”I am not afraid that we will become a one-party state. In five years, South Africa will have a healthy democracy and economy,” former South African president FW de Klerk told the Live with Alastair Stewart Show on the ITV News Channel in the United Kingdom.
In the exclusive interview, De Klerk said: ”In five or 10 years’ time, South Africa will have a better economy and a healthier democracy than now, with greater competition between parties, and not one monolith party and a few very small minority others.”
Explaining the current political state of South Africa, De Klerk said: ”We can not afford the typical confrontational Westminster style. Parties representing important minorities need to feel that they are part of the policy-formulating process, that their concerns are being attended to.
”Within that framework I supported a government of national unity. I would have liked to see, in our final Constitution, something like a consultative council, on which smaller, but important, parties would sit together with members of the majority party in trying to work out consensus on how to tackle the big challenges which we face in South Africa.
”This was the platform of the National Party in 1999 and again now in the 2004 election and I supported it wholeheartedly.
”But after the election the National Party decided that for practical purposes it will join the ANC [African National Congress] … One clause of that agreement reads that they will — from the moment that they join the ANC — be under the discipline of the ANC [and] I could not go along with that.
”The way in which black economic empowerment is done … [it] would be done differently by the National Party, for instance. On death penalty, labour legislation and other important issues we would also have been different to the ANC.”
Commenting on the ongoing extradition case of Mark Thatcher after he was allegedly involved in a coup plot in Equatorial Guinea, De Klerk said: ”Of course I was surprised when I heard about it. In the whole of South Africa there was a sense of shock. We have very strong legislation against any South African being involved as a hired hand in this type of action. Our extradition laws are also fair.
”Not only Mark Thatcher but all other visitors can be assured of a fair hearing in our courts before any extradition can be granted. Especially from regimes like the one in Equatorial Guinea. The law must now take its course.
”My heart goes out to Mrs Thatcher. When that happens to your child, however grown up that child may be, it is a shock and a trauma. I have great sympathy for the position in which she finds herself.” — ITV News Channel