Introduction The year 1994 is bound to signal the dawn of a social dispensation in South Africa. The epochal developments expected after the first non-racial general elections will certainly spell the end to the political monolith of white minority power. The emergence of this new South however, does not come without serious political problems that challenge the mission of the church. A debate on the ethical texture of the socio-political structure of this South Africa is a legitimate and crucially important theological exercise. However, the nature of the changes South Africa has already been undergoing since February 1990 posits the need for an analytical enquiry that reflects on the pertinent challenges to the mission of the church in a projective rather than a polemical-ethical way. And this is the subject of this essay. How is the church, as a sociological institution, affected by the socio-political developments underway in South Africa? What is the role and mission of the church as a community of faith in Jesus the Redeemer during this time of transition? What kind of church will South Africa have, or does it need, in the post-apartheid era? These are practical questions of great concern to the South African theological community. The nature of change The fact that apartheid South Africa entered into a course of dramatic political change in February 1990 is accepted by all shades of political-ideological opinion. What is in dispute, as established by elements in the far-right and the far-left of the South African political spectrum, is whether the country is changing for the better or for the worse. For the far-left, the constitutional negotiations, and the manner in which they are being conducted, are a sell-out of the goals of the liberation struggle against apartheid oppression on the part of the African National Congress (ANC). On the other hand, the right-wing forces cannot accept the cordial relationship the National Party government has struck with the liberation movement, and see its compromises on relinquishing power as a betrayal of the ideals of white power and guarantees of apartheid privileges. This an underlying political reality that will accompany life in South Africa throughout the coming years. This alignment of ideological perceptions vis-a-vis an analysis of where exactly the current negotiations are leading South Africa, i.e., what kind of a society is being produced, is one the church will not be able to escape. It is a matter laden with implications relating to how the church, in South Africa but also internationally, has understood the motivation and goal of its engagement in the struggle against apartheid. What level and point of socio-political change in South Africa will justify a suspension of combative theological characterizations as well as struggles that have been mounted as a matter of faith and principle during the past thirty years against the South African government? It is being accepted increasingly that as this process of political transition proceeds into 1994 and beyond, it will isolate the remnant of the black liberation movement on the left, and the remnant of the white power establishment on the right. The urge for a timely negotiated political settlement has meant that the cardinal dynamic of these negotiations between the liberation organizations and the forces of the apartheid status quo has been that of compromise. There are major compromises on both sides. These compromises are found in agreements on the management of the process of change as well as on the nature of the South Africa that is being produced. This search for compromises, and the self-accommodation of the various political parties to these compromises, has caused negotiations politics to locate itself as the centrist position within the South African political spectrum. It remains to be seen if this centrism will also be reflected in the government policies coming out of governmental mechanisms emanating from the negotiations. …