The negotiating process which took place between 1990 and 1994 was fragile, and at many points a descent into chaos looked likely. Obstacles included ongoing violence linked to a sinister " Third Force " - elements in the apartheid security forces who were working behind the scenes to destabilize the ANC; threats of civil war from heavily armed right-wingers and a low-key war of attrition in KwaZulu-Natal between Zulu nationalists and ANC supporters had already claimed three thousand lives between 1987 and 1990.

 

In August 1990, this violence burst into the Johannesburg townships when gunmen opened fire on black commuters on a train. In June 1992, forty people were hacked to death in a midnight attack on a squatter camp near Johannesburg. Eyewitnesses reported seeing police trucks ferrying alleged Inkatha supporters to the area. When Mandela arrived at the scene a crowd of youths sang: "Mandela, you behave like a lamb while we are being slaughtered." This response was very much to the advantage of the National Party as it gave the impression of an impotent ANC unable to protect its supporters and with no power to stop the violence. Mandela responded by breaking off negotiations and launching a campaign of mass action to pressurize the government. On August 3 and 4, 1992, the ANC called the largest strike in South African history, when four million people stayed away from work. Subsequently negotiations between the government and the ANC resumed and in October 1992, President De Klerk apologized (conditionally) for apartheid.

But in April 1993, it looked like the whole process was going to unravel with the assassination of Chris Hani , the most popular ANC leader after Mandela. Hani's slaying by a right-wing gunman touched deep fears among all South Africans. A descent into civil war loomed and for three consecutive nights the nation watched as Mandela appeared on prime-time television appealing for calm. This marked the decisive turning point as it became apparent that the ANC president was able to hold the country together, while De Klerk kept his head down. Pushing his strategic advantage, Mandela swiftly called for the immediate setting of an election date . On June 3, 1993, the pollwas proposed for April 27, 1994, and Mandela was able to tell his followers that "the countdown to democracy has begun".

By December 1993, South Africa had its first multiracial administration in 350 years, when the Transitional Executive Authority was installed. But this did nothing to stop the violence, which continued to endanger the transition, while Chief Buthelezi and the white right-wing continued to threaten civil war unless KwaZulu-Natal was given autonomy and the Afrikaners a volkstaat (homeland). Bloodshed and mayhem continued in KwaZulu-Natal and it looked as if the election was going to be disrupted. In February 1994, the negotiating parties held fresh discussions to accommodate Chief Buthelezi and the right-wingers. But concessions accepting the principle of self-determination failed to draw either into the elections.

In March 1994, a popular uprising against the government of the Bophuthatswana   bantustan resonated across South Africa. The territory's army and police mutinied and, in an attempt to shore up his regime, Chief Mangope asked the white right wing to help. Hundreds of armed AWB neo-nazis converged on the capital, Mmabatho, and South Africa watched as they were routed by the bantustan army. Television images of armed white neo-fascists being ingloriously defeated by Africans put paid to any ideas about white invincibility and laid to rest the threat of a right-wing rebellion.

In response, the fractionally less right-wing Afrikaner Volksfront (Afrikaner Peoples' Front), an alliance of whites who wanted their own self-governing homeland, announced that it would take part in the election, thus leaving Buthelezi isolated. Yet Buthelezi still insisted on boycotting the poll and threatened to lead a KwaZulu-Natal secession from South Africa. His supporters were whipped up into a frenzy of violence that swept across the province. The transitional government declared a state of emergency in KwaZulu-Natal and swamped the province with troops. One week before the election was due, the mercurial Inkatha leader agreed to take part.