The African National Congress made the transition from liberation movement into political party and government at the same time as the negotiations that created the new political system in South Africa. With intense international pressure and moral outrage at the apartheid regime, there was a delicate balance to be struck between compromise and principle. Lodge draws both positive and negatuve lessons from the experience, examining the approach of the ANC - not only how it determined the course of those negotiations, but was itself shaped by the process - highlighting the path to consensus, but also reflecting on the implications of the party's subsequence dominance of the political system.