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Originally Posted by Leifur

But then again in real terms the Nationals weren´t practically right winged at least not economically. So can anyone explain to me what happened, and why they were in such a rush to bargain with the ANC, so soon after they had lost their principal backers, the Soviet union and the Nationals victory seemed at hand against that old foe? Why didn´t they just wait a few more years and try to create a more favoreable situation in post-apartheid South Africa? And what if any preparation did they do while they still had power for their eventual powerlessness?

And what should they have done?

What do you mean a rush? The ANC was formed in 1912, just two years after the Union of South Africa created our country, and they were appealing for human rights, universal suffrage, etc. which the British skipped out the country without guaranteeing. The United Party buffed them off and then in 1948 when the Nats won unexpectedly the ANC's appeals got even louder and were rebuffed ever more violently. By 1961, after nearly 50 patient years of non-violent protest, Sharpeville saw the ANC and it's radical young leadership say "enough is enough" and began the work of forming a resistance army. By the mid-70s, apartheid was in arguably its most brutal stage with wanton killing of resistors habitual, death squads even formed to blackmail and coerce captured MK members into doing the dirty work. Come 1987 when PW Botha very reluctantly met with Mandela it was 75 years into the ANC's struggle for human rights, so again I ask, what do you mean in a rush?

After nearly 50 years of brutal oppression of all resistance movements, the ANC was really the only organization that was in any position to represent the people of South Africa at the negotiating table. People like Sisulu and Mandela had achieve iconic status and were highly revered even by those who were not yet born when they were shipped off to Robben Island. Robert Sobukwe and Steve Biko might have managed to form alternatives to the ANC, but the one was passively killed by the apartheid government, the other more actively being brutally beaten by the security police, left naked with severe brain damage for over 24 hours, and then driven, again naked, in winter, in the open back of a truck 1000 miles to Johannesburg before his body finally succumbed.

Personally I do not think that the ANC has failed - they have more than doubled the economy, for instance. The ANC certainly is not perfect, even before they somehow elected Zuma and his goons to all the leadership positions, and there are definitely many problems still facing South Africans on both ends of the economic spectrum and in the middle too, of course.

Really, the biggest mistake that was made was to let the trade unions, led by the astute negotiating mind of Cyril Ramaphosa, write the constitution. It is next-to impossible to fire someone so companies are very reluctant to hire leading to the huge unemployment, at least in the formal sector. People are hired on as day laborers or "temporary" workers, but not formally and lack job security and any kind of sickness or healthcare benefits. This has cascading effects throughout the economy.

I personally had hoped that reason would prevail and that Ramaphosa could be lured from the private sector back into government and take the position that Mandela had wanted him to hold - as leader of the party and future president - but it was not to be. Perhaps Ramaphosa knew that Zuma's mysterious and incomprehensible to rational minds surge to the top was unstoppable? If anything Zuma says can be believed, I hope that it is that the ANC is bigger than any one person and who is in charge doesn't matter. I hope that whomever was pulling his strings on his world tour prior to the party conference is able to keep his moral and economic corruption in check and our country on track.