The controversial Promotion of Orderly Politics Bill will almost certainly be changed. Instead legislation – similar to that of the United States – is likely to be proposed by the joint parliamentary committee that will reclaim non-profit organisations to disclose all sources of foreign funding and to have audited accounts. The committee is meeting again to day to discuss the matter.
Proceedings of parliamentary committees are secret. No indication has been given yet on whenthe proposed legislation will be published, nor have any details of the new measure been published. But a statement by Minister of Justice Kobie Coetsee, in the pro-Nationalist press this week, hinted a new approach was on the cards.
Coetsee stressed that the government welcomed foreign funds for upliftment projects and that the draft Bill was only a working document. There was, however widespread unhappiness about provisions of the proposed Bill and it has been felt if the government wanted to stop foreign funding for particular organisations, the Affected Organisations Act and other lawsshould be used.
The government has also come under enormous international pressure to scrap the Bill. Only two days ago, the South African ambassador to Bonn was called to the West German Foreign Ministry to be told of the European Community's (EC) concern about the Bill.
State secretary Jeurgen Sudhoff told ambassador Willem Relief the legislation would make a peaceful solution in South Africa more difficult. Earlier the same day, the West Germany foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, issued a warning on the same issue in unusually strong diplomatic language. "Whoever wants to hinder these measures (aid to anti-apartheid groups) through law must know that he is pitting himself against the 12 European Community countries. "We will not put up with Pretoria prescribing either the kind or extent of our assistance to victims of apartheid and their organisations," he said in an address to ambassadors of OAU countries in Bonn.
The West German statements, are important, because not only docs Germany have a relatively conservative government with some influence in Pretoria, but Germany speaks for all 12 EC countries. Sir Geoffrey Howe, the British foreign secretary, said last month his government would "do its utmost to keep up its aid programmes for victims of apartheid. A number of countries, including Britain and the US, have leaned strongly on Pretoria on this Bill. It has, for example, been repeatedly cited by Washingtonians lobbying for the comprehensive sanctions Bill now before the US congress.
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
