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Paper short abstract

This paper explores late apartheid processes of state reform, the negotiations and early years of state transformation through the idea of everyday changes and continuities within political institutions to ask how this alters our established understandings of 'the transition'.

Paper long abstract

This paper considers the established narratives of South Africa's state transition and asks how the processes and practices of state reform and transformation look when considered from the perspective of everyday change and continuity: from the doodles in the margins of negotiating papers; the plenary sessions of the Tri-Cameral Parliament that brought Indian and Coloured MPs into the same chamber as White MPs for the first time; to the stubbornly remaining statues of the parliamentary precinct. How do these everyday moments and experiences shape the wider process of transition and how does the scale and pace of change look. What might be the significance of moments and unfolding practices in a 'marginal' institution like the Tri-Cameral Parliament, which in a reformed guise took centre stage after 1994? How was change experienced within the institutions of the state and with what consequences?