BY GREG ROSENBERG
Opponents of measures to address the legacy of apartheid continue to lose ground in South Africa.
In a January 8 speech on behalf of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress marking the organization's 84th anniversary, ANC president Nelson Mandela referred to "a struggle which intensifies with each passing day, to define the agenda of the democratic order."
While political violence has declined in most of the country since the old regime was swept aside in the 1994 nonracial elections, violent assaults on workers and peasants are on the increase in KwaZulu-Natal province. These are being fomented by supporters of the Inkatha Freedom Party, headed by Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Home Affairs minister. Elements of the police force in the province have joined in the bloody forays.
On Christmas day, an armed mob of 600 to 1,000 IFP supporters rampaged through Shobashobane, near Port Shepstone on the Indian Ocean. They hacked or shot 19 people to death, razed homes and looted the area.
Most Shobashobane residents are supporters of the ANC. The attackers were shouting "bulalani amaqabane," (kill the comrades), reported Amos Nyawose, whose relative, an ANC leader, was killed in the raid.
On January 29, South African police commissioner George Fivaz said police planned to arrest more than 100 suspects, at least 10 of them cops, in connection with the massacre.
The stoking of violence by Inkatha supporters and sections of the police is seen as an attempt to forestall democratic local government elections in the province, scheduled for May. The ANC won more than 70 percent of votes cast last November, when such elections were held everywhere except KwaZulu-Natal and the Cape Town metropolitan region. A similar result in May would undermine Inkatha's provincial stewardship and its claim that it speaks on behalf of all Zulus.
`Elections without violence'
"As a movement," Mandela said in the ANC anniversary
speech, which was delivered to more than 10,000 people in
Khutsong township outside Carletonville, "we must commit
ourselves to continue to conduct our election campaign as we
have done before, without resort to violence and
intimidation. We call on other parties thus to commit
themselves as we do, in both word and deed.
"Furthermore, we must ensure that the people themselves take up the struggle for an end to violence and the creation of a climate conducive to free political activity, especially in KwaZulu-Natal."
Mandela, in his capacity as president of South Africa, has urged a call for an imbizo - a mass conference involving all Zulu traditional leaders - at which all issues in dispute can be aired. On January 25, Zulu king Goodwill Zwelithini endorsed the call for the imbizo. The Inkatha National Council gave its agreement January 28. A date for the meeting will be announced soon.
The determination by millions of South African working people to expose the wanton murder and brutality organized by the former apartheid government officials has also provoked sharp disagreements.
In December, former apartheid defense minister Magnus Malan and 19 co-accused were formally charged with 13 counts of murder in connection with a 1987 massacre in KwaZulu- Natal. Those accused included two former defense chiefs, the former chief of Staff Intelligence, former chief director of Military Intelligence, four former KwaZulu police, and Zakhele Khumalo, deputy secretary-general of Inkatha.
Malan trial opens March 4
The indictment documents extensive collaboration between
the South African military, KwaZulu homeland police, and
Inkatha in organizing murder squads, up to and including an
"extraordinary" meeting of the state security council in Cape
Town after requests by Buthelezi for "protection."
One military intelligence officer named in the indictment allegedly granted permission for the squads to target "persons whose death would have a positive impact on the Inkatha Freedom Party."
The Malan trial is set for March 4, and brought protest from South African deputy president F.W. deKlerk, head of the National Party, and others.
Malan and others have refused to go before the newly- established Truth and Reconciliation Commission, stating they are innocent and have nothing to reveal. The commission is charged with investigating gross human rights violations committed between March 1, 1960, and Dec. 5, 1993. It is chaired by Desmond Tutu, a cleric who was a prominent campaigner against apartheid.
Already, more than 2,000 people have submitted requests for amnesty. Revealing one's involvement in crimes committed is the central precondition for receiving amnesty.
Commenting on the commission's work, Mandela said during the ANC anniversary speech that "vengeance is not our goal. The building of a new nation at peace with itself because it is reconciled with its past, is our objective. Let us all therefore tell the truth that has to be told...."
The ANC president emphasized that "much still remains to be done to build a common sense of nationhood...It is in this context that we must continue the struggle to give life to what we said in the Freedom Charter - that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people as a whole.
"But the national reconciliation for which we continue to struggle," Mandela added, "cannot be founded on the preservation and perpetuation of the old order of white privilege and black deprivation. True reconciliation does not consist in merely forgetting the past. It does not rest with black forgiveness, sensitivity to white fears, and tolerance of an unjust status quo, on one hand, and white gratitude and appreciation underlined by a tenacious clinging to exclusive privilege, on the other."
A new apartheid mini-state?
South Africa's Constitutional Assembly is in the final
stages of the drafting of a new constitution, the deadline
for which is May. The assembly includes representatives of
all parties in the coalition government, except Inkatha,
which has been boycotting it.
A continuing debate is whether the constitution will grant a volkstaat, a white Afrikaner preserve. ANC leaders have long publicly rejected the call for a new apartheid ministate, cloaked in demagogic appeals for Afrikaner self- determination.
The volkstaat forces have been fighting a losing battle. The latest attempt to present an Afrikaner united front fell flat in early January, when the Foundation for Equality Before the Law - set up last November to "protect Afrikaner rights" - held a rally in Pretoria. Despite endorsement from such prominent voices as the Transvaal Agricultural Union and former police commissioner Johan van der Merwe, only about 1,000 people showed up. A clash ensued within the crowd when an attempt was made to burn the new South African flag.
Steps on land reform
Several modest steps forward have been taken over the past
month to advance land reform. The overwhelming majority of
agricultural land in South Africa is in the hands of white
capitalist farmers.
In January, the ANC-majority National Assembly passed a bill guaranteeing protection for labor tenants by ending evictions and giving them the right to buy, within the next four years and with some state assistance, the land they have occupied for years. Their employers are compelled to either sell the land or provide alternative compensation to the farm worker.
Other bills have been approved by committees and still require parliamentary approval. These would protect communal land rights, including recognition of informal land rights, which were difficult to "prove" under apartheid law.
Additional proposals have been put forward by Derek Hanekom, minister of land affairs, in a "Green Paper on Land Reform."
The proposals include allocating government grants of up to 15,000 rand (about U.S.$4,250) to help landless people and poor peasants buy or improve land. The buying of state-owned land would be included in these categories.
"I think if this kind of unreasonable legislation keeps on coming through, farmers will leave," said Graham McIntosh, president of the Natal Agricultural Union, responding to the Land Reform Bill. The South African Agricultural Union, an organization of capitalist farmers, may challenge the bill in the Constitutional Court, McIntosh added
Members of the Freedom Front voted against the land bills in the national assembly. "The property rights of tenants on farming units will lead to tension and uncontrollable situations," a spokesman complained.
The Land Claims Commission, established in 1995 with the passage of land restitution legislation, has now received more than 5,000 claims from blacks demanding the return of land stolen from them under apartheid rule.