Prospective et changement de régime en Afrique du Sud. Les scénarios de Mont Fleur

This article is the fifth in the series started by Futuribles in June 2004, in partnership with the Aleph group of the French Commissariat général du Plan. The aim of the series is to enlighten readers about what specialist bodies are doing in other countries in the area of futures studies and strategic thinking geared to public decision-making. The earlier articles looked at what is happening respectively in Germany, Ireland, Sweden and Quebec. This fifth article focuses on South Africa, and in particular on the Mont Fleur project, which started in the 1990s and resulted in the building of several scenarios for the country’s future up to 2002.
Aurélien Colson first sketches the background in South Africa at the time – a country in the midst of enormous social upheavals, facing an imminent major change of political regime; he then describes how the Mont Fleur process operated and presents the various scenarios that the participants developed as a result. He discusses the reactions to these scenarios of the general public and of decision-makers, before examining their relevance with the benefit of hindsight.