By Charlie van Gelderen On 6 December, for the first time in South Africa's 400year history, blacks and whites sat down together in the parliament buildings in Cape Town.
It has been hailed as the beginning of a new era, of 'powersharing' and, once again, the end of apartheid. What is the reality behind this rhetoric?
The historic meeting - and it would be stupid to deny its importance - is the cuimination of two years of negotiations beiween the ruling National Party and the representatives of some 20 organisations.
Unelected
None of these delegates were elected and some are quite unrepresentative of the constituencies which they claim to represent.
It could hardly be called a democratic process.
The provisional constitution agreed sets up a Transitional Executive Council which will work with the present government, which remains in power until the elections in April.
In the process the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP) have made many concessions.
It has been agreed that certain pre-determined constitutional principles cannot be overturned by the Constitutional Assembly which will be elected by universal franchise in April of next year.
To take one example, property rights cannot be questioned. The nationalisation demands of the ANC's long-time central manifesto, the Freedom Charter, have been thrown overboard.
South Africa may be non-racist, bit it will remain capitalist.
The De Klerk government has also won important concessions from the ANC in the form of the only racial provision to remain in the new constitution.
In a bilateral deal with the ANC, it was tentatively agreed that whites should be given a guaranteed 30 percent of seats shops. on municipal councils and a budgetary blocking mechanism.
This was to placate right-wing white extremists who had made a stand on this issue, threatening not to allow town councils to be taken over by blacks.
Council executive committees, responsible for the day-today running of municipalities, will have to take decisions by a two-thirds majority, effectively handing the power of veto over to the one-third white representation.
Separate state
Of course even these major concessions are not going to satisfy the extreme right-wing white groups, such as the Conservative Party and the AWB, who are demanding a 'Volkstaat', a separate white state, where blacks would be voteless.
But there is not a single area of South Africa where the races are not inter-mingled. This will not stop the extremists trying to sell, probably to US-owned, impose a "Yugoslav' solution -their own ethnic cleansing.
And there are thousands of armed and embittered whites who are prepared to fight. Much will depend on the disposition of the armed forces, still predominantly in white control.
It is of course farcical to talk of a peaceful transition to a democratic, non-racial South Africa. Since De Klerk announced his plan to dismantle apartheid in 1990, more than 10,000 people have died in po litical violence. This is going to get worse.
It would be fatal to underestimate the threat for the white extremists, and from Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party.
The only force which can save South Africa from the impending chaos is the working class. But they will have to break with the present ANC SACP leadership. This is why the Workers Organisation for Socialist Action (WOSA) is supporting the call for a Workers Party.
In the words of leading WOSA spokesperson Neville Alexander: «We socialists are saying that the struggle must continue. We have to find new ways of promoting the struggle against exploitation and oppres sion.
'You are going to have racism so long as you have capitalism. You have got to get rid of the capitalist system...'.