A caller to a local radio station last week suggested that the franchise be taken away from white people for a period so that the black majority can get on with the business of political contestation free from the bogey of race.
Her reasoning is that after 10 years, once the playing fields have been levelled, whites can have the vote back and spread their support among the black-led parties that emerge.
The caller was greeted with laughter and derision, but beholding the scenario in the Western Cape this week one wonders if there is not the germ of a good idea in that suggestion. There is mounting concern that after our second democratic election, South Africa is more racially divided than ever. The gulf in our politics is developing into a fundamental disagreement on what politics and government is all about.
For the previously disadvantaged majority, their vote and the government that it brought to power mean development, jobs, houses, and a better life for all. The state is an instrument of delivery. The raison d’tre of the opposition is about preventing the majority party from abusing its power.
Both objectives are worthy and should be entrenched in any democratic system. But in South Africa, with our history of division and racial exclusion, they are being seen as mutually exclusive. The Western Cape is a textbook example.
The Democratic Party and the New National Party want to prevent the African National Congress from acquiring a monopoly of power in the country, and they are correct to point out that it is not the majority party in the province. But the practical effect of this worthy position is that the most marginalised people in the Western Cape, the Africans, who have long been kept from any economic or political share of the province, are excluded once again.
The subliminal message is that the whites, and a large section of the coloureds, have ganged up to “fight blacks”.
Overcoming this racialisation of our politics is the greatest challenge facing DP leader Tony Leon when he takes up his seat as leader of the opposition in Parliament next week. If the political debate is perceived as being between the black majority represented by the ANC, and a white minority out to block transformation, the very notion of parliamentary opposition will be discredited.
We have always believed, along with Nelson Mandela, in the ideal of a non-racial South Africa. But, like a patient who needs to detoxify before he can be cured, we must be aware of and acknowledge our diseased racial past in order to finally purge it from the political bloodstream.
Amnesty or amnesia?
If anyone is of any doubt as to the importance of the amnesty issue we would refer them to an article published in this edition (PAGE 30) by Nelson Mandela’s official biographer, Anthony Sampson, confirming a “fundamental” rift between Mandela and president-elect Thabo Mbeki over the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Madiba’s determination to fight a general amnesty.
A general amnesty would be a clear breach of South Africa’s obligations under international law and as such can be ruled out.
But presumably the main reason why Mbeki wants to extend or broaden the ambit of the amnesty process is to “clear” Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi and thereby consolidate the peace initiative in KwaZulu-Natal. It is self-evidently invidious that a man who is, by popular account, about to become deputy president should continue to have the truth commission verdict stand against him – that he is guilty of “gross” abuses of human rights.
To some extent we can understand Mbeki’s impulse towards appeasement in KwaZulu-Natal. After all, the truth commission itself – by its own confession – was too scared to subpoena the chief to answer the charges against him. Our Constitution guarantees equality before the law, however. And that means that an amnesty deal with Buthelezi would needs be extended to others involved in gross abuses of human rights, most notably “the generals” -the senior officers in the old security forces.
It has been reported that the National Director of Public Prosecutions, Bulelani Ngcuka – already deserving of admiration in his new post – is devoting considerable energy to the pursuit of the generals for apartheid-era crimes, doubtless with good effect. If this is the case then it can be assumed that the generals will be anxious to be cut into a new amnesty deal.
The form such a deal would take is not clear, but it can be speculated that it might be by way of the reopening of amnesty deadlines, or enabling political organisations to make application on a collective basis.
Whatever the device, we would urge Mbeki not to take such a step. In the first place we do not consider that Buthelezi should be allowed to assume high office without the fullest examination of the charges levelled against him. And we would regard a compromise with the “old guard” in the military – which has shown such contempt for the truth commission and the new South Africa – as nothing less than a betrayal of the liberation struggle which has made Mbeki’s assumption of the presidency of South Africa possible.