I was particularly interested in how events in South Africa would resonate in the United States. Was apartheid giving way to the democratizing tendencies of the social movements? If so, in what ways would progressives have to readjust their worldviews? How did the new political landscape in southern Africa relate to equally massive shifts taking place in the economies and at the level of state power in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union? What would be the major obstacles to the creation of a non-racial state in South Africa? My goal had been to pose questions to activists in the anti-apartheid movement that would give readers of Social Justice insight into the processes of change - and the new conflicts created by these changes - that is unavailable in the conventional media. I traveled to South Africa in January-February 1990 on the educated guess that significant change was in the offing, only to experience the history-making unbanning of the anti-apartheid organizations and the release of Nelson Mandela. This issue has been more than a year in the making. That volume, entitled "State Terrorism in South Africa," characterized Pretoria's international lawlessness and included an analysis of the Freedom Charter, a document central to understanding current constitutional negotiations. This volume complements an earlier issue on South Africa that appeared a year before the State of Emergency and counterinsurgency war were unleashed against anti-apartheid forces in 1986. We are pleased to publish this timely special issue of Social Justice on the historic transition taking place in South Africa today.
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