council’
KILLING two birds with one stone, the African National Congress is hoping to satisfy both the volkstaters’ and the National Party’s demands for constitutional protection for Afrikaners by creating cultural councils, and writing them into the final Constitution.
Negotiations between the ANC and the Freedom Front (FF) on the one hand, and the ANC and the NP on the other, have developed over recent weeks, and are, according to the FF, reaching a head this week, with ANC members flying back to Johannesburg to check formulations for the final draft of the Constitution with their National Working Committee. Drafts are to be put before negotiators this weekend and discussed at the Arniston bosberaad next week.
The ANC is in a good position to play the FF and the NP off against each other because each party is negotiating a substantially different version of the cultural council with the ANC.
The FF’s chief negotiator Corne Mulder was this week upbeat for the first time in months, saying his party was making progress with the ANC on the issue of Afrikaner self- determination, one of the most vexing disputes inherited from the interim Constitution.
“Cultural councils will be part of a whole package aimed at the protection of the Afrikaner. I am confident that we will be able to sell the package to our constituency,” Mulder said this week.
Mulder said the cultural councils could operate on local, provincial and national government level. He said it was possible that through them, white Afrikaners could be given a voice in the new National Council of Provinces — which is to replace the Senate — and that the principle of self- determination could be enshrined and fleshed out in the Bill of Rights.
On the demand for a territorial homeland, Mulder said the FF realised it was premature to expect a Volkstaat right now, but it was working on consitutional provisions which could make a territorial volkstaat possible at a later stage.
The NP has taken several steps out of the laager, demanding cultural councils not just for Afrikaans speakers, but for all language groups in South Africa where they are wanted. However, NP secretary general Roelf Meyer is tentative about progress in negotiations, saying that he was still waiting for a response from the ANC on proposals. In a submission to the Constitutional Assembly, the NP suggests a special commission that would promote the diversity of cultures in South Africa and liase with the cultural councils, which would be fixed by law into the fabric of South African society, at every level of government.
The cultural councils could insist, according to the proposal, on a right to have a major say in mother-tongue education at all levels, language issues generally, the fate of monuments, museums and cultural assets. It could also intervene on the state media and issues having an impact on the development of a cultural group. The councils would be partially state-funded, but would have the right to raise money from their members and to receive donations.
Meyer denies that the suggestion of cultural councils is a bid to protect Afrikaans culture in particular.
“We are not negotiating it with any special interest for Afrikaners. This is not a bid for preferential treatment for any specific language groups and must be seen in the context of equal treatment for all,” he said. Special treatment for cultural groups flies in the face of the ANC’s much-publicised ideology of “new patriotism”, which prescribes a rainbow nation in which all are equal.