South Africa: Reform, resistance and negotiation

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Abstract
Government reforms in South Africa during the 1980s have neither adequately addressed the problem of black political rights nor significantly improved the material well‐being of blacks. Nonetheless reform should not be judged irrelevant Reform divided the ruling National Party, weakened its support base and exposed new contradictions in apartheid policy. It also opened critical space in which black resistance movements could build essential organisational strength. By rejecting reform as cosmetic in the mid‐1980s black resistance organisations lost strategic advantages in their struggle which they have only now recovered. Ironically, the government's rhetoric of reform may well force it to enter into genuine negotiations.
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