers and slaves, arrived from India, China, Malaya, and the Indonesian archipelago. South Africa began to develop a multiethnic mercantile, trading, and financial class, based primarily on the country's mineral wealth after the discovery of diamonds and gold in the 1880s.

The South African War of 1899-1902, one of the Anglo-Boer Wars, hastened the process of assimilation that made South Africa one of the twentieth century's most diverse populations. After the war, East Europeans arrived in growing numbers, many of them fleeing religious or political persecution. South Africans of African descent were increasingly marginalized as the concept of racial separation became a central theme in political debate and a key factor in government strategies for economic development.

The mining industry fueled the development of the interior plateau region as the nation's industrial heartland. Agriculture was made possible in this relatively arid land scattered with rocky outcrops only by employing indigenous or imported laborers at low wages and by the extensive use of irrigation. These measures allowed rural whites to achieve living standards that would have been impossible elsewhere and contributed to the growth of flourishing urban centers. The earliest of these were Cape Town, where the relatively dry hinterland proved ideal for grain farming and vineyards, and Durban, where agricultural development centered around sugarcane, forestry, and a variety of food crops.

The government adopted elements of legally entrenched racial supremacy in the twentieth century that culminated in the legal separation of the races, or apartheid, after 1948. Some believed that apartheid would allow parallel development of all ethnic and racial groups, but it was soon clear to most South Africans and to others that apartheid was an intolerable system of racial privilege and subordination bolstered by the frequent use of force.

Until the mid-twentieth century, white South Africans' views on race were relatively consistent with those of other Western nations. But after World War II, when the rest of the world began working toward greater integration among races and nations, South Africa veered in the opposite direction. By the 1960s, white domination had become entrenched, even as colonial rule was ending in the rest of Africa and racial segregation was condemned throughout much of the world.

As a result, South Africa became increasingly marginalized within the international community. Apartheid became so repugnant to so many people worldwide that this wealthy nation faced mounting economic and political pressures to end it. South Africa's growing isolation, together with the disastrous effects of apartheid, convinced most whites that racial separation would, in the long run, not guarantee their safety or prosperity. The government began dismantling racial barriers in the early 1990s, but apartheid-era distinctions left lasting marks on South African society, and the new, multiracial government in the mid-1990s faced too many pressing needs to spend much time celebrating its country's newfound character.

Population

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Size and Growth

The first census of the Union of South Africa was taken in 1911, one year after its formation. Several enumerations occurred after that, but the black African population was not accurately counted in any of them. In 1950, when apartheid legislation officially restricted black peoples to approximately 13 percent of the land, the government declared that a national census would be taken at the beginning of each decade. After that, Africans were gradually assigned to live in these homelands, then called Bantustans. As the first four homelands were granted nominal independence in the 1970s and the early 1980s, their residents and others assigned to live there were excluded from the official census of South Africa.

Another problem with census measurements was that many black South Africans lived in informal settlements, or "squatter camps," close to cities where they worked or hoped to work, and squatters were often omitted from census counts. In addition, although all citizens were legally required to register births, deaths, marriages, and divorces, many people--especially urban blacks--avoided doing so, in part because of the stringency and complexity of the laws governing legal residency.

The 1980 census count was nearly 23.8 million; another 4.6 million were added to compensate for acknowledged undercounting, resulting in a nationwide population of 28.4 million. The figures excluded those living in the three homelands that were nominally independent in 1980--an estimated 2.7 million in Transkei, 1 million in Bophuthatswana, and about 350,000 in Venda. A fourth homeland, Ciskei, with a population of 678,000, became "independent" in 1981.

The next census, in 1991, took place amid unprecedented political violence. For the first time, the government used aerial photography and sample surveys to enumerate residents in eighty-eight "unrest" areas, which were otherwise inaccessible to government officials. After being adjusted for underenumeration, the 1991 census yielded a count of 30,986,920 citizens, excluding the four "independent" homelands. Residents of the other six non-independent ("self-governing") homelands--10,746,504 people--were included in the nationwide count.

In 1992 the United States Bureau of the Census estimated that 48 percent of all black South Africans, and about 1 percent of all other racial groups, lived in the ten homelands--which made up only about one-seventh of the total land area of the country. On this basis, the bureau estimated the total population of South Africa at 40.6 million.

In 1994 the South African government estimated the total nationwide population at 40.4 million, after all ten homelands had been reincorporated into South Africa. In that year, the United States Bureau of the Census estimated the total population of South Africa at 43.9 million. Relying on the South African government's enumeration and legal categories, the South African Institute of Race Relations estimated that the population was 76.4 percent black, 12.6 percent white, 8.5 percent coloured, and 2.5 percent Asian.

Population growth rates declined from about 2.9 percent per year in the early 1980s to 2.4 percent in 1995, according to the Development Bank of Southern Africa, a South African economic research and lending organization. Again, racial groups varied; population growth was about 2.6 percent per year for blacks, 2.2 percent for coloureds, 1.9 percent for Asians, and 1.0 percent for whites. The government estimated that the population would double by the year 2025.

Life expectancy at birth was 62.7 years for males and 68.3 years for females in 1996, placing South Africa just below the global median. These figures, too, varied considerably by race; for black males, life expectancy was about nine years less than for white males. About 50.5 percent of the population is female and 49.5 percent is male, according to the South African Central Statistical Service. In some rural areas and the former homelands, labor policies that draw men into urban areas have resulted in strongly skewed gender ratios. For example, in the early 1990s, the population of QwaQwa was estimated to be 56 percent female; in KwaZulu, 54 percent female.

In 1995 overall fertility was 4.1 births per adult female, down from 5.6 a decade earlier. The crude birth rate was 27.1 births per 1,000 people, according to official estimates. Twelve percent of all births in the early 1990s were to women aged nineteen or younger. Infant mortality was estimated at 45.8 deaths within the first year, per 1,000 live births. The average annual death rate for the entire population was 7.6 per 1,000. Until 1994, these statistics had been reported by racial group, and both birth and death rates were higher among blacks than among whites.

The median age was 19.2 years in 1995, according to official estimates. Roughly 37 percent of all South Africans were fifteen years of age or younger. Nearly 13 percent were above the age of fifty. Racial disparities in age composition were large, however; for example, 52 percent of blacks and only 31 percent of whites were under age nineteen.

The age dependency ratio, or the ratio of the combined population of children and the aged (those less than fifteen years of age and those more than sixty-four years of age) compared to the number between age fifteen and sixty-four, was 70.6 percent in 1995. This measurement is often used to estimate the burden of "economic dependence" on the economically active population. Variations among provinces are great, in part because of the uneven job concentration across the country. For example, in the Northern Province, the age dependency ratio is more than 100; while in Gauteng, the age dependency ratio is less than 50.0, according to the Central Statistical Service.

Distribution

Population density averaged 34.4 persons per square kilometer in 1995, although distribution is uneven nationwide. The eastern half of the country is more densely populated than the western half, primarily because of the aridity of much of the west and the concentration of minerals in the east. The most densely populated areas of the country until 1994 were the homelands--where average densities sometimes exceeded 300 people per square kilometer--and Gauteng, which includes Pretoria, Johannesburg, and the mining region of Witwatersrand. More than 7 million people, nearly 17 percent of the population, live in Gauteng, which constitutes less than 2 percent of the land area of South Africa. The population of Gauteng is expected to double by the year 2010.

Population distribution by racial group is also uneven. In 1995 black South Africans formed a majority in all provinces except the Western Cape, where they made up only 20 percent of the population. Cities were predominantly white, and the townships and squatter areas that ringed the cities were overwhelmingly black. The racial composition of cities and of formerly white neighborhoods began to change in the early 1990s as apartheid-related laws were rescinded or ignored, and the pace of change accelerated in the mid-1990s.

The Johannesburg-based Urban Foundation and other researchers have estimated that the urban population was approximately 57 percent of the total in 1995. Rates of urbanization varied widely by province. The most highly urbanized provinces were Gauteng (nearly 96 percent), Western Cape (86 percent), and Northern Cape (73 percent). The population of Northern Province, in contrast, was only about 9 percent urban, according to the Development Bank of Southern Africa.

Ethnic Groups and Language

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South Africans represent a rich array of ethnic backgrounds, but the idea of ethnicity became highly explosive during the apartheid era, when the government used it for political and racial purposes. Whites in South Africa often attributed the recent centuries of warfare in the region to the varied origins of its peoples, rather than to the increasing economic pressures they had faced. Government officials, accordingly, imposed fairly rigid ethnic or tribal categories on a fluid social reality, giving each black African a tribal label, or identity, within a single racial classification.

Apartheid doctrines taught that each black population would eventually achieve maturity as a nation, just as the Afrikaner people, in their own view, had done. Officials, therefore, sometimes referred to the largest African ethnic groups as nations. The government established language areas for each of these and, during the 1950s and 1960s, assigned them separate residential areas according to perceived ethnic identity. Over the next decade, portions of these language areas became Bantustans, and then self-governing homelands; finally, in the 1970s and the 1980s, four of the homelands--Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda, and Ciskei--were granted nominal "independence". Although the independent homelands were not recognized as separate nations by any country other than South Africa, people assigned to live there were officially "noncitizens" of South Africa.

Apartheid policies also empowered the government to remove black Africans from cities and to preserve the "ethnic character"of neighborhoods in the African townships that were created, legally and illegally, around the cities. Many township neighborhoods were given specific "tribal" designations. Township residents generally ignored these labels, however, and reacted to the divisiveness of the government's racial policies by minimizing the importance of their ethnic heritage, or disavowing it entirely. A few South Africans embraced the notion that ethnicity was an outdated concept, a creation of governments and anthropologists, invoked primarily to create divisions among people of a particular class or region.

The word "tribe" assumed especially pejorative connotations during the apartheid era, in part because of the distortions that were introduced by applying this concept to society. Technically, no tribes had existed in South Africa for most of the twentieth century. The term "tribe," in anthropology, is often defined as a group of people sharing a similar culture--i.e., patterns of belief and behavior--settled in a common territory, and tracing their ancestry to a common--perhaps mythical--ancestor. But none of South Africa's black peoples shared a common, ancestral territory; they had been uprooted and relocated by warfare, by the search for new land, or by government action. Few rural residents could trace their descent from an ancestor shared with many of their neighbors.

Then in 1993 and 1994, as the country emerged from the apartheid era, many South Africans appeared to reclaim their ethnic heritage and to acknowledge pride in their ancestry. The new political leaders recognized the practical advantage of encouraging people to identify both with the nation and with a community that had a past older than the nation. So the interim constitution of 1993 reaffirmed the importance of ethnicity by elevating nine African languages to the status of official languages of the nation, along with English and Afrikaans.

Language Groups

The most widely spoken of South Africa's eleven official languages in the mid-1990s are Zulu (isiZulu), Xhosa (isiXhosa), Afrikaans, and English (for Bantu prefixes, see Glossary). The others--isiNdebele, sePedi (seSotho sa Leboa), seSotho, seTswana, siSwati, tshiVenda (also referred to as luVenda), and xiTsonga--are spoken in large areas of the country (see fig. 12). Each of the eleven includes a number of regional dialects and variants.

Despite the diversity of these language groups, it is nonetheless possible to begin to understand this complex society by viewing language groupings as essentially the same as ethnic groupings. This is possible because, in general, most South Africans consider one of the eleven official languages, or a closely related tongue, to be their first language; and most people acquire their first language as part of a kinship group or an ethnically conscious population.

Nine of South Africa's official languages (all except Afrikaans and English) are Bantu languages. Bantu languages are a large branch of the Niger-Congo language family, which is represented throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa. Bantu languages are spoken by more than 100 million Africans in Central Africa, East Africa, and southern Africa. Four major subgroups of Bantu languages--Nguni, Sotho, Tsonga-Shangaan, and Venda--are represented in South Africa.

The largest group of closely related languages in South Africa is the Nguni. Nguni peoples in the country number at least 18 million. About 9 million Sotho (BaSotho) and 2 million Tswana (BaTswana) speak seSotho or a closely related language, seTswana. More than 2 million Tsonga and Shangaan peoples speak xiTsonga and related languages; at least 600,000 Venda (VaVenda) speak tshiVenda (luVenda).

Each of these language groups also extends across South Africa's boundaries into neighboring countries. For example, Nguni-speaking Swazi people make up almost the entire population of Swaziland. At least 1.3 million seSotho speakers live in Lesotho, and more than 1 million people in Botswana speak seTswana. Roughly 4 million speakers of xiTsonga and related languages live in Mozambique, and tshiVenda is spoken by several thousand people in southern Zimbabwe. Language boundaries are not rigid and fixed, however; regional dialects often assume characteristics of more than one language.

Nguni

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The Nguni peoples are classified into three large subgroups, the Northern Nguni, the Southern Nguni, and the Ndebele. The Zulu and the Swazi are among the Northern Nguni. The Xhosa are the largest Southern Nguni society, but the neighboring Thembu and Mpondo are also well known Southern Nguni societies, often described as subgroups of the Xhosa. Each of these groups is a heterogeneous grouping of smaller (also heterogeneous) ethnic groups.

Four of South Africa's official languages are Nguni languages; isiZulu, isiXhosa, siSwati, and isiNdebele are spoken primarily by the Zulu, the Xhosa, the Swazi, and the Ndebele peoples, respectively. Each of these languages has regional variants and dialects, which are often mutually intelligible.

Before the nineteenth century, the dominant Nguni settlement pattern was that of dispersed households, as opposed to villages. The typical household was centered on a patrilineage; it also included other relatives through a variety of kinship ties, and people who had attached themselves to the household--often as indentured laborers who were rewarded in cattle. Cattle were central to most Nguni economies, which ranged from almost complete dependence on herding to mixed pastoralism and crop cultivation, often supplemented by hunting.

Nguni political organization generally consisted of small chiefdoms, sometimes only a few hundred people loyal to a person chosen by descent, achievement, or a combination of factors. Until the eighteenth century or later, historians believe, these chiefdoms were not united under a king or monarch. Each chiefdom typically included a group of related patrilineal clans, or descent groups united by common ancestry only a few generations deep, and others who had chosen to attach themselves to a particular chief. A chief could demand support and tribute (taxes) from his followers, could reward those he favored, could form political alliances, and could declare war against his enemies. A chief's followers, in turn, usually had the right to leave and to join another chiefdom, if they wished. Larger chiefdoms sometimes exercised limited control over smaller ones, but such hegemony generally did not
last for more than a generation or two.

Zulu

An estimated 8 million South Africans consider themselves Zulu (amaZulu) or members of closely related ethnic groups in the 1990s. By the eighteenth century, Zulu society encompassed a number of Nguni-speaking chiefdoms north of the Tugela River (see fig. 4). The Zulu homestead (imizi ) consisted of an extended polygynous (see Glossary) family and others attached to the household through social obligations. This social unit was largely self-sufficient, with responsibilities divided according to gender. Men were generally responsible for defending the homestead, caring for cattle, manufacturing and maintaining weapons and farm implements, and building dwellings. Women had domestic responsibilities and raised crops, usually grains, on land near the household.

Zulu chiefs demanded steadily increasing tribute or taxes from their subjects, acquired great wealth, commanded large armies, and, in many cases, subjugated neighboring chiefdoms. Military conquest allowed men to achieve status distinctions that had become increasingly important. In the early nineteenth century, the large and powerful Mthethwa chiefdom, led by Dingiswayo, dominated much of the region north of the Tugela River (see The Rise of African States, ch. 1). Shaka, a Zulu warrior who had won recognition in 1810 by skillfully subduing the leader of the warring Buthelezi chiefdom, took advantage of Dingiswayo's military defeat by the neighboring Ndwandwe armies to begin building the Zulu empire in 1817.

As king, Shaka Zulu (r. 1817-28) defied tradition by adopting new fighting strategies, by consolidating control over his military regiments, and by ruthlessly eliminating potential rivals for power. Shaka's warrior regiments (impis ) eventually subjugated the powerful Ndwandwe, and decimated or drove from the area the armies of Shaka's rivals. Spreading warfare--exacerbated by pressures from Europeans--drove thousands of Africans north and west, and the ensuing upheaval spawned new conflicts throughout the region (see fig. 5).

The Zulu empire weakened after Shaka's death in 1828 and fragmented, especially following military defeats at the hands of the Afrikaners in 1839 and the British in 1879. Zululand, the area north of the Tugela River, was incorporated into the British colony, Natal, in 1887. The last Zulu uprising, a poll tax protest led by Chief Bambatha in 1906, was ruthlessly suppressed. The Zulu population remained fragmented during most of the twentieth century, although loyalty to the royal family continued to be strong in some areas. Leaders of Zulu cultural organizations and Zulu politicians were able to preserve a sense of ethnic identity through the symbolic recognition of Zulu history and through local-level politics.

Zulu men and women have made up a substantial portion of South Africa's urban work force throughout the twentieth century, especially in the gold and copper mines of the Witwatersrand. Zulu workers organized some of the first black labor unions in the country. For example, the Zulu Washermen's Guild, Amawasha, was active in Natal and the Witwatersrand even before the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910. The Zululand Planters' Union organized agricultural workers in Natal in the early twentieth century.

The KwaZulu homeland was carved out of several unconnected plots of land in Natal in the 1960s. In 1976 Mangosuthu (Gatsha) Buthelezi, a member of the Zulu royal family, was named chief minister of KwaZulu, and the government declared KwaZulu a self-governing territory a year later. Buthelezi established good relations with the National Party-dominated government and, in the process, severed his former close ties to the African National Congress (ANC).

During the 1980s, Buthelezi refused repeated government offers of homeland independence; he preferred to retain the self-governing status that allowed the roughly 4 million residents of KwaZulu to be citizens of South Africa. Zulu solidarity was enhanced by Buthelezi's intellectually powerful and dominant personality and by his leadership of the Zulu cultural organization, Inkatha Yenkululeko Yesizwe (National Cultural Liberation Movement--usually called Inkatha), which became the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) during the 1990s.

During the apartheid era, many people in areas officially designated as Zulu were descendants of nineteenth-century Zulu warriors or subjects of the Zulu royal family, who retained a strong ethnic consciousness and pride in their Zulu identity. Others in these areas, however, traced their descent to those who resisted Shaka's domination or celebrated his death at the hands of his own relatives in 1828. Some viewed their association with Zulu royalty as little more than an artificial political creation. A substantial minority within the diverse Zulu society in the 1980s and the 1990s supported the rival ANC.

Military prowess continued to be an important value in Zulu culture, and this emphasis fueled some of the political violence of the 1990s. Zulu people generally admire those with physical and mental agility, and those who can speak eloquently and hold a crowd's attention. These attributes strengthened Buthelezi's support among many Zulu, but his political rhetoric sometimes sparked attacks on political opponents and critics, even within Zulu society.

Buthelezi's nephew, Goodwill Zwelithini, is the Zulu monarch in the 1990s. Buthelezi and King Goodwill won the agreement of ANC negotiators just before the April 1994 elections that, with international mediation, the government would establish a special status for the Zulu Kingdom after the elections. Zulu leaders understood this special status to mean some degree of regional autonomy within the province of KwaZulu-Natal.

Buthelezi was appointed minister of home affairs in the first Government of National Unity in 1994. He led a walkout of Zulu delegates from the National Assembly in early 1995 and clashed repeatedly with newly elected President Nelson (Rolihlahla) Mandela. Buthelezi threatened to abandon the Government of National Unity entirely unless his Zulu constituency received greater recognition and autonomy from central government control.

Swazi

About 1.6 million Swazi people live in the region in the 1990s--almost 900,000 in Swaziland and the remainder in South Africa, especially in the area of the former homeland, KaNgwane. Until the late eighteenth century, Swazi society consisted of a group of closely related Nguni chiefdoms organized around patrilineal descent groups. At that time, a powerful chief, Ngwane I, seized control over several smaller neighboring chiefdoms of Nguni and Sotho peoples to strengthen his own army's defense against the Mthethwa forces led by Dingiswayo. The greatest rival of the Mthethwa, the Ndwandwe, later subjugated the Mthethwa and killed Dingiswayo. Ngwane I, under pressure from the Ndwandwe, then withdrew into the mountainous territory that would later become Swaziland.

Ngwane I was able to resist incorporation into the Zulu empire during the reign of Shaka, and the Swazi maintained generally peaceful relations with Shaka's successors. Some Swazi clans were forced to move north, however, as regional upheaval spread, and together with displaced Zulu clans, they established aristocratic dynasties over herdsmen and farmers as far north as areas that would later become Malawi and Zambia.

In the twentieth century, the Swazi kingdom retained its autonomy, but not total independence, as the British protectorate of Swaziland in 1903 and as a British High Commission territory in 1907. In 1968 Swaziland became an independent nation led by King Sobhuza II. Swaziland has pressured Pretoria for the return of Swazi-occupied areas of South Africa since the 1960s. In 1982 Pretoria agreed, but that decision was reversed by the South African Supreme Court.

KaNgwane was carved out of land adjacent to Swaziland during the 1960s and was declared a "self-governing" territory with a population of about 400,000 in 1984. KaNgwane's Chief Minister Enos Mabuza tried to build an agricultural and industrial economy in the small, segmented territory, and he became the first homeland leader to grant full trade union rights to workers in his jurisdiction. Mabuza also led the fight against the incorporation of KaNgwane into Swaziland. During the late 1980s, he clashed with Pretoria by expressing strong support for the ANC, although many KaNgwane residents remained uninvolved in South African politics.

Xhosa

The Xhosa (amaXhosa) people in South Africa in the mid-1990s number roughly 6 million, according to official estimates, including the Pondo (Mpondo), Thembu, and several other small ethnic groups, which have been assimilated, to varying degrees, into Xhosa society over several centuries. Each of these is also a heterogeneous grouping of smaller populations.

Most Xhosa people speak English, and often several other languages, but they also take great pride in speaking Xhosa (isiXhosa), an Nguni language closely related to Zulu. Unlike most other African languages, Xhosa has more than a dozen "click" sounds, probably assimilated from Khoisan speakers over long periods of acculturation between Xhosa and Khoisan peoples.

Some ancestors of twentieth-century Xhosa arrived in the eastern Cape region from the north before the fifteenth century, and others moved into the area during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Xhosa history tells of settlement east of the Sundays River by the early eighteenth century. The Xhosa eliminated or enslaved some of the Khoisan speakers they encountered, but many Khoikhoi were peacefully assimilated into Xhosa society. Khoikhoi workers were often entrusted with the care of cattle for a generation or two before being accepted as equal members of Xhosa society. The Xhosa generally incorporated newcomers who recognized the dominance of the Xhosa chief. In fact, until the twentieth century, the term Xhosa was often used to designate territorial affiliation rather than common descent. The resulting Xhosa society was extremely diverse.

Most Xhosa lived by cattle herding, crop cultivation, and hunting. Homesteads were normally built near the tops of the numerous ridges that overlook the rivers of the area, including the Fish River, the Keiskama River, the Buffalo River, and the Kei River. Cattle, serving as symbols of wealth, as well as means of exchange, pack animals, and transportation, were central to the economy. Crops such as corn, sorghum, and tobacco thrived in years with adequate rainfall. Woodworking and ironworking were important men's occupations.

Xhosa homesteads were organized around descent groups, with descent traced through male forebears. These lineages, and the large clans formed by groups of related lineages, provided the center of Xhosa social organization. These descent groups were responsible for preserving ancestral ties and for perpetuating the group through sacrifices to the ancestors, mutual assistance among the living, and carefully arranged marriages with neighboring clans or lineages. Political power was often described as control over land and water. A powerful chief may be praised in oral histories by the claim that he had power over the land close to a large river, and a lesser chief, by the claim that he had power over land near a smaller river or tributary.

Xhosa oral histories tell of installing a royal lineage, probably by the early seventeenth century. This family, the Tshawe, or amaTshawe (people of Tshawe), continued to dominate other Xhosa clans for more than a century; only the Tshawe could be recognized as chiefs over other Xhosa, according to historical accounts in The House of Phalo: A History of the Xhosa People in the Day of Their Independence , by Jeffrey B. Peires. The Xhosa also experienced a rapid increase in population, and they divided several times over six or seven generations. The resulting dominant chiefdoms, the Gcaleka and the Rharhabe (Rarabe), formed distinct sections of Xhosa society throughout the twentieth century.

Xhosa people had extensive contact with Europeans by the early nineteenth century, and they generally welcomed European missionaries and educators into their territory. A Xhosa grammar book--the first in a southern African language--was published in 1834. Their early and sustained contact with Christian missionaries and educators led the Xhosa to distinguish between "school people," who had accepted Western innovation, and "red people," who were identified with the traditional red ocher used to dye clothing and to decorate the body. By the twentieth century, the Xhosa school people formed the core of South Africa's emerging black professional class and included lawyers, physicians, and ministers.

The South African government recognized the split between the Gcaleka Xhosa and the Ngqika (a subgroup of Rharhabe) Xhosa in the twentieth century by establishing two Xhosa homelands. Transkei, a segmented territory in eastern Cape Province bordering Lesotho, was designated for the Gcaleka Xhosa, and Ciskei--just west of Transkei--was for the Ngqika Xhosa. Transkei became an independent homeland in 1976, and Ciskei, in 1981.

Xhosa language speakers also include the Thembu (Tembu), the eastern neighbors of the Xhosa during much of their history. The Thembu represent a number of clans that managed to exert their dominance over neighboring clans. The Thembu had long and varied contacts with the Xhosa. These were often peaceful and friendly--for example, Xhosa history says that the Great Wife of each chief was a Thembu--but they sometimes erupted into war. The Thembu recognize their own royal clan, the Hala, who led many Thembu into battle against the Xhosa during the late eighteenth century.

Also closely related to the Xhosa are the Pondo (Mpondo), the eastern neighbors of the Thembu. The Pondo royal clan, the Nyawuza, struggled to establish and to preserve its dominance over neighboring clans well into the nineteenth century, when some of the Pondo and their neighbors were displaced and subjugated by the Zulu.

Another population often described as a Xhosa subgroup is the Mfengu, consisting of descendants of small remnants of clans and chiefdoms that were displaced during the early nineteenth-century upheaval of the mfecane (or crushing--see Glossary). Survivors of the mfecane attached themselves to Xhosa society, which was relatively stable, often in Xhosa villages located near Christian missions. After an initial period of clientship, or social inferiority that eroded as generations passed, the Mfengu were generally accepted as equals in the diverse Xhosa population.

Ndebele

The term Ndebele, or amaNdebele, in the 1990s refers primarily to about 800,000 South Africans whose forebears have inhabited areas of the northern Transvaal (now Northern Province) for more than a century. The Ndebele language, isiNdebele, is classified among the Nguni languages, although Sotho influences are strong enough in some areas that isiNdebele is sometimes also classified as a variant of seSotho.

Most Ndebele trace their ancestry to the area that became Natal Province, later KwaZulu-Natal. Some began moving northward well before the early nineteenth-century mfecane , and many of these settled in the northern Transvaal. Others, subjects of the Zulu leader Mzilikazi, fled north from Natal after his defeat by Shaka in 1817. Ndebele peoples throughout the region were forced to move several times after that, so that by the end of the nineteenth century, the Ndebele were dispersed throughout much of Natal, the Transvaal, and adjacent territory.

Many Ndebele became formidable warriors, often subjugating smaller chiefdoms and assimilating them into Ndebele society, and Ndebele clashed repeatedly with Voortrekker militias around Pretoria. The late nineteenth-century Afrikaner leader Paul Kruger jailed or executed many of their leaders, seized their land, and dispersed others to work for Afrikaner farmers as indentured servants. Some of the land was later returned to a few Ndebele, often as a reward for loyalty or recognition of status.

Under apartheid, many Ndebele living in the northern Transvaal were assigned to the predominantly seSotho-speaking homeland of Lebowa, which consisted of several segiments of land scattered across the northern Transvaal. Others, mostly southern Ndebele, who had retained more traditional elements of their culture and language, were assigned to KwaNdebele. KwaNdebele had been carved out of land that had been given to the son of Nyabela, a well-known Ndebele fighter in Kruger's time. The homeland was, therefore, prized by Ndebele traditionalists, who pressed for a KwaNdebele independence through the 1980s.

KwaNdebele was declared a "self-governing" territory in 1981. Very few of its 300,000 residents could find jobs in the homeland, however, so most worked in the industrial region of Pretoria and Johannesburg. At least 500,000 Ndebele people lived in urban centers throughout South Africa and in homelands other than KwaNdebele through the 1980s.

During the 1980s and the early 1990s, many Ndebele recognized a royal family, the Mahlangu family, and the capital of KwaNdebele was called KwaMahlangu. The royal family was divided, however, over economic issues and the question of "independence" for the homeland. These disputes were overridden by the dissolution of the homelands in 1994. At that time, in addition to the estimated 800,000 Ndebele people in South Africa, nearly 1.7 million Ndebele lived in Zimbabwe, where they constituted about one-sixth of the population and were known as Matabele; about 300,000 lived in Botswana.

Sotho

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At least 7 million Sotho (also BaSotho) people who speak seSotho and related languages live in South Africa. Another 3 million Sotho and closely related people live in neighboring countries. The diverse Sotho population includes the Northern Sotho (Pedi), the Southern Sotho, and the Tswana (BaTswana), each of which is itself a heterogeneous grouping.

Ancestors of today's Sotho population migrated into the region in the fifteenth century, according to historians, probably from the area of the northern Transvaal. Like many neighboring Nguni peoples, the Sotho traditionally relied on a combination of livestock raising and crop cultivation for subsistence. Most Sotho were herders of cattle, goats, and sheep, and cultivators of grains and tobacco. In addition, the Sotho were skilled craftsmen, renowned for their metalworking, leatherworking, and wood and ivory carving.

Also like the Nguni, most Sotho lived in small chiefdoms, in which status was determined in part by relationship to the chief. Unlike the Nguni, Sotho homesteads were grouped together into villages, with economic responsibilities generally shared among village residents. Villages were divided into wards, or residential areas, often occupied by members of more than one patrilineal descent group.

The village chief--a hereditary position--generally appointed ward leaders, whose residences were clustered around the chief's residence. Sotho villages sometimes grew into large towns of several thousand people. Farmland was usually outside the village, not adjacent to the homestead. This village organization may have enabled the Sotho villagers to defend themselves more effectively than they could have with dispersed households, and it probably facilitated control over ward leaders and subjects by the chief and his family.

Sotho villages were also organized into age-sets, or groups of men or women who were close in age. Each age-set had specific responsibilities--men organized for warfare and herding, depending on age-set, and women for crop cultivation and religious responsibilities. An entire age-set generally graduated from one task to the next, and the village often celebrated this change with a series of rituals and, in some cases, an initiation ceremony.

Sotho descent rules were important, even though descent groups did not form discrete local groups. Clans were often totemic, or bound to specific natural objects or animal species by mystical relationships, sometimes involving taboos and prohibitions. Major Sotho clans included the Lion (Taung), Fish (Tlhaping), Elephant (Tloung), and Crocodile (Kwean) clans.

Both Nguni and Sotho peoples reckoned descent through patrilineal ties, but their marriage rules differed markedly. Sotho patrilineages were usually endogamous--i.e., the preferred marriage partner would be a person related through patrilineal descent ties. Nguni patrilineages, in contrast, were exogamous--marriage within the descent group was generally forbidden.

By the early twentieth century, Sotho villages were losing their claims to land, largely because of pressure from whites. Cattle raising became more difficult, and as Western economic pressures intensified, Sotho people living in Lesotho and in South Africa increasingly turned to the mines for work. By the early 1990s, an estimated 100,000 BaSotho worked in South Africa's mines, and many others were part of South Africa's urban work force throughout the country.
Northern Sotho

The heterogeneous Northern Sotho are often referred to as the Pedi (or BaPedi), because the Pedi make up the largest of their constituent groups. Their language is sePedi (also called seSotho sa Leboa or Northern Sotho). This society arose in the northern Transvaal, according to historians, as a confederation of small chiefdoms some time before the seventeenth century. A succession of strong Pedi chiefs claimed power over smaller chiefdoms and were able to dominate important trade routes between the interior plateau and the Indian Ocean coast for several generations. For this reason, some historians have credited the Pedi with the first monarchy in the region, although their reign was marked by population upheaval and occasional military defeat.

During the nineteenth century, Pedi armies were defeated by the Natal armies of Mzilikazi and were revived under the command of a Pedi chief, Sekwati. Afrikaner Voortrekkers in the Transvaal acquired some Pedi lands peacefully, but later clashed with them over further land claims. By the 1870s, the Voortrekker armies were sufficiently weakened from these clashes that they agreed to a confederation with the British colonies of Natal and the Cape that would eventually lead to the South African War in 1899.

The smaller Lobedu population makes up another subgroup among the Northern Sotho. The Lobedu are closely related to the Shona population, the largest ethnic group in Zimbabwe, but the Lobedu are classified among the Sotho primarily because of linguistic similarities. The Lobedu were studied extensively by the early twentieth-century anthropologist J.D. Krige, who described the unique magical powers attributed to a Lobedu female authority figure, known to outsiders as the rain queen.

The Northern Sotho homeland of Lebowa was declared a "self-governing" (not independent) territory in 1972, with a population of almost 2 million. Economic problems plagued the poverty-stricken homeland, however, and the population was not unified by strong ethnic solidarity. Lebowa's chief minister, Cedric Phatudi, struggled to maintain control over the increasingly disgruntled homeland population during the early 1980s; his death in 1985 opened new factional splits and occasioned calls for a new homeland government. Homeland politics were complicated by the demands of several ethnic minorities within Lebowa to have their land transferred to the jurisdiction of another homeland. At the same time, government efforts to consolidate homeland territory forced the transfer of several small tracts of land into Lebowa.

Southern Sotho

The Southern Sotho peoples are a diverse group that includes almost 2 million South Africans, many of whom live in the area surrounding Lesotho, and 1.6 million residents of Lesotho. The Southern Sotho were unified during the reign of King Moshoeshoe I in the 1830s. Moshoeshoe established control over several small groups of Sotho speakers and Nguni speakers, who had been displaced by the mfecane . Some of these communities had established ties to San peoples who lived just west of Moshoeshoe's territory. As a result, Southern Sotho speech, unlike that of Northern Sotho, incorporates a number of "click" sounds associated with Khoisan languages.

Southern Sotho peoples were assigned to the tiny homeland of QwaQwa, which borders Lesotho, during the apartheid era. QwaQwa was declared "self-governing" in 1974, but Chief Minister Kenneth Mopeli rejected independence on the grounds that the homeland did not have a viable economy. Only about 200,000 Sotho people lived in QwaQwa during the 1980s.

A community of more than 300,000 people, Botshabelo, was incorporated into QwaQwa in 1987. Officials in the homeland capital, Phuthaditjhaba, and many homeland residents objected to the move, and the South African Supreme Court returned Botshabelo to the jurisdiction of the Orange Free State a short time later. The homeland continued to be an overcrowded enclave of people with an inadequate economic base until the homelands were dissolved in 1994.

Tswana

The Tswana (BaTswana), sometimes referred to as the Western Sotho, are a heterogeneous group, including descendants of the once great Tlhaping and Rolong societies, as well as the Hurutshe, Kwena, and other small groups. Their language, seTswana, is closely related to seSotho, and the two are mutually intelligible in most areas. About 4 million Tswana people live in southern Africa--3 million in South Africa and 1 million in the nation of Botswana. In South Africa, many BaTswana live in the area that formed the numerous segments of the former homeland, Bophuthatswana, as well as neighboring areas of the North-West Province and the Northern Cape. Tswana people are also found in most urban areas throughout South Africa.

By the nineteenth century, several Tswana groups were politically independent, loosely affiliated chiefdoms that clashed repeatedly with Afrikaner farmers who claimed land in the northern Transvaal. In the late nineteenth century, Afrikaner and British officials seized almost all Tswana territory, dividing it among the Cape Colony, Afrikaner republics, and British territories. In 1910, when the Cape and the Transvaal were incorporated into the Union of South Africa, the Tswana chiefs lost most of their remaining power, and the Tswana people were forced to pay taxes to the British Crown. They gradually turned to migrant labor, especially in the mines, for their livelihood.

Tswana culture is similar to that of the related Sotho peoples, although some Tswana chiefdoms were more highly stratified than those of other Sotho or the Nguni. Tswana culture was distinguished for its complex legal system, involving a hierarchy of courts and mediators, and harsh punishments for those found guilty of crimes. Tswana farmers often formed close patron-client relationships with nearby Khoisan-speaking hunters and herdsmen; the Tswana generally received meat and animal pelts in return for cattle and, sometimes, dogs for herding cattle.

Bophuthatswana was declared "independent" in 1977, although no country other than South Africa recognized its independence. The homeland consisted primarily of seven disconnected enclaves near, or adjacent to, the border between South Africa and Botswana. Efforts to consolidate the territory and its population continued throughout the 1980s, as successive small land areas outside Bophuthatswana were incorporated into the homeland. Its population of about 1.8 million in the late 1980s was estimated to be 70 percent Tswana peoples; the remainder were other Sotho peoples, as well as Xhosa, Zulu, and Shangaan. Another 1.5 million BaTswana lived elsewhere in South Africa.

Bophuthatswana's residents were overwhelmingly poor, despite the area's rich mineral wealth. Wages in the homeland's industrial sector were lower than those in South Africa, and most workers traveled to jobs outside the homeland each day. The poverty of homeland residents was especially evident in comparison with the world's wealthy tourists who visited Sun City, a gambling resort in Bophuthatswana.

The non-Tswana portion of the homeland population was denied the right to vote in local elections in 1987, and violence ensued. Further unrest erupted in early 1988, when members of the Botswana Defence Force tried to oust the unpopular homeland president, Lucas Mangope. Escalating violence after that led to the imposition of states of emergency and government crackdowns against ANC supporters in Bophuthatswana, who were often involved in anti-Mangope demonstrations. Mangope was ousted just before the April 1994 elections, and the homeland was officially dismantled after the elections.

Tsonga and Venda

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Tsonga

The Tsonga are a diverse population, generally including the Shangaan, Thonga, Tonga (unrelated to another nearby Tonga population to the north), and several smaller ethnic groups. Together they number about 1.5 million in South Africa in the mid-1990s, and at least 4.5 million in southern Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

In the eighteenth century, the ancestors of the Tsonga lived in small, independent chiefdoms, sometimes numbering a few thousand people. Most Tsonga relied on fishing for subsistence, although goats, chickens, and crop cultivation were also important. Cattle were relatively rare in their economies, probably because their coastal lowland habitat was tsetse-fly infested. The Tsonga maintained a tradition of inheritance by brothers, in preference to sons, which is common in many Central African societies but not among other South Africans.

During the mfecane and ensuing upheaval of the nineteenth century, most Tsonga chiefdoms moved inland. Some successfully maintained their independence from the Zulu, while others were conquered by Zulu warriors even after they had fled (see The Rise of African States, ch. 1). One Zulu military leader, Soshangane, established his command over a large Tsonga population in the northern Transvaal in the mid-nineteenth century and continued his conquests farther north. The descendants of some of the conquered populations are known as the Shangaan, or Tsonga-Shangaan. Some Tsonga-Shangaan trace their ancestry to the Zulu warriors who subjugated the armies in the region, while others claim descent from the conquered chiefdoms. The Tsonga and the Zulu languages remain separate and are mutually unintelligible in some areas.

The Tsonga-Shangaan homeland, Gazankulu, was carved out of northern Transvaal Province during the 1960s and was granted self-governing status in 1973. The homeland economy depended largely on gold and on a small manufacturing sector. Only an estimated 500,000 people--less than half the Tsonga-Shangaan population of South Africa--ever lived there, however. Many others joined the throngs of township residents around urban centers, especially Johannesburg and Pretoria.

In the 1980s, the government of Gazankulu, led by Chief Minister Hudson Nsanwisi, established a 68-member legislative assembly, made up mostly of traditional chiefs. The chiefs opposed homeland independence but favored a federal arrangement with South Africa; they also opposed sanctions against South Africa on the grounds that the homeland economy would suffer. In areas of Gazankulu bordering the seSotho-speaking homeland of Lebowa, residents of the two poverty-stricken homelands clashed frequently over political and economic issues. These clashes were cited by South African officials as examples of the ethnic conflicts they claimed would engulf South Africa if apartheid ended.

Venda

The Venda (also VaVenda) population of about 600,000 people coalesced into an identifiable social unit in the area of the northern Transvaal and in Zimbabwe over several centuries. The Venda language, tshiVenda or luVenda, emerged as a distinct tongue in the sixteenth century, according to scholars. In the twentieth century, the tshiVenda vocabulary is similar to seSotho, but the grammar shares similarities with Shona dialects, which are spoken in Zimbabwe.

Venda culture is similarly eclectic; it appears to have incorporated a variety of East African, Central African, Nguni, and Sotho characteristics. For example, the Venda forbid the consumption of pork, a prohibition that is common along the East African coast. They practice male circumcision, which is common among many Sotho, but not among most Nguni peoples.

Early Venda social organization consisted of small kinship groups, often dispersed among several households. These were organized into chiefdoms, and some were ruled by chiefly dynasties in the eighteenth century. Smaller chiefdoms often served as vassal states to larger and stronger chiefdoms, but they were neither entirely incorporated into them nor administered directly by a paramount chief. Venda traditional religious beliefs, like other aspects of culture, appear to have combined elements from several neighboring religious systems and Christianity.

The homeland of Venda became nominally independent in 1979 but was not recognized by any country except South Africa. Unlike other homelands, Venda actually drew most of the 700,000 people assigned to live there. Its economy depended on agriculture and small industry, and coal mining began in the late 1980s. Nearly 70 percent of the men worked elsewhere in South Africa, however, and at least 40 percent of the homeland's income was migrant labor wages. Facing economic collapse, Venda authorities applied for readmission into South Africa in 1991. Their petition was essentially overtaken by the political negotiations and constitutional reforms of the early 1990s, which led to the dissolution of the homelands in 1994.

Afrikaans Speakers

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Afrikaners

Roughly 3 million people, or 7 percent of the people of South Africa, trace their roots to Dutch, German, Belgian, and French forebears (see Early European Settlement, ch. 1). Their language, Afrikaans, and membership in the Dutch Reformed Church are the most widespread common features of this population. Afrikaans, a seventeenth-century African variant of Dutch, differs from its parent language in that it has eliminated grammatical gender and many inflected verbs. Afrikaans was recognized as a separate language in the nineteenth century, after a significant literature began to develop.

Many of the Afrikaners' forebears arrived in southern Africa in search of independence from government oppression. They settled the region by fighting a series of wars, first with Khoikhoi and Xhosa peoples who had preceded them in the area, and then with Zulu and British armies, who also hoped to defend their territorial claims. The Afrikaners' defeat in the South African War was a crucial turning point in their history; their greatly outnumbered troops suffered a military defeat, and more than 26,000 Afrikaners--including many women and children--died in British concentration camps. The two formerly independent Afrikaner republics, the Orange Free State and the South African Republic (later the Transvaal), were incorporated into the Union of South Africa within the British empire in 1910.

The war left much of the Afrikaners' farm land devastated, the result of the British "scorched earth" policy. Farmers had also been hard hit by cyclical occurrences of drought and rinderpest fever. This desperate rural poverty drove many Afrikaners into urban areas for the first time, to seek jobs in the growing industrial sector and particularly the flourishing mining industry. But many Afrikaners lacked educational credentials and urban work experience, and they were threatened by competition from the large black population in the cities. Africans had, in some cases, become accustomed to the work and lifestyle changes that were new to Afrikaners at the time. Afrikaner mineworkers, nonetheless, demanded superior treatment over their black counterparts, and they organized to demand better wages and working conditions through the 1920s.

During the 1920s and the 1930s, Afrikaner cultural organizations were important vehicles for reasserting Afrikaners' pride in their cultural identity. The most important of these was the Afrikaner Broederbond, also known as the Broederband (Brotherhood), an association of educated elites. The Broederbond helped establish numerous other Afrikaner social and cultural organizations, such as the Federation of Afrikaner Cultural Organisations (Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurvereniginge--FAK), and a variety of Afrikaner social service organizations. Most of these groups represented people of different classes and political persuasions, but Afrikaner leaders worked hard in the 1930s and the 1940s to forge a sense of unity and pride among them.

By the 1940s, the National Party (NP) had gained widespread appeal among Afrikaners by emphasizing racial separation and Afrikaner nationalism. Its narrow election victory in 1948 brought apartheid into all areas of social and economic life in South Africa. The force of the government's commitment to apartheid, and the popularity of the Dutch Reformed Church among Afrikaners, contributed to the impression of Afrikaner unity during the decades of National Party rule. But numerous rifts divided the community, and heated debates ensued. Some believed that the basic assumptions of apartheid were flawed; others, that it was being applied poorly. A small number of Afrikaners worked to end apartheid almost as soon as it was imposed.

Most Afrikaners strongly supported the government's 1960s and 1970s campaign to stem the spread of communist influence in southern Africa--the Total Strategy--based in part on their suspicion of strong centralized government and on their religious beliefs. But many were critical of South Africa's military intervention in neighboring states during the 1980s, and of escalating military costs in the face of the receding threat of what had been called the communist "Total Onslaught." By the late 1980s, enforcing apartheid at home was expensive; the unbalanced education system was in disarray and could not produce the skilled labor force the country needed. Most Afrikaners then welcomed the government's decision to try to end apartheid as peacefully as possible.

"Coloureds"

Roughly 3.2 million South Africans of mixed-race (Khoikhoi and European or Asian) ancestry were known as "coloureds" in apartheid terminology. About 83 percent of them speak Afrikaans as their first language, and most of the remainder speak English as their first language. Almost 85 percent of coloureds live in Western Cape and Northern Cape provinces, and a sizable coloured community lives in KwaZulu-Natal.

The largest subgroup within the coloured population is the Griqua, a largely Afrikaner-Khoikhoi population that developed a distinct culture as early as the seventeenth century. Their community was centered just north of the area that later became the Orange Free State. Growing conflicts with Afrikaner farmers and, later, diamond diggers, prompted Griqua leaders to seek the protection of the British, and later, to relocate portions of their community to the eastern Cape Colony and Natal. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century demands for land and the implementation of apartheid forced Griqua communities to move repeatedly, and many eventually settled north of Cape Town. They number at least 300,000 in the 1990s. Most speak a variant of Afrikaans as their first language and are members of the Dutch Reformed Church.

Another large subgroup, the Cape Malays, number about 180,000, primarily in the Western Cape, in the 1990s. Most are descendants of Afrikaners, indigenous Khoikhoi, and slaves brought to South Africa from the Dutch East Indies. The Cape Malays have retained many cultural elements from their diverse origins, but they are recognized as a distinct community largely because most are Muslims.

The coloured population suffered many indignities under apartheid, such as eviction from homes and neighborhoods preferred by whites. But the limited political reforms of the 1980s gave them political rights that were denied blacks, such as a separate house of parliament in the tricameral legislature and the right to vote in national elections. Coloured politicians took advantage of their status to improve life for their constituents, but at the same time, many were active in the antiapartheid movement.

In April 1994, the coloured community in the Western Cape gave the NP its only provincial victory in the national elections. Coloured voters outnumbered black voters by three-to-one, and white voters by two-to-one, according to local estimates. The population voted for the NP by a large margin, in part out of fear that its interests would be sidelined by a provincial government dominated by the ANC, and in part because conservative members of the coloured community had distanced themselves from the ANC's revolutionary rhetoric over the years. Another important consideration for many was their desire to preserve their first language, which is Afrikaans.

English Speakers

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"Europeans"

Although most of the English spoken in South Africa is spoken by nonwhites, the term "English speakers" is often used to identify non-Afrikaner whites in particular, largely because this group shares no other common cultural feature. Some of South Africa's roughly 2 million English-speaking whites trace their forebears to the large influx of British immigrants of the 1820s and the 1830s. Many more Europeans arrived in the late nineteenth century, after the discovery of gold and diamonds. Almost two-thirds of English speakers trace their ancestry to England, Scotland, Wales, or Ireland, but a few arrived from the Netherlands, Germany, or France and joined the English-speaking community in South Africa for a variety of social and political reasons. During the late 1930s and the 1940s, East Europeans arrived in substantial numbers. Unlike the Afrikaners, the English-speaking community has not worked to forge a common identity. During the apartheid era, non-Afrikaner whites held relatively little political power, but they maintained their superior wealth, in many cases, through their activities in commerce and business.

Also among South African whites are about 49,000 Portuguese immigrants, and 13,000 Greeks. South Africa's Jewish population of about 100,000 has been a relatively cohesive community, in comparison with other non-Afrikaner whites. Many South African Jews trace their ancestry to Eastern Europe or to the United Kingdom, and many others fled from Nazi Germany during the 1930s and the 1940s. In general, Jewish South Africans opposed apartheid, in part because of its emphasis on racial purity derived from National Socialist (Nazi) thought. Many Jews have also experienced religious discrimination in South Africa.

Asians

Of the roughly 1 million people of Asian descent in South Africa in the mid-1990s, all but about 20,000 are of Indian descent. Most speak English as their first language, although many also speak Tamil or Hindi, and some speak Afrikaans as a second or third language. Many South Africans of Indian descent trace their ancestry to indentured agricultural laborers brought to Natal in the nineteenth century to work on sugar plantations. But almost all Indians in South Africa in the 1990s were born there, because the South African government curtailed immigration from India in 1913.

Asians have endured racial and ethnic pressures throughout the past century. In the late nineteenth century, they were prohibited from living in the Orange Free State; a few settled in the Pretoria-Johannesburg area, but in the 1990s almost 90 percent of the Asian population live in KwaZulu-Natal--especially in Durban and other large urban centers. Only about 10 percent live in rural areas.

In the nineteenth century, Indians were divided by class, between those who had arrived as indentured laborers or slaves, and wealthier immigrants who had paid their own passage. The latter were given citizenship rights, in most cases, and were not bound by the labor laws applied to indentured workers. This class difference was reinforced by the origins of the immigrants--most of the wealthier Indian immigrants had arrived from northern and central India, and a substantial number were Muslims, while many indentured laborers were Hindus.

By the 1990s, these differences were narrowing; more than 60 percent of all Indians in South Africa are Hindus. About 20 percent are Muslims and 8 percent, Christians, and a few are members of other religions. Most are merchants or businessmen, but significant numbers are teachers or artisans. Caste differences based on Indian custom continue to have some influence over social behavior but are of decreasing importance.

Khoisan

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Khoisan languages, characterized by "click" sounds not found elsewhere in Africa, have almost disappeared from South Africa in the 1990s. All remaining Khoisan speakers are believed to be San, living in the Kalahari Desert region in the Northern Cape and North-West Province. The government has no accurate count of their numbers, although it is generally believed that larger numbers of San live in Botswana and Namibia.

The closely related Khoikhoi, who were living in coastal areas of the southwest in the seventeenth century, have been entirely destroyed or assimilated into other cultures. No Khoikhoi peoples remain in South Africa in the 1990s, although many so-called coloureds and others can trace their ancestry through Khoikhoi and other lines of descent.

The San hunters and gatherers who occupied southern Africa for several thousand years organized their society into small kinship-based villages, often including fewer than fifty people. The San economy developed out of the efficient use of the environment; their diet included a wide array of birds, animals, plants, and, among coastal populations, fish and shellfish. The San espoused generally egalitarian values and recognized few leadership roles, except that of religious specialist, or diviner. The culture of the Khoikhoi was similar to that of the San, but the Khoikhoi acquired livestock--mainly cattle and sheep--probably from Bantu speakers who moved into the area from the north.

Some South Africans of mixed-race descent and Khoikhoi residents of Namibia have preserved Khoikhoi oral histories that tell of a time when their ancestors quarreled and split apart. Ancestors of the Namaqua (Nama) moved to the Atlantic Ocean coastline and south toward the Cape of Good Hope; other Khoikhoi moved toward the Kalahari and the Namib deserts and farther north. Seventeenth-century European immigrants enslaved hundreds of Khoikhoi around Cape Town, and many died in smallpox epidemics that swept southern Africa in 1713 and 1755. Others were absorbed into the dominant societies around them, both African and European, and into the populations of laborers who were brought from Malaya, China, and from other region of Africa.

Religion

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Almost all South Africans profess some religious affiliation, according to the official census in 1991. Attitudes toward religion and religious beliefs vary widely, however. The government has actively encouraged specific Christian beliefs during much of the twentieth century, but South Africa has never had an official state religion nor any significant government prohibition regarding religious beliefs.

About 80 percent of all South Africans are Christians, and most are Protestants. More than 8 million South Africans are members of African Independent churches, which have at least 4,000 congregations. The denomination generally holds a combination of traditional African and Protestant beliefs. The other large Protestant denomination, the Dutch Reformed Church, has about 4 million members in several branches. Most are whites or people of mixed race.

Other Protestant denominations in the mid-1990s include at least 1.8 million Methodists, 1.2 million Anglicans, 800,000 Lutherans, 460,000 Presbyterians, and smaller numbers of Baptists, Congregationalists, Seventh Day Adventists, and members of the Assembly of God and the Apostolic Faith Mission of Southern Africa. More than 2.4 million South Africans are Roman Catholics; about 27,000 are Greek or Russian Orthodox. More than 7,000 are Mormons. Adherents of other world religions include at least 350,000 Hindus, perhaps 400,000 Muslims, more than 100,000 Jews, and smaller numbers of Buddhists, Confucians, and Baha'is.

Historical Background

African Religions

The earliest southern African religions, those of the Khoisan peoples, were more complex than early missionaries often recorded. Their beliefs and practices were substantially eroded by contacts with Europeans. Exceptional records of Khoisan rituals were made by a German linguist, Wilhelm Bleek, during the 1870s and the 1880s. Some traditional Khoisan beliefs have been preserved through oral histories, and some religious practices are still observed in remote areas of Botswana and Namibia.

Many Khoisan peoples believe in a supreme being who presides over daily life and controls elements of the environment. In some Khoisan belief systems, this god is worshiped through rituals or small sacrifices. A second, evil deity brings illness and misfortune to earth. This dualism between good and evil pervades other areas of Khoisan thought about the nature of the universe. Some Khoisan belief systems maintain that a person should never attempt to communicate with the beneficent deity, for fear of provoking his evil counterpart, and some believe that spiritual beings simply ignore humanity most of the time.

Traditional Khoisan religion also included numerous mythic tales of gods and ancestor-heroes, whose lives provided examples of ways to cope with social conflicts and personal problems. Also important was the use of dance and altered states of consciousness to gain knowledge for healing an individual or remedying a social evil. Healing dances are still among the most widely practiced religious rituals in South Africa, even in the 1990s, and are used in some African Independent churches to heal the sick or eradicate evil.

For many Khoisan peoples, the sun and the moon were gods, or aspects of a supreme deity. The cycle of religious observance was, therefore, carefully adjusted according to the cycles of the moon. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century observers in the Cape Colony noted the importance of ritual dances and prayers during the full moon each month. Khoisan legends and myths also refer to a "trickster" god, who could transform himself into animal or human forms, and who could die and be reborn many times over. The praying mantis, a predatory insect with large eyes and other features characteristic of animal predators, figures in San myths and folktales in a role similar to the clever fox in European folktales. Khoisan herdboys still use mantises to "divine" the location of lost animals, and in Afrikaans, the mantis is referred to as "the Hottentot's god."

Bantu-speaking peoples brought an array of new religious practices and beliefs when they arrived in the first millennium A.D. Most believed in a supreme being, or high god, who could bestow blessings or bring misfortune to humans. More influential in their spiritual life, however, was a group of ancestral spirits--a different pantheon of spiritual beings in each community. These spirits could communicate with and influence the lives of the living, and they could sometimes be influenced by human entreaties. The male head of a homestead was usually the ritual leader, responsible for performing rituals, giving thanks, seeking a blessing, or healing the sick on behalf of his homestead. Rites of passage, or rituals marking major life-cycle changes such as birth, initiation, marriage, and death, were also important religious observances, and rituals were used for rainmaking, strengthening fertility, and enhancing military might.

Zulu and Xhosa religions generally sought to placate male ancestral spirits, often with libations of beer or offerings of meat, and to seek their guidance or intercession. Ancestral spirits were almost uniformly benevolent; evil was generally attributed to witches or sorcerers, who might overpower or bypass a spiritual protector or ancestor. Ancestral spirits occasionally caused minor illnesses, primarily as a warning against religious neglect or misdeeds.

Most Bantu religious systems had no priesthood, or officially recognized mediator between the material and the spiritual worlds. Rather, they believed that political leadership was accompanied by religious responsibility. For example, a chiefdom or kingdom relied on the chief or monarch for physical and spiritual survival. Particular importance was attached to the status of the diviner, or sangoma , however; the sangoma underwent rigorous training to acquire the extensive knowledge and skills necessary for divination and healing.

Bantu religions usually avoided any claim that rituals performed by human beings could influence the actions of the supreme deity, or high god; rituals were normally intended to honor or placate lesser spiritual beings, and sometimes to ask for their intervention. The high god was a remote, transcendent being possessing the power to create the Earth, but beyond human comprehension or manipulation. Ancestors, in contrast, were once human and had kinship ties with those on earth, and they were sometimes amenable to human entreaties.

Many Bantu societies have historical accounts or myths that explain the presence of human society on earth. In many cases, these myths affirm that human beings first emerged from a hole in the ground, that they were plucked from a field or a bed of reeds, or that they were fashioned from elemental substances through the efforts of a supreme deity. Death originated in the failure of human beings or their messengers, such as a chameleon who was sent to relay a divine message of immortality, but who delayed and was overtaken by the message of death.

Such widespread myths not only provide an account of the origins of the human condition, but they also describe appropriate behavior for coping with a complex world. For example, a Zulu myth tells of the creation of both black and white human beings, the assignment of the black people to the land and the white people to the sea, and the provision of spears for black people and guns for whites. Many of life's conflicts arise, it is believed, when people defy the divine plan.

Scholars have reported that during the rapid acculturation of the nineteenth century in southern Africa, new myths and legends arose, attributing greater and greater power to traditional gods. In this way, new events and displays of power were incorporated into existing belief systems. Others have suggested that the upheaval of the nineteenth century provided fertile ground for Christian and Muslim missionaries, whose teachings of a Supreme Being presiding over the entire world provided reassurance of a divine order in a changing environment. In this view, the new world religions drew converts based on their appeal as an explanation of
changing circumstances.

The Arrival of Christianity

Religion and politics were inextricably interwoven as soon as the Portuguese navigator Bartholomeu Dias (Diaz) erected a limestone pillar and Christian cross at the Cape of Good Hope in the year A.D. 1488. Religious missionaries did not arrive in any significant numbers for more than a century, however. In 1652 the Dutch East India Company established a resupply station at the Cape, based largely on the experience of Jan van Riebeeck, who had survived a shipwreck off the coast of the Cape in 1648 and who later became the governor of the Cape Colony. Dutch Reformed Church missionaries reported in 1658 that Khoikhoi slaves in the area attended their mission services (and were rewarded with a glass of brandy after the sermon).

Religious reforms swept through the Netherlands in the early seventeenth century, and the Calvinist Synod ruled in 1618 that any slave who was baptized should be freed. In the Cape Colony, however, farmers who depended on their slaves refused repeated entreaties from the church authorities in Europe to free these slaves. Instead, the slaveowners banned religious instruction for slaves, so none could be baptized.

The London Missionary Society sent large numbers of missionaries to the Cape Colony in 1799, and soon after that, the Glasgow Missionary Society and the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society arrived, along with missionaries from the United States, France, Germany, and Scandinavia. Most missions placed a high priority on literacy and Biblical instruction, but as the Industrial Revolution swept through Europe and the United States, the evangelical message increasingly emphasized the spiritual benefits of productive labor. Missionaries also promoted European values and occupations as well as the possession of material goods unrelated to spiritual salvation, such as European clothing, houses, and tools.

Many Western missionaries mistakenly believed that southern Africans had no religion because of the differences in their faiths. Africans often denied the existence of a single, supreme being who could be influenced by prayer on behalf of humans. They appeared to confirm the missionaries' suspicions that they were "godless" by performing ritual oblations to lesser spiritual beings and ancestors. The absence of a priest or minister, or any type of church, was interpreted as further proof of the lack of spiritual beliefs, even among those who had strong beliefs in an array of spiritual beings and forces.

A few African leaders took advantage of the missionaries' presence to enhance or to reinforce their own political power. For example, the nineteenth-century Sotho King Moshoeshoe I claimed that Christian teachings only validated rules of behavior he had long advocated for his subjects. The Xhosa chief, Ngqika, rewarded local missionaries when their prayers appeared to bring much-needed rain. Sotho, Tswana, and others sought the protection of Christian missionaries during the mfecane and the related upheaval of the first part of the nineteenth century. The term Mfengu was originally applied to these displaced people who settled around Christian mission stations, but over time, the Mfengu came to be recognized as a relatively cohesive ethnic group.

The relationships among indigenous African leaders, missionaries, and European settlers and officials were always complex. Missionaries whose efforts were frustrated by local chiefs sometimes sought government intervention to weaken the chiefs' power. Government officials relied in part on the influence of missionaries in order to convince indigenous Africans of the validity of European customs. At times, however, missionaries objected to official policies that they considered harmful to their followers, and they were criticized by government officials, as a result, for interfering in official matters.

In the 1830s and the 1840s, British officials in the eastern Cape Colony tried to eliminate the Xhosa practice of witch hunts, which were increasing in response to the turmoil in the region and were spreading fear through many religious communities. The British also abolished traditional economic practices, such as the Xhosa custom of paying lobola , or bridewealth given by the family of a groom to that of his bride. But abolishing an element of traditional culture almost always resulted in an array of unforeseen cultural consequences, and this was especially true when the practices being eliminated were central to a group's social organization, as was the lobola .

By 1850, the Xhosa were enraged by the British presence. A leading Xhosa healer and diviner, Mlangeni, organized an army to confront the British and promised supernatural assistance in this effort, as long as the Xhosa people sacrificed all of their yellow and dun-colored cattle to counteract the evil spell that had engulfed them. A brutal frontier war ensued, and the rebellion was suppressed in 1853.

The Xhosa defeat was made even more bitter when a chiefly adviser, Mhlakaza, convinced many people of a prophecy brought by his niece, Nongqawuse, telling of an end to British domination and the redemption of the Xhosa if they would first kill all their remaining cattle and destroy their food stocks. In 1856 and 1857, thousands of Xhosa responded to the prophecy; more than 400,000 cattle were sacrificed. After the prophecy failed, more than 40,000 people died of starvation, and almost as many were forced to seek work in the colonial labor market.

Religion and Apartheid

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Dutch Reformed Churches

Christianity became a powerful influence in South Africa, often uniting large numbers of people in a common faith. In the twentieth century, however, several Christian churches actively promoted racial divisions through the political philosophy of apartheid. The largest of these denominations was the Dutch Reformed Church (Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk--NGK), which came to be known as the "official religion" of the National Party during the apartheid era. Its four main branches had more than 3 million members in 1,263 congregations in the 1990s.

The Dutch Reformed Church arrived in South Africa in the seventeenth century, after Calvinist reforms in Europe had entrenched the idea of predestination, and the Synod of Dort in the Netherlands had proclaimed this church as the "community of the elect" in 1619. The church gained recognition as the state religion in 1651, and the Dutch East India Company, as an extension of the state in southern Africa, established the first Dutch Reformed Church at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652.

Church members in South Africa generally resisted liberal trends that arose in Europe in the nineteenth century, but rifts occurred in the church in 1853 with the formation of the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk (also translated, the Dutch Reformed Church), and in 1859, with the formation of the Gereformeerde Kerk van Suid-Afrika (the Reformed Church of South Africa). The NGK is generally referred to as the Dutch Reformed Church, and these two newer churches are also referred to as Dutch Reformed churches.

All of the Dutch Reformed churches share similar Calvinist beliefs and presbyterial organization. Their doctrines assert that God is eternal, infinite, wise, and just, and the Creator of the universe. He has planned the life and the fate of each individual on earth; the "chosen" are saved, as long as they adhere to the church's teachings. The Bible--both the Old Testament and the New Testament--is the final authority on religious matters.

The presbyterial organization of the Dutch Reformed churches means that the functioning of each congregation is governed, in part, by that community, whereas decisions concerning policy and discipline are generally handled by regional synods. A general synod is responsible for the denomination as a whole. In South Africa, a national synod and nine regional synods oversee the operation of the Dutch Reformed congregations.

As black Africans and people of mixed race converted to the religion, church members debated the question of racial separation. Pressures grew for racially separate congregations, and the issue was complicated by the demands of some black church members for their own churches and congregations. In 1881 the Dutch Reformed Mission Church (Sending Kerk) established a separate coloured church. In 1910, when black South Africans made up about 10 percent of the community, the synods established the NGK in Afrika, as it became known, for black Africans. (An Indian Dutch Reformed Church was formed in 1951.)

Racial separation was only widely accepted in the church in the early twentieth century, as many Afrikaners came to believe that their own survival as a community was threatened, and as the belief in racial separation was gaining acceptance among white South Africans in general. Social and spiritual survival became intertwined in church philosophy, influenced in part by the early twentieth-century persecution of the Afrikaners by the British (see British Imperialism and the Afrikaners, ch. 1). Church leaders refused to condemn Afrikaner rebellions against the British, and their followers gained strength by attributing divine origins to their struggle for survival.

As the system of apartheid was called into question throughout the country in the 1970s and the 1980s, church leaders were, in general, more committed to apartheid than many of their followers, and the church became an impediment to political reform. A few Dutch Reformed clergy opposed apartheid. The best known of these, Reverend Beyers Naude, left his whites-only church in the late 1970s and joined a black parish within the Dutch Reformed church. The efforts of other church leaders who worked to reduce the church's racist image were often constrained by the fact that parish finances were controlled by the church's highest authorities, who supported apartheid.
Other Religious Organizations

In the 1990s, black South Africans form a majority in all large Christian churches in South Africa, except the Dutch Reformed churches, and this was true throughout the apartheid era. In these churches, many people became involved in efforts to reverse or to ameliorate the effects of apartheid policies, but with varying degrees of militancy. Again, there were often significant differences between church leaders and their followers concerning race and politics. For example, senior officials within the Roman Catholic Church in South Africa opposed apartheid, but a group of Catholics formed the South African Catholic Defence League to condemn the church's political involvement and, in particular, to denounce school integration.

Leaders of the Church of the Province of South Africa, the Anglican Church, spoke out in opposition to apartheid, but church members disagreed about tactics for expressing their views. Some white Anglicans vigorously opposed their church's involvement in politics, while many black Anglicans became leaders in the antiapartheid movement. The Methodist Church, which was overwhelmingly black, adopted openly antiapartheid stands on many public issues, but its leaders' activism cost it support among those who feared public scrutiny on this politically sensitive issue.

Religious alliances provided a means of coordinating church opposition to apartheid while minimizing the public exposure of church leaders and parishioners. The South African Council of Churches (SACC) was the most active antiapartheid umbrella organization. The SACC not only opposed apartheid but also offered encouragement to those who contravened race laws. Under the leadership of Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu in the 1980s, the SACC also attempted to withhold cooperation with the state, as much as possible, in protest against apartheid. SACC leaders were outspoken in their political views, lodging frequent complaints with government officials and organizing numerous peaceful protests.

Countering the efforts of the antiapartheid community, the Christian League of Southern Africa rallied in support of the government's apartheid policies. The Christian League consisted of members of Dutch Reformed and other churches who believed apartheid could be justified on religious grounds. The group won little popular support, however, and was criticized both for its principles and for its tactic of bringing religious and political issues together in the same debate.

Zion Christian Church

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The largest and fastest-growing of the African independent churches in the 1990s is the Zion Christian Church. Its members, estimated to number between 2 million and 6 million in more than 4,000 parishes, live primarily in urban townships and rural communities. The church is well known by the abbreviation, ZCC, pronounced "zed-say-say." The ZCC was established in 1910 by Engenas Lekganyane, a farm worker in a rural area that later became Zion City, in the Northern Province. Lekganyane was educated by Scottish Presbyterian missionaries, and the church reflects some elements of that religion. The ZCC took its name from Biblical references to the Mount of Zion in Jerusalem, based in part on the inspiration of a similar community in Zion, Illinois.

The highlight of the ZCC religious calendar is the Easter celebration, which has drawn more than 1 million church members for several days of religious services at Zion City. Zionist beliefs emphasize the healing power of religious faith, and for this reason ZCC leaders sometimes clash with the traditional healers, or sangomas , who are important in many belief systems. Despite occasional conflicts, however, the ZCC respects traditional African religious beliefs, in general, especially those concerning the power of the ancestors to intercede on behalf of humans.

ZCC beliefs are eclectic, but the church's practices are often strict. The ZCC proscribes alcoholic beverages, smoking, and eating pork. It condemns sexual promiscuity and violence. As a result, church members have become known in the business community for their honesty and dependability as employees.

The growth of the independent churches was spurred by the antiapartheid movement. Nevertheless, because devout ZCC members place their spiritual agenda ahead of earthly politics, they generally avoided antiapartheid demonstrations and organizations. As a result, ZCC members were often shunned, and some were even attacked, by antiapartheid militants. President Mandela is popular among ZCC members in the 1990s, however, in part because of his political moderation and antiviolent rhetoric.

Islam

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South Africa's small Muslim community of about 400,000 is gaining new members, especially among black South Africans, in the 1990s. The majority of Muslims are of Indian descent, however, and a small minority are Pakistanis or people of mixed race. Most live in or near Cape Town, Durban, or Johannesburg. The Africa Muslim Party won 47,690 votes, less than 1 percent of the total vote, in the April 1994 nationwide elections.

Most South African Muslims are members of the Sunni branch of Islam, although a small Shia sect is becoming more vocal in the 1990s. The Muslim Youth Movement, the Muslim Student Association, and several other Islamic organizations have small branches in South African universities. Diplomats and other visitors from Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait have contributed to the building of mosques and other efforts to promote Islam. The desire to proselytize in the region was an important topic of discussion at the first southern African conference on Islam, which was held in Cape Town in April 1995.

Education

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Schools in South Africa, as elsewhere, reflect society's political philosophy and goals. The earliest mission schools aimed to inculcate literacy and new social and religious values, and schools for European immigrants aimed to preserve the values of previous generations. In the twentieth century, the education system assumed economic importance as it prepared young Africans for low-wage labor and protected the privileged white minority from competition. From the 1950s to the mid-1990s, no other social institution reflected the government's racial philosophy of apartheid more clearly than the education system. Because the schools were required both to teach and to practice apartheid, they were especially vulnerable to the weaknesses of the system.

Many young people during the 1980s were committed to destroying the school system because of its identification with apartheid. Student strikes, vandalism, and violence seriously undermined the schools' ability to function. By the early 1990s, shortages of teachers, classrooms, and equipment had taken a further toll on education.

South Africa's industrial economy, with its strong reliance on capital-intensive development, provided relatively few prospects for employment for those who had only minimal educational credentials, or none at all. Nationwide literacy was less than 60 percent throughout the 1980s, and an estimated 500,000 unskilled and uneducated young people faced unemployment by the end of the decade, according to the respected Education Foundation. At the same time, job openings for highly skilled workers and managers far outpaced the number of qualified applicants. These problems were being addressed in the political reforms of the 1990s, but the legacies of apartheid--the insufficient education of the majority of the population and the backlog of deficiencies in the school system--promised to challenge future governments for decades, or perhaps generations.

Early Development

Many African societies placed strong emphasis on traditional forms of education well before the arrival of Europeans. Adults in Khoisan- and Bantu-speaking societies, for example, had extensive responsibilities for transmitting cultural values and skills within kinship-based groups and sometimes within larger organizations, villages, or districts. Education involved oral histories of the group, tales of heroism and treachery, and practice in the skills necessary for survival in a changing environment.

In many Nguni-speaking chiefdoms of southern Africa, highly regimented age-groups of young men acquired knowledge and skills vital to their survival and prestige under the instruction of respected military, religious, or political leaders. The socialization of women, although sometimes done within age-groups, was more often in small groups of siblings or cousins, and it emphasized domestic and agricultural skills necessary to the survival of the family. In all of these settings, the transmission of religious values was a vital element of education.

The socialization of African youth was sometimes interrupted by warfare or political upheaval. More serious disruptions occurred in the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century, when government policies drew large numbers of adult men away from their homes for long periods of employment in mines or urban industries. Women were heads of households for months or years at a time. And after apartheid became entrenched in the early 1950s, security forces sometimes removed entire villages from their land and relocated them to less desirable areas in the interest of white economic development.

The earliest European schools in South Africa were established in the Cape Colony in the late seventeenth century by Dutch Reformed Church elders committed to biblical instruction, which was necessary for church confirmation (see Early European Settlement, ch. 1). In rural areas, itinerant teachers (meesters ) taught basic literacy and math skills. British mission schools proliferated after 1799, when the first members of the London Missionary Society arrived in the Cape Colony.

Language soon became a sensitive issue in education. At least two dozen English-language schools operated in rural areas of the Cape Colony by 1827, but their presence rankled among devout Afrikaners, who considered the English language and curriculum irrelevant to rural life and Afrikaner values. Throughout the nineteenth century, Afrikaners resisted government policies aimed at the spread of the English language and British values, and many educated their children at home or in the churches.

After British colonial officials began encouraging families to emigrate from Britain to the Cape Colony in 1820, the Colonial Office screened applicants for immigration for background qualifications. They selected educated families, for the most part, to establish a British presence in the Cape Colony, and after their arrival, these parents placed a high priority on education. Throughout this time, most religious schools in the eastern Cape accepted Xhosa children who applied for admission, and in Natal many other Nguni-speaking groups sent their children to mission schools after the mid-nineteenth century. The government also financed teacher training classes for Africans as part of its pacification campaign throughout the nineteenth century.

By 1877 some 60 percent of school-age children in Natal were enrolled in school, as were 49 percent in the Cape Colony. In the Afrikaner republics, however, enrollments remained low--only 12 percent in the Orange Free State and 8 percent in the Transvaal--primarily the result of Afrikaner resistance to British education. Enrollments in these republics increased toward the end of the century, after the government agreed to the use of Afrikaans in the schools and to allow Afrikaner parents greater control over primary and secondary education.

By the late nineteenth century, three types of schools were receiving government assistance--ward schools, or small rural schools generally employing one teacher; district schools, providing primary-level education to several towns in an area; and a few secondary schools in larger cities. But during the last decades of that century, all four provinces virtually abolished African enrollment in government schools. African children attended mission schools, for the most part, and were taught by clergy or by lay teachers, sometimes with government assistance.

Higher education was generally reserved for those who could travel to Europe, but in 1829 the government established the multiracial South African College, which later became the University of Cape Town. Religious seminaries accepted a few African applicants as early as 1841. In 1852 British officials in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State acknowledged the right of Afrikaners to establish their own institutions of higher learning, and based on this understanding, Britain's incoming governor--Sir George Grey--allocated small sums of money to help fund Afrikaner institutions. The government established Grey College--later the University of the Orange Free State--in Bloemfontein in 1855 and placed it under the supervision of the Dutch Reformed Church. The Grey Institute was established in Port Elizabeth in 1856; Graaff-Reinet College was founded in 1860. The Christian College was founded at Potchefstroom in 1869 and was later incorporated into the University of South Africa and renamed Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education.

Following the British victory in the South African War, the new representative of the Crown, Sir Alfred Milner, brought thousands of teachers from Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to instill the English language and British cultural values, especially in the two former Afrikaner republics. To counter the British influence, a group of Afrikaner churches proposed an education program, Christian National Education, to serve as the core of the school curriculum. The government initially refused to fund schools adopting this program, but Jan C. Smuts, the Transvaal leader who later became prime minister, was strongly committed to reconciliation between Afrikaners and English speakers, and he favored local control over many aspects of education. Provincial autonomy in education was strengthened in the early twentieth century, and all four provincial governments used government funds primarily to educate whites.

The National Party (NP) was able to capitalize on the fear of racial integration in the schools to build its support. The NP's narrow election victory in 1948 gave Afrikaans new standing in the schools, and after that, all high-school graduates were required to be proficient in both Afrikaans and English. The NP government also reintroduced Christian National Education as the guiding philosophy of education.

Education under Apartheid

The Bantu Education Act

The Bantu Education Act (No. 47) of 1953 widened the gaps in educational opportunities for different racial groups. Two of the architects of Bantu education, Dr. W.M. Eiselen and Dr. Hendrik F. Verwoerd, had studied in Germany and had adopted many elements of National Socialist (Nazi) philosophy. The concept of racial "purity," in particular, provided a rationalization for keeping black education inferior. Verwoerd, then minister of native affairs, said black Africans "should be educated for their opportunities in life," and that there was no place for them "above the level of certain forms of labour." The government also tightened its control over religious high schools by eliminating almost all financial aid, forcing many churches to sell their schools to the government or close them entirely.

Christian National Education supported the NP program of apartheid by calling on educators to reinforce cultural diversity and to rely on "mother-tongue" instruction in the first years of primary school. This philosophy also espoused the idea that a person's social responsibilities and political opportunities are defined, in large part, by that person's ethnic identity. The government also gave strong management control to the school boards, who were elected by the parents in each district.

Official attitudes toward African education were paternalistic, based on trusteeship and segregation. Black education was not supposed to drain government resources away from white education. The number of schools for blacks increased during the 1960s, but their curriculum was designed to prepare children for menial jobs. Per-capita government spending on black education slipped to one-tenth of spending on whites in the 1970s. Black schools had inferior facilities, teachers, and textbooks.

Soweto and Its Aftermath

Tensions over language in education erupted into violence on June 16, 1976, when students took to the streets in the Johannesburg township of Soweto. Their action was prompted by the decision of Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of the Bantu education system, to enforce a regulation requiring that one-half of all high-school classes must be taught in Afrikaans. A harsh police response resulted in the deaths of several children, some as young as eight or nine years old. In the violence that followed, more than 575 people died, at least 134 of them under the age of eighteen.

Youthful ANC supporters abandoned school in droves; some vowed to "make South Africa ungovernable" to protest against apartheid education. Others left the country for military training camps run by the ANC or other liberation armies, mostly in Angola, Tanzania, or Eastern Europe. "Liberation before education" became their battle cry.

The schools suffered further damage as a result of the unrest of 1976. Vandals and arsonists damaged or destroyed many schools and school property. Students who tried to attend school and their teachers were sometimes attacked, and administrators found it increasingly difficult to maintain normal school activities. Some teachers and administrators joined in the protests.

The National Policy for General Affairs Act (No. 76) of 1984 provided some improvements in black education but maintained the overall separation called for by the Bantu education system. This act gave the minister of national education authority to determine general policy for syllabuses, examinations, and certification qualifications in all institutions of formal and informal education. But responsibility for implementing these policies was divided among numerous government departments and offices, resulting in a bewildering array of educational authorities: For example, the Department of Education and Training was responsible for black education outside the homelands. Each of the three houses of parliament--for whites, coloureds, and Indians--had an education department for one racial group, and each of the ten homelands had its own education department. In addition, several other government departments managed specific aspects of education.

Education was compulsory for all racial groups, but at different ages, and the law was enforced differently. Whites were required to attend school between the ages of seven and sixteen. Black children were required to attend school from age seven until the equivalent of seventh grade or the age of sixteen, but this law was enforced only weakly, and not at all in areas where schools were unavailable. For Asians and coloured children, education was compulsory between the ages of seven and fifteen.

The discrepancies in education among racial groups were glaring. Teacher: pupil ratios in primary schools averaged 1:18 in white schools, 1:24 in Asian schools, 1:27 in coloured schools, and 1:39 in black schools. Moreover, whereas 96 percent of all teachers in white schools had teaching certificates, only 15 percent of teachers in black schools were certified. Secondary-school pass rates for black pupils in the nationwide, standardized high-school graduation exams were less than one-half the pass rate for whites.

As the government implemented the 1984 legislation, new violence flared up in response to the limited constitutional reforms that continued to exclude blacks (see Constitutional Change, ch. 4). Finally, the government began to signal its awareness that apartheid could not endure. By 1986 President P.W. Botha (1984-89) had stated that the concept of apartheid was "outdated," and behind-the-scenes negotiations had begun between government officials and imprisoned ANC leader Nelson Mandela. The gap between government spending on education for different racial groups slowly began to narrow, and penalties for defying apartheid rules in education began to ease.

The School System in the 1990s

Reorganizing education was one of the most daunting tasks the government faced as apartheid laws were being lifted in the 1990s. President Frederik W. (F.W.) de Klerk, in a speech to Parliament in January 1993, stressed the need for a nonracial school system, with enough flexibility to allow communities to preserve their religious and cultural values and their home language. De Klerk established the Education Co-ordination Service to manage education during the political transition of the 1990s, and he charged it with eliminating the bureaucratic duplication that had resulted from apartheid education.

In August 1993, de Klerk gathered together leading experts on education in the National Education and Training Forum to formulate a policy framework for restructuring education. Anticipating rising education costs, the government earmarked 23.5 percent of the national budget in fiscal year (FY--see Glossary) 1993-94 for education. It established new education offices and gave them specific responsibilities within the reorganization plan. When the new school year began in January 1995, all government-run primary and secondary schools were officially integrated, and the first stage of the transformation in education had begun almost without violence.

The new policies were difficult to implement, however, and many policy details remained to be worked out. Education was compulsory for all children between age seven and age sixteen, for example, but there had not been enough time or resources to provide adequate schools and teachers for the entire school-age population. The schools received government assistance for teachers' salaries only; they had to charge fees for equipment and supplies, but pupils who could not pay school fees could not be expelled from school.

In 1995 South Africa had a total of 20,780 primary and secondary schools. Of these, 20,303 belonged to the government, and 477 were private. In addition, 226 specialized schools were in operation for gifted pupils or students with special needs (see table 3, Appendix). More than 11 million pupils were enrolled, about 6.95 million in primary school and 4.12 million in secondary schools. The number of teachers in the regular primary and secondary schools was 344,083, of whom 226,900 were black. Of the white teachers, more than 60 percent were Afrikaners. Men teachers were paid substantially more than women; women's salaries averaged 83 percent of men's salaries for the same job with equal qualifications.

Higher Education

University-level education suffered under apartheid. When the NP came to power in 1948, there were ten government-subsidized institutions of higher learning--four with classes taught in English; four with classes taught in Afrikaans; one bilingual correspondence university; and the South African Native College at Fort Hare, in which most classes were taught in English but other languages were permitted. The four Afrikaans universities and one of the English-language universities (Rhodes University) admitted white students only. Students of all races attended the University of Cape Town, the University of the Witwatersrand, and the University of Natal, although some classes at these universities were segregated.

The Extension of University Education Act (No. 45) of 1959 prohibited established universities from accepting black students, except with the special permission of a cabinet minister. The government opened several new universities and colleges for black, coloured, and Indian students, and these students were allowed to attend a "white" university only if their "own" institutions became too overcrowded. The University of the North, established in 1959, for example, admitted students of Tsonga, Sotho, Venda, or Tswana descent only.

The 1959 law also gave the central government control over the South African Native College at Fort Hare (later the University of Fort Hare), and the government instituted a new policy of admitting Xhosa students only to that school. Several technikons (advanced-level technical schools) gave preference to students of one ethnic group. Overall, however, the 1959 legislation reduced opportunities for university education for blacks, and by 1978 only 20 percent of all university students in South Africa were black. During the 1980s, several university administrations, anticipating the dismal impact of the long-term racial biases in education, began admitting students from all racial groups.

As of the mid-1990s South Africa has twenty-one major universities, which are government-financed and open to students of all races. In addition, secondary-school graduates can attend one of fifteen technikons , 128 technical colleges, and seventy teacher-training colleges (which do not require high-school certificates for admission), or another in a wide array of teacher training institutions (see table 4, Appendix). Students in universities and teacher-training colleges numbered 362,000 in 1994, and the institutions themselves had 14,460 academic staff members. At technical colleges and technikons , students numbered 191,087, and teaching staff numbered 5,532.

Each university administration is headed by a government-appointed chancellor, the institution's senior authority; a vice chancellor; and a university council. The chancellor is often a civic leader or political figure whose primary function is to represent the university to the community. The university council, comprising members of the university and the community, names the vice chancellor or rector, who controls the administration of the institution. The vice chancellor generally holds office until age sixty-five.

The university senate manages academic and faculty affairs, under the vice chancellor's authority. Each university sets its own tuition costs and receives government funding based on student:faculty ratios and tuition receipts. The university academic year lasts thirty-six weeks; school terms and vacation periods are set by the university council. The government establishes general degree requirements, but the individual university's council and administration set specific requirements for each campus.

A variety of adult education opportunities are available. These include classes in basic literacy, in technical and vocational subjects, and in sports and leisure activities. Two universities, those of Cape Town and Witwatersrand, offer classes for instructors in adult education, and Witwatersrand has a course leading to a diploma for adult educators. Some of these programs are being reoriented in the 1990s to emphasize literacy training for the more than 8 million adults who cannot read.

Health and Welfare

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South Africa's population in general enjoys good health, compared with other African countries in the 1990s. Rural health care compares favorably with delivery systems in Kenya and in Nigeria, for example. The system reflects the biases of apartheid, in that superior care is available to wealthy urban residents, most of whom were white as of 1995, and inferior services are available to the poor, who are black. These differences began to narrow in the early 1990s, as apartheid was being dismantled. Under the government's 1994 blueprint for social and economic development, the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), R14 billion (for value of the rand--see Glossary) was set aside for improvements in health care.

Incidence of Disease

Tuberculosis is the most prevalent disease reported to health officials in the 1990s. European settlers probably introduced this disease into southern Africa in the seventeenth or the eighteenth century, and it was perhaps reintroduced by nineteenth-century gold and diamond miners from Europe or China. Miners of all races lived in unhealthy and unsanitary conditions during the first decades of industrial development, and these conditions contributed to the spread of the disease in the early twentieth century. From the beginning, whites who became ill received better treatment than others. In 1955 tuberculosis reached epidemic proportions among black mineworkers, which prompted the South African Chamber of Mines to improve mineworkers' dwellings and health care services.

About 90 percent of tuberculosis cases reported after 1970 were among blacks. The rate of infection appeared to decline between 1970 and 1985, and the government, citing this decline, ended compulsory tuberculosis vaccinations in 1987. Although tuberculosis among blacks increased after that, health officials believed other causes were important. Overcrowding in urban housing projects increased in the late 1980s, and many tuberculosis patients discontinued treatment after only a few weeks, rather than the prescribed year. The South African National Tuberculosis Association reported that its case load increased from 88,000 cases in 1985 to more than 124,000 in 1990 and continued to increase after that. More than 6,000 people died of tuberculosis and related effects each year in the early 1990s. More than 47,800 new cases of the disease were reported in 1994.

Malaria ranked second among reported diseases, again affecting whites less than other racial groups. This disease reached epidemic levels in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century, especially in the northern Natal and the lowveld areas of the northern and eastern Transvaal. During the 1960s, there were 2.7 cases of malaria per 100,000 nonwhites, compared with only 1.1 cases per 100,000 whites. As malaria increased during the 1970s and the 1980s, the gap between races widened and these rates rose to 40.5 cases per 100,000 among blacks, Asians, and people of mixed race, compared with six cases per 100,000 whites in the early 1990s. In 1994 health officials reported 4,194 cases of malaria nationwide.

Several factors probably contributed to the changing patterns in malaria incidence. The use of insecticides helped reduce the incidence of malaria temporarily in the 1950s. The 1972 worldwide ban on the insecticide, DDT, though only partially observed in South Africa, was followed by a steady increase in the incidence of malaria. At the same time, mosquitoes and other parasites became more resistant to chemicals and medicines. Residential patterns also changed, and several mosquito-infested areas of the country were permanently settled. For example, the black homelands of Venda, Gazankulu, and Lebowa were established in heavily malaria-infested areas of the northern Transvaal.

Most other diseases decreased between 1970 and 1990. In keeping with world trends, smallpox was virtually eradicated in South Africa by the 1970s. Diphtheria declined to almost negligible levels--fewer than 0.1 cases per 100,000 people--by 1990. Leprosy showed similar trends, diminishing to 0.5 cases per 100,000 in 1990.

Typhoid continues to appear in scattered areas of the country in the 1990s, and most typhoid cases are among blacks. In the early 1990s, between twenty-five and thirty-five cases of typhoid were reported per 100,000 blacks, per year, compared with fewer than eight cases per 100,000 whites, Indians, and coloureds. A total of 581 new cases were reported in 1994. Measles outbreaks remained fairly steady in the early 1990s, with thirty to seventy new cases per 100,000 whites, coloureds, and Indians, and sixty to 150 cases per 100,000 blacks, each year. In 1994 a total of 1,672 cases of measles were reported. Other common ailments, such as gastroenteritis, kill several hundred black South Africans each year, even though these diseases are easily treatable in South African hospitals.

Infectious and parasitic diseases cause roughly 12 percent of all deaths among blacks but only 2 percent of deaths among whites. Health officials attribute the high incidence of infectious diseases in poor areas to the lack of clean water and sewage disposal systems. As a result, these services are high priorities in the government's development plans for the late 1990s.

Heart disease and cancer, which are common in industrialized nations, affect whites more than other racial groups in South Africa. Heart disease accounts for about 38 percent of all deaths among whites in the 1990s, compared with only 13 percent of deaths among blacks. Cancerous tumors are responsible for 18 percent of deaths among whites, but for only 8 percent of deaths among blacks.

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS)

Although the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases had declined from 1966 through the 1980s, the overall rate of infection increased after 1990, and among these diseases, acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) raised the greatest fears. South Africa's first recorded death from AIDS occurred in 1982, although the risks of AIDS were not widely publicized at the time. In 1985 health officials began testing blood to prevent AIDS transmission through transfusion.

By early 1991, 613 cases of AIDS had been reported nationwide, and 270 people were known to have died from the disease. Officials at the South African Institute of Medical Research estimated at that time that 15,000 people were infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The World Health Organization (WHO) reported 1,123 cases of AIDS in South Africa in 1992. By March 1996, the number of reported AIDS cases had reached 10,351.

Some health researchers estimated that between 800,000 and 1 million South Africans were HIV-positive in the mid-1990s. More than 500--perhaps as many as 700--people were becoming infected each day, according to these estimates, and the rate of infection was likely to double every thirteen months in the late 1990s. These figures suggested that between 4 million and 8 million people would be HIV-positive by the year 2000. Estimates of the number of likely deaths from AIDS in the early twenty-first century ranged as high as 1 million.

As in most of Africa, AIDS is primarily an urban phenomenon in South Africa, but it has spread rapidly into rural areas and has affected a disproportionate number of people between the ages of fifteen and forty. Recognizing the potential impact on the country's economic output, the South African Chamber of Mines, the nation's largest employer, began an aggressive campaign to educate workers and to curtail the spread of AIDS in the 1980s, after the chamber's health adviser warned that AIDS could be the country's most serious health problem by the late 1990s. The industry already had established treatment and counseling services for workers afflicted with sexually transmitted diseases, so it used this network to promote its campaign against AIDS. The Chamber of Mines found an incidence of only 0.05 percent of HIV infection among more than 30,000 mine workers in a baseline study in 1986. It then initiated random blood testing on 2,000 to 3,000 workers each month and found that the rate of HIV infection had risen to 6 percent by 1992.

The government was able to build on the early efforts of the Chamber of Mines to help stem the spread of HIV and AIDS in the 1990s. Government officials, health specialists from the ANC, and others established the National AIDS Convention of South Africa to coordinate the nationwide campaign emphasizing public education. In 1993 the National AIDS Convention, working with the Chamber of Mines, WHO, and other international experts, received financial assistance from the European Union (EU--see Glossary) for its efforts. In 1994 and 1995, however, the campaign became embroiled in funding disputes and was slowed by partisan political debate.

Although health officials were concerned about the spread of AIDS, some were still more concerned about the incidence of tuberculosis in the mid-1990s. They argued that tuberculosis caused as many as thirty-six deaths each day, on average, compared with less than one death per day from AIDS. Moreover, methods for preventing the spread of tuberculosis were already well known and could help in the fight against AIDS. Health officials had reported that people infected with tuberculosis are more susceptible to HIV infection and more likely to develop AIDS symptoms in a shorter time after being infected, and that these AIDS sufferers are likely to die sooner than those free of tuberculosis.

Health Care Services

Until 1990 apartheid was practiced in most hospitals, to varying degrees. Some admitted patients of one racial group only, and others designated operating rooms and special care facilities for patients of certain racial groups. This practice often led to expensive and redundant services and organizations, and, at times, unnecessary neglect. A few medical personnel, nonetheless, ignored apartheid-related restrictions, especially in emergency rooms and public clinics. By the early 1990s, deliberate racial distinctions were beginning to disappear from hospital care in general. Health care services continued to reflect the status of the communities in which they were found, however; wealthier people had easier access to health care and generally received better care.

South Africa's health care facilities include hospitals, day hospitals, community health care centers, and clinics. In 1995 about 25,600 doctors as well as 24,500 supplementary health professionals, 160,000 nurses and nurses' auxiliaries, and more than 5,100 dentists and dental specialists were registered with the South African Medical and Dental Council (SAMDC) and the South African Nursing Council. In the early 1990s, only about 1,500 doctors, nationwide, were black. Wealthy white areas averaged one doctor per 1,200 people; the poorest black homelands, one doctor for 13,000 people.

Seven universities have medical schools, and six provide dental training. Nurses are trained at several universities, hospitals, and nursing schools. More than 300 hospitals are managed entirely or in part by provincial governments, and 255 hospitals are privately operated. There are an estimated 108,000 hospital beds nationwide, and almost 24,800 beds in psychiatric hospitals.

The South African Red Cross renders emergency, health, and community services, and operates ambulance services, senior citizens' homes, and air rescue services across the nation, but primarily in urban areas. Some areas also have twenty-four-hour-a-day poison control centers, child-assistance phone services, rape crisis centers, and suicide prevention programs.

One of the interim government's highest priorities in the mid-1990s is the prevention of childhood death and disease through nationwide immunization programs. The incidence of tetanus, measles, malaria, and other communicable diseases is high, especially in the former African homelands. For this reason, one of President Nelson Mandela's first actions after assuming office in May 1994 was to implement a program of free health care for children under the age of six. By early 1996, officials estimated that at least 75 percent of all infants had been immunized against polio and measles.

Malnutrition and starvation also occur in a few, especially rural, areas. These problems are being addressed through other elements of the government's RDP of the 1990s (see Postapartheid Reconstruction, ch. 3). Minister of Health Nkosazana Zuma noted in December 1994 that only 20 percent of South Africans have any form of health insurance. The government plans to institute a program of free universal primary health care, but health officials estimated in early 1996 that it might take ten years to implement the plan fully.

Social Welfare

Disabilities and the Aged

Social welfare services in the 1990s include care for the disabled and the aged, alcohol and drug-rehabilitation programs, previous offenders' programs, and child care services. At least 1,742 private welfare organizations and numerous government agencies administer these programs.

The National Welfare Act (No. 100) of 1978 established a coordinating council, the South African Welfare Council, to help manage these diverse programs. Amendments to the act in 1987 signaled the government's growing awareness of the need to narrow differences in social welfare among racial groups. In the early 1990s, the government spent about R1 billion per year on welfare programs, excluding old-age pensions. About one-half of that amount was spent on whites. Government spending under the RDP in the mid-1990s was geared toward improving social services for other racial groups.

About 3.5 million South Africans are physically disabled in the mid-1990s. The government's approach is to encourage independent, although sometimes assisted, living for them. Assistance is sometimes available through outpatient rehabilitation centers, counseling services, workshops, and sheltered employment centers. Families and church groups are still important in assisting the handicapped, especially the mentally and psychologically impaired, although government-funded services are available for the blind and the deaf. Substance abuse programs, especially for alcohol abuse or marijuana dependence, are also available in some communities.

The government administers about 1.8 million old-age (nonmilitary) pensions in the 1990s that represent a total of about R4 billion. The government began narrowing the gap in pensions for different racial groups in 1992 and pledged to eliminate such disparities. But elderly black and other citizens continued to claim that they were disadvantaged because of their racial identity in the mid-1990s. Government welfare agencies also provide veterans' benefits, adoption and foster care services, services for alcoholics and drug addicts, and services for abused and neglected children.

Refugees

Most refugees in South Africa in the 1980s and 1990s were from Mozambique, fleeing that country's civil war. Estimates of their number varied widely, in part because many other Mozambican migrant workers were in South Africa during that time. The number of refugees was particularly difficult to estimate because until 1993, South African officials sometimes denied access to refugee camps for international observers trying to monitor the refugees' living conditions.

In early 1994, officials estimated that perhaps 1 million Mozambicans were working in South Africa, legally or illegally, and that perhaps as many as 500,000 were refugees. Although only a few took advantage of a repatriation program implemented by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in April 1994, in early 1995 relief workers estimated the number of refugees at about 200,000. This number was reduced by half during 1995, although several thousand Mozambicans were entering South Africa each month in early 1995--some for the second or third time.

Internally displaced South Africans were believed to number at least 500,000 in 1995, according to the United States Committee on Refugees (USCR). Most of these had been uprooted by official apartheid-related policies in the past decade, and perhaps 10,000 or more were displaced by political violence in KwaZulu-Natal in the early 1990s. The new government established a Land Claims Court and planned to adjudicate several thousand of such claims by the late 1990s. By mid-1996 a few cases had been resolved by restoring lost land, and a small number of displaced South Africans had received compensation for their losses.

Narcotics

After South Africa's international isolation ended and border trade increased in the early 1990s, problems associated with narcotics trafficking and drug use increased dramatically, according to the South African Police Service (SAPS). In 1994 South African authorities confiscated more than 2.4 million ounces of cocaine; nearly 25,000 grams of heroin; more than 16,000 units of LSD; 27,000 ounces of hashish, and 7 million kilograms of cannabis (marijuana), according to police records, and most of these figures were expected to increase in 1995 and 1996. At the same time, officials at the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence reported an increase in problems related to substance abuse and addiction, and police officials reported that narcotics dealers often were involved in other forms of crime, such as arms smuggling, burglaries, or car hijackings.

Women in Society

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In general, all racial and ethnic groups in South Africa have long-standing beliefs concerning gender roles, and most are based on the premise that women are less important, or less deserving of power, than men. Most African traditional social organizations are male centered and male dominated. Even in the 1990s, in some rural areas of South Africa, for example, wives walk a few paces behind their husbands in keeping with traditional practices. Afrikaner religious beliefs, too, include a strong emphasis on the theoretically biblically based notion that women's contributions to society should normally be approved by, or be on behalf of, men.

Twentieth-century economic and political developments presented South African women with both new obstacles and new opportunities to wield influence. For example, labor force requirements in cities and mining areas have often drawn men away from their homes for months at a time, and, as a result, women have borne many traditionally male responsibilities in the village and home. Women have had to guarantee the day-to-day survival of their families and to carry out financial and legal transactions that otherwise would have been reserved for men.

Women and Apartheid

Apartheid imposed new restrictions on African women beginning in the 1950s. Many lived in squalor in the former homelands, where malnutrition, illness, and infant mortality were much higher than in urban areas. Other women who followed their husbands into cities or mining areas lived in inadequate, and often illegal, housing near industrial compounds. Women often left their own families to commute long distances to low-wage jobs in the domestic work force in white neighborhoods. Substantial numbers were temporary workers in agriculture; and a growing number of women joined the burgeoning industrial work force, as has been carefully researched in Iris Berger's Threads of Solidarity: Women in South African Industry, 1900-1980 .

Women became the major source of resistance to many race-related restrictions during the apartheid era, especially the pass laws, which required Africans to carry documents permitting them to be in white-occupied areas. The Women's Defence of the Constitution League, later known as the Black Sash, was formed in 1954, first to demonstrate against such laws and later to assist pass-law violators. Black Sash established pass-law advice centers in many cities and helped reduce sentences or assist violators in other ways.

The African National Congress Women's League (ANCWL), formed in 1943, was able to organize more than 20,000 women to march on government buildings in Pretoria to protest against the pass laws and other apartheid restrictions in 1955. Their protests eventually failed, however. In the early 1960s, pass-law restrictions were extended to women and new legislation restricted black women without steady employment to stays of no more than seventy-two hours in any urban area. Also in 1964, many senior ANC leaders were arrested, and others fled from South Africa or went underground, and the ANCWL became almost defunct.

Women continued to join the urban work force, and by the late 1980s, women made up at least 90 percent of the domestic work force and 36 percent of the industrial work force, according to labor union estimates. Women's wages were lower than men's even for the same job, however. In addition, positions normally held by women had long hours and few benefits, such as sick leave; women often were dismissed without advance notice and without any type of termination pay.

Conservative Afrikaner women have organized in support of Afrikaner cultural preservation and apartheid since the 1970s. The Kappiekommando was established in the late 1970s to demand a return to traditional Afrikaner values. This organization was named for its distinctive Voortrekker dress, which caused some young Afrikaners and others to ridicule its members' appearance and their militancy. The Kappiekommando's militant opposition to political reforms eventually contributed to its marginalization, even among staunchly conservative Afrikaners.

The Afrikanervroue-Kenkrag (AVK), another Afrikaner women's organization, was formed in 1983 and worked primarily to oppose racial integration in schools and other public places. AVK membership grew to about 1,000 during the mid-1980s. The group published a monthly newsletter and cooperated with other Afrikaner organizations, but like the Kappiekommando, the AVK lost support when mainstream Afrikaner political leaders began working toward racial inclusiveness in the 1990s.

Women in the 1990s

The ANCWL was resurrected in 1990, after the ban on the ANC was lifted, and women in more than 500 towns and cities organized to press for consideration of gender issues in the upcoming constitutional negotiations. At the insistence of its Women's League, the ANC accepted, in principle, the proposal that women should receive one-third of the political appointments in the new government. Other symbolic gains by the ANCWL have included strong policy stands on women's rights and protection against abuse and exploitation, but translating these standards into enforceable laws proved to be a difficult task.

Women are achieving new prominence in politics as a result of the sweeping political reforms of the 1990s. In 1994 women won election to eighty of the 400 seats in the National Assembly, the only directly elected house of parliament, and a woman, Frene Ginwala, was elected Speaker of the National Assembly. Women also were elected to almost one-third of the seats in the nine provincial assemblies.

President Mandela appointed two women cabinet ministers in May 1994, and a woman succeeded the late minister of housing, Joe Slovo, after his death in January 1995. Three women were deputy ministers in early 1995. One of these, President Mandela's former wife, Winnie Mandela, was appointed deputy minister of arts, culture, science, and technology.

Mrs. Mandela had been a courageous fighter for the rights of the downtrodden for more than two decades while her husband was in prison, and she had achieved high office within the ANC. But her association with violent elements of the ANC Youth League in the late 1980s and other accusations against her in the 1990s led many within the ANC to shun her. She was also outspoken in her criticism of the government in early 1995 for its failure to move more quickly to ease the extreme poverty of many citizens. Her defiance led to her removal from office in March of that year.

Eliminating violence against women and improving educational opportunities for women are almost universally supported goals in South Africa in the mid-1990s, but these goals receive only rhetorical support, in many cases. More urgent priorities are to eliminate the vestiges of apartheid legislation and to improve economic and social conditions for the very poor, for children, and for other groups that were especially disadvantaged in recent decades. Gender-related inequities appear likely to be decried, but relegated to secondary importance, well into the twenty-first century.

The Economy

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TRADING ON JOHANNESBURG'S financial markets reached a new all-time high on April 26, 1994, reflecting the buoyant mood of voters of all races who were about to participate in the country's first democratic elections. As South Africa emerged from the economic stagnation and international isolation of the apartheid era, the new government and its theme of economic reconstruction received international acclaim and encouragement. At the same time, however, it faced conflicting pressures to speed economic growth, to strengthen South Africa's standing among international investors and donors, and, at the same time, to improve living conditions for the majority of citizens.

South Africa's economy had been shaped over several centuries by its abundant natural resources and by the attempts of immigrant populations to dominate and to exploit those who had arrived before them. For most of the twentieth century, its mineral wealth had surpassed that of almost any other country in the world, except the Soviet Union. South Africa produced nearly half of the world's gold and ranked among the top ten producers of a dozen other valuable minerals, including diamonds and copper. The mining industries provided the foundation for the strongest economy on the continent, which, by the mid-twentieth century, included a comprehensive transportation system, an extensive electric power grid, and a significant manufacturing sector. South Africa's main resource deficiency is oil, and as a result, many industries rely on coal rather than on imported fuels.

By the mid-1980s, the economy was distorted by government policies designed to bolster the economic and political power of a small minority and to exclude many of South Africa's citizens, selected by race, from significant participation in the nation's wealth. Basic needs were unmet, resulting in hunger, malnutrition, and undereducation, especially in rural areas. Industrial development could not be sustained through domestic resources, and there was stagnation in some areas when foreign capital was reduced in the face of strong international pressures for political reform. Because the mining industry continued to dominate the economy, wide fluctuations--especially in the price of gold--eroded currency values and reduced the country's ability to import goods. At the same time, keeping black wages low, which was crucial to profits in all areas of the economy, perpetuated the discrimination that provoked widespread protests and condemnation.

By the early 1990s, the weaknesses in the economy were increasingly evident despite the country's dazzling mineral wealth. Some segments of the population were poorer, and living in more difficult circumstances, than many people in far less developed African countries. Moreover, a poorly educated, impoverished majority of the population could not provide the skills and the resources that the country's infrastructure and labor market required. The government cast off the constraints of apartheid (see Glossary) in the early 1990s, in part to confront the serious economic problems caused by that system. The new government in the mid-1990s faces the enormous challenges of improving living standards and managing the country's resources profitably.

Historical Development

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Before South Africa's vast mineral wealth was discovered in the late nineteenth century, there was a general belief that southern Africa was almost devoid of the riches that had drawn Europeans to the rest of the continent. South Africa had no known gold deposits such as those the Portuguese had sought in West Africa in the fifteenth century. The region did not attract many slave traders, in part because local populations were sparsely settled. Valuable crops such as palm oil, rubber, and cocoa, which were found elsewhere on the continent, were absent. Although the local economy was rich in some areas--based on mixed farming and herding--only ivory was traded to any extent. Most local products were not sought for large-scale consumption in Europe.

Instead, Europeans first settled southern Africa to resupply their trading expeditions bound for other parts of the world (see Origins of Settlement, ch. 1). In 1652 the Dutch East India Company settled a few employees at a small fort at present-day Cape Town and ordered them to provide fresh food for the company's ships that rounded the Cape on their way to East Africa and Asia. This nucleus of European settlement quickly spread outward from the fort, first to trade with the local Khoikhoi hunting populations and later to seize their land for European farmers. Smallpox epidemics swept the area in the late eighteenth century, and Europeans who had come to rely on Khoikhoi labor enslaved many of the survivors of the epidemics.

By the early nineteenth century, when the Cape settlement came under British rule, 26,000 Dutch farmers had settled the area from Stellenbosch to the Great Fish River (see fig. 7). In 1820 the British government sponsored 5,000 more settlers who also established large cattle ranches, relying on African labor. But the European immigrants, like earlier arrivals in the area, engaged primarily in subsistence farming and produced little for export.

The discovery of diamonds in 1869 and of gold in 1886 revolutionized the economy. European investment flowed in; by the end of the nineteenth century, it was equivalent to all European investment in the rest of Africa. International banks and private lenders increased cash and credit available to local farmers, miners, and prospectors, and they, in turn, placed growing demands for land and labor on the local African populations. The Europeans resorted to violence to defend their economic interests, sometimes clashing with those who refused to relinquish their freedom or their land. Eventually, as the best land became scarce, groups of settlers clashed with one another, and rival Dutch and British populations fought for control over the land (see Industrialization and Imperialism, 1870-1910, ch. 1).

South Africa was drawn into the international economy through its exports, primarily diamonds and gold, and through its own increasing demand for a variety of agricultural imports. The cycle of economic growth was stimulated by the continual expansion of the mining industry, and with newfound wealth, consumer demand fueled higher levels of trade.

In the first half of the twentieth century, government economic policies were designed to meet local consumer demand and to reduce the nation's reliance on its mining sector by providing incentives for farming and for establishing manufacturing enterprises. But the government also saw its role as helping to defend white farmers and businessmen from African competition. In 1913 the Natives Land Act reserved most of the land for white ownership, forcing many black farmers to work as wage laborers on land they had previously owned. When the act was amended in 1936, black land ownership was restricted to 13 percent of the country, much of it heavily eroded.

White farmers received other privileges, such as loans from a government Land Bank (created in 1912), labor law protection, and crop subsidies. Marketing boards, which were established to stabilize production of many crops, paid more for produce from white farmers than for produce from black farmers. All farm activity suffered from the cyclical droughts that swept the subcontinent, but white farmers received greater government protection against economic losses.

During the 1920s, to encourage the fledgling manufacturing industries, the government established state corporations to provide inexpensive electricity and steel for industrial use, and it imposed import tariffs to protect local manufacturers. Again black entrepreneurs were discouraged, and new laws limited the rights of black workers, creating a large pool of low-cost industrial labor. By the end of the 1930s, the growing number of state-owned enterprises dominated the manufacturing sector, and black entrepreneurs continued to be pressured to remain outside the formal economy.

Manufacturing experienced new growth during and after World War II. Many of the conditions necessary for economic expansion had been present before the war--cities were growing, agriculture was being consolidated into large farms with greater emphasis on commercial production, and mine owners and shareholders had begun to diversify their investments into other sectors. As the war ended, local consumer demand rose to new highs, and with strong government support--and international competitors at bay--local agriculture and manufacturing began to expand.

The government increased its role in the economy, especially in manufacturing, during the 1950s and the 1960s. It also initiated large-scale programs to promote the commercial cultivation of corn and wheat. Government investments through the state-owned Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) helped to establish local textile and pulp and paper industries, as well as state corporations to produce fertilizers, chemicals, oil, and armaments. Both manufacturing and agricultural production expanded rapidly, and by 1970 manufacturing output exceeded that of mining.

Despite the appearance of self-sustaining economic growth during the postwar period, the country's economy continued to be susceptible to its historical limitations: recurrent drought, overreliance on gold exports, and the costs and consequences of the use of disenfranchised labor. While commercial agriculture developed into an important source of export revenue, production plummeted during two major droughts, from 1960 to 1966 and from 1981 to 1985. Gold continued to be the most important export and revenue earner; yet, as the price of gold fluctuated, especially during the 1980s, South Africa's exchange rate and ability to import goods suffered.

Manufacturing, in particular, was seriously affected by downswings in the price of gold, in part because it relied on imported machinery and capital. Some capital-intensive industries were able to expand, but only with massive foreign loans. As a result, many industries were insulated from the rising labor militancy, especially among black workers, which sparked disputes and slowed productivity in the late 1980s. As black labor increasingly voiced its frustrations, and foreign banks cut short their loans because of mounting instability, even capital-intensive industries felt the impact of apartheid on profits.

The economy was in recession from March 1989 through most of 1993, largely in response to worldwide economic conditions and the long-term effects of apartheid. It registered only negligible, or negative, growth in most quarters. High inflation had become chronic, driving up costs in all sectors. Living standards of the majority of black citizens either fell or remained dangerously low, while those of many whites also began to decline. Economic growth continued to depend on decent world prices for gold and on the availability of foreign loans. Even as some sectors of the economy began to recover in late 1993, intense violence and political uncertainty in the face of reform slowed overall growth through 1994.

Postapartheid Reconstruction

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As the African National Congress (ANC) shifted away from its liberation agenda toward a leadership role in government in the early 1990s, ANC economists, together with government and private-sector consultants, developed a blueprint for development in the late 1990s. This Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) analyzed nationwide living standards and proposed ways to improve government services and basic living conditions for the poor. The RDP detailed the extreme poverty of at least 17 million citizens who were living below internationally accepted minimum standards. The report estimated that 4.3 million families were without adequate housing, and some 12 million people lacked access to clean drinking water. Most homes, and many schools and hospitals, lacked electricity. An estimated 4.6 million adults were illiterate.

In May 1994, the new government adopted the RDP as the centerpiece of its economic policy, although President Nelson (Rolihlahla) Mandela was quick to reassure potential investors and donors that his government's social programs would be financed largely through cuts in existing government spending. He pledged that his government would avoid both dramatic increases in taxes and large-scale deficit spending to implement the much-needed welfare improvements.

The RDP envisioned sweeping government programs to raise living standards--to build houses and roads, to provide services, to upgrade education, and to create jobs to narrow the gap between rich and poor. By late 1994, the government had begun to implement its highest RDP priorities: a US$135 million school lunch program; a US$14 million program of free medical care for children and pregnant women; providing water and electricity to rural communities; and phasing in free, compulsory primary education for children of all races.

Government officials and ANC economists in the National Institute for Economic Policy estimated that RDP expenditures in fiscal year (FY--see Glossary) 1994-95 would amount to 2.5 billion rands (R; for value of the rand--see Glossary), or about 7 percent of government spending. They also estimated that RDP expenditures would double in FY 1995-96 and would increase by about R2.5 billion each year after that, to R12.5 billion--probably more than 25 percent of government spending--in FY 1998-99. The Development Bank of Southern Africa estimated costs approaching US$30 billion--US$19 billion in capital expenditures and US$11 billion in recurrent expenditures--by 1999. Government officials insisted that they would rely on increased trade and overall economic growth, as well as on international assistance and private-sector donations, for most of the additional revenue, and that reconstruction would be aided by a one-time, 5 percent levy on individuals and companies with taxable incomes of more than R50,000. They also predicted that the government would save money by increasing efficiency (in particular by eliminating the redundancy that had been necessary to provide services to separate racial groups under apartheid) and by reducing military expenditures.

To help finance the RDP, the government also undertook negotiations to sell some national assets to private citizens, despite the ANC's earlier opposition to privatization. Senior government officials, including the president, accepted salary cuts of between 10 percent and 20 percent to contribute to social reconstruction. President Mandela also asked for concrete proposals and contributions from the business community--such as on-the-job training and employer subsidies of housing, transportation, and education--to meet the urgent needs defined in the RDP.

The new government launched worldwide appeals for new trade and investment packages for South Africa, as it tried to overcome more than a decade of international isolation. South Africa began reentering world financial markets, establishing new trading partners, and expanding formerly clandestine trade ties that had long existed with many countries. International donors and investors responded cautiously at first, in part because of the continuing high levels of urban and township violence.

After mid-1994 immigrants from other African countries arrived in large numbers--a total of perhaps a million in that year alone, according to some estimates--seeking jobs in postapartheid South Africa. Poorer neighboring states also intensified their requests for assistance from Pretoria, hoping South Africa's economic revival would increase output and trade throughout the region and that South Africa would become the region's new "engine of development."

Structure of the Economy

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Gross Domestic Product

Historically, mining and agriculture contributed the most to national output. With government assistance during and after World War II, manufacturing grew to become the greatest contributor to overall gross domestic product, and overall economic growth in the 1960s rivaled that of Japan--averaging 5.9 percent per year in real terms (compared with the 4 percent annual average growth of the 1950s). During the 1970s, however, growth in both manufacturing and agriculture stagnated, and the services sector--especially the insurance industry, financial facilities, and transport services--became the fastest-growing economic sector

The price of gold was allowed to float (relative to the rand) in the early 1970s, and by the end of the decade, high prices for gold and other export commodities sparked a brief economic recovery. Mining continued to be vital to the nation's economic future, because minerals, especially gold, dominated exports and influenced the growth of other major economic sectors, which relied on gold exports to bring in much-needed foreign exchange. Thus, even as the importance of gold in the GDP declined, it continued to affect the country's balance of payments. When gold prices (and export revenues) declined, local industries often were unable to obtain imports, such as machinery and other inputs necessary to maintain production; as a result, other exports also declined.

Economic growth slowed in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, not only because of declining gold revenues, but also because of rising prices for oil imports and increased international competition in other traditional export commodities. The first recession of this period occurred in 1976, following dramatic oil price hikes. Strong export growth based on higher gold prices helped the recovery from this recession, but the country was hit by a series of droughts in the 1980s, which seriously affected agricultural output. Further erratic changes in gold prices led to a series of booms and busts, reducing average annual GDP growth for the 1980s to only 1.5 percent.

Negligible growth in the 1980s led to an overall decline in living standards, as population growth far outpaced economic expansion. Per capita GDP declined by more than 10 percent during the decade, and for the average individual, real wealth in 1990 was no higher than it had been in 1970.

National economic stagnation continued in the early 1990s. GDP declined in 1991 and 1992, and registered only weak positive growth in 1993, according to the government's Central Statistical Service. Private consumption accounted for 57 percent of GDP in 1993, representing a minimal (0.4 percent) increase over 1992. Private consumption was constrained by high consumer indebtedness, however, and by concerns over violence and job security.

The recovery strengthened in 1994. In that year, GDP amounted to R432.8 billion (US$121.9 billion) representing 2.6 percent real growth over 1993 (see table 6, Appendix). Per capita GDP averaged about US$3,010, placing South Africa among the World Bank's (see Glossary) upper-middle-income developing countries. The recovery continued in 1995, and officials predicted GDP growth would exceed 4 percent in 1996

National accounting procedures were adjusted in 1994 to incorporate the economies of the four former "independent" African homelands--Bophuthatswana, Ciskei, Transkei, and Venda. In addition, GDP measurements were adjusted upward by 5.6 percent to include a modest estimate of output in the informal sector, which had been omitted from national accounts until 1994. The informal sector constitutes a "parallel" economy, consisting primarily of unrecorded and untaxed wages, barter trade, and other unofficial receipts. For many rural families in South Africa, as in the rest of Africa, informal economic activity accounts for most of the household income.

South Africa's advanced industrial sector made it the twenty-fifth largest economy in the world, a giant among African countries in the 1990s. Per capita GDP, in 1994, compared with the rest of Africa, was topped only by the Seychelles, Réunion, and Gabon. With only about 7 percent of the population and 4 percent of the total land area of Africa, South Africa produced more than one-third of Africa's goods and services, and nearly 40 percent of its manufacturing output.

External Debt

Loan capital was readily available during the 1970s, and both the public and the private sectors borrowed heavily, often in the form of trade credits. Then in the early 1980s, foreign investments declined relative to the value of foreign loans needed to finance economic growth. As a result, equity capital dropped as a percentage of foreign debt from 60 percent in 1970 to less than 30 percent in 1984, while South Africa's loans grew from 40 percent to 70 percent of foreign debt. The government encouraged this trend by stepping in whenever foreign bankers hesitated to increase lending and stabilized indebtedness through gold swaps or by borrowing from the International Monetary Fund (IMF--see Glossary). As a result of these policies, South Africa's net indebtedness to the international banks increased sharply, and about two-thirds of its outstanding loans in 1984 had a maturity of one year or less. The banking sector was responsible for 44 percent of South Africa's foreign liabilities, and a further 16 percent had been incurred by the public sector. Only about 40 percent were private liabilities. Britain dominated foreign capital loans and investments, accounting for about 40 percent of foreign investment in 1985.

South Africa was hit with a major foreign debt crisis in 1985, when a group of banks, led by Chase Manhattan, withdrew substantial credit lines. The banks refused to roll over existing loans and called in many of the short-term loans. As a result, the value of the rand dropped precipitously, and the government temporarily closed its financial and foreign-exchange markets. Unable to meet debt obligations so suddenly, the government declared a standstill on repayments of approximately US$14 billion of South Africa's US$24 billion total external debt. Liabilities not included in the standstill were trade credits, loans from the IMF and central banks, and credits guaranteed by Paris Club (see Glossary) member governments. Publicly quoted issues of South African parastatals (state corporations) were also left out.

During the standstill, government officials met with representatives of creditor banks and drew up a rescheduling plan, which proposed extending the 1985 debt freeze until June 1987 and repaying 5 percent of the total outstanding by April 1987. An initial payment of US$420 million was made in mid-April 1986, but additional rescheduling agreements in 1987 and 1989 extended many of these loans. The 1989 agreement stipulated that the amount of debt remaining in those categories affected by the standstill, originally amounting to US$14 billion, would be reduced to roughly US$6 billion in four years.

A key problem in repaying its loans was the large, but undisclosed, portion of South Africa's debt that was denominated in hard nondollar currencies, but appreciated in dollar terms as the dollar weakened. South Africa nonetheless repaid between US$1.7 billion and US$1.9 billion of debt by 1990, and some foreign bankers were increasingly willing to refinance maturing South African credits. For example, US$300 million of US$900 million bearer bonds in deutsche marks and Swiss francs were rolled over or replaced in 1990.

There was almost no external borrowing by South Africa from 1985 to 1990, so even its slowed schedule of debt repayment made South Africa a net capital exporter during the late 1980s. South Africa reduced its total disclosed foreign debt to less than US$20 billion in early 1992, down from nearly US$24 billion in 1985, according to the South African Reserve Bank. Currency fluctuations brought South Africa's international debt back to US$25.8 billion at the end of 1993, including rand-denominated foreign debt, and that figure continued to increase in 1994.

The government repaid about US$500 million in foreign debt in February 1994. At that time, South Africa was considered an under-borrower by conventional financial criteria, with a foreign debt/export ratio of about 60 percent and a foreign debt/GDP ratio of 15.1 percent, according to South African Reserve Bank figures. Overall, South Africa posted a net capital inflow of more than R8 billion in the second half of 1994. Foreign borrowing increased in 1995, when gross foreign debt rose to nearly 22 percent of GDP.

Inflation

Historically, South Africa's inflation rate was tied closely to that of its major trading partners. In the 1960s, annual inflation averaged about 3 percent. In line with world trends, it rose above 10 percent in 1974 and fluctuated between 11 and 14 percent through the early 1980s. During the late 1980s, however, South Africa's inflation rates did not decline along with those of its Western trading partners. Inflation reached a high of 18.6 percent in 1986, forcing a depreciation of the rand, and it continued in double-digit amounts after that. The erratic price of oil--a crucial import bought on the black market because of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) sanctions--provided a consistent inflationary pressure.

Inflation continued to erode economic strength in the early 1990s, but declined to 9.1 percent in 1994. Inflation increased in early 1995 under pressure from new social spending, but declined to 8.7 percent by the end of the year. The lower rate of inflation resulted in part from a decline in food prices, the relative stability of the rand, and the lowering of import tariffs. Inflationary pressures persisted in the increase in credit purchases and strong labor demands.

Economic Distortions and Apartheid

National accounts in 1994 showed a sharp break with the past, as economic and legal data were reorganized to include citizens of all races and all jurisdictions, including former homelands. The interim constitution implemented in 1994 ended the use of racial categories to determine social and economic opportunity, but the economic system of the mid-1990s nonetheless continued to reflect some of the economic patterns that had developed during more than forty years of apartheid.

Creating the homelands and resettling people in them had drastically changed the country's population distribution and regional economic patterns in the 1970s and 1980s. Accounting for these anomalies caused confusion and obfuscation in economic data and analyses. Many homeland residents were barely able to support themselves, owing in part to the homelands' arid land, inferior roads and transportation, and overcrowding; some were therefore forced to travel great distances to work in "white" South Africa. Many of these workers were excluded from national accounts because they were not legal residents of South Africa.

It became increasingly clear in the 1980s that apartheid could not be implemented as decreed by law, and eventually many official and unofficial policies allowed some flexibility in its application. In 1986 the government called for "orderly urbanization," under which a limited numbers of blacks could live in officially "white" urban areas, as long as housing was available. Few black workers could afford to take advantage of this policy, however, and demographic trends did not change noticeably.

By the late 1980s, black poverty was so serious that the government began to take steps to alleviate some of the most dire impacts of apartheid. Government statistics then indicated that more than 16 million people were living below internationally determined minimum-subsistence levels. Using nutritional standards as an alternative measure, an estimated 2.3 million people were at severe risk from hunger and malnutrition. In 1988 the minister of national health and population development characterized the crisis as "worse than the Great Depression," and in response, the government initiated food programs and other social welfare initiatives.

Role of the Government

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South African economists in the 1980s described the national economy as a free-enterprise system in which the market, not the government, set most wages and prices. The reality was that the government played a major role in almost every facet of the economy, including production, consumption, and regulation. In fact, Soviet economists in the late 1980s noted that the state-owned portion of South Africa's industrial sector was greater than that in any country outside the communist bloc. The South African government owned and managed almost 40 percent of all wealth-producing assets, including iron and steel works, weapons manufacturing facilities, and energy-producing resources. Government-owned corporations and parastatals were also vital to the services sector. Marketing boards and tariff regulations intervened to influence consumer prices. Finally, a wide variety of laws governed economic activities at all levels based on race.

The government's main concern since the discovery of gold in 1886 had been balancing the growth of the mining industry against the need to diversify, in order to create sustained development and self-sufficiency. Successive governments had tried to encourage and to support local industries that could reduce imports, provide jobs, and create a multiplier effect by encouraging further industrial growth. Paul Kruger, who had led the Transvaal in the late nineteenth century, had granted monopoly concessions to industrialists; the 1920s governments of Jan C. Smuts and J.B.M. Hertzog had initiated state corporations, and the post-1948 National Party government had tried industrial decentralization (see Industrialization and Imperialism, 1870-1910; Segregation, 1910-48; and Apartheid, 1948-76, ch. 1).

Even after decades of policy shifts designed to spur development and diversification, however, South Africa's export economy in the 1980s still relied primarily on the gold-mining industry, and the government still protected import-substitution industries in order to keep them in operation. Furthermore, agriculture continued to be an uneven producer and therefore received substantial subsidies and other forms of government assistance. In the late 1980s, the government presented a blueprint for economic policy consistent with this history of economic struggle. Its central economic strategy advocated a shift toward strongly market-oriented policies, but left room for government intervention in response to social and political demands. The strategy increased the emphasis on local industrialization in order to cut imports and to create jobs. The only component of the central economic strategy that was really new was the effort to strengthen export industries, especially to increase value added through local processing of raw materials for export.

In 1994 the new Government of National Unity continued the economic policies of its predecessors, emphasizing a market orientation overall, but allowing government intervention when necessary, and maintaining import-substitution industries while trying to spur industrial development toward exports. International markets increasingly opened to South Africa, and trade flourished, especially with the new industrial giants of Asia. Senior government officials tried to downplay the ANC's longstanding commitment to nationalization of key industries in order to gain much-needed foreign investment. It was nonetheless clear that the debate over privatization would continue at least through the rest of the decade.

Legal Restrictions

Two legislative pillars of apartheid--the Natives Land Act (No. 27) of 1913 (and its amendment in 1936) and the Group Areas Act (No. 41) of 1950--limited African economic and business activities in both rural and urban areas (see The Legislative Implementation of Apartheid, ch. 1). These acts were repealed in 1991, but few blacks could yet afford to move into formerly white areas without financial assistance. Numerous other laws and regulations had restricted black economic activities and employment, especially the Mines and Works Act (No. 12) of 1911, the Native Labour Regulation Act (No. 15) of 1911, the Industrial Conciliation Act of 1924 and its amendments in 1937 and 1956, the Mines and Works Amendment Act of 1926, the Factories, Machinery, and Building Works Act (No. 22) of 1941, and the Bantu Labour Act (No. 67) of 1964. Public services and education opportunities were limited by the Bantu Education Act (No. 47) of 1953, the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act (No. 49) of 1953, and the National Policy for General Affairs Act (No. 76) of 1984.

In contrast to the government's control over domestic economic activity of South Africans, few legal restrictions were imposed on the economic activities of foreign nationals in South Africa, aside from stringent exchange controls on the repatriation of capital funds. Foreigners were welcome, even encouraged, to establish businesses in South Africa, and they could qualify for numerous government concessions and subsidies. During most of the apartheid era, those who wished to sell their South African assets, however, could do so only in financial rands (a currency control device), rather than the more commonly used commercial rands

Financial rands could be sold only to a foreign buyer for capital investment inside the country, and the financial rand traded at a discount (15 percent in late 1994) compared with the commercial rand. Exchange restrictions did not apply to current earnings, however, and investors could transfer those funds, subject to taxation. In March 1995, as the financial rand strengthened, and under strong pressure from the business community, the government abolished the financial rand.

The new government in 1994 began to implement legislation intended to compensate some of the roughly 3.5 million black citizens who had been dispossessed of their land under apartheid. The Restitution of Land Act (No. 22) of 1994 provided for the creation of a Land Claims Court and a Commission on Restitution of Land Rights to arbitrate demands for restitution. Petitioners under the law were given three years to lodge their claims. White landowners who feared the loss of their land lobbied hard through the South African Agricultural Union, which represented 60,000 white farmers, and succeeded in weakening provisions in the new law that would have given land rights to many sharecroppers and labor tenants. The white landowners also won the right to appeal land-claim decisions and to receive legal aid services under the new legislation. By mid-1996, only a small number of land claims had been adjudicated.

Parastatals

The government's strong role in shaping the economy was especially evident in the large number of parastatals, or state corporations, that it established beginning in the 1920s. Its primary goal was to strengthen import-substitution industries, which had started to grow during World War I, by providing infrastructure improvements and basic materials. Among the first such enterprises were the Electricity Supply Commission (Eskom) and the South African Iron and Steel Corporation (Iscor), both founded in the 1920s, and the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), established in 1940 to support other new industries. The IDC helped to establish many other state corporations, including the Phosphate Development Corporation (Foskor); the South African Coal, Oil, and Gas Corporation (SASOL); and the Southern Oil Exploration Corporation (Soekor). In addition, many state corporations also founded subsidiary companies in partnership with private firms, and many held controlling shares of stock in private firms.

Private individuals were allowed to purchase shares in many state-owned corporations. The government generally appointed a majority of corporate directors, but senior management made most personnel decisions independent of government control. The government's primary avenue of control over state corporations was by granting or withholding loans of state money. The electricity parastatal, Eskom, was always allowed to raise money publicly, but most other state corporations relied on government funds for capital financing.

The anticipated private-sector participation in these parastatals did not materialize, however. Investors showed little interest in purchasing parastatals' stock. Iscor suffered the embarrassment of an almost total public refusal of its stocks when they were offered for sale in 1929. In fact, most state corporation ventures were viewed as unprofitable and were funded by the government because of a lack of private interest. In 1979, however, after oil sales from Iran had been cut off, the synthetic fuel corporation, SASOL, offered shares to the public; investors eagerly bought all that were available and fully supported two more such issues.

In February 1988, President P. W. Botha announced plans to privatize several state-controlled industries, including Eskom, Foskor, and Iscor, as well as state-operated transport, postal, and telecommunications services. The reasons given for the privatization effort were that it would reduce public criticism of the government role in these enterprises and that these parastatals themselves were no longer profitable for the government. State corporations had been the major recipients of large foreign loans that were called in and cut off in 1985, leaving them with serious capital shortages. Sale of the corporations' assets could both ease the debt burden and provide the government with new revenue for much-needed social programs for the poor.

Iscor was the first major parastatal to be sold, in November 1989. Its sale raised R3 billion for the treasury. The government then scaled down its plans, and in the early 1990s the future of privatization was unclear. Officials estimated that the roughly R250 billion needed to finance the purchase of the largest state corporations probably could not be found inside the country. The argument for privatization was also weakened by the worsening investment climate as political negotiations stalled and violence increased. Government opponents, especially the ANC, vigorously opposed privatization--viewing it as a ploy to maintain white control in preparation for majority rule.

In 1995 the Government of National Unity began to develop its own privatization program. Late that year, Deputy President Thabo Mbeki announced that the government would seek equity partners in Telkom and in South African Airways and that it would sell several smaller parastatals outright. The announcement provoked strong protests from labor unions over the threat of job losses and over labor's exclusion from the policy decision-making process.

Budgets

The government enjoyed surplus budgets in most years during the 1970s and the early 1980s, until chronic high inflation and gold price fluctuations combined to diminish the business tax base in the mid-1980s. The severe decline in real gold prices reduced tax revenues to less than 2 percent of total revenues in FY 1990-91, compared with 25 percent of total revenues in the boom year a decade earlier

The personal tax base had always been relatively narrow because of the limited income of the large black population (about 76 percent of the total population) and the relative affluence of most whites (about 13 percent of the population). Searching for additional revenue during the late 1980s, the government tried to avoid higher taxes on businesses and instead relied on deficit financing. For example, in FY 1987-88, the deficit was 5.8 percent of GDP as part of a deliberate fiscal stimulation of the economy. This pattern of spending continued, and the budget deficit rose to 9 percent of GDP in 1993.

The erratic price of gold during the 1980s led to other budget problems, fueling the cycle of reduced industrial revenue, currency devaluation, and high inflation. The government attempted to encourage business development through lenient tax policies, but average incomes continued to be low so this strategy failed to bring in the needed government revenues. The government tried to increase its revenues by "widening the net" of goods and services taxed in 1991, when it introduced a 10 percent value-added tax (VAT) to replace the former 13 percent general sales tax. Then, in an effort to encourage capital spending, businesses were exempted from paying the VAT on capital inputs. And to encourage investment, other forms of tax, such as corporate taxes, taxes on gold mines and gold companies, and import surcharges on capital goods, were reduced. By 1995 the VAT had been increased to 14 percent.

The FY 1994-95 budget projected revenues of R105.8 billion and expenditures of R135.1 billion, leaving a deficit of R29.3 billion, or about 6.2 percent of projected GDP (see table 8, Appendix). To raise revenues, the government planned to sell domestic stocks, increase foreign borrowing, and increase excise taxes on alcohol and tobacco products--expected to bring in an estimated R525 million. The government also levied a one-time, 5 percent "transition levy" on individuals and businesses with taxable incomes of more than R50,000, expecting to enhance its revenues by about R2.25 billion through this measure.

In March 1995, the ANC-led government's budget for FY 1995-96 estimated total revenues at roughly R123 billion and expenditures at R153.3 billion, with a budget deficit of R29.7 billion and a gross borrowing requirement (including interest on previous debt) of R38 billion. Government revenues were to be enhanced by higher taxes on alcohol, tobacco, and gasoline (and a higher, 43 percent maximum rate on individual incomes). The budget was well received overall, and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange generally held steady after it was presented.

The proposed government budget for FY 1996-97 projected revenues of roughly R145 billion and expenditures of R174 billion, with a projected deficit equivalent to 5.1 percent of GDP. Principal projected new revenues included taxes on monthly retirement income, while revenues from import tariffs would be reduced or eliminated. Proposed budget allocations included roughly R7.5 billion for salary increases and pay adjustments for government workers, intended to reduce the inequities of the apartheid era. The budget also envisioned expenditures of roughly R5.5 billion for education, R10.2 billion for military spending, and R9.8 billion for the police.

Foreign Trade and Investment

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South Africa's foreign trade and investment were affected by sanctions and boycotts, especially during the 1980s and early 1990s. These measures included a voluntary arms embargo instituted by the United Nations (UN) in 1963, which was declared mandatory in 1977; the 1978 prohibition of loans from the United States Export-Import Bank; an oil embargo first instituted by OPEC in 1973 and strengthened in a similar move by Iran in 1979; a 1983 prohibition on IMF loans; a 1985 cutoff of most foreign loans by private banks; the United States 1986 Comprehensive Antiapartheid Act, which limited trade and discouraged United States investors; and the 1986 European Economic Community (EEC) ban on trade and investment. The Organization of African Unity (OAU) also discouraged trade with South Africa, although observers estimated that Africa's officially unreported trade with South Africa exceeded R10 billion per year in the late 1980s.

The most effective sanctions measure was the withdrawal of short-term credits in 1985 by a group of international banks. Immediate loan repayments took a heavy toll on the economy (see External Debt, this ch.). More than 350 foreign corporations, at least 200 of which were United States owned, sold off their South African investments. In 1991 both the EEC and the United States lifted many official sanctions in view of measures taken by Pretoria to begin dismantling apartheid. Foreign investors were slow to return to South Africa, however; most banking institutions considered the country too unstable, and foreign corporations faced high labor costs and unrest if they tried to operate there.

In 1994 and 1995, many of the United States companies that had sold off shares or operations in South Africa in the past decade returned to do business there. By early 1996, at least 225 United States companies employed more than 45,000 South African workers.

Foreign Trade

Throughout the twentieth century, South Africa's economy has depended heavily on foreign trade--a trend that continued even under pressure from international sanctions and recession. Gold dominated its exports to the point that the government occasionally intervened to promote nongold exports. During the 1970s and the 1980s, the price of gold directly affected the value of the rand and, therefore, the prices at which exports were sold overseas. As the gold price fluctuated, the exchange rate of the rand rose and fell, and export revenues responded accordingly. Under these uncertain conditions, few manufacturers were willing to risk large investments to increase their export capacity.

One of the 1970s programs that promoted nongold mineral exports was the development of new harbor facilities, railway lines, and mines, which helped to increase revenues from the export of metal ores at the impressive rate of nearly 18 percent per year, on average, during the 1980s. Also during the 1980s, the Board of Trade and Industry implemented structural adjustment programs for various industries and a General Export Incentive Scheme, which reduced import tariffs on raw materials to be used to manufacture goods for export, in proportion to their value and local content. One effect of these programs was to reduce the importance of gold in South African exports from 56 percent of revenues in 1980 to 36 percent in 1992, according to government statistics. Gold exports increased slightly in 1993 and 1994, as a fraction of export revenues, but remained below 40 percent of the total.

The government also took direct action to limit imports, in part to protect local industries. The government has the power to do so through tariffs, surcharges, and import licenses. Import tariffs provided some protection against dumping by foreign manufacturers. Import surcharges helped reduce import demand and raise government revenues. In August 1988, the surcharge on some items was raised as high as 60 percent in a bid to hold down imports, but in May 1989 the surcharge on capital goods was eased from 20 percent to 15 percent, and most import tariffs were being phased out in the 1990s.

Government pressures in the 1970s and the 1980s succeeded in reducing South Africa's import levels but did not succeed in changing the pattern of imports. By 1987, when total imports were down about 30 percent from their peak 1974 volume, industrial inputs continued to dominate imports. Machinery was the most important among these, followed by vehicles and transportation equipment, a variety of chemicals, and oil. After the OPEC boycott of 1973 and Iran's cutoff of oil to South Africa in 1979, however, official figures on oil trade were not available. Observers estimated that 1987 oil import costs reached US$1.75 billion.

The pattern of trade dominated by gold exports and industrial imports continued in the early 1990s (see table 9; table 10, Appendix). The government continued to promote exports and to limit imports in an effort to create the trade surplus (and foreign exchange reserve surplus) necessary for debt repayment. In 1993 exports were valued at roughly R79.5 billion (almost 35 percent of GDP) according to official estimates, and imports were valued at approximately R59 billion. In 1994 exports were valued at an estimated R89.1 billion, and imports, at R75.9 billion. In early 1995, imports began to outstrip exports, and South Africa's trade surplus declined at an uneven pace for the rest of the year. South African Reserve Bank estimates in early 1996 placed the value of exports in the previous year at R81 billion in merchandise and R20.2 billion in gold. Merchandise imports were about R98.5 billion, leading officials to predict that the trade balance could lapse into deficit. In early 1996, however, exporters took advantage of the sharp depreciation of the rand, and the trade surplus rose sharply. In dollar values, however, the trade balance remained almost flat as the benefits of the lower rand were offset by lower commodity prices

Foreign trade delegations began arriving in South Africa as international sanctions were being lifted in the early 1990s. Among its most dramatic turnabouts, South Africa sent a delegation to Moscow in mid-1991 to discuss strengthening trade ties, and for the first time, South African companies participated in a trade fair there.

South Africa's main trading partners in the mid-1990s are West European countries, the United States, and Japan. Members of the European Union (EU--see Glossary) receive roughly 40 percent of South African exports and provide one-third of South Africa's imports. In 1994 Switzerland, an important destination of South African diamonds, purchased the largest share of South African exports. Other markets for South African goods are the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, and Germany, in that order. Leading sources of South African imports are Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Italy.

The EU accorded South Africa duty-free entry on most of its industrial exports in early 1995, and the two were negotiating terms for the purchase of South Africa's agricultural products. In 1996 the EU granted South Africa a qualified membership in the Lomé Convention, to take effect in 1997. The Lomé Convention gives African, Pacific, and Caribbean countries preferential access to European markets.

South Africa's trade with the United States increased rapidly after 1994. In 1995 South Africa imported roughly US$2.75 billion worth of United States exports, mostly manufactured goods. This represented more than half of all United States exports to Africa. South Africa exported roughly US$2.21 billion worth of metals, alloys, and precious stones to the United States in that year, representing the only significant source of African products other than petroleum.

South Africa's trade with the rest of Africa, the natural market for its manufactured goods and agricultural products, was carried on both openly and clandestinely until the early 1990s, because of the OAU's long-standing trade ban. As commercial ties expanded in the 1990s, African countries purchased about 10 percent of South Africa's exports; Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Mozambique were the largest African markets. Only Zimbabwe supplied significant exports (primarily tobacco) to South Africa.

Official South African trade statistics include all members of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU). SACU arose out of a customs agreement between South Africa and the territories that became Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland, dating back even before the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910. SACU was formally established when the agreement was renegotiated in 1969, and Namibia joined the customs union when it became independent in 1990. Goods move freely among SACU member states, which share a common accounting procedure and impose a common tariff structure. Each country contributes to a shared fund and receives a fixed portion of revenues based on its approximate share of production and consumption. In the mid-1990s, South Africa was considering either dismantling SACU or restructuring its participation in the alliance.

Investment

During the 1960s, foreign investment in mining and manufacturing grew steadily, reaching over 60 percent of total foreign investment by 1970. After that, foreign investment in South Africa stagnated and in some cases declined, increasing the government's reliance on loans rather than on equity capital to finance development. In 1984 loans constituted over 70 percent of South Africa's foreign liabilities, as compared with only 27 percent from direct investments. As a result, when most loans were cut off in 1985, available investment capital dropped sharply, and the economy suffered. In 1989 a substantial proportion of gross investment--R39 billion out of R49 billion--represented depreciation.

Although international opposition to South Africa eased in the early 1990s and bans on investment were lifted, investment as registered on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) continued to decline and South African share prices on the JSE and on the London Stock Exchange were low. Industrial shares fared better than other sectors, but even the industrial index showed only sluggish growth through 1991. The overall JSE index improved slightly in 1992, and this trend continued after that. In 1993 the index rose by nearly 50 percent, although the volume of trade continued to be low by international standards. By late 1995, foreign purchases on the JSE had risen to more than R4.5 billion.

Foreign purchases were primarily in portfolio investment rather than direct investment through the mid-1990s. Most foreign direct investment was in the form of joint ventures or buying into existing enterprises. There was very little foreign direct investment in new enterprises, a trend that hit hardest in the struggling black business sector in South Africa. United States direct investment in South Africa rose during this time, from about US$871 million in 1992 to more than US$1.34 billion in 1995.

South Africans invested heavily in other African countries, even during the years of declining investments in South Africa. Tourist facilities were a favorite target for South African investments during the sanctions era. South Africans invested in tourist parks in Madagascar, for example, and in hotel development in the Comoro Islands and in Mozambique in the early 1990s. South African tourists, banned from many other tourist locales at the time, then shared in the benefits of these developments.

Balance of Payments

Before the debt crisis of 1985, South Africa's current-account position traditionally mirrored its business cycle, showing alternate surpluses and deficits. Whenever the economy grew faster than about 3 percent a year, local demand for imports increased, and when the economy slowed, imports decreased. In times of growth, when current-account deficits became too large, the government implemented restrictive monetary and fiscal policies in order to slow demand. After the 1985 debt crisis, however, South Africa had no choice but to run continuous current-account surpluses to meet repayment commitments. By the early 1990s, South Africa had become a capital-exporting nation because creditors wanted repayment on loans, and almost no new capital inflows other than replacement or rollover trade credits were available.

South Africa's current-account surplus, which had averaged about 3 percent of GDP in the late 1980s, increased sharply to exceed R6 billion in 1991, before declining slightly in 1993, according to the Central Statistical Service. In 1994 and 1995, import growth forced the current account into a deficit for the first time in more than a decade and officials estimated that the current-account deficit could reach R10 billion by 1997.

South Africa's gold and foreign currency reserves were hit hard by the need to repay the nation's loans in 1985 and 1986. At that time, gold holdings were sufficient to cover only about ten weeks of imports, and by the end of 1988 the reserve position had deteriorated to little more than six weeks of import cover. Although the capital account started to improve in 1990, and total gold and other foreign reserves rose to US$2.39 billion, this amount was still equivalent to the cost of only about six weeks of imports of goods and services. Net foreign currency reserves were still very low in the mid-1990s, at about R15.7 billion (about two months of import cover) in late 1995, and R10 billion (only about one month's import cover) in mid-1996.

Employment and Labor

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Labor Force

Agricultural employment in the formal economy declined beginning in the 1970s, reflecting the trends toward mechanization in agriculture and increasing urbanization. During that time, the government also changed its definition of agricultural employment to exclude many farmers who owned small plots of land and produced primarily for subsistence or for local markets. Impressive growth in the services sector--including trade, finance, insurance, restaurants, hotels, and other business and social services--accounted for most of the jobs created during the 1980s and the early 1990s. The services sector also included the country's large domestic work force, estimated at more than 800,000 in the early 1990s.

The distribution of labor continued to change in the 1990s, in response to global and regional market factors and political change in South Africa. For example, despite the importance of mining revenues throughout the twentieth century, the mining industry employed a dwindling share of the work force--only about 7 percent in 1995, down from nearly 10 percent a decade earlier. More than 200,000 mineworkers had been laid off between 1987 and 1993, according to the industrial umbrella organization, the South African Chamber of Mines (see table 11, Appendix).

In 1994 and 1995, officials revised employment statistics to incorporate into national accounts employment in the former black homelands--which were home to almost one-half of the black South African population. With these revisions, the government estimated the national work force in mid-1995 at 14.3 million people. Unemployment statistics also were being revised to incorporate workers outside the formal economy. In 1995 the government estimated unemployment at 32.6 percent. Unofficial estimates ranged to 40 percent or higher, and officials acknowledged that the rate was as high as 47 percent in some rural areas.

Labor and Politics

Even before apartheid restrictions were imposed during the 1950s, government policies, rather than market principles, determined many aspects of labor-management relations. From the 1950s until the early 1990s, black workers suffered systematic discrimination. Apartheid legislation authorized the "reservation" of many skilled jobs and managerial positions for whites; qualified blacks were legally excluded from most senior-level jobs, but black education standards were so inferior to those for whites that few blacks were qualified for well-paid jobs. Even in equivalent job categories, blacks received lower wages than whites. Although white workers were divided in their racial attitudes throughout the apartheid era, they often opposed benefits for black workers that could threaten their own economic standing.

Throughout South Africa's industrial history, workers of all races organized to demand better wages and working conditions, but through the early 1980s, almost all union leaders were white. This was true in part because some employers refused to negotiate with black representatives and because of legal restrictions on black labor organizations. The Industrial Conciliation Act of 1924, which governed many aspects of labor relations, redefined the term, employee , to exclude most blacks; the definition was amended by the Native Labour (Settlement of Disputes) Act (No. 48) of 1953 to exclude all blacks, thereby depriving them of any labor law protection.

A century of South African industrial development had relied on an abundance of low-wage labor in order to ensure profits. But as the economic and social problems associated with implementing apartheid emerged, and as new technologies were developed during the 1960s and the 1970s, many industries chose to increase their capital stock--investing in sophisticated machinery and employing a few skilled technicians--rather than adopt labor-intensive methods that would require training and managing a large work force. This trend toward capital-intensive operations probably resulted in lower labor costs and increased productivity. At the same time, it contributed to the country's soaring unemployment and spreading poverty, which fueled resentment and raised the costs to the government of preserving apartheid.

Increasing poverty among blacks, along with entrenched workplace discrimination and the marginalization of blacks from national politics, caused black workers' organizations to become increasingly politicized in the 1960s and the 1970s. They provided a legal arena in which political grievances could be aired. By the early 1970s, there were twenty-four African workers' organizations with a combined membership of nearly 60,000. Their increasing militance and a series of strikes that began in Durban in 1973 finally persuaded the government to begin reassessing its restrictions on black labor.

The government-appointed Commission of Inquiry into Labour Legislation (Wiehahn Commission) recommended the legal recognition of these fledgling unions, in part to exercise stronger control over black workers. As a result, Parliament enacted the Industrial Conciliation Amendment Act of 1979, recognizing black unions and extending labor law protection to them for the first time.

Under this legislation, many black workers had the legal right to bargain collectively with their employers in the 1980s, and, when legally required mediation procedures failed, they had the right to strike. They exercised these rights aggressively, using both legal and illegal labor actions to press their workplace demands and to protest against apartheid. Black union membership of about 500,000 in 1980 grew to more than 2.5 million in 1990. By the early 1990s, almost 70 percent of all union members in South Africa were black, and more than one-third of all employees in mining, industry, and commerce were union members.

The largest organizing effort among black workers resulted in the establishment of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) in 1985. An umbrella organization of more than a dozen unions, COSATU had a total of 1.3 million members by 1990. COSATU affiliated with the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP), both of which were banned. In addition to winning major financial concessions for its members, COSATU became the effective mobilizing arm of the ANC and the SACP. COSATU's two largest labor rivals were the National Council of Trade Unions (Nactu), a blacks-only confederation that rejected multiracial membership, and the United Workers' Union of South Africa (UWUSA), which was affiliated with the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP).

Union militancy contributed to labor successes. Real wages for black manufacturing workers rose an average of 29 percent between 1985 and 1990. Overall wage increases, outside agriculture, rose by 11 percent during 1985 alone, and this annual rate of increase accelerated to 17 percent in 1990.

By the early 1990s, however, both labor and government leaders were alarmed over the violence that had erupted during some labor actions. Violence had been part of labor's history of confrontation; some employers used force to suppress labor militancy, and strikers often used violence against nonstriking workers. But the scale of labor violence increased sharply, and the often-repressive police response also contributed to the destruction. In one of South Africa's most violent strikes--at a gold mine near Welkom, in the Orange Free State--more than eighty miners died in clashes between strikers and nonstrikers in 1991. Like many other violent strikes, this clash initially concerned economic issues, but it escalated because of political, ethnic, and racial grievances.

In the early 1990s, COSATU's largest and most militant unions were the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), each with more than 300,000 members. NUMSA's actions cost automobile manufacturers and related industries more workdays than any other union in 1993 and 1994. NUMSA threatened even more costly labor actions in the future if auto workers' wage increases did not accelerate.

Three other large unions led the labor movement in the number of strikes called during the early 1990s. These were the National Education, Health, and Allied Workers' Union; the Transport and General Workers' Union; and the Food and Allied Workers' Union. Even workers in small companies were becoming more militant; during the early 1990s, more than 40 percent of all strikes involved 200 or fewer employees.

In 1994, with 194 legally recognized labor unions in the country, the government extended labor law protection to domestic workers for the first time. Initially, this meant recognizing their 70,000-member domestic workers' organization as a union and granting its members rights such as sick leave and on-the-job lunch breaks for the first time. Several COSATU-affiliated unions launched membership drives among domestic workers in 1995 and 1996, and they promised to work for the introduction of a legal minimum wage and access to literacy classes and other forms of vocational training for the large domestic work force.

Business and labor leaders agreed that confrontations with labor contributed to rising business costs during the 1980s and the early 1990s. The number of workdays lost to work stoppages rose from 175,000 in 1980 to 5.8 million in 1987. Lost workdays per year declined in the late 1980s, but labor actions still extracted high costs from business by slowing operations, by intimidating investors, and by destroying property. Among the most costly actions were those by transport workers, whose services were vital to all sectors of the economy. South Africa's ability to compete globally was also affected by labor militancy, in part because, officials estimated, a worker's cost to employers in 1994--including wages and benefits--averaged US$5 an hour in South Africa, or double the average labor costs in Mexico or Brazil and more than five times the average labor cost in China.

Education and Employment

The Bantu Education Act (No. 47) of 1953 helped pave the way for labor strife in the 1980s and the 1990s by institutionalizing a plan to restrict black workers to low-paid jobs through deliberately inferior education (see Education, ch. 2). During the 1960s and 1970s, per capita spending on white pupils was about ten times greater than educational spending on black pupils. By the early 1990s, the gap had been reduced by half, but in general, standards for teacher qualifications and facilities in black schools continued to be inferior to those in white schools.

The economic costs of implementing and enforcing apartheid sky-rocketed in the 1980s. Black poverty deprived South African businesses and manufacturers of a sizable domestic market. Even more ominous for the future, it became clear that South Africa lacked the necessary skilled personnel to maintain growth in its manufacturing enterprises, and millions of South African workers were unqualified for anything but the lowest-paid jobs.

South Africa's Education Foundation, a respected private research organization, estimated in 1991 that unemployment among unskilled and uneducated workers would increase during the 1990s, and that at least 500,000 skilled jobs and managerial positions were likely to remain unfilled, unless foreign workers were hired to fill them. The government's National Manpower Commission confirmed these bleak estimates in 1992, adding to the political pressure to end apartheid, especially in education.

The interlinked challenges of economic recovery and educational reorganization presented the new government with an intractable dilemma in 1994. Educational reform would require significant increased spending in an expanding economy, but, at the same time, economic growth would require a more highly skilled work force and educational reforms. The government approach to these challenges was deliberate and careful, and attempted with foreign donor assistance to convince those who were uneducated and unemployed that some of the benefits of ending apartheid would be seen during their lifetime. Officials sought international assistance in providing on-the-job training for workers in many industries and in speeding the pace of reforms, but by late 1995, only a few new programs were being implemented.

Women constituted only about 36 percent of the labor force in the formal economy in the mid-1990s, according to official estimates. Women of all races generally held lower-paid jobs than men, and they were paid less in comparable jobs. During the apartheid era, white women most often worked in service industries and clerical positions; a few white women held supervisory jobs or government offices. Black women dominated the large domestic work force; some worked in clerical positions or in temporary jobs, often in agriculture. Women managed most agricultural production in the former homelands and rural areas where men frequently left home to work in cities or in the mines.

Foreign workers have been an important segment of the industrial work force. In 1994 the government estimated that between 1 million and 1.2 million workers from Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, and Swaziland were legally employed in South Africa--most on temporary contracts in the mines or urban industries. In addition, as many as 2 million foreign workers were believed to be self-employed or working illegally in South Africa in 1995, according to minister of home affairs Gatsha Buthelezi. Foreign workers were sometimes subject to immediate layoffs or discriminatory treatment at the hands of management or fellow employees, and in 1996, they faced the threat of new restrictions on their being hired.

Gold and Diamonds

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South Africa's modern history has often been dated from the first commercial mining of diamonds and gold in the 1870s and the 1880s, when the region became a magnet for European investment (see Diamond Jewelry). Mining in the region predated European arrivals by several centuries, however, as the new government recalled in its minerals policy statements in 1994 and 1995. Iron mining and smelting sites in the northeast were used as much as 1,700 years ago; copper was mined south of the Limpopo River more than 1,000 years ago; and historians describe early mining activities in the Witwatersrand (literally, "Ridge of White Waters" in Afrikaans, commonly shortened to Rand) area, which attracted miners from elsewhere in Africa as early as the thirteenth century.

Soon after the European rush for gold and diamonds in the late nineteenth century, mining operations expanded to include more than two dozen other minerals. By the mid-twentieth century, South Africa was the world's largest producer or second largest producer of gold, diamonds, platinum, chromium, manganese, and vanadium; and it ranked high among producers of coal, iron ore, uranium, copper, silver, fluorspar, asbestos, and limestone.

Clusters of minerals occur in five major mineral complexes--the Bushveld, Transvaal, Witwatersrand, Northern Cape, and Western Cape complexes. Whereas most mines were originally funded and managed from European centers, by the 1970s most were managed by South Africa's large diversified corporations, which controlled assets around the world.

Despite its importance in export revenues, the mining industry contributes only about 9.6 percent of GDP in the mid-1990s, down from an average of nearly 15 percent during the 1980s. The mining sector had been gradually surpassed by manufacturing and financial services both in terms of national output and labor force participation. The mines still account for a greater share of export revenues than any other single economic activity in the 1990s.

The mineowners' association, the South African Chamber of Mines, was formed in 1889 to represent the industry in dealings with the government. In the 1990s, the Chamber of Mines includes six major mining finance houses, with thirty-six gold mines, twenty-two coal mines, and sixteen diamond, platinum, antimony, asbestos, manganese, lead, and copper mines. Together they account for 85 percent of South Africa's mineral output. The Chamber of Mines negotiates labor concerns on behalf of mineowners, administers training programs for mineworkers, trains mineworkers in rescue and safety procedures, oversees pension and benefit funds, coordinates research programs, and refines and processes some minerals before sale.

Gold, first mined by Europeans in 1886 near Johannesburg, soon became the most important sector in the mining industry. South Africa has almost one-half of the world's known gold reserves, located primarily in the Rand in what was once a prehistoric lake. Gold is also mined in the Free State. Industry analysts estimated in the early 1990s that South Africa had produced more than 43,000 tons of gold in the past century, and that at least that amount remained in reserves.

Gold occurs in seams embedded in rock strata, sometimes more than a mile below the surface. Deep shafts must be sunk, large amounts of rock must be blasted and brought to the surface, and the rock must be crushed and chemically separated from the gold. Some gold mines then pump processed mine tailings underground to serve as backfill. Mining and processing are costly, especially in deposits where the gold seam is extremely thin compared with the surrounding rock. For example, in the early 1990s industry analysts estimated that only 5.6 grams of gold were extracted from each ton of ore excavated. Nevertheless, the industry has consistently earned high profits and has accounted for one-third to one-half of the world's gold production in the 1980s and 1990s. The country's fifty-seven operating gold mines produce between 600 and 620 tons of gold per year, representing almost 30 percent of the world production. Gold production in 1994 and 1995 fell below 600 tons for the first time since the 1960s.

Gold mining companies traditionally kept expenses to a minimum by paying low wages. Gold mines became known for their often exploitative labor policies, including the use of migrant workers on limited contracts, strict worker control in company compounds, and difficult working conditions. Labor costs were especially important in determining profits, because the price of gold was set at US$35 per ounce through the 1960s. After the price of gold was allowed to float in 1968, it gradually rose in response to market demand, and companies could afford to produce less and still earn even greater profits. They then began to expand operations into so-called low-grade-ore mines. The volume of South African gold production fell, and gold prices skyrocketed to an all-time high of US$613 per ounce in 1980.

During the 1980s, the dollar price of gold fluctuated widely, but because of devaluations of the rand, the rand price of gold generally advanced. When gold prices fell in 1989, the industry found that many of the low-grade-ore mines were no longer profitable. As the average value of the rand increased against the dollar, overall industry profits declined, and nearly half of the gold mines in operation were running at a loss. At least 40,000 gold mine workers were laid off in 1990, according to government estimates, and layoffs continued through 1993.

During 1994 all major gold mining houses except Johannesburg Consolidated Investments (JCI) were reporting lower profits as output fell in response to labor unrest and other factors. Randgold closed its Durban gold mine in mid-1994, owing primarily to poor grades of available ore, and other mines were threatening to close within the next few years unless profits improved.

In 1994 JCI began to "unbundle" its corporate structure by dividing into three separate companies. Anglo American, JCI's largest shareholder (with 48 percent), retained its platinum and some diamond interests in one company, Anglo American Platinum. JCI's gold mining and other industrial interests were separated into two companies, JCI Limited and Johnnies Industrial Corporation. Shares for these companies are being offered to the public, primarily as a vehicle for black investment and broadening participation in this sector of the economy.

Diamonds and Platinum

South Africa's diamond mining industry dates back to 1867, when diamonds were discovered near Kimberley, now in the Northern Cape. The Kimberley diamond fields, and later discoveries in Gauteng, the Free State, and along the Atlantic coast, emerged as major sources of gem-quality diamonds, securing South Africa's position as the world's leading producer in the mid-twentieth century. (Rough diamonds were produced in larger quantities in Australia, Zaire, Botswana, and Russia.) Through 1991 most of South Africa's diamonds were mined at only five locations, but a sixth mine, Venetia--in the Northern Cape--opened in 1992 and was expected to become a major diamond producer later in the decade.

The De Beers Consolidated Mines Company controlled most diamond mining in South Africa and influenced international trade through a diamond-producers' alliance, or cartel--the Central Selling Organisation. The cartel enabled diamond producers to control the number of gems put on the market and thereby to maintain high prices for gem-quality diamonds. The cartel was able to react to marketing efforts outside its control by temporarily flooding the market, and thereby driving down the price paid for an outsider's product.

Diamond prices fluctuated in the early 1980s, but the industry continued to expand even in the face of international recession and the discovery of the diamond-like cubic zirconia. Dollar prices for diamonds improved in 1985 but dropped again in 1987, requiring De Beers to support the market by withholding diamonds from dealers. Thus, annual production of more than 10 million carats in 1985 and in 1986 dropped to 9.1 million in the late 1980s. Gem and industrial diamond output in 1994 was 10.8 million carats, or roughly 11 percent of world production.

In 1990 the Soviet Union signed and openly acknowledged a contract to sell its diamonds (estimated at a value of about R13 billion over a five-year period) exclusively through De Beers. The action marked the first time in nearly thirty years that the Soviet Union had openly associated itself in commodity dealings with South Africa. Later that year, De Beers announced a loan of R2.63 million to the Soviet Union, against the security of an equivalent amount in diamonds.

Platinum group metals (platinum, palladium, ruthenium, rhodium, iridium, and osmium), which occur together in ore seams and are mined in one operation, were discovered in South Africa in 1924. Most of the estimated 59,000 tons of reserves are in the Bushveld complex of minerals; some concentrations are also found in the Transvaal and the Witwatersrand complexes. Platinum is used in automobile catalytic converters to reduce fuel emissions, as a catalyst in industrial processes, and in making jewelry.

South Africa is the world's leading producer of platinum. Its output of about ninety tons in 1993 accounted for almost 49 percent of world production. South Africa's platinum mines have profited, in particular, from the sale of rhodium, which sold for almost US$6,000 an ounce in the early 1990s, but world market prices fell after that.

Ferrous and Nonferrous Metals

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South Africa has the world's largest known deposits of chromium, manganese, and vanadium, as well as significant deposits of iron ore, antimony, copper, nickel, lead, titanium, fluorspar, zinc, and zirconium. Most of these metals are exported unprocessed, with the exception of iron ore, which is also used in the local steel industry.

South Africa's chromium deposits contain about 72 percent of the world's reserves, most of it in the Bushveld complex of minerals. In 1993 its mines produced 2.8 million tons of chromium, or about 32 percent of world output--down from 4 million tons in 1989; production recovered, to roughly 3.6 million tons in 1994. Used primarily to produce stainless steel, chromium was one of South Africa's export successes in the 1980s; prices reached US$0.70 per pound but dropped sharply when producers tried to undercut each other in 1990. The government used various incentives, including export subsidies and power rebates to those who produced alloys for export, to encourage production. About one-third of chromium produced in 1993 was exported, much of it to the United States and Japan.

South Africa contains the largest known deposits of manganese ore in the world. Its reserves of at least 12.5 billion tons, mostly in the Northern Cape mineral complex, constitute 75 percent of the world total. Manganese is essential in the manufacture of iron and steel, and more than 90 percent of South Africa's manganese is used for this purpose. During the late 1980s, production fluctuated slightly, but it remained between 3 and 4 million tons per year, while prices generally rose, nearly doubling in 1989. By the end of 1991, however, South African producers were forced to reduce prices in response to a weak international market. In 1994 more than 2.8 million tons of manganese ore were produced, roughly 17 percent of world output.

South Africa produced between 25,000 tons and 30,000 tons of vanadium a year in the early 1990s, almost 45 percent of the world's supply. Its estimated 5.4 million tons constitute one-third of world reserves. The world's largest producer is a South African firm, Highveld Steel and Vanadium. The year 1989 set a record in terms of both production and exports for South Africa, but when world steel production declined, demand for vanadium dropped and prices plummeted, forcing one vanadium producer in South Africa to close down. Prices again surged in early 1995, and Highveld Steel and Vanadium expected earnings to more than double in 1995, compared with 1994. Vanadium is used in manufacturing steel, to provide tensile and torsional strength and resistance to abrasion.

South Africa is the largest producer of iron ore on the continent, with reserves estimated at more than 9.4 billion tons. Iron is mined in the Northern Cape, the Bushveld, and the Transvaal complexes, and in KwaZulu-Natal. More than 29.3 million tons of iron ore, roughly 3 percent of world output, were produced in 1993. Almost half of that amount was used in the steel industry. A record 19.6 million tons were exported in 1994, much of it to Japan.

Although small by world standards, South Africa's steel manufacturing industry is the largest on the continent. Steel production increased dramatically in the 1970s following the development of port facilities at Saldanha Bay and the associated rail line connecting it to the high-grade Sishen ore deposits in the Northern Cape. Projections for the use of steel in local construction were increasing as the government began to implement its Reconstruction and Development Programme in 1994. Government plans to implement stricter automobile emission standards promised another boost to the steel manufacturers, who produce stainless steel for use in catalytic converters.

South Africa has only about 2 percent of the world's known copper reserves, with the largest deposits in the Transvaal complex in the northeast. Copper is also mined in the Northern Cape and the Western Cape. Mining costs are high, because of the high concentration of other minerals in copper ore. At the country's largest copper mine, at Phalaborwa, production decreased in early 1993, in part because of flooding that brought work in the mine to a standstill. Later that year, the mine owners received government permission to institute a seven-day workweek, and the mine increased its work force to extend operations. Nationwide copper production, nonetheless, fell from more than 176,000 tons in 1992 to about 165,000 tons in 1994, and copper exports decreased steadily, to roughly 82,000 tons in 1994.

Energy Resources

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Fortunately for South Africa, it is well endowed with coal and uranium for energy production, because the country apparently has no significant petroleum reserves and was officially cut off from oil imports from 1979 to 1993. Oil accounted for about 20 percent of primary energy until the early 1970s, and the government had stockpiled an estimated 18 million tons of imported oil by 1979. Although unreported oil shipments continued during the sanctions era, many industries switched to the use of coal to power generators.

Imported crude oil is processed at four refineries--two in Durban, one near Cape Town, and one in Sasolburg, southwest of Johannesburg--with a combined distillation capacity of about 401,000 barrels per day, or 21.5 million tons per year. In 1994 the government invited international investment in oil and gas exploration for the first time since the 1960s. Minister of Mines and Energy Roelof "Pik" Botha announced the plan, saying that the government needed domestic energy sources for reconstruction and development. The state-owned Southern Oil Exploration Corporation (Soekor) also needed the investment capital to develop nine recently discovered small oilfields off the western Cape coast, and several other small wells near Mossel Bay.

South Africa's coal reserves, most located in the Witwatersrand and in northern KwaZulu-Natal, were estimated to be between 60 billion and 100 billion tons, enough to maintain early-1990s levels of domestic use and exports through much of the twenty-first century, according to industry analysts. The coal occurs in seams, often less than one hundred meters below the surface, and hence it is relatively easy and inexpensive to mine. Most coal used locally is burned in generators at electricity plants; it is also used for coking in the steel industry.

During the 1980s, Eskom, the government's electric power utility, was the coal industry's major customer. Eskom purchased about two-thirds of coal output, which fluctuated between 159 million and 176 million tons from 1984 to 1989. In the early 1990s, the coal industry produced more than 180 million tons of coal each year, of which at least 47 million tons were exported. The industry employed more than 76,000 people. Eskom helped to finance coal mining operations and guaranteed coal prices to ensure the mining companies' return on investment.

International sanctions in the 1980s affected the coal industry in two ways. United States and European importers reduced their demand for South African coal exports, and South African homes and industries increased their use of coal in place of oil and other imported fuels. But in 1991 and 1992, as most sanctions were being lifted, the South African coal industry found itself facing stiff competition from emerging low-cost producers, such as Indonesia, Colombia, and Venezuela.

South Africa is ranked fifth in world uranium reserves in the 1990s with recoverable reserves estimated at nearly 180,000 tons. Uranium is produced as a by-product of gold in some mines of the Witwatersrand, and as a by-product of copper in the Phalaborwa mines of the far northeast of the country. Since 1968 all uranium produced in South Africa has been processed and marketed by the Nuclear Fuels Corporation of South Africa, a private company owned by the gold mines that produce uranium. Output declined in the late 1980s, as operating costs increased and uranium prices hit a thirteen-year low. Uranium output averaged nearly 2,000 tons a year in the early 1990s. Exports of uranium declined from roughly 1.3 percent of total export revenues in the 1980s to roughly 0.2 percent in the early 1990s.

South Africa produced substantial, but undisclosed, amounts of highly enriched uranium (HEU) in its nuclear weapons program, until that program was dismantled in the early 1990s. In 1994 the government, although a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), maintained stockpiles of HEU to produce industrial and medical isotopes, or to downgrade for use in power reactors.

The government has sponsored extensive research and development in the production of synthetic fuels, and South Africa became a pioneer in extracting oil and gas from coal in the 1960s and the 1970s. The South African Coal, Oil, and Gas Corporation (SASOL) established three facilities between 1950 and 1982 and is considering building a fourth plant in the late 1990s. After 1979, when SASOL shares were offered to the public, most of the corporation was run as a private company, with government assistance in constructing new facilities. Officials did not release production figures to the public, but the SASOL plants were believed to be supplying about 40 percent of South Africa's liquid fuel needs in the early 1990s. The corporation received tariff protection when the price of oil dropped below US$23 per barrel and paid into a fuel equalization fund when prices exceeded US$28.70 per barrel. In addition to liquid fuels, the company produces chemicals, fertilizers, and explosives.

Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing

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South Africa has a broad and well-developed agricultural sector and is a net food exporter in most years. Agricultural production, reflecting the sector's increased mechanization and commercialization, increased throughout the twentieth century. As mining and manufacturing industries expanded at a faster rate, however, agriculture's share of GDP declined from about 20 percent in the 1930s to about 12 percent in the 1960s and to less than 7 percent in the 1990s. The impressive range of crops--including almost every kind of food crop, as well as fibers, medicinal herbs, and components of cosmetic fragrances--reflects the country's diverse terrain, climate, and ecology. The agriculture sector provides for most domestic needs, and South Africa exports corn (maize), wool, sugar, peanuts (groundnuts), tobacco, and other farm products (see table 13, Appendix).

About 15 million hectares, or 12 percent of the land area, is under cultivation, and about 10 percent of this is under intensive irrigation. Agricultural production has suffered from cyclical droughts since the seventeenth century, and probably even earlier. Generally, the best rainfall is in the Western Cape and along the coast of KwaZulu-Natal. The rest of the country is relatively dry, and much of the arid Northern Cape is suitable only for grazing sheep (see fig. 16).

Under apartheid-era legislation until 1994, white farmers, who owned only 2 percent of the farms, controlled more than 80 percent of the arable land. White-owned farms averaged 1,300 hectares in size, whereas black farms averaged 5.2 hectares. Because nearly 80 percent of the population was restricted to less than 20 percent of the land, most black farmland was severely overused, leading to soil erosion and low productivity. As a result, many black farm families were supported by at least one person engaged in nonagricultural employment. The need for agrarian reform--broadening land ownership and increasing overall productivity--was one of the most serious issues facing the government in the mid-1990s as the inequities of apartheid were being reduced.

The government regulated both the production and the marketing phases of commercial agriculture through the early 1990s. Government-appointed marketing boards purchased important consumer crops--such as milk, corn, and most cereals--at fixed prices and sometimes subsidized consumer prices as well. Crops destined for further commercial processing--such as tobacco, wool, oilseeds, and dried fruit for export--also had to be sold through a marketing board, although producers generally received market value for these crops after the board sold the pooled national output. The only crops freely traded were fruits and vegetables sold at local markets. The government began to reduce the role of the marketing boards in the mid-1990s, and officials hoped to eliminate them entirely by the end of the decade.

Agriculture suffered serious effects from the chronic high inflation and debt that eroded other sectors of the economy in the early 1990s. Input costs (fertilizers, machinery, etc.) rose by 10 to 20 percent in some years; farm debt had reached R17 billion in 1992, more than four times the amount owed in 1980. Farmers also had witnessed deterioration in the terms of trade in farm products; for example, the amount of corn that had to be sold to buy a farm tractor increased from about 191 tons in 1984 to 347 tons in 1990. Moreover, South Africa faced reduced harvests as a result of severe drought in the early 1990s, forcing the government to spend vital foreign exchange on food imports.

Crops

Cereals and grains are South Africa's most important crops, occupying more than 60 percent of hectarage under cultivation in the 1990s. Corn, the country's most important crop, is a dietary staple, a source of livestock feed, and an export crop. Government programs, including generous loans and extension services, have been crucial to the country's self-sufficiency in this enterprise. Corn is grown commercially on large farms, and on more than 12,000 small farms, primarily in North-West, Mpumalanga (formerly, Eastern Transvaal), Free State (formerly, the Orange Free State), and KwaZulu-Natal provinces. Corn production generates at least 150,000 jobs in years with good rainfall and uses almost one-half of the inputs of the modern agricultural sector.

Corn production exceeds 10 million tons in good years; owing to regional drought in the early 1990s, however, production fell to just over 3 million tons in 1992, and roughly 5 million tons of corn were imported, at a cost of at least US$700 million. Both domestic and imported corn was shipped to neighboring countries to help ease the regional impacts of the drought. The drought eased in 1993, and officials estimated the 1994 harvest at approximately 12 million tons. Below-average rainfall in late 1994 again threatened to reduce corn output in 1995, and officials expected to import some 600,000 tons of corn in that year. Plentiful rain in late 1995 provided for a bumper crop in 1996.

Wheat production, which is concentrated in large, highly mechanized farms, also increased after World War II. Wheat cultivation spread from the western Cape where rainfall is fairly reliable, to the Orange Free State and the eastern Transvaal, primarily in response to rising consumer demand. But wheat harvest volumes vary widely; for example, roughly 2.1 million tons were produced in 1991 and only 1.3 million tons in 1992. Production in the early 1990s failed to meet local demand for about 2.2 million tons per year. Wheat imports in 1992, for example, cost more than US$5 million.

Other small grains are grown in localized areas of South Africa. For example, sorghum--which is native to southern Africa--is grown in parts of the Free State, as well as in the North-West and the Northern provinces, with yields often exceeding 200,000 tons. Sorghum has been used since prehistoric times for food and brewing purposes. Barley is also grown, primarily in the Western Cape. Nearly 300,000 tons of barley were produced in 1995.

South Africa produces peanuts, sunflower seeds, beans, and soybeans. Annual production of these crops varies significantly from year to year, although South Africa is usually able to meet domestic vegetable-oil needs and generate some exports. Plentiful rains in late 1995 meant increased harvests of these crops in 1996, compared to 1994 and 1995.

Fruits, including grapes for wine, earn as much as 40 percent of agricultural export earnings in some years. (Fresh fruit finds a good market in Europe because it matures during the northern hemisphere's winter.) Deciduous fruits, including apples, pears, and peaches, are grown primarily in areas of the Western Cape and the Eastern Cape, where cold winters and dry summers provide ideal conditions for these crops. Almost 1 million tons of deciduous fruits were sold fresh locally or were exported each year in the early 1990s.

Pineapples are grown, primarily in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. Tropical fruits--especially bananas, avocados, and mangoes--are also grown, especially in the northeast and some coastal areas. More than half of citrus production is exported in most years. South Africa exported 40 million cartons of citrus fruit in 1994, earning roughly R1.34 billion, according to industry sources.

More than 1.5 million tons of grapes are used domestically in South Africa's renowned wine industry, which dates back to the seventeenth-century vineyards introduced by French Huguenot immigrants. More than 100,000 hectares of land are planted in vineyards, centered primarily in the Western Cape. Smaller vineyards are also found in the Northern Cape, Free State, and Northern Province. One of the noticeable signs of the end of international sanctions against South Africa was a dramatic increase in worldwide demand for South African wines in 1994 and 1995.

Sugarcane is also an important export crop, and South Africa is the world's tenth largest sugar producer. Sugarcane was first cultivated in mid-nineteenth-century Natal. Production is still centered there, but sugar is also grown in Mpumalanga, where irrigation is used when rainfall is inadequate. Land under sugar cultivation has steadily increased, and the industry estimated that it produced more than 16 million tons of sugarcane in 1994.

Livestock

From the earliest times, livestock raising has been the backbone of South African agriculture. The large sheep herds of the Khoikhoi peoples on the Cape peninsula were admired and later appropriated by European settlers in the seventeenth century. The early Xhosa and Zulu societies were well known for the value they placed on cattle even before Europeans began cattle farming in the region in the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. The Europeans brought new breeds of sheep and cattle to southern Africa, and from these various stocks emerged a thriving commercial livestock sector. Cattle, estimated at more than 8 million head, are found in areas throughout the country; sheep (nearly 26 million) graze primarily in pastures stretching across the Northern Cape, Eastern Cape, western Free State, and Mpumalanga.

The livestock sector produces an estimated 900,000 tons of red meat each year. For example, the industry reported that nearly 2 million head of cattle were slaughtered in 1994. Poultry and pig farms are also found across the country, although most large commercial farms are near metropolitan areas. The industry estimates that farmers own roughly 1.2 million pigs. The poultry industry, with at least 11 million chickens, reportedly produced more than 500,000 tons of meat in 1994. In addition, a small but growing ostrich-raising industry produces plumes, skins, and meat.

Wool is an important agricultural export. South Africa became the world's fourth-largest exporter of wool by the late 1940s, and is consistently among the world's top ten wool producers, with an output of about 100,000 tons in most years. Approximately 60 percent of South African sheep are Merino, which produce high yields of fine wool. The newer, locally developed Afrino breed is a wool-mutton breed adapted to arid conditions. Most wool is exported, but the domestic wool-processing industry includes wool washing, combing, spinning, and weaving.

Dairy farming is found throughout the country, especially in the eastern half, and is sufficient to meet domestic needs, barring periods of extreme drought. The predominant dairy breeds are Holstein, Friesian, and Jersey cows. The milk price was deregulated in 1983, resulting in lower prices, but industry regulations continued to enforce strict health precautions. In a system dating to 1930, all wholesale milk buyers pay a compulsory levy to the National Milk Board. This money is pooled in a stabilization fund and used to subsidize dairies manufacturing butter, skim milk powder, and cheese when a surplus exists. Fresh-milk dairies objected in the early 1990s, however, and several of them were involved in litigation to have the levy lifted.

Forestry

South Africa's forests cover only about 1 percent of the country's total land area. The country never was heavily forested, and by the early twentieth century, humans had destroyed much of its natural wood resources. After World War I, the government began to establish forest plantations to grow trees for commercial use. Located primarily in the northeast and in KwaZulu-Natal, most timber plantations produce pine and eucalyptus trees. Although most wood is used for fuel, industrial uses include construction and mine props, paper products, and a variety of agricultural applications.

The country's pulp and paper industries expanded operations for export during the 1980s. About half of all commercial South African sawlogs came from state-owned plantations for use in the pulp and paper industries and in the mines. The two major paper manufacturers, Mondi (owned by Anglo American) and Sappi (owned by Gencor), spent approximately R3 billion to expand their operations during the 1980s, and in 1991 Sappi expanded even further by purchasing five specialty paper mills in Britain. Sappi was then ranked as the eleventh largest company in South Africa.

South Africa's forests produce more than 14.5 million cubic meters of unseasoned timber annually. Several hundred thousand people are employed on timber farms and in more than 240 wood-processing factories. Although South Africa could supply most of its own needs for wood and wood products, the timber industry faced problems on the export market in the early 1990s. The industry had relied on exports of pulp and paper, but falling world prices threatened profitability. In the mid-1990s, the government's Reconstruction and Development Programme calls for more than 1 million housing starts during the decade, and the timber industry is promoting the use of timber-frame houses to increase its domestic market share under this program.

Fishing

South Africa has a large commercial fishing industry. More than 4,500 commercial fishing vessels licensed by the Department of Environment Affairs work its nearly 3,000-kilometer coastline from Mozambique to Namibia. The industry employs more than 22,000 people. The principal species of shoal fish caught by coastal trawlers are anchovy, pilchard, and herring. Deep-sea trawlers bring in hake, barracuda, mackerel, monkfish, sole, and squid. The most important species caught by handline are tuna, cod, barracuda, silverfish, salmon, and yellowtail. Cape rock lobsters are harvested along the west coast, and several hundred other species, along the east and the south coastline. The total catch in the early 1990s was between 500,000 and 700,000 tons each year.

South Africa exports about 80 percent of its fish in most years. Much of the rest is consumed domestically or processed into fish meal and fish oil. The industry hit a peak in the 1960s, with a catch of more than 1 million tons in 1968, but declined after that, in part because local waters had been overfished and marine resources were severely depleted. Recorded fish harvests also declined in the early 1990s after South Africa relinquished control over its former fishing territory off the coast of Namibia.

The government enforces strict conservation measures, including fishing quotas and closed seasons, to prevent overfishing and to protect the fishing industry. Since 1977 it has enforced an exclusive South African fisheries zone of 200 nautical miles. In 1983 the government reduced foreign fishing quotas, and in the early 1990s it began scaling down the rights of five foreign countries still fishing in South African waters--Japan, Israel, Spain, Portugal, and the Republic of China (Taiwan).

Much of the fishing near large ports, such as Cape Town, Durban, Mossel Bay, and Port Elizabeth, is controlled by Portnet, the national port authority, in the mid-1990s. The provincial governments supervise some harbor facilities and provide marine conservation inspectors at official fishing harbors, including Saldanha Bay, Hout Bay, and at least ten others.

Manufacturing

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Although agriculture and, later, mining historically have dominated South Africa's economy, manufacturing became the most productive sector in the early twentieth century. Until then, manufacturing industries--wine making, tanning, and tallow production--were entirely derived from agriculture and were intended primarily for the domestic market. Then as the mining sector expanded, new industries arose to meet growing urban demands for processed foods, clothing, and footwear. Until the 1920s, the country still depended heavily on imports, ranging from mining equipment to textiles and clothing. The government encouraged local manufacturing through the establishment of state corporations to produce electricity (in 1922) and steel (in 1928) for manufacturers' use and through tariffs designed to protect local industry.

From 1936 to 1946, manufacturing output grew by 6 percent per year, and growth jumped even more dramatically after 1948, when the government tightened its control over imports. Annual manufacturing output increased an average of 13.3 percent in the early 1950s. Since then, most growth in manufacturing has been in heavy industry, led by the local iron and steel industry, but by the early 1990s, the manufacturing sector as a whole was relatively diverse (see table 14, Appendix).

As manufacturing activity expanded, the sector became increasingly capital intensive despite the availability of a large labor pool in South Africa. The government encouraged capitalization through tax incentives and led such investment through the state corporations. During the 1970s, manufacturing enterprises steadily increased their fixed-capital stock, leading to surplus capacity by the mid-1980s. In particular, massive extensions at the government's power utility, Eskom, as well as the establishment of SASOL synthetic fuel plants and the Koeberg nuclear power station, represented significant capital intensification but only a minimum labor requirement. Furthermore, most private manufacturers moved toward machinery and technology to cut labor costs, both to keep up with foreign producers and to avoid confronting an increasingly militant, organized labor force. Nevertheless, by the mid-1980s the government recognized that much of the responsibility for creating jobs for new entrants to the labor market would necessarily rest on the manufacturing industries, and for this reason, government programs in the 1990s were beginning to encourage more labor-intensive manufacturing enterprises.

Because of the general economic downturn of the 1980s, chronic high inflation, and the debt crisis--which hit capital-intensive manufacturing especially hard--manufacturing output slumped during the decade from an overall annual increase of 3 percent in 1981 to a decline of 2.5 percent in 1991. The biggest decreases were in textiles, footwear, industrial chemicals, and nonferrous base-metal industries. The poor performance in these industries reflected a weakness in local demand and the drawing down of inventories because of higher interest rates. Furthermore, average labor productivity in nonagricultural sectors was only about 2 percent higher in 1990 than in 1980, despite a major increase in capital per worker during the decade. Manufacturing sales increased after 1990, largely the result of improved business and investor confidence, increased domestic and export sales, and a decline in stocks of finished goods. In the early 1990s, manufacturing contributed more than 22 percent of total economic output.

Manufacturing industries are heavily concentrated in urban areas--especially in the industrial region around Johannesburg, which accounted for more than 50 percent of industrial output in the early and mid-1990s. Other major industrial centers are Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London, and Durban. Smaller, but nonetheless important, industrial concentrations are at Kimberley, Bloemfontein, Queenstown, and Mossel Bay. Government incentives for manufacturers to move to rural areas and the black homelands during the 1980s were generally unsuccessful, in part because of logistical and transportation difficulties. The government then tried regional development projects, intended to bring manufacturing jobs to undeveloped areas by providing performance-based incentives and improving infrastructure, although these projects were difficult and costly to initiate.

Manufacturing industries registered sharp increases in capacity utilization in 1994 and 1995, exceeding 90 percent of capacity in the coal and nonferrous metal industries, as well as in furniture and footwear manufacturing. Investors judged South Africa's manufacturing competitiveness in the international arena to be fairly weak, however, largely because of the outdated facilities and physical plant in many industries.

Electric Power

The country's first electric power plants were developed to support the turn-of-the-century mining industry. Most mines used on-site electrical generators until 1909, when the Victoria Falls Power Company was established. In 1923 the electricity parastatal, Eskom, began providing electricity for the country's railroads and nonmining industries. Eskom bought out the Victoria Falls Power Company in 1948 and has been the country's major power producer since then. Eskom's sales increased faster than GDP growth after World War II, and the utility expanded steadily. From 1950 to 1982, sales grew at an average rate of 8 percent per year.

Despite Eskom's strong sales record, officials became increasingly concerned over the government's capital investments in Eskom's expansion efforts, which were estimated at R27 billion between 1983 and 1987. Eskom was one of the enterprises hit hardest by the cutoff in foreign loans in 1985. After that, it scaled down plans for further expansion. Eskom supplied more than 97 percent of the electricity used nationwide in the early 1990s, but a few mines and industries had power generators of their own. Only about 40 percent of the population had electricity in their homes, but the new government in 1994 placed a high priority on supplying power to rural areas.

Eskom derives nearly 90 percent of its power from coal-fired electric power stations, 8 percent from nuclear power plants, and the remainder from hydroelectric plants. Some energy analysts predict that the country's coal reserves (estimated to be between 60 billion and 100 billion tons) will begin to run out by the middle of the twenty-first century. Eskom officials estimate that the last coal-fired station will be commissioned before the year 2045. With about 14 percent of the world's uranium reserves in South Africa, Eskom then plans to switch to the use of nuclear power to produce electricity.

The Koeberg nuclear power station, commissioned in 1976 but subsequently damaged through sabotage, began operations using uranium as an energy source in 1984. In the mid-1990s, it is the only nuclear power plant in operation, but sites have been selected for at least two additional plants to be built early in the twenty-first century.

South Africa imported electricity from the Cahora Bassa hydroelectric facility in Mozambique during the early 1980s, but that source was cut off in 1983 as a result of sabotage by Mozambican rebels. South Africa, Mozambique, and Portugal agreed on reconstruction plans, begun in 1995, that were expected to reestablish power to South Africa by 1997.

Heavy Industry

Iron and steel production dominates South Africa's heavy industry, providing material for manufacturing structural goods, transport equipment, and machinery, and for the engineering industry. Large-scale production of iron and steel was begun in 1934 by the state-owned South African Iron and Steel Corporation (Iscor). Iscor began selling shares to the public in 1989. It operate plants at Pretoria, Vanderbijlpark (Gauteng), and Newcastle (KwaZulu-Natal) and owns numerous coal, iron ore, and other mines throughout the country. Most major companies in this sector, including Union Steel (Usco), African Metals (Amcor), and Vanderbijl Engineering (Vecor), were established with help from Iscor or are operated as subsidiaries of Iscor. Highveld Steel and Vanadium is owned by the Anglo American Corporation.

South Africa produced about 9 million tons of steel, on average, each year in the early 1990s, only about 1 percent of world production. This output was more than enough to meet domestic demand and to provide some steel for export. The industry plans to increase production in the late 1990s to meet domestic construction needs and to increase steel exports.

The first vehicle assembly plant was established by Ford in Port Elizabeth, and in 1960 the government began to promote the increased use of local parts in vehicle assembly. Phase One through Phase Five of the local-content encouragement program were based on the weight rather than the value of local components and tended to make South African vehicles relatively heavy and expensive. In 1989 the government introduced Phase Six, which shifted the determination of content to value rather than weight. The result was a reduction in the cost of vehicles as manufacturers turned to low-cost imported parts in order to increase the percentage of value represented by local products. The lowered cost of assembly was evidenced in June 1991 when the South African Motor Corporation (Samcor) announced that it had started exporting locally assembled Mazdas to Britain.

Vehicles are manufactured primarily in the industrial area around Johannesburg, in Mpumalanga, and in the Eastern and Western Cape provinces, using parts manufactured locally at more than 150 plants and some imported parts. In 1994 South African automakers assembled more than 225,000 passenger cars and more than 97,000 commercial vehicles, employing more than 91,000 workers. At that time, almost 6 million vehicles, including more than 3.5 million passenger cars, were licensed to operate in South Africa.

South Africa also has a significant heavy-engineering industry that meets many of the country's industrial and construction requirements. Many of the firms connected to Iscor produce structural steel, for use in construction, as well as machinery and mining equipment. Most advanced machinery, such as Eskom's generators or SASOL's plant, was still being imported in the 1990s. Nevertheless, when the production of all categories of heavy industry is combined--including steel and metal products, machinery, and vehicles--this subsector accounts for about one-fourth of manufacturing output by value.

Chemicals Industry

South Africa has a well-developed chemicals industry that dates back to the use of explosives in the late nineteenth-century mining industry. Miners imported dynamite from France and Germany until 1896, when the De Beers company succeeded in establishing a dynamite factory at Modderfontein in partnership with a British chemical manufacturer. In addition to explosives, the African Explosives and Chemical Industries (AECI) plant produced a wide variety of industrial chemicals including insecticides, paints, varnishes, nitrogen compounds, sulfuric acid, and cyanide.

The government controls a significant segment of the chemical industry. Its largest investment is the SASOL operation, in which synthetic oil and gas are extracted from coal through a gasification process that also produces ammonia, pitch, alcohol, and paraffin. The government established the Phosphate Development Corporation (Foskor) in 1950 to produce phosphate concentrates for use in chemical fertilizers, and Foskor also produces zirconium and copper. Government involvement in the industry increased in 1967, when the IDC created a holding company to merge several small chemical companies in an effort to achieve greater economies of scale.

Many other chemicals are produced in South Africa, including plastics, resins, dyes, solvents, acids, alkalis, hydrogen peroxide, iodine, nitrates, and chemical materials for atomic reactors. Pharmaceutical products are also produced, primarily by subsidiaries of large international firms.
Consumer Goods

The single most productive subsector in manufacturing is the food-processing industry, which produces canned fruits and vegetables, dried fruit, dairy products, baked goods, sugar, and meat and fish products. Dairy products and baked goods are sold exclusively on the local market, but dried fruit, canned foods, sugar, meat, and fish products are exported. In the early 1990s, South Africa produced about 400,000 tons of canned fruits and vegetables each year.

Clothing manufacturing and textile weaving are important consumer industries. The clothing industry predated local textile manufacturing; even at the end of the nineteenth century, clothing manufacturers relied on imported textiles to produce a variety of apparel. By the 1990s, the clothing industry not only met the country's needs but also exported its goods, aided in part by the government's elimination of import duties on cloth. It maintained a 30 to 35 percent import duty on most apparel through the early 1990s. Then, because clothing manufacturers increasingly relied on imported cloth, the domestic textile industry suffered from the increased competition, and as all import tariffs were being lifted in 1995 and 1996, both clothing and textile manufacturers were laying off workers.

The bread industry was subsidized by the government for decades in order to avoid high prices for basic foodstuffs; the government eliminated the bread subsidy in 1991 in an effort to encourage competition. A few large institutions then dominated the bread industry; six of them, representing about 85 percent of the local market, reached a marketing agreement, allocating sales by producer quotas and by regional distributor. The government in the mid-1990s decided to allow the companies to continue market-sharing but was debating whether to discourage such agreements in the future.

Tourism

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In the mid-1990s, control of the tourism industry was transferred from the Department of Environmental Affairs to the Department of Industry and Trade, partly to give a higher priority to tourist-industry development concerns. Through the new Department of Industry, Trade, and Tourism, the government operates National Tourist Bureaus throughout the country as well as the South African Tourism Board (Satour). Satour, established in 1983 to promote tourism from abroad, has been recognized internationally for its high-quality services.

Among South Africa's many tourist attractions are sixteen national parks and numerous provincial and local game parks, nature reserves, and wilderness areas. The National Parks Board employs more than 4,000 South Africans. Kruger National Park in Mpumalanga and Northern provinces is one of the most popular with visitors and is home to more than 140 species of mammals and 450 species of birds. The rare mountain zebra, which is unique to South Africa, is protected in the Mountain Zebra National Park in the Eastern Cape. The Augrabies Falls National Park, site of the fifty-six-meter- high Augrabies Falls on the Orange River near Upington, preserves plants and animals that have adapted to semi-desert conditions. The Kalahari Gemsbok National Park, in the Northern Cape bordering Namibia and Botswana, is known for its free-roaming gemsbok and springbok. In addition to game parks, nature reserves, and big-game hunting between May and July, the wine region of the Western Cape is a consistent tourist attraction.

South African tourism figures have risen since the late 1980s and exceeded 3.8 million in 1994. More than half of the tourists in South Africa are from other African countries; most of the remainder are from the United Kingdom or Germany. South Africa is a member of the World Tourism Organization and a participant in the Africa Travel Association, which promotes tourist attractions in Africa to the North American travel industry.

Banking

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The heart of the banking system is the South African Reserve Bank, which is the primary monetary authority and custodian of the country's gold and foreign exchange reserves. The Reserve Bank is managed by a board of fourteen directors, seven representing major commercial and financial institutions, industry, and agriculture, and seven appointed by the government. Of the latter, one serves as governor, and three serve as deputy governors of the Reserve Bank.

The Reserve Bank's primary functions are to protect the value of the rand and to control inflation. The Reserve Bank regulates the money supply by influencing its cost--i.e., interest charged on loans to other institutions. It is technically independent of government control, but in practice it works closely with the Treasury and helps to formulate and to implement macroeconomic policy. The Reserve Bank issues banknotes and is responsible for the sale and purchase of foreign exchange for the government, as well as for the administration of the treasury-bill tender system. Its major customers are government agencies, private banks, and discount houses, although it also performs clearinghouse functions for private banks and assists banks that experience liquidity problems. Finally, the Reserve Bank is the authorized buyer of gold bullion, thereby acting as agent for the gold-mining industry in effecting sales on their behalf in the private market.

The Reserve Bank uses monetary policy to control inflation, primarily by adjusting the liquid-asset requirements of private banking institutions and by restricting bank credit in order to control consumer demand. Until 1975 the bank enforced fixed interest rates on long-term government securities, but thereafter it allowed transactions at market-related prices. Direct control over deposit interest rates quoted by banking institutions was abolished in 1980; nevertheless, the Reserve Bank still exercises considerable indirect control through its own bank rate.

The private banking sector was controlled by commercial banks until the 1950s when banking services began to diversify. Until then, commercial banks had avoided services such as personal loans, property leasing, and credit-card facilities. New institutions--including discount houses, merchant banks, and general banks--emerged to meet this demand, and in reaction to these changes in the banking sector, commercial banks increasingly entered into medium-term credit arrangements with commerce and industry and acquired interests in hire-purchase firms and leasing activities. In addition, they expanded their operations into insurance and even invested in manufacturing and commercial enterprises.

During the late 1980s, the "big five" commercial banks--First National Bank (formerly Barclays), Standard Bank of South Africa, Nedbank, Volkskas, and Trust Bank--were increasingly challenged by building societies, which had listed holding companies on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) and had set up commercial and/or general banking arms. The Deposit Taking Institutions Act of 1991 formalized the overlapping of functions between the banks and the building societies that had existed for more than a decade. The act brought South Africa into line with internationally recognized standards for capital requirements.

In February 1991, four of the country's leading financial institutions--Allied Bank, United Bank, Volkskas, and Sage Banks--merged to create the largest banking group in the country, the Amalgamated Banks of South Africa (ABSA), with assets of R56 billion. ABSA, which merged with a fifth bank in 1992, is jointly controlled by the Rembrandt tobacco group and the South African National Life Assurance Company (Sanlam), the country's second-largest insurance group. The banking industry is undergoing further reorganization in the mid-1990s, in part to establish banking services in poor communities that were neglected under apartheid.

Government

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SOUTH AFRICA IN 1994 underwent the most radical and far-reaching political and constitutional transformation since the racially divisive South Africa Act provided the legal basis for the Union of South Africa in 1910. The latest sweeping transformation officially began with the April 26-29, 1994, national and provincial elections, and with the triumph of the previously banned African National Congress (ANC).

The country's main political antagonists, the ANC and the former ruling National Party (NP), had agreed in November 1993 on the composition of a multiparty Transitional Executive Council (TEC) to govern jointly until elections were held. They also agreed that, after the elections, a transitional Government of National Unity would be in power and that a transitional bicameral parliament would form a constitutional assembly to draft a final constitution. In addition, they agreed on an interim constitution that would guide the transition between the April 1994 elections and the adoption of the final constitution.

Domestic, regional, and international developments over the past decade had served to alter radically both Afrikaner (see Glossary) and black politics from the politics of repression and armed resistance to the politics of negotiation and participation. Since 1960 the banned ANC, ANC-allied South African Communist Party (SACP), and Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) had waged an armed struggle from their bases in neighboring countries. The armed struggle intensified during the 1980s and expanded into a "people's war" involving mass demonstrations against the apartheid (see Glossary) state. International pressure in the form of economic and political sanctions, including diplomatic pressure by the United States, helped force the Afrikaner establishment--faced with a threat to its own economic well-being--to embark on a process that would ultimately result in sharing power, authority, and resources with the disenfranchised black majority.

A multiparty conference, the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa), met to formulate a new constitution on December 20, 1991, and, after talks foundered in 1992, resumed in March 1993 to plan the political transition. In April 1994, the nation's first nonracial provincial legislatures and the transitional National Assembly were democratically elected by universal suffrage. The 1994 elections were the culmination of a spectacular series of bilateral talks in which NP and ANC leaders agreed on a set of compromises concerning the interim period while formulating preliminary constitutional guidelines for a multiracial and majoritarian democratic society, based on the principle of "one person-one vote." Finally, the political conflict between the ANC and several recalcitrant parties that had boycotted the negotiations process--including the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP, known as Inkatha), which demanded greater regional autonomy for its Zulu constituency, and the Freedom Front, a group committed to Afrikaner self-determination--was resolved only days before the April 1994 elections.

In the early 1990s, the right-wing Afrikaner parties, including neo-Nazi elements, had provided the main resistance to the transition to multiracial democracy. Their resistance took the form of legal political parties, extra-legal movements, and paramilitary organizations. Most of these groups were fragmented, particularly over ideology, and demoralized by their realization that accommodationist currents were running against them. Some of them splintered as they were being pushed to the margin of events by the pragmatism of President Frederik W. (F.W.) de Klerk.

Establishing a national consensus over the new nonracial, democratic political system was, therefore, the main task of the leaders of the NP and the ANC. Only a consensus could overcome the pressures of extremists on both sides, whose violence and racial antagonisms had been fueled by the authoritarianism, coercion, and distortions implicit in the apartheid system. The task facing the moderate leaders was complicated by the sharp increase in violent criminal activity throughout the country, as law and order broke down in many regions, even areas in which crime rates had been low in the past. Although officials estimated that at least 80 percent of all murders committed in the early 1990s were not politically motivated, political violence by extremist groups continuously threatened to undermine the country's fragile political stability as the elections approached.

The revolutionary changes sweeping South Africa in 1993 and 1994 were remarkable. It was almost unprecedented for a ruling group in a society that it so completely dominated, although it constituted an ethnic minority, to hand over power in a peaceful manner to the country's longstanding oppressed and banned opposition. South Africa's ruling party leaders did so with the realization that the once-banned organizations represented the political will of the majority of citizens.

Many political leaders helped to shape the new political system. The two most instrumental in bridging the gap between the two sides were State President F.W. de Klerk, leader of the NP, which had ruled the country without effective electoral challenge since 1948, and Nelson (Rolihlahla) Mandela, president of the ANC, the foremost political leader among the black majority. A third player, Chief Mangosuthu (Gatsha) Buthelezi, leader of the Zulu-based IFP, also gave expression to black aspirations, particularly in the IFP stronghold of Natal Province's KwaZulu homeland (see Glossary). Other important players included supporters of the new regime, such as leaders of the coloured (mixed race--see Glossary) and the Indian communities, the largely English-speaking liberal white parties, and newly emerging leaders in the black homelands. In contrast were the virulent opponents of the postapartheid system, such as the Afrikaner extremists, who had split from the NP into several groups seeking to brake the slide toward political and social transformation in order to preserve a state based on the principles of apartheid.

As the country prepared to embark on full-scale democracy in the early 1990s, new challenges confronted the ANC. First, as a newly legalized party, the ANC had to demonstrate that it was no longer merely an extraparliamentary liberation movement, but a serious contender for the task of governing the country. It also had to balance the need to provide expression to a younger generation of black South Africans who had been radicalized by years of boycotts, jailings, suppression, and ethnic violence, against the need to attract new supporters not only from its black constituency, but from the white, the coloured, and the Indian communities as well.

Mandela, in order to succeed in the new political arena, had to gain the support of the more conservative, yet antiapartheid, ethnic leaders in the countryside and in the black homelands, while retaining the support of younger leaders and activists and while mobilizing the violence-prone majority in the townships. He also had to distance the party from the political and economic program of its longstanding ally, the SACP, even though a number of SACP leaders remained on the ANC's executive and working committees. To present a cohesive front, the ANC also had to join forces in one form or another with Inkatha Chief Buthelezi, although the tensions between the two black movements often erupted into violence over political turf, particularly in Natal and KwaZulu. Finally, the ANC had to fill the vacuum left by the loss of political and military support of previous state sponsors such as the former Soviet Union, which no longer provided material support to Third World liberation movements.

Similarly, NP leader de Klerk had to retain the party's traditional bases of support among Afrikaners while working to gain or to retain the support of coloured, Indian, and liberal white votes. Finally, de Klerk had to reach out to previously hostile black communities, a move that would invariably provoke white right-wing extremists, who had resorted to violence in the past and who were threatening antigovernment insurgency.

System of Government

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The new political system was established by the interim constitution voted into law in late 1993 and officially implemented on April 27, 1994. The interim constitution provides for a Government of National Unity and for a five-year transition, during which the final constitution would be drafted by the Constitutional Assembly, consisting of the combined Senate and National Assembly. To understand fully the revolutionary nature of the new government and the direction that the political transition is likely to take in the long term, it is necessary to examine the evolution of the political system that was based on the principles and practices of apartheid.

Historical Background

The Union of South Africa became a self-governing dominion within the British Commonwealth on May 31, 1910, when four British dependencies were merged under the South Africa Act passed by the British Parliament in 1909. Unification was interpreted differently by British and by Afrikaner leaders, however. To the British, uniting the four dependencies was central to their imperialist philosophy of consolidating the empire; to many Afrikaners, unity represented a step toward weakening British imperial influence. Ironically, however, this act failed to unite South Africa in a real sense because by excluding the black majority from political participation, it fueled the discontent and the conflict that characterized the country's politics throughout the twentieth century.

The South Africa Act served as the Union of South Africa's constitution until 1961. Although the country was formally ruled by a governor general representing the Crown, its government was granted almost total independence in internal affairs. Britain's 1931 Statute of Westminster removed many constitutional limitations on all British dominions, and South Africa's corresponding legislation, the Status of Union Act of 1934, declared that no act of the British parliament could apply to South Africa unless accepted by the Union parliament.

South Africa officially became the Republic of South Africa on May 31, 1961, following a national referendum among the country's white voters on October 5, 1960. The constitution of 1961 was based largely on the South Africa Act, but it severed ties with the British Commonwealth of Nations, replacing the words "king," "queen," and "crown" with "state." The state president replaced the British monarch and governor general.

The 1961 constitution provided for a president, a prime minister, and an executive council (cabinet) with offices at Pretoria (where most of the administrative bureaucracy was located). A bicameral legislature was situated at Cape Town. The independent judiciary was headquartered at Bloemfontein.

The 1961 constitution maintained white political domination through an electoral system that denied blacks, coloureds, and Asians the right to vote for national office holders. Coloureds and Asians, but not blacks, won limited participation in ethnic affairs through, respectively, a Coloured Persons' Representative Council established in 1964 and a South African Indian Council established in 1968. Since 1951 the Bantu Authorities Act had restricted black political participation to homelands (also referred to as Bantustans) set aside for Africans. During the 1970s and the 1980s, four of the ten homelands were declared "independent" black states, while the remaining six were known as "self-governing" territories.

Following intense debate and a series of legislative revisions in the early 1980s, the new Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act (No. 110) of 1983 went into effect on September 22, 1984. It outlined a government led by a president, who served as head of state and chief executive, and a parliamentary system with increased coloured and Indian representation. The new, tricameral Parliament encompassed a (white) House of Assembly, a (coloured) House of Representatives, and an (Indian) House of Delegates. The president was selected by an eighty-eight-member electoral college consisting of fifty whites, twenty-five coloureds, and thirteen Indians, chosen by a majority vote in their respective houses of parliament. The president served for the duration of the parliament that selected him, normally a five-year term. The president could dissolve the parliament, or could extend it by up to six months beyond its five-year term.

The president shared executive authority with a cabinet, which he appointed from the tricameral parliament, and with a Ministers Council chosen by him from the majority in each house of parliament. In addition, the president relied on a sixty-member President's Council for advice on urgent matters and for resolution of differences among houses of parliament. The President's Council comprised twenty members from the House of Assembly, ten from the House of Representatives, five from the House of Delegates, fifteen nominated by the president, and ten nominated by opposition party leaders. The NP dominated the President's Council throughout the ten-year duration of the 1983 constitution.

The three-chambered parliament was based on a fundamental premise of the 1983 constitution, the distinction between a racial community's "own" affairs (encompassing education, health, housing, social welfare, local government, and some aspects of agriculture), and "general" affairs (encompassing defense, finance, foreign policy, justice, law and order, transport, commerce and industry, manpower, internal affairs, and overall agricultural policy). Thus, legislation "affecting the interests" of one community was deliberated upon by the appropriate house, but legislation on "general affairs" of importance to all races was handled by all three houses of parliament. Disagreements among houses of parliament on specific legislation could be resolved by the President's Council, giving the NP-dominated House of Assembly substantial weight in determining the outcome of all legislative debates. The president signed all legislation, and he also exercised administrative responsibility for black affairs.

The country was divided into four provinces--Cape of Good Hope Province (later, the Cape Province), Natal Province, the Transvaal, and the Orange Free State. The president appointed a provincial administrator for each province. Until the mid-1980s, the provincial administrator acted in consultation with a provincial council, which was elected by whites only. In July 1987, the provincial councils were replaced by eight multiracial regional services councils (RSCs)--four in the Transvaal, three in the Cape Province, and one in the Orange Free State. The RSCs were empowered to administer government regulations and to coordinate the provision of services to local communities.

The Constitution

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The constitutional reforms of the early 1980s led to four phases of political change that, ultimately, irrevocably transformed the South African political system. First, the 1983 constitution's new political representation for coloureds and Indians made the glaring lack of participation by the country's black majority even more obvious. Even early discussions of the new constitution triggered widespread violent protests by antiapartheid activists. The escalating violence prompted the government to impose a series of states of emergency and forced both the government and many citizens to realize that promising future political reform regarding black political participation would no longer suffice; sweeping political reforms would be necessary, and the need for such reforms was becoming increasingly urgent.

The second phase of change was a series of secret meetings between NP officials and imprisoned ANC leaders. These began in July 1984, after Minister of Justice Hendrik "Kobie" Coetsee (representing President P.W. Botha) paid several unpublicized visits to ANC leader Nelson Mandela, who was then serving the twenty-first year of a life prison sentence. The government formalized these visits in May 1988 by establishing a committee to handle government contacts with Mandela and with other imprisoned or exiled ANC leaders. On July 5, 1989, in response to Mandela's request for high-level discussions of a possible negotiated settlement to the ANC's armed struggle, Botha and Mandela held their first face-to-face talks.

Botha resigned from office, owing to ill health, in August 1989, and in December, Mandela suggested a "road map" for future negotiations to the new president, F.W. de Klerk. Mandela's proposal outlined a power-sharing plan for the NP and its political rivals and embraced the spirit of compromise that would be needed to weather the political turbulence that lay ahead.

These talks led to the third, and most transforming, phase in recent politics, beginning with de Klerk's historic speech of February 2, 1990, in which he legalized more than thirty antiapartheid organizations; ordered the release of eight long-term political prisoners, including Mandela and ANC deputy president Walter Sisulu; removed many emergency regulations concerning the media and political detainees; and announced his intention to negotiate a new democratic constitution with his political opponents. In October of that year, the parliament took a symbolic step toward reform by repealing the Separate Amenities Act, an important legislative pillar of apartheid.

The fourth phase in the political transformation occurred as the NP government and the ANC leadership began to recognize their mutual dependence and the need for cooperation and compromise in embarking on constitutional negotiations. In this phase, their previously adversarial relationship was transformed through their discussions and their agreement on three accords--the Groote Schuur Minute (May 1990), the Pretoria Minute (August 1990), and the D.F. Malan Accord (February 1991). In these accords, ANC leaders pledged to suspend the armed struggle, the government agreed to release all political prisoners, and both sides agreed to pursue political reform through negotiation. On September 14, 1991, representatives of twenty-seven political parties, interest groups, and the national and homeland governments signed the National Peace Accord, agreeing to form a multiracial council, later called the Transitional Executive Council (TEC), to serve as temporary executive authority until democratic elections could be held.

Nearly three months after the signing of the historic peace accord, preliminary negotiations to agree on procedural rules began at the World Trade Center outside Johannesburg, as the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa). In September 1992, Mandela and de Klerk reached a Record of Understanding, formally committing both sides to accept a democratically elected, five-year interim Government of National Unity led by a political coalition. They also agreed that the center of government would remain in Pretoria and that the new state president would be chosen from the party winning the largest plurality of votes in nationwide nonracial elections. Any party that won at least 5 percent of the seats in parliament would be entitled to a place in the cabinet. The transitional, bicameral parliament was to be charged with drafting and adopting a new constitution. The ANC accepted the idea of sharing power with the NP during the transition. Assuming the ANC would win the elections, it would, as the majority party, exercise its prerogative on most matters, and the NP would serve as a junior partner in running the country.

These agreements on the transitional government represented important compromises by both the government and the ANC, and they helped to set new precedents for future negotiations. The NP won agreement on its refusal to give the new state president broad and extensive powers during the transition period. (Under the previous system, the president could override the views of minority parties.) At the same time, de Klerk compromised on his demand for a permanent consensus-style arrangement to be enshrined in any new constitution by agreeing to a five-year transitional government. The arrangement satisfied the NP demand for legally binding checks and balances to protect the country's white minority. The ANC, for its part, compromised on its earlier insistence on full and immediate majority rule, by agreeing to participate in a powersharing arrangement for at least five years. At the same time, many ANC leaders hoped that their party, as the dominant party in the transitional government, would win a sufficiently large majority to enable it to enact most of its policies, even without the consent of other parties.

Supporters on both sides viewed the Government of National Unity as the country's best hope for achieving long-term political and economic stability, for attracting much-needed foreign investment, and for limiting violence by both white and black extremists. One of the main criticisms of the proposed coalition government was that with the two major political rivals entering into a governing alliance, their small-party opponents would have little political maneuverability and would be forced into extraparliamentary protest.

By early 1994, a number of problems remained unresolved. The most crucial was the need to establish a broad consensus among the political parties over the basic principles to be embodied in a new constitution. The negotiators had yet to reach agreement on the powers and the functions of the three commissions responsible for overseeing the transition--the TEC, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), and the Independent Media Commission that would be charged with ensuring media fairness. Other problems concerned the operations of the interim government--such as joint ANC-NP control over the country's security forces and the integration of the ANC's and PAC's paramilitary wings into the new national army.

The ANC and Inkatha still had to resolve their civil war in Natal and KwaZulu, where more than 10,000 people had been killed in a decade of ethnic and political violence. The large Zulu population (of about 8 million) was split between supporters of the ANC and Inkatha, and Inkatha itself was split between the conflicting interests of IFP leader Buthelezi and the traditional Zulu monarch, King Goodwill Zwelithini.

The Interim Constitution

The interim constitution--The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1993 (Act No. 200)--was ratified on December 22, 1993, and implemented on April 27, 1994. It provides a framework for governing for five years, while a new constitution, to be implemented by 1999, was drafted by the Constitutional Assembly. The final constitution had to comply with the principles embodied in the interim constitution, including a commitment to a multiparty democracy based on universal adult franchise, individual rights without discrimination, and separation of the powers of government.

The interim constitution consists of a preamble, fifteen chapters containing 251 sections, and seven attachments. It contains a chapter on fundamental rights, and it requires a constitutional court to invalidate any new law or government action that might unreasonably restrict these basic human freedoms. The guaranteed freedoms include the right to life and human dignity, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, the right of free association, language and cultural rights, and other internationally accepted human rights. Key provisions are proportional party representation in the legislature with representatives to be selected from lists of party delegates; a bicameral parliament comprising a 400-seat National Assembly and a Senate consisting of ten members chosen by each of the nine provinces; and a Constitutional Assembly made up of both houses of parliament. The interim constitution requires that the draft of the final constitution be prepared within two years and that the draft be approved by two-thirds of the legislators and by the Constitutional Court.

The interim constitution also defines the government's authority; reaffirms its sovereignty, the supremacy of the constitution, and existing national symbols; and defines the national executive (a president, at least two deputy presidents, and the cabinet), the judicial system (the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court, and lower-level courts), the Office of the Public Protector, the Human Rights Commission, the Commission on Gender Equality, the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights, and the Public Service Commission. Further provisions relate to the police and security establishment; the continuation or repeal of existing laws and international agreements; and arrangements for legislative, executive, public service, legal, financial, and other administrative bodies. Schedules attached to the interim constitution describe the nation's nine new provinces, including areas still under contention; the electoral system; oaths and affirmations of office; the procedure for electing the president; and the authority of provincial legislatures.

Drafting a Final Constitution

On May 8, 1996, the Constitutional Assembly completed two years of work on a draft of a final constitution, intended to replace the interim constitution of 1993 by the year 1999. The draft embodied many of the provisions contained in the interim constitution, but some of the differences between them were controversial. In the final constitution, the Government of National Unity is replaced by a majoritarian government--an arrangement referred to by its critics as "winner-take-all" in national elections. Instead of requiring political parties to share executive power, the final constitution would enable the majority party to appoint cabinet members and other officials without necessarily consulting the minority parties that would be represented in the National Assembly.

The draft final constitution in 1996 also proposes changes in the country's legislative structure. The National Assembly would continue to be the country's only directly elected house of parliament, but the Senate would be replaced by a National Council of Provinces. Like its predecessor, the new council would consist of legislators chosen to represent each of the country's nine provinces. The new council would include some temporary delegates from each province, however, so some legislators would rotate between the National Council of Provinces and the provincial legislatures from which they were chosen.

Negotiators in the early 1990s had agreed that the 1996 draft constitution would be submitted to the Constitutional Court to ensure that it conformed to agreed-upon constitutional principles, such as the commitment to a multiparty democracy, based on universal franchise without discrimination. In May 1996, however, the Constitutional Court did not immediately approve the draft as received; instead, it referred the document back to the Constitutional Assembly for revision and clarification of specific provisions. Chief among its concerns were the need to clarify references to the powers that would devolve to the provincial legislatures and the rights of organized labor and management in an industrial dispute. The Constitutional Assembly was revising the draft constitution as of mid-1996.

Even before it was approved or implemented, the draft constitution had an immediate impact on the structure of government in 1996. Just one day after the draft had been completed by the Constitutional Assembly, the National Party declared its intention to resign from the Government of National Unity, effective June 30, 1996. In the weeks leading up to the NP's formal departure from the executive branch, NP leaders repeatedly tried to assure voters that the party would play a constructive role in politics as a loyal critic of the ANC-led government. President Mandela, too, accepted the NP departure as a sign of a "maturing democracy." NP legislators continued to serve in the National Assembly and in the Senate.

Executive and Legislative Authority

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The President

Under the interim constitution, executive authority is vested in the president, deputy presidents, and a cabinet chosen by the president in consultation with party leaders (see fig. 19). The executive offices are based in the administrative capital, Pretoria. The directly elected National Assembly elects the president from among its members and can remove the president from office by a vote of no-confidence or by impeachment. The president's primary responsibilities are to uphold, to defend, and to respect the constitution; to appoint cabinet members; to convene cabinet meetings; to refer bills back to the legislators or forward them to the Constitutional Court when constitutionality is in question; to summon the National Assembly for urgent matters; to appoint commissions of inquiry; to appoint ambassadors; and to accredit foreign diplomats.

According to the interim constitution, any party winning more than 20 percent of the popular vote is entitled to name a deputy president. If only one party or no party wins that percentage of votes, each of the two parties with the largest numbers of votes selects a deputy president. The deputy presidents' primary responsibilities are to assist the president in the duties of the executive and to succeed the president in the event of absence, incapacitation, or vacancy in that office. In 1994 the NP named outgoing president F. W. de Klerk and the ANC named Thabo Mbeki to serve as deputy presidents.

The Cabinet

The cabinet shares executive authority with the president and his deputies, and its members are appointed by the president in consultation with party leaders. Under the interim constitution, cabinet appointments reflect the relative strength of political parties; each party winning more than 5 percent of the popular vote is entitled to a proportional number of cabinet portfolios. In May 1994, the ANC was allocated seventeen cabinet portfolios, and a minister without portfolio was from the ANC. The NP was allocated six cabinet portfolios, and the IFP, three. After NP Minister of Finance Derek Keys resigned in July 1994, that post was designated "nonpartisan," and a new portfolio, General Services, was allocated to the NP in December 1994.

The president, in consultation with national party leaders, appoints a minister and deputy minister to manage each cabinet portfolio. In most ministries, a department staffed by government employees assists the ministry in the implementation of national policy. For example, the Department of Education, within the Ministry of Education, assists in implementing national educational policy. Each department is headed by a director general, who is generally a career government employee.

The cabinet customarily travels between the administrative capital, Pretoria, and the legislative capital, Cape Town, while the parliament is in session. The transitional cabinet's first session on May 23, 1994, took place in Cape Town. The president is required to consult with the cabinet and to gain the approval of two-thirds of the cabinet on issues of fundamental importance, but most cabinet decisions are reached by consensus.

The diversity represented in the new cabinet in 1994 was a major departure from earlier administrations (see table 16, Appendix). The ANC held key portfolios, such as foreign affairs, defense, safety and security, justice, and land affairs, and had strong deputy ministers in finance, home affairs, provincial affairs, and agriculture. The ANC appointees included older contemporaries of President Mandela, middle-aged former exiles, and younger antiapartheid activists of the 1980s. There were three women in the senior executive ranks--two women cabinet ministers and one woman deputy minister.

Other sharp breaks with the past were the reorganization and the renaming of several ministries. For example, in 1994 the Ministry of Law and Order became the Ministry of Safety and Security, and the Ministry of Information was subsumed under the Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications, and Broadcasting. In addition, the apartheid-based distinction between a racial community's "own" affairs and "general" affairs was abolished.

One of the new government's most controversial cabinet appointments was the minister of foreign affairs, Alfred Nzo, a veteran of the antiapartheid struggle who had little foreign affairs background. Nzo's deputy, Aziz Pahad, had been considered effective in managing the ANC foreign affairs department during the preelection period, and new Deputy President Mbeki planned to maintain close oversight of the foreign affairs portfolio. Another controversial ANC appointment was that of Winnie Mandela, President Mandela's estranged wife, as deputy minister of arts, culture, science, and technology. In March 1995, the president removed Mrs. Mandela from her post as deputy minister, citing insubordination as the cause for her dismissal. (After a legal challenge of his action, Mrs. Mandela resigned from the post.)

Cabinet ministers from the NP included some of the previous government's most experienced members. Important portfolios were assigned to Keys, who retained the finance portfolio until his resignation, and to constitutional negotiators Roelf Meyer (Ministry of Provincial Affairs and Constitutional Development) and Dawie de Villiers (Ministry of Environmental Affairs and Tourism). Veteran minister Roelof "Pik" Botha was appointed Minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs.

To appease and to accommodate Mandela's rival, the IFP leader, Zulu Chief Buthelezi, he was appointed minister of home affairs. His duties include managing elections and internal issues, several of which affect his IFP stronghold in KwaZulu-Natal. Buthelezi also shares responsibility for resolving the country's growing problem of illegal immigration from neighboring states.

Parliament

Under the interim constitution of 1993, legislative authority is vested in a bicameral parliament consisting of the National Assembly (lower house) and the Senate (upper house), based in the country's legislative capital, Cape Town. Members of the National Assembly are chosen by proportional representation: constitutionally, 200 of the 400 assembly delegates are chosen from party lists of national candidates, and 200 are chosen from lists of candidates representing specific provinces. The 200 selected from provincial party lists are allocated in the following proportions: Eastern Cape 28, Free State 14, Gauteng 44, KwaZulu-Natal 42, Mpumalanga 11, Northern Cape 4, Northern Province 25, North-West Province 12, and Western Cape 20.

In 1994 individual delegates could choose to run as national or provincial party delegates. Provincial party leaders submitted lists of delegates after elections or party caucuses in each province. A candidate nominated on a provincial list had to be a resident of that province, although exceptions were made for parties that listed only one nonresident candidate, or for cases in which fewer than 10 percent of the party's nominees lived outside the province. The assembly delegates elected a speaker and deputy speaker to preside over their deliberations. The speaker and the deputy speaker retained their parliamentary seats but could not vote, except in the case of a tie.

The Senate consists of ten members from each of the nine provinces, selected by the provincial legislature on the basis of proportional representation, to reflect party strength in each province. The president and the two deputy presidents preside over the Senate and are also members of the Senate. Although not granted a deliberative vote, they can vote in case of a tie.

The bicameral parliament is empowered not only to pass laws, but, in its additional role as the Constitutional Assembly, to draft and to adopt the final constitution, which had to be completed in 1996. Although intended to serve as the interim legislature for five years, parliament may be dissolved at any time by presidential decree, followed by new parliamentary elections.

The interim constitution requires ordinary bills introduced in either house of parliament to be voted on by both houses. If one house passes a bill and the other rejects it, the bill is referred to a joint committee from both houses. Both houses approve bills affecting the powers and the boundaries of provinces; the appropriate provincial legislature also must approve any bill affecting the powers and the boundaries of that province. Both houses deal with bills appropriating revenue or imposing taxes, and in case of a conflict between houses on any bill, the decision of the National Assembly prevails.

In accordance with the interim constitution, parliament generally convenes from January to June each year in Cape Town, although a briefer session may be called later in the year if needed. All members of the government plus many of the departmental secretaries and heads of other executive agencies reside in Cape Town when parliament is in session.

Reflecting the far-reaching changes in the new political system, the new parliament in 1994, unlike its predecessor, adopted an informal dress code--many new members dispensed with the conventional Western suit and instead wore kaftans or safari suits. For the first time as well, some speeches in parliament were delivered in African languages, with a bevy of translators assembled to render them in English or Afrikaans.

Volkstaat Council

In November 1994, the Volkstaat Council Act (No. 30) of 1994 established a Volkstaat Council within the legislative branch of the government to investigate the possibility of establishing an Afrikaner state within South Africa. The twenty members of the council were elected by a joint session of the National Assembly and the Senate. The functions of the council are to gather information concerning possible powers, boundaries, and structures of such a state; to study the feasibility of these; and to submit recommendations to the joint National Assembly and Senate. The Volkstaat Council began deliberations in early 1995. Its formal proposals had not been presented as of mid-1996.

Provincial and Local Government

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Until 1994 South Africa was divided administratively into four provinces, the Cape Province, Natal Province, the Transvaal, and the Orange Free State; six "self-governing" homelands, Gazankulu, KaNgwane, KwaNdebele, KwaZulu, Lebowa, and QwaQwa; and four "independent" homelands or "sovereign independent states," Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda, and Ciskei (see fig. 11). The government estimated in the early 1990s that 44 percent of the country's total population resided in the ten homelands, which formed less than 14 percent of the total land area. A 1992 study by the Urban Foundation, a South African research organization, concluded that this high population density--several hundred persons per square kilometer in some areas--greatly exacerbated socioeconomic and political problems in the homelands.

To resolve these problems, government and ANC negotiators redrew the country's internal boundaries, dissolving the homeland boundaries and forming nine new provinces (see fig. 1). The demarcation process began in May 1993, when the Multiparty Negotiating Council appointed a 150-member Commission on the Demarcation of States/Provinces/Regions, with instructions to hold a public hearing and to submit recommendations to the council. After receiving 304 written reports and hearing eighty oral witnesses, the commission recommended the formation of nine provinces, with a few disputed borders to be reconsidered at a later date. These recommendations were incorporated into the interim constitution, and the homelands were officially dissolved on April 27, 1994.

The interim constitution assigns authority in each of the nine provinces to a provincial executive, or premier, and a legislative assembly. The premier, elected by the legislators, selects a council, or cabinet, based on proportional representation of political parties (see table 17, Appendix). Provincial legislatures have between thirty and 100 members, although within those limits, the size of the legislature is proportional to the number of votes cast in the province--i.e., the total is divided by 50,000, and that number is added to the base of thirty delegates (see table 18, Appendix). Thus, at both the provincial and the national levels, voters select a political party they wish to have represent them rather than a specific individual to serve as legislator. The legislators are chosen on the basis of proportional representation from lists of party representatives.

The capitals of the new provinces are Cape Town (Western Cape), Kimberley (Northern Cape), Bisho (Eastern Cape), Bloemfontein (Free State), Nelspruit (Mpumalanga), Pietersburg (Northern Province), Johannesburg (Gauteng), and Mmabatho (North-West Province). The capital of KwaZulu-Natal was not yet decided, between Ulundi and Pietermaritzburg, as of 1996.

As the 1994 elections approached, the government amended the interim constitution to strengthen the power of the provincial governments, largely in an attempt to appease Zulu and Afrikaner separatists. These new measures uphold the general principle of "self-determination," to the extent that people of a common culture are allowed to establish a "territorial homeland" where their language and traditions can be maintained. They also stipulate that the resulting homeland must have broad popular support within its boundaries and its policies may not be racially or ethnically discriminatory. The amendments also assign to the provincial authorities the power to levy taxes and to formulate a provincial constitution, as long as they do not violate constitutional provisions concerning fundamental rights. Furthermore, to satisfy Zulu aspirations, the negotiators adopted the name KwaZulu-Natal for the former Natal Province and agreed to allow the Zulu king to retain his honorary crown and to continue to receive his salary from the central government.

Although the new provincial administrations assumed power immediately after the April 1994 elections, many of them were unable to deliver government services to their constituents in the months following the elections. Provincial authority had not yet been fully defined, and many provincial and local-level offices and procedures continued to be under the control of apartheid-era civil servants. Throughout 1995, several provincial administrators demanded more autonomy and more financial support from the central government, and this issue delayed agreement on a draft of the final constitution in 1996.

One of the last steps in the creation of the new political system was the establishment of new local government institutions below the provincial level. The government planned for elections in 1995 to replace the existing all-white city councils with nonracial, democratically chosen municipal governments and to establish multiracial local councils in rural districts. The Local Government Transition Act (No. 209) of 1993 required 40 percent of local government members to be elected by a system of proportional representation using a party list system, and 60 percent to represent individual localities. The interim constitution specified that the existing local governments in 1994 would continue in place until the new elections were held.

On November 1, 1995, local government elections were held in all areas of the country except KwaZulu-Natal and some parts of the Western Cape. The elections put in place municipal and rural councils, replacing the bureaucratic infrastructure that had existed since the apartheid era. The elections were successfully held in 686 constituencies, although only about 52 percent of the registered electorate turned out to vote. The ANC won seats on all 686 councils, and it won a majority of the seats on 387 councils. The NP won a majority of seats on forty-five councils. The Freedom Front won control over one local council. Independent or nonpartisan candidates won a majority of seats on at least forty-two councils. A few elections were finally decided in byelections held in early 1996. In KwaZulu-Natal and areas of the Western Cape, the local government elections were postponed until mid-1996.

The Legal System

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South Africa's legal system, like the rest of the political system, was radically transformed as the apartheid-based constitutional system was restructured during the early 1990s. Nevertheless, many laws unrelated to apartheid continued to be rooted in the old legal system. Thus, the justice system after 1994 reflected elements of both the apartheid-era system and nondiscriminatory reforms.

The Apartheid-Era Legal System

The principles embodied in the legal system were adapted from Roman-Dutch law with an admixture of English law introduced after 1806. The influence of English law is most pronounced in criminal legal procedures, in constitutional or statutory law, and in corporate and mercantile law. Roman-Dutch law predominates in private law--for example, the law of persons, of property, of succession, and the law of sale and lease. Despite the influence of these universally accepted laws, however, a prominent feature of the former legal system was the pervasive role of discriminatory apartheid-based laws, regulations, and codes (see The Legislative Implementation of Apartheid, ch. 1), and the extensive judicial apparatus required to enforce them.

Judicial authority is vested in the state, and the minister of justice is responsible for administering the justice system. The president appoints the attorneys general, who order public prosecutions on behalf of the state, and whose authority in the lower courts is delegated to public prosecutors. Similarly, the president also appoints judges from among members of the bar. Until the 1990s, all judges were white. The legal profession is divided broadly, as in Britain, into advocates (barristers) and attorneys (solicitors); only the former can plead a case in a higher court.

The judicial system is headed by the Supreme Court, the decisions and interpretations of which are considered an important source of the law. The Supreme Court comprises an Appellate Division and six provincial divisions. Each provincial division encompasses a judge president, three local divisions presided over by judges, and magisterial divisions presided over by magistrates. Separate traditional courts administer African traditional law and custom; they are presided over by traditional leaders, often chiefs or respected elders.

The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court is the highest court in the country and is seated in Bloemfontein, the country's judicial capital. The Appellate Division is composed of the chief justice and the judges of appeal, whose number varies, as determined by the president. Supreme Court members can be removed only on grounds of misbehavior or incapacity. The Appellate Division's decisions are binding on all lower courts, as are the decisions--within their areas of jurisdiction--of the provincial and the local divisions. Lower courts, which are presided over by civil service magistrates, have limited jurisdiction in civil and criminal cases. In 1995, there were 309 district magistrates' offices, presided over by 1,014 magistrates, 1,196 prosecutors, and 3,717 officers.

The Legal Aid Society, an independent statutory body, provides advice and assistance to indigent persons. Other programs offer aid or rehabilitation to prisoners. Until the mid-1990s, a few private voluntary organizations, such as Black Sash, offered legal assistance to people who faced legal problems arising out of the pass laws or other apartheid-era legislation.

The New Legal System

The postapartheid legal system introduced by the interim constitution of 1993 embodies the supreme law of the land and is binding on all judicial organs of the state. It establishes an independent judiciary, including a Constitutional Court with the power to review and to abolish legislation inconsistent with the constitution. It includes provisions not found in apartheid-era laws, such as a prohibition on all forms of discrimination and an emphasis on individual rights. These rights include "equality before the law and equal protection of the law"; freedom of expression, assembly, demonstration, petition, and association; the right to "choose a place of residence anywhere in the national territory"; the right not to be deprived of citizenship without justification; full political rights; full access to the courts; and fair and lawful administrative justice mechanisms, including rights concerning detention, arrest, and accusation. Other provisions provide for specific rights in areas such as economic activity, labor relations, property, environment, children, language and culture, education, and conditions under which a state of emergency can be declared.

In 1994 the government established the new Constitutional Court, a Human Rights Commission, and a Judicial Services Commission that forwarded to the president its ten nominees to the Constitutional Court. Legislation in 1994 also set forth operating procedures for these bodies and established the Office of the Public Protector (public defender).

The new legal system also deals with the consequences of apartheid-related abuses and crimes, although it aims primarily to promote a spirit of national reconciliation and a new "culture of human rights," rather than to resolve long-standing grievances. In June 1994, the government announced that a Truth and Reconciliation Commission would investigate accusations of human rights abuses and political crimes by both supporters and opponents of apartheid, and that it would consider related issues such as amnesty and reparation to survivors and their dependents. The government established guidelines for the commission's operations in 1994 and 1995, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission began hearing testimony by both victims and perpetrators of apartheid-era violence in early 1996.

The 1994 Elections

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Until the nonracial elections in April 1994, the laws of apartheid governed elections. An elections administrator, or chief electoral officer, prepared a list based on the population registry of people who were qualified to register as voters. They had to be more than eighteen years of age and, under the 1983 constitution, to belong to one of the constituencies of the three racially based houses of parliament--white, coloured, and Indian. In the 1989 parliamentary election, for example, only 2,176,481 votes were cast, out of 3,170,667 registered voters and a total population of almost 28 million.

In the April 1994 national and provincial elections, nineteen political parties, representing the country's diverse constituencies, participated in the electoral process. Each voter received two ballots and cast two votes (enabling each voter to choose different parties at the national and the provincial levels). Voters selected a political party, not an individual candidate, to represent them in the National Assembly and in the provincial legislature. Each party had prepared ranked lists of delegates for the national and the provincial legislatures. Political parties gained seats in each body proportionally, according to the number of votes each party received, and party delegates became legislators based on their ranking on the appropriate list.

The number of eligible voters in 1994 was estimated at 21.7 million--about 16 million of whom had never voted before. In a radical departure from previous electoral practice, no formal voter register was prepared; instead, voters were asked to present identity books as proof of citizenship, and even this requirement was enforced with flexibility. Officials had determined before the elections that about 2.5 million people--mostly blacks--lacked identity books, and most of these were given temporary identity papers. For most residents of the homelands, valid travel documents were accepted as legal identification.

The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) created a state electoral fund with an estimated 22 million rands (for value of the rand--see Glossary) to finance the April 1994 elections. Half of that amount was distributed among participating political parties before the election, and the balance afterward. The first payment was made in late March 1994 to nine parties that had submitted documentation of popular support.

During the campaign, political parties were hampered by several factors. One of the major challenges was the need to educate the electorate, particularly those who had never voted before, in basic elements of democracy and electoral procedures. For example, there was a great deal of skepticism about democratic practices--such as the secret ballot--particularly in rural areas where literacy rates are low, and where traditional leaders and white employers had often manipulated political participation in the past. In addition, the political violence leading up to the elections threatened to keep many potential first-time voters away from the polls. ANC voters felt especially vulnerable in KwaZulu, Bophuthatswana, and Ciskei, where the apartheid-era homeland leaders and security forces had harassed and intimidated ANC supporters. Similarly, in ANC-controlled areas, some of that party's activists intimidated IFP, NP, and even liberal Democratic Party (DP) organizers and disrupted their campaign rallies, despite ANC leaders' pleas for tolerance. Finally, the election posed a logistical nightmare for the IEC, which had to accommodate the IFP's last-minute decision to participate in the elections and add the party's name to the ballots. The IEC helped monitor the more-than-9,000 polling stations and was responsible for verifying the vote count before it was announced.

The IEC reported that it had counted 19,726,579 ballots and rejected 193,081 as invalid. The voting was declared generally free and fair. Observer missions from the United Nations (UN), British Commonwealth, European Union (EU--see Glossary), and Organization of African Unity (OAU) issued this statement: "South Africans' confidence in the secrecy of the ballot was manifest and they were able to participate freely in the elections. The outcome of the elections reflects the will of the people of South Africa."

Seven political parties won seats in the National Assembly, the ANC, 252 seats (representing 62.6 percent of the popular vote); the NP, 82 seats (20.4 percent); the IFP, 43 seats (10.5 percent); the Freedom Front (FF), 9 seats (2.2 percent); the DP, 7 seats (1.7 percent); the PAC, 5 seats (1.2 percent); and the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP), 2 seats (0.5 percent). Twelve other parties received too few votes to be represented in the National Assembly. Each of the seven major parties also won representation in at least one of the nine provincial legislatures. The ANC won a majority in seven provincial legislatures. The NP won a majority in the Western Cape; and the IFP did so in KwaZulu-Natal.

Political Parties

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South Africa's political party system underwent radical transformation in the early 1990s when previously illegal parties were unbanned and participated in the April 1994 elections. In what international observers called a "developing multiparty system," parties were challenged to become all-inclusive and not to limit their appeal to their traditional constituent groups. They also had to reorient themselves to participate in the bicameral multiracial legislature rather than the previous tricameral apartheid-based parliament. The most successful of the parties in the April 1994 elections (and the South African Communist Party) are described below, in order of decreasing parliamentary strength.

African National Congress

The African National Congress (ANC) was founded in 1912 as the South African Native National Congress, under the leadership of Dr. Pixley Ka Isaka Seme, a Durban attorney. It was renamed the African National Congress in 1923. Although the ANC cooperated to some degree with the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA--later, in 1953, the South African Communist Party, or SACP) in the early 1920s, cooperation ceased in 1927 when some traditional African leaders opposed white-led communist involvement in the black nationalist movement. In the 1930s, the ANC's influence declined, primarily because it was unsuccessful in representing black grievances and was weakened by factionalism and leadership disarray. The ANC's revival in the 1940s was largely the result of a dynamic group of young leaders--including Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, and Anton Lembede--who were influenced by a pan-African version of black nationalism. In 1943 they established the ANC Youth League to mobilize mass protest against racial discrimination. Following the rise to power of the NP in 1948 and its implementation of strict apartheid laws, the ANC, with many of the Youth League founders then in leadership positions, responded by launching a series of countrywide defiance campaigns. This activism invigorated the ANC and resulted in the movement's growth from 7,000 to some 100,000 dues-paying members in 1952.

In the mid-1950s, the ANC formed the Congress Alliance with other antiapartheid organizations to oppose the white state. On June 26, 1955, alliance members adopted the Freedom Charter, which advocated the creation of a nonsocialist multiracial society, but the debate over the charter widened an ideological rift in the ANC between Charterists and Africanists, concerning the question of multiracialism. A few activists opposed the ANC's inclusive policies and established the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) in 1959 to press for black political control.

The government declared the ANC an illegal organization on April 8, 1960, as part of a government crackdown and state of emergency following violent antiapartheid incidents at Sharpeville and Langa. The ANC went underground, many of its cadres left South Africa for exile in neighboring states, and its leaders adopted armed struggle as a means of achieving their goals. In 1961 ANC and SACP leaders created a joint military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation," also known as Umkhonto, MK). The principle of armed struggle through guerrilla warfare to overthrow the South African regime superseded the goal of gaining political rights for all citizens. ANC sabotage and attacks between 1960 and 1962 led to the arrest of many party leaders. At the 1963 trial that became renowned as "the Rivonia trial," Mandela, Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, and others were convicted of treason and were sentenced to life terms in prison. Most ANC leaders fled the country, established ANC headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia, and continued their struggle against the Pretoria regime.

Over the years, the ANC built up a strong support network in many Western and Eastern-bloc states, in cooperation with overseas antiapartheid groups. Although certain Western states, particularly Scandinavian countries, provided financial support, the ANC's logistical support, including the supply of weapons, came from the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). The ANC also attained observer status at the UN and during the 1980s broadened its diplomatic ties with Western states.

The ANC's leadership structure consists of the president, deputy president, secretary general, deputy secretary general, and treasurer general. A ninety-member National Executive Committee (NEC) consults with senior officers and influences decisions on important issues. A twenty-six-member National Working Committee (NWC), chosen from the NEC, oversees day-to-day decision making and administration and manages the party's functional departments. The seven appointed members of the President's Committee serve as presidential advisers and assistants.

The ANC's annual national conference brings together more than 1,300 representatives, whose functions are to elect the NEC and to nominate delegates to the party's National Assembly, which meets every five years. At a working level, the party has nine national departments--Information and Research, Manpower and Development, Foreign Affairs, Youth, Political Education, Information and Publicity, Finance, Religious Affairs, and Women--as well as branches in each of the provinces.

In the early 1990s, the ANC took a number of steps to broaden its political base. It reactivated the ANC Youth League in order to bridge the generational gap between its older leaders and young members. In addition, propelled by the many politically active women in the organization, the ANC reactivated its Women's League in order to promote women's rights nationwide. The ANC Youth League and the ANC Women's League work in cooperation with the corresponding departments within the ANC.

Although the ANC primarily represents the interests of the majority black population, its membership is open to whites, coloureds, and Asians, as well. It had appealed to all races to join in 1969, and a substantial number of white liberals did join during the 1970s and the 1980s. In April 1991, five white members of parliament representing the Democratic Party left that party to join the ANC, giving the ANC official parliamentary representation for the first time in the all-white House of Assembly.

Until the ANC and the NP-led government entered into negotiations over the country's political future in 1991, the ANC's ideological platform for opposing apartheid ranged from Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi's strategy of passive resistance (in the early 1900s), to pan-Africanism (in the 1940s), to the Freedom Charter in 1955. In 1969 the ANC adopted an official policy advocating armed struggle to gain political control of the state, and in 1988 it promulgated the Constitutional Guidelines for a Democratic South Africa, derived from the Freedom Charter of the 1950s. These guidelines called for a nonracial democratic state based on universal franchise. In August 1989, the ANC adopted the Harare Declaration, advocating multiparty negotiations to arrive at a new form of government, giving strong emphasis to the concept of individual rights.

The ANC's major political partner throughout most of the apartheid era was the SACP. SACP leaders helped the ANC to secure the support of communist and socialist governments during its period of exile, played important roles in ANC policy formulation, and helped to consolidate support for the ANC in the labor movement. The SACP at times played a moderating role in the ANC, too; for example, in early 1993 SACP chair Joe Slovo drafted the ANC's proposals, couched in a "sunset clause," to compromise and to share power with the NP. Slovo's position was that compromise was necessary because the party was "not dealing with a defeated enemy," but with the NP as a minority party.

Although the ANC became the country's dominant political party in 1994, it still faced a number of long-term problems. The issue of political succession had yet to be resolved. President Mandela and other senior party leaders were members of the older generation, whose active leadership years were drawing to a close. Mandela had pledged he would not seek reelection in 1999. His most likely successors--Thabo Mbeki, the former ANC secretary for international affairs, and Cyril Ramaphosa, ANC secretary general since 1991--had not demonstrated the decades of practiced leadership of their seniors.

As the dominant party in the national unity government, the ANC had to balance the need to co-manage (along with the NP) the country's finances to facilitate economic growth against its long-standing affiliation with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the labor confederation known for vigorously defending workers' interests against those of the previous government. The ANC also had to overcome its image as a violator of human rights after its leaders acknowledged there had been instances of torture, execution, and abuse of dissidents in its exile camps and in some black townships during the antiapartheid struggle. In 1993 the party apologized for past abuses, but it refused to punish its human rights violators or to pay compensation to the victims or their families.

In 1994 the ANC proposed a number of controversial cabinet appointments, adding to the difficulties inherent in transforming itself from a former liberation movement into a broad-based political party. A notable case was that of Winnie Mandela, who had earlier been regarded as South Africa's "first lady of liberation." She had staged a political comeback after being stripped of her official posts in the ANC and after being shunned by many black leaders because of her 1991 conviction for her part in a kidnapping that had resulted in a death. Her five-year jail sentence was set aside for a fine, but she was subsequently removed from the ANC's NEC and as head of its Welfare Department.

Mrs. Mandela went on to organize an independent power base in the restive and impoverished squatter camps, where she was respected for her activism on behalf of the poor. In some communities, Mrs. Mandela was able to capitalize on the widespread distrust of government that extended even to black leaders like Nelson Mandela. During the preelection negotiations, she had criticized power-sharing proposals as a deal between "the elite of the oppressed and the oppressors" and had charged ANC leaders with "the distortion of a noble goal in favor of a short-cut route to parliament by a handful of individuals." But while she chided ANC leaders for their new-found "embourgeoisement," Mrs. Mandela continued to live in relative luxury in the Johannesburg township of Soweto. Even after she fell out of favor with the government led by her husband in 1994, she remained popular, especially among the poor and unemployed. Her defiance of the government led to her removal from office in March 1995.

South African Communist Party

In 1994 the South African Communist Party (SACP) was not an independent political entity, but a strong faction within the ANC, where its members held important leadership positions. Former party leaders, Joe Slovo and Chris Hani, for example, had both served as chief of staff of the ANC's military wing and on its most important committees. The SACP won strong representation in the National Assembly in 1994, not by participating openly in the April 1994 elections, but by having SACP members well represented among delegates from the ANC.

The SACP was originally founded as the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) in July 1921 in Cape Town. The CPSA was formed out of the merger of several leftist organizations, including the International Socialist League (ISL), the Social Democratic Federation, the Durban Marxist Club, the Cape Communist Party, and the Jewish Socialist Society. The CPSA affiliated with the Communist International (Comintern), headquartered in Moscow, which provided it with political direction, although some party factions opposed Moscow's intervention in South African affairs.

Although whites dominated the party in the 1920s, some CPSA leaders attempted to strengthen its reputation as an indigenous communist organization by increasing its African membership and orientation. David Ivon Jones and Sidney Percival Bunting, formerly of the ISL, translated the concept of social revolution into a struggle for a "black republic" and a "democratic native republic, with equal rights for all races." The major stumbling block they encountered was the belief, inherent in Marxist dogma, that all workers fundamentally share the same interests. In South Africa, white workers generally felt they had little in common with their black counterparts and feared that any improvements for black workers would reduce their own status and income.

Despite efforts at Africanization, the CPSA failed to establish strong ties with black political organizations, many of which were dominated by traditional tribal leaders. In 1928, for example, the ANC denounced the "fraternization" between the ANC and the CPSA. ANC President James T. Gumede was removed from office in 1930, after trying to educate ANC members about Marxism. Even as the CPSA gradually succeeded in recruiting more black members, its leadership continued to be white. For this reason, two ANC Youth League leaders in the 1940s--Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu--opposed any alliance between the ANC and the CPSA at that time.

CPSA members were divided over the increasing Comintern intervention in local affairs. Moscow urged the CPSA and all communist parties to continue to be small, revolutionary elite organizations, and to rid the party of alleged "rightist" elements. In 1931 a new Stalinist faction, led by Douglas Wolton, Molly Wolton, and Lazar Bach, assumed leadership roles in the CPSA and proceeded to purge the party of many white leaders. In the internal upheaval that followed, the party lost black support, too, and weakened its ties to labor. As its leadership ranks were "Stalinized" and leading party activists fled the country, CPSA membership dropped from an estimated 1,750 members in 1928 to about 150 in 1933. Racial divisions continued to exist between the predominantly white leadership and the largely black membership ranks.

At the outset of World War II, the CPSA opposed efforts to counter the Nazi threat, primarily because of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, which led to Soviet neutrality. Party members campaigned against military recruitment of blacks (and Indians) in South Africa, arguing that the "natives" should not be sacrificed to perpetuate their own exploitation. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the CPSA echoed Moscow's shift to support the anti-Nazi campaign, and the South African government responded by releasing some CPSA activists from detention and permitting political activities in support of the war effort.

By the mid-1940s, CPSA membership was increasing, and the party had gained influence after a few CPSA members (all white) won political office. After the 1948 NP election victory, however, the government quickly restricted black political activity and in 1950 banned the CPSA. The party went underground temporarily but also strengthened its ties to local nationalist organizations, such as the ANC. During the years it was banned, while the ANC continued to operate legally, the CPSA viewed the ANC as the primary expression of black aspirations for a multiracial socialist state under eventual communist leadership. The Comintern's Sixth Congress declared that "the CPSA could now play an active role in the ANC." The party re-emerged in 1953 under the leadership of Joe Slovo and his wife, Ruth First, and changed its name to the SACP.

The SACP and the ANC in the 1950s held similar views about policy and tactics as embodied in the ANC's Freedom Charter; in addition, they both advocated the use of guerrilla warfare against the apartheid regime in order to bring about the dual-phase revolution of political liberation followed by economic transformation. Party members reportedly persuaded the ANC to abandon African nationalism in favor of nonracialism, however, although the SACP, unlike the ANC, viewed the primary objective of the revolution as the creation of a socialist state. After many leaders of both organizations were arrested in 1963, both the SACP and the ANC shifted their political and military bases of operations to neighboring African states.

The close ties between the SACP and the ANC, particularly the predominance of SACP members in the ANC, have always been controversial, and in 1959 prompted a split by black nationalists from the ANC to form the militant Africanist, anticommunist PAC. The SACP-ANC relationship evolved into a symbiosis, derived in part from their dual memberships and overlapping leadership ranks. Throughout the 1980s, for example, the SACP was well represented on the ANC's NEC and in other key ANC positions, and in ANC-affiliated labor organizations, such as COSATU.

When the SACP was unbanned in February 1990, its strength was difficult to estimate because many party members had been underground for years. In July 1990, a party spokesman publicized the names of twenty-two SACP members who were prominent in national politics but said that the names of others would remain secret. In 1991 SACP leaders estimated that the party had 10,000 dues-paying members, but refused to publish the party's membership rolls.

SACP chairman Joe Slovo was the most prominent party member in government in 1994. Slovo was a trained lawyer and advocate, a member of the Johannesburg Bar, and one of the original members of MK, the ANC military wing. He served on the ANC's revolutionary council from 1969 until it was disbanded in 1983, became the first white member of the ANC's NEC in 1985, and served as MK chief of staff until April 1987. He was appointed SACP general secretary in 1986, following the death of Moses Madhiba, and continued in that post until 1991, when he became party chairman. Slovo was appointed minister of housing in the Government of National Unity in May 1994 and served in that post until his death in January 1995.

Slovo had been a hard-line communist, a Stalinist, when he joined the party in the 1940s, but along with others in the SACP had followed Moscow's 1980s reforms. By 1987 Slovo and his associates espoused the creation of a multiparty state with a mixed economy, and sought to broaden the party's membership base. This liberal philosophy might have explained the SACP's large representation among ANC leaders in the 1990s. The collapse of the Soviet system in the late 1980s had weakened the SACP's outside support and appeared to have weakened the appeal of the socialist ideals the party espoused for South Africa. Party activists believed, nonetheless, that the remaining economic disparities among racial groups provided fertile ground for SACP recruitment in the 1990s.

SACP leaders, considerably weakened by the murder of Chris Hani in 1993, debated the possibility that the party no longer represented a political asset to the ANC, as they prepared for the April 1994 elections. They realized that the SACP could do little to help the ANC broaden its popular support beyond its liberation allies, and public opinion polls gave the SACP, alone, strong support among only about 5 percent of voters. By including a large number of SACP members among the electoral delegates representing the ANC in the April 1994 elections, however, the SACP was able to gain significantly more representation in the national and provincial legislatures and more key posts in the government than it would have, had it run independently.

National Party

In the early 1990s, the National Party (NP), led by President de Klerk, led the white community in radically transforming the apartheid system and ushering in nonracial democracy. This process also served to transform the NP into a modern democratic party, while at the same time depriving it of the uninterrupted political dominance it had enjoyed for some forty-five years.

The present-day NP emerged out of Afrikaner organizations of the early 1900s. Founded by General J.B.M. Hertzog in January 1914 as an expression of Afrikaner ideology and ethnic nationalism, the NP sought to strengthen racial separation and to oppose British rule in South Africa. The NP, in alliance with the Labour Party--a white organization led by Colonel F.H.P. Creswell--defeated General Jan C. Smuts's ruling South African Party (SAP) in parliamentary elections in 1924. In 1933 the NP formed an alliance with the SAP, and the alliance was formalized in 1934 as the United South Africa National Party, or the United Party (UP). The merger prompted staunch segregationists from Cape Town to establish the Purified National Party under the leadership of Daniel F. (D.F.) Malan, to counteract the UP's relatively moderate positions on race. The UP ruled until it was unexpectedly defeated by Malan's party (then known as the Reunited National Party, owing to a reconciliation with a conservative faction of the UP) in parliamentary elections in May 1948. After the 1948 elections, the victorious alliance--again under the banner of the NP--ruled without interruption until April 1994.

The NP's dominance over political and security organizations gave it a vast patronage pool for its mostly Afrikaner constituency. Numerous cultural, social, economic, and religious organizations also furthered Afrikaner interests, including the Afrikaner Broederbond (later Broederbond, or Brotherhood), Nasionale Pers (National Press), South African National Life Assurance Company (Sanlam), the Voortrekkers (a scouting organization), the Federation of Afrikaner Cultural Organisations (Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurvereniginge--FAK), Helpmekaar (an Afrikaner social service organization, roughly translated "mutual aid"), and Volkskas (People's Bank).

Although the party did not publish membership figures, much was known about its organization--a federal structure divided into four provincial parties, linked through a Federal Council. At the lowest level were the party's local branches, consisting of 500 or fewer members. Local branches in rural areas reported to a District Council, which comprised a leader, a deputy leader, a secretary, and elected representatives from each local branch in the district. In addition, local branches elected Constituency Divisional Councils. Above each divisional council were a Head Council, a Provincial Congress that met annually, and a provincial leader. At the apex of the NP was the thirty-seven-member Federal Council that met at least once a year. The national leader of the NP, who until 1994 was also the state president, was elected by the party's parliamentary delegates in caucus.

Under P.W. Botha's leadership in the 1980s, the NP began to change directions, first to reform, and then to dismantle, apartheid. Although these reform initiatives led to a number of splits within the NP, the reformist wing (referred to in party parlance as verligte , or "enlightened") was sufficiently strong, its parliamentary delegation sufficiently disciplined, and its national leadership sufficiently cohesive to enable the party to remain in power as its members vigorously debated the question of reform. The NP quickly recovered after its conservative faction, led by Transvaal NP leader Andries Treurnicht, abandoned the party in February 1982 in protest against the proposed "power-sharing" constitution that established the tricameral parliament. Treurnicht launched the Conservative Party (CP), which gained immediate parliamentary representation through the conversion of seventeen NP members of parliament. The NP nonetheless retained its majority in the next elections in 1987.

The most dramatic changes in the NP began in 1989, when President Botha relinquished his party leadership following a stroke and was replaced by then Minister of Education F.W. de Klerk. De Klerk committed himself to establishing a new postapartheid South Africa, over the objections of Botha, who had retained his position as president. The NP's Federal Council in June 1989 went on to pass a five-year plan to reform apartheid. As de Klerk and Foreign Minister Roelof ("Pik") Botha prepared to discuss their planned political reforms with Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda later that year, President Botha objected to the pace of the proposed reforms, and he opposed any plan to hold discussions with Kaunda. In August 1989, his intransigence finally prompted the cabinet to ask him to resign. He did so in a televised broadcast, and de Klerk succeeded him as president. In national elections in September 1989, the NP under de Klerk's leadership remained in power both in the national House of Assembly and in the provincial legislatures, and de Klerk was confirmed as president for another five-year term.

The NP then spearheaded the reform process that paved the way for the postapartheid political system (see Constitutional Change, this ch.). The NP also sought to project a new party image. In 1990 it launched a nationwide recruitment drive for new members of all races, appointed a new management council and new regional secretaries to oversee its reforms, and established new training programs for party leaders, to emphasize racial tolerance. These changes broadened the party's parliamentary support. In May 1991, five MPs deserted the Labour Party, which since 1965 had represented the interests of the coloured community, to join the NP delegation. Their view that the new NP best represented the interests of their community was rejected by most of the Labour Party, but the NP continued to seek the support of the roughly 1.6 million voters in the coloured community.

As the April 1994 elections approached, the party tried new approaches to win support among the country's black majority. One of its campaign tactics was to emphasize its active role in dismantling apartheid and to portray itself as the liberator of the country's black population. The NP also portrayed the ANC as intolerant of political dissent.

The NP failed to gain many black votes in the April 1994 elections but nonetheless won the second-largest vote--20.4 percent of the total, gaining eighty-two seats in the National Assembly. The NP won a majority in the Western Cape, garnered the second-largest vote in seven provinces, and ranked third in KwaZulu-Natal. Despite its second-place performance in the elections, the NP--by virtue of its long-term political dominance--still exerts strong influence in the state bureaucracy and the country's security forces.

Inkatha Freedom Party

The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP, also Inkatha) is a Zulu-based political party, based in its ethnic stronghold, KwaZulu-Natal. It is the ANC's main rival in the black community. Between 1970 and 1990, Inkatha portrayed itself as a moderate and democratic organization, contrasting its views with extremist positions within the ANC. But in the early 1990s, the IFP became increasingly intransigent in its efforts to preserve its traditional power base in KwaZulu, while the rest of the country was moving closer to nonracial democracy under the now moderate NP and ANC leadership.

Inkatha was originally established in 1922 as a cultural movement to promote the Zulu heritage. It was rejuvenated in 1928 by the Zulu king, Solomon ka Dinuzulu, as Inkatha ya kwa Zulu (Organization of the Zulu). During this phase, controversy arose over the party's activities. For example, critics claimed that funds collected from Natal's impoverished black population were misused to pay for King Solomon's lavish life-style. Others suggested that the organization's 1928 constitution, written by a white lawyer from Durban at the urging of white businessmen in Natal, was intended to ensure that the party would express the interests of the traditional tribal elites, the conservative black petite bourgeoisie, and a few white power brokers. After a period of relative inactivity, and following an unsuccessful attempt to revive it in 1959, Inkatha ya kwa Zulu was reestablished as a political organization in March 1975 by KwaZulu's chief minister, Mangosuthu (Gatsha) Buthelezi. Buthelezi renamed the organization Inkatha Yenkululeko Yesizwe (National Cultural Liberation Movement). In August 1990, following the unbanning of antiapartheid organizations, Inkatha proclaimed itself a political party, the IFP, with membership open to all races.

From its primarily Zulu political base, Inkatha has played an important role in national politics. In 1977 it was the largest legal black movement in the country, having an estimated 120,000 members; by the late 1980s, its leaders estimated their membership at 1.5 million (considered highly inflated by the inclusion of the party's 600,000-member Youth Brigade and 500,000-member Women's Brigade). It has never managed to recruit many members outside the Zulu community, however.

The IFP in the 1990s is a tightly knit and authoritarian organization, dominated by Buthelezi. Its political structure consists of local branches organized into regions and provinces. The IFP's four provincial councils are led by the IFP National Council. Provincial delegates elect representatives to the annual general conference, where delegates to the National Council are elected each year. The IFP's power base is rooted in three sources--the former KwaZulu homeland bureaucracy, which the party controlled by virtue of its dominance over the local legislature and provincial government; the Zulu traditional leaders--i.e., chiefs and headmen; and the Zulu population, including the inhabitants of large squatter settlements near several cities, especially Johannesburg and Durban.

Although Inkatha and the ANC had close ties in the early 1970s, their relationship deteriorated after that. Inkatha became especially threatened by ANC organizing efforts among educated and urban Zulus. The ANC criticized Buthelezi for becoming the leader of the KwaZulu homeland, and thereby accepting the government's demographic manipulation for apartheid purposes. The ANC pressed for a more militant antiapartheid campaign and waged a propaganda war against Buthelezi, demonizing him as a "stooge" of apartheid. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, this rivalry degenerated into violent conflict, spilling over into townships and rural areas, and claiming the lives of thousands of black South Africans.

Some Western observers and South African political leaders hoped that the IFP, rooted in Zulu tradition and Western in its outlook in support of a federalist democracy and free enterprise, would attract moderate South African blacks to its ranks. That prospect dimmed in the climate of escalating violence leading up to the 1994 elections. Buthelezi protested against his being sidelined by what he considered "ANC-NP collusion" in the negotiating process, and in early 1994 he announced that the IFP would boycott the country's first free elections.

The IFP ultimately participated in the elections, after the ANC and the NP agreed to consider international mediation on the issue of provincial autonomy and agreed to reinforce the status of Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini and the Zulu homeland. The party's late entry cost it popular support at the polls, however. The IFP managed to win barely one-half of the vote in Natal and only 10.5 percent of the nationwide vote, with most of its support in KwaZulu and the area around Johannesburg.

The IFP's commitment to Zulu autonomy remained strong after the elections. In May 1994, at a caucus of the KwaZulu legislative assembly, Inkatha formed a new society called Iso Lesizwe, or Eye of the Nation, with Chief Buthelezi as its president. The new organization dedicated itself to pursuing Zulu autonomy "within the parameters of democratic and pluralistic forms of government and along with all the other peoples living in the ancestral territory of the Zulu nation." Debate over this issue intensified in 1995 and 1996.

Freedom Front

The Freedom Front (FF) is a right-wing Afrikaner political party established in March 1994, following a split among extremist organizations, to ensure a proapartheid presence in the April elections. It is a successor to the Afrikaner Volksfront (AVF), which was founded by General Constand Viljoen, who had also served as chief of the South African Defence Force (SADF) until November 1985. Viljoen emerged from retirement in 1991 to lead a group of right-wing former generals in forming an alliance of Afrikaner parties. As the AVF, the alliance included the White Protection Movement (Blanke Bevrydingsbeweging--BBB), the Boerestaat Party (Boer State Party, the military wing of which was known as the the Boer Resistance Movement, or the Boere Weerstandsbeweging--BWB), the Conservative Party of South Africa (CP), the Reconstituted National Party (Herstigte Nasionale Party--HNP), the Oranjewerkers (Orange Workers), and the Republic Unity Movement. The AVF's objective was to unify the extreme right and to advocate the formation of a volkstaat , an autonomous Afrikaner nation-state, in a postapartheid South Africa. However, even some AVF leaders were troubled by the violent racism and political extremism of some members of the front. Their refusal to participate in the nation's first nonracial elections weakened the movement, and in March 1994 General Viljoen and his allies broke away to form the FF.

Much of the support for the FF comes from farmers' organizations in the former Transvaal and the Free State. Among the FF's leaders are several former Conservative Party members of parliament, former high-ranking military officers, and a former chairman of the Broederbond.

In the 1994 elections, the FF received only 2.2 percent of the vote, gaining nine National Assembly seats. The party performed best in Gauteng, where some 40 percent of its votes were cast. Its participation in the elections helped to legitimize the electoral process and thus to neutralize the violent threat that the extremist right-wing extraparliamentary forces could have posed to the new political system. In doing so, it bolstered the standing of Viljoen and others who sought to preserve Afrikaner cultural autonomy through nonviolent means.

Other Political Parties

The Democratic Party (DP) was established in April 1989 as a liberal, centrist party. It was formed as an amalgamation of four liberal political groupings, the most important of which was the recently disbanded Progressive Federal Party (PFP), led by Zach de Beer. The coalition also included the Independent Party (IP), led by Dennis Worrall; the National Democratic Movement (NDM), led by Wynand Malan; and a group of reform-minded Afrikaners dubbed the "fourth force." The DP then became the primary left-of-center parliamentary opposition to the NP. It won 20 percent of white support in the 1989 general election, giving it thirty-three parliamentary seats.

The DP advocated the abolition of apartheid and the creation of a nonracial social democratic state through the protection of human rights, a government based on proportional party representation and universal suffrage, an independent judiciary, collective bargaining in industrial relations, and economic growth through individual entrepreneurship. Ironically, the NP adopted some of the DP's notions about reforming the apartheid state in 1989 and 1990, thus depriving the DP of some of its political base. A few DP leaders advocated an alliance with the ANC; others favored joining the NP; and the embattled center--led by the party's leader de Beer--sought to develop a distinctive, liberal, centrist image that would serve to mediate between the ANC and the NP. At the same time, the DP sought, without much success, to expand its support among all racial groups.

In preparation for the April 1994 elections, the DP's economic program gave top priority to creating jobs in a "free market economy with a social conscience," while rejecting the "nationalization of privately owned businesses and the expropriation of property for political purposes." The DP also opposed "economic populism," socialism, and the "politicization of education, housing, and social services." Its political program criticized the interim constitution for failing to eliminate laws that allowed detention without trial, and for failing to ensure the political independence of the media. The DP also opposed the antidefection clauses in the interim constitution, which made it difficult for members of parliament to break ranks and vote against the dictates of their party leaders. The DP called, instead, for a constitution based on individual rights, property rights, press freedom, women's rights, proportional representation within constituencies, federalism, devolution of federal powers to the provinces, and the direct election of senators by the provincial electorates.

In the 1994 elections, the DP's performance was considered disastrous, as it won only 1.7 percent of the vote and gained only seven seats in the National Assembly. The voting results revealed that it had failed to broaden its urban, middle-class, and English-speaking white base. It had won only about 3 percent of the coloured vote in the Western Cape, a comparable percentage of the Indian vote in KwaZulu-Natal, and no significant black support.

The Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) was established in April 1959 by ANC dissidents who opposed that group's multiracial orientation and advocated black liberation within an exclusively black nationalist context. The party was founded in the black townships of Orlando and Soweto, outside Johannesburg, where it has received most of its support. The government declared the PAC an "unlawful" organization in 1960, because it advocated violent rebellion against the government. Like the ANC, the PAC was recognized by the United Nations (UN) and by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) as an official South African liberation movement. It was unbanned on February 2, 1990.

As advocates of the black liberation struggle, the PAC's founders criticized the ANC for diluting black nationalism by accepting white members (and Asians and coloureds). The PAC also opposed the ANC's alliance with the SACP because most PAC leaders rejected Marxist economic dogma (although the PAC had advocated some Maoist tenets in the late 1960s). Instead, the PAC advocated an indigenous form of African "communalism." It rejected the ANC's Freedom Charter because the charter sought to guarantee minority rights in a future postapartheid state, and issued instead the Azanian Manifesto in 1959. The manifesto promoted armed struggle by black South Africans as the only means of seizing power, overthrowing capitalism, and restoring their birthright of African landownership. Finally, unlike the ANC, which engaged in extensive political organizing through formal party structures, the PAC believed in the inevitability of national liberation through the spontaneous revolt of the masses.

From 1960 to 1990, the PAC's activities ranged from mass action campaigns, such as a campaign in 1960 to overcome what it termed "black psychological subservience to whites," to protests against the hated pass laws that required black South Africans to carry identity documents. One such demonstration in March 1960 led to at least sixty-seven deaths at police hands and more than 11,000 arrests in subsequent disturbances. The PAC's military wing, the Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA)--then known by the name "Poqo" (loosely translated "blacks only")--also engaged in an underground armed struggle against white-dominated political and cultural institutions (see Consolidating Apartheid in the 1960s, ch. 1).

After the PAC was banned in 1960, the organization went underground, with headquarters located in Maseru, Lesotho. It was led by an executive committee, the members of which had either evaded arrest or been released from prison. The PAC's senior leaders included its charismatic founder, Robert Sobukwe; acting president Potlako Leballo, who resigned under pressure in 1979; Vusumazi Make, who succeeded Leballo; John Pokela, who became leader in 1981; Johnson Mlambo, who succeeded Pokela as chairman in 1985; and Clarence Makwetu, who became president in 1990.

Following the PAC's unbanning in 1990, it reorganized as a legal political party, although its military wing continued to operate underground until 1994. Its internal organization consisted of a thirty-five-member National Executive Committee led by President Makwetu, first deputy president Johnson Mlambo, second deputy president Dikgang Moseneki, and general secretary Benny Alexander.

The PAC has eight working committees and a five-member National Coordinating Committee. Its members are organized into 105 local branches nationwide. Affiliated organizations include the Azanian National Youth Unity (Azanyu), a youth wing; the All African Student Committee (Aasac); the National Council of Trade Unions (Nactu); the African Organisation for Women (AOW); the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM); the Sobukwe Forum, a London-based faction; and the Pan-Africanist Students' Organisation (PASO), which has branches at several South African universities.

Although the PAC played little role in the multiparty negotiations during 1993 and early 1994, it formally suspended its armed struggle in early 1994 and agreed to participate in the April elections. It gained only 1.2 percent of the national vote, receiving five seats in the National Assembly, and it won one seat in each of three provincial legislatures--in Gauteng (then Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging--PWV), KwaZulu-Natal, and the Eastern Cape.

Several other political parties participated in the 1994 elections, although, with the exception of the African Christian Democratic Party (which gained two seats in the National Assembly and seats in three of the nine provincial legislatures), none received more than 1 percent of the vote. These parties included the Sports Organisation for Collective Contributions and Equal Rights (SOCCER), the Keep It Straight and Simple Party (KISS), the Women's Rights Peace Party (WRPP), the Worker's List Party (WLP), the Ximoko Progressive Party (XPP), the Africa Muslim Party (AMP), the African Democratic Movement (ADM), the African Moderates Congress Party (AMCP), the Dikwankwetla Party of South Africa (DPSA), the Federal Party (FP), the Luso-South Africa Party (LUSAP), and the Minority Front (MF).

Interest Groups

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Interest groups have played a significant role in South African politics, although until apartheid was abolished the primary criterion for interest articulation was race, more often than economic issues. Interest groups work to achieve the goals of a particular ethnic community (Afrikaner, Xhosa, Zulu), racial group (white, black, coloured, or Indian), or other category of persons sharing a common goal. Leonard Thompson and Andrew Prior, in their book South African Politics , describe apartheid-era attempts by groups such as the Afrikaner Broederbond to win political influence in the parliament and the executive branch in order to maintain the status quo, while others, such as trade unions, sought to change labor relations and economic policy. Still other interest groups, such as the South African Media Council, had specific goals, in this case the establishment of a free and independent press. Finally, several organizations that were effectively banned from the political arena, such as the United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM), continued to function as political interest groups during the apartheid era.

Within this system, the Afrikaner interest groups were the most influential, as they constituted an element in the country's ruling elite. After apartheid was abolished, however, interest-group politics began to change. Many organizations abandoned their ethnically based, secretive, extraparliamentary, or underground characteristics to meet the challenges of the new nonracial, open, and democratic political order.
Afrikaner Broederbond

The Afrikaner Broederbond (later Broederbond, or Brotherhood) was the most important apartheid-era interest group in South Africa. Functioning for almost sixty years as an elite, exclusively Afrikaner, secret society, the Broederbond gradually shifted its perspective on the future and supported the political reform process beginning in the early 1980s.

Founded in 1918, the Broederbond became a secret organization in 1921 and dedicated itself to advancing Afrikaner political, cultural, and economic interests. Membership was restricted to white Afrikaner males who passed a rigorous selection process. One of the group's primary goals was to place Afrikaner nationalists in key political positions and to establish other organizations to further Afrikaner interests. With members of the Broederbond in key leadership positions, the NP government often promoted the interests of the group.

The Broederbond's organizational structure and political strategy were first publicly disclosed in the late 1970s by Hennie Serfontein, an Afrikaner journalist who devoted much of his career to investigating the organization. According to internal Broederbond documents, in 1993 the society reportedly had 20,074 members--one of the highest figures in its history--organized into twelve regions and 1,392 branches, or cells. Branches varied in size from five to twenty members, and central committees in towns and cities coordinated branch activities. Branch cells selected representatives to regional councils, the next higher level of organization. Top policy-making authority was vested in the National Congress (Bondsraad), which met every two years and elected the organization's senior executive authorities, the Broederbond chairman and the Executive Council. The Executive Council served for two years; in 1993 it had eighteen members.

The Broederbond played an important role in transforming apartheid. Major governmental policy shifts in areas such as education and sports were first tested in Broederbond discussions before being aired in parliamentary debate. Then in November 1993, in preparation for the postapartheid political system, the Broederbond adopted a new constitution that radically transformed the previously clandestine organization. The Broederbond changed its name to the Afrikanerbond, removed its cloak of secrecy, and abolished its Afrikaner male exclusivity by permitting women and all racial groups to join. Some membership restrictions remained--new entrants had to speak Afrikaans, had to subscribe to the organization's constitution, and had to be approved by the other members. These restrictions helped to ensure the continued importance of Afrikaner interests and identity.

United Democratic Front

The United Democratic Front (UDF) was an extraparliamentary organization established in 1983, primarily in opposition to the government's constitutional proposals of that year. It served as an umbrella organization of antiapartheid groups. Membership was open to any organization that endorsed the principles of the ANC's Freedom Charter. Affiliates of the UDF included the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the South African National Student Congress (Sansco), the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), and the Congress of South African Students (COSAS).

Following clashes with the government, the UDF was effectively banned--i.e., its political activities were proscribed--under the terms of the emergency regulations of February 24, 1988, and many of its affiliates were reorganized under the guise of a new political coalition. The UDF disbanded on August 20, 1991, declaring that its major objectives had been fulfilled.

Mass Democratic Movement

The Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) was the name of an informal coalition of antiapartheid groups during the 1970s and early 1980s. As a formal organization, the MDM was established as an antiapartheid successor to the UDF after the 1988 emergency restrictions effectively banned the UDF and several other opposition groups. Even after 1988, the MDM was a temporary loose coalition of antiapartheid activists with no permanent constitution, no official membership rolls, no national or regional governing body, and no officeholders. Like the UDF, the MDM drew much of its support from the black community; a condition for affiliation with the MDM was adherence to the provisions of the ANC's Freedom Charter.

The MDM gained prominence in 1989, when it organized a campaign of civil disobedience in anticipation of national elections scheduled to take place in September of that year. Defying the state-of-emergency regulations in effect at the time, several hundred black protesters entered "whites-only" hospitals and beaches. During that month, people of all races marched peacefully in several cities to protest against police brutality and repressive legislation. When the UDF was unbanned in February 1990, most MDM leaders and many members rejoined their former organizations.

Trade Unions

Labor activism dates back to the 1840s, when the first unions were formed. Most major industrial unions were organized after World War I either to support or to oppose racial privileges claimed by whites. Black and communist organizations formed antiapartheid unions to abolish racist policies in the workplace; most proapartheid unions were formed by government forces to support discriminatory labor practices. During the apartheid era, membership in most trade unions was based on race, and until 1979, the government did not recognize black unions or grant them labor law protection. In 1977, for example, out of 172 registered trade unions that were eligible to bargain collectively, eighty-three were white, forty-eight were coloured, and forty-one were open to whites, coloureds, and Asians. Among the proapartheid and all-white unions were the White Workers' Protection Association (Blankewerkersbeskermingsbond), the Mineworkers' Union, and larger coordinating bodies such as the South African Confederation of Labour.

The South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), formed in the early 1950s, became the leader of the antiapartheid struggle in the labor movement. The government often arrested and harassed its leaders for political agitation. During the 1970s, however, the government recognized the need to exert greater control over labor activities and to improve government-union relations. In 1977 it established the Commission of Inquiry into Labour Legislation, headed by Professor Nicolas Wiehahn. The Wiehahn Commission recommended the legalization of black unions, in part to bring labor militants under government control. The government recognized black unions in 1979 and granted them limited collective bargaining rights. In the same year, the government established a National Manpower Commission, with representatives from labor, business, and government, to advise policy makers on labor issues.

During the 1980s, business owners and management organizations, such as the Afrikaner Trade Institute (Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut--AHI), which had represented Afrikaner commercial interests since the 1940s, were forced to negotiate with black labor leaders for the first time. To adapt to the new labor environment, they established the South African Employers' Consultative Committee on Labour Affairs (SACCOLA) to represent the owners in lobbying and collective bargaining sessions.

Black union membership soared during the 1980s. New labor confederations included the nonracial COSATU, which was affiliated with the ANC and the SACP; the PAC-affiliated National Council of Trade Unions (Nactu); and the IFP-affiliated United Workers Union of South Africa (UWUSA). By 1990 COSATU, the largest of these, had more than thirty union affiliates with more than 1 million members.

Efforts to begin dismantling apartheid during the early 1990s meant that union leaders were pressed to represent workers' interests more vigorously in the changing economic environment. Although the largest unions had been strong ANC supporters in the past--and were vital to ANC efforts to mobilize popular demonstrations against apartheid--they began to clash with ANC party officials and with government leaders in 1994 and 1995. Some union members feared that workers' interests would be overlooked in the effort to implement economic development plans in the postapartheid era.

Political Elites

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Although change was evident at all levels of society as South Africa began to dismantle apartheid during the 1990s, particularly dramatic changes were occurring in the country's political and social leadership. Not only were new leaders emerging on the national level, but shifts were also occurring within political organizations, as new political expectations and aspirations arose and as new demands were placed on political leaders at all levels.

Since 1948 the country's governing class, the political elite, had been dominated by Afrikaners. Afrikaners held most high positions in government, including the legislature, the judiciary, the cabinet, and the senior ranks of the military and security services. Afrikaners also came to dominate the larger community of leaders, the power elite, by assuming important roles in the civil service bureaucracy, and to a lesser extent in business, the universities, and the media. Afrikaner dominance was reinforced by the rules of apartheid, in large part because the government's security and intelligence services helped to enforce the rules of apartheid through other institutions.

In general, during the apartheid era, English-speaking whites were less important in the political and power elites. They played only secondary roles in most areas of government. English speakers were, nevertheless, prominent in commerce and industry, where the Afrikaners' success had lagged behind their political achievements, as is explained by Thompson and Prior. By the 1980s, English-speaking whites also held important positions in universities and the media, and in a few areas of government.

In the early 1990s, these political and power elites were evolving, as is demonstrated in the authoritative survey of elites, Who's Who in South African Politics , by the South African writer Shelagh Gastrow. Gastrow divided South Africa's dominant political leaders into four major categories: political leaders within the Afrikaner community, most associated with the NP; an older generation of black opposition leaders, most within the ANC; a younger generation of leaders emerging from the Black Consciousness Movement; and a new group of labor leaders who had risen to prominence as the trade union movement strengthened during the 1970s and 1980s. A fifth category might be added--according to South African political scientist Roger Southall, who reviewed Gastrow's book--the small number of white political leaders who attempted to reshape white politics along nonracial, democratic lines.

A subsequent revised edition of Gastrow's book identified 118 individuals--110 men and only eight women--as constituting South Africa's evolving political elite in 1992. Among the obvious changes occurring at that time was the emergence of formerly imprisoned, exiled, or banned opposition leaders, who had been released from prison or had been legally recognized since early 1990. They could then be legally quoted in the country's media, and their ideas were being widely disseminated. In addition, new challengers arose to replace formerly entrenched leaders, especially conservative blacks, coloureds, and Indians who had gained office through various forms of state patronage in the black homelands or in other institutions of government.

Changes were also occurring within the senior ranks of the organizations from which the country's new leaders had emerged. As the ANC, for example, was forced to cooperate with former opponents, especially the NP, in pursuing national goals, new alliances and friendships were formed, shaped in part by a pragmatic appraisal of the political realities of the time. In addition, former opposition groups--especially the ANC--began to revise their rhetoric from that of guerrilla opponents of government, or "states in exile," to adapt to their new positions of responsibility. The ANC's best educated, skilled technocrats, capable of managing governmental and other bureaucracies, were gaining particular prominence.

At the same time, a greater distance was developing between these educated elites and the less educated rank-and-file within their own organizations. In particular, there was a growing distance between the ANC and its radical youth wing in late 1994 and 1995. There was also a growing distance between the ANC leadership and their former ally, the South African Communist Party (SACP). Ties between these two organizations had not only been close in the past; their membership and leadership rolls had overlapped.

In some cases, the new elites appeared to have more in common with members of rival political organizations than with their organization's own members. Several new government leaders, for example, were drawn from traditional African elites--royal families, chiefs, and influential clans. President Mandela, while a university-trained lawyer, is also a descendant of a leading family among the Thembu (Tembu), a Xhosa subgroup. Like Mandela, the prominent Zulu leader and minister of home affairs, Mangosuthu (Gatsha) Buthelezi, is university-educated and the product of aristocratic origins. Buthelezi, a member of the Zulu royal family, is also a chief within the Buthelezi sub-group (also, "tribe") of the Zulu.

Other members of South Africa's new government also represent ethnic elites. For example, the minister of public enterprises in 1995, Stella Sigcau, is the daughter of a well-known Pondo paramount chief, Botha Sigcau. Stella Sigcau also had served as chief minister in the Transkei government during the early 1980s.

Many former ANC officials who were in government office in the mid-1990s had worked to overcome factional differences based on ethnicity during the apartheid era. Although the ANC is often stereotyped as "Xhosa-dominated," and a number of its officers are Xhosa, several ethnic groups have been represented in the ANC's senior ranks. Thomas Nkobi, treasurer general from 1973 through the early 1990s, represents a subgroup within the Zimbabwe-based Shona people. Former Secretary General Cyril Ramaphosa and National Working Committee member Sydney Mufamadi are Venda (VaVenda--see Ethnic Groups and Language, ch. 2). Ramaphosa's former deputy, Jacob Zuma, is one of several Zulu leaders who rose to prominence within the ANC. The ANC's former security and intelligence specialist, Patrick "Terror" Lekota, and former MK leader Joe Modise are Sotho (BaSotho). Several popular regional leaders are Tswana (BaTswana). In general, these leaders have rejected arguments that favored the use of ethnicity to define political factions.

Age differences appeared more divisive than ethnicity within the ANC during the early and the mid-1990s. There were heated debates over questions of political succession, as the ANC's aging leaders--many over the age of seventy--faced challenges from the generations below them. Nelson Mandela was seventy-five years old when he was elected president in 1994, and several other ANC leaders were more than seventy years of age. Their most likely successors--especially Mbeki, Ramaphosa, Zuma, and the ANC's former director of intelligence, "Mac" Maharaj--were roughly two decades younger. Some of the ANC's younger militants threatened revolt against senior party figures in the early months of the new government, as their demands for jobs, homes, and improved living standards continued to be unmet. Criticism of the "older generation" was fueled in late 1994 and early 1995, when the president's former wife, Winnie Mandela, clashed with the government and was ousted as a deputy minister, as she championed the grievances of the ANC's militant youth.

As the apartheid system was being dismantled, some members of the Afrikaner elite in government, the civil service, and the security services reacted with impressive flexibility. By adapting quickly to the new environment, many of them not only retained their valued positions in the bureaucracy but also won new respect from former adversaries. As the ANC assumed responsibility for the security establishment, the police, and the intelligence services, ANC leaders were often able to work closely and cooperatively with Afrikaners who had once been so effective in excluding blacks from the political process.

The shift in power and influence among the country's political elites had begun well before the April 1994 elections. An important arena in which this power shift occurred was that of the political negotiations concerning the interim constitution of 1993. During those negotiations, as difficult and unpromising as they sometimes appeared, then-governing whites began, some for the first time, to view their black counterparts as legitimate partners in the decision-making process. At the same time, many black leaders adjusted smoothly to the new climate of political tolerance.

Media

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South Africa's communications media were radically transformed by the political reforms sweeping the country in the 1990s. The most fundamental changes were the gradual easing of government censorship and its abolition in the interim constitution. In spite of frequent government censorship under apartheid, however, South Africans had received news reports through numerous publications and broadcasts.

Under apartheid, a vast array of legislation and regulations had imposed limits on the media. The South African Press Council, for example, had the power to fine newspaper editors for defying emergency regulations, which often barred coverage of political events. Under emergency regulations in the 1980s, journalists were forbidden to report on banned organizations and people; the media were prohibited from reporting events relating to "state security," such as protests and demonstrations. The public then had to rely on the government's Bureau of Information for official reports of political events. And for violating emergency regulations, some journalists were detained--even without being charged--and newspapers were temporarily suspended. Some editors and reporters were prosecuted, and foreign journalists were expelled or refused entry visas. Similarly, the Publications Control Board, under the Publications Act (No. 42) of 1974, censored certain books and movies, especially those dealing with race relations.

In the early 1990s as part of the government's pledge to reform apartheid, many of the emergency regulations relating to the media were removed. Thus, the Protection of Information Act of 1982, which imposed penalties on publications that violated national security, was repealed in February 1990 and less stringent guidelines for protecting sensitive information were established. Thereafter, the press, including numerous mainstream and alternative publications, was generally independent, criticizing both the government in power and the various opposition parties involved in the political transformation.

Radio and Television

South Africa has an estimated 12.1 million radio receivers and more than 3.5 million television sets in the mid-1990s. Radio and television broadcasting (with the exception of M-Net, a privately owned, subscriber-based cable television service) is controlled by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), a statutory body that obtains its revenue from licenses and advertising. It operates twenty-two domestic radio broadcasting services in eleven languages through SABC-Radio, one external radio broadcasting service in seven languages through Channel Africa Radio, and two television channels that broadcast in seven languages through SABC-Television. Although M-Net was the only privately owned television network (with more than 880,000 subscribers), there were at least six privately owned commercial radio stations by 1996.

The most fundamental change in the role of the media in the mid-1990s took place in the SABC, which had been controlled by NP-led governments and had generally expressed government views. In April 1993, a new twenty-five-member SABC board began to prepare the SABC for the postapartheid era as an independent, autonomous, and impartial broadcasting authority. President de Klerk relinquished the right to appoint its board members, and the members of the board were selected publicly for the first time, after an independent judicial panel had screened the nominees to ensure political neutrality. Ironically, however, as a reflection of the new balance of forces in the country, an estimated nineteen of the twenty-five new board members were ANC members or were generally believed to be ANC supporters, and new complaints of political bias in the media began to emerge.

Another major change in the broadcasting system was the establishment of the Independent Broadcasting Authority in January 1994, as authorized by the Independent Broadcasting Authority Act (No. 153) of 1993. The authority consists of a seven-member panel, appointed by the minister of home affairs after a period of public discussion and nominations. The authority in 1994 required all broadcasters to reapply for operating licenses. It issued temporary licenses to most, and it obtained court orders to close down a few broadcast stations that had not applied for licenses. Permanent licenses were issued in 1995, after five months of public hearings and debate over the rules of broadcasting in South Africa.
Newspapers, Magazines, and Journals

More than 5,000 newspapers, magazines, and journals were registered with the South African Department of Home Affairs by January 1994; sixty-six new ones registered in that year, and registration was no longer required after 1994. As in other nations, newspaper and magazine publishers are organized into corporate groupings. Major corporations include the Argus Printing and Publishing Company, Perskor, and Times Media. Newspapers are printed in English, Afrikaans, and several African languages. The country's two national newspapers, which are printed on Sundays, are the Sunday Times and Rapport . Both are printed in several cities, simultaneously. The Sunday Times had a circulation of about 524,164 in 1995, and Rapport , about 396,974. Other major newspapers (and 1995 circulation figures) are City Press (262,203), The Sowetan (204,219), and The Star (199,753) (see table 19, Appendix).

South Africa has more than 300 consumer magazines and 500 trade, technical, and professional publications. Huisgenoot , a weekly Afrikaans publication, sold more than 520,000 issues in 1995, while You , its English counterpart, sold nearly 300,000 issues. The leading business and political magazine is the weekly Financial Mail , with approximately 32,000 subscribers.

The South African Press Association (SAPA) is the country's national news agency. It is a forty-member nonprofit cooperative, engaged in foreign and domestic news-gathering and distribution. Foreign news agencies operating in South Africa include Agence France Presse, Associated Press, Reuters, and United Press International.

Foreign Relations

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The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is responsible for South African foreign policy decisions. The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs conducts liaison with foreign governments and international organizations on all matters affecting official relations. These relations are conducted through foreign government officials, through diplomats accredited to South Africa, and through South Africa's accredited embassies, consulates, and other missions abroad. Until the early 1990s, the DFA and the diplomatic corps competed against numerous counterestablishment "diplomatic services" run by antiapartheid organizations in exile, especially the ANC. The aim of these parallel communication channels was to isolate the South African government within the international community as a means of pressuring Pretoria to abolish apartheid.

After the abolition of apartheid and the inauguration of the democratically elected Government of National Unity, South Africa's foreign relations were dramatically transformed. The country's diplomatic isolation ended, and existing relations with other countries and with international organizations improved. South Africa reestablished diplomatic and trade relations with many countries, particularly in Africa, and established new relations with some former sanctions "hardliners," such as India, Pakistan, Bahrain, Malaysia, Jordan, Libya, and Cuba. Several regional and international organizations invited South Africa to join, or to reactivate its membership, including the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and the United Nations (UN). In addition, South Africa participated in international and bilateral sport, academic, and scientific activities, often for the first time in decades. Relations with the countries of the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and Central Europe improved. South Africa had full diplomatic ties with thirty-nine countries in 1990; that number increased to sixty-nine in 1993, and to at least 147 in 1995.

After the April 1994 elections, President Mandela appointed two ANC members, Alfred Nzo and Aziz Pahad, as minister and deputy minister of foreign affairs. He refused to make immediate sweeping changes in the diplomatic corps. The pillars of South Africa's future foreign policy had been enunciated by Mandela in late 1993, in an article published in Foreign Affairs . These principles are the promotion of human rights and democracy; respect for justice and international law in interstate relations; the achievement of peace through "internationally agreed and nonviolent mechanisms, including effective arms-control regimes"; incorporation of African concerns and interests into foreign policy choices; and economic development based on "cooperation in an interdependent world." In southern Africa, Mandela denounced South Africa's earlier economic domination of the region and its deliberate destabilization of neighboring states. Instead, Mandela called for "cooperation in regional construction, infrastructure and resource development projects . . . in virtually every sector and area." Finally, Mandela advocated the full reintegration of South Africa into global trade networks.

These foreign policy principles were being implemented even before Mandela's inauguration. For example, in early 1994 de Klerk and Mandela, along with the presidents of Botswana and Zimbabwe, helped mediate an end to a military revolt in neighboring Lesotho. In mid-1994, South Africa provided its first assistance to a UN peacekeeping operation when it supplied hospital equipment for Rwanda. Also in 1994, President Mandela agreed to help resolve the intractable civil war in Angola, although he cautioned against unrealistically high expectations in this and other deep-rooted political and ethnic conflicts.