26 May 1999
On Tuesday, 25 May 1999, the Durban and Coast local division of the High Court interdicted the New National Party from printing, publishing and distributing a leaflet and a poster which that party had been distributing in the Durban region alleging that Comrade Thabo Mbeki, President of the ANC, had said that the ANC does not want votes from the Indian people.
The leaflet and poster in question had first appeared in KwaZulu-Natal over the weekend of 22 to 23 May. The ANC had immediately sought and received relief from the law courts. Rather than abide by the courts the decision the New National Party (NNP) had continued to distribute the offending leaflet in Durban and its environs.
The upshot was that the ANC took legal action on 25 May. The High Court on this occasion ruled that the NNP should by 31 May show cause why it should not be cited for contempt of court. The court further ruled that the NNP surrender to the Sheriff all copies of any documents or media containing the offending allegations. The Sheriff was empowered to seize all such posters and other documents that were not surrendered within the hour.
During a television appearance on the morning of 25 May, the leader of the NNP, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, brazenly repeated this mendacious statement, offering further testimony that the KwaZulu-Natal poster was not the aberration of over-zealous NNP local activists.
Towards the end of that Tuesday, Koos van der Merwe, one of the parliamentary whips of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) made the outrageous suggestion on national radio and television, that the ongoing amnesty hearings before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had been arranged by the ANC to embarrass the IFP in the run-up to the elections.
During the course of this week the Comrade Joel Netshitenzhe, a member of the National Executive Committee of the ANC, has also had occasion to instruct attorneys to act against!! the Democratic Party (DP). In a paid radio advertisement that has been running for the past week, the DP attributes certain views to Comrade Netshitenzhe and has offered these as substantiation of its scare-mongering about the ANC's real intentions.
We cite these three instances as examples of a desperate campaign of dirty tricks, misrepresentation and outright lies which the opposition parties have resorted to in these last days of the election campaign.
While the tactics of the NNP come as no surprise given its parent parties long-standing record of malicious propaganda and incitement of fear, we are appalled that the other two parties have seen fit to descend into the gutter with the NNP.
On 20 May the ANC announced that it was taking court action against Julian Killian, the NNP's Premier candidate in Gauteng, for the grossest slanders uttered against the ANC and the Independent Electoral Commission. The Electoral Court in Bloemfontein is expected to give a ruling on this matter during the course of Wednesday 26 May.
The methods these parties have resorted to betray a deep anxiety amongst them as the date of elections approaches. More seriously, these tactics demonstrate the inability of these parties to place credible alternative policies before the electorate, hence their bid to malign the ANC by dirty tricks and lies.
We remain confident that the South African electorate will deliver the verdict about these parties of 2 June by returning the ANC to office in all nine provinces with a convincing majority.
Issued by The African National Congress
Elections Media Centre
Braamfontein.