ABSTRACT
The end of the Second World War, to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, South Africa was a byword for racism, and the policies of its government attracted widespread international opprobrium that increased in intensity with the passage of time. The open practice of racial discrimination had by no means been confined to South Africa. However, what ensured conflict with the international community was that the direction of South African policies ran counter to the global rejection of racism after 1945. By the end of the 1980s, it was apparent that the reforms that had been made by the government after the 1976 Soweto uprising had failed to end the country's crisis of governability. Formal, multilateral negotiations are a necessary phase in practically any peace process. In South Africa's case, the name given to the forum for this process was the Convention for a Democratic South Africa.
