By ABAYO I AZlKIW
of their land
TH RE E T fi t non-raei I elections ever held in th
country, the fo that have championed th national liberation of
the opp Africans were given n overwh lming mandate to
proceed in government to implement the de- cializ tion of South
African political culture and the reconstruction of th society based
upon indi nous concep and principl of governing.
The political culture of South Africa has been transformed by the
atmosphere of qu tioning, prot t, organization, mobilization, dis­
cussion and debate which evolved out of the m and armed strug­
gl of the last two d d .
Despite the attempts by F.W. DeKlerk to claim responsibility for
the new dispensation, his actions only reflected the trategic think­
ing of mainstream Afrikanerdom in alliance with international capi­
tal, who realized that it was imperative to bring the whites of South
Africa into the Twentieth century. .
The National Struggl� and the Demographic Shift
As it was alluded to above, the response of th white power
tructure in South Africa was conditioned by the heightening strug­
gl of the African peoples for self-determination and national inde­
pendence.
This escalation occurred even prior to the 1976 national student
uprisings with the Natal workers general strikes in 1973 and the
demonstrations in commemoration of the victories by the guerilla
armie in the former Portuguese colonies of Guinea-Bissau, Angola
and Mozambique in 1974.
By the time that the Wiehan Commission had recommended
"legalized" trade union activity in 1979, this measure of "liberaliza­
tion" was designed to deflect attention away from the struggle for
national liberation into what the ruling elites perceived as dead-end
campaigns geared toward higher wages and better working condi­
tions within the same racially dominant system
By the mid-1980s, the major trade union organrzations had con­
solidated into the pro-ANC Congress of South AfrH':l11 Trade Unions
(COSATU and the ational Confederation of Trade Unions
(ACTU llied with the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC).
THE TRADE U 10 federations in alliance with the United
Democratic Front (later the Mass Democratic Movement), the Afri­
can National Congr , the PAC and other m formations created
he social atmosphere which was conducive to a negotiated settle­
men of the problem of national oppression in South Africa.
As a r ult of the displacement of millions of Africans from their
land during the nineteenth and early twentieth century in South
Africa, the system of oppression had allocated thirteen percent of the
most arid and unproductive land in the country to the indigenous
population, while the Europeans seized 87 percent of the highly
rable and minerally rich areas of South Africa:
However, the r nt breakdown that has occurred in the rigid
geographical boundari based on race and nationality are not only
h r ul of the recension of the Group Areas Act, e c., but largely
r ul from the pr ur placed upon Africans living in both rural
nd mi-urban centers that have experienced ver I changes re­
lated tobo h he material conditions of the peopl living in the e
ar well theshifting outlook of the African m es who have
I ready n infu ed with he phenomena of "rising expectations"
ch racteri tic of modern societi undergoing rapid social transfer-
qu ntly, the reforms mitiated by the two pr vious ation­
rty regimes of F.W. D Klerk and P.W. Both I wer merely
E RAI E the qu tions regarding European pr
in a post-apartheid outh Africa it is n ary to first under-
t nd th many whites hav alr dy migra ed out of the country as
a r ult 0 bo h he political and economic crisis that had been
n nder by the I r-colonial state ystem.
S'- AFRICA, B8