ENGLISH ORAL :

IV-ABOLITION OF RACIAL SEGREGATION :

.

A) In South Africa :

The coming to power in 1989 of Frederik de Klerk changed the political situation. It
was after six months of deliberation within the national party that this Afrikaner, until
then renowned for his conservative positions, had acceded to the position of leader
of the party with the mandate to reform the system in order to meet the aspiration of
the egalitarian vote of Blacks and to pose in a cycle of constitutional negotiations, the
intangibility of certain principles such as the inviolability of private property and the
establishment of deadlines to block possible land claims. The banned political parties
were legalized and negotiations officially began in March 1990 between the ANC and
the government. Most of the apartheid laws were abolished between 1989 and June
1991 and a constitutional forum was set up in April 1992, following the specific
mandate to negotiate with parties like the ANC, granted by nearly 70% of the white
voters to the South African president on March 17, 1992 in a referendum. If some
conservative Afrikaners take refuge in communitarian utopias , others, who also
consider that they are the heart of the white nation of South Africa, reinvent the
slogan "adapt or die" to lead political openness towards the country's black majority.
After 4 years of constitutional negotiations, the first multiracial elections took place in
April 1994, leading to the election of Nelson Mandela, the first black president of the
Republic of South Africa.
From 1996 to 1998, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission traveled the country to
collect testimonies from victims and oppressors, supporters or opponents of
apartheid121, in order to identify all human rights violations committed from 1960 to
1993 and to clarify the crimes and political abuses committed in the name of the
South African government but also the crimes and abuses committed in the name of
national liberation movements.