CONTINENTAL economic powerhouse South Africa received the rawest deal in history at the CODESA negotiations, in Kempton Park, east of Johannesburg, in the early 1990s. It was as recent as that, when the unbanned African National Congress (ANC) with its alliance partners negotiated their way forward to democratic elections and into the corridors of government in the Union Buildings in Pretoria in May 1994.
The negotiations between the two parties to end colonial-apartheid - the outgoing apartheid National Party on the one hand and the new African National Congress on the other - took place on two parallel tracks that more often than not intersected - one was political and the other economic, with the political talks hugging the limelight and public emotions. The summits between ANC president and then future democratically elected country president-in-waiting, Nelson Mandela, and colonial-apartheid regime president F. W. de Klerk, received all the attention. It also meant that the important economic negotiations were not all in favour of the incoming indigenous, non-racial majority under the ANC banner.
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