THE-NEWSOUTHAFRICA
pointed by the government under the' constitution, made a series of at-
tacks on the press. Labeling journalists racists when they criticized the
government, it intimidated them by issuing subpoenas to, among many
others, the editor and staff of the Mail and Guardian, whichhad
been a
conspicuous critic of the white government in the apartheid era, and con-
tinued to expose corruption in the 'new regime; whereupon Sheena Dun-
can, who had been a courageous leader of the anti-apartheid Black Sash
organization, resigned from the commission, declaring it was "violating
the rights it was established to protect." 90
After the 1999 election, when Mbeki continued to include Buthelezi
and two other IFP members in his cabinet, the ANC'S relations with the IFP
mellowed; there was even talk of a merger between them. Moreover, in re-
sponse to the government's economic policies, communist politicians left
the SACP in droves, to become staunch capitalisrs.t"
SACP documents re-
vealed that its membership declined from 80,000 a few years earlier to a
mere 13,803 in 2000. The goverment's relations with COSATU became in-
creasingly strained, but COSATU continued to provide political support to
the ANC on the basis of racial solidarity.f? while the PAC and other black