ANC Today

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Volume 6, No. 35, 8-14 September 2006

----------------------------------------------------------------------

THIS WEEK:

* Letter from the President: Learning to listen and hear 
* Land and agrarian reform: Boost to accelerated land reform 
* DRC: SA mission finds DRC elections peaceful, credible and transparent

----------------------------------------------------------------------

LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT

Learning to listen and hear

At some point during 1989, in Lusaka, I received a message from Professor Willie
Esterhuyse that we should meet in London. Accordingly, I informed our then
President, the late Oliver Tambo, about this message. I told him that the
indication was that Professor Esterhuyse would be bringing a message for the ANC
from the apartheid government.

President Tambo told me that one of his recurring nightmares was that one day
this government would send us a message indicating its readiness to negotiate an
end to the apartheid system, and that we would fail to understand the message
and therefore fail to respond to it correctly.

He said that over the centuries, and especially during the apartheid years, a
deep gulf of mutual antagonism had developed between especially the African
majority and the ruling white minority, especially the Afrikaners. He feared
that so deep was this chasm that we had reached a stage such that the two sides
would find it difficult even to hear each other.

Hence his recurring nightmare that when the apartheid regime sent a message that
it now wanted a genuine peace and an end to white minority rule, we would read
this as being nothing but a ruse intended to demobilise us from struggle, with
the aim of perpetuating apartheid. Thus as the possibility for a peaceful end to
the apartheid system presented itself, we would decide that this was precisely
the moment to intensify our just war against this system.

He said that it might very well be that the message communicated by Professor
Esterhuyse signified that the apartheid rulers were now ready to engage the ANC
in discussions aimed at achieving a genuine peace and an end to white minority
rule.

He said that whatever might have been happening at that time, we needed to
ensure that we did not make the grievous mistake of failing to hear a message of
hope that our enemies might seek to communicate. He therefore authorised that I
should proceed to London, listen to what Willie Esterhuyse had to communicate,
and report back, which I did.

And indeed Professor Esterhuyse had brought a message that the apartheid regime
wanted to talk directly with the ANC leadership in exile. He conveyed the
proposals made by the regime to establish direct contact between its
representatives and the delegation that would be chosen by the ANC, and other
matters relevant to the convening of the first meeting.

President Tambo and other ANC leaders he consulted agreed that we should respond
positively to all the suggestions conveyed by Professor Esterhuyse. The first
meeting that began our process of negotiations, and therefore the very first
meeting between the apartheid government and the ANC, took place in Switzerland.
Jacob Zuma and I represented the ANC. The South African government was
represented by two senior officials of the National Intelligence Service (NIS),
Mike Louw and Maritz Spaarwater.

This began a succession of meetings, which addressed the demand repeatedly made
by our movement, that for any negotiations to take place, the necessary climate
had to be created. Accordingly, by the end of 1989 we had agreed, among others,
that Nelson Mandela and all other political prisoners would be released, and the
ANC, the SACP and all other progressive organisations would be unbanned.

By leaping over the gulf that separated the oppressed from the oppressor, to
listen to, hear and understand the words communicated by the oppressor, our
movement had managed to avoid transforming Oliver Tambo's nightmare into
reality.

We can indeed say that when the drum of peace was sounded, we did not mistake
this for a new summons to the war regiments. I have often wondered what would
have happened to our country and people if we had allowed our history so to
condition our minds that we failed to hear the message of the oppressor conveyed
to us by Professor Esterhuyse!

The recounting of a 1989 episode in our history has been provoked by an
extraordinary event that took place at the Union Buildings in Tshwane five weeks
ago. I refer here to the encounter, with which many of us are now familiar,
which took place at this seat of government between Rev Frank Chikane, Director
General of the Presidency, and former Minister in the apartheid government, Mr
Adriaan Vlok.

Once again, what happened on that day has imposed an obligation on all of us to
ask ourselves many questions that are important to the future of our country,
centred on such important questions as private imperatives and the public good,
'the RDP of the soul', national reconciliation, nation building, a new
patriotism, and so on.

But, centrally, I believe that this happening, and especially the legitimate and
necessary debate it has provoked, has also made it necessary for all of us as
South Africans, to pose the question whether we are indeed listening to and
hearing one another! Or is it the case that the chasms that continue to fracture
our society are so big and deep, that we are still unable to hear one another!

I have been present at an occasion when some people laughed when reference was
made to the fact that Adriaan Vlok washed Frank Chikane's feet, as though this
act amounted to nothing more than the height of comedy. I have seen public
comments that "the more I think about it, the more I have to stop myself from
laughing out loud." I have also seen it said that, "we respect the fact that
Vlok is at a point in his own life where he wished to seek resolution, in his
own way and for his own reasons, for the past. But what he did is neither
precedent-setting nor sufficient." This comment appeared under the heading,
"Gesture not good enough".

General Dallaire commanded the UN troops deployed in Rwanda during the
catastrophic genocide in that country in 1994. His book, "Shake hands with the
devil: the failure of humanity in Rwanda", stands out as a compelling account of
what happened. In the Foreword to this book, Samantha Power wrote:

"Dallaire can't escape the memories. He recalls the rat that wandered around the
UN compound. His men thought the creature was a terrier, so fat had it grown on
the flesh of dead Rwandans. Dallaire once picked up a Rwandan child whom he saw
twitching with life. But when he held the 'tingling and mushy' being in his
arms, he realised that the movement was caused by maggots feasting on the dead
youth. He came across the whitened skeletons of women who had been raped: 'The
legs bent and apart. A broken bottle, a rough branch, even a knife between
them.' As he writes: 'It's as if someone has sliced into my brain and grafted
this horror called Rwanda, frame by blood-soaked frame directly on my cortex.' "

Dallaire himself has explained that, "There is no doubt that the toxic ethnic
extremism that infected Rwanda was a deep-rooted and formidable foe, built from
colonial discrimination and exclusion, personal vendettas, refugee life, envy,
racism, power plays, coups d'etat and the deep rifts of civil war. In Rwanda
both sides of the civil war fostered extremism."

He ends the book with the following words: "No matter how idealistic the aim
sounds, this new century must become the Century of Humanity, when we as human
beings rise above race, creed, colour, religion and national self-interest and
put the good of humanity above the good of our own tribe. For the sake of the
children and of our future. Peux ce que veux. Allons-y." (Where there's a will
there's a way. Let us go for it.)

Because we too were exposed to the most brutal violence that claimed many lives,
including the years immediately preceding our transition to democracy in 1994,
we cannot but feel a deep sense of personal revulsion and anger when we read of
the skeletal remains of women who had been raped, murdered and defiled in
unconscionable acts of barbarism, and of rats in Rwanda having grown to the size
of terriers by feeding on the abandoned human dead.

Although we were never condemned to suffer the horror of the genocide in Rwanda,
we would nevertheless understand what General Dallaire means when he writes of
"a deep-rooted and formidable foe" born of  "colonial discrimination and
exclusion", "toxic ethnic extremism", "envy, racism, power plays.and the deep
rifts of civil war".

The overwhelming majority among us would immediately and without hesitation
support the clarion call made by General Dallaire that "as human beings, (we
must) rise above race, creed, colour, religion and national self-interest and
put the good of humanity above the good of our own tribe."

I have cited the unimaginable horror of the genocide in Rwanda and the lessons
we should draw from it, to use it, in a manner of speaking, as a magnifying
glass to bring into sharper relief what happened in our own country.

I hope that this will serve the better to explain how some might feel that what
Adriaan Vlok said and did amounts to no more than a joke, or an insufficient
gesture as a response to the grievous harm and pain that was caused to an entire
people by the erstwhile captains of the apartheid system, such as Adriaan Vlok.

For his part, in a sermon on 3 September, in his Apostolic Faith Mission Soweto
church, in the presence of Adriaan Vlok, Rev Chikane said: "Whatever other
people may say, I have no doubt that Mr Vlok must have gone through what is
called a 'Damascus Road experience' like Paul (Saul) did."

He had himself come face to face with death, as a result of the wearing clothes
that had been contaminated with toxic chemical substances produced and used
against him by the experts in chemical and biological warfare charged by Adriaan
Vlok and the apartheid regime to develop and manufacture these supremely inhuman
and now prohibited weapons of mass destruction.

Adriaan Vlok was born on 11 December 1937 in Sutherland, and grew up on a
smallholding close to the Orange River, attending Neilerdrift Primary School and
Keimoes High School. Following three months of military training in Pretoria
during 1957, he began work for the Department of Justice in the magistrate's
offices of Keimoes and Upington. Between 1959 and 1966 he served as a senior
official at the department's head office in Pretoria, and was appointed private
secretary to Pelser, Minister of Justice, a post he held for four months before
becoming assistant private secretary to John Vorster. He completed his Dip Proc
at the University of Pretoria in 1962.

Vlok had an active interest in military matters and following his basic
training, voluntarily joined the 'Regiment Oranjerivier'. He was promoted to the
rank of lieutenant before he resigned his commission on entering active party
politics. In 1972 he was elected to the Verwoerdburg City Council and served on
its management committee. He joined the National Party in 1959 and in 1964 began
to participate actively in party functions.

He was elected Member of Parliament for Verwoerdburg in 1974. In 1984 he was
appointed Deputy Minister of Defence. In 1985 he was appointed Deputy Minister
of Law and Order, a portfolio he held concurrently with that of Deputy Minister
of Defence. In December 1986 he was appointed Minister of Law and Order.

As Minister of Law and Order, he was also responsible for administering the
National Security Management System (NSMS), the mechanism formed to coordinate
and oversee the entire repressive machinery and offensive of the apartheid
regime. At the end of July 1991, in a Cabinet reshuffle carried out because of
our movement's resistance to the raging state-sponsored political violence at
the time, Vlok was redeployed to the post of Minister of Correctional Services.
He resigned from active party politics in 1994.

This short biography tells the story that in Adriaan Vlok we have an Afrikaner
who grew up and matured within the confines of the Afrikaner society of his day.
He evolved, naturally, to join, represent and lead the party of apartheid, the
National Party. Again naturally, Adriaan Vlok has been and is a devout
Christian. We can safely assume that he was also a member of the Afrikaner
Broederbond.

Thus the man who washed the feet of a black man he grew up knowing belonged to a
sub-human species, and whom he wanted dead because he represented the anti-
Christ, was the product of an age and historical experience that produced people
steeped in racism, who were convinced that they had to beat back a 'swart
gevaar', (black danger), that permanently threatened the Afrikaner volk, and
whose deep religiosity was used to justify evil.

At the age of 69, one among these, Adriaan Vlok, took the decision to humble
himself before one that he had once considered as being nothing more than
vermin, in the same way that the genocidaires in Rwanda had convinced themselves
that those they intended to kill and did kill, were mere "cockroaches". To show
the depth of his penitence and remorse, and the sincerity of his apology, he
decided to emulate Jesus Christ, who had knelt down and washed the feet of his
disciples.

In the Bible he gave to Frank Chikane, he inscribed the words, "I have sinned
against the Lord, and against you. Please forgive me.", and referred Rev Chikane
to the Biblical Psalm 51. This Psalm contains a verse that says, "Surely you
desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place."

He also referred to other texts in the Scriptures, and specifically the Acts of
the Apostles. One of these quotes Paul as saying: "Lord.when the blood of your
martyr Stephen was shed, I stood there giving my approval and guarding the
clothes of those who were killing him."

While I hope that this does not communicate a message of arrogance, I believe
that personally I heard what Adriaan Vlok said. I heard him say that he now
unequivocally accepts that racism and apartheid were wrong and evil. I heard him
say he did grievous wrong by supervising the murder of the martyrs.

I heard him say he pleads for the forgiveness of the millions who suffered from
what he and his colleagues in the National Party did. I heard him say he wants
to do something to heal the wounds of the past, to close the poisoned chasm of
which Oliver Tambo spoke, to join the architects of a new society at peace with
itself.

I heard him say all these things and was deeply moved that an elderly Afrikaner,
with Adriaan Vlok's history and pedigree, could speak as he did and break with
his past in the manner he has. What his words and actions said to me was that
our society, which includes those who matured under circumstances very different
from today's, is gradually growing out of its traumatic past.

His words and actions said to me that even as he embarked on an intensely
personal journey, Adriaan Vlok communicated a message to all who will listen,
including the Afrikaner people he led, that together we must build a new and
humane society of hope, in which we are each one another's keeper. As a South
African, I felt uplifted and strengthened that Adriaan Vlok had spoken and acted
as he did.

Remembering what Oliver Tambo had said when Professor Esterhuyse asked that we
should meet in London, I have been asking myself whether, as a nation, we are
listening to and hearing one another!

Does white South Africa hear what the black people are and have been saying, and
vice versa! Does adult South Africa hear what the youth are saying, and vice
versa! Does male South Africa hear what the women of our country are saying!
Does urban South Africa hear what the communal rural areas are saying! Do the
commercial farmers hear what the farm workers are saying!

Do the Africans in the Cape Peninsula hear what their Coloured neighbours are
saying, and vice versa! Does the nation hear the voices asserting that each one
of us, whether Afrikaner or Khoi or Venda or Coloured or Tamil or any other
among our people, are entitled to and must have the possibility to define our
identity! Are we succeeding to bridge the chasms of the past, regaining the
capacity to hear human messages, and thus empower ourselves to achieve the
objective of national reconciliation, which is of fundamental importance to our
shared future!

In the midst of all this, and much else besides, I too, and especially my
mother, regret that the TRC process did not succeed to unearth the truth about
what happened to our own loved ones who disappeared without trace - my brother
Jama Mbeki, my son Kwanda Mbeki and my cousin, Phindile Mfeti.

We are each products of our lived past and present. Inevitably, what we say and
do is refracted by that reality, all of which impacts on others whose
consciousness may be refracted by a different historical and social experience.
To weld ourselves into one humane society, united in its diversity, surely, we
must learn to listen to and hear one another.

The first step we must take in this regard is to learn that our respect for one
another's humanity includes respect for the reality that each one of us will
take his or her unique or special and stony feeder road to join the national
march towards the achievement of the objective of a "South Africa (that) belongs
to all who live in it, united in our diversity", as our Constitution says. This
demands that we must cultivate the capacity to hear one another.

Thabo Mbeki

----------------------------------------------------------------------

LAND AND AGRARIAN REFORM

Boost to accelerated land reform

The process of accelerated land reform has received a further boost with the
establishment of a national steering committee (NSC) to take forward the
outcomes of the national land summit, held in July last year, Minister of
Agriculture and Land Affairs Lulu Xingwana announced this week.

The national land summit brought together a broad range of organisations and
stakeholders to assess the progress made in land and agrarian reform since the
advent of democracy. The summit analysed the shortcomings, problems and
challenges faced, and developed a range of recommendations on how the reform
process could be accelerated and make a significant impact particularly on the
lives of the rural poor and landless.

The land summit achieved some important milestones, with all participants
renewing their commitment to ensuring the redistribution of at least 30% of
white-owned agricultural land by 2014. The summit noted that, "not only is land
and agrarian reform necessary to undo the injustices of history, it must also be
a central component of economic transformation, and contribute towards realising
the goals of accelerated and shared growth."

The summit agreed that the approaches to land reform then being pursued were not
delivering land at a scale needed to achieve this target and were also not
realising the full potential of developmental benefits associated with land
reform. There was an urgent need to change approach, the summit concluded,
beginning with inclusive partnerships, in which government, landless people,
farming communities and other components of civil society act together.

The state needed to assume a stronger leading role, particularly since market
mechanisms were seen as incapable of ensuring the fundamental structural change
that all agreed was needed. This new approach needed to make sure that people
living and working on commercial farms were the primary beneficiaries of land
reforms.

The national steering committee, which would, among others, comprise government
officials, organised agriculture and labour, and mass movement and faith-based
organisations, would have to consider the various resolutions and
recommendations that emerged from this analysis.

These recommendations dealt, among other things, with the respective role of the
state and the market in the process of land reform, and specifically
redistribution. The report of the summit noted that: "The overwhelming majority
of participants in the Summit rejected the notion that the land reform process
should be based solely on the notion of willing-buyer, willing-seller."

This approach - of willing-buyer, willing-seller - means that land for
redistribution depends on existing owners deciding to sell their land, and
government then entering the market as any ordinary buyer would. The summit
concluded that this was not sufficient to meet redistribution targets.

"International experience of land and agrarian reform programmes demonstrates
that the market on its own is unable to effectively alter the pattern of
ownership in favour of equity for the targeted beneficiaries of land reform, as
well as in favour of broader goals of job creation and poverty reduction," the
report said.

The Constitution makes provision for the expropriation of land for the purposes
of land and agrarian reform provided "just and equitable" compensation is paid.
This is one of the issues the national steering committee would need to look
into.

Xingwana said this week that the committee had developed and adopted terms of
reference to guide its operations, and four technical task teams had been
appointed within the NSC to focus on policy, legislation, implementation and
other topics.

The task teams should collate work done by different organisations and have
"this body of information discussed and interrogated by relevant technical task
teams". The teams would meet in September to discuss land tax; the willing-
buyer, willing-seller principle; and other matters.

She said the willing-buyer, willing-seller principle did not and "should not"
apply to restitution as restitution was a rights-based programme.

"Once a claim has been validated, there is no need for the willing buyer/willing
seller approach on the claimed land as this should be understood to be a forced
sale as there is only one buyer (the state) and one seller (the land owner),"
she said.

Among the other recommendations of the land summit was that a land audit should
be carried out, establishing a register of land needs for target groups,
including labour tenants, people living and working on commercial farms and the
landless. Government should also introduce a comprehensive support package for
new owners. It was also called on to implement a progressive land tax and repeal
legislation that hampered more intensive use of land, the reduction of farm
sizes and compromised productivity.

Xingwana said land reform in South Africa was a public interest issue and
expropriation should therefore be carried out for purposes of public interest.
She said the government respected the justice system and the rule of law in
South Africa.

"We will uphold the decisions of our courts should any of our land and agrarian
reform interventions be found to be unconstitutional by our courts. The South
African government is also committed to security of land tenure for all its
citizens, black and white," she said.

MORE INFORMATION:

Department of Agriculture http://www.nda.agric.za/

Department of Land Affairs http://land.pwv.gov.za/

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Democratic Republic of Congo

SA mission finds DRC elections peaceful, credible and transparent

The South African Observer Mission on elections in the Democratic Republic of
Congo (DRC) announced this week that it found that the country's first
presidential and legislative elections in over 40 years were democratic,
peaceful, credible and remarkably transparent.

"The mission is of the view that space was created for the people of the DRC to
freely choose their leaders. The challenge now facing the leaders is to ensure
reconstruction of the country for the betterment of the lives of the Congolese,"
the leader of the mission, Deputy Defence Minister Mluleki George, said in a
statement on the release of the final report of the mission.

The report covers the period from 19 July until the official announcement of the
provisional presidential results on 20 August 2006. The final presidential
results have yet to be announced while the capturing of the legislative results
is still to be finalised.

Following an invitation by the Independent Electoral Commission of the DRC,
South Africa deployed a 108-member national observer mission to observe the 30
July 2006  presidential and legislative elections. The South African Observer
Mission (SAOM) was multi-sectoral in its composition, consisting of members of
parliament, government officials, and representatives of religious groups and
civil society organisations.

Members of the SAOM arrived in the DRC on 19 July 2006 and observed all the
phases of the elections. The South African observers were deployed in all eleven
provinces of the DRC with an average of three teams in each province.

"Considering the background of civil strife and autocratic rule, which marked
most of the country's history since independence, infrastructure challenges and
the fact that these elections were the first democratic elections in forty
years, the 30 July 2006 DRC's presidential and legislative elections were a
remarkable achievement and success," George said.

The provisional presidential results were announced on 20 August. As no
candidate managed to receive the required majority for an outright win, the top
two presidential candidates, President Joseph Kabila and Vice President Jean-
Pierre Bemba will contest the presidential run-off scheduled for 29 October
2006.

"The election process proceeded in a relatively peaceful environment. Political
candidates were able to conduct their election campaigns without interference.
The SAOM noted with regret that some lives were lost during isolated incidents
of violence. While this was tragic, the election process, in general, proceeded
peacefully.

"On the election day, voting took place in all the eleven provinces of the
country in about 50,000 polling stations. The majority of voting stations opened
on time with a few exceptions where stations opened late due to a number of
problems including lack of electricity and late delivery of election material.
In general, voting proceeded smoothly in the presence of party agents and
national and international election observers.

"The SAOM did not observe any incidents of irregularities with the voting
process. On the contrary, election day was marked by a general atmosphere of
calm. Voters patiently stood in queues waiting to cast their votes.

"The mission commends the DRC Election Commission (CEI) for the professional and
impartial manner in which it conducted and managed these elections, thereby
creating space for voters to express their choices freely and without fear of
intimidation," the report said.

The mission also concluded that the results compilation and verification process
was very transparent. Party agents representing political parties and
independent candidates were present all the time. Cell phones were allowed
inside the premises. Journalists were given unrestricted access to the centre.
Some used media-recording devices such as video cameras to record the process.

"It is the view of the mission that the unrestricted access and openness of the
process at the results centres indicated a high level of transparency that is
not common in other countries. The mission is of the view that this unrestricted
access of the media, party agents and observers has assisted in improving the
confidence and legitimacy in the process and reducing the likelihood of
tempering with the data," it said.

In concluding its report, the mission said that during these elections the
people of the DRC were provided with a platform to freely elect representatives
of their choice. Voting took place in a reasonably peaceful environment and
electoral officers performed their tasks admirably: "Taking advantage of these
elections, the first in forty years, the people of Congo turned up in large
numbers to choose their leaders, hoping for peace, national independence,
national unity and reconciliation, democracy, human rights and development."

However, the mission "noted with regret" the violent clashes that erupted in
Kinshasa following the release of the provisional presidential results. It urged
the candidates in the presidential runoff to demonstrate a high sense of
responsibility, put an end to the escalation of hostilities in the country and
create conditions conducive for the successful conclusion of the electoral
process.

"The SAOM is confident though that the Congolese political leadership will build
on the successful first round of the presidential and legislative elections and
take the country forward to lasting peace, stability and economic development.
The SAOM further calls on the international community to continue to support the
people of Congo as they prepare for the second round of the presidential and
provincial elections scheduled for 29 October 2006," it said.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

This issue of ANC Today is available from the ANC web site at:
http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/2006/at35.htm

To receive ANC Today free of charge by e-mail each week go to:
http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/subscribe.html

To unsubscribe yourself from the ANC Today mailing list go to:
http://lists.anc.org.za/mailman/listinfo/anctoday