KwaZulu-Natal Premier S’bu Ndebele has questioned whether reconciliation among blacks is proving ‘more difficult than fighting the oppression of apartheid†and he has blamed the divided leadership for infusing the province with ‘hatredâ€.
He was speaking in the provincial legislature last Friday following a resolution to finalise the provincial Constitution, which has been delayed for eight years because of tensions between the African National Congress and the Inkatha Freedom Party.
His comments about intra-racial reconciliation were directed at his beleaguered relationship with former premier and IFP leader Lionel Mtshali.
‘The most difficult of all my relationships is with the leader of the IFP [Mtshali]. I have not been able to overcome my own prejudices in this relationship to say, ‘Look, can we sit down and discuss this thing’,†he said.
‘I wonder if it will prove to have been easier to fight the oppression of apartheid and to have black and white reconciliation than to have African and African reconciliation.â€
His speech was also a conciliatory appeal to other party leaders to address inherent racial and political prejudices among them, which have thwarted the transition in KwaZulu-Natal for the past 10 years, he said.
‘You can go out here in the street, put on an ANC T-shirt, put on an IFP T-shirt, people do not mind. There is no hatred out there.
‘It is [the provincial leadership] that transports that hatred,†he said.
Ndebele also said that Democratic Alliance provincial party leader Roger Burrows ‘fears†him: ‘Each time I want to discuss with [Burrows] he thinks that I am trying to canvass him to take this point and so forth. It is wrong because he is a very mature politician and leader.â€
According to Burrows: ‘As far as references to the DA and to me individually are concerned, I think — he wants to repair bridges that might have been damaged when he was leading the ANC in the struggle towards getting elected.â€
However, he continued: ‘I know that the ANC is worried that any approach to us would be seen as weakness on their part, given the national conflict between President Thabo Mbeki and [national DA leader] Tony Leon. In this light, they would rather tough it out.â€
An ad hoc committee formed to resolve differences over the provincial Constitution met for the first time on Thursday.
This follows months of mudslinging between the ANC and the IFP over the draft, which the ANC wrote and the IFP rejected because of Ndebele’s attempt to pass a Bill that would have enabled other political parties only to make amendments to the ANC draft but not to include their own sections.
Since then Ndebele has been forced to compromise because a provincial Constitution can only be passed by a legislature if two-thirds of its members vote in favour of the Bill. This means that the ANC and the IFP need each other to obtain the required majority and to avoid a stalemate.