Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA)

The Convention for a Democratic South Africa, CODESA, was the multiparty forum that negotiated South Africa's transition from apartheid. CODESA 1 convened on 20 and 21 December 1991 at the World Trade Centre in Kempton Park, bringing together 228 delegates from nineteen parties and administrations, including the African National Congress, the National Party government, and the Inkatha Freedom Party; the Pan Africanist Congress and parties further to either extreme stayed out. Nelson Mandela had proposed the compromise that made the talks possible, an all-party congress negotiating toward an elected body that would write the final constitution. Five working groups then negotiated constitutional principles, an interim government, and the reincorporation of the nominally independent homelands, but CODESA 2 collapsed in mid-1992 over the majority required to adopt a final constitution and amid rising political violence. Bilateral talks between the ANC's Cyril Ramaphosa and the government's Roelf Meyer revived the process later that year, and negotiations continued from April 1993 as the Multi-Party Negotiating Forum, which produced an interim constitution and the agreement to hold South Africa's first democratic election in April 1994.