When South Africa’s Constitution of 1996 came into operation on 4 February 1997, it represented the historical culmination of a focused process of constitution-writing which commenced in December 1991 when the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA), a national multi-party constellation established to negotiate a transition to inclusive democracy, got underway. 1997 was, however, not the year in which South Africa underwent its profound constitutional and political transition: that occurred on 27 April 1994, when the essential fruits of the negotiating process matured. That was the date when inclusive elections were held for the first time in terms of the—albeit expressly transitional—Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Act 200 of 1993, which came into operation on that date as the first South African ‘supreme law’: that is, a constitutional instrument endowed with superior normative effect.