HSY3705 ASSIGNMENT 5 2026
DUE SEPTEMBER 2026
Explain why negotiations between 1990 and 1993 were both necessary and
deeplycontested.
Negotiations between 1990 and 1993 were necessary because the apartheid state
faced a deep legitimacy crisis that made continued white minority rule impossible. After
years of resistance, sanctions and internal unrest, President FW de Klerk saw that the
system could no longer claim moral or practical authority. On 2 February 1990 he
unbanned the African National Congress (ANC), the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and
the South African Communist Party, and released Nelson Mandela and other political
prisoners. These steps were not gifts of goodwill. They were forced by the clear failure
of apartheid to keep order or win acceptance at home or abroad. Without talks the state
risked total collapse.¹
The high and rising costs of violence and isolation also made negotiations unavoidable.
Between 1990 and 1993 more than 10 000 people died in political fighting, most of it
between supporters of the ANC/United Democratic Front/Congress of South African
Trade Unions and Inkatha. Train attacks, township massacres and the Boipatong
killings of June 1992 showed that the security forces could not stop the bloodshed.
International sanctions hurt the economy, and the end of the Cold War removed the old
excuse that South Africa was a front-line state against communism. De Klerk calculated
that talking was cheaper and safer than fighting on. The ANC, for its part, suspended
the armed struggle in the Pretoria Minute of August 1990 because it too understood that
a long civil war would destroy the country it hoped to govern.²
¹ University of South Africa, HSY3705 Study Guide: Modern South Africa – From Soweto to Democracy
(Pretoria, 2016), Learning Unit 3, Discussion 1.
² Ibid., pp. 54–55.
DUE SEPTEMBER 2026
Explain why negotiations between 1990 and 1993 were both necessary and
deeplycontested.
Negotiations between 1990 and 1993 were necessary because the apartheid state
faced a deep legitimacy crisis that made continued white minority rule impossible. After
years of resistance, sanctions and internal unrest, President FW de Klerk saw that the
system could no longer claim moral or practical authority. On 2 February 1990 he
unbanned the African National Congress (ANC), the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and
the South African Communist Party, and released Nelson Mandela and other political
prisoners. These steps were not gifts of goodwill. They were forced by the clear failure
of apartheid to keep order or win acceptance at home or abroad. Without talks the state
risked total collapse.¹
The high and rising costs of violence and isolation also made negotiations unavoidable.
Between 1990 and 1993 more than 10 000 people died in political fighting, most of it
between supporters of the ANC/United Democratic Front/Congress of South African
Trade Unions and Inkatha. Train attacks, township massacres and the Boipatong
killings of June 1992 showed that the security forces could not stop the bloodshed.
International sanctions hurt the economy, and the end of the Cold War removed the old
excuse that South Africa was a front-line state against communism. De Klerk calculated
that talking was cheaper and safer than fighting on. The ANC, for its part, suspended
the armed struggle in the Pretoria Minute of August 1990 because it too understood that
a long civil war would destroy the country it hoped to govern.²
¹ University of South Africa, HSY3705 Study Guide: Modern South Africa – From Soweto to Democracy
(Pretoria, 2016), Learning Unit 3, Discussion 1.
² Ibid., pp. 54–55.
