By Norm Dixon
The African National Congress has rejected suggestions by South African President F.W. de Klerk that a referendum be held if right-wing parties opposed to the April 27 elections do not return to multiparty talks within four weeks.
De Klerk brandished the threat of a referendum following a meeting with the newly formed Freedom Alliance — composed of the white supremacist Conservative Party, several extreme white separatist organisations, the Zulu chauvinist Inkatha Freedom Party and several bantustan administrations which are little more than puppets of the apartheid state.
It is feared that a referendum would be phrased by the regime in such a way as to pre-empt negotiations and make significant concessions to the right-wing parties, which are demanding a "federalism" that entrenches important powers for proposed regions.
In a statement issued on October 12, the ANC said the "handful of participants" who had withdrawn from the negotiations "are all creations of the apartheid order. They share the common goals of perpetuating their anti-democratic vested interests which they acquired under apartheid. They are motivated by the goal of dismembering South Africa into ethnic and tribal entities which would entrench the seeds of endless conflict ...
"Those who have walked out have ganged up to prevent change and impose their solutions against the will of the majority. Their actions cannot and do not in any way detract from the legitimacy of the Multi-Party Process as the only forum through which a negotiated solution can emerge."
The ANC said that is was urgent for an interim constitution to be agreed to and enacted by the current parliament to ensure that elections for the Constitutional Assembly and an Interim Government of National Unity take place as scheduled on April 27.
The ANC said that only the multiparty negotiations should decide whether a referendum was needed. These matters cannot be decided unilaterally by de Klerk.
"Given that there are vast areas of our country, including KwaZulu, Bophuthatswana and the Ciskei, where there is no free political activity, how will it be ensured that the referendum is free and fair? Above all, any such exercise will be meaningless if all South Africans, black and white, including those in Bophuthatswana and Ciskei, are not assured the right to participate.
"South Africa needs to move with speed into the transition to democracy. The process of change is irreversible. We must be on guard to ensure that no proposal carries with it the prospect of delaying change."
Meanwhile, a Supreme Court judge in Johannesburg on October 14 found Janus Walusz and Conservative Party member Clive Derby-Lewis guilty of the April 10 murder of South African Communist Party general secretary Chris Hani. However, the judge found them not guilty of charges of conspiracy. Gaye Derby-Lewis, who compiled a hit list for the killers, was acquitted. The ANC expressed anger at the acquittal and the finding that a wider right-wing conspiracy did not exist.