Gaye Davis reports on the dramatic scenes behind this week’s constitutional impasse
SCENES of high political drama played out in Parliament’s old Assembly chamber early on Thursday morning when African National Congress negotiators declared deadlocks with the National Party on single-medium instruction, property rights and the employers’ right to lockout.
The crisis, culminating at the end of a marathon all-night session of the Constitutional Committee, brought the process to the brink of collapsing into deadlock- breaking mechanisms provided for in the interim Constitution – setting negotiators face-to-face with the possibility of the country having to go to a referendum.
The ANC was committed to going the referendum route if the deadlock could not be broken, ANC MP Carl Niehaus said on Thursday. “Warning lights are flicking. We feel so strongly about it that we are prepared to go that route, rather than compromise,” he told the Mail & Guardian.
Efforts to resolve the impasse were to resume on Thursday after party caucuses. The Constitutional Committee was to reconvene on Friday to consider ANC proposals on the issues. The parties agreed to try to resolve the three outstanding issues before 10am on Friday.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has meanwhile called a special meeting of its central executive committee for Monday, when it will consider the progress made. Cosatu secretary general Sam Shilowa told the M&G the federation would mobilise its members if there was no agreement, focusing action – in tandem with the ANC – on a referendum.
Exhausted negotiators left the chamber around 5.30am on Thursday with a warning from a disappointed Constitutional Assembly co-chair Cyril Ramaphosa ringing in their ears: “The route we may embark upon in the next 24 hours, if we do not reach agreement, could well spell disaster for our country. The entire world had hoped we would draft a Constitution in peace,” he said.
After ANC negotiators declared they were unable to reach agreement with the NP on the three issues, NP negotiator Roelf Meyer said his party believed resolution was possible, and declared the NP’s commitment to reaching agreement. His proposal for a 24-hour adjournment, “to put in every effort on resolving the outstanding matters”, was carried.
ANC negotiator Valli Moosa expressed doubts, however. Moosa said for the ANC, the three rights – all issues around which apartheid had revolved – were central to South Africa’s transformation. To compromise would be “a betrayal of victims of apartheid”.
Moosa was no longer certain agreement was possible. The ANC would table amendments on the issues on Friday: “If there is no agreement, we will in any case ask for a decision so that the Bill tabled does not have blank spaces.”
When the Constitution is tabled for the vote, it will be voted on as a whole, not clause by clause. Should the NP vote against it, the ANC will still be able to reach a 51% majority. In terms of the deadlock-breaking mechanisms, the Bill then goes to a panel of experts, which must present a new draft within 30 days.
If a fresh vote still fails to reach the required two-third’s majority, the ANC will have the option of drawing up its own text. All deals and compromises reached between the parties so far would, in this event, probably fall away.
Adoption of the new text would require only a simple majority. It would then have to be certified by the Constitutional Court as compatible with the 34 principles in the interim Constitution. If certified, it would then go before the country in a referendum, and would be adopted if there was a 60% majority.
Ramaphosa started sifting through the deadlock-breaking mechanisms at 3am on Thursday, “when it became clear to me these outstanding matters were becoming unresolvable”, putting the process in the “danger zone”.
He warned that if negotiators took “a wrong turn in the next 24 hours”, they “could do something to regret for many months, if not years, to come”.
The country’s transition was still fragile, he added. Resorting to the deadlock-breaking mechanism had implications for the country in terms of the economy, race relations and reconciliation: “All sorts of things start coming undone – the centre may not hold.”
Some might think it “fashionable” to hold to a position “and even become a bit arrogant and say to hell with them”, but it was time to think about South Africa, he said. “For me this is a very sad moment. One had hoped we would never reach this stage.” Based on his experience over the past months of the spirit of give and take in resolving problems, he had been “brimming with optimism and sending out positive signals that we would resolve our problems”.
Earlier, Ramaphosa listened to ANC negotiators reporting on the deadlocks. MP Blade Nzimande said the ANC was trying to accommodate every language group in the country with a clause allowing education in the language of choice where reasonably practicable. The NP’s desire to have single-medium instruction entrenched signalled a return to Verwoerdian apartheid.
Baleka Kgositsile said the NP was not negotiating in good faith on the property clause: political agreement was reached last Sunday based on a formulation agreed to at the Arniston bosberaad two weeks ago.
Willie Hofmeyr said the ANC had tried to accommodate the NP on the lockout clause, as well as its fears on the other issues. The deadlocks all focused on where the NP was trying to depart from internationally accepted rights in a bid to preserve privilege.
Roelf Meyer told the gathering the transparency of the Consitution process meant both the ANC and NP had come under pressure from constituencies outside the Assembly and that parties alone were not to blame for the impasse.
He told the M&G the ANC and Cosatu had been unable to agree on the lockout clause, an assertion denied by ANC MP Phillip Dexter, one of the South African Communist Party representatives in alliance talks on the issue.
“The NP’s game all along was to try to split the alliance on the issue because it knew the ANC was under pressure from employers as well as from Cosatu. The game has been to drive a wedge between the ANC and Cosatu.
“The leadership of the ANC has been absolutely firm on the issue. It has considered ways of dealing with the problem, but will not put lockout into the Constitution, whether in drag or through the back door.”
Shilowa said alliance talks had been easier than those with ANC negotiators who were “in the heat of things”. He said: “We were dealing with a situation where the ANC would want to ensure that a referendum would not be a result of lack of trying (to reach agreement) on the ANC’s part.”