While marches and protests took place outside, the Theme Committees continued to thrash out several contentious issues behind closed doors. As time went on, it became apparent that the parties were quite far apart on many matters. The upbeat spirit and co-operative alliances that had characterised the first year of the Constitutional Assembly were starting to show signs of dissipating. 

Indeed, by the end of August 1995, it became clear that the first draft Constitution would not be tabled on time as initially planned. Hassen Ebrahim appealed for more time. This was reluctantly agreed to, although all political parties still insisted on 10 May 1996 as the final deadline. There were just ten months to go and a draft of the Constitution had yet to be produced.

A new sub-committee, known as ‘The Bird’, was established in a bid to break the deadlocks that had developed. With its supposed ‘bird’s-eye view’ of the process, it was hoped that this initiative would hurry things along. The Bird faced three bulky reports listing proposals from various Theme Committees as well as contentious issues. After a few weeks, The Bird had made no headway on such controversial issues such as the division of powers between the provincial and central government, the role of the Auditor-General and the Reserve Bank.

Ramaphosa conceded that it was ‘only bilateral meetings between the parties that could now enhance the process’. FW de Klerk expressed his own worries about an important issue for the NP – the protection of minority rights. He asserted that his party’s demands were ‘not a smokescreen to continue to preserve privilege or to maintain a form of separatism or apartheid’ but insisted that ‘this is what this country needs’.