Thabo Mbeki’s pragmatic efforts to ‘lower the political temperature’ at a nati onal level have helped smooth out old enmities in KwaZulu-Natal. Eddie Koch re ports
Deputy President Thabo Mbeki played a key role in promoting the “miracle deals ” between the African National Congress and the Inkatha Freedom Party which ha ve a real chance of ending low-level civil war in KwaZulu-Natal.
IFP Secretary General Ziba Jiyane this week told the Mail & Guardian that repo rts last weekend of an imminent coalition or merger between the rival parties were premature. But he confirmed that a range of peace initiatives at provinci al level had created a spirit of rapprochement which could lead to “various st ages of future co-operation”.
Other IFP sources say that, while the peace deals were driven by the provincia l leadership of both parties, Mbeki’s pragmatic style “helped lower the politi cal temperature” in Cape Town. This ensured that old enmities between Presiden t Nelson Mandela and Home Affairs Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi were not able to disrupt the delicate negotiations taking place in Durban.
ANC provincial leader Jacob Zuma, who played a major role in bringing both par ties to the table, approached Mbeki earlier this year to complain that bellico se statements from Mandela about the Inkatha leaders were interrupting progres s and low-key parleys being held in the province between proponents of peace.
Because the president had adopted a lower leadership profile in recent months, Mbeki was able to step in with a low-key diplomatic approach that was more in
tune with developments on the ground in the province. The deputy president ha
d a series of face-to-face talks with Inkatha’s Correctional Services Minister Sipho Mzimela, and this helped to ensure that Inkatha’s national leadership i
n Cape Tow n supported the peace talks.
The M&G has established that the big breakthrough for people in the embattled province came at a series of secret parleys held over several months between t he provincial leaders of the ANC and the IFP, first at the home of Inkatha-sup porting businessman Arnold Zulman and then at the government’s Bourquin House in Durban.
The thaw in relations began with each party exploring the reasons for the schi sm in the 1970s that led, in later years, to violent confrontations between th eir members. This, says KwaZulu-Natal Premier Frank Mdlalose, involved “going back into the past and finding out where we went wrong. We presented our versi on. They presented their version and, yes, we have come to some sort of agreem ent.”
At the end of May, the delegations from both parties went to Cape Town to disc uss plans for a provincial peace summit in June. Mandela was away at the time and Mbeki hosted talks with provincial leaders from both parties, giving furth er impetus to the new diplomacy and stress on common experiences and philosoph ies of the two groups.
It appears the emerging consensus revolves around an Africanist strand of poli tical thinking that is shared by most of the politicians who brokered the deal s that have given KwaZulu-Natal its first prospect of real peace in years.
Zuma and Mbeki on the ANC’s side are said to share Africanist sympathies, whil e Jiyane, Mdlalose and former KwaZulu MEC Celani Mthetwa, also a key player, h ave similar convictions.
“A crucial development was that both Ziba Jiyane and the ANC leaders in the pr ovince are sympathetic to the idea of converting their movements into politica l parties in an Africanist way, rather than in the style of Western parties,” said one source.
The upshot is that hard-line white rightwingers who took over senior leadershi p posts within the IFP after the 1994 elections are now being marginalised by a centrist African bloc emerging within the Zulu nationalist party.
This is reflected in the way IFP central committee member Walter Felgate and p arty adviser Mario Ambrosini, now squabbling with each other over the party’s recent setbacks in the Constitutional Court, have taken a backseat role in rec ent developments.
Sources in Inkatha say there is strong grassroots dissatisfaction with white r ightwingers who got comfortable jobs after the 1994 elections, and that pressu re to remove them will increase as Inkatha’s branch and provincial party struc tures are strengthened.
Hard-line warlords in Inkatha, who rely on strong-arm tactics to rule over sha ntytown and rural communities in the province, rather than modern civic system s set up after last month’s local government elections, are also likely to be shifted sideways.
An early indication of this is the way Inkatha last week suspended the controv ersial mayor of Lindelani, Thomas Tshabalala, reportedly for leading the recen t march through Durban that led to a violent shoot-out with police.
This week’s announcement of a power-sharing deal between the IFP, ANC and mino rity parties in the Durban Metropolitan Council is another portent of of an em erging Africanist consensus in KwaZulu-Natal’s politics. Significantly, the NP has been left out of a pioneering agreement in the province’s strongest local
government forum that will act as a powerful stimulant for co-operation at ot
her levels
Dennis Nkosi, executive director of the Peace Committee that helped facilitate the peace deals, says there are three issues that have to be dealt with for t
he process to consolidate.
First, the cut-off date for amnesty needs to be renegotiated (and there are re cent signs of flexibility on this from the ANC) so that IFP and ANC officials involved in political violence after the 1994 elections can be lured into the peace process with promises of immunity.
Then the IFP needs to reconsider its refusal to participate in the truth commi ssion. By making use of the institution it could present its version of what h appened during the 1980s, thus allowing the breakthrough which took place behi nd closed doors between the parties’ leadership to be extended into a broader form of reconciliation between rank-and-file supporters of the rival organisat ions.
And ANC leaders at national and provincial levels need to “revisit” the questi on of Zulu culture and the role that traditional leaders play in local and pro vincial government. Hostility to the chiefs and their cultural authority on th e part of some ANC activists has been the root cause of some of the most most violent community conflict.