ABSTRACT
Of the original twenty-six organisations that attended the first meeting of the MPNP in April 1993, twenty-two political parties and groups remained to the end. Later, some parties regretted leaving the negotiations. The deputy provincial secretary of the IFP declared in 1996 that doubts had existed within the organisation as to whether it had been correct to withdraw from the negotiations.3 Johnson and Schlemmer believe that the establishment of such transitional administrative arrangements was critical in ensuring that ‘the government did not use its superior resources to rig the first election’. The TEC was a ‘broadly representative body with the power to make authoritative rulings on any matter required for the “levelling of the playing fields” prior to the election’.4 Each participant in the MPNP
demonstrates, a great deal of the TEC’s work was performed by seven multi-party sub-councils, all of which operated under its control and liaised with the relevant government department.
