By Norm Dixon
JOHANNESBURG — The ANC's southern Natal chairperson, Jeff Radebe, flanked by the ANC's candidate for premier of Natal, Jacob Zuma, said here on March 23 that "the time has come for the Transitional Executive Council to take charge of the situation" in KwaZulu and Natal to ensure free and fair elections on April 27. Radebe said that the ANC would launch a campaign of mass action in Natal beginning March 25 to prove "the majority of Zulus are pro-election".
Radebe said the situation in Natal was "explosive". The Inkatha Freedom Party is preventing free political activity. Two weeks ago IFP supporters in Umlazi, south of Durban, occupied the King Zwelithini Stadium to prevent an ANC rally taking place the next day. A similar action took place over the weekend of March 19-20, when the stadium where an ANC rally was to be held at KwaMashu was occupied by 3000 IFP members.
Many people have been killed and more than 40 houses in KwaMashu belonging to ANC supporters have been burned down by the IFP since that weekend, Radebe said.
"Why are these things happening in our province? The IFP leadership has decided that it is not going to participate in the April elections. More than that, they have decided that they are going to stop the elections from taking place. So the violence, the killings and the destruction of property taking place in the whole province of Natal must be understood against that background", Radebe explained.
Radebe said that KwaZulu Chief Minister Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, when opening the session of the KwaZulu legislative assembly on March 17, spelled out that elections in Natal would be impossible. "What we are witnessing in Natal is precisely what Buthelezi has been promising: to plunge our province and our people into a bloodbath. He must be stopped."
The ANC also accused the police Internal Stability Unit of colluding with the IFP. The ISU refused to prevent the IFP occupying the KwaMashu stadium. "Our president [Nelson Mandela] spoke to both de Klerk and the commissioner of police, General van der Merwe, and they both assured him that what happened in Umlazi would never happen again."
Radebe called for the multiparty National Peace Keeping Force, which has just completed its training, to be deployed in Natal. He said there is an arms build-up taking place throughout the province, with the IFP distributing G-3 rifles to chiefs who support it.
Radebe said the mass action campaign would "dispel the myth once and for all that the people of this region, particularly Zulus, don't want an election". He said the ANC "was getting signs that people are getting tired of the autocratic rule of Buthelezi ... even within the KwaZulu Police there are voices starting to be heard that they are opposed to this autocratic rule."
Downtown Durban was brought to standstill on March 25 as tens of thousands of people answered the ANC's call for Zulus to demonstrate their support for elections. The march, estimated to be in excess of 200,000 people, jammed Durban's main street. The enthusiastic crowd, singing and dancing, suddenly broke into a run, startling journalists at the head of the march. Apart from a minor disturbance when a small section of the march ignored ANC marshals and broke away from the planned route, the march was completely peaceful.
Public sector unions in Natal plan to launch a campaign to demand free political activity and to gain assurances from the KwaZulu administration that their pensions will be safe if it continues to refuse to accept the interim constitution after the election.
ANC southern Natal regional secretary Sbu Ndebele said the mass action campaign would "involve all those people whose lives have been thrown into disarray because of Inkatha's opposition to the elections, the TEC and the new government after April 27".