tage by stage. The principal issues of the vote in the 1994 election were the formal granting of equal individual rights to both blacks and whites, the dissolution of the so-called black homelands, and the acceptance of the principle of majority rule. As anticipated, Nelson Mandela, who had been imprisoned for political crimes by the all-white apartheid regime, was in 1994 elected the first (ethnic black) president of South Africa at the head of the so-called National Unity Government, which would rule through the period of constitutional development and a period of establishment of the institutions of national democracy. The voters approved in 1994 what was known as an interim constitution, the permanent provisions of which were a matter of negotiation to be voted on within the following five years. In 1996, following such negotiations, the permanent constitution was indeed ratified, bringing to a conclusion the era of apartheid that guaranteed a "final transition" from racial separatism in all phases of civil society.
Marcuse sums up this whole process of political development in South Africa as transitions from the old to new South Africa, from the phase of apartheid to the phase of what he terms "nonracialism" and what other commentators had termed multiracialism; and from a politically repressive to a politically democratic regime; and a pattern of economic activity formerly distinguished by international sanctions and by de jure economic privileges for whites and restrictions for blacks, thence toward de jure equality of economic opportunity. The major provisions of the 1996 constitution include prohibition of discrimination based on race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, social or marital status; a "right to life," which appears meant to reaffirm the abolition of capital punishment; freedom of speech except "hate speech" and incitement to violence or war; prohibition of detention without trial, a response to a practice...