Despite its war-talk, the ANC has decided to duck direct confrontation with Bophuthatswana.
“There is nothing we can do until after the election,” the media officer of the Western Transvaal region of the ANC, Rankoa Molefe, said this week.
“We are recruiting membership and building our structures in Bophuthatswana but we will not expose them to mass action or another Bisho” — a reference to the 1992 massacre when Ciskei police fired on demonstrators crossing the border.
Molefe’s comments would seem to confirm the view among ANC members in Bophuthatswana that the organisation is determined to tackle repression in the homeland – either directly or through the Transitional Executive Council – for fear of upsetting negotiations to get the Freedom Alliance to take part in the election.
At a meeting in Rustenberg on Sunday, on the edge of one of Bophuthatswana’s many pieces of territory in the Western Transvaal, potential voters repeatedly asked for assurance from ANC leadership that the organisation would secure their rights to political activity, electoral education and the vote in the April election.
But, even as ANC president Nelson Mandela insisted that his organisation would “sort out” Bophuthatswana, homeland authorities had thrown up roadblocks to stop people attending ANC meetings and prevented ANC national executive members from addressing gatherings on its territory.
The ANC responded by adding the problem to the TEC’s agenda. “The events of the weekend have sharply raised the need for the Independent Electoral Commission and the TEC to take decisive action on the issue of free political activity in Bophuthatswana,” said the ANC in a statement.
But on Tuesday the TEC — which only meets once a week — did not get around to discussing Bophuthatswana. In any event, the council has made it clear it is waiting for the outcome of negotiations with the FA to guide any action it may decide on. Molefe insisted the ANC had not written off the Bophuthatswana vote.
“A lot depends on the government and the TEC but Bophuthatswana is cut up and people will walk to vote.” However, activists in Bophuthatswana have made it clear they do not see ballot boxes on the borders of the homeland as a viable alternative to free political activity.