/ 22 March 1996

Rajbansi returns a hero

Amichand Rajbansi, the much-pilloried leader of the Minority Front, is back in the political limelight and being hailed as a saviour, writes Ann Eveleth

‘Bengal Tiger” Amichand Rajbansi played the key role in securing KwaZulu-Natal’s Constitution last week. Walking out of the parliamentary chamber in Pietermaritzburg last Friday morning, bleary-eyed after the 24-hour negotiations which secured a unanimous vote, one African National Congress MP remarked, astoundingly, that the Minority Front leader had “saved democracy”.

Known more for slithery alliances (he is credited with saying “I’ll double-cross that bridge when I come to it” at constitutional negotiations), laughable debating floor antics and eager participation in apartheid-era institutions like the House of Delegates, the acclamation would have come as a shock to anyone absent from the tension-filled corridors of the provincial legislature that night.

Even more shocking was that Rajbansi, the classical opportunist, once deemed “unfit for public office” by a supreme court judge, had turned down an Inkatha Freedom Party offer of a provincial cabinet post to support the ANC’s concerns. “From the beginning to the end of Thursday night, the IFP made me whatever proposals you can ever think of. [IFP constitutional adviser Mario] Ambrosini pulled me into another room and said, ‘It’s guaranteed that one minister’s post is for you’. I said I’m not prepared to buy that bait,” Rajbansi told the Mail&Guardian.

Withholding his single vote long after the National Party, Democratic Party, Pan Africanist Congress and African Christian Democratic Party had assented to vote for the IFP’s hardline Constitution, the “Bengal Tiger” forced the IFP to give substantial ground to the ANC.

“The NP was in cahoots with the IFP from the beginning. The DP’s Roger Burrows was the first to go crawling. The PAC gave Inkatha the assurance they’re voting with them at about 8:30 Thursday night. I was the only party that held out,” Rajbansi gloated.

The centre of attention for anxious ANC and IFP negotiators during the final hours of the gruelling battle, Rajbansi put forward one ANC position after another until the two parties agreed to restart bilaterals: “I stood there like an umpire and said right, my single vote stands between conflagration and reconcilation. Let’s bring the two parties together,” he said.

“I would not go into a meeting without saving my face. So I actually saved the face of the ANC. My intention was for Inkatha and the ANC to start talking. [Then] I stepped aside and, when the ANC started negotiating, it was from a position of strength. That strength was provided by me and they knew it,” declared Rajbansi with typically unapologetic immodesty.

Described by one constitutional adviser as “neither fish nor fowl”, the final constitutional text is so full of “inoperative” holes it looks like a victim of an AK-47 attack. Intact and fully operative – — if the Constitutional Court certifies it – — are the preamble, sections on the legislature, executive, finances, and a few harmless provincial powers and functions, as well as a chapter on features of the province. The rest of the Constitution, riddled with controversy, is subject to delay periods and requires special majorities to become effective, or can be frozen by special minorities.

The IFP was forced to concede on several contentious issues, including local government, the monarchy, and the structure of a new 15-member provincial unity government. Rajbansi says the major sticking point for him was King Goodwill Zwelithini’s objection to parts of the constitution: “When we met the king the previous week, he was very bitter,” he said. Most significantly, however, the IFP was forced to concede that the Constitution would also have to be consistent with the final national Constitution.

This was a major concession to the ANC, given that a March 1994 amendment to the interim Constitution deleted that requirement. The IFP would now have to give credence to the Constitution under negotiation in its absence at the Constitutional Assembly. Although it is not clear how the Constitutional Court will deal with this new requirement, the clause — – with the ANC’s significant concession that the “inoperative chapters” would remain in the body of the Constitution — finally paved the way for the multi-party agreement.

Observers credit a few subtle ego strokes from President Nelson Mandela for Rajbansi’s bold stand. Rajbansi denied Mandela had influenced his stance, but said he met the president the previous week, during his check-up at the Park Lane clinic, for “a routine meeting. Once a year I have discussion with him about minority issues. It’s an annual thing,” Rajbansi said, speaking warmly of Mandela, who “phones me every year to wish me happy new year (Diwali)”.

In contrast, Rajbansi said Buthelezi had “never” phoned to acknowledge Hindu religious holidays and “actually criticised me in his National Council some time ago because I was giving him a lot of trouble. See, I look after my people, and I’m very very hard about it,” Rajbansi retorted. Even Rajbansi’s opponents are forced to admit to his unfailing attention to his Indian constituency, and this may ultimately have played the more important role in his decision.

“You take the premier. He appoints a secretariat in his office as advisers to the police. No Indians. The next thing, he appoints a commission to investigate violence. Two whites, one African. So I asked him does Inkatha realise that Indians exist in this province? You check, all the Inkatha ministers, no Indians are employed in their offices.” Rajbansi says this is not the case within the ANC: “All three ANC ministers in the province have Indians working in their offices. Go to Mandela’s office, there are Indians,” he added. Ultimately, Rajbansi sees the IFP’s problem as one of strategy: “The trouble with them is they don’t have political philosophers. They had Ambrosini in the front line. He’s a political idiot.”

Suggesting his opponents were an easy game, Rajbansi said: You can make out a footballer who learns to play football and a footballer who is born to play. I am not a made politician, I am a born politician,” he declared.