Synnøve Skjelten used Edward Shalala’s papers additionally to other primary and secondary resources for her Masters thesis Democracy and communication: an analysis and assessment of the public participation programme of the Constitutional Assembly, and her book A People's Constitution: Public Participation in the South African Constitution-making Process. 

This series contains Skjelten’s Masters thesis as presented to the Department of Political Studies, University of Cape Town and primary material significant to her research for A People's Constitution.

The series Women Representatives contains material from the Meeting of the Women Representatives of Participating Parties in the Multi-party Negotiation Forum on the 26 and 31 March 1993. These meetings framed the terms on which women were included in the Multi-Party Negotiation Process (MPNP). 

On the 18 March 1993 Constitutional Committee, during discussions on the structure and composition of the negotiation process, determined that all parties and organisations participating in the negotiation process should submit “a female representative” to attend a meeting. There was a noted lack of women participating in the MPNP; the meeting was to establish the views of women on the form of their participation in the negotiating process going forward. 

The resulting meeting of Women Representatives recognised that during the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) the representation of women in the negotiating process had been lacking.

During CODESA, the Gender Advisory Committee (GAC) was established. GAC was to be primarily composed of women and was intended to provide for greater gender equality and representation at CODESA. GAC was able to comment and recommend alterations to text from negotiation processes occurring in CODESA however GAC did not participate directly in the negotiations themselves. GAC’s recommendations and submissions received no feedback from the CODESA 2 Plenary. 

Recommendations made by the Meeting of Women Representatives included that all delegations to the Multi-Party Negotiation Forum and future plenaries should be required to include women rather than continue with an auxiliary structure such as GAC. This recommendation and others were accepted by the Negotiating Council to ensure that women would be active participants in the negotiation process going forward.

This series contains the working documents of the Negotiating Council and the Facilitating Committee (as it was briefly known). It includes the minutes, delegation packs, reports and resolutions of the Negotiating Council. Additional proposals and submissions from other bodies of the Multi-Party Negotiation Process (MPNP) and resolutions from the Planning Conference can be found here.

The Negotiating Council was the core negotiating body of the MPNP and established the Transitional Executive Council (TEC) to serve as its successor. It was ultimately responsible for the negotiating, drafting, finalising and implementation of the Interim Constitution as endorsed by the MPNP Plenary. The Council reported to the Multi-Party Negotiating Forum.

Each participating party was represented in the Negotiating Council by two delegates, one of which was required to be a woman, plus two advisers. The Negotiating Council’s primary function was the day to day negotiations of the MPNP and processing reports from all other committees and sub-committees for review by the Negotiating Forum ahead of submission to the MPNP Plenary for approval.

The Negotiating Council established seven technical committees, commissions, task groups and various ad hoc and sub-committees to assist in its work. While these bodies reported to the Negotiating Council, the Planning Committee was responsible for their co-ordination and terms of reference.

The series Commission on National Symbols contains a small digitised subset of public submissions made to the Commission on National Symbols. Further material is available from the National Archives and Record Service of South Africa.

The Technical Committee on Constitutional Issues on 27 July 1993 recommended to the Negotiations Council that the selection of national symbols be removed from its tasks due the deeply political rather than technical nature. The Negotiating Council agreed and appointed a Commission on National Symbols on 7 September 1993. Commission on National Symbols ran a public submission campaign from which National Symbols were selected.

Steering Committee contains audio recordings of Steering Committee meetings. This committee was created by and reported to the Constitutional Assembly. It was primarily concerned with budgeting, planning and the creation of operational rules between May and August 1994.