tion of 1908-9, when thirty white men created the Union of South Africa
out of four British colonies, with a flexible constitution that enabled the
white minority to establish a system of racial domination.
CODESA com-
prised nearly three hundred delegates, most of them Africans, many of
them women. There were delegations from the government, from eight
political parties, and from the ten Homelands. But CODESA was boycotted
by parties on both extremes that hoped to wreck the negotiation process:
the Pan Africanist Congress
(PAC) and Azanian People's Organization
(AZAPO) on the African side, and the Conservative party and others still
further to the right on the white side. Buthelezi allowed an IFP delegation
to take part, but declined to do so himself.I"
In the plenary session on the first day, seventeen of the delegations en-
dorsed a crucially important document-a
Declaration of Intent setting out
the basic components of an interim constitution.V It was to provide for uni-
versal suffrage, a bill of rights including civil and political rights, an inde-
pendent judiciary with the power to declare legislation invalid, the elimina-
tion of the Homeland
governments,
and the incorporation
of their
territories into a new set of provinces. The IFP and Bophuthatswana delega-