All revolutions are impossible until they happen; then they become inevitable. South Africa has for long been trembling between the impossible and the inevitable, and it is in this singularly unstable situation that the question of human rights and the basics of government in post-apartheid society demands attention.

No longer is it necessary to spend much time analysing schemes to modernize, reform liberalize, privatize, or even democratize apartheid. Like slavery and colonialism, apartheid is regarded as irremediably bad. There cannot be good apartheid, or degrees of acceptable apartheid. The only questions are how to end the system as rapidly as possible and how to ensure that the new society which replaces it lives up to the ideals of the South African people and the world community. More specifically, at the constitutional level, the issue is no longer whether to have democracy and equal rights, but how fully to achieve these principles and how to ensure that within the overall democratic scheme, the cultural diversity of the country is accommodated and the individual rights of citizens respected.