26 parties meet to discuss future negotiations

Nine months after the collapse of Codesa II, twenty-six parties - the most representative gathering of South African political groups ever assembled for negotiations - attended a Negotiation Planning Conference (5-6 March) in Johannesburg, where the political parties were able to restructure the process and address some of the previous objections to CODESA.  They agreed to resume multi-party negotiations early in April. As result of this, what became known as the Multi-party Negotiating Process (MPNP) opened at the World Trade Centre on 1 April 1993. It convened 26 participating parties comprising political groupings, national and homeland government representatives and traditional leaders. For the first time the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), Conservative Party (CP) and Volksunie participated; only the far-left Azanian People's Organisation (AZAPO) and several extreme Afrikaner parties refused to join.