by Guy Arnold
The ANC mounted a defiance campaign in August at a time when the gulf between de Klerk and Mandela appeared to be widening alarmingly. Then, on 7 September, 70,000 ANC protesters marched to the main stadium in Bisho, Ciskei, and when a group of marchers attempted to run through an opening in a fence in order to take a different path to the town, the poorly trained homeland troops opened fire on the marchers killing 29 and wounding over 200. Now Bisho and its homeland defenders became a byword for brutality. Then on 26 September, and not before time, de Klerk and Mandela met: they signed a Record of Understanding that set the mould for subsequent negotiations. It established an independent body to review police actions, created a mechanism to fence in the hostels and banned the display of ‘traditional weapons’ at rallies. Its real importance, however, was to break the constitutional deadlock of CODESA 2. The government finally agreed to accept a single elected constitutional assembly which would adopt a new constitution and serve as a transitional legislature for the new government. In response, Inkatha withdrew from all government/ANC negotiations. In November the National Executive Committee of the ANC agreed a power-sharing deal that would allow all parties gaining 5 per cent or more votes a share in the cabinet of national unity. It was during this hectic year that Mandela and his wife Winnie, who had become both notorious for her behaviour and a power in her own right, agreed to separate. An estimate of July 1992 put at 7,000 deaths in township violence since de Klerk’s speech of 2 February 1990. During the first six months of 1992 there had been 1,181 deaths according to the police although Human Rights Watch set the figure for deaths to 30 September 1992 at 2,762. Inkatha was seen as the main aggressor. Despite the deep suspicion of each other that led to the breakdown of talks, it was becoming clear that the ANC and the government needed each other if a workable political solution was to be found. Despite repeated setbacks through 1992, continuing violence, periodic expressions of distrust or bad faith from either side and ANC accusations that de Klerk was unable to control either the police or military, who were seen to be well to the right of government, nevertheless, by February 1993 the ANC and government appeared to have worked out a formula for advance. Yet while they were close to agreeing constitutional arrangements, the question of what role Buthelezi should play became more and more important. It seemed at that time that he was determined to wreck any agreement since he saw himself being marginalized because his Inkatha power base, which represented only a part of the Zulu nation, was too small to carry national weight.
‘Although few people will remember 3 June 1993,’ Mandela was to write, ‘it was a landmark in South African history. On that day, after months of negotiations at the World Trade Center, the multiparty forum voted to set a date for the country’s first national non-racial, one-person-one vote election: 27 April 1994. For the first time in South African history, the black majority would go to the polls to elect their own leaders.’5 In July 1993 the multiparty forum agreed on a first draft of an interim constitution. Elections to regional assemblies would take place at the same time as national elections and the regional bodies could draw up their own constitutions consistent with the national constitution. Chief Buthelezi wanted a constitution drawn up before the elections. A second draft interim constitution that August gave greater powers to the regions but failed to placate either Buthelezi or the Conservative Party, with the latter describing the resolutions as hostile to Afrikaner interests. A group calling itself the Afrikaner Volksfront, led by Gen. Constand Viljoen – a former Chief of the South African Defence Force – was now formed to unite conservative white organizations around the idea of a volkstaat or white homeland. In October parliament passed legislation to create a transitional executive council. Mandela made a direct appeal to the United Nations with the result that the UN, the US and the Commonwealth withdrew all economic sanctions against South Africa. The national territory of South Africa was re-divided into nine regions: Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Northern Cape, Orange Free State (which became the Free State in 1995), Northwest, KwaZulu/Natal, Eastern Transvaal (later Mpumalanga), Northern Transvaal (later Northern province) and PWV (Pretoria, Witwatersrand and Vereeniging – later Gauteng). The homelands were to be absorbed into these new regions. The central parliament was to comprise a house of assembly of 400 members elected by proportional representation, half on national and half on regional lists, while an upper house of 90 would be chosen by the regional assemblies. The Interim Constitution, under which South Africa was to be governed for five years from the April 1994 elections, was finally endorsed on 18 November 1993 by the delegates to the multiparty negotiations. Chief Buthelezi, however, warned that the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) would resist the Interim Constitution and reduce it to the ‘rubble of history’. In December the Transitional Executive Council (TEC) was established to give the African majority a legal role in central government for the first time in the country’s history. It was opposed by the Freedom Alliance consisting of Inkatha, the Conservative Party under Ferdi Hartzenburg, and Gen. Viljoen of the Afrikaner Volksfront, as well as the leaders of the two nominally independent homelands, Lucas Mangope of Bophutatswana and Joshua Oupa Gqoza of Ciskei. Despite this opposition, it was agreed that South Africa would be ruled for a five-year interim period after its first one-person-one-vote election by a Government of National Unity (GNU) comprising five parties – the ANC, the NP, the PAC, the CP and Buthelezi’s IFP – with Nelson Mandela as President. According to calculations made at the time a 22-member cabinet would consist of 14 ANC ministers, four NP, two PAC and one each for the other two parties. ‘The new constitution, approved on 18 November 1993, provided for universal suffrage and a cabinet constitution, and was – once more in an echo of the Act of Union – only capable of amendment by a two-thirds majority of the popular vote. It was, all things considered, an extraordinary achievement, the voluntary relinquishment of power (with, certainly, internal violence and outside pressures acting as potent incentives) by the white minority… South Africa emerged from the shadow of apartheid badly injured, but alive.’6 There were still hurdles to overcome.
Early in 1994 the government and the ANC held talks with the Freedom Alliance to persuade its various member groups to take part in the elections, but without success. Ciskei, however, subsequently broke ranks and then on 14 January withdrew from the Alliance. Then the PAC suspended the activities of its armed wing, the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA), and at the deadline finally said it would take part in the elections. On 29 January the TEC announced plans for a 10,000-strong national peacekeeping force. In mid-March the militant section of the Afrikaner extreme right suffered a severe reverse. The Bophutatswana army and police mutinied against Chief Mangope who fled. Some 2,000 Afrikaner extremists then invaded Bophutatswana to restore Mangope and to take over all or part of the homeland for a Boerestaat. However, the Bophutatswana forces attacked the Afrikaner invaders and de Klerk sent units of the South African army to restore order. Buthelezi, however, held out for the first three months of 1994 and fears that Inkatha could wreck the elections continued into mid-April by which time 10,000 people had died in the violence of the preceding four years. Finally, on 19 April, Buthelezi dropped his opposition to the elections and agreed to let his followers take part. He did so despite having failed to obtain most of the ‘guarantees’ he had sought though it was agreed that the Zulu monarchy should be legally accommodated in the provincial government. Over the last seven days leading up to the elections the killings stopped and the elections took place in an uninterrupted calm. ‘It was a powerfully impressive spectacle, witnessed with keen interest by the rest of the world, to see millions of South Africans of all races queuing patiently together to register their votes.’7 During the run-up to the elections the ANC had prepared its Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), an ambitious blueprint for social change covering jobs, housing, health, free education, the redistribution of land, cuts in food taxes and affirmative action, and a simpler election version called A Better Li
fe for All. The party was all too aware of the high expectations of the people that it would have to satisfy. Mandela had already embarked upon his mission to win over the whites: ‘I told white audiences that we needed them and did not want them to leave the country. They were South Africans just like ourselves and this was their land too. I would not mince words about the horrors of apartheid, but I said, over and over, that we should forget the past and concentrate on building a better future for all.’8
In the elections the ANC won 62 per cent of the vote, the NP 20 per cent and control of Western Cape, Inkatha 10 per cent and was ‘credited’ with a 51 per cent victory in KwaZulu/Natal. On 9 May the assembly elected Mandela as President of South Africa. Thabo Mbeki was elected First Vice-President, F. W. de Klerk Second Vice-President. On 10 May, Mandela was inaugurated as President of South Africa in the court of the Union Buildings in Pretoria in the presence of the largest gathering ever of international leaders the country had seen. In his speech Mandela said: ‘We, who were outlaws not so long ago, have today been given the rare privilege to be host to the nations of the world on our own soil. We thank all of our distinguished international guests for having come to take possession with the people of our country of what is, after all, a common victory for justice, for peace, for human dignity.’ South Africa then joined the OAU, rejoined the Commonwealth, which it had left in 1961, joined the Southern African Development Community (SADC), previously the SADCC, and resumed its UN seat. In September 1994 Britain’s Prime Minister John Major made an official visit to South Africa and in March 1995 the Queen made a state visit followed by a return state visit to Britain by Mandela in July 1996.
The hard tasks now had to be tackled. ‘From the moment the results were in and it was apparent that the ANC was to form the government, I saw my mission as one of preaching reconciliation, of binding the wounds of the country, of engendering trust and confidence.’9 At the grassroots the problems were huge. As a member of Alexandra township responded to a question about the new government’s record in December 1994: ‘Satisfied? How can you ask if I am satisfied with this government?’ And as another said: ‘The government must start doing something concrete.’10 During the apartheid years the white minority in South Africa held all the levers of political and economic power and could be seen as an extension of the rich developed North set down in a poor country of the South and able to control the black majority by means of the apparatus of apartheid. Following the elections of April 1994 this situation was turned on its head: South Africa became (what it always was in fact) a poor developing country with a rich white elite in the middle of it. The Human Development Report 1998 highlighted the extent of the economic divide between black and white in South Africa. Under apartheid, consumption patterns of black and white were separated – by both unequal income distribution, but also by unequal access to basic services and suppression of living standards. Government house building came to a halt in the early 1980s at a time when the housing backlog was estimated at about 600,000 units. By 1998 it was 2.5 million units. Unequal access to public infrastructure meant the black population was barely able to meet basic needs. Among top objectives for the new South Africa was to meet basic needs for all – housing, water, transport, electricity, telecommunications, a clean and healthy environment, nutrition, health care and jobs. In 1995 alone there was a marked increase in access to services among black households: the share with electricity increased from 37 per cent to 51 per cent, those with a telephone from 12 per cent to 14 per cent, those with piped water from 27 per cent to 33 per cent, those with a flush toilet or latrine from 46 per cent to 51 per cent and those with refuse removal by the local authority from 37 per cent to 43 per cent. ‘In one survey, however, pensioners said electricity might consume up to a quarter of their income, yet they could no longer imagine living without it. And because other spending could not be cut, they sought credit.’11
The implementation of the RDP was far more difficult than had been anticipated: there were neither the resources nor the personnel to implement it in full and in 1996 the Ministry for RDP was abolished. Joe Slovo, the first minister of housing, died in January 1995 and though he had tried to provide mass housing, his programme, as well as that to extend electricity, had partly stalled. The government had to rethink its plans and in June 1996 Trevor Manuel, the Minister of Finance, announced a new plan for growth, employment and redistribution (GEAR) which emphasized the privatization of state assets. GEAR was criticized by both COSATU and the Communist Party because it had been adopted without debate or consultation and would mean fewer jobs would be created. On 9 May 1996 de Klerk announced that the National Party would withdraw from the GNU. His NP cabinet colleagues were shocked and Leon Wessels thought he had not tried hard enough to make the GNU work. Some ANC ministers were also angry and suggested, ‘Breaking it up was one of de Klerk’s greatest disservices to the country.’12 Although de Klerk can take credit for the realistic and pragmatic way he ended apartheid, he was not possessed of any greatness of character. The withdrawal of the NP left Mbeki as sole Vice-President and by this time he had taken over most aspects of running the country as Mandela became increasingly aloof from day-to-day government. He saw the break with the Afrikaners as inevitable and useful. And though Mandela had no regrets about the departure of de Klerk, he wanted to bring his old black rivals of Inkatha and the PAC into power-sharing. He was acutely aware of how narrowly South Africa had escaped civil war in 1992–94 and saw increasingly that his role should be that of peacemaker. Mbeki’s position was now increasingly secure and Mandela was treating him as his political heir. Cyril Ramophosa, his chief rival who had overseen the preparation of the constitution, left parliament to become Deputy Chairman of New African Investments Ltd (NAIL). He denied a serious clash with Mbeki and said he would return to politics in 10 years. A second rival, Tokyo Sexwale, the Premier of Gauteng, had also been a contender for president but had been sidelined by Mbeki and quit politics in 1997 for business.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which was set up in 1995 under the chairmanship of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, was always bound to be controversial. It was also cathartic, not just for those who came before it but also for others who watched its proceedings. It was not about justice, though many Africans who had suffered under apartheid must have found this difficult to understand, but about reconciliation by persuading people to admit their crimes against their fellows. One failing of the TRC was its inability to investigate the human rights abuses that South Africans had committed in neighbouring countries such as Namibia. Many members of the ANC thought that the formula, finally agreed by de Klerk, that the Commission could grant individuals amnesties on condition they showed their actions had been politically motivated, was far too generous. Two years of hearings revealed horrific stories of torture and assassination – more than many had imagined – yet despite these revelations de Klerk still denied that the government had given the security forces a licence to kill.13 The report of the TRC provides a benchmark against which future white behaviour as well as the conduct of governments may be judged. It is a historic record of a brutal regime whose primary motive was to maintain a racial minority in power. And it is a reminder of how easily power and the desire to retain it can corrupt and destroy a people’s integrity. How much this exercise in exposing truths that a majority of the whites wished only to hide or ignore will assist the new South Africa to forge a racially integrated future remains to be seen. Throughout the sittings of the TRC it was clear that a new non-racial South Africa was an ideal that had yet to be created. The gaps remained – the poverty statistics that separated the majority from the minority – and though black Africans may have gained confidence since the elections of 1994, they have not, in most cases, gained very much else. Whites, who appear to think they have made the supreme sacrifice by the act of rejecting apartheid, behave as though there is nothing else they can do, complaining instead that they are at risk from mounting violence.
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p; Inevitably, in the years from 1994 there were racial incidents – whites objecting to blacks coming to ‘their’ schools, the ratepayers of Johannesburg’s wealthiest suburb of Sandton objecting to an increase in rates despite the poverty of nearby townships, objections to affirmative action and so on. The resistance of hard-line former supporters of apartheid was, perhaps, understandable or at any rate to be expected. Nonetheless, it was and remains essential for the wealthy, privileged whites to realize that if the new South Africa is to work they have to give to it more than the grudging acceptance of the end of apartheid. A press article of July 1995, began as follows: ‘Like the nobles of feudal Europe, white South Africans are retreating behind fortifications. On the leafy avenues in Johannesburg’s richer suburbs, defensive walls around the houses are climbing upwards, usually topped off with what South Africans call siege architecture: crenellations, electric fencing or just plain razor wire.’14
Reconciliation in the light of the apartheid years could be neither easy nor simple. The thousands of victims of torture and those who had lost relatives and friends did not want forgiveness to obliterate what had happened. Mandela believed that apart from Hitler’s genocide of the Jews, ‘there is no evil that has been so condemned by the entire world as apartheid’.15 Mandela went out of his way to meet former enemies and his charisma and charm clearly bowled many of them over, though not Botha, the old ‘crocodile’. He made his peace with the Afrikaner churches: ‘The men all wanted to touch me. The women all wanted to kiss me. The children all wanted to hang on my legs.’ He gave a lunch for Percy Yutar, the Rivonia trial prosecutor who had been renowned for his vindictive, hectoring tirades, and Yutar said of the occasion: ‘It shows the great humility of this saintly man.’16 Forgiveness for most people is very hard but Mandela achieved it in a spectacular fashion that contributed enormously to the South African transition.