Marion Edmunds
SLY to the last, the National Party attempted to win constitutional guarantees for special pensions for long-serving parliamentarians, just before the end of the constitutional negotiations.
It was with some surprise that the waiting hordes of journalists heard, in the last nail- biting night, that the NP had added a new proposal on the table for discussion, along with the property, labour relations and education clauses.
While the latter three were matters of principle, this new one was a matter of pocket. During the multi-party negotiations in Kempton Park, the NP MPs negotiated constitutional guarantees for pensions for those who had served in the old apartheid Parliament, and to balance it out, those who had served the ANC in Umkhonto weSizwe. In effect, the guarantee means that many Nat MPs who served in the last Parliament and are in the new one are receiving double pay — a pension for apartheid days service as well as their current salary package. The NP wanted a guarantee in the final Constitution that this double privilege would not be taken away, once the interim Constitution fell away.
The Nats were hoping that by introducing this proposal so late, and with everyone so desperate for agreement, the ANC would concede their wish to avoid a deadlock.
ANC sources said that they called the Nats’ bluff on that Tuesday night, challenging them to force a deadlock on a matter of pensions, and to take the consequences. At that stage, the NP took the proposal off the table, knowing that the adoption of the Constitution would overshadow this small incident, and that it was unlikely to make headline news.
“You’re right, it doesn’t look good,” said an NP source late Tuesday.