By Norm Dixon
JOHANNESBURG — The misnamed Freedom Alliance of right-wing parties opposed to South Africa's first non-racial democratic elections on April 26-28 is preparing to plunge this country into civil war, Tokyo Sexwale, has warned. The African National Congress candidate for premier of the PWV provincial government called on the people of South Africa not to underestimate the seriousness of the threat posed by the "fascist alliance" of the white far-right groups and Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party.
Sexwale, just returned from a visit to war-crippled Angola at the head of an ANC delegation, told a press conference here on February 17 that the previous fortnight's failed talks between the ANC, the South African government and the far right were not in reality negotiations. "What the Freedom Alliance is doing is making demands with a pistol at our heads, and that pistol is civil war."
Sexwale said that the trip to Angola gave the delegation the opportunity to look into the future which the right wing had in store for South Africa. "We saw bloated bodies of newly born babies blasted by mortar and rocket fire and rotting away in the scorching sun. We saw lifeless bodies of women and men butchered by those who lust for political power against the popular will of their own people, expressed in a popular election under international auspices.
"We saw mass graves of innocent Angolan people. We visited hospitals and saw the wounded in an Angola which now leads the world in the number of amputees. We were witnesses to a country with a war-ravaged economy, a mineral-rich country, which otherwise would have been an example of growth and development."
However, Sexwale added, the delegation also saw a courageous people prepared to fight back against Jonas Savimbi's UNITA bandits in defence of democracy, no matter what the cost. The courage of the Angolan people had strengthened the ANC's belief that, should the far right launch its civil war, all South Africa's people, black and white, must fight back "to defend what we all have thus far achieved in the constitutional process ... against those ... baying for innocent blood".
The leader of the ANC's most powerful region stressed that the ANC will do all it can to avert such a disastrous event. The only road to freedom, peace, stability and national reconciliation, he said, was through the coming elections.
"Nothing and nobody must be allowed to put obstacles on the road to this process. Even at this late hour, we make a special appeal particularly to those South Africans in the Freedom Alliance who are itching to butcher other South Africans. We make a special appeal to them to stop in their tracks and reconsider their position carefully."
Sexwale urged South Africa's contras to accept ANC president Nelson Mandela's sweeping concessions, announced on February 16. The ANC had demonstrated great vision which transcended narrow political interest so as to steer South Africa away from the "Armageddon of the complete destruction of civil war", he said.
Concessions rejected
Drawn-out talks between the FA, the ANC and the National Party government collapsed on February 10 after the FA rejected a range of concessions which met most of key their demands. These included offers to amend the interim constitution to allow for:
- a two-ballot-paper system. Previously there was to be only one ballot paper for both national and provincial assemblies. The FA (and other minor parties) complained this would not allow voters to cast votes for a party they preferred in a province while supporting another party at the national level. The ANC opposed two ballot papers because it feared this would confuse first-time voters and lead to many informal votes;
- the name of Natal province to be changed to kwaZulu Natal;
- exclusive powers for the provinces, including increased powers to raise their own taxes. The interim constitution as it stands contains no powers that are exclusive to the provinces;
- the power for provinces to vary the form of their legislative and executive structures as long as they remain consistent with the democratic principles and rights set down in the national constitution. This would allow the new kwaZulu Natal province, for example, to make King Goodwill Zwelithini its constitutional monarch.
The FA rejected these offers out of hand. On each it insisted that the constituent assembly to be elected in April have no right to alter the powers or structures of the provinces. Such a demand completely undermines the democratic process, especially since the constituents of the FA, including the Inkatha Freedom Party, have very little chance of winning a majority in any province.
In effect the FA, by threatening to launch "armed resistance" if its total demands were not accepted, is attempting seize political power and privileges it could not hope to win at the ballot box.
Deliberate deadlock
The rejection of these concessions confirmed the view of most South Africans that the FA had never intended to reach an agreement or to take part in the elections, knowing that it would be humiliated at the ballot box.
It is widely believed that the far right, with strong support from within the South African Police and the security forces, has all along planned to go to war against the new democratic, non-racial South Africa to maintain its privileges from the apartheid era. The FA's involvement in talks was designed only to engineer a deadlock that would give resistance a legitimacy it otherwise would not have had.
The FA's constituent parties — Buthelezi's IFP, the government of the Bophuthatswana bantustan led by Lucas Mangope, the white supremacist Conservative Party, the Afrikaner Volksfront (AVF) and its neo-Nazi ally, the AWB — will boycott the April poll and actively work to disrupt it.
Terrorist bombs
In the months prior to the breakdown in talks, white far rightists had exploded more than 30 bombs throughout the country. ANC and COSATU (Congress of South African Trade Unions) offices, the homes of liberation movement activists, electricity pylons and railway tracks had been targeted. At least two people have died in these attacks.
"Mandela, give us a volkstaat or you will have total war", bellowed the brutish Eugene Terre'Blanche, leader of the AWB, to farmers in the small western Transvaal town of Lictenburg in early February. South Africa would look like Guy Fawkes Day if the ANC and the National Party stood in the way of a "Boerstaat" or homeland for white Afrikaans speakers, he warned.
General Constand Viljoen, leader of the AVF and sometimes referred to as a "moderate" in the South African press, has warned that "limited violence" will be used to win an Afrikaner volkstaat. Volksfront co-leader General Tienie Groenewald added: "Either we get it now peacefully, or in a few years' time the boundaries will be drawn in blood like in Bosnia".
At least nine right-wingers have been arrested in connection with terrorist bombings. In one of the most despicable incidents, a refuge for disabled and homeless black children was bombed on February 6.
White rightist leaders estimate that at least 100,000 people who support the ideal of a volkstaat or refuse to be governed by a "communist" ANC government are in possession of SADF-issued guns, including thousands of Uzi submachine guns.
Meanwhile, KwaZulu and Bophuthatswana continue to raise demands that verge on secession. Buthelezi has pledged to recognise any racially exclusive Afrikaner homeland that is established. A week prior to the collapse of talks, a belligerent Buthelezi told members of the central committee of the IFP that "no government has ever won the kind of war against opposition which an ANC/SACP government will have to wage against us if we resist the present interim constitution".
Recognising his own and Inkatha's dwindling popularity, Buthelezi has pushed forward the traditional leader of the Zulu people, King Goodwill Zwelithini, to mouth his words.
On February 14, 50,000 Inkatha supporters, heavily armed with so-called "traditional" weapons, gathered in Durban as Zwelithini put demands for an "independent sovereign kingdom" in KwaZulu and Natal to South African President F.W. de Klerk. At one stage shots were fired, and at least one person was killed.
Buthelezi and Zwelithini have in recent months made it plain they would embark on a violent campaign to maintain political power in the KwaZulu/Natal region despite the fact that polls indicate that they have the support of less than 25% of Zulus, compared to the ANC's 40-50%.
'At the crossroads'
In a dramatic move on February 16, Nelson Mandela signalled that despite the FA's rejection of the concessions offered, the ANC would agree to a special sitting of parliament to amend the interim constitution and extend the deadline for parties to register for the elections. He promised that the interim constitution would also be amended to ensure that "powers presently granted are not substantially diminished" when the constituent assembly drafts the new constitution. Mandela also offered to meet with King Zwelithini to discuss his concerns.
"South Africa is today at the crossroads", Mandela said, "Great progress has been made towards the first democratic elections on 27 April 1994. Already, parties which have committed themselves to agreements arising out of multiparty negotiations are out in the hustings competing for votes in what has become the most exciting political mobilisation that our country has ever seen. Such is true democracy.
"Yet there are others, steeped in the politics of the past — the politics of racism, ethnic chauvinism and violence — who seek to drown the process in blood. This shall not and cannot be allowed to continue ...
"We wish to issue a solemn reminder to those who think that they can use force to disrupt the democratic process that the people of this country have both the capacity and the will to use their power to defeat these attempts. We call on our people to exercise maximum vigilance and ready themselves for any such attempts.
"History and future generations would judge the current South African leadership harshly if we failed to take all the necessary measures to resolve South Africa's problems peacefully and through dialogue", Mandela concluded.
The ANC's willingness to compromise has helped to isolate further the far right and legitimise the defence of South Africa's democratic gains should it be necessary, Tokyo Sexwale added on February 17. But the primary aim of Mandela's initiative was prevent a civil war.
"The leadership of the ANC is bending over backwards to prevent that...We will not be talking violence like that in Kathlehong or East Rand, they are talking war. [The right wing] must also realise that in war you get killed. Anybody who starts this war will not be able to escape it ...
"We are breaking our backs bending over backwards, to try to the last iota of our energies to be a responsible and effective leadership. Because it must not be said, when the country is beneath oceans of blood, 'but you should have tried more'."