An African Athens

As the millennium turns on its hinges, South Africa offers a remarkable stage for a replay of the great themes of public deliberation and the rise of postmodern rhetorical democracy. South Africa indeed serves as a unique example of a democracy that has issues from a regime that both magnified and pre-dated European colonialism, and which has broken that mold without the prising apart of either a revolution or a disintegration. It also offers the striking case of a democracy won at the negotiating table and also won every day in public deliberation. This book is not a history of the transition from apartheid to democracy; instead, it is an analysis of a new ecology of rhetoric. Salazar's aim is to arrive at a general view of issues as they have taken shape in the particular South African experience. In his examination of the documents and dialog which define the transitional period, Salazar employs South Africa as a test case for global democracy, for rhetoric, and for the relevance of rhetoric studies in a post modern democracy.