10 The influence of international actors in South Africa’s transition to democracy Sandy Africa Introduction It is widely held that there was little external influence and international involvement in South Africa’s transition, and that the internal political negotiations of the early 1990s exclusively involved the major political rivals, specifically the African National Congress(ANC) and the white nationalist South African government(van Zyl Slabbert, 1991; Friedman, 1993; Sparks, 1994). The home-grown solution in the form of a negotiated political settlement has been held as proof that the parties to the conflict found each other and worked out an agreement without significant external involvement (O’Malley, 1996; Maharaj, 2008; Odendaal, 2013; Saunders, 2014). The role of the apartheid state’s intelligence services and its underground components has also been presented as proof to support this narrative(O’Brien, 2010; Spaarwater, 2012). South Africa’s unique, domestically crafted transition and the approach contained therein(negotiating an armed truce, the inter-party dialogue, consensus-building, constitution-making, and a power-sharing framework) are elements that South Africa’s political elites have promoted as a useful model for other countries emerging from conflict. This chapter explores the role of international actors in South Africa’s transition, their impact, and how they influenced South African role-players in the conflict. This is an important subject in South Africa today, given recent debates and criticism about how the negotiated political transition was handled. Some analysts, for instance, have portrayed it as a significant achievement for the oppressed majority, while others have viewed it as an elite pact that betrayed the aspirations and class interests of the poor and working­277 Sandy Africa