Howard Barrell President Thabo Mbeki is driving a R6- million project to record the history of the struggle against apartheid over the 30 years leading up to South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994. His officials in the Office of the Presidency have talked cellphone operator MTN and Nedcor, the banking group, into jointly providing R6-million over two years to finance the project. Compaq, the computer manufacturer, will be providing hardware.
The project is being headed by Ben Magubane, a social scientist and historian who spent many years in exile, and Yvonne Muthien, a sociologist who completed a doctorate at Oxford University in the 1980s. Magubane and Muthien, both of whom are considered in academic circles to be close to the African National Congress, left the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) earlier this year. Magubane was contracted by the HSRC as chief research specialist, while Muthien was executive director of the democracy and governance group at the HSRC. A new body, the South African Democracy Education Trust, has been set up to oversee the project. Essop Pahad, the Minister in the Office of the Presidency, is leading the project on Mbeki’s behalf. Nedcor has given the project working space at its Pretoria Central branch – in precisely the area occupied by the ANC underground operative Klaas de Jonge, a Dutchman, when he holed up in the Netherlands’ embassy in Pretoria from mid- 1986 to mid-1987 to evade security police. The project will document developments between 1964, when militant opposition to apartheid had been smashed, and the remarkable process of negotiations that began in secret in the late 1980s and culminated in the ANC’s victory in South Africa’s first free election in 1994. It is understood that, after an approach from the presidency, MTN chair Saki Macozoma, its chief executive Bob Chaphe and its corporate relations executive Jacques Sellschop discussed the project with Nedcor chief executive Richard Laubscher and Nedcor’s assistant general manager Ivan May, and decided to oblige. Funding on the original proposal was pruned down to a total of R6-million.
Others currently giving early shape to the project have included Lieutenant General Andrew Masondo, a former Umkhonto weSizwe political commissar now serving in the South African National Defence Force and Vincent Maphai, chair of the SABC board. May and Sellschop confirmed details of the project to the Mail & Guardian this week. Sellschop said that, if the project went beyond two years and needed additional funding, MTN and Nedcor would consider helping out. Responding to the suggestion that some may see the project as ANC-dominated and intended to advance ANC perspectives and mythologies, May said: “It is written into the deed of trust that the project will be non-partisan. We raised this issue upfront at the first meeting. It was immediately picked up by Pahad, who also said it should not be a partisan project. From the business point of view, we don’t want to be seen as party political.” May said: “As a funder, we have to rely on the integrity of the researchers – on academic freedom and integrity.” Sellschop echoed May. In response to the suggestion that some may see MTN’s and Nedcor’s funding of the project as an attempt to ingratiate themselves with the ruling party, Sellschop said: “We have total confidence not only in our own integrity but also in the president’s. We are facilitating the recording of history. We believe it is important to record it for future generations while many of those involved in the 1960s are still alive.”