The Constitutional Committee was responsible for creating refined working drafts of the constitution and incorporating amendments adopted by the Constitutional Assembly. The Constitutional Committee acted as both a negotiating forum and a driving body of the Constitutional Assembly.

The series Constitutional Committee contains the working documents of the Constitutional Committee, audio recordings of Constitutional Committee meetings and reports submitted to it from all other structures of the Constitutional Assembly. Drafts bills, amendments, and reports on contentious issues and debates can be found in this series.

As a negotiating body the Constitutional Committee created sub-committees and ad hoc committees to assist in negotiating and drafting. Primary among these was the Constitutional Committee Sub-committee which dealt with substantive issues that the Constitutional Committee was unable to process because of time constraints.

As the driving body of the constitution-making process, it supervised the establishment of the theme committees and related structures such as technical committees, formed the Management Committee, and outlined the work plan for the Constitutional Assembly and its structures.

The Management Committee was responsible for matters of process. It implemented tasks of the Constitutional Committee, oversaw the Administration unit, and monitored the media and public participation. This series contains the Management Committees’ working documents, and audio recordings of their meetings.

Management Committee tasks included:

• preparing agendas for Constitutional Committee meeting
• preparing reports to be considered by the Constitutional Committee
• co-ordinating the activities of the theme committees
• co-ordinating the activities of all structures of Constitutional Assembly
• attending, between meetings of the Constitutional Committee, to the day-to-day management and overseeing of developments in the structures.

The Post-CODESA 2 phase was short-lived. Despite the establishment of several Sub-committees and Task Groups, and the allocation of tasks, all CODESA meetings were suspended at the end of June 1992. This decision was made after a general request for the suspension of meetings, due to the unstable political situation in the country at that stage.

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 Planning Conference contains the materials produced for the meeting of the Multi-party Planning Conference on 5 and 6 March 1993. While draft resolutions of the Planning Conference can be found here, the final resolutions are in the series Negotiating Council. 

This short lived conference focused on planning for a meeting of the Multi-Party Negotiating Forum to be held at the World Trade Centre 1 and 2 April 1993. The conference resolved general terms for consensus, negotiating procedure and that “CODESA” was no longer to be the name of the negotiation process. Twenty six parties and organisations were represented. After the Planning Conference its members dissolved into the then yet to be named Multi-Party Negotiating Process. 

Further planning for the Negotiating Forum meeting continued during March under the direction of the Facilitating Committee and the Sub-committee of the Facilitating Committee. These committees were renamed the Negotiating Council and the Planning Committee.

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.