Abstract:

A socio-political study was conducted in the KwaZulu-Natal province of the Republic of South Africa in the second half of 1988 for the Indaba, a pressure group for constitutional change. It was conducted in an unstable environment on a topic related to the instability of the region, and numerous difficulties had to be overcome. The results of the study proved conclusive and constructive in spite of the problems, and they have contributed to progress towards a political solution for the region, an area where no other legal instrument exists for reading the political attitudes of that population. The paper, giving a little background to the area and its problems, describes how the difficulties in design and execution of the study were tackled, summarises key results and discusses their implications both for the Indaba, which commissioned the study, and in overall political terms.