Opening Statement of the Deputy President of the African National Congress, Nelson Mandela, at the meeting with President F.W. de Klerk on the situation in Natal

Opening Statement of the Deputy President of the African National Congress, Nelson Mandela, at the meeting with President F.W. de Klerk on the situation in Natal

Pretoria
September 11 1990

Mr State President

As you know, this meeting is taking place at our request. We asked for it because we felt that it was of the greatest importance that we should meet the South African government at the highest level with only one issue on the agenda, namely, the situation in Natal. I would like to take this opportunity to express our appreciation to you and your colleagues for the fact that indeed we are meeting today.

The facts about the Natal situation are a matter of public record. In a period of between three-and-a-half and four years, 4000 people have been killed. Thousands of houses have been destroyed. Poor people have lost the few possessions they had. Tens of thousands have been turned into internal refugees. Even as we are working on the return of the exiles, hundreds of people are fleeing into exile, especially from Natal.

This intolerable situation is now being reproduced in the Transvaal with the same disastrous consequences. In a period of no more than a month, over 500 people have been killed. Once more houses and property have been destroyed. More people are being turned into refugees within their own country. These events in the Transvaal, taken together with those in Natal, indicate to us that a Renamo-type force is being formed. We view these developments very seriously indeed.

It is of crucial importance that the government should understand that our people, the families of the thousands who have been and are being killed, the communities that have been and are being terrorised, are all pointing their finger at the government for failing to stop this horrendous crime against the people. The simple point is made that such carnage would never have been allowed if the victims were white.

The KwaZulu homeland, like all the others, is a creation of previous National Party governments. Its administration is kept going through funds allocated by central government. Such power as this administration exercises have been ceded to it by decisions taken in the Cape Town Parliament. It is an integral part of South Africa, a component part of the South African system of local and regional government, and not an independent country.

This is true with regard to matters relating to the maintenance of law and order. The KwaZulu commissioner of police is appointed by the South African minister of Law and Order. Furthermore, by virtue of Section 37 of the National States Constitution Act of 1971, read with Article 21b of Schedule 1 of that Act, the South African government has power over the administration of law and order in KwaZulu and the other homelands.

Mr State President

You and your colleagues have with you a memorandum on violence in Natal which we submitted to you earlier. You will undoubtedly have studied the memorandum. The story it tells is that within Natal, and mainly in the areas falling under the KwaZulu administration, law and order has broken down. This has come about as a result of criminal activities carried out by self-proclaimed members of Inkatha.

But is has also come about as a result of acts of commission and omission on the part of members of the KwaZulu police, the South African Police and the South African Defence Force. At the same time, the system of justice has utterly failed to respond to this situation, thus encouraging the commission of further crimes and compelling the people to take the law into their own hands. Our delegation will be able to elaborate on these matters in the fullest detail.

The reality we are dealing with in KwaZulu is that you have a governing party which has used and is using its power of government not to administer the area under its control impartially but to strengthen itself and to act against those it sees as its political opponents. This has affected everything including the KwaZulu Police, the educational and health systems, pensions housing, the granting of trading licences and so on. The situation therefore obtains whereby it is virtually impossible to differentiate the KwaZulu Administration from Inkatha as a political party.

It is in this context that the KwaZulu Police have been used not for the purposes of maintaining law and order, but as a private army of Inkatha. The fact that the KwaZulu Minister of Police is at the same time, the Chief Minister as well as the President of Inkatha, reinforces this gross and unacceptable misuse of state power. To support him, he has exercised his powers to appoint the same person Deputy Commissioner of KwaZulu Police and head of the Inkatha security establishment.

We would like this meeting to agree that its central objective is to address the urgent and burning issue of ending the violence in Natal and the related killings in the Transvaal. I this regard, let me mention a dew salient points which we are convinced have to be attended to.

The first of these is that the central government must take full charge and responsibility for the maintenance of law and order throughout the province of Natal, including KwaZulu, a central provincial command structure has to be instituted immediately under which would fall all the security forces operating in this region. The KwaZulu Police have to be disbanded and must cease to exist as an independent force.

Secondly, measures must be instituted to ensure that the security forces in this area really function as an effective and impartial agency for the maintenance of peace and law and order.

Thirdly, an effective liaison and monitoring machinery between ourselves an the central provincial command structure and its sub-units must be established immediately. This machinery must have the power to act to ensure that no violence breaks out anywhere in the province, that where it does break out, it is brought to an end very quickly and that where it has occurred, the culprits are apprehended and prosecuted.

Fourth, measures must be instituted to prosecute the individuals against whom there are specific allegations arising out of earlier incidents, but who have so far not been charged despite the existence of large volumes of evidence and accusatory findings at various inquests.

Fifth, the state of emergency must be lifted as part of the very necessary process of ensuring that free and peaceful political activity can take place in the whole of Natal as elsewhere in the country. Measures must be taken to ensure that no government institution is used to compel any person to belong or not to belong to any particular political or other organisation.

Sixth, a high-level joint working group of representatives of the government and the ANC should be established to oversee the implementation such agreements as we may arrive at during this meeting and to recommend any new initiatives as may be necessary. This group would also maintain contact with Deputy Minister Tertius Delport, to the extent that his work would have an impact on the objectives of ending the violence in Natal, reducing the possibility of any further outbreaks and ensuring a situation of free political activity and freedom of association.

The ANC is determined to do everything in its power to normalise the political situation throughout the province of Natal. Since 1987, we have supported initiatives of the UDF, Cosatu, the churches and the business community to negotiate with Inkatha to end the killing in Natal.

These have taken us nowhere, essentially because the leaders of Inkatha were not prepared to resolve the conflict. We should also make the point here that numerous communications conveyed to the South African Government and its agencies have also not led to any meaningful action.

We are now engaged in new efforts to engage Inkatha in serious discussions to end the violence. The joint working committee is holding regular meetings with representatives of Inkatha. The special committee on the National Executive Committee on Natal is scheduled to meet Inkatha representatives on the 19^th of this month. New actions will arise from these meetings as part of a serious drive to end all the violence which has emanated from Natal. The message has already been communicated to Inkatha that we are ready to meet Chief Buthelezi as part of a comprehensive set of agreements which must actually bring the carnage to an end.

It is however perfectly clear to us that these political efforts will fail unless that question of law and order is dealt with as a matter of urgency and is handled firmly ans effectively. The primary responsibility for this rests with the South African government. We undertake here that we will do everything in our power to engage in the political work which is a necessary part of reaching an acceptable outcome with regard to the whole issue of the conflict in Natal.

The Pretoria Minute refers to the spirit of mutual trust that exists between out two leadership collectives. To speak quite frankly, that spirit will be undermined by the absence of visible government action to end the killings in Natal and now the Transvaal, pressure is building up for us to do whatever we can to act in defence of our people, who believe that the government has abandoned them to the mercies of crazed gangs of murderers who know that they are immune from any punishment for their crimes.

Mr President:

This cannot go on. We have been and are engaged in a process which has given hope to the millions of our people and the greater numbers in the rest of the world that, at last, our beautiful country was coming out of the long years of a terrible nightmare. But today, many doubt that we are serious. Many are beginning to lose hope that we have any future different from that which has torn Lebanon apart. Many are beginning to distance themselves from the peace process to which you have contributed so much.

Whatever you might have thought of the ANC in the past. Whatever you think of us now, whatever the agreements of your party with other people in the past, whatever the confidential discussions you hold within the structures of your party and your government, none of these things can allow for a situation in which people are slaughtered like flies. Let us all do what we have to do as people of honour and integrity.

Let is never be said that we needlessly sacrificed people's lives because some political objective was seen as being more important than the existence of some innocent and harmless person somewhere in the black or white townships, suburbs and villages of Natal, the Transvaal or elsewhere in our country. The situation we are confronting demands an honest, urgent and meaningful solution.

Thank you.