A chapter from The UDF. A history of the United Democratic Front in South Africa, 1983-1991

At the UDF's national launch in 1983 Frank Chikane expressed his hope that the day would be recorded in history as an event that would 'bolster the tide of the struggle'. Almost eight years later, Walter Sisulu told the UDF's final national conference that the Front had indeed 'decisively turned the tide against the advances being made by the [National Party] regime'. The metaphor of the tide is apt in the task of understanding the impact of the UDF on South African politics. It conjures up images of the fundamental pressures and forces in a society rather than the more superficial events - even those that are supposed historical 'turning-points'. As the UDF's founders themselves recognised, the struggle for democracy and freedom depended not on single events, however momentous, but on the shifting balance of political power.

The UDF was formed at a time when the balance of power was not irredeemably tilted towards either the apartheid state or its opponents. The state remained immensely powerful in military and economic terms, notwithstanding a long-term decline in profit rates and the more immediate economic downturn since 1981, but underlying processes of social and economic change together with the resurgence of internal resistance since the mid-1970s had undermined the state's ideological and political positions. As key state actors themselves recognised, the political future of the country and of the dominant white minority depended on a successful political strategy: military might and economic power were insufficient. The apartheid state therefore sought to rebuild its ideological and political foundations around a package of major policy reforms. These were intended to draw (or co-opt) Indian and coloured South Africans, together with some sections of the urban African population, into support for a reformed but still racially non-egalitarian system. The reforms were also intended to foster acquiescence among a broader range of the African population. At the same time, a series of deals with the frontline states strengthened the state's position in the southern African region. These changes thus threatened to tilt the balance of power markedly towards the state; as Boesak put it in January 1983, 'apartheid's crisis has become our crisis'. The formation of the UDF, its founders hoped, would help first to forestall this prospective shift, and then perhaps to carry forward the faltering momentum of resistance - to stop the advancing 'tide' of counter-democratic politics, and then turn it round.

With hindsight it is clear that the tide flowed strongly against the state from the end of 1983. Prospective opposition from the newly formed UDF first led the government to discard the idea of referendums among coloured and Indian voters to legitimise the process of constitutional reform. Then the elections to the new coloured and Indian houses of parliament were largely boycotted. This and other protests discredited the government's 'new deal', both within South Africa and internationally. The township revolt from the second half of 1984 forced the state onto the defensive, pushing it to use brutal repression, which served to highlight the moral poverty of even 'reformed apartheid'. The strategic framework of people's power enabled the forces of revolt to be harnessed more effectively, and channelled into a direct and potentially sustainable challenge to the apartheid state. In response the government was able to stem the tide of resistance only by imposing a level of repression that was unprecedented in South Africa, although mild by comparison with many other anti-democratic regimes. But resistance adapted and continued at a level sufficient to render the state's strategy of repression unsustainable. In mid-1988 the first talks were held towards some kind of a negotiated settlement. Amidst a dramatic (if uneven) revival of popular protest during 1989, the move towards a negotiated settlement speeded up, leading to the government's decision to unban the ANC. By the early 1990s, as Lodge writes, the slogan amandla (power) was no longer just an aspiration; it had become an assertion.

Assessing political organisation in periods of change

What role did the UDF play in this turning tide? What impact did the UDF have on the process of democratisation and liberation in South Africa? How can one isolate the roles and impact of an organisation like the UDF from those of other factors -ranging from the international context to the pressures exerted by highly fragmented groups at the local level, from divisions within ruling elites to the broad dynamics of social and economic change? Answers to such questions are, to some extent, only conjecture. They depend on counterfactual scenarios which themselves rest on multiple assumptions and defy easy specification. Presumably in part for this reason, analytical histories of political organisations generally tend to avoid explicit assessment in their concluding chapters.

The role played by political organisation in periods of political change may, however, be too important to circumvent. The importance of organisation is an empirical question, within the limits of the kind of 'empirical' research possible. Certainly, organisation should not be assumed to be a key factor - even when political activists and strategists themselves generally act as if it is. Some actors' emphasis on organisation no doubt sometimes reflects a concern to strengthen or protect their own power within opposition politics. In other cases, actors' emphasis on organisation may prove to be futile. In the South African case, Barrell shows how the ANC's interminable restructuring never led to the adoption of an effective strategy and appropriate organisation.

One context where one might expect that political organisation would play an especially important role is during periods of political transition. As O'Donnell and Schmitter, Huntington and others have argued, liberalisation and democratisation are typically uncertain and indeterminate processes: 'unexpected events, insufficient information, hurried and audacious choices, confusion about motives and interests, plasticity, and even non-definition of political identities, as well as the talents of specific individuals, are frequently decisive in determining the outcomes'. Political organisation - including ideas and discourses, strategies and tactics, leadership and networks - play an important role in determining the outcome of these processes. While specific social, economic and international factors may constitute necessary conditions for successful democratisation, they are not sufficient. As Huntington writes: 'Economic development makes democracy possible; political leadership makes it real.' This is not to say that political organisation is isolated from broader factors, whether material, ideological, international or other, but rather that the effects of the structural context are generally mediated through the political realm. This renders the choices made by political actors consequential. Organisations can perceive pressures and opportunities in diverse ways, and then exercise a degree of choice in how they respond to the perceived pressures and opportunities.

Curiously, studies of transition rarely focus on the character of political organisation, despite the acknowledged importance of political factors. One reason for this has already been mentioned: the necessarily speculative nature of any assessment of the role and impact of particular organisations. More important, perhaps, is the general absence of an outstanding, above-ground political organisation in such periods of transition. Non-democratic regimes typically do not permit public, mass-based and determinedly subversive opposition organisations. South Africa was an exception to the general pattern, for reasons that we shall begin to delineate in the section on opportunities below. To emphasise the distinctiveness of the South African case, and thus of the UDF, consider the experiences of communist-ruled Central and Eastern Europe. The anti-communist revolutions of 1989, more or less coincident with democratisation in South Africa, occurred without organisations comparable to the UDF. The one possible exception was Poland, where solidarity remained a key player even during the years of martial law after 1981; the military were eventually left with little option but to negotiate with it in 1989. Whilst perhaps not unique, therefore, the UDF is certainly at one end of the spectrum of political organisation in periods of transition.

Few studies of South Africa assess directly and explicitly the significance of political organisation in the transition. The few that do typically criticise the ANC and the UDF from the left. McKinley, for example, condemns the ANC and UDF for their failure to promote a more revolutionary outcome. According to their view, the structural conditions were favourable for a revolution, but the leadership was derelict. A careful study of the 1980s provides little support for this view. For sure, the UDF leadership did indeed at times seek to rein in the militancy of sections of the population; the UDF was indeed weakly committed to a socialist vision of transformation; the UDF was willing to enter into or support negotiations, and offer compromises in the course of them. But accounts such as McKinley's ignore very real political obstacles to radical change. The street militancy that the UDF sought to rein in was rarely linked to the organised working class or any clear socialist project; there were important strategic costs to such militancy, as well as considerable direct costs to the people living in the townships concerned; the UDF certainly sought to intensify the pressure exerted on the state in other ways; and, above all, the practice and prospect of state repression placed severe restrictions on the UDF and other organisations. The 'moment' of the mid-1980s had much less revolutionary potential than is often imagined. Political organisation, including the UDF, needs to be assessed in terms of what it did achieve, and not simply dismissed for failing to achieve observers' revolutionary dreams.

The roles and impact of the UDF

The 'role' played by the UDF in turning the tide was neither monolithic nor static, but rather varied between regions and changed over time. As the political landscape was transformed, so the UDF too was transformed, organisationally, strategically and above all in its relationships with the ever-changing smorgasbord of organisations, groups and individuals arrayed against the apartheid state.

The UDF was formed, first and foremost, to co-ordinate and hence intensify opposition to the state's reforms. From the outset the UDF stamped its mark on political developments - notwithstanding its initially reactive and piecemeal activities and its deep internal divisions surfacing around the Port Elizabeth conference. The UDF played a minor role in mobilising opposition to new local councils in African townships. More importantly, it was the threat of action by the UDF and key affiliates that deterred the government from holding referendums among coloured and Indian voters over its constitutional proposals. The importance of this should not be underestimated: referendums would have helped to legitimise the new constitution, internationally and domestically, in part through the spurious symmetry of allowing coloured and Indian as well as white voters the opportunity to approve or reject the proposals. The Million Signatures Campaign demonstrated popular opposition to the reforms, even though the campaign fell far short of its goal of a million signatures. Moreover, the campaign involved an active demonstration of support, through signing a petition, and not just the passive demonstration involved in (for example) boycotting an election. This campaign allowed the UDF to capture a significant part of the so-called political middle ground. The election boycott was a triumphant success, with low polls and public opposition, especially in the important metropolitan areas, thereby undermining the political value of the government's project. Finally, the occupation of the British consulate in Durban focused international attention on detention without trial, further undermining the reformist image that the government sought to project. By the end of 1984 the Tricameral Parliament and African township councils were discredited. The government had failed to secure political advantage from its reforms - largely thanks to the scope of opposition co-ordinated through the UDF.

The UDF's existence and activities served to 'push back the frontiers of what was politically possible'. As Morobe later said, 'We managed to get people to stand up and fight for their rights without any fear and actually challenge authority'. Perhaps it was the government that unwittingly put politics on the table, but it was the UDF that overcame the previously widespread fear and wariness of politics. Its opposition to the constitutional reforms demonstrated not just the efficacy of protest but also the possibility of challenge.

Whilst primarily concerned with opposition to the government's reforms, the UDF also posed the outline of an alternative approach to politics. For the most part this was somewhat abstract: the goal was a non-racial, democratic, unitary South Africa, and the appropriate interim institution was not some multi-cameral parliament but rather a national convention. Not surprisingly, this did not seem to catch the popular imagination. But UDF speakers also put forward a more appealing alternative, couched in the universalist language of rights and morality: in Boesak's words, 'we want all of our rights, we want them here, and we want them now ... Now is the time!' Here was a vision and a rallying cry, simultaneously a demand and an expression of impatience.

The twelve or so months between mid-1983 and mid-1984 also saw the construction of a country-wide movement. The two national conferences of 1983 gave the movement some momentum; NEC meetings provided for inter-regional co-ordination; RECs and RGCs provided for regional co-ordination. The growth of this movement was reflected in, and in turn strengthened by, the Million Signatures Campaign, which involved on sustained basis perhaps a thousand activists in collecting signatures, building cross-racial contact and developing organisational experience. It is easy to criticise the campaign - as UDF leaders themselves did - but it was the first nationwide campaign on this scale since the 1950s.

The importance of the formation of the UDF in terms of building political networks is evident from comparison with the deep fragmentation of opposition politics prior to 1983. Then, some networks did exist, but they were very patchy. Inter-regional contact and debate were limited to individual connections, interspersed with very rare opportunities provided by conferences such as the 1981 Anti-SAIC conference in Durban. Even at the regional level, key activists sometimes did not even know each other. The formation of the UDF ensured the institutionalisation of regular inter-regional and intra-regional co-ordination.

For sure, the Charterist movement was scarred by multiple tensions after 1983: across racial lines in many areas; between more nationalist and more socialist strands of Charterism, in East London for example; between groups plugged into different resource bases, including the battles around Freeway House in Johannesburg; between individuals with different lines of communication to 'the' ANC, especially during the referendum debate; between regions, notably over the election of a president, and also during the referendum debate; and within regions between metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas. But most of these tensions were the products or results of improved co-ordination, problems that would not have arisen in a more fragmented context; they were the inevitable frictions associated with building a movement out of disparate components.

Symbolically, the existence of a nationwide front, its campaigns and its media helped to integrate the disparate parts of opposition politics into a larger whole. Activists in smaller townships were encouraged to see themselves as part of a broad movement, and to regard the various aspects of state policy as part of a larger state strategy. The UDF did not seek explicitly to construct a Charterist movement but helped to secure the construction of Charterist near-hegemony. Non-Charterist strands of opposition politics were emphatically sidelined, with the exceptions of Inkatha, whose base lay increasingly within bantustan state structures, and the independent trade union movement, whose political role was muted at the time.

There were clear limits to the UDF's achievements in this initial-period. Much of the impetus to the formation of the UDF came from the specific political needs of apartheid activists in coloured and Indian areas. In terms of leadership, concerns, discourses and strategy, the UDF was orientated primarily towards coloured and Indian politics. This fuelled dissent or at least a sense of distance among some activists from African areas, notwithstanding the UDF's rhetorical commitment to the 'primacy of African leadership'. Perhaps it was the very success of the UDF in advancing the Charterist cause, sidelining rivals in order to secure its claimed position as the 'only' body representing 'all' sections of the population, that subsequently allowed sections of the Charterist movement to adopt a hostile attitude toward the Front.

If opposition to the government's reforms largely frustrated the government's political project, thereby forestalling any shift in the balance of forces in the state's favour, it was the township revolt of the mid-1980s that decisively tilted the balance of forces away from the state. In the Delmas Treason Trial, UDF leaders Molefe and Lekota were initially convicted for their parts in the township revolt. The UDF was found to have been party to the instigation of revolutionary violence. This judicial interpretation is perhaps not surprising: governing elites, including judges, rarely appreciate the ways in which localised political, social and economic conditions can give rise to burgeoning revolt; to do so would be to acknowledge their collective failure to address these causes. Instead, governing elites typically look for conspiracies and agitators.

The UDF's own leadership was taken by surprise by the initial revolt. Certainly the UDF sought the collapse of the apartheid state but, as its own leaders acknowledged in internal documents, the UDF was at the margins of the revolt. Indeed, the sites of the initial revolt were areas with particularly weak direct links to the UDF: Tumahole, Atteridgeville, the East Rand, the Vaal Triangle, Cradock. Even those townships with stronger links to the UDF - including Soweto, Mamelodi, as well as the townships of Port Elizabeth, Uitenhage and Cape Town - were slow to be drawn into the revolt.

Much of the initial impetus to the revolt came from issues which the UDF had neglected: rents and service charges, housing, urban development, and even the roles and responsibilities of elected township councillors. The UDF was clearly and emphatically opposed to the reform of African local government, since elected township councils seemed a substitute for full democratic rights. But the Front was not integral to the widespread, locally based opposition to councils and councillors. The UDF was also somewhat distant from the schooling crisis, in part because COSAS resisted UDF involvement. The organisational form of the UDF as a front meant that, at this stage, it could only be involved in issues if the relevant affiliates sought its assistance. Township-based organisations either opposed the UDF's intervention or at least had not sought it.

Indirectly, however, the UDF played an important role in the genesis of the revolt. As Lodge puts it, the Front 'inspired an insurrectionary movement'. Two factors helped to transform localised discontent over civic and educational issues into a nationwide political movement. First, the existence and prominence of the UDF served to encourage local-level activists to link their struggles into the national political struggle. This is presumably what Lodge means when he writes of the 'inspirational' role of the UDF. Secondly, state repression played a powerful politicising role. It is surely likely that the heightened mobilisation around the UDF's campaigns in 1984 was an important factor in the state's often heavy-handed approach to policing in the second half of the year. The fact that township protests coincided with UDF-led resistance to the Tricameral Parliament meant that many police, as well as National Party politicians, were likely to regard civic protests as part of a political conspiracy and then to use a high level of force to contain them.

Revolts may seldom be instigated by political organisations, but revolts typically provide unprecedented opportunities for political organisations to extend their organisational and ideological reach and power. The UDF was initially not well placed to take advantage of the opportunity posed by the growing revolt. Most of its leaders were deeply wary of insurrectionary or confrontational tactics; indeed, the Front had decided against them earlier in 1984. Some UDF leaders saw violence as morally suspect; others saw it as potentially counterproductive, a threat to sustained revolt; most favoured instead extended organisation building. The UDF came to be seen as overly conciliatory and insufficiently supportive of the insurrectionary project favoured by some activists and promoted by the ANC through its Radio Freedom. It was only with escalating violence by the state against its opponents that senior UDF leaders began to endorse the use of 'counter-violence' for ostensibly defensive purposes.

The UDF's capacity to seize the political initiative became hampered by repression. In August 1984 and February 1985 its leadership was decimated by detentions. Top leaders were prosecuted in two treason trials. In the Eastern Cape an REC member and other activists were abducted and murdered. In Natal an REC member was assassinated. In July a State of Emergency was imposed across most of the Eastern Cape and PWV, and later extended elsewhere; the Emergency regulations were used to detain activists at all levels and impose a complete clampdown on political meetings. In August a further round of detentions seemed to herald a third major trial, although in fact this never took place. The effect of this was, not surprisingly, very disruptive. Although resistance was spreading across the country, it was difficult for the UDF to provide direction. The Front sought to re-orientate itself to the new conditions and opportunities. It adopted a more vanguardist approach and streamlined its organisational structures. Discourses of power replaced discourses of rights. But the Front lacked any overall strategic direction, and lacked the authority to retrieve its position at the helm of the Charterist movement inside the country.

In early 1986 the UDF succeeded in seizing the political initiative, both within the Charterist movement and in the politics of the country as a whole. It did this through developing the strategic framework of 'people's power'. By providing direction it helped to intensify and, more importantly, sustain popular insurrection. The impetus to people's power came from several sources: from burgeoning violence and the education crisis, which was deemed to require urgent intervention;from the Eastern Cape, where street committees had been formed at the very local level to provide direction to political struggle amidst pervasive repression; and from the ANC, which continued to preach popular insurrection over Radio Freedom. The UDF's ascendancy was made possible by its endorsement by the ANC - not least at their meeting in Stockholm in January - as playing an integrative role in the Charterist movement inside the country.

The goal of people's power, as Zwelakhe Sisulu put it, was to shift decisively 'the balance of forces in our favour'. 'Protest' should be transformed into a sustainable 'challenge'. The strategic framework envisaged converting the situation of ungovernability, in which the state was unable to control the townships, into one in which the people governed themselves. What this meant in practice was a massive programme of organisation building, enlarging the social bases of resistance, and integrating the disparate parts of the Charterist movement. It involved a clear retreat from the more triumphalist and insurrectionary claims of some activists, and a return to the emphasis of political rather than military factors. The brilliance of 'people's power' lay in its retention of the discourse of power. Through developing and promoting this strategic framework, through conferences, meetings and an expanded media, the UDF retrieved its leading role in political developments inside the country, at the same time as reducing the risk of the mid-1980s revolt spluttering to a halt in the same way as its predecessor of 1976-7.

It is important here to acknowledge the role of the ANC in the UDF's resurgence. UDF leaders generally saw themselves as subordinate to the ANC in exile, although subordinate in the sense more of a subordinate partner than of a subordinate in a straightforwardly hierarchical command structure. In practice, however, the UDF was often the tail that wagged the ANC dog. The ANC simply did not have the capacity to provide detailed direction and co-ordination for political initiatives inside the country, and it was these rather than the muted activities of MK that were driving forward the prospect of political change. Mufson quotes an unidentified UDF leader who was angry at his treatment on one occasion by the exiled ANC: 'The ANC had done a lot of ambassadorial tasks we could not have done. But we unbanned the ANC at home ... I'm an equal in the struggle, if not more.' Where the ANC was decisive was in buttressing the leading role of the UDF inside the country. Faced with dissent or scepticism from important sections of the Charterist movement inside South Africa, the UDF could have its leading role confirmed only by endorsement by the ANC. While the ANC needed an integrative vehicle like the UDF to develop the capacity of the Charterist movement to sustain the revolt, the UDF needed the endorsement of the ANC to play this role. (When, in 1990-1, the ANC's endorsement ceased to be unambiguous, the UDF fell prey to its detractors.)

The state countered the challenge of people's power with an unprecedented clampdown. In July it imposed a country-wide State of Emergency. By the end of the year an estimated 20 000 people had been detained; some were to remain in detention until 1989. The state was unable, however, to secure significant political or ideological gains despite its clear military domination. 'Despite all its efforts, the regime's attempts to reverse the tide of history has been a dismal failure,' the UDF claimed. The National Party government failed to build a significant organised support base in African areas, and failed to erode the support enjoyed there by the ANC and the Charterist movement. The system of elected township councils failed to generate a credible set of conservative, pro-government African political leaders. Those councillors who refused to resign in the face of popular anger fled their townships to live in protected isolation far from their supposed constituents. As a result the National Party was to enter negotiations with the ANC in 1990 devoid of any significant allies in African urban areas. Only among coloured and Indian South African did it bolster its support, laying the basis for its electoral success among these voters in the 1990s.

The UDF's role in boxing in the government is hard to assess. The rhetoric of the Front's leadership was brave, but the reality was that organisation was badly battered, especially at the regional level. In Moosa's words, the UDF sought to conduct a 'holding operation'. Its campaigns were muted, and much of the impetus came from co-organisers in COSATU and the churches. The UDF's own media were disrupted, and its coverage in the commercial press was circumscribed by the press's caution in the face of Emergency regulations. What the UDF did provide was a minimal organisational network across the country, recharged on occasions such as the clandestine 1987 National General Council in Durban, financed through the fast-growing revenues available from Europe, and given some direction through the media. Above all, perhaps, its recommitment to continued public political activity helped to inject into opposition politics an element of continuity from the heady days of the mid-1980s. The late 1980s would not be like the early 1960s, when all efforts had been diverted to the embryonic armed struggle; political struggle was to remain central to the struggle for democracy and freedom. The UDF thus forged a nascent alliance with COSATU and re-engaged the so-called political middle ground, targeting disaffected white political and economic elites. It also played an important part in the rising profile of the ANC, through the Unban the ANC activities and its adoption of the Freedom Charter.

The political strength of the state's opponents became more visible during 1988, notwithstanding the de facto banning of the UDF and other organisations early that year. Popular support was demonstrated through the mass stayaway in June, and this was followed by plans for a broad-based Anti-Apartheid Conference, which was banned by the state at the last possible moment. In October the government gave in to international and local pressure, allowing UDF leaders Moosa and Morobe unrestricted freedom after they had escaped from detention and taken refuge in the American consulate in Johannesburg. In January 1989 the government revealed the limits to its political will when it conceded a de facto end to mass detention in the face of detainees' hunger strikes.

The key development in this period was, of course, the government's recognition not only that the crisis would be resolved politically rather than militarily, but that unilateral political initiatives were insufficient and that the political agenda now hinged upon negotiations with the ANC. As multiple lines of communication were opened between the government and the ANC, the UDF was transformed more clearly into a component of the ANC's strategy. Its role was to maintain political pressure on the government inside the country, discrediting it, chipping away at the margins of its support, and building support for the kind of transformation envisaged by the ANC. The UDF played this part with outstanding success. The UDF-led Defiance Campaign simultaneously strengthened resistance and weakened the state: participation in protest grew rapidly, as public defiance demonstrated the possibility once again of active protest, whilst the campaign embarrassed the government by highlighting racial segregation and police brutality. The marches raised the spectre of escalating defiance, comparable perhaps to the huge marches that were at that very moment rocking Communist Party rule in Central and Eastern Europe. The Campaign, followed by the Conference for a Democratic Future, strengthened the ANC-led opposition politically, and it was this political terrain that was all-important.

Walter Sisulu was quite right to note, in his speech to the final UDF conference, that the Front had placed the 'central question of political power on the agenda'. In 1983-4, when the state sought to present its reforms as extending democracy, the UDF redefined them as exclusionary and anti-democratic. In early 1986 the Front drew together disparate protest and defiance into an explicit challenge to state power. In 1988-9 it pushed the government into actions, which acknowledged that the future would be resolved politically, not militarily. Further, in each of these periods the UDF defined the nature of the political game as involving not the government and its allies and supplicants, but rather the government and the extra-parliamentary opposition - the ANC and its internal supporters and allies. Thus Mandela was right to praise the UDF, on his release from prison in 1990, for ensuring that 'none of the reformist strategies of the Government have succeeded'. But he might have gone further: the UDF, along with other groupings, had ensured that there was no realistic possibility of any reformist strategy succeeding without the full co-operation of the ANC.

Limits to change: the process, form and outcome of democratisation

The onset of negotiations between the ANC and government in 1990 and, four years later, the successful completion of the formal process of democratisation, marked by democratic elections, may be considered as underlining the achievements of the UDF. Yet, in several respects, each of these events was somewhat less than the UDF had publicly aspired to. Firstly, the process of designing a new South African polity was not what the UDF had envisaged. Secondly, the form of post-apartheid democracy differed from the vision set out by some UDF leaders in the mid-1980s. In addition, some critics of the UDF point to the failure to reach a socialist outcome.

From 1983 the UDF called publicly for an alternative process of constitutional change that involved a national convention. As it turned out, the post-apartheid interim constitution was not designed in a national convention but through multilateral and bilateral negotiations among political parties. The country's 1996 constitution was finalised by a democratically elected Constitutional Assembly in the form of parliament, but within guidelines set during the earlier multi-party talks. Furthermore, in 1984 the UDF had set out several preconditions for a national convention, which were not met prior to the start of talks between the ANC and the government in 1990, including the demobilisation of the security forces and the repeal of all racist and unjust laws.

The appeal of a national convention faded with the growing power of the township revolt. The ANC, whilst still a legal organisation, had long advocated a national convention. The concept was put forward again in the 1980s primarily as an alternative to the Tricameral Parliament: a national convention would be inclusive and representative of all South Africans, in contrast to the Tricameral Paarliament. The township revolt transformed the political terrain in such a way that it seemed possible that state power could be seized. The conception of the struggle in terms of power supplanted a conception in terms of rights; the national convention proposal was damned as a compromise with the oppressors. The democratic alternative to the state's constitutional initiatives was not some national-level bargaining forum but the network of representative structures built at the grassroots, from street committees upwards. The UDF embraced and directed this alternative through the strategic framework of 'people's power'. A paper on 'Towards a People's Democracy', widely distributed in 1987, referred to the 'expansion of the democratic process' and did not mention a national convention. Locally based initiatives would serve to fashion a democratic South Africa even before the transfer of 'political power to the majority had taken place'. In so far as there needed to be a national initiative, this was satisfied by the demand that the ANC be unbanned. It was unnecessary to demand that the ANC and government actually sit together at a negotiating table. Similarly, a national convention was not mentioned in the secretarial report to the UDF's National Working Committee conference in May 1987, nor in any of the conference resolutions.

Similarly, the form of South Africa's democratisation was not what the UDF had committed itself to in the immediate aftermath of people's power. In 1987 the UDF set out a vision of democracy that involved far more participatory elements than were later provided in the post-apartheid institutions of representative democracy. Enthused with people's power, and influenced by accounts of Nicaraguan democracy under the Sandinistas, the UDF declared that it was opposed to the existing parliamentary institutions not only because most of the population was excluded, but also 'because parliamentary-type representation in itself represents a very limited and narrow idea of democracy'.

Our democratic aim therefore is control over every aspect of our lives, and not just the right (important as it is) to vote for a central government every four to five years. When we speak of majority rule, we do not mean that black faces must simply replace white faces in parliament. A democratic solution in South Africa involves all South Africans, and in particular the working class, having control over all areas of daily existence - from national policy to housing, from schooling to working conditions, from transport to consumption of food. This for us is the essence of democracy. When we say that the people shall govern, we mean at all levels and in all spheres, and we demand that there be real, effective control on a daily basis ... In other words, we are talking about direct as opposed to indirect political representation, mass participation rather than passive docility and ignorance, a momentum where ordinary people feel that they can do the job themselves, rather than waiting for their local MP to intercede on their behalf.

In its strongest form, this kind of vision was based on a glorified understanding of both people's power in South Africa, on the one hand, and the experience of socialist democratisation in Nicaragua and elsewhere, on the other. The reality of people's power in South Africa - and of democracy under the Sandinistas in Nicaragua - was more complex and fragile than imagined. The decline of this vision, however, was not so much due to the growth of any critical analysis of such South African or Nicaraguan experiences, but rather to the shifting balance of power in South Africa in the face of state repression and popular demobilisation from June 1986.

Faced with a perceived stalemate under the State of Emergency, UDF leaders became more open to alternative processes of change and forms of democratic outcome. Although some affiliates remained opposed to any kind of negotiation, including even the idea of a national convention, in which the 'oppressors' would be represented, the senior UDF leadership was willing to accept both the ANC's lead in embracing negotiations and the goal, at least initially, of a representative democracy for all South Africans. Some UDF leaders hastily accepted this as reality, and denounced as Utopian any more participatory vision. For others, it seems, this acceptance involved a measure of disappointment. It is easy to see such disappointment as an inevitable part of the process of democratisation. Huntington, controversially, considers disappointment as 'an essential first step in the process of democratic consolidation', because the health of democracy as a political system depends on 'the premise that governments will fail and that hence institutionalised ways have to exist for changing them'. In Huntington's view: 'Disillusionment and the lowered expectations it produces are the foundation of democratic stability. Democracies become consolidated when people learn that democracy is a solution to the problem of tyranny, but not necessarily to anything else.

In South Africa the more substantive view of participatory democracy that had been widespread in 1986 gave way, at least among the UDF leadership, to a procedural view of democracy emphasising elections and representative government. In their comments at the Kagiso Trust's 'From Opposing to Governing' conference in January 1990, both Morobe and Manuel intimated that the radicalism and expectations of the UDF's supporters needed to be tempered. Similarly, in describing the preceding Conference for a Democratic Future as akin to a 'genuine people's assembly' and a 'genuinely democratic parliament', Morobe was endorsing a more or less conventional view of representative democracy.

The appeal of an essentially procedural view of democracy probably reflected the ANC political elite's concern to control state power from the top (perhaps for progressive purposes) and the partial demobilisation of protest inside the country, as well as a recognition of the need to reassure white and other minority South Africans, economic elites and the international audience. If the formal transition had begun in mid-1986, rather than early in 1990, the impulse towards a more participatory form of democracy would have been far stronger, for better or worse. All the same a weak version of the more radical vision of democracy did persist in South Africa, surfacing somewhat confusedly in the Reconstruction and Development Programme adopted by the ANC as its election manifesto in 1994, and expressed intermittently by critics on the left. It must be acknowledged that former UDF leaders have not been prominent among the visible supporters of such a vision.

In some respects, the South African experience was not dissimilar to that of other contexts where people were struggling against oppressive regimes. In Central and Eastern Europe under Communist Party rule, 'democracy' was widely understood as the antithesis of the existing political and economic system; that is, in terms of freedoms from state and party authority, and economic opportunities through free markets. In South Africa liberation generally meant rights and representation for all, decentralised power, and a re-distributive economic alternative. To some extent, the vision was contingent on the existing system. In South Africa, as in Central and Eastern Europe, a more precise picture of social and institutional arrangements did not begin to take shape until democratisation became imminent.

A more striking dissonance between 1980s rhetoric and 1990s outcome concerns the extent of social and economic transformation. In the early and mid-1980s certain elements of socialist rhetoric were widespread within the Charteris movement, as well as within the movement's growing range of allies in the labour movement. This has led many scholars to the view that 'the UDF's capacious ideological umbrella also sheltered socialists', as Lodge writes. But should apparently socialist rhetoric be taken at face value? Lodge himself tends to caution, believing that 'a substantial proportion of the UDF's working-class following was inspired by a socialist vision' whilst suggesting that the 'ideological predilections of the largely middle-class leaders of the movement' are harder to pin down. Certainly, it is not clear that a hostility to perceived exploitation or even the intermittent use of class in popular discourse is sufficient to warrant categorising a movement, organisation or individual as 'socialist'. The hostility to capitalism among many UDF leaders seems to have been rooted in the perception that capitalism and apartheid were intimately linked, and that capitalists were opposed to democratisation. In other words, social and economic radicalism was rooted at least as much in perceptions of the battle lines around democratisation and liberation as vice versa. When capitalist elites appeared ready to throw their support, albeit conditionally and self-interestedly, behind the ANC and UDF, so most of the top UDF leaders welcomed their support and shifted away from socialist rhetoric.

Even among the broader movement as a whole inside the country, it is easy to exaggerate the extent and depth of radicalism. Radical discourse was often highly contingent on the context. Unfortunately, there is almost no research on popular political culture in the 1980s. Research conducted in the early 1990s tends, however, to deflate assessments of popular radicalism. Surveys of public opinion suggest that few African voters regard themselves as particularly 'left-wing' or 'radical'. Most voters combined radical views on some issues with conservative views on others, so that Johnson and Schlemmer (no radicals themselves) regarded ANC supporters to be 'social democrats'. Research conducted by Charney soon after the 1994 elections found little evidence of revolutionary sentiment: people wanted to 'prod the system, not smash it'. Most African voters regarded the election in a purely political sense, and did not expect any rapid emancipation from economic wants. Certainly, trade union members may be committed to democratic procedures that are more radical than mere accountability through elections, as Maree suggests, using post-1994 survey data; but even this section of the population is committed to representative democracy, which they seek to make more democratic, rather than replace it altogether. As the SACP intellectual Mzala suggested, perhaps the best way of understanding the socialist rhetoric and ideology of the 1980s is as 'populism about socialism', based more in anti-apartheid sentiment than any clear socialist vision.

The UDF leadership generally articulated the view that the UDF was engaged in a 'national democratic struggle'. Its goal was a changed political system rather than a changed society, (political) democracy rather than socio-economic equality.

The UDF Declaration refers to the Front's goals as a 'true', unitary and non-racial democracy. Its demand that 'all forms of oppression and exploitation must end' was appealing but vague. Many self-conscious socialists, whether in the labour movement or elsewhere, tended to remain outside the UDF; those who were active in the UDF tended to subordinate socialist goals to democratic ones. For sure, most UDF leaders held strong beliefs in justice that extended beyond formal political equality, but justice was generally conceived in terms of rights and responsibilities rather than public ownership of the means of production. Beliefs in justice were infused with liberal conceptions of rights, including, especially, freedom from discrimination, together with a religious morality.

The UDF should not be regarded as synonymous with the broader movement - or movements - of popular resistance in the 1980s. It was not even coterminous with the Charterist movement, large parts of which declined either always or sometimes to acknowledge the UDF as the overarching co-ordinating structure for Charterists inside the country. In so far as the UDF was integral to a broader movement, that movement was primarily a 'people's movement', as Boesak put it in 1983, standing for freedom and democracy, and proclaiming a message of hope and freedom, more than for radical economic or social change. Its successes thus corresponded to its objects.

Opportunities

While the UDF's successes, and their limits, were in part the product of tactical and strategic choices made by the UDF leadership, the prospects of success were shaped by the changing structure of opportunities facing the UDF. Crucially, the UDF was formed during a period of liberalisation on the state's part, as the state sought to reconstitute its political and ideological foundations. Liberalisation entailed new political openings and a lowered level of state repression. The changing international context also shaped the prospects of success, with growing international pressure on the South African government and growing acceptance of the ANC. The impact of the UDF was also dependent, in large part, on the organisational basis provided by its many affiliates. The social structure of South Africa had changed in ways that facilitated the formation of collective organisation in the workplace, residential areas and educational institutions. Finally, the government faced elite disaffection and struggled to maintain a broad anti-democratic alliance: democratisation for its part offered growing benefits to some important elite groups, but growing costs to others.

Authoritarian regimes seeking to reconstitute their political bases often tolerate political liberalisation prior to - or as an attempted alternative to - full democratisation. Liberalisation typically involves the relaxation of controls over political communication, association and activity, thus providing openings for opposition movements. 'Liberalizing authoritarian regimes may release political prisoners, open up some issues for public debate, loosen censorship, sponsor elections for offices that have little power, permit some renewal of civil society, and take other steps in a democratic direction, without submitting top decision-makers to the electoral test.' In many cases, including most of contemporary Africa, political liberalisation has been a government response to political pressures, especially from below, but sometimes from the international arena. Often, political liberalisation has not led to democratisation - which suggests that it can serve as an alternative for incumbent regimes.

In South Africa the UDF was formed amidst a general political liberalisation, itself the result of political pressures from within the country and international factors. The constitutional reforms were part of this liberalisation, but more important for opposition was the accompanying relaxation of repression. Although the ANC remained banned, a significant degree of freedom of assembly and association was permitted during 1983-4, except in the bantustans. While outdoor political meetings were banned, indoor meetings and conferences were generally permitted, with rare exceptions - notably in the Border region. The UDF itself was not banned. The Million Signatures Campaign was tolerated: hot without illicit interference, but tolerated nonetheless. Restrictions on many individuals were lifted. The mainstream commercial media reported on the anti-apartheid opposition with growing impunity, and the explicitly anti-apartheid alternative press - community newspapers such as Grassroots - burgeoned, being only partly fettered.

The effect of this political opening was to strengthen the national, rather than local, focus of opposition activity. Had there been a higher level of repression it is likely that more localised and sporadic activities would have been far more predominant. Overt activities at the national level required a higher degree of freedom. (Such national level activity was facilitated, and perhaps even made possible, by the technology of the telephone and improved inter-city road and air transport.)

Liberalisation involved the curtailment of repression. Repression in South Africa had always operated within political limits, its use being governed by political considerations. Even in the late 1980s, when the South African state was widely referred to as the 'security state', politics had primacy. The military and police never had the scope to conduct the kind of dirty war practised in, for example, Argentina after 1976, El Salvador and Guatemala after 1979, or Algeria in either the 1950s or 1990s. As many people 'disappeared' or were murdered in Argentina as were detained in South Africa. In Guatemala over 21 000 people were murdered between 1978 and 1986. In El Salvador 55 000 people were murdered over the same period; no fewer than 31 000 people were murdered in 1980-1981 alone. An equivalent dirty war in South Africa would have entailed the death of all of the activists who were 'only', in the event, detained and often tortured. This would, surely, have transformed the character of resistance in South Africa. There were considerable variations within South Africa in the level and brutality of repression, with the worst atrocities concentrated in the Eastern Cape. Nonetheless, of about one hundred top national and regional UDF leaders, only three REC members, Goniwe, Mxenge and Nchabaleng, were killed by the police or army, with one other senior leader, Ngwenya in Pietermaritzburg, killed by Inkatha leaders.

Repression was particularly muted at the time of the formation of the UDF. This was the result of two related shifts in state strategy, linked to political liberalisation. First, the state adopted what has been termed the 'Rabie Strategy', named after the judge who chaired a commission of inquiry that led to the promulgation of the 1982 Internal Security Act. Under the Rabie Strategy, threats to internal security would be responded to as crimes, through the courts and by the police. The Internal Security Act tightened up the criminalisation of political offences such as subversion, as well as making provision for detentions, bannings and other restrictions. Secondly, the South African Police Commissioner from June 1983, Johann Coetzee, favoured a strategy of stealth over one of confrontation. 'Believing that the UDF was too powerful to crush and that banning it would merely force it underground, he was reportedly behind the government's relatively tolerant attitude to the organisation in its first years.

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