1990 in South Africa

See also: 1989 in South Africa, other events of 1990, 1991 in South Africa and the Timeline of South African history.

Events

February

• 11 February – President FW de Klerk scraps apartheid and releases Nelson Mandela
  • The government state of emergency is lifted after 6 years in place
  • The African National Congress, Pan Africanist Congress and the Communist Party are unbanned

March

• 4 March – Brigadier Oupa Gqozo of the Ciskei Defence Force leads a coup in the homeland of Ciskei
• 12 March – African National Congress president Oliver Tambo and vice-president Nelson Mandela meet for the first time in 28 years in Sweden
• 26 March – The Minister of Education Piet Clase announces that as of January 1991, the segregation of Whites and Blacks in state run schools is no more

April

• 25 April – Dirk Coetzee, former South African Police Commander of the Vlakplaas counter-insurgency unit, testifies at the Harms commission

May

• 2-4 May – The Groote Schuur talks between the South African government and the African National Congress
• 6 May – Pieter Willem Botha resigns from the National Party in protest against the State President of South Africa Frederik Willem de Klerk's reform proposals

August

• 1 August – African National Congress's armed wing, the Umkhonto we Sizwe, suspends its armed actions after 29 years

December

• 14 – 16 December – The African National Congress hold a national consultative conference in Johannesburg

Unknown date

• Namibia gains independence with the United Nations supervising the withdraw of South African forces and the first elections
• George Bizos becames a member of the African National Congress's Legal and Constitutional Committee

Births

Deaths

• 1 May – Jackie Matjili, Umkhonto we Sizwe member, is shot dead in Thokoza
• 13 June – Sipho Phungulwa, who was part of a group of exiles who were held in African National Congress detention camps in Angola, is shot dead in Umtata while trying to seek an audience with the Transkei ANC leadership to expose the hardships they had endured in Angola. Ndibulele Ndzamela, Mfanelo Matshaya and Pumlani Kubukeli are later granted amnesty on 13 August 1998 in connection with this incident.