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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:The Historical Significance of South Africa's Third Force
Author:Ellis, StephenISNI
Year:1998
Periodical:Journal of Southern African Studies (ISSN 1465-3893)
Volume:24
Issue:2
Period:June
Pages:261-299
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:violence
national liberation movements
peace negotiations
national security
History and Exploration
Politics and Government
Ethnic and Race Relations
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/2637528
Abstract:Accounts of South Africa's transition from apartheid differ markedly in the role they attribute to violence. The most influential narratives of negotiations tend to portray the violence of the transition period, including that perpetrated by those networks within and without the security forces which have become known collectively as the Third Force, as a reaction to events, doomed to failure and rather disconnected from the main narrative of history. Newly available evidence shows the degree to which the Third Force was integrated into the policy of the National Party (NP) over a long period (from the 1960s onwards), and played a crucial role in determining the nature and outcome of constitutional negotiations in the period 1990-1994. Concentration on the narrative of negotiations, or any account which fails to give due weight to the perpetrators of organized violence including those who constituted the Third Force, implicitly assigns the violence of 1990-1994 to a position somewhat divorced from, or even antithetical to, the pursuit of negotiations. This has deflected attention from the important question of ascertaining the extent to which the agenda and pace of negotiations, and thus the shape of the eventual political and constitutional outcome, were actually driven by proponents of violence who were able to make their influence felt from outside the conference chamber. Ref., sum.
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