The th!nc Foundation

The colonial history that defined South Africa remains one of the permanent watermarks in any analysis of whatever democratic order it ultimately settles with. The structural foundations of its state formation process are a further background of permanence for any concert of reforms and reconceptualisations of all arguments defining democraticness in South Africa. The basis of creating a state is, in most instances, inextricably linked to the economic purposes of the dominant at the time the State was formed. It is in the details of such purposes where the potential or otherwise of a democracy lies. The 1994 democratic breakthrough that created a Constituent Assembly, negotiated and drafted a Constitution could only emerge with a state that had to negotiate its co-existence with apartheid-colonial power rather than fundamentally overturning it. The 'non-racialisation' of 'human enfranchisation' to include the African majority, and as a process to legitimise a negotiat...