the CODESA plenary. CODESA I: December 1991 CODESA held two plenary sessions, both at the World Trade Centre in Kempton Park outside Johannesburg. The first plenary was held on 20–21 December 1991; was chaired by judges Michael Corbett, Petrus Shabort, and Ismail Mahomed; and was broadcast live on television. On the first day, all 19 participants signed a Declaration of Intent, assenting to be bound by certain initial principles and by further agreements reached at CODESA. Notwithstanding various enduring sticking points, the extent of agreement reached at CODESA I was remarkable. Participants agreed that South Africa was to be a united, democratic, and non-racial state, with adherence to a separation of powers, with a supreme constitution and judicially enforceable bill of rights, with regular multi-party elections under a system of proportional representation, and with a common South African citizenship. Disagreements about how these provisos were to be implemented, however – and, for example, what exactly was entailed by a unified state or by proportional representation – continued to occupy, and to obstruct, the working groups well into 1992. CODESA II: May 1992 The second plenary session, CODESA II, convened on 15 May 1992 at the World Trade Centre to canvas the progress made by the working groups. In the interim, electoral losses by the NP to the Conservative Party had led de Klerk to call a whites-only referendum on 17 March 1992, which demonstrated overwhelming support among the white minority for reforms and a negotiated settlement and which had therefore solidified his mandate to proceed. However, de Klerk's triumph in the referendum did not curtail – and may have inflamed – political violence, including among the white right-wing; nor did it resolve the deadlock that the working groups had arrived at on certain key questions. The most important elements of the deadlock arose from the work of the second working group, whose mandate was to devise constitutional principles and guidelines for the constitution-making process. In terms of the content of the constitutional principles, the ANC favoured a highly centralised government with strict limitations on regional autonomy, while the IFP and NP advocated for federal systems of slightly different kinds, but with strong, built-in guarantees for the representation of minority interests. For example, the NP's preferred proposal was for a bicameral legislature whose upper house would incorporate a veto for minority groups, to exist alongside a bill of rights with specific