party led by well-educated liberal
white professionals-played
a major part in the drafting process. On June
3, 1993, the Forum set a date-April
27, 1994-for
the election of the
new legislature. On November 17, de Klerk reluctantly yielded to Man-
dela yet another time and consented that decisions in the cabinet would
not require a special majority; the next day a plenary session approved the
interim constitution. In December the old white-dominated South African
parliament passed the necessary legislation to ratify the document, thus
providing legal continuity between the old regime and the new. Parliament
also created a multiparty Transitional Executive Council, which became
the de facto government of South Africa until the election, and an Inde-
pendent Electoral Commission, which was responsible for organizing the
election.I''
In his autobiography, de Klerk states that in his closing speech to the
Multiparty Forum he said, "We have shown that it was possible for peo-
ple with widely differing views and beliefs to reach basic and sound agree-
ments through compromise, through reasoned debate and through nego-
tiation. I added that the transitional constitution was the distillation of the
dreams of generations of disenfranchised South Africans. It offered a rea-