PARTC

THE ERA OF DESTABILISATION 1990-1994

Introduction

The 1990s got off to a promising and auspicious start with the announcement in parliament on 2 February 1990 by the then state president F.W. de Klerk that all hitherto banned organisations were immediately unbanned and that further measures were being taken to set the stage for talks aimed at reaching a negotiated political settlement in South Africa. This dramatic announcement was followed a few days later, on 11 February, by the release of Nelson Mandela from prison after 27 years of incarceration. In the months that followed, further steps to lift repressive measures were taken, if somewhat hesitantly and grudgingly, and talks were indeed held, the first at Groote Schuur in Cape Town from 2 to 4 May and the second at Pretoria on 6 August. Each meeting produced minutes of agreement on the measures needed to arrive at a climate conducive to the commencement of substantive negotiations for a political settlement. Of particular significance in the Pretoria Minute was an agreement by the ANC to suspend the armed struggle as their contribution towards creating such a climate.

The ink on the Pretoria Minute was not yet dry before a wave of violence of unprecedented proportions emerged from the migrant workers hostels in the PWV (Gauteng) area to engulf the adjacent black townships. It took some time before a pattern could be discerned of an orchestrated campaign of destabilisation of the communities forming the support base of the liberation movement. Vigilantism became rampant, collusion by the security forces was thinly disguised and the hidden hand of hit squads was manifest by its results. Thus, at the very moment of the apparent capitulation of apartheid, South Africa was being cruelly plunged into a period of destabilisation from which it is yet to fully emerge. Destabilisation by whom? With what motives? These are the questions, which are addressed in Part C of this book.

There follows, as with Parts A and B, a chronology of political events during this period.



The political calendar during the era of destabilisation

*300 deaths or more

**180 deaths or less