Faced with imminent closure due to lack of funds, peace workers are rebelling , writes Stefaans Brummer
THE national peace structures — which have taken much of the credit for the decrease in violence — are on the verge of disbanding while government dithers on a request for additional funding.
Sources say all staff of local and regional peace committees are about to receive two-months notice of retrenchment — a clear sign that the national structure, the Peace Secretariat, has all but thrown in the towel. Secretariat executive director Nick Grobler yesterday denied it was imminent.
Meanwhile senior members and staffers at regional and local level, worried about the effect of abandoning their work, have embarked on a last-ditch “revolution”, bypassing the secretariat, and are delivering a memorandum and petition to government early next week.
The peace structures’ woes stem from a massive budgetary shortfall — in the region of R35-million — caused largely by unexpected expenses incurred during the election period. The shortfall is roughly equal to the government allocation from the Home Affairs budget in the 1994/5 financial year.
A high-powered lobby group composed, amongst others, of secretariat chairman Dr Antonie Gildenhuys and John Hall, chairman of the sister body the National Peace Committee, lobbied senior national and provincial government leaders in the run- up to last week’s Home Affairs budget reading, asking for more funding.
While Home Affairs Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi and his deputy, Penuell Maduna, reaffirmed the need for the peace structures during the budget debate, they kept mum on the request for more money. Home Affairs has carried the peace structures’ budget since taking it over from Justice.
The Mail & Guardian learnt this week that the Ministry of Home Affairs had withdrawn a request to cabinet to approve the additional funding pending greater clarity on the future of the peace structures, and under which government department they would resort.
A secretariat spokesman said this week that plans were in the offing to send notice terminating the two- month contracts of all peace structure employees. The spokesman said all that could stop it was a clear and urgent signal from government that it was prepared to bail out the structures.
But Grobler said: “The scope of the continuation of the local and regional committees depends on how they can cope within the (already) allocated budget.” He said notice would be given if government decided the peace structures could not continue. He said some regions could possibly not survive after October.
Great unhappiness has reigned in the local and regional structures during the process of lobbying to government, and some regions openly rebelled. Sources said last month the structures received a request from the secretariat to submit names of two- thirds of staff for retrenchment. At least two of the larger regions, Wits-Vaal and the Western Cape, refused to comply.
A source said senior members of the regional and local peace committees were “actively involved” in drawing up a memorandum, to be delivered to government early next week, in which they spell out their vision for the restructuring and future of the peace structures.
The memorandum would include a petition from staff members asking for “a continuation of their peace work in the light of the situation in the country and the process of mediation that is underway at grassroots level in communities”.
He said the composers of the memorandum felt the lobby by Gildenhuys, Hall and others had been “ineffective” as “no clear vision on the peace structures’ new role under a new government” had been conveyed. He said the memorandum would propose that the “burdensome” secretariat bureaucracy be disbanded and replaced by a small and democratically elected national committee, which would have representatives from political parties and civil society.
The source said although the secretariat had acknowledged the need for a smaller national structure, it had not “looked properly at demands for democratisation”.
He said the memorandum also suggested that the peace structures gained more independence by greater emphasis on them raising money from business and community sources.
He emphasised the need for a continued role for the local and regional peace committees, saying they were involved in mediation at local government negotiation forums, community policing forums and reconstruction and development forums.
The demand by the local and regional structures for restructuring and democratisation stems from a national general meeting of peace structure representatives about a month before the elections, where resolutions to that effect were taken.
Grobler said he was not aware of the memorandum and petition from the structures, “but I can understand it”. However, he said it was “unreasonable to the lobby group”, as the group had been mandated by the regions, not the secretariat.