Peacemaking and Peacebuilding in South Africa: The National Peace Accord, 1991-1994 1847012566, 9781847012562

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Praise for Peacemaking and Peacebuilding in South Africa: The National Peace Accord, 1991–1994 It’s the hitherto untold story of people who, finding themselves unexpectedly together and called upon without precedent or guidelines to prepare a safe climate for negotiations which in turn would be without precedent or guidelines, creatively and imaginatively invented pragmatic solutions. A strong story, strongly told by one of the key participants, it not only provides a key ingredient for understanding how precarious the transformation from apartheid to non-racial democracy was in South Africa, but offers rich lessons for securing foundations for peace processes throughout the world. Albie Sachs, former Judge on South Africa’s Constitutional Court Seldom has there been a political transition so profound as South Africa’s transition from racist apartheid to democracy. South Africa’s transition was all the more remarkable – and at the time surprising – for being largely peaceful. In this compelling and important book, Liz Carmichael offers a definitive account of the National Peace Accord which paved the way to peaceful transition. Combining rich insights from archives, interviews, and her own personal experience working with local peace committees, with a deep understanding of the difficult politics of peace-making, this book tells a gripping and ultimately hopeful story, one full of insight that reaches well beyond South Africa. It offers illumination for anyone concerned about peaceful political transitions. This is a book of genuine and lasting value, that demands to be read, and whose lessons must be learned. Alex Bellamy, University of Queensland This is a timely book. It closes a gap in knowledge about what exactly happened during the period of the National Peace Accord and what its contribution was to the democratic order that emerged. There are fascinating insights into how the idea of ‘peace’ was contested, and the notion of peacebuilding as hybrid, driven both from below and above. This book shows how ordinary citizens and concerned individuals play a part in facilitating peace processes. It helps to recast the perspective from a single narrative of a major political party that delivered change, to the complexity of political change as shaped by multiple actors with different perspectives and skills, but a shared interest in building a stable future. I really enjoyed reading this. Mzukisi Qobo, University of the Witwatersrand The National Peace Accord brought us from a life of violence under apartheid to a multifaceted quilt of warring parties working together to save lives and lay the foundation for South Africa’s transition to a peaceful democracy in 1994. This book tells how it was done. Jay Naidoo, General Secretary of COSATU 1985–1993

This book offers what few have accomplished: a nuanced and overarching exploration of both the promise and challenges of moving a whole society from protracted violent conflict toward enduring peace. Perhaps the most compelling aspect of this extraordinary book is found in its multi-faceted understanding of what is required of a transformational process, and always with the capacity to look back at the before, during, and after the formal accords were signed. The detail, integrity of research, and comprehensive nature make this a must-read for those interested in peace with justice. John Paul Lederach, University of Notre Dame A remarkable book that is enormously important for our history, and that will inform and inspire many other future peace processes. In 1994, South Africa and the world witnessed what Desmond Tutu called a miracle, a negotiated transition of power from a rogue Apartheid regime to a free multiracial democratically elected government headed by Nelson Mandela. This book explains how government, business, religious bodies and wider civil society worked together in local and regional peace committees across South Africa to keep the transition as peaceful as possible. As Liz Carmichael establishes without a doubt in this first full account, this feat would not have been possible without the National Peace Accord. Cedric de Coning, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) and ACCORD Documents an important aspect of the history of South Africa’s transition to democracy and describes the interaction between South African civil society and its political actors in enabling its peace process. … a useful resource not only for scholars in peace studies and South African history, but also for institutions and actors facing the task of making/building/forming peace. Andries Odendaal, Institute of Justice and Reconciliation, Cape Town Liz Carmichael’s masterly account of the National Peace Accord shows the central importance of everyday actors – engaged citizens, church, union and business leaders – in building lasting peace in South Africa. … Through interviews with key players and unearthing a little-known literature, Carmichael provides a compelling and provocative account of that critical period. This deepens our understanding of the peacemaking process in South Africa and highlights the vital role of everyday peacebuilders around the world. Phil Clark, SOAS University of London An important contribution that not only provides a comprehensive account of the complexities of peacemaking and peacebuilding processes, but also adds considerable detail to the historical record about South Africa’s transition from apartheid rule to democracy. Importantly, it not only includes the insights and views of the elites, but also those ordinary peacebuilders who were at the coalface of making and constructing peace in South Africa during the turbulent 1980s and 1990s. Guy Lamb, Stellenbosch University South Africa owes Dr Carmichael an enormous debt of gratitude for documenting, in such fascinating detail, this significant piece of South African history. Val Pauquet, National Peace Committee and Secretariat, 1991–1994

Related James Currey titles on South Africa South Africa. The Present as History: From Mrs Ples to Mandela & Marikana John S. Saul & Patrick Bond Liberation Movements in Power: Party & State in Southern Africa Roger Southall The New Black Middle Class in South Africa Roger Southall Mandela’s Kinsmen: Nationalist Elites & Apartheid’s First Bantustan Timothy Gibbs The Road to Soweto: Resistance & the Uprising of 16 June 1976 Julian Brown Markets on the Margins: Mineworkers, Job Creation & Enterprise Development Kate Philip Township Violence & the End of Apartheid: War on the Reef Gary Kynoch Limpopo’s Legacy: Student Politics & Democracy in South Africa Anne K. Heffernan Cyril Ramaphosa: The Road to Presidential Power Anthony Butler The Vaal Uprising of 1984 & the Struggle for Freedom in South Africa Franziska Rueedi Marikana: A People’s History Julian Brown Whites and Democracy in South Africa Roger Southall Red Road to Freedom: A History of the South African Communist Party 1921 – 2021 Tom Lodge

Peacemaking and Peacebuilding in South Africa The National Peace Accord, 1991–1994

Liz Carmichael Foreword by Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu

JAMES CURREY

James Currey is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge Suffolk IP12 3DF (GB) www.jamescurrey.com and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue Rochester, NY 14620–2731 (US) www.boydellandbrewer.com © E. D. H. Carmichael 2022 First published 2022 The right of E. D. H. Carmichael to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-84701-256-2 ( James Currey hardcover) ISBN 978-1-84701-337-8 ( James Currey Africa-only paperback) ISBN 978-1-78744-793-6 ( James Currey ePDF) ISBN 978-1-80010-386-3 ( James Currey ePUB) Cover photograph: Peace Monitor Victor Mpahleni of Vosloorus shepherding ANC rally-goers in Katlehong, May 1993. (Sunday Times, 30/5/93, photo Cecil Sols; by permission of Arena Holdings)

To those who negotiated or worked under the National Peace Accord and all who seek to make and build peace

Contents List of Illustrations

xi

List of Abbreviations

xiii

Glossary

xviii

Acknowledgements

xix

Note on Nomenclature

xx

Transition Timeline

xxi

Foreword by Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu

xxv

Introduction

1

PART ONE: Peacemaking, Peacebuilding, and the South African Conflict 1 Peacemaking and Peacebuilding: Situating South Africa

7

2 South Africa’s Fractured Rainbow

17

3 Repression, Reform, Resistance, and Grassroots War

33

PART T WO: Peacemaking 4 Churches, Business, and Secret Conversations

49

5 De Klerk Becomes President, Mandela Walks Free

77

6 Deadlock and the President’s Summit

94

7 Convening the Parties

111

8 Negotiating the National Peace Accord: The Process

124

9 Negotiating the National Peace Accord: The Agreements

144

10 Signing up to Peace: The National Peace Convention

166

ix

Contents

x

PART THREE: Peacebuilding 11 National Peace Committee: Promoting Peace

201

12 National Peace Secretariat: Getting to Grassroots

236

13 Mobilizing the People, Making Peace Cool

252

14 Peace Monitoring: Building Peace on the Streets

290

15 First Explorations in Reconstruction and Development (SERD)

329

16 Building Peace in the Regions I: Natal/KwaZulu, Wits/Vaal

352

17 Building Peace in the Regions II: The Cape, OFS, and Transvaal

379

18 The Goldstone Commission: Seeking Truth, Recommending Peace

402

19 The Police Board, Community Policing, and CPFs

424

20 A Role in Future Peacebuilding?

434

Conclusion: Impact and Unfinished Business

451

Bibliography

461

Index

469

Illustrations Full credit details are provided in the captions to the images in the text. The author and publisher are grateful to all the institutions and individuals for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are offered for any omission, and the publisher will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions.

Map 11.1 Map showing the eleven regions under the National Peace Accord, and the four ‘independent states’ reincorporated into South Africa in 1994

202

Figures (organograms) 11.1 Organogram of the peace structures 1991–92

200

11.2 Organogram of the peace structures 1993–94

200

Photographs 7.1

The ‘Committee of Twelve’ facilitators, 22 June 1991

10.1 The ‘main’ signatories of the National Peace Accord: President F. W. de Klerk, Nelson Mandela, Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, 14 September 1991

118

188

11.1 Montage of a few among the thousands of peacemakers. Left to right, from top: Antonie Gildenhuys, John Hall, Mvume Dandala, Aziz Pahad, Val Pauquet, Bulelwa Mdoko, Senzo Mfayela, Herman Fourie, David ‘Slovo’ Matlhanye (Makhado), Peterson Phoswa, Hannes Siebert, Malibongwe Sopangisa, Dawn Lindberg, Barbara Nussbaum, Mntomuhle ‘B’ Khawula, Iqbal Motala, Patience Pashe, Con Roux, Neil Naidoo, Susan Collin Marks 203 11.2 NPA facilitators after meeting King Zwelithini, 15 April 1994

234

13.1 ‘Peace Now …’, the first advertisement, Christmas 1991

256

xi

xii

Illustrations

13.2 ‘Peace in our Land’, the new aspirational slogan for 1993, and new Peace Doves symbol, March 1993

267

13.3 The three Chairs, John Hall, Richard Goldstone, Antonie Gildenhuys, releasing white doves at the launch of the Peace Doves symbol, 18 March 1993 267 13.4 ‘Bloemfontein for Peace’ balloon, with the Mayor and VIPs on City Hall roof, 1 June 1993 269 13.5 Wits/Vaal peace monitors commence a seventeen-day peace walk from Johannesburg to Durban, Peace Day, 2 September 1993

273

13.6 Peace Soccer, Murchison, Port Shepstone on Peace Day, 2 September 1993

274

13.7 ‘Peace is Cool’, competition-winning picture by Ally Papa Mathibela of Potgietersrus, City Press, 12 December 1993 276 13.8 Students Neziwe Ngubelanga and Ncumisa Deline promote the Port Elizabeth Run for Peace, 29 September 1993 278 13.9 Northern Transvaal Regional Youth Peace Rally, Laudium, Pretoria, 12 September 1993 278 14.1 Thin Orange Line: Peace monitors separate IFP and ANC marchers, Katlehong, Sharpeville Day, 21 March 1993 293 14.2 Bishop Peter Storey and Soweto peace monitors, Soweto, Election Day 1994

322

14.3 The OFS sub-regional coordinators, April 1994

326

16.1 ISU Casspir and the author, near M1 Hostel, Alexandra, 25 September 1992

367

16.2 Alexandra ICC (LDRC) at the planning weekend, Garden Lodge, 12–13 September 1992

369

Abbreviations AE

African Enterprise

AFM

Apostolic Faith Mission

AHI

Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut (Afrikaans Commercial Institute)

AK-47, AK

Kalashnikov assault rifle

ANC

African National Congress

ANCYL

ANC Youth League

APLA

Azanian People’s Liberation Army (PAC’s armed wing)

AVF

Afrikaner Volksfront

AWB

Afrikanerweeerstandbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement)

AZANLA

Azanian National Liberation Army (AZAPO’s armed wing)

AZAPO

Azanian People’s Organisation

C1

SB covert operations unit based at Vlakplaas

CBD

Central business district

CBM

Consultative Business Movement

CCB

Civil Cooperation Bureau (DMI covert operations unit)

CDS

Constitutional Development Service

CIS

Crime Investigating Service

Codesa

Convention for a Democratic South Africa

COMSA

Commonwealth Observer Mission in South Africa

COSAS

Congress of South African Students

COSATU

Congress of South African Trade Unions

CP

Conservative Party

CPF

Community Policing Forums

DCC

Directorate of Covert Collections (DMI covert operations unit) xiii

Abbreviations

xiv DIPI

Directorate of Internal Peace Institutions

DMI

Department of Military Intelligence

DP

Democratic Party

DRC

Dutch Reformed Church

Ds

Dominee (Latin Dominus), title for a DRC Minister (Afrikaans)

ECOMSA

European Community Observer Mission in SA

FABCOS

Foundation for African Business and Consumer Services

FEDSAL

Federation of South African Labour

HNP

Herstigte Nasionale Party

HRC

Human Rights Commission (a pre-1994 NGO)

HURISA

Human Rights Institute of South Africa

ICC

Interim Crisis Committee

IDASA

Institute for Democratic Alternatives in SA

IDT

Independent Development Trust

IEC

Independent Electoral Commission

IFP

Inkatha Freedom Party

IMSSA

Independent Mediation Service of SA

IPI

Internal Peace Institutions

ISU/ISD

Internal Stability Unit/Division: paramilitary police, formed 1991, successor to Riot Police

JMC

Joint Management Centre (regional, under NSMS)

JOC/JOCC Joint Operations (and Communication/Control) Centre KZ

KwaZulu

KZP

KwaZulu Police

KZN

KwaZulu-Natal Province (from 1994)

LDRC

Local Dispute Resolution Committee (renamed LPC in 1993)

LPC

Local Peace Committee (formerly LDRC)

MAWU

Metal and Allied Workers Union (precursor to NUMSA)

MDM

Mass Democratic Movement (= UDF, after restrictions)

MK

uMkhonto weSizwe (Spear of the Nation) ANC armed wing

Abbreviations

xv

MPNP

Multiparty Negotiating Process (Negotiating Council)

NACTU

National Council of Trade Unions (AZAPO-aligned)

NAFCOC

National African Federated Chamber of Commerce

NEC

National Executive Committee (ANC)

NEHAWU

National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union

NHK

Nederduitsche Hervormde Kerk (offshoot of DRC)

NIR

National Initiative for Reconciliation

NIS

National Intelligence Service

NK

Natal/KwaZulu Region (renamed KZN in 1994)

NMP

Nelson Mandela papers, ANC Archive, University of Fort Hare

NP

National Party (Nasionale Party)

NPA

National Peace Accord

NPAT

National Peace Accord Trust

NPC

National Peace Committee

NPI

National Peace Initiative (NPA negotiation process)

NPKF

National Peacekeeping Force

NPS

National Peace Secretariat

NSMS

National Security Management System

NUM

National Union of Mineworkers

NUMSA

National Union of Metal Workers of SA

OAU

Organisation of African Unity

OAUOMSA Organisation of African Unity Observer Mission in SA OFS

Orange Free State

PAC

Pan Africanist Congress

PRO

Police Reporting Officer

PWV

Pretoria/Witwatersrand/Vereeniging area (later Gauteng Province)

RDP

Reconstruction and Development Programme

RDRC

Regional Dispute Resolution Committee (renamed RPC in 1993)

RPC

Regional Peace Committee (formerly RDRC)

xvi

Abbreviations

RPS

Regional Peace Secretariat

SABC

South African Broadcasting Corporation

SAAF

South African Air Force

SACC

South African Council of Churches

SACCAWU South African Commercial Catering and Allied Workers Union SACCOLA South African Consultative Committee on Labour Affairs SACOB

South African Chamber of Business

SACP

South African Communist Party

SACS

South African Communication Service

SADF

South African Defence Force

SAFCON

South Africa Foundation for Conciliation

SAIRR

South African Institute of Race Relations

SANCO

South African National Civic Organization

SANDF

South African National Defence Force (from 27/4/94)

SAP

South African Police

SAPA

South African Press Association

SAPS

South African Police Service (from 27/4/94)

SARCC

South African Rail Commuter Corporation

SB

Security Branch, Special Branch (SAP intelligence)

SDU

Self-defence Unit

SEIFSA

Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of SA (employers)

SERD

Socio-economic Reconstruction and Development

SGT

Self-governing Territory (non-independent ‘bantustan’, ‘homeland’)

SPU

Self Protection Unit

SSC

State Security Council (SVR in Afrikaans)

TBVC States ‘Independent’ ‘homelands’: Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda, Ciskei TEC

Transitional Executive Council

TRC

Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Abbreviations

xvii

UCT

University of Cape Town

UDF

United Democratic Front (anti-apartheid coalition formed 1983)

UNDP

United Nations Development Programme

UNHCR

United Nations High Commission for Refugees

UNOMSA

United Nations Observer Mission in SA

UNSC

United Nations Security Council

UN S-G

United Nations Secretary General

UNISA

University of South Africa

USIP

United States Institute of Peace

UWC

University of the Western Cape

UWUSA

United Workers’ Union of SA (IFP-aligned)

WARC

World Alliance of Reformed Churches

WCC

World Council of Churches

WFP

Women for Peace

WG

Working Group (WG1, etc)

WOSA

Workers Organisation for Socialist Action (far left-wing union)

Glossary Amakhosi Askari

Chiefs Former liberation movement member, ‘turned’ to work for apartheid security forces (‘soldier’ in Swahili) Assegai Short stabbing spear Boer Farmer, referring to Afrikaners Casspir Armoured personnel carrier (landmine-protected) Combi Minibus Doppers Gereformeerde Kerke (Reformed Churches, offshoot of DRC) Impi Group of armed warriors Indaba Discussion, conference Induna Headman, under a chief Inkatha Zulu politico-cultural movement, became IFP in 1990 Inkhosi Chief Kraal Enclosed homestead Laager Wagon circle, defensive camp Nyala SAP armoured personnel carrier (rectangular shape) Panga Machete Sosatie Kebab ‘Third Force’ A suspected clandestine anti-democratic violent force believed to be based within government, or security forces, or right-wing Tricameral Parliament Three-chambered parliament (white, Coloured, Indian), 1983–94 Tsotsi Street criminal, thug Ubuntu The quality of being human; compassion and humanity Veld Grassland Verkrampte Conservative, illiberal Verligte Enlightened, progressive xviii

Acknowledgements My gratitude to everyone who gave interviews, found documents or encouraged this work; to Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, a Facilitator of the National Peace Accord and later Chairperson of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), for the Foreword; and to Jenny Camons for the map and organogram; to Isobel Clymer, to colleagues under the National Peace Accord, librarians and archivists especially Gerrit Wagener at the National Archive; to Pauline Duncan for scrambles over the KZN hills, and to all who generously hosted me: John and Liz Allen, Mark and Irene Anstey, Annemie Bosch, George and Patricia Devenish, Peter and Alison Gunning, Mark and Lindy Manley, Chris and Julia Mann, Charlotte and Zolile Mbali, Tosca Voss, Liz Welsh, and Fay, Graeme, Fiona, Michael and Jeanette Rennie. Thanks to Jaqueline Mitchell of James Currey for her encouragement and patience. My gratitude to my colleagues at St John’s College, Oxford, for the Emeritus Research Fellowship which made this work possible. I have tried to achieve accuracy and am grateful to all who assisted. Any mistakes that remain, are my own.

xix

Note on Nomenclature This book uses the broad terms ‘white’ and ‘black’, where ‘black’ refers collectively to races other than ‘white’. Where it is important to specify the black indigenous people of Africa, the term ‘black African’ is used. Place names are those in use in 1991–94; where they have changed, the current name is given in brackets on first use. The regional and local peace committees were originally named ‘Dispute Resolution Committees’ (RDRCs, LDRCs). Popular and media usage preferred ‘Peace Committees’ and this term was adopted within the structures from February 1993, becoming official in October in the Internal Peace Institutions Amendment Act. Only the name changed, not the structures. This book uses the generic term ‘peace committees’ throughout, while echoing the records in using the terms RDRC/LDRC in 1991–92, and RPC/LPC thereafter. The Alexandra local peace committee began as an ‘Interim Crisis Committee (ICC)’ and, while always functioning fully as the Alexandra LDRC/LPC, remained the ‘ICC’ until March 1994. The Natal/KwaZulu (NK) region adopted the new provincial name, Kwa­ Zulu-Natal (KZN) in January 1994.

xx

Transition Timeline 1990 2 Feb.

State President de Klerk unbans liberation movements, and announces Mandela’s imminent release.

11 Feb.

Mandela released.

4 May

ANC–Government Groote Schuur Minute.

6 Aug.

ANC–Government Pretoria Minute. ANC suspends armed activities.

5–9 Nov.

Rustenburg Conference: churches reconcile and form broad Committee.

1991 29 Jan.

Buthelezi and Mandela sign peace agreement in Durban.

12 Feb.

ANC–Government DF Malan Accord.

5 Apr.

ANC sends ultimatum to President: stop the violence, or talks stop. Behind scenes, church and business leaders begin to organize.

24–25 May President’s Summit on violence, boycotted by ANC. 4 Jun.

‘Committee of Twelve’ church and business facilitators forms.

22 Jun.

Multiparty ‘Peace Planning Meeting’, Barlow Park.

Jul.–Sep.

Negotiation of NPA.

14 Sep.

National Peace Convention. NPA signed by 29 organizations.

20 Sep.

Interim National Peace Committee (NPC) meets.

1 Oct.

First Full NPC meeting, submits nominations for Commission.

24 Oct.

Judge Richard Goldstone appointed Chair of Commission.

7 Nov.

NPS constituted.

11 Nov.

First working meeting of NPS. xxi

xxii 12 Dec.

Transition Timeline First RDRC formed (Border/Ciskei). Greater Soweto DRC formed.

20–21 Dec. ‘Codesa 1’ constitutional talks commence at World Trade Centre. Christmas Phase 1 advertising: ‘Peace now, not another death later’.

1992 11 Mar.

Media release of Peace Song.

17 Mar.

White referendum endorses negotiations.

8 Apr.

Eleventh RDRC formed (Northern Cape).

15 May

Constitutional talks plenary, ‘Codesa 2’, deadlocks.

17 Jun.

Boipatong massacre. ANC suspends all talks, Codesa ceases.

15–16 Jul. Special UNSC debate on violence in South Africa. 21–31 Jul. UN S-G’s Special Envoy, Cyrus Vance, visits SA. 3–8 Aug.

ANC-Alliance’s Mass Action Week. First UN Observers present. Marches monitored and peaceful, including first Bisho march.

17 Aug.

UN S-G Boutros-Ghali reports Vance recommendations: peace structures to have offices and staff. UNSC Resolution 772 creates UNOMSA.

7 Sep.

Second Bisho march. ANC ignores NPA, Ciskei Defence Force shoots 28 marchers and a soldier.

13 Sep.

UNOMSA Observers arrive, followed in Sep.–Oct. by COMSA, ECOMSA, OAUOMSA. Deployed to peace structures.

26 Sep.

‘Record of Understanding’ between ANC and Government angers IFP.

17–25 Oct. Kaunda adjudicates Buthelezi’s complaint against Mandela. 4 Nov.

Internal Peace Institutions Act in force: NPS, RDRCs, LDRCs statutory.

11 Nov.

Goldstone investigators raid DCC (DMI) leading to Steyn Inquiry and dismissal or suspension of 23 top SAP officers.

21 Nov.

Hostels Peace Initiative launches.

24 Nov.

At Full NPC, Mbeki and Mdlalose announce intention for ANC– IFP bilateral.

Transition Timeline

xxiii

Christmas Phase 2 advertising aims at mass mobilization for peace: ‘Peace in our land’, ‘What have you done for peace today?’

1993 5–6 Feb.

At NPS & Chairs meeting, change of name to RPC, LPC, agreed.

12–14 Mar. ‘Peace in our Land’ Community Workshop consults grassroots. 18 Mar.

Peace Doves symbol launched, Peace Song promoted.

21 Mar.

ANC and IFP Sharpeville Day rallies in ‘Kathorus’ jointly planned, successfully monitored.

1 Apr.

Constitutional talks resume as ‘MPNP’.

10 Apr.

Chris Hani assassinated. Wits/Vaal region central to coordinating and monitoring events. Country-wide mass action 14 Apr., funeral 19 Apr.

22 May

ANC march in Thokoza ignores NPA, 13 die, Kathorus violence intensifies.

3 Jun.

Election date announced as 27 Apr. 1994.

23 Jun.

Mandela–Buthelezi bilateral facilitated by Tutu and Mogoba.

12 Jul.

National Peace Campaign committee forms, under auspices of NPS. Peace Doves logo achieves 95% recognition across all population groups.

20 Aug.

First formal Peace Monitor training, for clergy, in Wits/Vaal.

2 Sep.

National Peace Day has wide impact: one minute’s silence at noon, holding hands, and Peace Song. Numerous events now happening ‘for peace’.

7 Dec.

First meeting of Transitional Executive Council (TEC).

12 Dec.

Over 1 million new Peace Dove T-shirts, for New Year, sell out immediately.

Christmas Phase 3 advertising launched: victims of violence tell their stories.

1994 1 Jan.

‘National Year of Peace’ begins, with candles, blue ribbons, and T-shirts.

xxiv

Transition Timeline

Mid-Jan.

LPCs now number over 260. Training of 20,161 peace monitors and 1930 party marshals starts. Ninety-one percent of violence now confined to Kathorus and parts of KwaZulu-Natal. Numerous pre-election events peacefully monitored.

11 Mar.

AWB ‘invasion’ debacle in Bophuthatswana. Freedom Front enters election.

18 Mar.

Goldstone and de Klerk hold press conference on ‘Third Force’ following ‘Q’s revelations.

28 Mar.

IFP anti-election rally in Johannesburg ignores NPA. ‘Shell House massacre’.

15 Apr.

Washington Okumu begins mediation with Chief Buthelezi. Church facilitators and Hall visit King Zwelithini; he issues appeal for peace.

19 Apr.

IFP enters election.

26–29 Apr. First democratic election, 18,500 peace monitors provide support and logistics. 10 May

President Mandela inaugurated. Remaining violence abating except in KZN.

23 May

NPS, NPC, and regional Chairs form Lobby Group on future of structures.

25 Oct.

Meeting of remaining NPA signatories, Cape Town.

26 Oct.

Cabinet decision effectively dismantles peace structures.

31 Dec.

All peace offices close, except in KZN.



KZN Province retains peace structures until 2001 (peace agreement 1999).



NPAT continues as independent NGO.

1995 6 Apr.

Deposition of NPA and its signatures in Parliament.

1996–98 TRC hearings commence 15 Apr. 1996; final Report 29 Oct. 1998.

Foreword On the momentous day when the National Peace Accord was signed, I said we on the Preparatory Committee had discovered that ‘we share a common humanity, that transcends sex, race, colour, creed, culture. And so, we made this fantastic scientific discovery, that we are all human beings’. The peace committees spread across our beautiful land, and the opportunity to make the same discovery came to thousands of people, brought together for the first time to build this rainbow nation. Peace monitors from ‘black’ townships and ‘white’ suburbs trained and worked together. Former detainees and policemen who had held them prisoner found themselves serving together and shook hands. A new way opened for people caught up in bitter fighting to discover one another, resolve conflicts without violence, and build trust, understanding and peace. In the months before the 1994 election, when political tensions ran high and violence still wracked some communities, the Peace Song and the symbol of blue and white Peace Doves took God’s message of peace and hope into every corner. Doves flew on millions of T-shirts, badges, car stickers and flags, in newspapers, on TV, and on the bibs and jackets of peace monitors. The people mobilized for peace. This book tells the story of this peace operation, a stage in South Africa’s journey to freedom and democracy. It was facilitated by churches and business, negotiated by the politicians, and supported by the international community, but the people accomplished it. May this story bring useful suggestions, hope and inspiration. God bless you,

Desmond Tutu Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town

xxv

Introduction The National Peace Accord (NPA), South Africa’s first consensus document, was signed in Johannesburg on 14 September 1991 at the National Peace Convention, the most comprehensive gathering of races, political leaders and organizations yet seen in the nation’s history. This book provides the first full account of the Peace Accord. It tells how, through the peace structures under the Accord, thousands of ordinary people became involved in making and building peace as South Africa transitioned in a few short, breath-taking years from the deeply racist system of apartheid to become a free, multiracial democracy. It brings into view an aspect of that transition which has been obscure, yet was vital. The Peace Accord, signed eighteen months after Mandela’s release in February 1990, was another ‘watershed’ in South Africa’s history.1 It opened the way for the commencement of constitutional talks at ‘Codesa’ in December 1991, and it set up structures to implement itself. Roelf Meyer, the National Party government’s chief negotiator both for the Accord and the Interim Constitution, states simply: ‘I think it’s fair to say that there would not have been a peaceful process of constitutional negotiations if we didn’t have the National Peace Accord’.2 The two parallel exercises of negotiating an Interim Constitution on one hand, and grassroots peacebuilding on the other, led to the remarkably peaceful first democratic election in April 1994. The Interim Constitution enshrined the promise that there would be amnesty, and the final (and most widely remembered) transitional exercise was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which held its hearings from 1996 to 1998. There is a tendency, in historical memory, to telescope this intense period: Mandela was released, then the election happened – and there was a TRC. But the work done in the years 1991–94 was key. ‘What we managed to pull off in those four years is astoundingly miraculous really’.3 Many who experienced that period recall the Peace Song and the Peace Doves logo but were less aware, even then, of the peace committees. ‘Their role’, 1 2 3

Jayaseelan Naidoo interview. Roelf Meyer, 14/9/21, www.news24.com/news24/analysis/qa-we-were-nearinga-racial-war-roelf-meyer-and-jay-naidoo-on-30-years-since-signing-the-peace-accord-20210914 [accessed 17/10/21]. Callaghan interview.

1

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Judge Albie Sachs comments, ‘was so important, yet has dropped right out of sight’.4 COSATU’s Jayendra Naidoo, who served on the National Peace Secretariat (NPS), remarks that the Accord was ‘a very important initiative’, but because it opened the door to negotiation of the constitution, ‘what would normally have been something that the whole society would remember for a long time, was overshadowed by its bigger counterpart … But it was so important in the process’.5 Another NPS member, the IFP’s Senzo Mfayela, observes: ‘I always think that, well, enzymes don’t have to be seen after the process is finished, so maybe the NPA was an effective enzyme! I think if you look at the results, then … you can see its impact, but the body itself can’t be seen’.6 This book reveals that hidden body. We first introduce the concepts of peacemaking and peacebuilding, applying them to the complex web of conflicts, all of which find parallels in conflict situations elsewhere, in which South Africa was entangled at the close of the apartheid era. In preparation for the Peace Accord, this book recalls a less-­explored aspect of the anti-apartheid struggle itself: the efforts, both overt and clandestine, that were made during the 1980s to initiate dialogue, bring opponents together across the divides, and seek a breakthrough. As is increasingly recognized, reconciliation is not just for the post-conflict phase. ‘Talking with the enemy’ can be vital in finding paths to peace. We trace how civil society leaders from business and the churches positioned themselves to act as mediators, how they successfully intervened in the political impasse of 1991, and their work as facilitators during the negotiation and signing of the Accord. We then unfold the implementation of the Accord through its peace structures, in grassroots conflict resolution and prevention, pro-active monitoring of marches and rallies, the building of relationships and promotion of peace, the introduction of community policing, the efforts to start reconstruction and development and the relationship of the Accord to the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) which formed the ANC’s flagship election manifesto in 1994. We examine the role of the structures in assuring the success of the 1994 election, the subsequent debate as to a possible future peacebuilding role, and the pressures that led to their closure at the end of 1994. We end with a brief assessment of the Accord and what may be learnt from it. The author, working from 1991 to 1996 for the Anglican Diocese of Johannesburg, was privileged to serve as a churches representative on the grassroots local peace committee (which kept its early title, ‘Interim Crisis Committee’ or ICC) in Alexandra township in the northeast suburbs of Johannesburg, and as a religious representative and peace monitor trainer in the surrounding Wits/Vaal region. Earlier, as a doctor at Baragwanath Hospital, Soweto, 1975–81, I had wit4 5 6

Email to author 3/5/18. Jayendra Naidoo interview. Mfayela interview.

Introduction

3

nessed the tragic consequences of apartheid and the violence that accompanied confrontations between people and police, in the complete absence of a mechanism for mediation or meaningful communication. Research for this book has been fascinating, entailing travel throughout South Africa, interviewing some 270 of the many thousands who were involved – indeed, millions were involved through the National Peace Campaign of 1993–94 – and searching libraries and archives to find surviving documentation. The National Peace Committee (NPC) records survive in part, including albums of press cuttings made weekly for the NPC.7 The records of the National Peace Secretariat, a statutory body, are in the National Archive, Arcadia, Pretoria, and give insight into the structures’ regional and national activities.8 The records of the eleven Regional Peace Committees and over 260 Local Peace Committees, also statutory under the NPS, were unfortunately, by oversight, not gathered in for archiving. Complete Minutes survive from the Alexandra and Midrand Local Peace Committees, and Wits/Vaal and Western Cape Regional Peace Committees.9 A short run of RPC Executive minutes survives from Natal/KwaZulu, and fragments from elsewhere. These records, collected by or loaned to the author, are designated in the footnotes as ‘Carmichael/name of source’, thus ‘Carmichael/Pauquet’ is material given by Val Pauquet. Much was lost, making research difficult; but sufficient documentation remains, supplemented by personal memories, to give an accurate account and bring the story alive.

Previous Literature Two books published by the US Institute of Peace (USIP) give the story in part. Peter Gastrow, a Democratic Party MP and National Peace Secretariat member, took a sabbatical starting late August 1993 to write Bargaining for Peace (USIP, 1995), which recounts the early activities of the NPS and the initial impact of the structures. He includes the text of the Accord, and adds a post-election Epilogue written in May 1994. Gastrow picks out the themes of democratization (the NPA negotiations prepared leaders for the constitutional negotiations; LPCs introduced a culture of political tolerance and pluralism); violence (overall statistics seemed unchanged, yet the monitoring of marches and events had made an obvious difference); and reconstruction and development (govern7 8 9

In the author’s Carmichael/Pauquet collection. These comprise 296 files, often somewhat dishevelled, with source codes commencing ‘BVS’. The Alexandra and Midrand records were deposited in the National Archive; Alexandra is also in the Wits Historical Collection, and in the author’s Carmichael collection. Wits/Vaal, W. Cape, the Natal/KZ fragments and other fragments, collected from or loaned by Rupert Lorimer, Susan Collin Marks, and others, and currently in the Carmichael collection, are designated Carmichael/Lorimer etc.

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ment commitment had been disappointing; Port Shepstone LPC had devised the most outstanding project). In Watching the Wind (USIP, 2000), Susan Collin Marks, mediator, trainer and Western Cape RPC member, gives a lively account of that region, bursting with human stories while analysing the various conflicts and tracing the impact of the Peace Accord in townships and informal settlements, between police and community, and amid warring taxi associations. ‘The wind itself was invisible, but I saw its effect, its force and impact, its power and artistry’ (Marks, 2000 p.xvii). Some contemporary papers appeared in Track Two, the journal of Cape Town’s Centre for Intergroup Studies (renamed ‘Centre of Conflict Resolution’ in 1993); from the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR); in South African Outlook and, briefly, from the Goldstone Institute. In 2013 USIP published Andries Odendaal’s A Crucial Link: Local Peace Committees and National Peacebuilding, a treasury of learnings from his experience as a Sub-­ regional Coordinator in the Western Cape region and his later international work as a peacebuilding consultant. Two major accounts of the period, by Allister Sparks (1994) and Patti Waldmeir (1997), exhibit a striking Peace Accord-shaped gap. Both authors, as leading journalists, reported positively on the Accord at its creation, yet neither mentions it. The NPA was the bridge between the breakdown of ANC–Government talks in April–May 1991 and the opening of Codesa in December, but both writers leap that period without explanation (Sparks 1994, p.129; Waldmeir 1997, p.176). Both then concentrate on the ‘rollercoaster’ constitutional talks, with their breakdowns and walk-outs, without mentioning the parallel peace process. Waldmeir comments: ‘Lots of things could have gone into my book and lots of things were left out, I wouldn’t read anything into it. Beyond that I don’t remember considering including it’.10 Waldmeir’s book is entitled Anatomy of a Miracle. A vital organ was missing! De Klerk (1999 pp.207, 215–17) recounts the NPA’s birth, with minor inaccuracies. Mandela (1994) states that the ANC suspended talks in May 1991, then he too leaps without explanation to the opening of Codesa on 20 December, where he mentions de Klerk rebuking the ANC for maintaining its army ‘in violation of the National Peace Accord of September 1991’ (p.715). Sampson’s biography of Mandela just mentions the NPA signing ceremony in the context of ongoing conflict (Sampson 1999, p.444) and using photos of the three leaders that day which suggest stiff body language, he perpetuates the fallacy that Buthelezi refused to shake de Klerk’s hand (Ibid. p.486). Authors who salute the Accord include Cassidy (1995), Lyman (2002), Harris (2010), Naidoo (2010), Spaarwater (2012), Odendaal (2013), Parsons (2018), Worrall (2018), du Toit (2018), Storey (2018) and Nganje (2021). 10

Email to author 26/3/17. Allister Sparks died in 2016, before being approached on this question.

PART ONE

Peacemaking, Peacebuilding, and the South African Conflict

1 Peacemaking and Peacebuilding: Situating South Africa In February 1990, more than forty years after the imposition of apartheid by the National Party government in 1948, the new State President F. W. de Klerk unbanned the ANC and other liberation movements, and released Nelson Mandela. Two results were expected: the commencement of multiparty talks to formulate a new constitution and hold the first-ever fully democratic election; and the ending of the low-intensity civil war in Natal/KwaZulu, which for five years had pitted ANC supporters against the conservative Zulu Inkatha movement. However, neither result materialized. Only bilateral talks were held, mainly between the government and ANC focusing on the release of political prisoners and return of exiles. For a year, ANC ‘hawks’ prevented a meeting between Mandela and Inkatha leader Chief Buthelezi, while Inkatha became the ‘Inkatha Freedom Party’ (IFP) and the ANC–IFP conflict spread to the townships around Johannesburg. A crisis point was reached in April 1991 when the ANC, blaming the government for both police and Inkatha violence, threatened to call off all talks. At that point, twelve church and business leaders formed a facilitating group and succeeded in bringing the government, ANC, IFP and a wide spectrum of politicians together for the first time to negotiate peace agreements. These agreements became the National Peace Accord (NPA), the first ‘negotiated understanding among the representative leaders of the entire population’.1 With the Accord in place the constitutional talks could commence, in parallel with grassroots peacemaking and peacebuilding throughout the land through the peace structures set up under the Accord. But what is ‘peace’? At first there was hardly any popular knowledge of the provisions of the Accord, and grassroots definitions can be startlingly context-specific. A definition spat out on the street at the height of the violence in Alexandra township, Johannesburg, in April 1992 ran simply: ‘Peace? Peace is when those people go away’. 1 https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02039/04lv0 2103/05lv02104/06lv02105.htm [accessed 16/2/21].

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Just five months later the Alexandra ICC, the local peace committee formed on 1 April under the NPA, held a weekend retreat. ANC and IFP from the opposing township and hostels, police, army, Women for Peace, churches and business together envisioned a peaceful future and the process required to get there: (1) To reconcile the polarised groups, and create a climate of tolerance and trust (i.e. bring UBUNTU back to Alex). (2) To create a stable and peaceful society by eliminating the conditions (social, political and economic) which undermine peace. (3) To forge a competent and commonly agreed socio-economic reconstruction and development process. (4) To develop a culture of peace by fully communicating the principles of the National Peace Accord at grass-roots level. (5) To give all people in Alex a vision of a better future. (6) To deal quickly with conflicts and crises as and when they arrive.2

That September ‘Alex’ was just emerging from violence, having suffered some 222 ‘political’ deaths in 1992 (HRC, 1993 p.19), and fear still ran deep. After intensive work, no political deaths occurred in 1993.3 By the April 1994 election, goals 1, 4, 5 and 6 were largely achieved, while 2 and 3 had been much debated across the community. The election was a festive occasion, graced by 198 local Alexandra peace monitors. The nature of the desired peace particularly exercised the national Marketing and Communications Committee under the Accord. In March 1993 it held a major research workshop for some seventy grassroots participants from throughout South Africa. The pre-workshop survey asked: ‘What is peace?’ The replies illustrate how broadly ‘peace’ is popularly conceived, and its deep connections with happiness, freedom and economic empowerment. Negatively, respondents said, peace meant ‘an end to violence, conflict, anger, and intimidation, to chaos and disorder, to apartheid, discrimination, and domination; to fear and anxiety; an end to an era of selfishness, greed and exploitation’. Positively, peace meant: Freedom, freedom of speech, choice, movement, and association; freedom from want, need, and from the degradation of grinding poverty. The provision of basic or essential material and spiritual needs. Stability, security, protection of life and property. Democracy. Tolerance, understanding, mutual respect, recognition, and acceptance. Reconciliation, forgiveness, healing. Conflict resolution by negotiation and cooperation. Living in harmony, love, and goodwill. Peace with God.4

In summary, ‘The concept of “peace” embodies our people’s hopes for an end to 2 3 4

Report, Alexandra ICC Workshop 12–13/9/92, Carmichael. See p.370. Mission Statement, in Report, ‘Peace in our Land’ Community Workshop, 12–14 March 1993, pp.15–16, Carmichael/Pauquet/Manley.

Peacemaking and Peacebuilding: Situating South Africa

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an era of suffering and discrimination, and crystallizes their vision of the dawning of a bright future offering justice, equality, and opportunity for all’.5 Clearly such peace must entail political endeavour, but it also requires that of the people. The NPA Communications division aimed ‘to persuade every South African to build peace within their own context and environment’.6 Mark Manley, National Communications Coordinator, took the idea of ‘building peace’ to have been home-grown in South Africa. He noted that it has a vernacular root: the word kagiso, ‘peace’ in Setswana, ‘contains the verb “to build”’, so kagiso means, not just ‘peace’ but ‘to build peace’; moreover, it implies ‘to build together’.7 Everyone could be active in building peace, thus building the nation. Post-election in 1994 the peace structures were poised to provide ongoing leadership, encouragement, programmes, training, networking and coordination for continued grassroots peacebuilding. From an international perspective the term ‘peacebuilding’ was introduced in 1976 by Johan Galtung.8 Its first use in the field is ascribed to UN operations in Namibia in the 1980s, possibly from 1978.9 It was popularized in a seminal report, An Agenda for Peace, presented by UN Secretary-General Boutros BoutrosGhali to the UN Security Council in July 1992. Its use spread rapidly. In South Africa in February 1993 lawyer Antonie Gildenhuys, Chair of the National Peace Secretariat, was expressing hope that 1993 would be ‘a year of peacebuilding as 1992 had been a year of putting structures in place’.10 Boutros-Ghali had been responding to a Security Council request to report on ways to strengthen the UN’s capacity for ‘preventive diplomacy, peacemaking and peacekeeping’. He defined ‘peacemaking’ as trying ‘to bring hostile parties to agreement by peaceful means’ (UN 1992, para.34) and ‘peace-keeping’, which had occupied much of the UN’s energy to date, as helping to ‘implement settlements that have been negotiated by peacemakers’ (para.50). He added ‘post-conflict peace-building’, defining it as ‘the construction of a new environment’ by cooperative work on the ‘underlying economic, social, cultural and 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. p.31. 7 Manley interview and NPS Marketing and Communications Report, June 1994, p.51, Carmichael/Manley. 8 Galtung 1976 (p.298) hypothesised that ‘peace has a structure’, an ideal political arrangement that will ‘remove causes of wars and offer alternatives to war in situations where wars might occur’. Such arrangements would be required both within and between nations, would be ‘associative’ and feature equality, inclusivity, and interdependence; they would render peace robust and self-sustaining. Galtung points to the European Community as an example of such a peace ‘structure’ or ‘infrastructure’. 9 Communication to author from Prof. Mary King, UN University for Peace. 10 Wits/Vaal RPC Minutes 2/2/93, Carmichael/Lorimer.

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humanitarian problems’ to consolidate peace on firm and lasting foundations (para.57). The triad of peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding reached grassroots in South Africa in late 1993 in the peace monitor training manual.

Peacemaking South Africa always harboured an alternative network of peacemakers who, despite risks and difficulties, extended friendship and solidarity across apartheid boundaries. There is a long history of ‘track-two diplomacy’, encounters that are strictly not negotiations but ‘explicitly intended to further conflict resolution by improving understanding and relationships by humanizing adversary groups through face-to-face meetings, and by preparing the ground for official negotiations by exploring, in an unofficial and informal setting and without commitment, underlying issues and possible solutions’ (Lieberfeld, 2002 p.356).11 One notable peacemaker was gentle Hendrik W. van der Merwe (1929–2001), known as ‘HW’ (pronounced like ‘Harvey’). An Afrikaner sociologist, an active but dissident DRC member until 1976 when he joined the Quakers, HW was from 1968 the founding Director of the Abe Bailey Institute, associated with the University of Cape Town (renamed ‘Centre for Intergroup Studies’ in 1973 and ‘Centre for Conflict Resolution’ in 1993). Its purpose was to ‘do applied research and conduct educational programmes with the purpose of improving relations among different population groups’ (Van der Merwe, 2000 p.40). The first step in peacemaking in South Africa was to bring together people whom the apartheid system had separated, who for multiple reasons profoundly distrusted one another, ‘trying to build bridges, to bring understanding to both sides’ (Ibid.). The next step was to facilitate agreements between them. HW worked assiduously to bring leaders together. In the 1980s he brought practitioners of conflict resolution from America, notably Richard (Dick) and Greta Salem and Ron Kraybill, to conduct South Africa’s first training courses. Among the trainees were leaders of the opposing groups in Natal/KwaZulu, ‘doves’ from Inkatha, and the ANC-supporting UDF. HW took seriously people’s reasons for believing what they did, thus creating ‘middle ground’ where all could speak honestly and be heard. ‘In all these cases, he hoped this would empower people to negotiate their own futures’.12 Pursuing ‘track-two diplomacy’, HW began meeting exiled ANC leaders in London in 1980, then Thabo Mbeki in Lusaka in 1984 and shortly afterwards 11

Lieberfeld cites Diamond & McDonald (1996 p.2). ‘Track Two’ may alternatively denote peace efforts at regional or local levels, below national and international level. 12 Ampie Muller, HW’s colleague, in ‘A Tribute to H. W. van der Merwe: Peace Builder, Colleague, and Friend’, Accord, AJCR 2013/3, www.accord.org.za/ajcr-issues/a-tribute-to-h-w-van-der-merwe/ [accessed 6/2/21].

Peacemaking and Peacebuilding: Situating South Africa

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Mandela in Pollsmoor prison. Mbeki expressed interest in meeting prominent Afrikaner Nationalists. HW arranged for two moderate NP MPs, Leon Wessels and Wynand Malan, to visit Lusaka. President Botha vetoed this visit and a subsequent plan to send Stellenbosch Professors Willie Esterhuyse and Sampie Terreblanche. Finally HW succeeded in sending the political editor of the Afrikaans daily Beeld, Piet Muller, brother of HW’s colleague Ampie Muller, whose subsequent articles in Beeld for the first time publicly aired the possibility of a negotiated future for South Africa. When violence swept Natal/KwaZulu in 1985, Archbishop Hurley invited HW to intervene. In his exploratory consultations he encountered the kinds of impasse with which NPA committees would become familiar. Inkatha leaders were keen to talk, but UDF unwilling to meet them. The UDF wanted a reduction in violence, but ‘no peacemaking’ (Van der Merwe, 2000 p.129). HW began to understand their reluctance. The violence was largely a turf battle, predicated on a tradition of ‘no-go areas’, i.e. exclusive zones of influence within which no other party must meet or organize. The UDF believed that through violence, with police support, Inkatha had gained control of areas where the majority was actually UDF. A negotiated ‘peace’ might leave Inkatha in charge and would feel unjust and unsustainable. HW made a technical distinction between acting as a ‘facilitator’ which allowed shuttle diplomacy, and as a ‘mediator’ which did not. By shuttling, he brokered some rules of conduct to regulate political activities such as ‘the common practice of busing in party supporters from other communities to an enemy stronghold in order to outnumber the enemy at a rally on its own turf ’ (Van der Merwe, 2000 p.132), which inevitably led to violence. Both parties agreed it must stop; but within months the UDF complained Inkatha was not honouring the rules. They began to realize they would have to meet, and suggested a joint monitoring committee. Only in July 1986 did a first meeting happen, mediated by HW, in Archbishop Hurley’s house. Opening with furious mutual accusations, then agreeing to focus on their common concern to lessen the suffering, the leaders held a promising informal discussion – but HW, after a year of solo trust-building, left the following week for a year-long USIP sabbatical. No other mediator was acceptable, and eighteen bloody months passed before another meeting. HW learnt ‘never to undertake long-term mediation as an individual. For the sake of balance and continuity it should always be undertaken by a team’ (Van der Merwe, 2000 p.134). By 1991, when a remarkably broad facilitating team of top-level church and business leaders brought the political parties together to negotiate the National Peace Accord, Natal/KwaZulu and the townships around Johannesburg were a patchwork of tiny civil wars, driven by revenge and local histories, fought by men with tenuous relationships with the parties they supposedly supported, the victims being overwhelmingly ‘civilians’. It had become starkly obvious

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Peacemaking and Peacebuilding in South Africa

that the mere signing of Accords by top leaders did not translate into grassroots peace. Media critics rarely appreciated the extent to which each locality operated according to its own dynamics, or the time-consuming work required at grassroots to move from violence to cooperation. Each conflict needed to be unpicked locally, and peace made and built. The NPA provided the infrastructure to make such peacebuilding possible.

Peacebuilding: post-conflict or ongoing? In the 1990s the UN’s focus shifted from peacekeeping to state-level peacebuilding, still conceived essentially as a post-conflict activity. In 2000, a review of UN peace operations defined peacebuilding as ‘activities undertaken on the far side of conflict to reassemble the foundations of peace and provide the tools for building on those foundations something that is more than just the absence of war’. ‘Thus,’ the review continues: peace-building includes but is not limited to reintegrating former combatants into civilian society, strengthening the rule of law (for example, through training and restructuring of local police, and judicial and penal reform); improving respect for human rights through the monitoring, education and investigation of past and existing abuses; providing technical assistance for democratic development (including electoral assistance and support for free media); and promoting conflict resolution and reconciliation techniques.13

South Africa engaged in all these activities, managing them itself with some assistance from abroad. During the period 1990–94 the internal instruments of peacebuilding were twofold: the National Peace Accord and the constitutional talks, both preparing for the catharsis of the April 1994 election. It was South Africa’s good fortune that this ‘hybrid’ approach could be taken: an intensive multi-level peace process, pursued simultaneously with statebuilding through the constitution-making process, while much of the country continued to function efficiently under the previous arrangements. ‘Peace’ in South Africa was assumed, by consensus, to mean a progressive, multiparty, liberal democracy. The limited democracy that existed since 1910 was transformed and made fully inclusive, while the capitalist free market economy continued essentially unchanged. South Africa was fortunate in that, with regard to the ‘investigation of past abuses’, it was able to promise amnesty for ‘political’ actions in a ‘postamble’ to the 1993 Interim Constitution, while deferring detailed planning of the TRC until after the 1994 election. Thus, fear of retribution did not hamper participation in the peace process. It was less fortunate that the assumption that guided the new 13 UN, Report of the Panel on UN Peace Operations (2000), para.13, http://undocs. org/A/55/305 [accessed 5/2/21].

Peacemaking and Peacebuilding: Situating South Africa

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government in 1994 was that ‘peace’ had been achieved and nation-building was now primarily a government responsibility. In 2005 the UN established a Peacebuilding Commission and Peacebuilding Support Office and Fund. Two years later it was recognized that peacebuilding should be conceived as more than a post-conflict activity and its aim was rearticulated as ‘sustainable peace’: ‘Peacebuilding involves a range of measures targeted to reduce the risk of lapsing or relapsing into conflict by strengthening national capacities at all levels for conflict management, and to lay the foundations for sustainable peace and development’. It was also recognized that: ‘Peacebuilding strategies must be coherent and tailored to the specific needs of the country concerned, based on national ownership, and should comprise a carefully prioritized, sequenced, and therefore relatively narrow set of activities aimed at achieving the above objectives’.14 Even this was still a somewhat rigidly prescriptive, systematic and linear programme. An alternative voice, that of Mennonite peacebuilder John Paul Lederach, finally broke through ‘from below’. In his 1997 classic, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies, Lederach drew on his own immersion in community conflict transformation to argue that peacebuilding begins by seeking to heal relationships among the people, is a flexible process, and may take decades. Lederach (1997 p.20) is clear that peacebuilding is ‘more than postaccord reconstruction’. It is ‘a comprehensive concept that encompasses, generates, and sustains the full array of processes, approaches and stages needed to transform conflict toward more sustainable, peaceful relationships’. Peacebuilding both precedes and follows formal peace accords. It involves both building and maintenance. ‘An infrastructure for peacebuilding’, he argues, ‘should be understood as a process-structure’ which ‘transforms a war-system characterized by deeply divided, hostile, and violent relationships into a peace-system characterized by just and inter-dependent relationships with the capacity to find non-violent mechanisms for expressing and handling conflict’ (Ibid. p.84).15 That ‘peace is a process’ was a mantra within the NPA structures. As a Franciscan leaflet that circulated in the structures pertinently suggested: ‘Peace is always a goal to reach … and a place from which to begin.’16 14 UN Peacebuilding Support Office UN Peacebuilding: An Orientation (2010), p.5, quoting UN S-G’s Policy Committee, May 2007. www.un.org/peacebuilding/ sites/www.un.org.peacebuilding/files/documents/peacebuilding_orientation. pdf [accessed 9/2/21]. 15 Note the difference between Lederach’s ‘infrastructure for peacebuilding’ and Galtung’s concept of a ‘peace structure / infrastructure’ in the sense of an ideal political solution. 16 ‘A Franciscan Methodology toward Peace’, OFM, Assisi, 1993.

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Lederach recognizes, even from minimal information, that the NPA structures had represented such a process (1997 p.51).17 He offers a simple pyramid-shaped diagram showing three levels for peacebuilding activity: Level 1 (top leadership), Level 2 (regional leaders), Level 3 (grassroots leaders). He emphasizes that the levels (which have also been called ‘tracks’) are interdependent and an integrated peace process needs to embrace all three (Ibid. p.39). The National Peace Accord did indeed establish a three-level ‘infrastructure for peacebuilding’. The Nicaraguan initiative familiar to Lederach had been its closest, but different, precursor: the 1987 Central American Escipulas II peace agreement initiated a complex regional process, within which Nicaragua established a four-person ‘national peace commission’ and multiple regional and local ‘commissions’. These were mediation teams which promoted dialogue between combatants and documented human rights violations (Ibid. p.50). The NPA negotiators were not aware of this initiative: the South African structures were home-grown.

‘Liberal peacebuilding’ under attack, and the ‘local turn’ Neither Galtung nor Boutros-Ghali specified that the ‘peace’ to be built should take the form of a liberal, free-market democracy; but in the era that saw the end of both colonization and the Cold War, that Western model was taken to be the ideal. It was assumed to be universally attractive, workable and inherently peaceful. South Africa, already in part a Western democracy, followed that trajectory. By 2010 strong objections to ‘liberal peacebuilding’ were being voiced in academic circles. It had not proved a universal panacea. It expected the rapid emergence of a stable Western-style state – which frequently was not forthcoming. The model appeared to be failing egregiously in Iraq and Afghanistan. Liberal idealism gave way to what has been hailed as a ‘pragmatic’ approach to peacebuilding, a ‘local turn’, focused on working – as Lederach had suggested – in conflict-affected grassroots communities, building on local resources. Local peace committees (LPCs) have appeared in various forms in Nepal, Ghana, Kenya, Burundi, Malawi and elsewhere (Odendaal 2013; Nganje 2021). Local structures need support. Andries Odendaal (2013 pp.33–46) weighs the relative advantages of a ‘formal’ infrastructure that enjoys a mandate and support from the state and the main conflict protagonists, against ‘informal’ structures with only local legitimacy. Based on his NPA experience he advocates a mandated, formal peacebuilding infrastructure, which can provide the crucial accompaniment at local level to national peacebuilding. 17

He misinterprets a figure in Laurie Nathan’s article, ‘An Imperfect Bridge …’, Track Two 2/2 (May 1993; Centre for Intergroup Studies), p.5, to mean the NPA operated on seven levels. It was three.

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15

Fritz Nganje (2021 pp.130–1) concurs. He offers three policy recommendations to African governments: that they should create a policy framework in which LPCs are recognized and empowered; that United Nations and African Union peacebuilding missions should integrate LPCs into their peacebuilding plans; and that the capacity and performance of LPCs should be developed ‘by establishing and supporting national and regional networks of LPCs to serve as platforms for facilitated peer learning and support, as well as the sharing of experiences and best practice’ (Ibid. pp.136–7). Lederach (1997 p.60) outlines the differing roles of top-level, middle-range and grassroots leadership, suggesting that: ‘Constructing a peace process in deeply divided societies and situations of internal armed conflict requires an operative frame of reference that takes into consideration the legitimacy, uniqueness, and interdependency of the needs and resources of the grassroots, middle range, and top level.’18 The critique of liberal peacebuilding encouraged ‘a gamut of experimental approaches’ from below (Moe & Stepputat, 2018 p.297). Peacebuilding could now be seen as ‘hybrid’, a combination of statebuilding from above and local endeavour from below. With this broadening of the concept and the proliferation of international and local peace NGOs, it has been objected that ‘peacebuilding’ was becoming a catch-all term, referring to so wide a field that it escaped definition. In defence it may be argued that ‘peacebuilding’ is necessarily a broad concept. It should be a space where a wide variety of politicians, practitioners, academics and community members can share ideas and cooperate. Peacebuilding systems must always expect to adapt. ‘Complexity theory’ emphasizes the evolutionary nature and unpredictability of local systems and processes, and the likelihood of unintended consequences. Its advocate Cedric de Coning, himself South African, describes the ‘pragmatic turn’ in peacebuilding as pointing to ‘a more open-ended or goal-free approach … where the focus is on the means or process, and the end-state is open to context-specific interpretations of peace’ (De Coning, 2018 p.301). He notes the adoption by the UN in 2016 of ‘a new understanding of peacebuilding, namely that it is essentially about sustaining peace’, which entails giving support to indigenous peace processes ‘by strengthening the resilience of local social institutions, and by investing in social cohesion’ (Ibid. p.304). De Coning favours the term ‘adaptive peacebuilding’ and writes, in a striking echo of the ‘process facilitation’ methodology applied by South African business facilitators in the NPA negotiation process: ‘In the adaptive peacebuilding 18

The online handbook Peacebuilding: A Caritas Training Manual (2011 p.90) offers a useful practical guide, a checklist of actions to be taken at grassroots, middle, and top levels before, during, and after violent conflict: https://issuu.com/catholicreliefservices/docs/caritas_peacebldg/950 [accessed 3/3/21].

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approach, the core activity of a peacebuilding intervention is one of process facilitation’ (2018 p.307). Peacebuilders working with local people ‘can assist a society by facilitating and stimulating the processes that enable self-­organization to emerge’. The NPA itself emerged through such a process. No template or plan for such a document existed, but deft facilitation by civil society mediators, and positive inputs by negotiators, enabled it to evolve. Then the NPA structures constantly encountered the unexpected. LPC members might in a single day find themselves practising preventive diplomacy, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and adapting whatever plans were in place for building peace. Success was achieved through nimble-footed adaptive facilitation. In 1994 the overall political conflict ended, but much remained to be done. South Africa, in many ways a microcosm of the world in all its rich diversity and stark inequality, offers a fascinating, complex story of peacemaking, and of peacebuilding that is still a work in progress.

2 South Africa’s Fractured Rainbow Introduction This chapter traces the arrival of South Africa’s unique mix of races and ethnicities, the birth of a single nation under white minority rule, the coming of apartheid, the turn to violence in 1960–61 and the beginning in 1976 of an inexorable movement for change.

The land and people South Africa is strikingly diverse: a land of high rolling grasslands, spectacular mountains, endless semi-desert, lush semi-tropical hills, winelands and gold mines, stretching from the cold Atlantic to the warm Indian Ocean, from the tropical Limpopo to the storm-lashed rocks of Cape Agulhas. A few of the San or ‘Bushmen’, remain. As hunter-gatherers they inhabited southern Africa unchallenged for at least 50,000 years, leaving rock paintings and ‘click’ languages. Within the past 2,000 years groups of cattle-owning ‘Bantu’ farmers migrated from central Africa, forging iron and building villages in the interior and down the eastern coast. Khoe hunter-gatherers and pastoralists, related to the San, populated the western Cape. European explorers appeared in 1488 when Bartholomew Diaz, seeking a trade route to Indonesia, made landfall at Mossel Bay. In 1580, Francis Drake’s expedition described the Cape as: ‘a most stately thing and the fairest cape we saw in the whole circumference of the earth’. In 1652 white settlement began when the Dutch East India Company established a fort and vegetable garden at the foot of Table Mountain. Dutch, German and French Huguenot settlers flowed in, enclosing the Khoe’s lands and absorbing the people into a burgeoning slave population taken from Angola and the entire rim of the Indian Ocean: Indonesians, Malays, Bengalis, east Africans and Madagascans. The mixing of all these races created the ‘Coloured’ people, still living mainly in the Cape. The Afrikaans language developed as a local form of Dutch, spoken by whites and Coloureds. Its white speakers acquired the name of ‘Afrikaners’ (Africans). Britain briefly occupied the Cape in 1795, establishing permanent rule in 1814, bringing merchants, missionaries, prospectors, and a liberal constitution with 17

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a colour-blind voters’ roll. In 1820 some four thousand English settlers landed at Algoa Bay (Port Elizabeth; Gqeberha), an unpopulated semi-arid part of the eastern Cape. Pushing north and inland they established farms and small towns, expanding the Cape Colony through a series of frontier wars with the Xhosas. Simultaneously, further north, the autocratic Zulu chief Shaka (c. 1778–1828) established rule over neighbouring clans, making the Zulus South Africa’s largest tribe. Shaka rigorously trained its young warriors, equipping them with new short, lethal, stabbing spears. In 1824 Shaka ceded land to English settlers to found a trading station at Port Natal (Durban). The British Colony of Natal was proclaimed in 1843. In 1879 a controversial British expeditionary force of about 2,000 entered Zululand. It camped at Isandlwana without a wagon circle (laager) and was destroyed by a Zulu force of some 20,000. Months later the British captured the Zulu capital at Ulundi. Zululand was incorporated into Natal, but the Zulus retained their warlike reputation. During the 1860s Indian indentured labourers were brought to work in Natal’s sugar plantations. ‘Passenger’ migrants from India followed. Altogether some 100,000 Indians settled, chiefly in Natal. Further immigration has brought Greek and Portuguese traders, Jews from Lithuania, and refugees and migrants from eastern Europe and across Africa. Thus the elements of Desmond Tutu’s ‘rainbow nation’ were assembled.1 Nelson Mandela, at his formal election as President in Cape Town on 9 May 1994, dwelt on ‘the fateful convergence of the peoples of Africa, Europe and Asia on these shores’. Under British rule, all free men in the Cape Colony enjoyed a qualified franchise based on literacy and property ownership, though few blacks met the criteria. A colour-blind franchise briefly applied in Natal. In 1834 slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire. Land hunger, combined with dislike of British liberalism, motivated hundreds of Afrikaner farmers (boers) from Cape Colony’s eastern areas to pack their ox-wagons and lumber northwards in a series of ‘treks’, seeking independence. Piet Retief ’s group headed for fertile lowland Natal, and negotiated a large tract of land with Shaka’s successor, King Dingane. Two iconic events followed. In February 1838 Dingane received Retief and his hundred-strong group, persuaded them to lay aside their arms, and had them killed. Then, on 16 December 1

In 1911 the population was some 6 million, over 1 million being white. According to the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the population in 1993 totalled about 39.6 million, of which 75% (30 million) were black African, the largest group being 5.8 million Zulus; 14% (5.1 million) white; about 8% (3.4 million) mixed race (‘Coloured’) and 3% (1 million) Indian or of other Asian origin. See www. nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02167/04lv02218/05lv02244/ 06lv02245.htm [accessed 31/3/21].

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19

1838 at the Battle of Blood River, 470 trekkers protected in a wagon-circle laager decisively fought off some 15,000 Zulus. Before the battle they vowed that, should God grant them victory, they would keep 16 December as a perpetual commemoration. With victory came a new Afrikaner national consciousness: they were now a covenant race like ancient Israel, which God was leading into their promised land. The annual reminder came on the ‘Day of the Vow’, oddly known popularly as ‘Dingaan’s Day’. After a brief attempt to found an Afrikaner republic in Natal, Retief ’s trekkers led their wagons up the escarpment onto the grassland plateau of the Highveld. Two republics emerged: the South African (or Transvaal) Republic, and Orange Free State, where no blacks had the vote. The Afrikaners assumed, in line with contemporary colonial thinking, that God had given them trusteeship over the native peoples. Three black African groups gained British protection, eventually to become independent as the nations of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland (Eswatini). Mineral resources then began to dominate affairs. In 1866 diamonds were discovered in what quickly became Cape territory, giving birth to Kimberley. In 1886 British prospectors found a rich gold seam in the Transvaal Republic, and Johannesburg appeared. British involvement in the gold rush, Europe’s ‘scramble for Africa’ and Cecil Rhodes’s ambition to paint the continent pink (British) from Cape to Cairo, culminated in the Second South African or ‘Boer’ War of 1899–1902. Boers fought in fast-moving mounted ‘commandos’. British strategy was to burn their farms and incarcerate their families and black servants in ‘concentration camps’, where some 27,000 died of disease and starvation. Afrikaner dislike of the British became visceral. Under the peace of 1902 the republics became the British colonies of the Transvaal and Orange River, alongside the Cape and Natal, with the promise of self-rule within the Empire. Political mobilization was just beginning among black people in the Cape, as mission education and overseas study began to produce black professionals: lawyers, doctors, clergy, teachers. Cape Malay Dr Abdullah Abdurahman was elected to the Cape Provincial Council in 1904, Rev. Walter Rubusana in 1909. Indians, with Mohendas Gandhi among their leaders, secured a distinct status. Born in India, graduating in law in London, Gandhi’s political formation took place in South Africa. In 1893 he became lawyer to a Transvaal Indian firm. Travelling up from Durban he was ejected from his first-class railway seat, and from the train, because a white passenger objected to this ‘coolie’. He stayed for twenty-one years, campaigning for the civil rights of Indians as British subjects. He never sought to work with black Africans. The Natal Indian Congress formed in 1894, the Transvaal British Indian Association (later Transvaal Indian Congress) in 1903. Gandhi developed his strategy of non-violence, ‘satyagraha’, in the successful campaign in 1906–07 against the imposition of ‘passes’ (restrictive identity documents) on Indians. He returned to India in 1914.

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No black representatives were included in the National Convention of 1908– 09 to decide South Africa’s constitution. In July 1909 a group led by Rubusana as President of the ‘South African Native Convention’, formed in Bloemfontein that March, sailed to London to lobby for non-racialism and the removal of the colour bar from the draft South Africa Act. They found sympathetic ears but the majority of British MPs, preoccupied with reconciling Boer and British, ducked the challenge of extending ‘Cape liberalism’ across the Union. On 31 May 1910 the four colonies became the provinces of the Union of South Africa, a self-governing Dominion with the same status in the Empire as Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Each province again retained its own voting customs, but whites alone sat in the national Parliament. All the people were British subjects and citizens of South Africa but, without a universal franchise, racial inequality was only set to increase. The first shock was cruel and severe. The Natives Land Act (1913, repealed June 1991) restricted the ownership and renting of land by black Africans to the tribal reserves, then totalling just 7% of the land (enlarged in 1936 to 13.5%). Thousands of tenant and sharecropper families became destitute wanderers. Pleas to Westminster to reverse the Act were dismissed by the Colonial Secretary, who said the Prime Minister, General Louis Botha, had assured him ‘the natives had too much land already’ (Benson, 1966 p.32). From 1931, new laws in Dominions no longer required ratification by Westminster. Black Africans lost their voting rights in the Cape in 1936; those of Coloured people disappeared in 1956. In January 1912, Rubusana, with Oxford-educated lawyer Pixley Seme, writer Sol Plaatjie and others, called some hundred professionals and traditional leaders to Waaihoek Methodist Church in Mangaung township, Bloemfontein, to found the South African National Native Congress (renamed the African National Congress, ANC, in 1923). The Congress declared loyalty to the Crown and listed among its chief aims that of keeping communication open between the government and the black African population. Despite its tragic inability to avert illiberal legislation, the Congress’s activities continued for five decades to be patient, gentlemanly and non-violent. ‘African nationalism in South Africa’, with its deep liberal Christian roots, ‘maintained a remarkably steady focus on non-racial ideals’ (Walshe, 1969 p.609). In 1910, over half the white electorate were Afrikaners. Not all were anti-­ British but the dream of independence lived on. The National Party (Nasionale Party, NP) formed in 1915 to advance the Afrikaner cause. It participated in government from 1924, briefly merging in the 1930s with the more liberal South African Party of Jan Smuts to become the United Party. A ‘purified nationalist’ rump remained. Led by D. F. Malan, it opposed South Africa’s participation in the Second World War and some leaders were interned as Nazi sympathizers; but in 1948, campaigning on an ‘apartheid’ ticket against the aging Smuts, the NP unexpectedly won.

South Africa’s Fractured Rainbow

21

Apartheid Apartheid, literally ‘separateness’, was institutionalized racism in its starkest sense. Honed in the fascist 1930s, apartheid was predicated on white racial supremacy. It was bolstered by the pseudo-scriptural ‘Babel’ theology of racial separation as God’s will and a socio-political theory that people naturally gravitate to their own group or ‘nation’. Apartheid ideology was sustained by the Afrikaner Broederbond, an influential all-male secret society founded in 1918 to advance the ‘Christian National’ cause in all spheres of life. Its membership strictly by invitation, this ‘brain’ of Afrikanerdom embraced academics, teachers, Dutch Reformed clerics, and NP politicians including every party leader from Malan to de Klerk. Prior to apartheid, race relations were governed by social conventions that mirrored the class relations of Victorian Britain. Social segregation was customary. Education enabled some social mobility. Inter-racial friendships and marriage were possible but rare. A few creative multiracial suburbs developed. Now, ‘petty apartheid’ regulations enforced social separation. Trains, taxis, lifts, park benches, entrances and serving counters, beaches and amenities, all were labelled: ‘Non-whites’, ‘Whites’ or ‘Europeans’. The overall ‘grand apartheid’ plan aimed at complete political and physical separation. The Population Registration Act (1950, repealed 17 June 1991) defined four groups: Bantu, Indian and other Asian, Coloured, and White. Each was confined to its own residential areas under the Group Areas Act (1950, repealed, together with the Land Act, on 30 June 1991). Mixed marriages were prohibited for ‘Europeans’ in 1949 and the Immorality Amendment Act (1950) criminalized sexual relations between whites and any ‘non-white’ person. Mixed suburbs, famously Cape Town’s District Six and Johannesburg’s Sophiatown, were demolished, their people despatched to segregated townships. Numerous ‘black spots’ continued to suffer forced removal, the people discarded in arid tribal areas. Farm workers, tied to farms like medieval serfs, lived a family life but usually in very poor conditions Black Africans with urban roots or long-term employment had ‘Section 10 rights’ under the Urban Areas Act, allowing families to live in drab government-­ owned townships; but ‘grand apartheid’ envisioned a future when ‘Bantu’ families would all live in tribal ‘homelands’ and any workers, men and women, who were needed in cities would come as ‘migrant workers’, housed in single-sex hostels or back-garden rooms. Rigid control of the black African population was imposed through a ‘pass’ system. Passes, or ‘Reference Books’, were identity documents that regulated where each person over 16 could live and work. Some pass regulations had previously existed: urban areas were declared ‘white’ in 1923 and black African men within them had to carry a pass. In 1956 some 20,000 women, led by the ANC’s Lilian Ngoyi and a small multiracial group of supporters, marched peacefully

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through Pretoria against the imposition of passes on women, but by 1958 all ‘native’ adults had to carry their ‘pass’ in ‘white’ South Africa or face fines, imprisonment, and possibly being ‘endorsed out’ to a tribal area, causing constant grief and resentment. In 1962 alone, 384,497 persons were convicted of pass offences (Benson, 1966 p.271 n.1). Passes prevented natural urbanization. After their abolition in 1986 the unplanned influx into cities, with overcrowding of squatter areas and hostels, helped create the conditions for violence. Prior to 1948 black African education depended almost entirely on some 4,000 government-subsidized mission schools. A few were elite: Clarkebury and Healdtown educated Nelson Mandela; the alumni of Adams College included Pixley Seme, Albert Luthuli and Chief Buthelezi. The Lovedale missionary institution became Fort Hare University College, attracting students from across Africa. The liberal English-speaking universities boasted a scattering of black students and staff. Apartheid changed all this. In 1953 black African education was nationalized under the Ministry of Native Affairs headed by apartheid’s chief architect, Hendrik Verwoerd. His Bantu Education Act made educational segregation compulsory and introduced an inferior ‘Bantu education’ curriculum. Most mission schools decided to close rather than adopt it. Among many teachers who resigned, Desmond Tutu turned to the priesthood. The government greatly expanded black schooling but spent, per black pupil, around 10% of the provision for whites. Books were lacking, facilities poorly maintained; dedicated head teachers battled to maintain some kind of standard. Education was a bomb ready to detonate. Grand apartheid separated even tribes. In 1951 the old tribal reserves, scattered across South Africa, became ten ‘homelands’ (‘bantustans’ or ‘Self Governing Territories’ (SGTs)).2 Some resembled archipelagos. They still totalled just 13.7% of the land. Grand apartheid drew on the social theory of ‘pillarization’ elaborated by Dutch politician-theologian Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920), who pictured human society as existing not in horizontal layers but in vertical silos or ‘pillars’ set beside one another. The bantustan system depicted each ethnicity, within its own ‘pillar’, as ‘separate but equal,’ developing along its own lines. Pretoria, in liberal statebuilding mode, promoted ‘self-government’ by creating miniature political parties and police forces. The vision was for each SGT to accept ‘independence’ and receive international recognition, creating a mini-­ commonwealth of autonomous ethnic states within white South Africa. The Bantu Citizenship Act (1970) caused all South Africa’s black African citizens to vanish overnight, promising each a citizenship certificate of their tribal homeland. F. W. de Klerk, then a young Afrikaner nationalist, welcomed this policy as a ‘moral solution to our complex problems’: it would afford Afrikaners and other 2

Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda, Ciskei, KwaZulu, Lebowa, Gazankulu, KaNgwane, KwaNdebele, and QwaQwa.

South Africa’s Fractured Rainbow

23

groups an equal right to self-determination in their own areas (De Klerk, 1999 p.30). Most black Africans angrily rejected this theft of their South African citizenship and despised the bantustan authorities as collaborators. South African passports, grudgingly issued, were always necessary for international travel. Between 1976 and 1981 four ‘homelands’: Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei, the ‘TBVC States’, opted for ‘independence’. They acquired small Defence Forces. All became mini-dictatorships. Ciskei, Transkei and Venda succumbed to military coups. Apart from minor semi-official contacts with Israel and Taiwan, the international community never recognized these creations. All were reincorporated before the April 1994 election.

Defiance Campaign and Freedom Charter New ANC leaders, who were eventually to emerge triumphant – Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela and their colleagues – made their debut in 1944 as the founders of the ANC Youth League. In 1949 they led the ANC into militant anti-apartheid protest. In 1952 a multiracial partnership formed between the ANC, SA Indian Congress, and Coloured and white volunteers to wage a Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws, the ‘Defiance Campaign’. Mass disobedience against ‘petty apartheid’ saw thousands of protesters using ‘wrong’ entrances and facilities. Eight thousand were briefly imprisoned. International attention was attracted. The same multiracial alliance then formulated the ‘Freedom Charter’, a common vision of South Africa’s future. Submissions collected by thousands of volunteers were collated by the ANC’s Prof. Z. K. Matthews and Lionel ‘Rusty’ Bernstein, an underground Communist representing the new white ‘Congress of Democrats’. The submissions became a seminal declaration by ‘the People of South Africa’ that the future they desired was a non-racial democracy with equal rights, work and homes for all, security, peace and friendship. A vision of multiracial peace, diametrically opposed to apartheid. The Freedom Charter was adopted at a festive two-day multiracial ‘Congress of the People’ that drew about 3,000 delegates to the Kliptown football ground in Soweto over the weekend 25–26 June 1955. The ANC seized the occasion to honour three multiracial heroes: Fr Trevor Huddleston (who was present), Chief Albert Luthuli and Dr Yusuf Dadoo (both absent due to banning). In its final hours the Congress was visited by Special Branch police, on suspicion that ‘treason’ was being committed. Modelled in 1947 on the investigative Special Branch of the London Metropolitan Police, the SB was yet to acquire its sinister reputation as the ‘Security Branch’, and was regarded as a joke. By agreement with the Chair, speeches cheerfully continued while the SB collected banners and papers, including ‘two notices at the food-stall – SOUP WITH MEAT and SOUP WITHOUT MEAT’ (Benson, 1966 p.178). The ANC adopted the Freedom Charter as its fundamental policy statement. Black society broadly approved, but did not universally welcome the Charter’s

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multiracialism. Division arose between inclusive ‘Charterists’, and strict ‘Africanists’ who identified with anti-colonialism and deliberated on whether all races could qualify as ‘African’.

Communism: partner or threat The small Communist Party of South Africa, recently banned and dissolved, provided the Defiance Campaign with several leading figures. White workers who founded the Party in 1921 had received instructions from Moscow to open to all races and support majority rule, as the route to a socialist state. Equal membership proved one of the Party’s attractions. After participating in strikes and protests it was banned under the Suppression of Communism Act (1950) and later the Internal Security Act (1976). It secretly reconstituted in 1953 as the underground South African Communist Party (SACP) and existed in close partnership with the ANC, with some overlap in membership. This Communist link would give the ANC its entrée to military training in the Communist bloc, directly linking the South African situation to the geopolitics of the Cold War. HW van der Merwe recounts how, in his youth, three existential threats to Afrikaners were impressed upon him: the Engelse gevaar, Roomse gevaar, and swart gevaar – the English, Roman Catholic, and black dangers (Van der Merwe, 2000 p.46). To these were now added the rooi gevaar, the red, Communist danger. Communism and black rule were the South African government’s two great bogeys, and they became fused together. Black majority rule would equate to a Russian take-over and the unthinkable horror of atheist Communist rule. The ANC must either be naïve not to recognize it was being used by the USSR, or must actually have a hidden Communist agenda. Geopolitically, South Africa presented itself as the regional bastion of Western values: democracy, capitalism and Christian civilization. The apartheid government believed in this analysis, as did enough white voters to keep the NP safely in power. The Suppression of Communism Act (1950) and Terrorism Act (1967) and their successors provided a catch-all rationale for internal repression. Practically any anti-apartheid activity, organization or publication might be labelled ‘communist’ and/or ‘terrorist’. Without the instigation of unrest, the government’s propaganda proclaimed, the black population would be perfectly content. Organizations and individuals could be placed under ‘banning orders’, an administrative action by Ministers, allowing no legal redress. A banned person could not be published or quoted, was subject to travel restrictions and/or house arrest, and was restricted to meeting just one person at a time apart from family. Banned organizations might regroup under another name, or go underground. Between 1950 and 1990 over 100 organizations and over 1,600 individuals of all races suffered banning. Mandela consistently argued that the ANC–SACP relationship was pragmatic. True, the ANC adopted the salutation ‘Comrade’ and accepted Com-

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munist training and materiel, but it also enjoyed broad Western support. It subscribed to the Freedom Charter, which was not fully Marxist. It was not controlled by Moscow. In December 1956, 156 people – including Chief Albert Luthuli, Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela, Lilian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph, Joe Slovo, Ruth First, Z. K. Matthews and Joe Modise – were detained and charged with a plot inspired by international Communism to overthrow the government by force. The ‘Treason Trial’ continued until March 1961. All were acquitted. A Defence Fund was organized by activists of all races, and Canon John Collins at St Paul’s Cathedral in London started the Defence and Aid Fund, the first organized international activism against apartheid. It worked throughout the apartheid period, using circuitous, often church-related, means to pay legal fees and support those accused or imprisoned and their families. The Trial also demonstrated the existence of a significant anti-apartheid strand within the establishment, including lawyers and judges willing to stand up to the government. The press too had a fair amount of freedom – as long as it made no difference. All internal broadcasting, however, was government-controlled and used for propaganda. One of the triallists, Chief Albert Luthuli, ANC President 1952–67, was a deeply respected Methodist lay preacher, teacher and non-violent activist. Banned in 1959, he was restricted to his home in Natal. In 1960 he was the first African to be honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize, which he received in Oslo the following year. At the same moment, the South African conflict was turning violent.

Sharpeville massacre, call to arms Early in 1960, with many British colonies preparing for independence, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan toured Africa. On 3 February, addressing Parliament in Cape Town, he spoke of the ‘wind of change’ inexorably sweeping across the continent. But the white government was preparing to enter its right-wing laager. On the far left wing, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) had broken away from the ANC in 1959, rejecting its multiracial ‘Charterist’ vision and adopting a radical Black nationalist, anti-colonialist stance. The two organizations were intense rivals. The ANC called for an anti-pass protest to commence on 31 March 1960; but on 18 March PAC President Robert Sobukwe announced a day of action on Monday 21 March when everyone should refuse to carry their passbook and present themselves for arrest at their nearest police station. Some 5,000 gathered outside the fenced Sharpeville police station, south of Johannesburg. After reinforcements the police numbered about 150. They opened fire, shooting as people fled, killing 69 and injuring 180. ‘Sharpeville’ reverberated round the world. On 28 March the ANC, faced with probable banning, smuggled Oliver Tambo out to be its ambassador in London, where he led the ANC from exile, becoming President on Luthuli’s death in 1967.

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The government declared a State of Emergency, detained hundreds, and on 8 April banned the ANC and PAC. The UN’s Security Council Resolution 134 of 1 April 1960 called for an end to apartheid. In July the newly independent Belgian Congo disintegrated into chaos, whites were killed and apartheid’s apologists felt justified in resisting change. ‘Professor’ Robert Sobukwe was a widely respected lecturer in Zulu at the University of the Witwatersrand. As PAC President he was a moderate, accepting as ‘African’ all who owed loyalty to Africa and were willing to accept democratic majority rule. His volcanic colleague Potlako Leballo, PAC leader 1962–79, wanted whites to return to Europe. Sobukwe was arrested in Soweto on 21 March, detained on Robben Island and died in 1978 having spent his last illness under banning orders in Kimberley. After Sharpeville, ANC leaders made renewed efforts to achieve non-­ violent change. The government had initiated a major constitutional alteration by calling a referendum among white voters in which, in October 1960, 52% voted to become a republic. Just before being banned the ANC called instead for an inclusive ‘National Convention’ – recalling the National Convention of 1908–09 – to formulate a constitution for a democratic South Africa based on one person, one vote. Released from detention in September, the ANC leaders called a conference for March 1961 which elected Mandela to lead a National Action Council. Mandela again called for an elected National Convention, and announced a nation-wide three-day strike for 29–31 May to demand this, and to disrupt the inauguration of the Republic on 31 May. The PAC opposed the strike, and the government crushed it. Its failure sealed the ANC’s decision to take up arms (Benson, 1966 pp.236–7). Mandela wrote to the press calling again for a Convention and pledging himself to ‘militant action’ (Mandela, 1994 pp.326–7). Liberals of all races were expressing interest but the government and opposition United Party ignored Mandela’s call.3 In June 1961 Mandela and a small group of ANC and SACP resorted to planning an armed force, uMkhonto we Sizwe, ‘Spear of the Nation’, abbreviated as ‘MK’. Mandela chaired its High Command. MK was autonomous and non-racial.4 It adopted and maintained a policy of sabotaging infrastructure and making ‘propaganda attacks’ while avoiding deaths, particularly civilian deaths, as ‘the best hope for reconciliation among the races afterwards’ (Mandela, 1994 p.336). 3

4

Anglican priest Cyprian Thorpe (1996 p.140) describes an urgent gathering in July 1961 in the liberal suburb of Houghton, Johannesburg. It included ‘businessmen, leaders of the Liberal and Progressive parties, … African, Indian and Coloured leaders’, Beyers Naudé (still a DRC Moderator) and Anglo American’s Zach de Beer. The gathering agreed to call for a National Convention, but the effort died after intimidation and the disappearance of several would-be organizers into exile. For MK history see Motumi (1994), Williams (2000), Cherry (2011).

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27

Operations began on ‘Dingaan’s Day’, 16 December 1961, with ‘symbolic sabotage’: blowing up an electricity substation in Port Elizabeth, damaging Bantu Affairs and municipal offices nearby and in Durban and Johannesburg – and distributing an eloquent explanatory leaflet. Six days earlier, on 10 December, Chief Luthuli had received the Nobel Peace Prize as a leader committed to non-violence, and the turn to violence was always contentious (Mandela, 1994 pp.320–4). Theologically, Mandela found a persuasive argument in Christ’s forceful cleansing of the temple; white conservatives cited St Paul’s injunction to obey the authorities (Romans 13:1–5). Church leaders generally advocated non-violence while expressing understanding of the motivations for violence. Mandela says Luthuli’s doubts contributed to the decision to create MK as a separate organization. By the end of 1962, however, MK was being seen unequivocally as the ANC’s military wing. Mandela organized MK underground, then travelled through Africa and to London with Tambo, rallying support. After two months’ training in Ethiopia he returned secretly to South Africa. On 5 August 1962 he was arrested, probably after a CIA tip-off. Nine colleagues were arrested the following year at their underground headquarters in Rivonia, Johannesburg. In the ‘Rivonia Trial’ the group faced charges of sabotage, planning revolution and promoting Communism. Mandela’s international standing stemmed from his speech from the dock on 20 April 1964 when he pledged himself to the ideal of ‘a democratic and free society’ for which ‘if needs be’ (a caveat urged on him by lawyer George Bizos) he was prepared to die. Justice Quartus de Wet ruled that the accused were guilty of high treason, deserving death; but since the State had not brought that charge, he sentenced them to life imprisonment. For Mandela and his closest colleagues this lasted for eighteen years on Robben Island and nine on the mainland. MK began with a few hundred ‘cadres’ (members) including whites and a significant penumbra of white supporters inside South Africa. A first group trained in China, a second in Ethiopia. Ronnie Kasrils (2013 pp.58–65) describes training in Ukraine, USSR, in 1964 with MK’s later Commander Joe Modise and 300 others. After the ‘Soweto uprising’ in 1976, and during the militant 1980s, hundreds of youngsters ‘skipped the border’ seeking scholarships or military training. From 1987, basic training was available in Transkei.5 MK was based initially in Tanzania, then Angola 1976–89, and finally Uganda. Its strength, underground viability and arms caches were always shrouded in speculation. Tsepe Motumi (1994) concluded there were no accurate published figures, but estimated no more than 10,000 to 12,000 ‘cadres’ ever received formal training. A few units saw action in the region’s other liberation struggles, all doubling as Cold War proxy wars. In 1967 MK’s ‘Luthuli Detachment’ led by Chris Hani 5

Ntuli interview.

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briefly fought in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). Units were involved in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Angola (Williams, 2000 p.17). Cadres based in Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland suffered cross-border SADF raids. Many members never experienced combat. An unknown, but modest, number penetrated back into South Africa, risking rapid capture and imprisonment but contributing to a growing number of attacks.6 The actors might often be locally trained, possibly using MK-supplied materiel. Some indication of numbers emerged when, early in 1994, the Transitional Executive Council drew up a register of forces to be integrated into the new SANDF.7 MK’s list of 28,888 included SDU members recruited locally and given minimal training. The number actually integrated was 14,791.8 The legend of ANC arms caches was an issue in the transition. From 1987 to 1993 MK infiltrated modest supplies of arms. Its London-based front company ‘Africa Hinterland’, ran adventure trips from Nairobi to Cape Town.9 Its Bedford safari truck, bought and modified in England with £80,000 cash from the London ANC office, had two long slim secret compartments. During an overnight stop in Lusaka these were filled with thin boxes containing a tonne of arms: handguns, AK-47s, ammunition, grenades, and limpet mines – Mac Maharaj comments that MK dispensed with dynamite since limpets were doing so well: they had learnt to prise open Soviet limpets and pack them with thermite ‘so that when it exploded the fire would stick and keep burning’.10 Above the boxes sat the unsuspecting passengers, often Australians and New Zealanders recruited in London. The young British driver/guides were told only that South Africa’s black population was under attack and the arms were either for immediate use or to be cached pending the future ‘people’s war’. Leaving its passengers in Cape Town the truck made a delivery round, dropping boxes with 6

According to Cherry (2011 pp.50, 95) 10 or 12 minor attacks on buildings and infrastructure occurred each year 1977–79, rising to 44 in 1984 and 300 in 1988. At interview Ronnie Kasrils, MK intelligence chief, agreed that ‘even after the 1976 uprising when MK benefitted from a lot of recruitment, it was something like 10 to 20 operations a year’. For the late 1980s his verbal estimates diverge from Cherry’s: ‘By the mid-1980s this was hitting 100 a year, and by 1988 it hit the top mark, which was 150’. In another variant: ‘The head of the SA Security Police said in January 1990 that incidents of terror in SA’ (excluding the TBVC) ‘decreased from 281 in 1988 to 199 in 1989 (SAIRR, 1989/90 p.238). Police statistics included attacks on policemen, buildings, railway lines, and ‘civilians including people like town councillors’, where MK was suspected. 7 The SADF declared 90,000, TVBC Defence Forces 11,039, MK 28,888, APLA 6,000 (Williams, 2000 p.25). 8 Final Integration Report (2003), http://pmg-assets.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/docs/2003/appendices/030522finalintergr.htm accessed 29/1/21. 9 Round interview, and film ‘The Secret Safari’. 10 Maharaj interview.

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MK sympathizers in other cities. According to driver Stuart Round each box could hold two AKs (so a maximum of thirty-two per trip, but usually many fewer).11 A significant proportion probably ended in police hands.12 Officially, this smuggling ceased when the ANC ‘suspended’ armed activities in August 1990; but MK ‘hawks’ believed the ANC–Government war was continuing in the guise of the ANC–IFP conflict and negotiations might break down, necessitating the ‘people’s war’. Hence ‘MK took the decision, independently of the ANC’ to continue shipments.13 Africa Hinterland relocated to Johannesburg and ran short trips to Lusaka, bringing fresh loads until 1993. Altogether, between 1987 and 1993 the truck smuggled forty loads into South Africa. Sporadic smuggling in cars also continued into 1993 (Cock, 1998 p.139; Kasrils, 2013 p.230). Caches might consist of two or three AKs buried by cadres infiltrating on foot; or larger collections in the bedrooms or garden sheds of white sympathizers.14 Maharaj says that in 1988–89 he was shown some fifty AKs in a shed, which he dispersed in batches of six in strategic locations.15 Fear of ANC caches remained an issue, but probably by the time of the NPA any collections had been dissipated. All reports suggest that both IFP and ANC were sourcing AK-47s via Mozambican migrants.16 Cock (1998 p.138) mentions that it was intended, after the 1994 election, that the SANDF would lift the ANC caches. It appears there is no record of anything being done or found.17 Over the entire period 1961–90, due to ‘a combination of ineffectiveness with restraint’, only some 240 deaths within South Africa are attributed to formal MK activity (Cherry, 2011 pp.136–7). A car bomb in Church Street, Pretoria, on 20 May 1983, aimed at SAAF personnel in retaliation for a cross-border raid, exploded prematurely killing two MK cadres and seventeen others, some civilians. In unauthorized revenge attacks, a bomb at the Amanzimtoti Wimpy Bar in December 1985, retaliating for a raid into Lesotho, killed five; another at the Wild 11 12

Round interview. ‘The Secret Safari’ film visually suggests four AKs per box. ‘Weaponry seized in the first eight months of the year’, according to SAP reports in September 1991, ‘included 700 AK-47 rifles, 31,000 rounds of AK-47 ammunition, 200 hand grenades, 100 limpet and other mines, and three RPG-7 missile launchers’ ( Jeffery, 2009 p.290). In 1992 police discovered 25 caches (SAIRR, 1993/94, p.301). 13 Mannie Brown in ‘The Secret Safari’ film. 14 Maharaj interview, and ‘The Secret Safari’ film. 15 Maharaj interview. 16 e.g. Weekly Mail 19–25/4/91 on the flow of AKs to East Rand IFP; Thokoza SDUs & SPUs interviews. 17 ‘MK arms caches were only cleared by the new defence force early in 1994 [sic; should read 1995]’ (Cock 1998 p.138). The author sent email inquiries to Cock on 19/11/15, and Maharaj 28/11/15; both replied they have no hard information. Emails to Kasrils and Nyanda elicited no replies.

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Coast Sun Casino in April 1986 killed two. On 14 June 1986 Robert McBride’s car bomb outside Magoo’s Bar in Durban, aimed at security personnel, killed three civilian women and injured about seventy. The low death toll was a success for ANC policy. President de Klerk unbanned MK and the other liberation armies on 2 February 1990. MK members served on peace committees both as ‘hawks’ (Robert McBride, organizing SDUs in Thokoza) and ‘doves’ (Mandla Maseko, an outstanding peacemaker in Alexandra).

APLA and AZANLA The PAC formed its first armed wing, ‘Poqo’ (‘pure’) in 1961. Poqo was integral to the PAC. It explicitly aimed to kill whites, police, and collaborators, but its bloody campaign across the Cape in 1962–63 killed mainly blacks and ended in mass arrests and executions. In 1968 the PAC formed the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA), which trained in China, was based in Tanzania, and upheld the PAC’s killing policy. The PAC’s notorious slogan ‘One settler, one bullet’ was coined in 1986. Its President Zeph Mothopeng straight-facedly explained to the NIS’s Maritz Spaarwater that it ‘was in fact intended to teach their supporters thrift in everything they did’ (Spaarwater, 2012 p.205). During 1991 to 1993 the PAC declared support for peace but Transkei-based APLA units continued to attack whites and security forces in the Cape and OFS, earning severe reprimand from the Goldstone Commission. APLA’s final action was to shoot five civilians at the Heidelberg Tavern in Cape Town on 30 December 1993, in retaliation for the SADF’s slaughter of four youths in Umtata. Post-election, 6,421 APLA members integrated into the SANDF. The extreme-left Azanian People’s Organisation (AZAPO) was formed in 1978 by the leaders of some banned Black Consciousness organizations. It established a small armed wing, the Azanian National Liberation Army (AZANLA), which trained in Africa and China but had little international support and appears not to have made an impact. AZAPO declared support for peace but boycotted the negotiations and the 1994 election, declining to integrate AZANLA into the SANDF. Years later, several hundred veterans gained military pensions.

Black Consciousness, and Soweto uprising In the late 1960s a new generation of students found inspiration in Latin American ‘liberation theology’ and American ‘black theology’. The radical and multiracial University Christian Movement (UCM) spread these influences. It afforded space for Durban medical student Steve Biko to develop his philosophy of Black Consciousness. His black caucus in UCM became, in 1969, the all-black SA Student Organisation, SASO, awakening the identity and potential of black youth with its slogan: ‘Black man, you’re on your own’. This was a difficult birth-period for race relations, marked by caucusing and confrontations, but the thrust of Black Consciousness was pro-black, not

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anti-white. Biko’s mission was to challenge black people to take responsibility for discovering their own identity, voice and capabilities. At the same time his close friends and supporters included Anglican monk Aelred Stubbs CR, KwaZulu-born Swedish Lutheran pastor Dr Axel-Ivar Berglund, and Daily Dispatch editor Donald Woods. Banned in 1973, Biko defied his restrictions and was arrested in August 1977. In September he was severely assaulted while under interrogation by the SB in Port Elizabeth. He died after being transferred, unconscious, in a police van to Pretoria. Biko’s biography, written and smuggled out by Woods, became the hit film Cry Freedom (1987). Biko inspired a new wave of militancy among black youth. In the ‘Soweto uprising’ of 1976 the protagonists were high-school pupils, their leaders youths in their late teens and early twenties. The uprising was sparked by a directive from Dr Andries Treurnicht, Deputy Minister of Bantu Education, decreeing the 50/50 use of Afrikaans and English as media of instruction in ‘Bantu’ high schools. Afrikaans, itself an unpopular subject, was to replace English for teaching geography, social sciences and, vitally, mathematics. The order was perceived as a fatal attack on the already inadequate ‘Bantu education’. The lethal confrontations that followed inaugurated years of similar confrontations prior to the Peace Accord. Early in 1976 students in Johannesburg’s vast township of Soweto began boycotting classes and holding conscientization meetings, studying Black Consciousness, exploring the history of resistance, and criticizing their parents’ failure to protest. Urgent warnings and appeals to withdraw Treurnicht’s decree were made by headteachers, the SA Institute of Race Relations, and Desmond Tutu, who was living in Soweto having become Dean of Johannesburg’s Anglican Cathedral. Treurnicht, nicknamed ‘Dr No’, said he could see no problem. No structure existed that was capable of mediating. Teaching in Afrikaans began in Junior Secondaries. Stories circulated of maths teachers with dictionaries in one hand, chalk in the other. On 30 April, Orlando West Junior Secondary pupils went on strike. On Wednesday 16 June some 10,000 scholars from other schools marched across Soweto to express solidarity. At about 10am the first groups reached Orlando. At the Cillie Commission of Inquiry, Orlando Police Station commander Col. Kleingeld described taking forty black and eight white policemen armed with truncheons, teargas, pistols and three Sten sub-machine guns to deter a crowd of schoolchildren whom he estimated at 1,000–2,000 and believed to be aggressive. He said the students threw stones and police responded with teargas and truncheons; he fired warning pistol shots and fired a Sten gun over the children’s heads. Then he learnt that a police dog had been killed, and became fearful for the lives of his men.18 18 Kleingeld statement, www.gutenberg-e.org/pohlandt-mccormick/pmh02m.html [accessed 28/1/21].

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At an incongruously solemn TRC hearing in Soweto twenty years later, former student Murphy Morobe claimed all had been calm until the dog was loosed. It bit the students and they killed it. Panic and live firing followed. The police, surrounded by newly arriving students, retreated to their vehicles and drove through the crowd, shooting.19 Two schoolboys, Hastings Ndlovu (15) and Hector Pieterson (13) were killed. The photo of Hector, lifeless in the arms of a tall youth, his distraught sister stumbling along beside him, became the icon of the uprising. The news hit the world’s media, and precipitated fury across Soweto. At least twenty-three black people died that day and two white officials were stoned to death. Students attacked the government-run beer-drinking halls, which were said to finance Bantu education. Drunken knife-fights added to the mayhem. Soweto’s administration offices were burnt down, and the vast government-­run Baragwanath Hospital besieged. The army was placed on standby but not deployed. Police reinforcements were rushed in, including riot police in camouflage uniform toting high-velocity rifles and lumbering about in ungainly landmine-protected Bedford trucks, ‘Hippos’. They heralded a succession of riot units, trained not in public order but for counter-insurgency in the bush, culminating in the ‘Internal Stability Division’ of 1991 which became familiar on the peace committees. Rioting and school boycotts spread nation-wide. The Cillie Commission identified twenty-two deaths among children in the first three days, and a total of 575 ‘unrest’ deaths across the country by February 1977.20 It blamed apartheid and incompetence, but also intimidation by ‘black power’ leaders. The government’s answer was repression. A wave of fresh young prisoners arrived on Robben Island. From 1976 onwards, black communities felt under permanent attack by the police. Black youths dropped out of school to become ‘young lions’ who, with nothing to lose, were prepared to face bullets rather than live under apartheid. Some ‘skipped the border’ seeking military training. On ‘Black Wednesday’, 19 October 1977, the government banned eighteen organizations including the SA Student Organisation and other Black Consciousness groups, two black newspapers, and Beyers Naudé and his Christian Institute. Then, after a few sullen, repressed years, South Africa slid into endemic violence.

19 TRC Soweto hearing, Morobe, 23/7/96 https://sabctrc.saha.org.za/originals/ hrvtrans/soweto/morobe.htm [accessed 31/3/21]. 20 Cillie Commission Report Part D, 2.5.1.

3 Repression, Reform, Resistance, and Grassroots War Introduction P. W. Botha, Prime Minister 1978–84 and State President 1984–89, attempted to reform apartheid while repressing all opposition. A new mass movement, the United Democratic Front (UDF), arose in reaction, demanding the ending of apartheid, while the exiled ANC called on the people to make the country ‘ungovernable’. Black trades unions, legalized after 1979, proved a powerful ANCaligned mobilizing force; but in Natal/KwaZulu conservative black reaction to strikes and the ‘ungovernability’ campaign morphed into civil war. Two overlapping violent conflicts now raged, which together were to prompt the Peace Accord: the people versus the government, and Inkatha versus ANC.

Government versus people: ‘total onslaught’ and ‘total strategy’ Botha had previously, since 1966, been Minister of Defence, responding to sanctions by energetically building up the SADF, complete with Military Intelligence, special forces, and a sophisticated arms industry that included secret nuclear weapons. Botha and his generals adopted the terminology of the French counter-­ insurgency theorist General André Beaufre. Beaufre’s thesis was that France could have won against the Algerian rebels in the 1950s had it introduced reforms and development, ‘winning hearts and minds’ by offering a better future under French, rather than rebel, rule. In Beaufre’s language South Africa was being subjected, internally and externally, to a ‘total onslaught’ by international Communism, which must be met with a ‘total strategy’ that combined reform with repression. Beaufre’s weakness was his failure to comprehend the popular yearning for freedom, but Botha was convinced and in 1977 he introduced the ‘total strategy’ doctrine to Parliament (Barnard, 2015 p.134). Beaufre believed that for the sake of efficiency the military should run the ‘total strategy’ on the ground. Botha applied this doctrine, from 1979 to 1989, 33

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through his National Security Management System (NSMS). The NSMS was headed by the State Security Council (SSC), a Cabinet sub-committee chaired by the President, composed of intelligence and security personnel, attended by ministers and civil servants relevant to the topic under discussion. Contrary to popular suspicion the SSC was advisory to Cabinet and lacked executive powers. The SSC’s large secretariat in Pretoria received information from a semi-­ clandestine nation-wide security structure of twelve regional Joint Management Centres ( JMCs), each managing a cascade of sub-regional JMCs and discreet local committees composed of invited white citizens, which passed information on any local problems to the JMCs, which reported to the Secretariat and so to the SSC. In ‘progressive’ thinking the SSC loomed as the dark source of all malign deeds. Its member Niël Barnard (2015, p.135) states it met fortnightly, on Mondays before Tuesday Cabinet meetings, and in his view ‘despite certain blunders’ it ‘had nothing to hide’. De Klerk and other ministers consistently state they were not fully informed of any actions ordered or sanctioned by the SSC or elements within it, nor did all its members know what Botha and some others might privately decide (De Klerk, 1999 pp.122–4). A ‘need to know’ convention reigned. Former Cabinet Minister Leon Wessels confessed to the TRC that he had been aware that activities were happening which were causing concern, and although he had no proof, ‘I do not believe that the political defence of “I did not know” is available to me, because in many respects I believe I did not want to know’ (Allen, 2006 p.365). It eventually emerged that certain ‘dirty tricks’ – the murder of the ‘Cradock Four’ in 1985, the bombing of the SACC offices in 1988 – were indeed discussed and ordered by Botha and other persons within the System but apparently outside formal meetings The SADF was deployed in a few infrastructure developments, such as tarmac roads in townships, but hearts and minds were not won. Faced with increasing ‘unrest’ the NSMS concentrated on spying and repression. Botha’s State of Emergency from 1985 to 1989 was high season for ‘dirty tricks’ perpetrated by covert units within both army and police. On becoming President, de Klerk dismantled the NSMS but retained the SSC in a strictly advisory role. For a time suspicions persisted that it was orchestrating ‘Third Force’ activities against the ANC. Such activities did exist, but not under the SSC.

‘Dirty Tricks’: Unit C1/C10 at Vlakplaas From the 1970s onwards the police Security Branch (SB) became notorious for surveillance, running informers, torture, and deaths in detention. It was suspected of assassinations and disappearances. In 1980 it acquired a covert counter-insurgency group, ‘Unit C1’, based at Vlakplaas farm south of Pretoria.

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Headed by Dirk Coetzee (1980–81), and later Eugene de Kock (1985–93), C1 employed white and black police, and ‘askaris’ – ‘turned’ members of MK and other liberation forces. Theoretically under political control, Vlakplaas became increasingly autonomous and unaccountable. Among top officers and politicians, its existence operated on a highly selective ‘need to know’ basis. Vlakplaas operatives assassinated a string of activists, including lawyer Griffiths Mxenge in 1981 and his wife Victoria in 1985; bombed COSATU headquarters on 7 May 1987; and were personally ordered by Botha and Adriaan Vlok, Minister of Law and Order, to bomb the SACC offices on 31 August 1988 (Allen, 2006 pp.6–7). Vlok initiated an SB attempt in April 1989 to assassinate SACC General Secretary Rev. Frank Chikane (a future NPA facilitator) by spraying SADF-produced poison on his underwear.1 Coetzee, having fled overseas and sought ANC protection, exposed Vlakplaas in Vrye Weekblad on 17 November 1989. In response President de Klerk set up the Harms Commission to investigate all covert activities, police and military. In November 1990 Judge Harms erroneously concluded that Coetzee was lying, and exonerated C1 of hit squad activities. De Klerk believed Harms, but also believed C1 was disbanded soon afterwards. In reality, in early 1991 when the SB became the Crime Intelligence Service, C1 was kept intact by the General in charge, Krappies Engelbrecht, who hawkishly told de Kock it was still needed in case negotiations should break down.2 C1 became ‘Unit C10’, tasked with investigating illegal firearms. Officially, firearms seized by the police were melted down, but in February 1994 informant ‘Q’, Chappies Klopper, told Goldstone that C10 personnel, with the continued involvement of de Kock – who left Vlakplaas in April 1993 with eighty-four others in a R1.75-million pay-off (O’Brien, 2011 p.187) – were still supplying seized firearms to the IFP. Klopper also corroborated Coetzee’s earlier revelations, adding that C1 had supplied guns to Inkatha leaders in the 1980s and was active in train and hostel violence in 1990. Goldstone rapidly investigated and Vlakplaas was closed just before the 1994 election (Goldstone, 2000 pp.50–3).3

‘Dirty tricks’: the Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB) Under Botha, the army’s Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) grew to several thousand personnel. In 1986 it spawned the ‘Civil Cooperation Bureau’ (CCB), staffed by plain-clothes ex-soldiers and police, to carry out covert activities through front companies. Operatives assassinated leading activists Anton 1 www.iol.co.za/news/politics/the-source-of-chikane-poison-revealedclaim-362973 [accessed 30/1/21]. In 2006 Vlok apologized and washed Chikane’s feet. 2 www.justice.gov.za/trc/decisions/2001/ac21171.htm [accessed 30/1/21]. 3 See pp.415–17.

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Lubowski, Dulcie September and David Webster, and injured Albie Sachs in Maputo in April 1988. As late as 28 April 1990, ANC-aligned Anglican priest Michael Lapsley in Harare received a letter bomb, blowing off his hands and blinding him in one eye; the CCB is suspected. General Magnus Malan, Minister of Defence since 1980 and originator of the CCB as an intelligence unit, informed de Klerk of these activities in January 1990, saying he had only just become aware of them. De Klerk (1999 p.194) insists he knew nothing of the CCB until this briefing. The CCB refused to disclose documents to the Harms Commission, and was disbanded in August 1990. Its milder successor, the ‘Directorate of Covert Collections’ was uncovered by Goldstone in 1992.4

A ‘Third Force’? Most police and army members were ignorant of these units. Until Goldstone’s investigations their activities were revealed only through leaks and reports that seemingly corroborated the existence of a ‘Third Force’. Belief in a coherent ‘Third Force’, coordinated at SSC/Cabinet level by a malign and double-dealing government bent on keeping power by derailing negotiations, was prevalent as the transition began; but as Goldstone was to demonstrate, any real ‘Third Force’ consisted of rogue elements of the old covert units, assisted by a few hawkish top officers who believed the ANC was Communist-controlled and that Communism must still be fought. Meanwhile the ‘Third Force’ became for progressives the same kind of malign entity, imagined as lurking behind every incident, as ‘Communist instigators’ had been for past governments.

National Intelligence Service South Africa fortunately had a National Intelligence Service (NIS), successor of the ineptly named ‘Bureau for State Security’ (BOSS), which was significantly more sophisticated. In 1979, P. W. Botha made the imaginative appointment of Daniel (Niël) Barnard to direct the NIS. Barnard, a 30-yearold politics professor at the University of the Orange Free State specializing in security and strategic studies, became Director on Sunday 1 June 1980, the day when MK limpet mines (with IRA assistance) set alight eight large tanks in the Sasolberg oil refinery. The ANC itself, he realized, was the ‘foremost enemy’ (Barnard, 2015 p.21). A committed Broederbonder, Barnard was distrustful of Communism and believed the ANC was under Moscow’s influence; but as an academic he prided himself on a ‘propensity for analysing things, viewing them from all sides’ (Ibid. 4

See pp.412–15.

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p.34). He quotes Mike Louw, his intuitive Deputy Director, as being ‘fond of saying at instruction sessions that “intelligence is truth well and timely told”’ (Ibid. p.72). He realized that South Africa’s real problem was internal and political, and that his task should be to establish facts and prepare the government for a political solution. The NIS, DMI, SB and Department of Foreign Affairs met early in 1981 to define their spheres of operation. The NIS emerged with primary responsibility for collecting ‘governmental’ information inside South Africa, and ‘non-military security information’ outside (Barnard, 2015 p.50). Barnard expanded the Service, to nearly 4,000 by 1992. It avoided dirty tricks, distancing itself from its ‘brown-shirt’ DMI counterparts, and became poised to play a critical, remarkably constructive, role in the transition.

Botha’s constitutional reforms By 1978 it was obvious that ‘grand apartheid’ had been a chimera. Townships had not vanished. Less than half the black African population lived in the ‘homelands’. Power-sharing, at least, was indicated – but it was not to be enough. Botha’s first reform, the Black Local Authorities Act (1982) created ‘Town Councils’ in townships. Council elections were violently boycotted and councillors, as collaborators, became targets. At national level Botha introduced a ‘Tricameral’ Constitution with a Parliament of three Houses, responsible for the ‘own affairs’ of whites (with 178 seats), Coloureds (85 seats) and Indians (45 seats). Power lay with the whites. Coordination was achieved through joint standing committees and a President’s Council of 20 white, 10 Coloured and 5 Indian elected members plus 25 presidential appointees. Coloured and Indian parties did form to contest seats, but elections were accompanied by violent protests and boycotts. This Constitution introduced a powerful executive State President, chosen by an electoral college of 50 white, 25 Coloured, and 13 Indian MPs, so the leader of the white ruling party was virtually certain to be State President, again keeping power in white hands. An all-white referendum gave 66.3% approval to the Tricameral Constitution. It was introduced in 1983 and inaugurated in 1984, an inadequate reform that provoked wrath from left and right. Faced with Botha’s plan, the NP’s right wing split away in 1982 under Dr Andries Treurnicht, ‘Dr No’ of the Soweto uprising, to become the fanatically anti-Communist, pro-apartheid Conservative Party (CP). The CP replaced the liberal PFP (Progressive Federal Party) as the official parliamentary opposition, and claimed significant support among the police and army; in 1989 it polled 31.5% of white votes, winning forty-one seats in the House of Assembly. Certain CP-controlled town councils gave the AWB the freedom of the town. The CP was to boycott all negotiations, spurning both the NPA and constitutional talks as Communist plots.

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United Democratic Front (UDF) Popular rejection of Botha’s reforms gave birth in May 1983 to the United Democratic Front (UDF), the largest ever multiracial anti-apartheid coalition. It adopted the Freedom Charter and the slogan ‘UDF Unites, Apartheid Divides’. Some 400 ‘progressive’ organizations joined, from trades unions, churches and youth and women’s groups to the ‘civic organizations’ that sprang up in townships as unofficial ANC-aligned alternatives to Botha’s town councils. The UDF first organized ‘bottom-up’ in regions, then launched nationally on 20 August 1983 at a gathering of 10,000 in Mitchells Plain, Cape Town. UDF leaders and patrons included Rev. Frank Chikane, Helen Suzman MP, Rev. Beyers Naudé, Rev. Allan Boesak, and Bishop Desmond Tutu.5 Contact was maintained with the exiled ANC. Government propaganda duly branded the UDF an ANC/Communist front, but ‘the movement mobilised the ordinary people, urban and rural, like the ANC had never done’ (Du Preez, 2003 p.139). The UDF aspired to be non-violent in face of police repression, but in Natal/ KwaZulu its affiliates clashed with conservatives in the civic and industrial spheres, and the ‘black-on black’ violence of the UDF/ANC–Inkatha civil war began. In 1988 the government restricted the UDF’s funding and activities, and banned or detained many of its leaders. UDF organizations persisted in mobilizing, as the ‘Mass Democratic Movement’, but with moderate leaders silenced, activist youths became more violent.

Rubicon refused In January 1985 Botha publicly offered to release Mandela on condition that he reject violence. Although he was still banned, his reply was read out at a UDF rally by his daughter. He declined, proclaiming that his freedom was indivisible from the freedom of all through the ending of apartheid. Would Botha end apartheid? In June 1985 he repealed the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act. Then, in Durban on 15 August, he made a much-­anticipated speech amid speculation that he would now ‘cross the Rubicon’ and inaugurate the post-apartheid era. Instead he defended the status quo, firmly rejecting a unitary democracy. Major international banks withdrew their government loans, the Rand halved in value and sanctions tightened. In September, admitting that homeland ‘independence’ would never win international recognition, Botha restored South African citizenship to black Africans, allowing ‘dual citizenship’ to the TBVC States. In 1986 he abolished the pass system, ending ‘influx control’. Township governance was breaking down just as work-seekers flooded in, shack settlements burgeoned, and drains burst. 5

SACC General Secretary 1978–84, Bishop of Johannesburg 1985–86, Archbishop of Cape Town 1986–95.

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‘Ungovernability’ ANC President Oliver Tambo first hinted at making South Africa ungovernable early in 1984. ‘We should direct our collective might to rendering the enemy’s instruments of authority unworkable’ ( Jeffery, 2009 p.67). Town Councils must not be allowed to exist. The ANC’s Consultative Conference at Kabwe, Zambia, in June 1985 endorsed Tambo’s words and Radio Freedom broadcast the call to the people to make the country ungovernable and apartheid unworkable. Already, UDF affiliates were ahead. The ‘Vaal Uprising’, sparked by a rent rise in the sprawling townships south of Johannesburg in September 1984, featured boycotts of white businesses and attacks on police and councillors. This ‘unrest’ spread to the eastern Cape. In July 1985 Botha imposed a State of Emergency in both areas. Extended to the whole country in June 1986, it lasted until 1990. ‘Dirty tricks’ burgeoned, and for the first time the SADF was deployed in the townships to support the police. The new ANC-aligned ‘Civic Organizations’ encouraged the replacement of policing by vigilante justice that was frequently meted out by teenagers, boycotting school under the slogan ‘Liberation now! Education later!’ To eliminate perceived collaborators and informers they adopted the gruesome method of ‘necklacing’, forcing a tyre over the victim, pouring on petrol and setting them alight. Mature leaders protested. By 1991 necklacing was rare but township administration was essentially non-functional and even the most credible leaders could barely control a highly disturbed, youth-led population. Fr S’mangaliso Mkatshwa, visiting Lusaka with Catholic bishops in April 1986, said the conflict ‘was no longer between black and white but between those who supported freedom and non-racialism and those who defended the status quo. The so-called “black on black” violence in the townships was between progressives and [conservative] vigilantes – it was neither irrational nor directionless’ (Macmillan, 2013 p.212). It was nevertheless complex and chaotic. Barnard records that Botha realized by 1986 that, despite police assurances, things were getting out of control and the regime might go under; yet he was still determined to be tough and inflexible. Barnard (2015 p.15) credits himself with inwardly reflecting that there was ‘another, far better option’.

The ANC–Inkatha conflict A ‘black on black’ war was now developing in Natal/KwaZulu, between the ANC and the Zulu traditionalists of Inkatha headed by Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi. The ‘homeland’ of KwaZulu was a fragmented archipelago of patches of land, rural and urban, large and small, scattered throughout Natal. By tradition since Shaka’s time the Zulu ‘nation’, which by 1991 numbered some five million, was ruled by a monarch and a semi-hereditary aristocracy of chiefs, amakhosi. The

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amakhosi in turn appoint local headmen, indunas. As a ‘Self-Governing Territory’ KwaZulu had acquired an elected Legislature, and King Goodwill Zwelithini struggled to chart his role as a ‘constitutional monarch’, theoretically above party politics. Presiding over the Legislature was the curious institution of a ‘traditional’ Chief Minister with executive powers, a post permanently held by Buthelezi both as President of Inkatha, which entirely controlled the Legislature, and as hereditary ‘adviser’ to the King. Born in 1928, an Anglican, educated at Adams College and Fort Hare, Buthelezi was charming but prickly and ambivalent. The very embodiment of touchy male Zulu pride, he nevertheless depended heavily on advisers who included white conservatives. As a member of the ANC Youth League, Mandela (1994 p.688) had considered him ‘one of the movement’s upcoming young leaders’. Buthelezi, although no pacifist, revered the non-violent ANC embodied by his uncle Pixley Seme (c. 1881–1951) and Chief Albert Luthuli (1897–1967), whom he considered his mentor. Buthelezi became chief of his clan in 1953, was installed by the government according to colonial protocol, and was sucked into the apartheid system. In 1970 he became head of the Zulu Territorial Authority. In 1975 he revived Inkatha, a Zulu national-cultural movement founded in 1922, as a quasi-political party; he gave it the ANC colours of green, gold and black and presented it as a movement for all black Africans, a surrogate for the banned ANC. When KwaZulu became fully ‘self-governing’ in 1977 Buthelezi was still on friendly terms with the exiled ANC leadership. They accepted his participation in the ‘homeland’ structures as a strategic ploy: he was expected to frustrate apartheid by refusing to take ‘independence’. He did make the release of Mandela the condition for any further talks with government on KwaZulu’s status; but in radical eyes he was simply a collaborator. In October 1979 Buthelezi met secretly in London with Tambo and the exiled leadership. They insisted that if Inkatha were to act as the ANC’s internal wing it must take orders from them. Buthelezi refused. His differences with ANC policy surfaced: he opposed the armed struggle, was in favour of the free market, and against sanctions which he believed hurt black workers most, and he was wary of Communist influence behind the ANC. Enmity set in. Buthelezi proclaimed the ANC was no longer the ANC of Chief Luthuli but an enemy intent on destroying the Zulu nation. Many Zulus believed him. The ANC dismissed Buthelezi as merely part of ‘the system’, failing – as O’Malley (2008 p.295) remarks – to recognize that while not all Zulus wanted him as leader, Buthelezi’s support-base ‘was real and not driven by a false consciousness somehow instilled by the regime’. Buthelezi, Inkatha, KwaZulu, the amakhosi and KwaZulu Police (of which Buthelezi was Minister) effectively formed a single institution, uncomfortably aligned with the apartheid system and a prime target for ‘progressives’ but fiercely defensive of its own Zulu cause, quite apart from its government links.

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A handful of the amakhosi leaned to the ANC; most supported Inkatha. The KZ Police officially supplied hundreds of shotguns and Hechler & Koch G3 rifles to chiefs’ ‘bodyguards’. Enmity between politicized ANC-aligned youth (mainly urban) and Inkatha-­ aligned traditionalists (mainly rural, including many urban hostel-dwellers) who upheld the old values of respect for elders and the amakhosi, was a prime dynamic in the transitional ‘black on black’ violence, which was political, generational, cultural, and finally also inter-tribal. In 1980, school boycotts in Durban townships were put down by Inkatha vigilantes. In April 1983 Lamontville, Durban’s oldest black African township, was due to be incorporated into KwaZulu. The Chair of the UDF-aligned Lamontville Rent Action Committee, which opposed incorporation, was shot and Lamontville’s Inkatha-supporting mayor was convicted of contracting the assassination. Then, in April 1985, at Howick in the ‘Natal Midlands’, a labour dispute became violently politicized. The UDF-aligned Metal and Allied Workers Union (MAWU, later NUMSA) called a strike at the British Tyre and Rubber (BTR) factory, and presented a recognition agreement setting out workers’ rights. Management rejected it, laid off 975 strikers and employed ‘scab’ labour from surrounding villages. The strikers intimidated the scabs, who fought back and secured Inkatha support. MAWU, following COSATU policy, sought legal interdicts against Inkatha; but at grassroots the conflict became physical and bloody. Intimidation and killings spread through the Midlands and then to other areas of Natal/KwaZulu. Buthelezi, seeing MK as an existential threat and waving an expanding dossier of allegedly assassinated Inkatha officials, turned to the government, pleading that, unlike the ANC, he had no army. In a covert operation during 1986 some 200 Zulus were trained by Military Intelligence’s ‘Directorate of Special Tasks’ at a base in Namibia’s Caprivi Strip. Ostensibly, they were being prepared to protect KZ government officials and buildings, but the training included the use of explosives and techniques of ‘house penetration’ – specifically, how to shoot up an ‘ANC’ home and eliminate its occupants. At the same time, Buthelezi had frequent personal meetings with the ANC’s Archie Gumede, amid attempts at rapprochement between Inkatha and the exiled ANC.6 The Weekly Mail on 21 September 1990 published a detailed exposé of the Caprivi training. It said the trainees had been assigned to four divisions: ‘offensive’, ‘defensive’, ‘ministers’ aides’ and ‘contra-mobilization intelligence’, and sent back to Ulundi to train others. Continued training did take place at Mkuze, where the Weekly Mail on 9 August 1991 stated that the SADF were now training 6

Mfayela interview. Temkin (2003, p.254) mentions peace plans made in 1987 by Dhlomo and Mbeki. Mfayela recounts how a plan, possibly the same, foundered when Walter Felgate raised concerns that ANC ‘hawks’ planned to assassinate Buthelezi at the signing ‘in Harare’, and Mbeki confirmed he had similar information.

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IFP members in urban and guerrilla warfare. De Klerk and Buthelezi confirmed that ‘150’ had been trained previously, to defend VIPs and buildings, but claimed they were KZP, not ‘IFP’, and were now housed at Mkuze because KZP barracks were full (SAIRR, 1991–92 p.500). Hearings later revealed that ‘Caprivians’ did contribute to the slaughter, some merely as criminals – enjoying protection from prosecution lest their training be revealed in court – and others as militia. Zweli Dlamini testified to the TRC that during training his ‘offensive’ group were told they were soldiers rather than police. Buthelezi himself, he said, attended the welcoming ceremony when the 200 returned to Ulundi. After a time at home, and with no police training, they were made ‘detectives’ in the KZP, a convenient cover since they could ‘investigate’ their own crimes. Dlamini and some fellow Caprivians were sent to the Pietermaritzburg area, where: ‘At night, if there was a chance, we will go out to hit or attack the ANC people.’7 As ‘unknown gunmen’ they assaulted homes, shot the occupants and ran away. A hit squad within the KZP in Esikhawini township in the north, led by Caprivi-trained Gcina Mkhize and involving Romeo Mbambo, a notorious killer, claimed over 100 victims.8 KwaZulu’s chief paramilitary trainer was Philip Powell, a young Security Branch policeman who had ostensibly resigned but remained on the SAP payroll.9 Powell appeared in the field, and at peace committee meetings, as the IFP’s ‘urban representative’. One early morning he suddenly appeared, armed, from remote bush at Gcumisa east of Pietermaritzburg, flagging down RPC fieldworker Linus Luthuli’s car. How he got there, he would not say, but ANC members had blocked the road the previous night to prevent IFP going to work, and Powell had gone to the rescue – but now: ‘“I need a lift, ANC is killing IFP!”’ Luthuli’s colleague, UN Observer Gertrude Blake, a feisty lawyer from Sierra Leone, replied firmly: ‘“Hey friend, we are UN Observers, we don’t take warlords!” – and she closed the window! We left. He was carrying two R5s!’10 From October 1993 Powell ran ‘Self-Protection Unit’ (SPU) training for some 5,000 IFP members at the Mlaba camp, set up by the KwaZulu Legislature and operative until April 1994 when the SAP raided and closed it. The young trainees, instructed to kill ANC and prevent anyone from voting, had brought fresh organization to the grassroots IFP.11 In May 1999, with KZN violence finally 7

TRC Vol. 3B:211ff., http://sabctrc.saha.org.za/documents/special/caprivi/56252. htm [accessed 31/3/21]. 8 Weekly M&G 14–20/5/99, https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/soc.culture. south-africa/MJdc0JJKvhI [accessed 14/9/20]. 9 Ibid. 10 58 Luthuli interview. An R5 is an SAP assault rifle. 11 Mfayela interview; Thokoza SDU/SPU interviews; Human Rights Watch Report: South Africa 7 (3) May 1995, www.hrw.org/reports/1995/Safrica.htm [accessed

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ending, Powell revealed a cache of seven tonnes of arms received in 1994, his last shipment ‘for training’ from Vlakplaas and Eugene de Kock.12 The IFP pointedly adopted the term ‘SPU’, as if these groups complied with the NPA; but no conditions for compliance were met. In Kathorus on the east Rand, IFP ‘SPUs’ fought ANC ‘SDUs’, both acting outside the provisions of the Accord. Another example of past government support to Inkatha came to light on 19 July 1991 when the Weekly Mail broke the story, from an ex-SB policeman, that Department of Foreign Affairs funding totalling R250,000 had been covertly channelled via the SB in Durban to Inkatha to help fund rallies in November 1989 and on 25 March 1990 (SAIRR, 1991/92 p.482). Foreign Minister Pik Botha justified this misappropriation as support to his Department’s anti-sanctions campaign. Buthelezi denied any knowledge, but paid back the money from IFP funds. Press investigation also revealed that R1.5 million in government funds had gone to the Inkatha-aligned union, UWUSA, from its launch in 1986 to July 1991.13 These ‘Inkathagate’ revelations reinforced the ANC’s contempt for Inkatha as a mere government puppet.

Dynamics of grassroots violence In the ANC–Inkatha war, both sides subscribed to a doctrine of ‘defence’ that encouraged pre-emptive action and indiscriminate revenge. A frank internal ANC memo, ‘On violence: Some Perspectives from the Ground’, handwritten shortly after 8 September 1991, admits that communities were taking matters into their own hands, believing: ‘They must fight Inkatha before Inkatha attacks them.’14 It quotes women in Boipatong saying the community was being ‘provoked into attacking the hostel’ because young ANCYL women were being abducted into it, raped and beaten – and rescue missions turned violent. Zwelakhe Sisulu [ANC Director of Information] holds the view that many township residents are beginning to pre-empt Inkatha. Thus when they hear that a rally is planned they plan to respond to the inevitable trail of violence which follows every rally. Again this is not an ANC response but the response of people living in the townships where Inkatha attacks have taken place. He thinks this may have been the situation in Thokoza.15

This, the memo notes, is a matter of concern for the ANC: if the people organize themselves, the ANC is weakened. 3/3/21]. TRC Final Report 3 (3) 57, https://sabctrc.saha.org.za/reports/volume3/ chapter3/subsection57.htm [accessed 3/3/21]. 12 Weekly M&G 14–20/5/99. 13 Ibid. pp.482–4. 14 NMP/326/0173/- (ANC Archive). 15 Ibid.

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An equally revealing report by Phillip van Niekerk in the Weekly Mail on 30 October 1987 quoted Velaphi Ndlovu, KwaZulu Legislative Assembly member and Inkatha Chair for the Pietermaritzburg area, as believing that if an Inkatha member was killed by a UDF member, it was ‘acceptable to take revenge by killing relatives of the UDF member’.16 Ndlovu admitted that revenge killing was not party policy but, he explained, it counted as defence: ‘what can you do if your house is burnt down and the law won’t do anything about that? You revenge yourself so he won’t come back again.’ Inkatha’s solution, said Ndlovu, was that the local police stations should be handed over to the KwaZulu Police. Edendale runs southwards from Pietermaritzburg, its hillsides dotted with hundreds of tiny vulnerable homesteads. In a nearby ‘newly liberated’ part of the valley, van Niekerk found ‘the enemy’, a UDF youth activist instructing an audience including small schoolboys, on forming an area committee. ‘The community’, he directed, must pursue three priorities: ‘defence committees to counter vigilante attacks; people’s courts to discipline “comrades” who misbehaved; and a first aid committee to treat the battle-wounded’. Church leaders, by contrast, were planning a large peace service in the valley. Fighting had been entrenched in Edendale since 1985, spiking in July–August 1987 when a violent Inkatha recruitment drive met fierce retaliation. In a massacre at KwaShange on 16 September thirteen Inkatha Youth Brigade members were locked in a burning house, and slaughtered on trying to escape. By 1989 the Natal/KwaZulu violence was endemic around Pietermaritzburg and Richmond, in Durban’s townships, around Empangeni and Richard’s Bay in the north, and spreading to the southern hills behind Port Shepstone. Local quarrels were coopted into the political conflict. NPS member Senzo Mfayela (IFP) says of Richmond: That fight had nothing to do with UDF and the IFP. Nothing! A group of local people – because of the faction fights that were there for generations – this group bought a gun, an R4 or something, an illegal gun. They went to a party, and they had a fight with a group of people from another village. Somehow these guys … confiscated the gun and took it to an induna, who just happened to be an IFP branch secretary. Okay! The story ends there. But guess what, those who wanted the gun said: ‘Oh, he is taking our gun because he is IFP and we are ANC.’ So next day Harry Gwala was there to support his UDF, and next day David Ntombela was there to support his IFP. Then it spiralled out of control and many dozens of people died. That conflict, when it started it had nothing to do with IFP–UDF, nothing. If all people had stood back, and allowed the local conflict to be a local conflict, 16 https://mg.co.za/article/1987-10-30-00-behind-the-inkatha-udf-violence/ [accessed 4/10/21].

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we’d have saved all those lives. So, there are many conflicts that we adopted, and went completely out of hand.17

Top leaders uniformly denied that violence was party policy, or that their members were responsible. Buthelezi denied that people were being killed for refusing to pay membership fees: ‘Inkatha leadership’, he said, ‘would not tolerate such behaviour.’18 Rather, Inkatha had been participating in peace initiatives while numerous members had been killed by UDF. Journalist Richard Mkhondo (1993 p.67) wrote that ‘Buthelezi constantly portrays himself as a man of peace on whom violence is often forced.’ Buthelezi has always insisted that he never ordered violence. This may be technically correct, but his warnings of inevitable retaliation were undoubtedly taken as encouragement. Mkhondo quotes him addressing chiefs in 1990: ‘We must now declare ourselves to be at war with these developments which wish to threaten us, and the people who lead it. Going to war against that which threatens us is something which we as Zulu leaders understand … we have the blood of our forefathers running through our veins’ (Ibid. p.68). Such frank sabre-rattling was matched by that of Pietermaritzburg-based Harry Gwala, the ANC/SACP’s fiercest ‘hawk’. ‘We’, he told journalist John Carlin, ‘will kill Inkatha warlords’.19 Mandela was released into a South Africa divided by racism, anger, pride, ignorance and fear – and yet buoyed by immense hope. Peacemakers too were at work.

17 Mfayela interview. 18 https://mg.co.za/article/1987-10-30-00-behind-the-inkatha-udf-violence/ [accessed 4/10/21]. 19 Saturday Star 18/4/92.

PART TWO

Peacemaking

4 Churches, Business, and Secret Conversations Introduction South Africa’s politicians wanted to manage their own transition, and to a large extent they did so, but others provided vital help. Alongside the increasing violence of the late 1980s came a flowering of ‘track-two’ peacemaking initiatives opening up communication between the conflicting parties, at home and in exile. Churches and business were frequently at the forefront, and between 1988 and 1990 both these pillars of civil society readied themselves to play a pro-­ active role in the political transition. At the same time Mandela and his captors reached out to each other and began to converse.

Churches and politics The churches constituted by far the majority of South Africa’s religious bodies. In the 1980 census 77% of the population identified as Christian, 1.8% Hindu, 1.1% Muslim and 0.4% Jewish. The churches fell broadly into five groups. The largest, 25.9% of the population, were ‘African-initiated’ independent churches, offshoots from mainstream churches, often small but including the politically conservative Zion Christian Church (ZCC) with over two million members. The Dutch Reformed group, independent of Holland since 1824, accounted for 16.3%. It embraced the white DRC, its white offshoots the Nederduitsche Hervormde Kerk (NHK) and somewhat more liberal Gereformeerde Kerk (GK, nicknamed ‘Doppers’); and its black branches. Its Sendingkerk (Mission Church) contained just Coloured members, the black Africans having been transferred into the ‘Dutch Reformed Church in Africa’ (1952) and Indians into the ‘Reformed Church in Africa’ (1968). When the DRC began missionary activity in the nineteenth century it assumed that all the baptized are one in Christ, and accepted all as members; but lay elders objected and in 1857 the Synod fatefully ruled that although it was desirable that black converts join existing congregations, nevertheless where this would, ‘as a result of the weakness of some’, create an obstacle to conversion, separate congregations could be formed (De Gruchy, 2004 p.8). The black congregations became the Sendingkerk in 1881. 49

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When apartheid’s theoreticians looked for theological justification, the DRC managed to supply it. Two Old Testament passages regularly appeared in its official statements on society between 1948 and 1986: the myth of the Tower of Babel, when God scattered humanity into different language groups (Genesis 11.1–19); and Deuteronomy 32.8 (echoed at Acts 17.26), which states that God has ‘fixed the boundaries of the peoples’ (NRSV). These texts were held to teach that, notwithstanding the fundamental unity of humanity: ‘The diversity of nations and races is grounded in the predestination of God’ (Kinghorn, 1990 p.74). Preachers added the popular justification that black Africans were ‘children of Ham’. Ham, the flood story goes, was one of the three sons of Noah (Shem, Ham and Japheth). He was the ancestor of Africans and Canaanites, and was cursed to be a slave to his brothers (Genesis 10.6; 9.25–7). Certain Canaanites were later cursed to be forever ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’ ( Joshua 9.23–7, NRSV). By conflating these texts, the image of Ham and his descendants as perpetual servants emerges. It lies behind the notorious explanation to Parliament in June 1954, by apartheid’s architect H. F. Verwoerd, that a different education was appropriate for the ‘Bantu’ because no place existed for them in ‘European’ society above ‘certain forms of labour’. In 1966, Prime Minister B. J. Vorster was keen to add that ‘separate development’ meant Bantu could of course aspire to the professions within their own societies. The ‘English-speaking’ churches embraced over 34% of the population, the largest being Methodist (13.2%), Roman Catholic (11.9%), and Anglican (9%). They held to multiracialism on theological grounds: the equality of humanity before God and unity of all races in Christ ( John 17.11, 21; Galatians 3.28); and pointed out that Babel was reversed at Pentecost (Acts 2). They were more in touch with both black thinking and worldwide developments. Official statements were consistently anti-apartheid. A range of political opinions existed among white ‘English’ church members. Social convention and Group Areas legislation meant congregations were usually monochrome, but cathedrals at least stayed multiracial. Friendships existed across the divide, and the churches produced prophetic voices. Author Alan Paton, Anglican and liberal, placed a much-quoted warning on the lips of a black character in his searing novel Cry, the Beloved Country (1948): ‘I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find we are turned to hating.’ When multiracial Sophiatown was destroyed its parish priest, Anglican monk Trevor Huddleston CR, alerted the world to apartheid’s reality in his book, Naught for your Comfort (1956). Franciscan priest Cosmas Desmond described the poverty and hunger suffered by thousands of ‘surplus’ families forcibly removed from ‘white’ areas, in The Discarded People (1970). The ‘evangelicals’ constituted an influential network across the churches. Multiracial but politically non-confrontational, evangelicals believed change comes through individual conversions. Their leading spokesperson was Anglican lay preacher Michael Cassidy, who in 1962 founded the non-denominational

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evangelistic organization ‘African Enterprise’ (AE). Based near Pietermaritzburg, AE partnered with a wide range of churches, and wielded influence in Natal/KwaZulu. Cassidy counted Buthelezi among his contacts, and supported the NPA facilitators. AE became a catalyst in the political arena in July 1979 by organizing a ‘South African Christian Leadership Assembly’ (SACLA) which attracted some 5,000 leaders from churches, civil society and politics, including Buthelezi, cabinet minister Piet Koornhof, and Rev. Prof. Johan Heyns, to a week of prayer and meetings on the Pretoria showgrounds. Local follow-up initiatives, such as a two-year series of bring-and-share lunches in Soweto and white suburbs, continued SACLA’s work. Among the charismatic/Pentecostal groups, Pentecostalism in the form of the Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM) arrived with white American missionaries in the early twentieth century. Multiracial at first, the AFM split on racial lines. Rev. Dr Frank Chikane, AFM’s most prominent black leader, was SACC General Secretary 1987–94 and a leading NPA facilitator. The ‘charismatic movement’ of the later twentieth century produced new independent congregations, the largest being Johannesburg’s Rhema church, founded in 1980 by Pastor Ray McCauley. Like the evangelicals, charismatics kept a low political profile but cultivated personal contacts with political figures. McCauley’s pastoral outreach to Buthelezi, and the influence of his PA Rev. Ron Steele, a former journalist interested in socio-political matters, led McCauley to join Chikane as an NPA facilitator.

Division at Cottesloe, rise of the SACC When the World Council of Churches (WCC) was founded in 1948, the DRC, NHK, and six ‘English’ South African churches joined. After Sharpeville, on 7–14 December 1960, a top-level WCC delegation held a watershed ‘consultation’ on race relations and social problems in the country, with delegations of ten from each church, in the Johannesburg suburb of Cottesloe. In the resulting Cottesloe Statement the participants acknowledged that differing opinions existed as to the wisdom of racial separation, but agreed to reject apartheid as unjust, and called for the vote for black people living in white areas.1 Apart from the NHK, all present assented to the Statement although only Dr Beyers Naudé, Moderator of the Southern Transvaal DRC Synod, offered no justification for apartheid. The following year, under strong pressure from Prime Minister Verwoerd, the DRC synods rejected the Statement and left the WCC. A deep rift opened between the ‘Dutch’ and ‘English’ churches. Beyers Naudé became a new prophetic voice, founding the anti-apartheid Christian Institute (CI) in 1963, losing his post as a DRC minister and being welcomed into the black ‘DRC in Africa’. In October 1977 he and the CI fell 1

Text at https://kerkargief.co.za/doks/bely/DF_Cottesloe.pdf [accessed 20/2/21].

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victim to the mass banning of anti-apartheid individuals and organizations; but even when silenced he remained an icon. In 1968 commitment to social justice was running high in ecumenical circles worldwide, and the former Christian Council of South Africa transformed into a newly active South African Council of Churches (SACC). Led chiefly by the ‘English’ churches, it included a network of African Independent churches, and Roman Catholics as observers. Absent were white charismatics and the DRC family. The SACC was a leading extra-parliamentary opposition body, inspired by ‘liberation theology’ and the related ‘black theology’, calling for justice and solidarity with the oppressed, and emphasizing praxis, practical action. It discreetly channelled overseas support to political prisoners and their families. With Naudé’s CI it organized a popular theological study programme to explore how apartheid interfered with the divine command to love one’s neighbour. All this took place in an atmosphere of intense surveillance: phones tapped, letters opened, premises watched, leaders detained, and informers suspected in every meeting. In 1968 the WCC established a Programme to Combat Racism, intended to challenge racism within the churches. It attracted controversy when in 1970 it advised the WCC to grant humanitarian aid to liberation movements. Government propaganda duly denounced the WCC and SACC as communist fronts and supporters of terrorism. Then Bishop Desmond Tutu, SACC General Secretary 1978–84, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1984, supported international sanctions as a non-violent alternative to the armed struggle. The WCC took up his call in its ‘Harare Declaration’ of December 1985, urging all churches to advocate sanctions. government media demonized Tutu and the SACC as communist fellow-­travellers, creating lasting antipathy towards them among black and white conservatives, Buthelezi included. Political change within Afrikanerdom required a change in consciousness within the DRC and the Broederbond. A significant sign of movement came with the publication in 1979 of Afskied van Apartheid (Farewell to Apartheid) by Stellenbosch theologian and philosopher Prof. Willie Esterhuyse.2 Discerning a mood for change, he demonstrated that the common justifications of apartheid were theologically mistaken and immoral, and advocated a politics of Christian love and justice. The entire DRC family still belonged to the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC). At its meeting in Ottawa in 1982 the young Coloured theologian Alan Boesak, a Sendingkerk minister, led the WARC to declare apartheid a sin and the theological justification for it a heresy. WARC suspended the white DRC and NHK. Later that year the Sendingkerk synod, meeting in Belhar, Cape 2

English translation: Apartheid must Die (1981).

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Town, drafted the ‘Belhar Confession’ declaring that unity is ‘both a gift and an obligation’ for Christians and that Christ’s message is one of reconciliation and justice, rejecting separation.3 In 1986 the Sendingkerk formally adopted this Confession as a foundational document, thus directly challenging the DRC. The 1986 DRC Synod responded by updating its document on ‘Church and Society’ with an admission that enforced separation had no biblical justification and apartheid had proved discriminatory and a political mistake. It did not yet label apartheid as essentially wrong, but did support political rights for blacks and advised DRC congregations to open to all races. Three thousand conservative DRC members departed to form a whites-only ‘Afrikaans Protestant Church’.

Newick Park Initiative From 1987 to 1991 a series of discreet discussions on South Africa’s future took place in Britain and South Africa, in academic mode, within an evangelical Christian framework, aiming at reconciliation and grounded theologically on the reconciliation of all things in Christ (Colossians 1.20).4 The originator was Dr Michael Schluter, a former World Bank economic consultant on east Africa. In 1983 he founded the Jubilee Centre in Cambridge, England, to promote Christian social engagement grounded on political and economic research. In 1986 he teamed up with Jeremy Ive, a South African student just completing his PhD, to engage a range of South African opinion-leaders in discussion on possible constitutional and economic futures for the country. The discussions were based at Newick Park in Sussex, home of Schluter’s brother-in-law Viscount Brenthurst. Their unforeseen significance was that they introduced ‘Professor’ Washington Okumu to the current South African scene.5 At the first meeting, 6–8 March 1987, Schluter, Ive and Lord Brenthurst were joined by Prof. Willie Esterhuyse of Stellenbosch, soon also to join the secret Consgold talks (see p.64), Potchefstroom University Rector Prof. Tjaart van der Walt, Michael Cassidy (AE), Prof. Richard Stevens (University of the Western Cape), Rev. Elia Tema (DRC in Africa), and Rev. Caesar Molebatsi (Director, Youth Alive, Soweto).6 A ‘Newick’ gathering at BP’s London HQ on 2 March 1988 featured Michael Young of Consgold, and Enos Mabuza, Chief Minister of the KaNgwane ‘homeland’. Mabuza had taken his entire 21-member Cabinet to Lusaka in March 1986 3 Text at www.presbyterianmission.org/resource/belhar-confession/ [accessed 8/3/21]. 4 Information from Ive (2014a, 2014b), and Ive and Schluter interviews. 5 In 1976 Okumu had acted as secret envoy between Prime Minister Vorster and President Nyerere, staying in Pretoria with Minister Piet Koornhof ( Jacobs, 2019 pp.234–6). 6 Chronology for Newick Park, communication from Ive, 2015.

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for a three-day meeting with the ANC, issuing a communiqué committing his Inyandza Party to work for a ‘united, democratic, and non-racial South Africa’. Mabuza stayed on for talks, 3–5 March, at Newick Park – also attended by the creative, verligte Chair of the Broederbond, Prof. Pieter de Lange. Meetings in South Africa in 1988 drew in Sampie Terreblanche (Stellenbosch), Marinus Wiechers (UNISA), and Methodist leader Rev. Stanley Mogoba, future NPC Vice-chair. F. W. de Klerk’s brother Wimpie de Klerk was to have joined, but work pressure and family illness prevented him.7 Max Sisulu, Tito Mboweni and others from the ANC’s Department of Economic Policy attended in 1990. The Newick Park invitees were moderate academic, church, political and business leaders. Participating in their personal capacities, they got to know each other well. They discussed ninety-one papers on possible political and economic scenarios, from federalism to land issues, and made them available to ‘the major negotiating parties’ (Ive, 2014b p.58). Reflecting on the Initiative as peacebuilding, Ive defines ‘peacebuilding’ as ‘characterized by its systematic character and future-orientation. It does not so much address current grievances as encourage those involved to look beyond the present conflict to ways of living together in the future’ (Ibid. p.21). An internal South African offshoot of Newick Park launched in November 1989. Initially named the ‘Jubilee Initiative’, it was renamed ‘Christian Research, Education and Information for Democracy’ (CREID). It was headed by Dr Theuns Eloff, a young Dopper Minister who fell out with his congregation after attending Dakar. While with CREID, Eloff was approached by Christo Nel to become a consultant to the Consultative Business Movement (CBM).8 The CREID programme shortly closed, leaving Eloff full-time with the CBM; there he became a major organizer for the transitional negotiations, first for the NPA, then in the constitutional talks. Michael Cassidy built on Newick Park’s house-party tradition. Beginning in December 1992 he invited a wide range of politicians to meet each other and share their stories in residential gatherings at Kolobe Game Lodge north of Pretoria, a venue suggested by peacemaker Rupert Lorimer MP. Six weekend encounters were held, funded by British friends of AE, involving nearly a hundred guests. They included PAC, AZAPO, and NP leaders, but not CP and AWB, who were forbidden to accept (Cassidy, 1995 pp.48–87; 2019 pp.361–5). Cassidy also maintained contact with Washington Okumu. At Harvard, where he received a BA cum laude in 1962, Okumu had attended Henry Kissinger’s politics lectures and made his acquaintance.9 After spending 1962–63 7 8 9

Ive’s ‘Timeline’ provided to author. See p.67. Ive confirms they undoubtedly knew one another (verbal communication to author 17/1/2021).

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at King’s College, Cambridge, Okumu worked for the East African Community, became a political exile, and served from 1972 to 1987 with the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), travelling widely in Africa. In 1972 or 1973, at the Washington DC ‘Prayer Breakfast’, he met Chief Buthelezi. Okumu met Schluter at a conference in Oxford in 1987, just as the Newick Park Initiative began. Hearing that federalism would be discussed, he urged Schluter to understand that the ANC would only consider a unitary democracy.10 Invited to Newick Park, he participated from November 1988 until talks closed in April 1991. He succeeded Ive in May 1989 as the Initiative’s Director, in which role he conferred with Thabo Mbeki and Aziz Pahad, and in 1990 explored a reconciliatory meeting at a Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast in London between Buthelezi, Mandela and de Klerk. Buthelezi indicated availability but the idea did not progress.11 Okumu was thus immersed in possible political scenarios for South Africa, preparing him to play his critical mediating role just prior to the 1994 election.12

Natal Church Leaders Group The churches responded to the UDF/COSATU-Inkatha violence by providing relief and making repeated attempts to broker peace. The Natal Church Leaders Group (NCLG) formed in 1988 to coordinate this work (Kearney, 2009 p.280). Leading lights among some twenty members were RC Archbishop Denis Hurley, Anglican Bishop Michael Nuttall, Peter Kerchoff (founder of the Pietermaritzburg Agency of Christian Social Awareness, PACSA), and several Methodists: Bishop Stanley Mogoba, conflict resolution trainer Rev. Athol Jennings, and Federal Seminary head Rev. Dr Khoza Mgojo, an NPA facilitator. In a breakthrough in 1989, Natal’s Anglican bishops initiated ‘five a side’ UDF/COSATU–Inkatha talks, which devised a comprehensive peace plan: a Presidents’ Conference in London between Tambo and Buthelezi, followed by joint rallies and a monitoring and reconstruction programme (Nuttall, 2003 pp.65–6). The initiative foundered on disagreements about delegate numbers, while a letter to Tambo from Buthelezi, sent just prior to Tambo’s stroke, went unanswered, leaving Buthelezi distrustful. The talks dwindled to two-a-side, continuing until early 1990 between Inkatha ‘doves’ Oscar Dhlomo and Dr Frank Mdlalose, a medical doctor with gracious bedside manner, KZ Minister of Health and Welfare, future national IFP Chair and NPA negotiator; and COSATU’s Alec Erwin accompanied by Diliza Mji (Ibid. pp.67–8). 10 11 12

Schluter interview. Communications to author from Jeremy Ive, including Okumu’s expense claim for tea with Mbeki and Pahad, 18/5/89, and letter 26/7/90 from Okumu to Basil Landau re. Prayer Breakfast. See pp.233–4.

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During Edendale’s ‘Seven Days War’ in March–April 1990 Archbishop Tutu made an urgent shuttle visit with a delegation of SACC and NCLG. In Ulundi they were lambasted by Buthelezi and his cabinet, Prince Gideon Zulu darkly warning of worse violence to come (Allen, 2006 p.319). They then met Mandela in Pietermaritzburg. Buthelezi agreed to a joint rally anywhere in the area but, says Bishop Nuttall (2003 p.75), ‘the moment had passed, and suspicions had deepened’. Despite their prickly relationship Tutu returned next day to see Buthelezi, who had complained bitterly of feeling abandoned by his Archbishop; and he continued to make pastoral visits, dubbed by his staff ‘the Ulundi Shuttle’ (Allen, 2006 p.319). The church mediators urged Buthelezi to reactivate the 1989 peace plan, but instead, months passed and violence spread.

Reconciliation versus Denunciation The churches displayed a wide spectrum of approaches to dealing with the apartheid past. At the reconciliatory end lay the ‘National Initiative for Reconciliation’ (NIR), launched by a gathering of 400 church leaders and others, invited by AE to confront the political situation, in Pietermaritzburg on 10–12 September 1985 – shortly after Botha’s failed ‘Rubicon’ speech. The NIR was headed by Prof. David Bosch, a prominent ‘DRC in Africa’ missiologist, and Robin Briggs, Anglican Dean of Pretoria. An NIR delegation called on Botha to end apartheid. He refused to meet them. A theological core group published three notable volumes on democracy, justice, and reconciliation, urging the churches to seek political change and meanwhile to reverse the slide into polarization by building ‘bridges of acceptance and trust’ (Nürnberger & Tooke, 1988 p.86). At the confrontational end, on 13 September 1985 a mainly black group of about thirty ministers and theologians, meeting in Soweto, issued a radical discussion paper, ‘Challenge to the Church: The Kairos Document’.13 ‘Kairos’ (Greek) denotes a critical moment, demanding response. Characterizing itself as a provocative reflection ‘from below’, the Kairos Document (KD; Barkat & Mutambirwa, 1985) distinguished three ‘theologies’: ‘State theology’, which justified the status quo; ‘Church theology’, which it dismissed as seeking reconciliation at the expense of justice; and ‘Prophetic theology’, which calls for political analysis and action. In ‘prophetic’ mode, the KD advocated ‘a biblical theology of direct confrontation with the forces of evil rather than a theology of reconciliation with sin and the devil’ (KD 3.1). It accused the State of causing the violence, affirmed the (possibly armed) struggle of the oppressed, and rejected negotiation. Politically the KD’s position reflected the rejectionism of the PAC and AZAPO. Tutu thought it too abrasive; Methodist leader Peter Storey (2018 p.344) thought it 13 https://kairossouthernafrica.wordpress.com/2011/05/08/the-south-africa-kairos-document-1985/ [accessed 1/2/21].

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‘driven more by political calculation than theological principle’. Neither joined the 151 signatories. The reconciliation debate continues, but in 1985 the KD’s most resonant impact probably lay in the word kairos: the nation was facing a moment of truth.

Rustenburg: the churches find their common voice In November 1990, ten months after Mandela’s release, with violence spreading and the political scene stagnating, the churches at last came together to reconcile between themselves and plan concerted action. President de Klerk deserves credit as the initiator of this process. In his broadcast message at Christmas 1989 (of which the exact script is not extant) he ‘appealed to the Church in South Africa to formulate a strategy conducive to negotiation, reconciliation and change’ (Alberts & Chikane, 1991 p.14); ‘Mr De Klerk invited church leaders to discuss with him the role of the churches in a changing South Africa’ (SAIRR, 1989–90 p.288); ‘I need the churches to speak to me’ ( Johnston, 1994 p.197). In January, on the advice of Dr Pieter Bingle, his Dopper pastor in Cape Town, de Klerk approached Dr Louw Alberts, a physicist and prominent DRC layman whom he knew and trusted as a government scientific adviser, asking him to explore how church leaders might be brought together to speak with consensus. Alberts surmised that the President found himself besieged by varied advice from churches, and wanted concerted guidance.14 By June Alberts only had positive responses from the DRC churches and the ‘non-political’ evangelicals and charismatics, including Michael Cassidy (AE) and Ray McCauley (Rhema). They planned a brief conference of churches in July, which de Klerk would address, focused on welfare issues such as health and housing. The SACC and English-speaking churches remained aloof, agreeing there was need to meet but refusing invitations from the President. Alberts’s group reached out to its contacts. Michael Cassidy knew many SACC leaders and McCauley had recently established a friendly link with the SACC General Secretary, fellow Pentecostal Frank Chikane. Through these friendships an historic meeting took place on 15 June 1990 at the SACC offices, Khotso (‘Peace’) House in Johannesburg’s CBD (Steele, 1992 pp.116–19; Alberts & Chikane, 1991 pp.14–16). Alberts brought Cassidy, Prof. Johan Heyns (DRC), Dennis House (Mission South Africa), and McCauley with his aide Ron Steele. Facing them was a large group of SACC staff and church representatives including Chikane, Brigalia Bam (Deputy General Secretary), Allan Boesak (Sendingkerk), Bishop Duncan Buchanan (Anglican), Bishop Manas Buthelezi (Lutheran), John P. Scholtz (Methodist) and Archbishop Themba Ntongana (Council of African Independent Churches). 14

Alberts interview.

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After lunch together the two sides caucused, then met in plenary. The SACC churches wanted a new planning committee, a new date, and no state involvement. Pausing for prayer, the meeting surprisingly reached consensus on an ambitious National Conference of Church Leaders, 5–9 November 1990, to explore the church’s role in the future South Africa. Meanwhile the July conference would go ahead, at the Presidency in Pretoria, for those already signed up. Alberts and Chikane were unanimously made Co-chairs of a twelve-person Steering Committee, with Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Anglican), Prof. Johan Heyns (DRC), Bishop Wilfrid Napier (RC), Dr I. S. van der Merwe Burger and Pastor Justus du Plessis (AFM), Dennis House (Mission South Africa), Michael Cassidy (AE), Rev. Ray McCauley with Ron Steele (Rhema), Archbishop Themba Ntongana (AICs), and Rev. John P. Scholtz (Methodist). Brigalia Bam recalls that the SACC wanted to include Beyers Naudé but then Heyns – and hence the DRC – would have withdrawn.15 This all-male committee recruited Val Pauquet, a former social and religious affairs journalist, as Communications Officer. Working from her home-based office in Randburg, Pauquet became de facto the Committee’s administrator; and ghost-wrote The Road to Rustenburg, the account of the initiative ostensibly authored by Alberts and Chikane.16 The chosen venue was the Hunters Rest Hotel, nestled beneath bush-­ covered hills near Rustenburg. International delegates sought invitations. The chasm that opened at Cottesloe began to close when the WCC was invited in the person of Rev. Barney Pityana, a young South African Anglican priest who headed the WCC’s Programme to Combat Racism. Pityana and Dennis House served as Conference co-coordinators. Speakers were primed to give heavyweight theological input on the theme ‘Towards a United Christian Witness in a Changing South Africa’. ‘About 230 Church leaders from 80 denominations and 40 para-church organisations’ converged on Rustenburg (Alberts & Chikane, 1991 p.10).17 For Methodist minister Peter Storey, a former SACC President, soon to be southern Africa’s Methodist Presiding Bishop and a leading member of the Wits/Vaal Regional Peace Committee, Rustenburg was where the Peace Accord ‘really began’. He arrived feeling deeply conflicted. ‘I hated the idea of going to that Conference. I really found it very difficult to even begin to talk to the Dutch Reformed representatives there. I remember some of us standing here and them standing there when we arrived, and saying: “How are we going to talk to these people?”’18 After the Methodist Church had endorsed the WARC’s declaration that the DRC was heretical, Methodist ministers had been instructed not to 15 16 17 18

Bam interview. Pauquet interview. Also see ‘The Peacemakers’ video, Carmichael/Pauquet. Peter Storey interview.

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cooperate with it. ‘So we were coming out of that sort of ethos, and here they were, and to me they were people who had betrayed the Gospel. I found it hard, I must say. But if the churches could not be healed, the country could not – so they must meet.’19 During the opening worship Archbishop Tutu jubilantly reviewed the unimaginable events of 1990. This Conference again was ‘a miracle’ which must speak healing and peace to ‘our beautiful, but bewildered and bleeding land. … We must be reconciled’ (Alberts & Chikane, 1991 pp.20–2). The victims must forgive, because ‘that is a Gospel imperative. But those who have wronged must be ready to say: “We have hurt you by this injustice … We are sorry, forgive us.”’ Then, after repentance and forgiveness, ‘those who have wronged must be ready to make amends … to make restitution and reparation’ (Ibid.). Tutu here articulated, succinctly and clearly, his teaching on reconciliation as a threefold process requiring confession, forgiveness, and restitution, which carried through to the TRC (Allen, 2006 p.342). Next morning verligte DRC theologian Prof. Willie Jonker of Stellenbosch riveted the Conference. In October, just days previously, the DRC Synod had finally declared apartheid a sin. Jonker announced this news and then confessed, for himself, his church and people: The broken relation between the Churches cannot be healed by synodical decisions alone. An experience of reconciliation is necessary to enable us to come to a united witness. I confess before you and before the Lord, not only my own sin and guilt, and my personal responsibility for the political, social, economical and structural wrongs that have been done to many of you, and the results of which you and our whole country are still suffering from, but vicariously I dare also to do that in the name of the DRC of which I am a member, and for the Afrikaans people as a whole. I have the liberty to do just that, because the DRC at its latest synod has declared apartheid a sin and confessed its own guilt of negligence in not warning against it and distancing itself from it long ago. (Alberts & Chikane, 1991 p.92)

‘I can remember,’ says Storey, ‘I was sitting in a row with people like Charles Villa-­ Vicencio and John de Gruchy … and we just looked at each other and sort of thought: “What are we going to do with that? How do you – you know, what do you do with that!”’20 Tutu had no hesitation. As Jonker finished he bounced up onto the stage, accepted his confession and offered forgiveness, ‘and the whole conference delegation rose to its feet in applause’ (Steele, 1992 p.123). Pauquet sent out her most memorable press release: ‘Apartheid is a sin!’ Next day Jonker’s confession was endorsed, at Rustenburg, by the DRC Moderator Dr Pieter Potgieter. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid.

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Retired President P. W. Botha expressed fury and alarm. ‘Oh, he was mad’, Alberts recalled, ‘that we had admitted that apartheid was a sin!’21 Tutu had to explain his offer of forgiveness on behalf of others, not only himself. It was, he said, no light offer but he felt he could make it because he knew so many people who had suffered and yet were not bitter, but responded with forgiveness and love. The Pentecostal/Evangelical group met to devise their own confession for not having effectively opposed apartheid. McCauley read it out in his devotional Epilogue on the Wednesday evening (Steele, 1992 pp.125, 219). A new issue was gender. To remonstrations by Tutu, many males casually ignored an early evening session addressed by female delegates. Profuse apologies and confessions of sexism ensued; but the under-representation of women persisted throughout the transition period. The conference’s Rustenburg Declaration (Alberts & Chikane, 1991 pp.275– 86) succeeded in uniting the voices of almost all the churches and organizations. It incorporates a long confession, denounces apartheid and sexism, and calls on South Africa to renounce all sin including racism. It challenges the government to release political prisoners and scrap all remaining apartheid laws, it urges political leaders ‘to negotiate a new and just order for our country’, and lists elements of a democratic constitution. It commits the churches to: ‘Calling a peace conference to bring together leaders who can help end violence’ (4.3.3; Ibid. p.284). The planning committee continued as the ‘Committee of the National Conference of Churches’, or simply ‘Rustenburg Committee’. Empowered to support the transition, endowed with a wide range of political contacts, articulating the united voice of the churches, the Committee was mandated to visit the State President and all political leaders, to discuss the Declaration and seek ways forward.

21

Alberts interview. Alberts added that he saw P. W. a few days later: ‘PW and I knew each other quite well. He said, “Do you want to tell me that Verwoerd, John Vorster, P. W. Botha, we are all going to hell, because we supported apartheid?” In fact I was sitting in his home when he said that to me. And I said to him: “No. In Paul’s time, slavery was accepted, in fact Paul recommended a thing about Onesimus going back to his owner.” I said, “But the Christian church learnt through the centuries, with the awakening of human consciousness, under the influence of the Gospel, that slavery is wrong. And while we accept the reality of slavery in biblical times – it was part of the social structure – we know it’d be a sin to own somebody now. Therefore, apartheid is a product of colonialism, let’s face it, it came three centuries along, but we have since then recognized that this is not, from a Christian perspective, a valid policy. And it would be a sin, now, to perpetuate it. It wasn’t a sin when it was still an accepted social mode.” I’d managed to quiet PW! Because he really thought that we said, and that I concurred with the statement, that it was a sin. But anyway, you know, we got over that, PW and I remained good friends.’

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Business and politics An adage ran that: ‘the business of business is business; and leave politics to the politicians’. A casual onlooker might assume that the white-dominated South African business community supported the apartheid status quo. In fact apartheid, with its restrictive labour laws, sanctions and popular boycotts, was bad for business. The decade of quiescence following the security crack-down of the early 1960s saw a brief spurt of economic growth at over 5% per annum, but thereafter South Africa’s economy suffered. Foreign investment fell sharply after 1976. Growth in the 1980s was under 2%. Business was looking to move on. Business was dominated by the large mining houses, with the industrial and finance sectors that grew around them – all largely an English-speaking preserve. By 1991, the national organization for English-speaking business was the South African Chamber of Business (SACOB), with its affiliated regional and local chambers of business and industry. The Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut (AHI), founded in 1942, was SACOB’s Afrikaner counterpart. Black African business was severely restricted (manufacturing was prohibited in black areas) but its first national structure, the National African Federated Chamber of Commerce (NAFCOC), had formed in 1964. All these provided facilitators for the NPA, among them SACOB’s Chair, John Hall. The ethos of English-speaking business had been one of liberal gradualism, typified by Oxford-educated Harry Oppenheimer (1908–2000), Chair of Anglo American Corporation 1957–82 and De Beers 1957–84. Oppenheimer believed democracy depended on education, and in a free economy with an open education system black people would gradually join the middle class. He owned the investigative Rand Daily Mail, financed the Progressive Party, and his philanthropy created several major development organizations.22 He was quoted as saying that, despite having little apparent political impact, he ‘had tried to build a “better sort of society and a better country” and keep alive “what I considered a voice of common sense and humanity”’.23 Mike Rosholt, head of the Barlow Rand group (later Barloworld), next-­largest conglomerate after Anglo, was pro-actively progressive, as was Bobby Godsell, Anglo’s head of industrial relations, a leader in the organization of industrial employers (SACCOLA) and the Chamber of Mines, and a key NPA facilitator. When Godsell and his wife Gill had seriously considered emigrating, they were helped by joining the multiracial, ecumenical congregation led by activist Presbyterian minister Rob Robertson, in St Antony’s church in Pageview, Johannesburg. It afforded ‘a way for us to be here with some authenticity’.24 Oppenheimer controversially ceased financing the Mail in 1985; its staff regrouped as the Weekly Mail, becoming the Weekly Mail and Guardian from July 1993. 23 Obituary, The Economist 24/8/2000. 24 Godsell interview. 22

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Business actors were motivated by genuine principle and concern, not merely by pragmatic self-interest. In 1977, with international anti-apartheid pressure growing, American Baptist minister Rev. Leon Sullivan published the ‘Sullivan Principles’, a one-page, six-point Code of Conduct for American companies operating in South Africa. It called for non-segregation in the workplace and equal treatment for all workers. In 1984 a seventh principle was added, calling on business to ‘eliminate laws and customs that impede social, economic, and political justice’.25 The Principles provided criteria for international boycott and disinvestment campaigns, and challenged South African business itself. Full compliance was impossible within apartheid laws, but in 1978 Barlow Rand produced its own contextualized Code of Employment Practice, advancing the human rights and training of workers within existing law and pushing for further change. Other businesses followed, increasing their investment in human resources, corporate social responsibility, and involvement in the community beyond the workplace. The 1979 Wiehahn Commission of Inquiry into labour relations recommended the official registration of black trades unions. Botha’s government allowed this, and a fast-growing union movement began. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was founded in December 1982 by a 30-year old lawyer, Cyril Ramaphosa, legal adviser to the Council of Unions of SA. He led NUM as General Secretary until 1991. The Metal and Allied Workers Union (MAWU, renamed the National Union of Metalworkers, NUMSA, in 1987) formed in 1983. COSATU, the umbrella Congress of South African Trade Unions, formed in 1985 and was immediately a major political player. In 1990 the ANC, SACP and COSATU joined forces, to act collectively in the political sphere as the tripartite ‘ANC-Alliance’. Unions and management together learnt the skills of negotiation, producing recognition agreements, codes of conduct, and structures to implement and monitor them – a direct preparation for creating the NPA. A cohort of progressive lawyers worked on labour relations, absorbing the skills of ‘alternative dispute resolution’ then being developed by Roger Fisher and William Ury in the Harvard Negotiation Project at Harvard Law School. Paul Pretorius recounts how, while working at the Legal Resources Centre in Johannesburg in the 1980s, he ‘increasingly concentrated on labour cases and became involved … in the development of alternate forms of dispute resolution in the labour field, particularly mediation and later arbitration.’ He continues: I trained as a mediator, the same group as Cyril Ramaphosa, and I really think that … the adoption by the Union movement of mediation as a tool of negotiation, resolving disputes and gaining advantage in disputes was 25 www.bu.edu/trustees/boardoftrustees/committees/acsri/principles/ [accessed 30/3/22].

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really instrumental in creating a culture of negotiation and creative thinking around negotiation, which formed the skills and attitudes of people like [Cyril] Ramaphosa later.26

The Independent Mediation Services of South Africa (IMSSA), a network of mediators, was founded in 1984. Pretorius chaired its Board. IMSSA and similar initiatives provided the peace committees with a ready-made pool of experienced facilitators, mediators, and conflict resolution trainers.

Meeting the ANC in exile During 1985–89 contacts with the exiled ANC multiplied, Zambia frequently providing the venue (Macmillan, 2013 pp.198–220).27 In September 1985 President Kaunda invited Anglo American Chair Gavin Relly to bring a business and media delegation for a day-long informal meeting with ANC leaders at Mfuwe game lodge. ‘Hawks’ Chris Hani and Mac Maharaj were present; Slovo sent written replies to likely questions. Encouraged by Tambo to mix and use first names as fellow South Africans, the delegates explored policies and positions and discovered they liked each other. Progressive Federal Party MPs, the KaNgwane cabinet, COSATU leaders, Catholic bishops and numerous others followed. The most flamboyant expedition to meet the ‘enemy’ was the ‘Dakar Safari’ or ‘Encounter’ of 9–12 July 1987, organized by Frederick van Zyl Slabbert and Alex Boraine. They quit Parliament to found the Institute for Democratic Alternatives in South Africa (IDASA), and immediately invited sixty-one opinion-formers and intellectuals, mostly mildly dissident Afrikaners who were ‘against apartheid and pro-democracy’, to meet the ANC in Senegal.28 The Encounter was facilitated by Madame Mitterand, Breyten Breytenbach, and the President of Senegal; finance came from George Soros, the Swiss and Scandinavian governments, and business. Members assembled in Paris, boarded an Air Afrique plane in questionable repair, had an unscheduled stop in Italy while refuelling was negotiated, and landed in Dakar at 1am to a jubilant official welcome. The media, noticing at the last moment, took intense interest. According to Spaarwater (2012 p.173) one participant had alerted Mike Louw at the NIS, but apparently no agents were present. The Encounter explored three themes: strategizing for fundamental change and building national unity; possible future structures of government; and economic policy. The ANC participants aimed to educate and coopt the IDASA 26 LRC Oral History Project interview, Paul Pretorius, 6 Dec. 2007, www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/inventories/inv_pdft/AG3298/AG3298-1-155-text.pdf [accessed 2/2/21]. 27 See also www.sahistory.org.za/archive/chronology-meetings-between-south-africans-and-anc-exile-1983-2000-michael-savage [accessed 1/9/21]. 28 Nel interview.

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group, getting it to commit to action. The impact on both sides was considerable (Lieberfeld, 2002 pp.363–4). A Declaration was issued, expressing concern at the level of violence and urging the government to negotiate. Participants faced castigation on return, but a watershed had been passed: the possibility of talking had been publicly demonstrated.

Secret Consgold (Mells) talks On 24 June 1987, just before Dakar, a meeting took place in London between the ANC’s exiled leadership – Oliver Tambo, Thabo Mbeki, Mac Maharaj, Aziz Pahad and Jacob Zuma, who were in town to testify before the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee – and twenty-three British business leaders (Harvey, 2001 pp.xiv, 23). After a depressing exchange on the South African situation, Michael Young, head of communications at Consolidated Goldfields (Consgold), asked Tambo if British business could do anything to promote real change: could Young ‘help him build a bridge between the ANC and Afrikaners close to the government’? (Ibid. p.23). London-based journalist Fleur de Villiers, a consultant to Consgold on its South African labour policy, was discussing the same question with Consgold executives Rudolph Agnew and Humphrey Wood. How might the company act as midwife to get the ANC into conversation with leading Afrikaners?29 Consgold pledged financial support. Wood assigned to Young the task of liaising with the ANC, and to de Villiers that of contacting Afrikaner opinion-formers. Thus began ‘the most politically influential initiative’ involving the exiled ANC and South Africa’s ruling group (Lieberfeld, 2005 p.105). De Villiers phoned her friend Prof. Willie Esterhuyse, by now a veteran of such requests. With his Stellenbosch colleague Prof. Sampie Terreblanche, Esterhuyse helped sound out others. Willie Breytenbach at Stellenbosch, a former civil servant and secretary to the SSC, and Prof. Marinus Weichers of UNISA, accepted. Esterhuyse, Terreblanche and Weichers thus became participants simultaneously in the Newick Park and Consgold talks. Prof. Johan Heyns, then the DRC Moderator, a thought-leader for change within the DRC, was not yet ready to risk such meetings. Johan Degenaar, Pieter de Lange and Tjaart van der Walt also politely refused. Two NIS men approached Esterhuyse (Esterhuyse, 2012 p.28). The NIS, de Villiers believes, was alerted by her first phone call. He agreed to report to the NIS on the Consgold talks, provided Mbeki knew of this. He confided his role to Mbeki at the second meeting, the first Mbeki attended (Ibid. p.121). The NIS thus secured a proximity channel between itself and the exiled ANC, with which Mbeki was equally delighted. Barnard kept P. W. Botha informed – albeit, as his Director General Mike Louw later remarked, not always fully (Ibid. p.36). 29 De Villiers interview.

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In August 1988 Willem (‘Wimpie’) de Klerk, F. W.’s elder brother, joined the Consgold talks. A former Dopper minister, Willem was the verligte editor of the daily Die Transvaler. He insisted, ignoring F. W.’s professed lack of interest, on supplying his brother with written reports, which F. W. later admitted had influenced him by showing that change would not be so ‘risky’. Willem also sent reports to Minister of Education Gerrit Viljoen, a former Chair of the Broederbond, who became de Klerk’s Minster of Constitutional Development (Lieberfeld, 2005 pp.115–16). The ANC team was led by Thabo Mbeki and Aziz Pahad. Both were to participate in negotiating the NPA and serve on the NPC. Seven meetings took place between November 1987 and February 1990, in secluded English hotels or at Mells Park, Consgold’s country retreat in Somerset.30 Remarkably, secrecy was maintained (just one leak, necessitating denials). The last meeting, at Mells, coincided with Mandela’s release.

Consultative Business Movement: business finds a common voice Business preceded the churches in establishing a united voice for the transition. The Consultative Business Movement (CBM) emerged in 1988 after the failure of the then Federated Chamber of Industries (FCI) to influence political change. In 1986 it had formulated a ‘Business Charter of Human Rights’, and engaged the help of Christo Nel, a business sociologist at UNISA, to implement it. The FCI also called on government to stop the forced removal of the ‘black spot’ township of Oukasie at Brits, and its President called for Mandela’s release. Faced with government fury, many businesses withdrew from membership. Consequently, in January 1987 Nel was approached by Chris Ball, CEO of Barclay’s Bank (then wholly owned by Anglo American, shortly renamed First National Bank), who told Nel that a group of business leaders believed a new initiative was needed.31 Ball’s group included Mervyn King (Tradegro; ex-judge), Zach de Beer (Anglo, ex-MP), Neal Chapman (Southern Life), Mike Sander (AECI), Willem van Wyk (Iscor), Chris van Wyk (Trust Bank) and ex-judge Anton Mostert, who in 1978 had uncovered the Infogate scandal. They took a new track: They essentially asked whether I would be willing to identify [the legitimate mass-based leadership of the country] and introduce them and start setting up discussions, between them. And – I’ll never forget Chris, I asked him: ‘So who would that be?’ and he said: ‘Well that’s the problem. We don’t know.’ And I think that’s a very important factor, because at that stage the 30 Compleat Angler Hotel, Marlow, 1–3/11/87; Eastwell Manor Hotel, 21–24/2/88; Mells Park, 21–24/8/88, Flitwick Manor Hotel, 17–19/12/88, Mells 21–24/4/89, 29/9–1/10/89, and 9–11/2/90. 31 Nel interview

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government would have one believe that the black leadership was essentially the heads of the homelands.32

Nel succeeded in creating links with ‘legitimate’ black leadership. He attended the Dakar Encounter in July 1987 and subsequently met the ANC in Lusaka and London. Internally, he worked with activist Rosemary Grealy to contact UDF leaders who were now banned, detained, or in hiding. Help came from journalistic film makers Roger and Miranda Harris, who had made documentaries on the UDF for Swiss and Swedish TV – and consequently had SB surveillance vehicles parked around their semi-rural home near Johannesburg. George Bizos helped Nel to converse with ‘Terror’ Lekota and Popo Molefe in the cells during the Delmas treason trial. Azhar Cachalia and Albertina Sisulu, both under restriction orders, committed to bring other leaders to meet business. The aim firmed up: to form a business group to interact intensively with legitimate black leaders. Early in 1988 ‘there was an endorsement from COSATU, the UDF, and the ANC, for leaders to meet formally with business, on the condition business would come up with a collective and would take a stance’.33 After nervous false starts seventy-six individuals arrived at the Gencor Training Centre in the Magaliesberg hills, west of Pretoria, for the ‘Broederstroom Encounter’ on 5–7 August 1988. The business group numbered forty-­ one (40 men, 1 woman) including guests Frederick van Zyl Slabbert and Prof. Sampie Terreblanche. For the meeting, they dubbed themselves the ‘Creative Minority’ (CM). The multiracial COSATU/ UDF group of thirty-three boasted three women. It included banned activists Beyers Naudé and lawyer Azhar Cachalia, COSATU’s Sydney Mufamadi and Jay Naidoo, and Canon Mcebisi Xundu (UDF executive, Chair of Eastern Cape Council of Churches, future Co-chair of the Eastern Cape Regional Peace Committee). They dubbed themselves the ‘Representative Majority’ (RM). Fifteen RM and twelve CM sent apologies. Murphy Morobe, Eric Molobi and Mohammed Valli Moosa had just been detained; Albertina Sisulu and Govan Mbeki were under severe restriction. Others came regardless. Wariness reigned as the participants arrived, apprehensive of each other and any possible police raid. When Cachalia, forbidden to interact with more than four others, stood up to co-facilitate, he explained he would speak to one person on the front row: others could listen if they wished! (Eloff et al., 1997 p.6). Nel and a small team facilitated. He presented a roadmap of the current change process, distinguishing between ‘reformers’ who wanted to keep some kind of racially defined system, and ‘transformers’ who believed in open non-­ racial democracy. The programme then flowed through plenaries, caucus 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid.

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meetings, and themed workshops. Chris Ball expounded the purely economic ‘opportunity cost’ of apartheid: since 1970 a possible 5% growth had reduced to only 1.9% per annum (Du Preez, Evans, & Grealy, 1988 p.65). Efforts made by Botha’s NSMS to coopt business had aroused suspicion: ‘I know for a fact’, one sceptical activist declared, ‘that a lot of these guys are linked directly to the JMCs or that the groups they belong to like the chambers of commerce are part of the JMCs.’ Some business representatives, by contrast, were asking the activists: ‘What are JMCs?’ (Ibid. p.67). Laurie Searle, then Chair of the Pietersburg Chamber of Business, recalls his own experience: in the 1980s when the Chamber tried to negotiate with black communities during boycotts of white businesses, it collided with the NSMS: ‘The SADF were telling us: “Don’t negotiate with the ANC, the enemy! Don’t negotiate with these boycott committees, because they’re just going to lead you in the wrong direction, they’re Commies!”’34 At Broederstroom the CM, previously suspecting the RM were mere violent revolutionaries, discovered they ‘are not enemies of society. They are South Africans’ (Du Preez et al., 1988 p.108). The RM learned that white business contained empathetic people who could play a meaningful role in political transformation. The RM challenged the CM to organize and take clear stances on concrete issues. On Sunday morning, 7 August, the ‘Creative Minority’ resolved to formalize itself as the ‘Consultative Business Movement’ (CBM), ‘an alliance of South African business leaders and professionals dedicated to working towards a fair and just society and a successful economy in a united, non-racial democracy’ (Ibid. p.78). The CBM immediately published the Encounter’s proceedings, to spread its message and recruit members. It would be pro-active, non-political but committed to change and to consultation with all interest groups, based on the principles of trust and respect, a non-racial democracy, one nation for all, conditions conducive to economic growth and the just distribution of wealth, ‘urgent progress in education, housing, health, welfare and job creation’, peace, justice, stability, and ‘full international relations in a post-apartheid society’ (Ibid., pp.78–9). The CBM was not ‘an ordinary mandated business organization, of the lowest common denominator’; but was rather ‘based on the principle of the highest effective multiplier, the power of a critical mass of supporters acting in the interests of democratic values and deep concern over the future of our country’ (Eloff et al., 1997 p.1). It was free to be a creative catalyst and facilitator. The CBM’s board, or ‘National Consultative Group’ (NCG), formed in February 1989 with eleven business leaders, nineteen more joining later. Its full-time Consultative Team consisted of Theuns Eloff (Executive Director), Colin Coleman (National Organizer), Rosemary Grealy (National Projects Coordinator), 34 Searle interview.

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Debra Marsden (Economics Project Coordinator) and Christo Nel (Executive Consultant) (Ibid. p.9). Leon Cohen provided offices in PG House, 322 Main St, Jeppestown, adjoining Johannesburg’s CBD. Coleman explains that Eloff ‘had relationships in the National Party, I had relationships in the ANC, and between him and I we were really the driving force of the CBM’.35 Rapid decision-­making was facilitated by a ‘Chairco’ (chairing committee) of Mike Sander (AECI), Murray Hofmeyr ( JCI), and later Neal Chapman (Southern Life) and Clive Menell (Anglo-Vaal) (Ibid. p.10). The CBM included most of the leading business houses. It had 40 member companies by the beginning of 1990, 92 by May 1991 and over 100 from 1992 to its closure in 1995. Its strength lay in its methodology of ‘process consultation’: listening first, then acting in partnership, a method that ‘in effect, led the CBM to become involved in process facilitation (when the concept was still unknown)’ (Ibid. p.7). During 1989 the staff reached out to more groups: the PAC, AZAPO, right-wingers, Afrikaans business leaders and black business organizations. It found Inkatha difficult, but meetings took place with ‘dove’ Oscar Dhlomo, and one with Buthelezi on 18 October (Ibid. pp.13–16). F. W. de Klerk, on becoming NP leader early in 1989, was keen to interact with business and welcomed CBM leaders to share their perspectives. In August he invited CBM Chair Mike Sander and Christo Nel to Pretoria. Nel was intrigued to hear him asking: ‘Is it true that the black leadership, the ANC, UDF, etc., that their only real purpose is a violent military overthrow of the country?’ And you know we could with one cohesive voice say, you know: ‘They’ve never believed either that it’s possible – and, that has never been their intention!’ And yeah, so he asked some very incisive questions, and I’ll never forget towards the end of the meeting he sort of paused for a while and he said, “It appears to me I have only two choices. One dangerous and the other disastrous.” [To negotiate, or do nothing.] Now fascinatingly I was at that stage writing an article on F. W. de Klerk for the Leadership magazine. And my essential gist of the article was: a leopard doesn’t change its spots. And I came out of that meeting, scrapped the article, re-wrote it, and said this is going to be a massive shift. So it was – because it was just clear, F. W. had come to different insights. And we accelerated our meetings then, with the black leadership, it became quite clear that the unbanning and release was coming very, very soon.36

During 1990 the CBM held workshops for NP ministers and civil servants, providing ‘valuable alternative information and insights for the people who generally had very little if any sustained contact with the forthcoming political leadership 35 Coleman interview. 36 Nel interview.

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of South Africa’ (Eloff et al., 1997 p.8). On 23 May the CBM brought 350 delegates from business and 40 from the ANC to the Carlton Hotel for an historic conference on future economic scenarios, where Mbeki and other returnees at last spoke on home soil. Eloff calls this Carlton Conference a watershed event, when the nationalization versus privatization debate was replaced by ‘a deeper debate about the nature of the mixed economy and ways to transform the economy constructively and in partnership with each other’ (Ibid. p.17). The business leaders, Eloff emphasizes, genuinely desired to facilitate change towards a new, free South Africa, and were willing to mobilize resources to that end.

Business in peacemaking: Middelburg and Stutterheim During the NPA negotiation the Barlow Rand group could point to two existing local social compacts, born of its progressive approach, somewhat prefiguring the peace structures. The steel and coal town of Middelburg, with its township of Mhluzi, was home to Barlow’s subsidiary Middelburg Steel and Alloys (MS&A). In 1980 MS&A launched a programme to transform the management and workforce into a united cohesive company. Washrooms were desegregated, and training given for previously ‘reserved’ jobs. The MD, John Gomersall, aspired to spread these cooperative principles to the wider community. He challenged a town hall meeting: ‘If harmony, success and incredible growth are possible within an equal opportunity company such as MS&A, why can’t it be extended to the town, region and country as a whole?’ (Phitidis, 2007 p.123). In 1990, after incidents of intimidation by unemployed ‘comrades’, MS&A’s Human Resources Director Brian Wegerle negotiated with them, drew in community and political representatives from town and township, and the Middelburg Peace Forum (or Informal Regional Planning Forum) was born. A peace committee, it also prefigured multiracial local government. Working groups formed for education, health, housing, small business and job creation, and security. A Trust Fund was created to resource these groups and implement their plans. Local business donated materials, the township donated labour. One job-creation initiative turned unemployed youths into worker-­ owners making metal ‘comrades’ pots’, ‘Compots’. The outcomes included greater social and economic stability, and tolerance of differing viewpoints. Violence and ‘necklacing’ stopped.37 In mid-December 1990, during a full Forum meeting of councillors, church leaders, business leaders and comrades from the township, ‘we heard a knock on the door, and in walked Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu’. We were obviously surprised, but he asked us to carry on while he sat at the back and listened. Later, he asked if he could say a few words. He started 37

Article, ‘The Miracle of Middelburg’, unknown source 1991/92, Carmichael/Pauquet.

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Peacemaking and Peacebuilding in South Africa with a prayer and then said if what was happening in Middelburg could be repeated throughout the country, then South Africa would have a great future ahead of it.38

Tutu became a major NPA facilitator. Wegerle moved to Nedcor in Johannesburg (also part of Barlow’s), which released him in 1992 to chair the Alexandra ICC (Local Peace Committee). He made presentations on the Middelburg experience, but found it was not simply transferable to so complex and fractious a township as Alexandra. Back in 1982 a remarkable Afrikaans couple, Nico and Loël Ferreira, settled in the small eastern Cape farming town of Stutterheim.39 Nico was a Small Business Adviser employed by the C. S. Barlow Foundation. In 1988 he and five friends stood as independents and took over the white Town Council. Ferreira became mayor. Barlow’s supported him as he sought to unite Stutterheim’s black and white communities. By May 1990, with church help, Nico won the trust of Chris Magwangqana, Chair of the ANC-aligned Civic Association in Stutterheim’s township of Mlungisi. Boycotts ended and the two communities agreed to work together in a single ‘Stutterheim Forum’. Nosimo Balindlela of the ANC Women’s League and Loël Ferreira began a parallel process of cooperation among women. Reconciliation and development went together. Local labour was trained, and built IDTfunded housing. A Development Trust supported new projects. Stutterheim, formerly tense and violent, was an oasis of calm throughout the transition. The Stutterheim Forum featured on TV and was much visited and praised, but never fully emulated. Its sustainability post-1994 required a supportive local development policy that failed to materialize, so trained workers found no permanent local jobs, and low-income residents remained unable to pay for services, which could be delivered only with large but dwindling government subsidies.40

Business in conflict intervention: Natal/KwaZulu and Thokoza When fighting reached northern Natal/KwaZulu a peace initiative was led by Rob Barbour, CEO of Alusaf and Chair of the Zululand Chamber of Industries, with Cornell Moll, Human Resources Manager at the mainly Anglo-owned Coal Terminal in Richard’s Bay. They brought the parties, unions and police to secret meetings in Barbour’s home and Richards Bay Rotary Centre. Frank Mdlalose and Bonginkosi Biyela (Inkatha), and Jacob Zuma with Alec Erwin, Willies 38

Reminiscence by Mark Drewell, MS&A Communications Manager (Phitidis, 2007 p.124). 39 See Nussbaum (1997), Ferreira (2006), Ferreira & Nussbaum interviews. 40 107 www.ecsecc.org/files/library/documents/StutterheimCaseStudy.pdf (1998) [accessed 2016; unavailable 2021].

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Mchunu, Jeffrey Vilane and John and Michael Mabuyakhulu (ANC/COSATU), assisted at local and provincial level. The ‘Lower Umfolozi Regional Peace Accord’ was signed on 1 September 1990 in the Methodist Church in Empangeni, where Minister Arthur Loans gave strong support, by Mdlalose and Zuma, the mayors of Esikhaweni, Ngwelazane, and Enseleni townships, and the local KZP and SAP. Just a few pages long, it contained a Code of Conduct enshrining the principles of freedom to attend political meetings, freedom to strike or not, and the acceptance that intimidation is criminal; that the denigration of leaders and organizations through inflammatory and insulting rhetoric must cease; schools must not be disrupted; refugees must return home; dangerous weapons should not be carried in public; rumours must be stamped out.41 In addition, Barbour recalls a practical agreement as to who could be buried where. John Mabuyakhulu, later seconded to work with the Empangeni LPC, recalls this Accord with pride, saying it did effectively dampen violence in northern Natal/KwaZulu.42 It was, he understood, a direct precursor of the NPA; he recalls being called to Pretoria to brief the government on it (no corroboration of this has emerged). It had two major weaknesses: the amakhosi were not involved and immediately dismissed it, as did Buthelezi; and it had no implementation mechanism beyond the intention to hold a joint peace rally which did not materialize. The Empangeni LPC, under-resourced and covering a vast area, seems always to have struggled, not least with the amakhosi. NPS records reveal its reliance on a preferred facilitator flown expensively from Cape Town. A very different place was the township of Thokoza, part of the three-­township complex of ‘Kathorus’ (Thokoza-Katlehong-Vosloorus) on a dusty plain on the East Rand, southeast of Johannesburg, close to the N3 highway to KwaZulu-­ Natal. Established under apartheid to house industrial workers respectively for Alberton, Germiston and Boksburg, these townships accommodated about one million in small houses interspersed with large hostels, with squatter settlements expanding along their fringes. Second only to Soweto in size and population, Kathorus proved the most intractably violent area outside KZN. Thokoza housed workers for Alberton’s light industrial area. In 1991 its houses accommodated some 80,000–100,000, many in crowded ‘backyard room’ extensions. Four men’s hostels, of the barrack type, housed a further 6,000–8,000 ‘single’ migrant workers and unemployed job-seekers, mainly Zulus (Matthewson, 1992 p.2). The three main hostels stretch for some 300 metres along one side of Thokoza’s north–south artery, Khumalo Street. The Khalanyoni hostel stood isolated at the southern end of Thokoza. In 1987 squatters moved onto open ground beyond. Some were from Thokoza’s overflowing back yards, others Xhosa 41 42

SAPA report 2/9/90. Mabuyakhulu interview.

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migrants fresh from the eastern Cape or illegal immigrants including Mozambicans; they created the informal settlement of Phola Park, 4,000–5,000 shacks accommodating up to 20,000 people. Unemployment was at least 50% among both squatters and hostel-dwellers. In 1989 authorities and police attempted violently to dismantle Phola Park. A few people moved to Zonkizizwe, south of Katlehong. Most resisted, forming a residents’ committee and a separate ‘defence committee’, believing themselves now at war with the police. ‘Black-on-black’ violence began in 1989 in the contiguous township of Katlehong: ‘the migrant Zulu occupants of a [minibus] taxi – including women and children – were burned alive by township militants for failing to observe a “stayaway”’ (Kynoch, 2013 p.290). Hostel-dwellers retaliated. Fifty deaths occurred in February–March 1990. Local ANC leaders became set on destroying the hostels. Lindela hostel in Katlehong was successfully demolished. Then, in August 1990, Khalanyoni hostel inmates who refused to join the IFP fled to Phola Park, the Phola Park ‘defence committee’ became a ‘self-defence unit’ (SDU), and war commenced. By December 1990 Phola Park had demolished the Khalanyoni hostel, displacing hundreds of Zulu residents. Many fled to the Khumalo Street hostels. Some resorted to Zonkizizwe, making it an occasional battleground. Night attacks spread into the established residential areas and, to add to the crisis, after a year of rent and service payment boycotts led by the Thokoza Civic Association (TOCA), the white Alberton Town Council (ATC) was now threatening to cut the electricity, extinguishing the street lighting. TOCA sought the mediation of the seventy-member Alberton Industries Association (AIA).43 The AIA intervention was led by two white personnel managers, both on good terms with community leaders: Englishman Grahame Matthewson and second-generation Italian immigrant Paolo Candotti. An emergency meeting was held with the ATC on 13 September. Candotti brought Gertrude Mzizi, a wiry young Sotho, ‘and the legend goes that Gertrude took a lock and chain, wrapped it round the door handles and said to people: “We’re not leaving here until we’ve got a solution.”’44 Gertrude and her Zulu husband Abraham, leading IFP members, lived near the main hostels and acted as intermediaries. It was a weakness that hostel leaders themselves are not prominent in accounts of peace efforts in Thokoza. At 9pm the Council switched power back on, but only for twenty-four hours. Next day Matthewson raised a R100,000 loan from business and Eskom’s bill was paid; but an agreement with TOCA to pay reduced rates failed, electricity was cut on 1 December, and bloody battle resumed. The hostels’ angle was rarely reported. Irish academic and peacemaker Padraig O’Malley interviewed residents of Thokoza’s Madala Hostel on 18

43 Accounts in Matthewson (1992), Candotti (1992), Matthewson interview. 44 Matthewson interview.

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December.45 They described being woken around 3am by a police Casspir driving into the hostel courtyard. At first reassured, they were astonished when it disgorged a blanket-clad Xhosa ‘ANC’ war party. The attackers shot several inmates, some while they slept, others as they fled. O’Malley saw the bloodstained beds. The men bitterly and personally blamed Mandela, asserting he had visited the Thokoza police station the previous day (Mandela and Buthelezi had visited, separately, on 11 December) and that its commander, a Xhosa, had subsequently lent the Casspir to Phola Park. The story is closely corroborated by Segal (1991 p.227), who says the Casspir was driven by Xhosa police and stopped at the hostel gates, protecting Xhosa attackers on foot. Segal records that Zulu police were reportedly assisting their Zulu brothers, ‘with bullets’. Next day a hostel force attacked Phola Park. By 12 December at least 17 hostel men and 22 from Phola Park were dead. Over 200 had died since August. The unlikely rumour ran that a white attacker was eaten in Phola Park (Reed, 1994 p.52). The hostel-dwellers told O’Malley they had originally been glad when Mandela was released, but now they were convinced he wanted the Zulus eliminated so the ANC could take power. The army fenced Phola Park. Democratic Party MP Rupert Lorimer, a future leading member of NPA structures, set up a liaison committee between the police and Phola Park residents’ committee, but it met irregularly and had no formal liaison with the SDU, which was out of all control. February 1991 saw an IFP-aligned ‘Tokoza Ratepayers’ Association’ (TRA), chaired by Gertrude Mzizi, emerge to challenge TOCA. The AIA again brought the community together, culminating in the first Thokoza Peace Conference.46 About sixty attended, from seventeen organizations: ANC, IFP, PAC, TOCA and TRA; churches, teachers, hostel residents, and Phola Park residents, but not SAP or SADF. The facilitators were IMSSA lawyer-mediators Prof. Nicholas (‘Fink’) Haysom, Paul Pretorius, and Thabo Molewa. Three Resolutions were adopted, on political tolerance, the services crisis and the education crisis. The twelve-point Resolution on Political Tolerance contained a political Code of Conduct, a direct precursor to that in the NPA, binding the organizations to ‘respect’ and ‘mutual’ coexistence among the political groups’, to ‘cease making statements and chanting slogans that vilify other political groups’, to ‘disassociate themselves from any forms of physical political intimidation, including necklacing and malicious injury to property and assault on political opponents’, to ‘commit themselves to the principles of free speech, association and movement’, to propagate their principles in a democratic manner, and to establish communication channels to investigate breaches that could lead to violence (Candotti, 1992 app. 1). 45 www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv00017/04lv00344/05lv 00389/06lv00507.htm [accessed 19/10/21]. 46 At Eskom Training Centre, Midrand, 19–21 April 1991.

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The Resolution also established a peace structure, a multiparty ‘Thokoza Peace Coordinating Committee’ (TPCC) to continue communication, seek ways to restore peace, ‘attend to breaches of the Code of Conduct’, address the issue of ‘Defence Units’, find solutions and monitor them. The TPCC met weekly in a little conference room at Dulux. Matthewson convened and the chair rotated around the ANC, IFP, and PAC. Gertrude Mzizi represented the IFP, Duma Nkosi and Babelazi Belunga the ANC. ‘Whenever it looked as though there was going to be a fracture, we would rush in with our home-printed T-shirts and see what we could do.’47 ‘Fink’ Haysom told Matthewson a few months later: ‘that experience in Thokoza … just gave us the foundations for the National Peace Accord: the one thing followed from the other’.48 Calm reigned for eight months, then, early in September 1991, the IFPaligned Thokoza Hostel Dwellers’ Association applied for magisterial permission for a rally on Sunday 8 September in Thokoza stadium. It stands beside Khumalo Street some 2km south of the hostels and 1km north of Phola Park. Rally-goers would inevitably march down Khumalo Street, but police gave assent, neither consulting nor liaising with anyone. The Phola Park SDU, perceiving this as an attack, prepared pre-emptive action. When the hostel residents, in holiday mood, poured towards the stadium, they were suddenly ambushed by ‘unknown gunmen’ wielding AK-47s. Twenty-three died. The ANC denied involvement. The press, led by heavyweight Allister Sparks, confidently deduced that the shootings were a professional ‘Third Force’ operation to derail the National Peace Accord, due to be signed the next Saturday. The police correctly suspected the SDU and arrested one member, Michael Phama. He was convicted, the truth emerging in court and later at the TRC. Goldstone’s inquiry censured the police for not liaising with the ‘Lorimer Forum’, meaning both Lorimer’s Phola Park committee and the TPCC.49 Civics leader Sam Ntuli was assassinated in Thokoza on 29 September, and eighteen died at his funeral. All was blamed on the police and ‘Third Force’ – but that entire incident, it eventually emerged, was taxi-related.50 The NPA structures were just forming. On 11 October the NPC instructed the embryo NPS to contact Thokoza leaders ‘with the aim of urgently setting up’ an LDRC.51 The AIA secured all-party agreement for a second Thokoza Peace Conference, and convened and funded it (eventually to be reimbursed by the NPS). With a full attendance, facilitated by ‘Fink’ Haysom and Paul Pretorius, it 47 Matthewson interview. 48 Ibid. 49 Goldstone Report, Violence at Tokoza, 17/11/92, para.9. 50 www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/ifp-taxi-owners-ordered-ntulis-murder-11918 [accessed 27/2/21]. TRC AM 2806/96. 51 Daily Dispatch 12/10/92.

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met on 2–3 November 1991 at the Anglo American training centre at Macauvlei on the Vaal River, and enthusiastically agreed to form an LDRC. Dulux continued its support through Matthewson as the LDRC’s convener.52

Mandela and government in secret talks Mandela never abandoned the foundational undertaking of the ANC to maintain communication between the black population and government. In 1982 he was transferred from Robben Island to Pollsmoor Prison near Cape Town, increasing the potential for encounter. Nothing yet happened. After Botha’s failed ‘Rubicon’ speech in August 1985, Mandela wrote to Minister of Justice Kobie Coetsee, requesting a meeting. No reply came, but that November Coetsee visited Mandela, who was in hospital for an operation. A pleasant conversation took place, then long silence until early in 1986 the visit of a Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group sparked a series of confidential discussions, authorized by Botha, between Mandela and Coetsee, often at the latter’s home. In 1988 Botha appointed NIS Director Niël Barnard to head a small ‘committee’ for secret official exploratory talks with Mandela. It was made up of Barnard, with his Deputy Director-General, Mike Louw; General Willie Willemse, the Commissioner for Prisons, who had known Mandela since 1971 on Robben Island; and Fanie van der Merwe, Director-General of the Department of Justice under which prisons fell, and a future key NPA negotiator. ‘There was’, Barnard later reflected, ‘a very deep feeling from 1986 to 1989, that we can still continue, but for how long? Would it be five years, ten years, fifteen years?’53 The NIS positioned itself to steer the ship of state onto a new course while the government still had relative strength. Esterhuyse (2012 p.120), commenting on the talks with Mandela, writes: ‘Mike Louw even opined that P. W. Botha had dug a hole for himself and that it was the committee’s responsibility to extricate him from that!’ Social introductions included a ‘delicious’ dinner cooked by Willemse’s wife at their house in Pollsmoor on Wednesday 1 June 1988 (Barnard, 2015 p.159). Weekly or fortnightly meetings ensued, with the team or just Barnard alone. Coetsee liaised with the committee while continuing his personal meetings with Mandela. Barnard reported to Botha. Mandela made his prison colleagues, and the external leadership under Tambo, aware of these talks, emphasizing they were strictly not negotiations, but exchanges of view. Mandela (1994 pp.640–3) says the chief topics were MK, Communism, and the assumption that the Freedom Charter implied ‘wholesale nationalization’. He remarks on the committee’s poor 52 53

For the continued Kathorus story, see pp.371–6. Interview in 1994, in Lieberfeld (2005 p.106).

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knowledge about the ANC, apart from Barnard, who had absorbed inaccuracies and prejudices from police reports. Barnard (2015 p.206) recalls discussing ‘the ANC’s use of violence and terrorism, the influence of the Communists on the ANC and a future constitutional model for the country’. In December 1988, Mandela was moved to a house in the grounds of Victor Verster prison, in the winelands near Paarl. Here he could, under surveillance, make phone calls and receive visitors including his colleagues still at Pollsmoor (ferried on secret visits by ambulance).54 He met Botha only once, just before his presidency ended, for an unexpectedly cordial tea at Tuynhuys on 5 July 1989. Through all these ‘track-two’ interventions, understanding deepened and the peaceful future that might be built took clearer shape. People recognized each other as human. Friendships developed. Now came the challenge to replace violence with negotiations, and to expand these new relationships into a new political order.

54 Andrew Mlangeni, conversation with author 19/7/18.

5 De Klerk Becomes President, Mandela Walks Free Introduction P. W. Botha suffered a stroke on 18 January 1989. He resigned the party leadership on 2 February and F. W. de Klerk became leader. De Klerk became Acting State President on 15 August, was formally elected on 14 September, and inaugurated on 20 September. Meanwhile National Intelligence operatives arranged to meet the ANC in exile. The Cold War, which had provided geopolitical cover for the apartheid government, symbolically ended on 9 November with the fall of the Berlin Wall. In February 1990 de Klerk released Mandela. The expectation was that violence would abate and multiparty constitutional talks begin. Instead, bilateral ANC–government talks proceeded slowly, then stalled, while the ANC–Inkatha conflict spread and a long-delayed peace agreement between Mandela and Buthelezi, signed in January 1991, had no effect on the violence.

De Klerk, the NIS, and meeting the enemy Frederik Willem de Klerk was born in 1936 into a political family. He was a student leader at Potchefstroom, became an attorney, entered Parliament in 1972 and Cabinet in 1978, and held posts in telecommunications, energy, and education. He was considered a moderately conservative centrist. By 1989, while never a ‘hawk’ but not fully ‘verligte’, he had no doubt that radical change must come – a ‘quantum leap’ as he called it on accepting the party leadership. As leader he was briefed by Kobie Coetsee on the secret talks with Mandela, of which he previously knew nothing.1 Privy to the Consgold talks since August 1988 through his brother Willem, he ‘took note’ of the impressions of the ANC given in those discussions but remained wary of ‘well-intentioned efforts by businessmen and academics’ and of falling prey to the wily SACP. Like Barnard he was determined that ‘when the time came, the government and no one else from our side should determine the timing and direction of the process’ (De Klerk, 1999 p.173). 1

Email, de Klerk to author 9/12/15.

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While de Klerk was advancing to power the NIS decided to pre-empt further delay by establishing face-to-face contact with the ANC. In May, knowing Botha would shortly meet Mandela and that his reign was ending, the NIS instructed Hanna Langenhoven, its current contact with Willie Esterhuyse, to enlist his help to arrange a secret meeting between NIS operatives and Thabo Mbeki.2 Esterhuyse contacted Mbeki in Lusaka. They met in London on Wednesday 31 May. Michael Young, now at British American Tobacco, provided a lounge in the BAT offices. Wary of walls with ears, Esterhuyse passed the NIS request to Mbeki in a written note, asking for a personal phone number. ‘You will receive a call from someone called John Campbell. This person will discuss logistics and other issues with you’ (Esterhuyse, 2012 p.198). After conferring with Tambo, Mbeki rendezvoused with Esterhuyse in a pub a few days later. He divulged his home phone in Lusaka, but still wondered if this were a trap. Esterhuyse could only assure him it was serious and high-level: ‘Barnard and his team are engaged in a process. Not a sensational event.’ (Ibid. p.199). ‘John Campbell’ was Maritz Spaarwater, NIS’s tall, lanky, whimsically humorous verligte Chief of Operations. He arranged false passports for Mbeki and Zuma as ‘John and Jack Simelane’, booked travel, and arranged to meet in September in the imposing Palace Hotel, Lucerne, Switzerland (Spaarwater, 2012 pp.174–8). Meanwhile, in the best traditions of double-speak but now on the side of the angels, the NIS obtained official sanction for their plan. On 16 August Acting President de Klerk chaired a meeting of the State Security Council. The NIS tabled a motion affirming the need to take ‘special additional direct action … particularly with the help of National Intelligence functionaries’ to obtain more information about the ANC and the ‘potential approachability of its different leaders and groupings’ (Spaarwater, 2012 p.175; Sparks, 1994 p.111). The Council passed the item without discussion and the NIS men, to their secret delight, secured their go-ahead. Because they regarded de Klerk as still on the ‘conservative’ wing of the NP they decided not to confide in him, but to present him with a fait accompli. A week later, on 21 August, the OAU’s Ad-hoc Committee on Southern Africa issued its ‘Harare Declaration’, which was effectively the ANC’s manifesto for negotiations. The Declaration noted South Africa’s role in current negotiations for Namibian independence and for peace in Mozambique and Angola, and welcomed the ‘possibility to end apartheid through negotiations’.3 To create the correct climate, the Declaration set out conditions: South Africa must release political prisoners, un-ban individuals and organizations, end the State of Emergency and remove troops from townships; and the sequence for the transition must be: a ceasefire, an interim government to draw up a new constitution, and then elections. 2 3

Esterhuyse interview. Harare Declaration, para.14. https://peacemaker.un.org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/ files/ZA_HarareDeclaration-21Aug_1989.pdf [accessed 16/2/21].

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Within South Africa, parties launched their manifestos ahead of the 6 September parliamentary election. The NP boldly declared its intention to ‘normalize the political process; to remove racial discrimination; to negotiate a new political dispensation; to promote economic effectiveness; to maintain law and order; and to remove mistrust by building bridges between our divided communities’ (De Klerk, 1999 p.147). It received broad white support: the NP lost some seats to the right-wing CP but stayed comfortably in power with 103 members in the 178-seat House of Assembly; the CP had 41, the liberal DP 34. On the evening of Tuesday 12 September Maritz Spaarwater, with Deputy Director Mike Louw, welcomed a wary Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma to their hotel rooms in Lucerne. When Louw died in 2010 Zuma wrote: I can recall quite clearly our first meeting, under conditions of utmost secrecy in a foreign country, meeting as representatives of forces that were engaged in a bitter struggle against each other. Though we came from greatly different backgrounds, socially and politically, we were nevertheless all South Africans, seeking a resolution to a conflict that had engulfed our country for decades. The recognition of our common desire for peace in the country we both called home was a critical factor in the progress of those discussions and in the process towards the initiation of meaningful negotiations, which led to peace and democracy in our country.4

Spaarwater writes: Both sides expressed the sincere intentions of their principals to seek a peaceful negotiated settlement to ensure the future of the country. We agreed that neither side was authorized to negotiate and that our discussions were aimed solely at establishing whether such discussions would be feasible. … we discussed some of the most vexed nettles … Mandela’s continued incarceration, the ban on the liberation movements; the involvement of the SACP with the ANC, to which our principals had serious objections; and the ongoing ANC mass protest action in South Africa with its attendant eruptions of violence. (Spaarwater, 2012 p.178)

The NIS pair urged the ANC to help the government to persuade its own support base that peaceful negotiations were possible, by toning down any rhetoric of violence and retribution. Conversation went on into the early hours of Wednesday.

‘Rainbow people’: the Cape Town March That Wednesday, 13 September, a momentous turning point was also reached in Cape Town. Some twenty-three protesters had been killed by police in the Cape Town townships on election day. Archbishop Tutu, out of a deep prayerful 4

Weekly Mail & Guardian 4/1/10.

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conviction, called for a protest in the form of a non-violent peace march on the 13th from St George’s Cathedral through the city centre. Permission was not applied for. The police objected. Johan Heyns, Cape Town’s new mayor Gordon Oliver, and diplomats negotiated with de Klerk, and on Tuesday evening he announced the government’s permission to march: ‘“The door to a new South Africa is open,” he said, “it is not necessary to batter it down”’ (Allen, 2006 p.310). Some 30,000 people of all ages and races flowed from the cathedral down Adderley Street, headed by Tutu, other religious leaders, and the Mayor. The still-restricted UDF network helped organize, and provided marshals. Just to march, unopposed, was a festive experience. From the City Hall balcony, to rounds of laughter and applause, Tutu called ecstatically: “Mr de Klerk, come and look at technicolour! … We say, we are the rainbow people! We say, we are the new people of a new South Africa! … Mr de Klerk, please come!”5 Johannesburg, Pietermaritzburg and Durban then staged similar marches: multiracial crowds bubbling with energy and hope, solemnly headed by clergy with linked arms.

Preparing the quantum leap On 17 September Louw and Spaarwater reached Cape Town and reported to a startled President that the ANC were ready to negotiate. De Klerk exploded, demanding who had given them the right to talk to the ANC? ‘Calling us “you people” he accused us again of doing things in our own self-willed way, accountable to no one’ (Spaarwater, 2012 p.178). Louw showed him a copy of the SSC resolution, explaining they had gone to investigate, not negotiate. ‘After all,’ Spaarwater comments, ‘we could not have executed our mandate to investigate the possibility of talking directly to the ANC without talking directly to some of them. De Klerk instantly calmed down and, as Louw put it, “took up the ball and ran with it”’ (Ibid.; Sparks, 1994 p.113). De Klerk, feeling a profound sense of calling, was inaugurated as President three days later, 20 September 1989. He was determined to restore Cabinet rule, remove the securocrat mentality, make government transparent, and negotiate a new political dispensation. There seems no reason to doubt de Klerk’s sincerity in desiring to reform the security sector, end ‘dirty tricks’, and establish transparent Cabinet rule. On 28 November 1989 he announced that the SSC would henceforward be composed only of politicians, and the NSMS would be replaced by a National Coordinating Mechanism focused on socio-economic development (which appears to have had little impact). The SSC secretariat and JMCs were dismantled and police reform proceeded. Certain unofficial covert activities persisted, to be finally uncovered by Goldstone.6 In relation to these, de Klerk (1999 p.152) admitted he had been too naïve and trusting: ‘Years later I would discover just how much 5 6

Video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygpWizpLKSc [accessed 31/3/21]. See pp.412–17.

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had been hidden from me.’ The ANC distrusted de Klerk and its allegation that the government itself was running a ‘Third Force’ to foment ‘black-on-black’ violence persists even now, despite a complete lack of proof. Walter Sisulu and Mandela’s other remaining co-prisoners were flown by military aircraft to Johannesburg, released individually from the Fort, and conveyed home in police vehicles.7 A tumultuous reception rally in Soweto followed. On 13 December de Klerk called Mandela to Tuynhuys for their first encounter. Finding de Klerk was a listener, Mandela insisted the NP’s ‘group rights’ policy would be unacceptable, and reiterated the ANC’s preconditions for talks: the unbanning of the ANC and other organizations, release of political prisoners and return of exiles (Mandela, 1994 pp.664–5). De Klerk was hearing the same advice, including unbanning the SACP, from his own advisers. Over the Christmas break he held an intensive ‘bosberaad’ (bush meeting) with his Cabinet, received General Malan’s revelations about the CCB, and quietly prepared to make history.

De Klerk’s speech, 2 February 1990 De Klerk’s ‘quantum leap’ came at the opening of the new Parliament in Cape Town on the morning of Friday 2 February 1990. The world’s media were in town, expecting Mandela’s imminent release; but the breadth of the President’s announcement was wholly unexpected. His opening words were already familiar: peace could be ensured only by ‘a negotiated understanding among the representative leaders of the entire population’; the government would therefore make negotiation its priority, aiming for ‘a totally new and just constitutional dispensation in which every inhabitant will enjoy equal rights, treatment and opportunity’.8 The speech meandered off into a standard review of domestic and foreign affairs. Then, suddenly: the banning orders on the ANC, PAC, and SACP were unconditionally rescinded; political prisoners who had not committed violence would be released; restrictions on thirty-three organizations, including UDF and COSATU, and 374 individuals, were lifted; reporting restrictions relaxed and the State of Emergency would end as soon as the situation allowed.9 ‘It is time for us to break out of the cycle of violence and break through to peace and reconciliation.’ In this, Nelson Mandela ‘could play an important part’. He ‘has declared himself willing to make a constructive contribution to the peaceful political process’ and the government had decided to release him unconditionally in a short while. It was a breath-taking moment. ‘Despite all the predictions, it astonished 7 Andrew Mlangeni, conversation with author 19/7/18. 8 https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02039/04lv0 2103/05lv02104/06lv02105.htm [accessed 16/2/21]. 9 Lifted in June 1990, delayed to October in Natal.

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almost everyone. In a few minutes de Klerk reversed nearly all his predecessors’ policies over the past three decades’ (Sampson, 1999 p.402). Parliament sat stunned, as the news went global. In the Concourse Hall at the World Economic Forum in Davos, CBM Co-chair Neal Chapman watched the news ticker. ‘South African delegates’, he reports, ‘stood open-mouthed in astonishment and delight.’10 Acknowledging the ANC’s argument that violence had been necessary because the government refused to talk, de Klerk argued that there was now ‘no longer any reasonable excuse’ to continue violence. ‘Walk through the open door, take your place at the negotiating table together with the government and other leaders who have important power bases inside and outside of Parliament.’ Among these others the President pointedly mentioned Buthelezi. He appealed to the international community ‘to adopt a positive attitude towards the dynamic evolution which is taking place in South Africa’. He closed with a prayer ‘that the Almighty Lord will guide and sustain us on our course through uncharted waters’. De Klerk assumed his hand would remain on the tiller. He would convene the talks, and censure non-attendees. He was to learn that progress would be made only through consultation and consensus – and that he might need some help. On Saturday 10 February de Klerk announced Mandela would be released in the Cape the following day. In London, at a memorial service in St Martin-inthe-Fields for Bishop Simeon Nkoane CR, Archbishop Trevor Huddleston CR conveyed the news from the pulpit.11 The service ended in an awed procession to South Africa House next door, to sing the ‘alternative National Anthem’, the hymn adopted by the ANC in 1912, Nkosi, sikelel’ i Africa – God, bless Africa.

Mandela’s speech, Sunday 11 February 1990 Mandela replied publicly to de Klerk on his first evening of freedom, standing at dusk on Cape Town’s City Hall balcony above a vast crowd. There he read, not the gracious invitation to reconciliation that de Klerk and Barnard hoped for, but an uncompromising political manifesto finalized with his comrades over the previous twenty-four hours. The majority of South Africans, black and white, he said, now realized apartheid had no future. To cheers, against de Klerk, he asserted that the factors which had motivated the armed struggle and sanctions were still present. Above all, the people were still disenfranchised. He had not entered into any negotiations but had only insisted that the government and ANC must talk, provided the conditions stated in the 10 11

Neal Chapman, ‘Reflections on 25 Years of the World Economic Forum’ (2015), p.1. www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/06/reflections-on-25-years-of-the-world-economic-forum-on-africa/ [accessed 31/3/21]. Author was present.

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Harare Declaration were first met. Meanwhile, international sanctions should continue. De Klerk was ‘a man of integrity’ but there must be no relaxation of the struggle. March on to freedom! The de Klerks, and Barnard, watching on TV, were deflated. De Klerk needed reassurance for his constituency; instead he heard Mandela thanking the Communists while perpetuating sanctions and the ‘armed struggle’. This public chasm was inevitable. Mandela explains he had to affirm his revolutionary credentials and leadership. ‘I encouraged the people to return to the barricades, to intensify the struggle, and we would walk the last mile together’ (Mandela, 1994 p.677). He would have been ‘powerless if he could not carry his movement with him … But as the acknowledged leader of the black majority he could use all his authority for a peaceful settlement’ (Sampson, 1999 p.409). The Mandelas spent the night at Bishopscourt, Archbishop Tutu’s official residence. Next morning, when the press gathered on the lawn, Mandela was ‘more conciliatory’; he ‘insisted that the armed struggle was merely defensive’ (Ibid. p.410). He said that ‘when the state stopped inflicting violence on the ANC, the ANC would reciprocate with peace’ (Mandela, 1994 pp.679–80).

Expectations Two expectations now predominated: that grassroots violence would abate, and multiparty talks about constitutional negotiations would begin. Neither happened. The ANC–government meetings moved from Switzerland, becoming a joint steering committee to plan the return of exiles. An entire year of mainly technical bilaterals ensued, producing short ‘Minutes’ on security-related matters. ‘Hawks’ who wanted no recognition for Buthelezi prevented Mandela from meeting him. Buthelezi had expected to play a significant national role, but was left dangerously waiting in the wings. Grassroots violence spread. The shooting of demonstrators by jittery police in Sebokeng on 26 March 1990, killing 5 and wounding 161, caused the first bilateral, at Groote Schuur, to be postponed from April to 2–4 May. The meeting produced the Groote Schuur Minute on the release of political prisoners, the return of exiles and, for the first time, violence and intimidation. The next bilateral, in Pretoria on 6 August, was preceded by revelations of ‘Operation Vula’, MK’s persisting efforts to organize underground. The ANC leadership played this down, and announced at the meeting that ‘it was now suspending all armed actions with immediate effect’ (Pretoria Minute, para.3).12 The Pretoria Minute’s next paragraph expressed ‘serious concern about the general level of violence, intimidation and unrest … especially in Natal’. It called for a growing understanding, at all levels, that ‘problems can and should be 12 Text available at https://peacemaker.un.org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/files/ ZA_900806_The%20Pretoria%20Minute.pdf [accessed 30/3/22].

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solved through negotiations … in line with the spirit of mutual trust obtaining among the leaders’ (Ibid., para.4). A multi-level communication structure was suggested, rather than just a working group: ‘the delegations consider it necessary that whatever additional mechanisms of communication are needed should be developed at local, regional and national levels. This should enable public grievances to be addressed peacefully and in good time, avoiding conflict’ (Ibid., para.5). No ‘additional mechanisms’ appeared until the NPA created them, but the Minute ended optimistically: exploratory talks about a new constitution were to be held ‘soon’ (para. 9).

A bilateral on violence Instead, the ANC-Alliance and government met on 11 September at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, at the ANC’s request, to address the violence in Natal/ KwaZulu and now also Transvaal. With de Klerk were Ministers Adriaan Vlok (Law and Order) and Kobie Coetsee ( Justice). The ANC-Alliance delegation, led by Mandela, included Jacob Zuma, Harry Gwala, Thabo Mbeki, Alec Erwin, COSATU Secretary General Jayaseelan Naidoo, Jayendra Naidoo (SACCAWU), Blade Ndzimande, Willies Mchunu, John Jeffery, and legal adviser ‘Fink’ Haysom. The ANC record captures the exchanges. Many of the issues would be addressed in the Peace Accord.13 Harry Gwala challenged the government to take responsibility for the violence, which he alleged stemmed from Inkatha and its ‘private army’ the KZ Police. The government must impose law and order, disband the KZP, arrest warlords, lift the State of Emergency and set up a joint ANC–government Working Group to ‘find practical solutions and to implement agreements between the government and ourselves’. In effect, an ANC–government take-over of security in KwaZulu. Gwala mirrors Buthelezi in complaining that ‘talks between ANC/ COSATU/UDF and Inkatha have taken us nowhere’. Talks were nevertheless continuing and the ANC was ‘prepared to meet Buthelezi in the context of a comprehensive peace plan’ but ‘not as a matter of public theatre’. After inputs on education in KZ, the SAP, SADF, and KZP, the ANC for the first time raised the issue of the public carrying of ‘cultural weapons’ by Inkatha supporters. The government had recently relaxed a 100-year-old absolute prohibition on carrying weapons in Natal. Vlok ‘explained that the amendment to the Natal Code … actually prohibits traditional weapons being carried except in a few cases. It has made controlling the carrying of traditional 13 Typed ‘Report on meeting with FW held at Union Buildings, Pretoria on 11 September 1990’, faxed from NUMSA, Durban, on 4 October 1990, kept by Paul Graham, IDASA, copy provided to author Feb. 2013. Carmichael/P. Graham. All quotations in this section are from this report.

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weapons much easier.’ The display of weapons became an intractable issue during the NPA negotiations. Vlok and Coetsee raised the difficulty of conducting police investigations in the face of the lack, or intimidation, of witnesses. De Klerk said ‘the government must be impartial’, and not ‘in cahoots’ with either ANC or IFP, so he did not warm to a bilateral working group on violence but could see promise in the idea of ‘a joint working group including Inkatha, with the government as referee or chairperson’. Again he was assuming the government would be in the Chair, although he mentioned he had been ‘put off ’ interfering between Mandela and Buthelezi. Mandela confirmed ‘he has told F. W. not to intervene, he will meet Buthelezi when he is ready and the time is right’. Mandela responded that he was encouraged by the government’s positive attitude, but ‘stressed that violence is an obstacle to the broader peace process in S. Africa’: The government has the capacity to end violence and has a strong efficient and well-armed army and police. From previous actions, the government could end violence in a few days. There is a wide perception the government uses different yardsticks over white lives and black lives. He used the example of torture of detainees where the government has appointed a commission of inquiry into right wing allegations but has ignored the ANC’s allegations of torture.

The ANC was constantly expressing its belief that the government could stop the violence immediately but did not wish to do so. Mandela states here for the first time that ‘From the ground there is a demand to stop talks until the government has taken steps to end violence’, and ‘it was becoming difficult to resist this demand’. De Klerk pointed out that only ‘suppressive measures’ such as mass detentions had succeeded in damping violence in the past. He did not wish to apply them now, but preferred ‘short-term unrest legislation’ which was showing some promise. government, he concluded, ‘would look at the matter in cabinet and further communication would be through existing channels’. The meeting ended. The brief Report of the ‘Paragraph 3 Working Group’ under the Pretoria Minute, on MK’s suspension of armed action, was accepted on 12 February 1991 at Cape Town’s D. F. Malan Airport, as the ‘D. F. Malan Accord’. It amounted to vague assurances. A Liaison Group met a few times, then was overtaken by the NPA and Codesa.

Mandela and Buthelezi After Mandela’s release ANC–Inkatha relations pursued their own bilateral track. The old personal relationship between him and Buthelezi had remained intact. In April 1989 he had written to Buthelezi expressing distress at black

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people killing one another, ‘a serious indictment against us all’ (Temkin, 2003 p.259). Buthelezi read out the letter to the KwaZulu Legislative Assembly. Barnard maintains that during Mandela’s last months in prison he encouraged Mandela to invite Buthelezi to visit, but Mandela consulted his ANC colleagues and ‘they were evasive; on occasion, he complained to Winnie that he was very dissatisfied that the ANC had not given him an answer to his offer to speak to Buthelezi and to try to make him part of the settlement process’ (Barnard, 2015 p.184). Mandela wrote again shortly before his release, and phoned a week afterwards to thank Buthelezi for his support. ‘My inclination’, Mandela writes, ‘was to meet the chief as soon as possible to try to resolve our differences’ (Mandela, 1994 p.688). Buthelezi expected to be treated equally, as a third partner, by the government and ANC – but even moderate ANC leaders were shrinking from conferring legitimacy on him. Mandela’s wishes were vetoed at his first meeting with the ANC’s NEC in Lusaka. De Klerk believed the failure to meet was a mistake, as did Jacob Zuma, himself a Zulu peacemaker: ‘It was important for Buthelezi to feel welcomed, embraced, and part of the process’, Zuma says. If Mandela had embraced him, and called him brother, right at the beginning, ‘you could have had absolutely the end of the problem, that’s my feeling.’ Mandela was ready to do so, says Zuma, but the local leadership of the ANC in Natal prevented him from acting. (Waldmeir, 1997 p.160)

Possible visits by Sisulu and Mandela to King Zwelithini foundered on one-­ upmanship concerning numbers and venues (Mandela, 1994 pp.688–9). Natal ANC leaders vetoed any further plans. Mandela himself began gravitating to the view of his ‘hawks’, that Inkatha should be spurned as a government puppet. Just two weeks after his release, on 25 February 1990, Mandela addressed a rally estimated to number over 100,000 people, mainly Zulu, many young, beside Kings Park Stadium on the Durban seafront. ‘He wanted Buthelezi to share his platform, but his colleagues opposed this, to Buthelezi’s fury’ (Sampson, 1999 p.437). The event starkly illustrated the gulf between top leadership and the grassroots. Mandela gave an impassioned, reasoned exhortation to end the war and turn to peace. He commended Inkatha for supporting ANC political prisoners and ‘refusing to participate in a negotiated settlement without the creation of the necessary climate’ (Temkin, 2003 p.264). He offered Buthelezi the hand of peace, saying he hoped it would become possible to share a platform with him. But Buthelezi’s name drew catcalls, and when Mandela called for an end to this war between brothers – ‘Take your guns, your knives and your pangas and throw them into the sea!’ – his words ‘fell on deaf ears’ (Mandela, 1994 p.690). Bishop Michael Nuttall watched as ‘quite a number of people in the crowd started to leave, and we knew that it would be a long time before his idealism

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would be translated into reality’ (Nuttall, 2003 p.72). Bheki Cele, then still on Robben Island, reports: ‘and they were saying: “No! This is a fake Mandela. Our Mandela’s still coming. The Boers have given us a wrong one!” Because of the hot, hot situation.’14

‘Seven Days War’ On a wet Sunday a month later, 25 March 1990, Buthelezi addressed a smaller crowd in King’s Park stadium. With him was David Ntombela, a prominent member of the KwaZulu legislature who was also induna and warlord at Elandskop in Vulindlela, part of KwaZulu, in the hills above Pietermaritzburg. The road to Vulindlela ran through ANC territory in the Edendale valley. Ntombela warned that if the returning Inkatha buses were stoned, his people would ‘protect themselves’. Stones flew. ‘Protect’ meant ‘retaliate indiscriminately’. At dawn on Wednesday 28 March war horns sounded and men with ‘traditional’ weapons and guns swept down through Edendale, attacking homes and people. The ‘Seven Days War’ destroyed some 3,000 houses and created 20,000 displacees. Churches in Pietermaritzburg received hundreds of refugees. Estimates of the death toll varied from 80 to 200, with hundreds wounded. Cattle and property were looted. Vivid images flashed across the national media. ‘In March,’ Mandela writes, ‘after one particularly horrifying spasm of violence, I announced on my own that I would meet him [Buthelezi] at a mountain hamlet outside Pietermaritzburg.’ Buthelezi had suggested they meet at Taylor’s Halt in Vulindlela. Church leaders supported a meeting but deplored the choice of venue (Nuttall, 2003 p.74). ‘On a personal level,’ Mandela continues, ‘my relations with the chief were close and respectful, and I hoped to capitalize on that. But I found that such a meeting was anathema to the ANC leaders in Natal. They considered it dangerous, and vetoed my meeting’ (Mandela, 1994 p.690). Buthelezi thought the cancellation ‘senseless’, since the whole purpose was ‘to stop the fighting which was going to go on unless black leaders came together to stop it’ (Temkin, 2003 p.266).

ANC–Inkatha violence spreads For the first half of 1990 the ANC–Inkatha violence was confined to Natal/KwaZulu. Of 951 ‘political’ deaths in January to March 1990, 695 were in Natal/KwaZulu, 256 elsewhere (SAIRR, 1989–90 p.238). Then in July the fighting spread to South Africa’s industrial heartland, variously referred to as ‘the Reef ’ (gold reef) or ‘PWV’ (Pretoria–Witwatersrand–Vereeniging triangle), or ‘Witwatersrand/ Vaal’, containing Soweto and other large townships around Johannesburg. 14

Cele interview.

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On 14 July, at Inkatha’s national conference, Buthelezi announced its transformation from a ‘cultural movement’ into the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), aspiring to be a nation-wide political party open to all races, poised to participate in the expected multiparty negotiations. Recruiting began immediately, precipitating the first eruptions of ANC–Inkatha fighting in the Johannesburg area. Here, despite the IFP’s proclaimed multiracialism, the grassroots conflict acquired a strongly inter-ethnic dimension, pitting traditionalist Zulus against everyone else. A scattering of non-Zulus, chiefly Sothos and whites, joined but the party remained predominantly Zulu. This fighting was intimately bound up with the apartheid demography of the townships and their migrant worker hostels. The hostel system originated with the mine compounds where migrant mine-workers were accommodated, leaving their families in the rural areas. Under apartheid hundreds of new single-sex hostels were built, some by industry, most by local government, mostly for men, a few for women. Older hostels are complexes of long one-or two-storey barracks, surrounding open yards. Newer hostels featured high brick multi-storey blocks. Hostels could house hundreds or thousands of inmates, sleeping on concrete bunks or iron beds, sharing basic facilities for cooking and washing.15 Hostels were generally ethnically mixed, usually with a Zulu majority. They were communities apart, sitting uneasily in the townships. Zulu inmates, used to traditional discipline, despised the unruly township youths while themselves feeling disdained by township-dwellers as uneducated country bumpkins. Still, in peaceful times social mixing took place. In the 1980s influx control ended, township administration broke down, and hostels became dilapidated and overcrowded. The Transvaal had 136 hostels with 207,158 beds, but an estimate in the early 1990s put occupancy in the ‘PWV’ alone at 312,581 (Minnaar, 1993 p.10). Unemployment at around 50% prevailed in both hostels and shack settlements. With the advent of ANC–IFP violence, ‘The most identifiable participants … were migrant workers residing in the many hostels on the Reef on the one hand and on the other, … youth from the townships, particularly the squatter settlements’ (Ibid.). The IFP defended the hostel system, while the ANC wanted these symbols of apartheid demolished or converted into family housing. The major report on hostels commissioned by Goldstone, Communities in Isolation (Minnaar, 1993), explained the preponderance of Zulus. In Zulu customary law, men who held land had to settle their families there, or forfeit their holding. They needed the hostels, to allow them to work in town, and feared losing them, By contrast, relatively few Xhosa workers used hostels; most brought their families, built shacks, and became urbanized. In the violence many hostels became 15

In 1991 an estimated 402 government-administered hostels offered some 529,784 beds. Natal/KwaZulu, where hostels also participated in the violence, had 16 hostels with 26,125 beds (Minnaar, 1993 p.10).

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Zulu/IFP-dominated ‘no-go areas’. A few hostels of mainly Xhosa or mixed ethnicity became ANC strongholds. Both sides accused the other of busing in supporters from rural areas to occupy hostels and carry out attacks.16 The Goldstone Report describes a visit by researchers in 1990–91 to the Nguni hostel in Vosloorus, East Rand. As was common, maintenance had ceased, leaving sanitary facilities in a disgusting state. The researchers interviewed the residents to determine their needs ahead of possible redevelopment. ‘At all the interviews, it was hard to correlate the pictures on television screens and in newspapers with the traumatized, utterly exhausted and often terrified men who filed in and out of the interview rooms’ (Minnaar, 1993 p.146). The same was true of the Alexandra hostels in 1992.

Sebokeng, 22 July 1990 The first major IFP–ANC clash on the Reef was triggered by a national strike called by COSATU for 2 July 1990. COSATU was, inter alia, demanding that the government solve the Natal violence by dismantling the KwaZulu homeland and its police. Inkatha’s Transvaal leaders complained that its members were intimidated and some fifteen Inkatha homes burnt, including eight in Sebokeng. Inkatha called a rally on Sunday 22 July in the Evaton stadium beside Sebokeng, to show solidarity and deny Sebokeng to the ANC as a ‘no go’ area. As IFP recruitment was just starting, this rally is seen as the IFP’s launch event on the Reef. Before the rally, amid mutual threats, a questionable ‘ANC’ leaflet circulated calling for Zulus to be attacked and driven back to KwaZulu. It was the first expression of ethno-political antagonism against Zulus as Zulu. Inkatha believed the pamphlet genuine. The ANC disowned it as a ‘classic destabilization tactic’ by the security forces.17 Certainly the violence, which in Natal/KwaZulu had been intra-Zulu, became ethno-political and inter-tribal on the Reef. Mandela’s account of the events of 22 July comes from an ANC perspective and is coloured by his growing doubts about the government’s good faith. He makes no mention of the COSATU strike. The ANC, he writes, had ‘received information that hostel-dwellers belonging to the Inkatha Freedom Party were planning a major attack on ANC members in Sebokeng … on 22 July’ (Mandela, 1994 p.703). Lawyers for the ANC therefore requested Minister Vlok and the SAP ‘to prevent armed Inkatha members from entering the township to 16

17

The ANC commonly accused Inkatha of this. IFP representatives strongly denied it, saying they heard counter-rumours of the ANC busing in MK or Transkeian Defence Force members (Author’s Alexandra Peace Notes, 13/9/92, Carmichael). Mfayela states there was no policy of busing; people only came for rallies and returned home immediately, or came for work (Mfayela interview). www.hrw.org/reports/1991/southafrica1/8.htm [accessed 14/2/21].

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attend an Inkatha rally’. Busloads of armed IFP, escorted by police, nevertheless ‘entered Sebokeng in broad daylight’ and following the rally the IFP ‘went on a rampage’, killing ‘approximately thirty … in a dreadful and grisly attack’ (Ibid. p.704). Mandela visited on 25 July, saw mutilated corpses in the morgue, and furiously confronted de Klerk: why no protection and no arrests? He received, he says, no explanation. BBC documentary-maker Daniel Reed offers a different account. ANC youths, he says, placed small barricades across the road and lay in wait for the buses bringing rally-goers from other hostels. (Low barriers of stones and rubbish were indeed a standard ‘defence’ against anticipated ‘attack’.) An Inkatha supporter who alighted to shift a barricade was shot dead. During the rally messages came to warn Zulus from the Sebokeng hostel that its Xhosa residents were preparing to attack them on their return. As the rally ended, ANC youths threw stones and petrol bombs at rally-goers exiting the stadium, and a bullet wounded a bodyguard of Rev. Celani Mthethwa, KwaZulu Minister of Justice. Zulus retaliated, attacking houses, breaking windows, setting fires – and starting to kill civilians (Reed, 1994 pp.32–5). Police escorted the local Zulu inmates back towards the Sebokeng hostel. Reed agrees that: ‘There was little doubt whose side the police were on. The police had been at war with ANC-aligned youth since 1976 but Inkatha supporters were relatively docile and seen by the police as pro-government’ (Ibid. p.34). A mass of Xhosas (traditional rivals of the Zulus) awaited them. They were from Sebokeng hostel and the large nearby KwaMasiza hostel – which housed 6,000 Iscor steel workers, mainly Xhosas from the eastern Cape – joined by township youth, all armed with ‘traditional’ weapons. In the stand-off, the Zulus demanded that the police remove the Xhosas. The Xhosas then attacked the police. A Xhosa steelworker threw a sharpened metal rod, spearing a white policeman in the chest and killing him. The police temporarily withdrew and battle commenced, leaving at least fifteen dead. The Zulus claimed all the dead were ‘ANC’ Xhosas. Police put the day’s death toll at eighteen, the ANC counted twenty-four. Most of Sebokeng hostel’s Zulu residents were forced out, leaving it an ANC/Xhosa stronghold. The displaced Zulus were housed in Red Cross tents. On 4 September about 100 of them made a counter-attack on the hostel, killing some thirty-eight; the attackers were then cornered by ‘ANC’ township residents, and rescued by SAP and SADF. During the rescue panicking soldiers shot four residents. Mandela was beginning to talk about a ‘Third Force’. He defined it, that month, as ‘a hidden hand behind the violence … which consisted of renegade men from the security forces who were attempting to disrupt the negotiations’ and were ‘murderously effective in their targeting of the ANC and the liberation struggle’ (Mandela, 1994 p.703). His definition embraced ‘unknown gunmen’ who killed ANC supporters, and any police behaviour perceived as partial to Inkatha.

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Real ‘renegade men’ did lurk behind an incident that 4 September in Sebokeng. At a nearby roadblock, Inkatha regional leader Themba Khoza was discovered to have several AK-47s in the boot of his vehicle. Khoza claimed they were planted, and escaped conviction. In March 1994 Goldstone revealed the guns were supplied by de Kock’s Unit C10 at Vlakplaas, which also secretly paid Khoza’s legal fees. Khoza served as an IFP representative on the Wits/Vaal Regional Peace Committee, while allegedly still receiving arms. This Zulu counter-attack prompted a pastoral visit to the ‘ANC’ victims by Archbishop Tutu and an entire conference of Anglican bishops (Allen, 2006 p.323), bolstering the IFP’s belief that Tutu sided against them. In October the displaced Zulus, with Zulus from KwaMasiza, occupied the disused Iscor KwaMadala hostel in nearby Boipatong. A trail of continuing incidents culminated in that hostel’s assault on the township in June 1992.18

Peace and war On 29 January 1991 Mandela and Buthelezi finally met, not for a deep personal encounter but in a bilateral consultative meeting on peace between delegations from the ANC NEC and IFP Central Committee, held in the Royal Hotel, Durban, jointly chaired by IFP National Chair Dr Frank Mdlalose and ANC Secretary General Alfred Nzo. Buthelezi used his opening address, with media present, to harangue the ANC, cataloguing their verbal attacks on him and criticizing their negotiating position. Mandela comments that Buthelezi opened wounds rather than healed them. He himself, he claims, was irenic in reply (Mandela, 1994 p.707). After ten hours the leaders issued a ‘Joint Declaration and Agreement’. The accompanying press release said the ANC and IFP were now at peace, all fighting must stop, and if misunderstandings arose, local leaders must settle them by discussion.19 A ‘joint peace implementation committee’ would be created and ‘peacemaking mechanisms are being established in all areas as rapidly as possible’. Unfortunately, they were not. The Agreement effectively consisted of a code committing both parties to ‘political tolerance and freedom of political activity’. It banned attacks, vilification, forced recruitment and ‘acts of destruction’. Parties must ensure the freedom to use public venues, and must urge a return to school, ensuring no pupil is excluded ‘by virtue of political affiliation’. The leaders resolved to ‘use the existing joint mechanism to monitor all violations of the agreement and recommend appropriate action’. Arrangements were to be made for them to ‘make a joint tour of all the affected areas’. Further top-level meetings would be held as necessary. 18 19

See pp.43, 220–1, 310, 342, 406–7, 428. Texts in pamphlet Let us all Work for Peace, Diakonia, Durban, 1991, Carmichael.

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The Agreement called on the government to ‘accept its responsibilities’ for ensuring ‘an effective peace-keeping role by the security forces’. Both parties agreed to ensure that ‘all security force members’ would ‘act without political bias; receive professional and appropriate training as a peace-keeping force; and act ‘with due respect for the sensitive community situation that exists’. (The KZP is clearly implied, but not named.) Finally, ‘it is essential that a non-­partisan ‘reconstruction and development programme is expedited to reduce the potential for violence’, particularly in Natal and the Transvaal hostels, giving priority to displaced persons and the reintegration of divided communities. Implementation was hopelessly poor. No impartial facilitation or monitoring were provided. Communication of this Accord relied on the meeting’s press release and the good faith of the parties to take the message to their grassroots. Next day, a widespread battle erupted in the Umgababa area south of Durban, leaving eight dead and 100 homes damaged. Rather than grasp the challenge of peacemaking, Buthelezi blamed the ANC and repeatedly referred to that battle as having left the agreement ‘in tatters’. The existing ANC/IFP Peace Committee met on 18 February, surveyed the violence, called on supporters to exercise restraint and on leaders to ‘exercise responsibility and to get in contact to address problems together’, and announced that ‘a joint peace implementation committee will be established, to closely look at ways and means of implementing’ the 29 January Agreement.20 No implementation committee materialized. It was to have consulted local leadership and the grassroots, reporting back to the NEC and Central Committee in terms of four ‘principles’: 1. To ‘develop practical steps’ to end violence, ‘facilitate local level peace initiatives’, ‘act as crisis contact points’, and ‘consolidate and implement existing local agreements such as the Lower Umfolozi Peace Accord’. 2. ‘To ensure that all persons affected by principle 1 are aware of this agreement and that they take active steps to implement it.’ 3. To cooperate in non-partisan reconstruction in violence-devastated areas, the parties pooling funds where feasible in a joint trust fund. 4. To develop codes of conduct ‘equally applicable to both organizations and all security forces’.

Neither business nor the Natal Church Leaders Group had any part in these meetings, but it was Diakonia, Durban’s efficient ecumenical organization, that issued a leaflet, Let us all Work for Peace, containing the text of the 29 January ‘Accord’ in Zulu and English. In a Preface, eighteen Natal church leaders committed themselves to this ‘Peace Accord’, calling on congregations to put it 20 Ibid. p.7, press release 18/2/91.

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into practice. Diakonia also distributed an audio tape with peacemakers Frank Mdlalose and Jacob Zuma speaking on the meaning of the Agreement. Mandela calls it ‘a fair accord’ that could have ‘helped to staunch the bloodletting. But, as far as I could tell, Inkatha never made any effort to implement the accord, and there were also violations on our own side’ (Mandela, 1994 p.708). Journalist John Battersby commented that the increasing political and tribal tension showed an ANC ‘battling to control some of those it counts as its supporters – notably young radicals, known as “comrades”, and Xhosa-speaking migrant workers’, while Inkatha, also divided between warlords and ‘doves’, appeared to be ‘pursuing an aggressive recruitment drive under the mantle of spreading the message of the peace accord’ between Mandela and Buthelezi.21 ‘Inkatha’, Battersby continues, ‘appears to have found focus for its political campaign in the black townships by appealing to beleaguered black councillors, who are under ANC pressure to resign because of their collaboration with apartheid.’ Daveyton’s Mayor Martin Mthimunye had recently joined, as had ‘Prince’ Mokoena, Mayor of the non-functioning black Alexandra Town Council. Simultaneously, ANC vigilantes were labelling unsuspecting non-political Zulus as spies or quislings. Believing they would bring Inkatha to attack them, some took pre-emptive action, chasing away or killing their Zulu neighbours.22 Hundreds of intimidated Zulus took refuge in hostels. Accusations and misinformation abounded. Mandela mentions the beginning of violence in Alexandra, a venerable township in Johannesburg’s northeastern suburbs. ‘Alex’ had been calm until March 1991. Then, he writes, ‘Inkatha members launched an attack in Alexandra township in which forty-five people were killed over three days of fighting. Again, no one was arrested’ (Mandela, 1994 p.708). In reality no concerted attack occurred. There were separate killings, including a ‘necklacing’, and gunmen shot some fourteen mourners at a funeral vigil. Although immediately reported as ‘political’, the cause was apparently a family feud over the deceased’s property.23 One of the dead was an ANC-­ supporting COSAS student. His own subsequent vigil was attacked by gunmen, perhaps for truly ‘political’ reasons, killing at least three (Steele, 1992 p.141). Hostel inmates were arrested but, as usual, released for lack of specific evidence linking them to the shootings. Mandela and Buthelezi held a ‘crisis summit’ in Durban on Easter Monday, 1 April 1991, signing another ineffectual agreement. More than a year since Mandela’s release there was no progress, on either violence or constitutional talks. An impasse on all fronts was looming.

21 22 23

Christian Science Monitor 27/3/91. Khumalo interview; IBI (1994). Sowetan 4/4/91.

6 Deadlock and the President’s Summit Introduction In May 1991 de Klerk attempted to call all parties to a Summit on violence. The liberation movements boycotted the event, demanding an impartial convener. Church and business leaders separately made efforts to overcome the impasse, then by joining forces they were able to insert themselves into the process as facilitators. The President’s Summit went ahead, as did the boycott, on the understanding that church and business would then convene a more inclusive peace meeting.

Deadlock The ANC was now setting deadlines. Its National Consultative Conference on 16 December 1990 charged the regime with failure to release all political prisoners, allow all exiles to return, and repeal the Internal Security Act: it had therefore failed to create a ‘climate conducive to peaceful negotiation for a new constitution’.1 Further, the current violence was – and was intended to be – an obstacle to negotiation. The Conference still mandated the NEC to proceed with ‘talks about talks’, but all obstacles must be removed by 30 April 1991 or the ANC would consider suspending the whole negotiation process. In early April at an emergency NEC meeting Mandela discussed, as he puts it, his ‘doubts about Mr de Klerk’ (Mandela, 1994 p.708). As de Klerk puts it, Mandela ‘expounded his views about the government’s complicity in violence’ (De Klerk, 1999 p.206). The ANC believed the government could stop the violence if it wished, but was rather fomenting it, to prevent free political activity and the start of negotiations. On 5 April the NEC sent an Open Letter to Cabinet, an ultimatum expressing the ANC’s perceptions and demands (text in Mandela, 1993 pp.85–91). It blamed the IFP for attacks, turning hostels into strongholds and bringing in supporters to stage ‘provocative armed’ demonstrations, ‘escorted by the 1

Report, para.5, https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/0 3lv03445/04lv04015/05lv04016/06lv04039/07lv04047.htm [accessed 16/2/21].

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police’. The government, it charged, was complicit. The IFP was recruiting township councillors, offering protection by force against ANC demands that they resign. The letter accused the police of ‘partiality, connivance, and complicity’, of attacking ANC supporters and failing to investigate massacres, train violence and the supply of firearms. Since it was ‘inconceivable that the authorities lack the capacity or the skill’ to prevent the violence, therefore the State must be reacting feebly because violence gave it an advantage. Violence caused fear and disunity, undermining the people’s efforts to unite and deal with ‘the root causes of poverty, hunger, deprivation and want’. Violence preyed on whites’ fears, making them ‘more apprehensive about a democratic transformation’. It created ‘no-go areas’ from which ANC ‘members, activities and symbols are excluded … by gangs of hoodlums and vigilantes’. It made ANC membership risky, so the State was hampering the ANC’s growth while inflating the ranks of the IFP to make it ‘the third major player’. government inaction suggested lack of sincerity ‘regarding the entire peace process and the democratization of South Africa’. The government must outlaw all weapons at public events; dismiss Ministers Vlok (Law and Order) and Malan (Defence) from public office; remove officers responsible for police or military hit squads; dismantle all ‘counterinsurgency’ units; suspend the police officers implicated in the shootings at Sebokeng on 22 July 1990 and Daveyton on 24 March 1991; ensure that the SAP and SADF use ‘acceptable and civilized methods of crowd control’; establish ‘an independent commission of inquiry to receive, investigate and report on all complaints of misconduct by the police and other security services’; and begin phasing out the hostels by converting them into family units and flats. Should these demands not be met by Thursday 9 May, the ANC would ‘(a) suspend any further discussion with the government on the all-party congress; and (b) suspend all exchanges with the government on the future constitution of our country’. ‘I, of course,’ writes de Klerk (1999 p.206), ‘rejected these demands.’ He proposed a tripartite meeting with Mandela and Buthelezi, and a Commission of Inquiry into all violence. The ANC rejected both proposals. De Klerk nevertheless initiated legislation for a standing ‘Commission of Inquiry Regarding the Prevention of Public Violence and Intimidation’. Moderate voices were calling on the President to convene an all-party peace summit, and on 18 April de Klerk announced a conference on violence and intimidation to be held on 24–25 May 1991, ‘to cut to the root of the causes of conflict’ (Ibid.). The government would invite ‘all parties and interested groups – including churches and business’. Whoever was for peace should prove it by attending. It was an imperious invitation. The State was not yet ready to admit some responsibility for violence and meet others ‘as political equals’.2 2

Lamprecht interview.

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The announcement was welcomed by the IFP, and by the parliamentary parties except the CP, which rejected any talking with ANC or SACP. The liberation movements also refused: they denied the government’s legitimacy, considered it the major perpetrator of the violence, and totally rejected it as umpire. Mandela deemed a summit pointless, since the government knew exactly how to end the violence. De Klerk comments that Mandela was evidently ‘still operating under the delusion, cherished by so many revolutionaries, that possession of the levers of government enabled those in power to achieve whatever goals they wanted’ (Ibid.). The President’s Summit became itself an issue in the conflict. At this critical juncture an unprecedented team of peace facilitators began emerging from church and business.

Church facilitators: the Rustenburg Committee The churches had committed themselves in the Rustenburg Declaration to calling a national peace conference. Early in 1991 the Rustenburg Committee met and sent the Declaration to the heads of all political parties, requesting meetings. Only the CP refused. On 14 March they met the President and cabinet ministers at Tuynhuys. There was keen engagement but de Klerk criticized the Declaration as too ‘political’: churchmen and politicians should stay within their separate parameters, and peace conferences were a political matter. At the end of March Frank Chikane announced that the SACC would, within a week, ‘convene an urgent national meeting of leaders of strife-torn communities’ (Gastrow, 1995 p.15). Tutu appealed to black politicians for greater realism in dealing with the violence. Buthelezi poured scorn on the churchmen as naïve ‘busybodies trying to be important in the eyes of the world by trying to take charge of the peace process’ (Ibid. pp.16–17; Sunday Times, 31/3/91). He had not replied to the Rustenburg Committee’s request to meet. He regarded the SACC as ANC-aligned and unacceptable as an umpire. On 17 April, Mandela and other NEC members welcomed the Rustenburg leaders warmly to the ANC’s Johannesburg HQ. He expressed gratitude for his mission education, the ministry of prison chaplains and being sustained in prison by his Christian faith. On Communism, he affirmed the ANC’s alliance with the SACP was a temporary partnership until democracy was achieved (Steele, 1992 p.132). At the post-meeting press conference Mandela dismissed de Klerk’s intention to call a multiparty conference, leaked by Vlok the previous day, as a mere ‘propaganda ploy’ before the President’s impending visit to Europe (Gastrow, 1995 p.19).3 De Klerk’s official announcement came on 18 April, and was rejected by the ANC-Alliance, PAC and AZAPO. The SACC’s 3 Quoting Business Day 18/4/91.

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suggested grassroots meeting had been shelved, but the press began speculating on an alternative, rival ‘peace conference’. On the evening of Friday 19 April, Ray McCauley hosted a ‘VIP dinner party’ at his home. Present, with their wives, were McCauley, Ron Steele, Frank Chikane and Johan Heyns. At that dinner, says Steele (1992 p.143), ‘the thought of the church getting involved in the peace process took firm root’. Conversation turned to the political crisis and there was consensus that the churches must step in. The diners represented the three major groupings, the SACC, DRC and charismatics, which reconciled at Rustenburg. Their diverse contacts might now enable them to convene a representative national gathering. Johan Heyns, Professor of Theology at Pretoria and Assessor of the Dutch Reformed Church, could speak to government. He was of impeccable Afrikaner pedigree. Born in 1928 on an Orange Free State farm, membership of the Broederbond was necessary for his career but he spent two formative years studying theology in Amsterdam and was an independent thinker. He ministered first to a poor white congregation, then moved to Rondebosch, Cape Town, where his elite flock included the Verwoerds, Vorsters and P. W. Botha. From 1966 he taught theology, in Stellenbosch, then Pretoria. He was a quiet, firm voice for change. Becoming Moderator of the DRC in 1986, he nudged it into realizing apartheid’s lack of scriptural authority, and influenced its decision that apartheid was inherently wrong and to support it was sinful. Frank Chikane had the inside track to the ANC. Son of a Soweto pastor he had struggled while at high school in the 1970s with the rejection of Christianity by many of his peers because it had been used to bolster apartheid. He countered that apartheid ‘was in fact a misuse of the Bible’, urging his peers to ‘reinterpret it in the light of the truth, and turn it against the oppressor’ (Chikane, 1988 p.38). He studied mathematics at the University of the North where, with Cyril Ramaphosa, he became a leader of the Student Christian Movement, combining Christianity with the insights of Black Consciousness. Ordained in the AFM church in 1980, he was repeatedly detained and tortured for ‘political’ activities. Suspended from the cautious AFM, he joined the Institute for Contextual Theology and emerged into the public eye as a leader of the UDF, participated in the 1985 Kairos Document, and became SACC General Secretary in 1987. His immediate circle included Thabo Mbeki, still the ANC’s chief negotiator. Ray McCauley’s first interest in life was body-building, but by 1980 he was a full-time charismatic preacher. His congregation, in Randburg near Johannesburg, grew to become the Rhema charismatic church, a mainly white but multiracial congregation then numbering about 5,000. During the 1980s, encouraged by his aide Pastor Ron Steele, a former journalist, McCauley developed greater social and political awareness. He had flown to Ulundi in 1987 to initiate friendly pastoral contact with Buthelezi. The relationship continued by phone and correspondence, and gave McCauley an open door. On Buthelezi’s

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side, he respected McCauley, appreciated his personal ministry of prayer, and gave him the benefit of the doubt that, by the nature of his calling, his motives would be ‘above board’ and not ‘political’.4 The churchmen agreed to meet urgently on Monday 22 April, asking Alberts to join them (he was unavailable) and meanwhile making pastoral phone calls to de Klerk and Mandela. Meeting at the SACC offices they agreed to explore a church-convened conference, and deputed McCauley to try to persuade Buthelezi that the IFP would get ‘a fair deal’ at such an event (Steele, 1992 p.145).

Business facilitators: unions and management, CBM Simultaneously, concern to rescue the political process was prompting conversations among business and union leaders. During industrial-relations negotiations in the 1980s, a store of understanding and skills had built up around Recognition Agreements, Codes of Conduct, and ongoing dispute resolution mechanisms. A ‘Recognition Agreement’ recorded the formal recognition of a union, by management, as its negotiating partner. It contained Codes of Conduct for both sides, and dispute-resolving structures for any future dis­ agreements. Lawyer Halton Cheadle, an NPA negotiator, suggests that ‘Process Agreements’ would be a better term, since they provided ‘an agreed process for managing disputes and avoiding violence’.5 Two pairs of individuals who had been immersed in these processes now came to the fore: Bobby Godsell of Anglo American with Cyril Ramaphosa of the National Union of Miners (NUM), and Jay ( Jayaseelan) Naidoo of COSATU with André Lamprecht of Barlow Rand. They had developed lasting friendships. The unions, and Anglo and Barlow’s as CBM members, were all committed to supporting the transition.

Bobby Godsell and Cyril Ramaphosa For Bobby Godsell, then an Executive Director at Anglo American, the NPA story begins during the miners’ strike of 1987, ‘a civil war’ that caused eighty-two deaths and shut down gold mining for three weeks, an industry that involved a quarter of a million people, mostly living in company hostel compounds. Afterwards, 20,000 dismissed workers had to be reinstated through arbitration, and ‘we had to re-set the power relationship between management and unions and workers’.6 Three years of negotiation followed, led by Godsell for management and Cyril Ramaphosa for NUM. They agreed a mutual Code of Conduct to enshrine the right of all to strike or to work, outlaw intimidation and violence from either 4 5 6

Buthelezi interview. Cheadle interview. Quotations in this section are from the author’s interview with Godsell.

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side, ban hate speech, and regulate behaviour during meetings and strikes – ‘because, we’d had mass meetings where people had been publicly executed at the mass meeting, and … where individuals had been identified as management impimpis (spies, informers) and people had marched from the mass meeting into their rooms and killed them’. Management undertook not to drive people forcibly back to work. Signed in 1990 between Anglo and NUM this Code was, in South Africa at that time, ‘a very big conceptual advance’: It made the union movement positive about entering into that sort of negotiation, they’d seen that it had changed the balance of power. … You know I think that the 1980s in labour relations, this was an apprenticeship for the broader democracy. People used their power, discovered the limits, discovered that it was possible actually to achieve their interests and ensure their continued role through negotiation rather than through the application of brute force.

Godsell and Ramaphosa decided their Code had broader significance: it could be appropriate in the political arena. ‘If you’re going to have a healthy political discourse,’ comments Godsell, ‘you have to regulate both the forces of order and the forces of change.’ During the impasse of April–May 1991 they took their agreement to Cape Town and presented it to Minister of Constitutional Development, Gerrit Viljoen. Shortly afterwards Godsell was at Tuynhuys for the State President’s Economic Advisory Council. Passing in a corridor, de Klerk inquired whether Godsell was coming to the peace summit? Being ‘a good liberal, and good liberals tend to go to most things’, he replied, ‘Yes.’ De Klerk asked if he would ‘bring that fellow along?’ ‘Which fellow?’ ‘The fellow you brought to see Gerrit Viljoen.’ ‘Ah, you mean Cyril Ramaphosa.’

Noting that de Klerk seemed unaware of who Ramaphosa was, Godsell explained he did not walk around with him in his pocket, and suggested the President might pick up the phone and speak to him himself! Ramaphosa, however, was part of the boycott.

Jay Naidoo and André Lamprecht Jay ( Jayaseelan) Naidoo was a medical student before becoming an activist, union organizer, and in 1985 the founding General Secretary of COSATU. André Lamprecht was an activist law student, then an attorney, mediator, and a cofounder of IMSSA. He was invited into labour relations by Barlow’s progressive Chair Mike Rosholt. After an MBA in Switzerland, he was now a behindthe-scenes thinker, a friend of COSATU’s young legal advisers at Cheadle, Thompson and Haysom, and a partner with Naidoo in settling strikes.

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Both vividly recall a conversation during the April–May impasse, in the prosaic surroundings of Tony Factor’s furniture store café in Harrison Street, Johannesburg. Naidoo had requested the meeting because COSATU was seen as ‘a protagonist … in the war that was taking place’, and hence was unable to act as a facilitator, ‘and I was sort of reaching out and saying: “Is there anything that the business community could do?”’7 ‘We concurred that violence had reached a tipping point and urgency was imperative’ (Naidoo, 2010 p.199). Communication at the top had broken down: they understood that de Klerk and Mandela, previously able to pick up the phone to one another, were not talking. Within the ANC’s NEC, ‘doves’ and ‘hawks’ were arguing whether to continue to talk. ‘It sort of struck me’, says Naidoo, ‘I said: But, let’s look at the fundamentally adversarial relationships between trade unions, workers and employers, and how did we, over the decade of the eighties, build a relationship with you based on a certainty of rules, on rights and responsibilities which got translated into what was called a ‘Recognition Agreement’, which really catered for the worst-case scenario: what will happen if someone is dismissed, what are the procedures …? What will happen if there is a strike, how will you handle this? The whole question of mediating an adversarial relationship between two sides. And basically what we had learnt was that even in the most extreme cases the Recognition Agreement held, you know, even when there were battles on the street and the cops got involved and we were bashing each other’s heads and we were like fighting with baseball bats in the street, we always had an idea: what is the goal? At the end of the day the exercise of power was an intention to negotiate a fairer deal … If we had to apply that principle in a society, how would we construct that?8

They discussed whether churches and business could convene something different from the President’s conference – and how the methodology of Recognition Agreements and Codes of Conduct might be applied to resolve the dangerous standstill. As Cheadle comments, it was very easy in the political realm for a peace conference to make resolutions saying: ‘“We will not be violent!” but that isn’t good enough. You have to create structures and processes.’9 Naidoo and Lamprecht realized that what had to be managed was the entire, inherently dangerous, transition period. ‘What we need is not an event, but a process that spans from national to local. … If we’re all committed to a negotiation, how do we create the conditions for a negotiation to succeed?’10 The 7 8 9 10

Jayaseelan Naidoo interview. Jayaseelan Naidoo interview. Cheadle interview. Jayaseelan Naidoo interview.

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environment for constitutional negotiations had to be governed by the same principles as Recognition Agreements: freedom of speech, assembly, and association. How to achieve this in a political sense? ‘We cannot,’ Naidoo said, ‘just … sign a document and [imagine that] therefore it’ll translate. How do we build structures down to the ground?’ What was needed was ‘a National Recognition Agreement’ – to which Lamprecht responded: ‘Exactly.’11 Shop Stewards’ Committees were the vital link that translated labour agreements into reality on the ground. ‘That’s where people were dying – they weren’t dying nationally, they were dying locally.’12 There was currently no mechanism to make peace agreements effective at grassroots level. Local peace committees would be that mechanism. Lamprecht recalls dwelling, during this conversation, on how the two main political sides had come to realize they could either fight it out and leave South Africa in ruins, or ‘rise above the conflict and find a political solution’, and how much it matters that a political means is chosen. He recalls citing a saying of Gandhi’s to the effect that: ‘you can’t ever have a condition which is not reflective of the leadership that got cultivated during the process for such a condition’. Naidoo concurred: he was sure the ANC would win, but if it were by a military route then the leaders after victory would be those best suited to military leadership, whereas ‘if you use the democratic process and you cultivate those leaders, then at least you have leaders that are schooled in the character of the nature of the society you’re trying to establish’.13 As yet unaware of the church leaders’ initiative, Naidoo and Lamprecht committed themselves to do all in their power to break the deadlock. Could the President’s initiative somehow be engineered to become a new beginning where all could meet in parity? Could it be contrived that church leaders would convene it? Then, since peace was a legitimate cause for churches, no-one would lose face. Lamprecht undertook to test the idea of a ‘national-level recognition process’ with management; Naidoo would test it with his core COSATU team and members of the NEC. Lamprecht was confident of support from his boss John Hall, a Barlow’s Director, current President of SACOB, and CBM board member. Naidoo also called Hall, assuring him that ‘COSATU and the ANC would go to a peace conference if it was convened by independent conveners’.14 Business and the unions, Naidoo recalls with delight, proved to be ‘on completely the same side’ in this initiative to ‘tie these guys [the politicians] to the ground in a way that creates these conditions’.15 But hawkish ANC Youth leaders were urging the leadership 11 12 13 14 15

Jayaseelan Naidoo and Lamprecht interviews. Jayaseelan Naidoo interview. Lamprecht interview. Hall interview. Jayaseelan Naidoo interview.

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to break off talks. ‘Remember, the general feeling among our supporters was: “We want guns, to defend ourselves!” … “Give us the guns!”’ Naidoo, too busy himself, needed a trusted, efficient COSATU representative, ‘someone who understands negotiations, who is nifty on their feet and able to drive this whole thing’. It required ‘a very meticulous type of negotiation, because it’s finely balanced you know, especially on our side, because we had to bring the Communist Party and the ANCYL, and these are big, and the trade union movement, and bring everyone on board’.16 Naidoo phoned his quasi-namesake, ‘little Jay’, Jayendra Naidoo, who had for some time assisted Jayaseelan as COSATU negotiations coordinator. He found him already imagining ways forward and wondering about a Recognition Agreement. Jayendra explains: ‘We didn’t react to F. W.’s conference, we had a different view, based on already five years of experience.’17 The Natal/KwaZulu experience taught COSATU and its legal advisers that they were attempting to conduct a legal battle on a field that lacked sufficient rules. A peace process with Inkatha would require ‘a visible, transparent and public agreement that delegitimized the actions that were being conducted in the name of this party’. An agreement would create an architecture ‘where everyone was bound in to a set of norms, set of values, set of commitments’. Then, as in industry, disagreements could be settled non-violently within a mutually agreed dispute resolution mechanism. What was desperately needed, was an agreed mechanism. ‘So that’s what we need to do – and then there’s the question, how do we achieve it?’ De Klerk’s upcoming conference provided a point to rally round, but it was done in the wrong way: ‘so now let’s rather create a better process’.18 Jayendra had been intending to move to the Cape but was persuaded at least to come to one meeting to set this up. ‘Well,’ says Jayaseelan, ‘he came and he never left!’ Jayendra joined the ANC-Alliance negotiating team for the NPA under Mbeki, and then served as ANC-Alliance representative on the National Peace Secretariat until December 1993, doing as Jayaseelan says ‘a tremendous job’ which included chairing the NPS Training Committee and National Peace Campaign. Lamprecht contacted Bobby Godsell at Anglo. He thought Godsell, as well as Hall as SACOB President, would have influence with Buthelezi – although Godsell describes his own history with Buthelezi up to that point as ‘chequered’. Godsell set up a breakfast meeting next morning in the Carlton Club Room, atop the Carlton Hotel tower. The occasion was graced by radio-astronomer Bernie Fanaroff, then a NUMSA official, standing in for Jayaseelan. The meeting agreed to become ‘a sort of informal planning committee’.19 16 Ibid. 17 Jayendra Naidoo interview. 18 Ibid. 19 Lamprecht interview. Meeting date unknown.

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Sabre-rattling and shuttling At a May Day rally Mandela warned that the 9 May deadline was fast approaching. The following week, sixty-six died in Soweto alone and the ANC requested a search of the hostels. Top police officers, ‘to be even-handed’, informed the IFP in advance.20 Despite this, Buthelezi reacted to the searches by threatening to boycott the Summit in protest against ANC–Government collusion – adding, with characteristic innuendo: ‘I will not be held responsible for the ire of the Zulus if they continue to be abused in this way.’21 De Klerk appealed to the ANC to reconsider and attend, protesting he felt compelled to call the Summit because the government was finally responsible for law and order. SACOB sponsored large newspaper advertisements urging all to attend. On 6 May, Musa Myeni, an IFP Central Committee member and official on the Reef, whose house had just been torched, reportedly threatened to send 100,000 men from KwaZulu to Soweto ‘armed with non-traditional weapons’, if the ANC did not stop the fighting there.22 Buthelezi professed ignorance of any such plan. The ANC’s suspicions of busing were reinforced. The same day, the press reported the first inklings of a summit to be convened by ‘neutral bodies … probably religious and business groups’.23 Unhelpfully, this disclosure came via the ANC-Alliance, which had reportedly discussed the idea. Church leaders quietly met Mandela and de Klerk (Gastrow, 1995 p.20). De Klerk made a last-minute visit to Buthelezi in Ulundi to seek compromise on the vexed issues of hostels and ‘traditional weapons’, and on 8 May announced a ban on carrying dangerous weapons, except spears (!), in unrest areas, and a plan to upgrade hostels and convert some into family units – thus equally annoying both ANC and IFP. On 9 May the ANC, its demands mostly un-met, regarded itself as having broken off talks (Mandela, 1994 p.709). Fortunately, as Gastrow (1995 p.20) remarks, little fuss was made of this: the churches and business had begun providing proximity channels and this ‘shuttle diplomacy’ appeared to be winning the day. That same day Chikane renewed the suggestion that the SACC might convene a bottom-up conference of ‘affected communities’ (Ibid.) It would not involve government but would attempt to include Buthelezi; it would aim ‘to establish a code of conduct and violence-monitoring mechanisms’ and would eventually engage with government. Mandela welcomed the proposal. The conviction persisted, within the SACC, that the peace process should be built bottom-up from grassroots, not top-down. 20 Scheepers interview. 21 Ibid. 22 Star 6/5/1991. 23 Cape Times 6/5/91.

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Then, 12 May brought the Swanieville massacre. Residents of the IFPaligned Kagiso One hostel on the west Rand were allegedly being harassed by ANC-aligned residents of the nearby Swanieville squatter camp. At dawn that day several hundred hostel men attacked the squatters, leaving some twenty-seven dead, many wounded, and 100 shacks burnt. Police in armoured vehicles responded late, then escorted the attackers back to their hostel to avert any attack on Kagiso township. Inevitably, the police were accused of complicity. Journalist Shaun Johnson asked why were not ‘every one of that band of marauders’ arrested and interrogated?24 Only thirteen hostel men were arrested, and it proved impossible to pin blame on individuals. For lack of precise evidence, all were acquitted. McCauley had waited until he felt moved to ask Buthelezi for an appointment. Steele arranged it at short notice through former journalist colleague Suzanne Vos. Contrary to rumours, McCauley had no private jet. A charter plane flew him, Steele, Gordon Calmeyer and Pastor Dick Khoza to Ulundi on the sunny morning of Thursday 16 May. After small talk, McCauley introduced the topic of violence. Buthelezi denied that IFP supporters caused it. McCauley broached the possibility of church mediation to open the way to negotiations. At mention of the Rustenburg Committee, Buthelezi suddenly flew into an ‘unbridled show of anger’, directed at Frank Chikane but much more at Desmond Tutu. The visitors were ‘a little taken aback’ by his bitterness (Steele, 1992 p.151). Ostensibly, Buthelezi’s animosity sprang from disagreement over sanctions and his involvement in the homeland system. As an Anglican Buthelezi also felt that his Archbishop owed him ‘more pastoral care instead of, as he perceived it, aligning himself with the ANC against him’ (Ibid.). The visitors were unaware that Buthelezi had nursed a personal resentment against Tutu ever since Sobukwe’s funeral in 1978. He had met Tutu, then SACC General Secretary, for the first time on the podium. PAC youths, seeing Buthelezi, had approached with jeers, shouting: ‘Kill him!’ Buthelezi at first refused to move, then reluctantly took Tutu’s advice that it was best to leave. Youths pressed around, kicking the escort of clergy. Tutu turned to remonstrate. A youth attempted to stab Buthelezi and his aide fired in the air (Allen, 2006 p.318). People scattered and Buthelezi believed Tutu ‘ran away’, abandoning him.25 The Chief escaped to his car. Then in a press interview Tutu said the youths were ‘a new breed of blacks who have iron in their souls’ (Allen, 2006 p.318). Buthelezi was forever convinced that Tutu had abandoned him and then condoned the youths’ humiliating insults. In 1985 Tutu requested a meeting. It was brokered by the Natal bishops and was reportedly worthwhile, but despite many pastoral visits the relationship never really normalized (Ibid.; Nuttall, 2003 pp.62–3). 24 Star 18/5/91. 25 Buthelezi interview.

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McCauley stressed that the Rustenburg Committee represented a much wider spectrum of churches than the SACC. Might it be acceptable as convener of a second conference? Buthelezi took the government line that, if the ANC cared about peace, it should show it by attending the Summit. Finally he appeared to concede that progress might require a further conference and the Rustenburg Committee might play a role. At lunch, with KwaZulu cabinet members and New Zealand’s High Commissioner to Zimbabwe, Buthelezi spoke about the ‘Zulu Empire’. Steele (1992 p.152) sensed ‘a definite feeling of nationalism being stirred up’ and got ‘the distinct impression that the Inkatha Freedom Party was not going to be marginalized by the ANC, even if it meant bloodshed’. Flying back to Johannesburg, the visitors shared their worry about the depth of bitterness among the IFP, but McCauley felt he could report that the Rustenburg Committee appeared to be acceptable as conveners of a second conference (Ibid.). Meanwhile CBM staff had done research on the violence, presenting a memo on it to de Klerk which CBM leaders discussed discreetly with Cabinet on 26 March, with the ANC-Alliance on the following day, and with Buthelezi and the IFP’s central executive on 7 May, signalling their readiness to play a facilitating role (Gastrow, 1995 p.18). On 16 May, Mandela spoke at the CBM’s second gathering of over a hundred businessmen in Johannesburg’s Carlton Hotel. He explained why the ANC would not attend the Summit but welcomed the SACC plan. He appealed to business to help end the violence, and to de Klerk not to go ahead. The businessmen were unwilling to join him in pressing de Klerk to cancel.

Church and business join forces Early next morning, 17 May, with one week before the Summit, the CBM staff decided business and the churches must urgently collaborate. Their church link was Frank Chikane, whose SACC offices were not far from the CBM. Chikane says the Peace Accord began, for him, with visits from the CBM’s Colin Coleman and Theuns Eloff, and Jayaseelan Naidoo.26 Chikane shared the CBM’s concern that the clock was turning back, polarizations were reappearing: the SACC siding with the ANC and business with government (Eloff et al., 1997 p.18; Gastrow, 1995 p.21). The CBM had to help now, or all its bridge-building work might ‘just go for nought’.27 Coleman visited Chikane again that morning. He heard that Buthelezi was reacting negatively to the SACC’s proposal (Gastrow, 1995 p.21). That afternoon, an informal emergency meeting was jointly hosted, in the SACC offices, by the staff of CBM and SACC. A broad coalition of church and business was born. 26 Chikane interview. 27 Eloff interview.

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John Hall (SACOB) was present: The church and business were two of the most powerful non-political groupings in the country, and therefore it made a tremendous amount of sense for church and business with their collective power, 1+1=3, to play a role in influencing the politicians: (a) you did not publicly defy the church all that easily, and (b) business you have to keep on board: so together we have a powerful leverage over the politicians.28

No full attendance list exists but also present were Jayaseelan Naidoo, Beyers Naudé, Raymond Parsons (Director General of SACOB), and Bobby Godsell or someone else from SACCOLA (Gastrow, 1995 p.22). The President’s Summit must, they agreed, be rescued, modified, or made to appear part of an ongoing process. Naidoo suggested the ANC might possibly attend if an Agenda Committee representative of all the attending parties could be established, and an independent Chair presided over plenary sessions. The meeting phoned this suggestion to the President’s office in Cape Town, which replied next morning, Saturday 18 May: the President was determined to go ahead, but agreed to an independent Agenda Committee and suggested it meet within three days to select an independent Chair. According to Gastrow he also ‘agreed to make the point that he would ask a facilitating committee to bring all parties together for another conference’ (Ibid.) By then the ANC’s NEC had rejected Naidoo’s compromise. It refused any involvement in the President’s Summit but agreed the event could be part of a process towards a further peace conference which must be independently convened, involve all parties, and must reach ‘multi-lateral binding agreements with obligations on all parties to act in accordance with those agreements’ (Gastrow, 1995 p.23).29 Minister Gerrit Viljoen chimed in, issuing a statement that the Summit should be seen as a first step and the government would be willing to attend a further, church-convened, conference. Details remained unclear. The CBM’s Deputy Chair, Clive Menell, hosted a formal meeting of the church–business group early that Sunday morning, 19 May, at his Anglo Vaal offices. No full list survives, but Johan Heyns and Sam Shilowa (COSATU) were present, and others at the meetings that weekend included Frank Chikane, his Deputy Brigalia Bam, the CBM’s Theuns Eloff, Colin Coleman and Debra Marsden; Beyers Naudé, Jayaseelan Naidoo, John Hall, Raymond Parsons, CBM Co-chairs Murray Hofmeyr ( JCI) and Neal Chapman (Southern Life), Leon Cohen (CBM) and André Lamprecht (Gastrow, 1995 p.107, n.48).30 The Sunday meeting decided to send a joint SACC–SACOB delegation, led by Chikane and Hall, including Brigalia Bam, Theuns Eloff and Raymond 28 Hall–Pauquet interview 1994, Carmichael/Pauquet. 29 Quoting Business Day 20/5/91. 30 Also Eloff and Hall interviews.

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Parsons, to visit the President and Mandela. The chief goal would be to persuade the President to postpone his Summit and allow independent facilitators to convene it. The delegation took a Barlow’s jet to Cape Town on Tuesday 21 May, arriving at Tuynhuys in the evening. De Klerk was accompanied by Ministers Pik Botha and Sam de Beer, and the indispensable Fanie van der Merwe, whose note records just the date and the government names. The President was adamant: invitations had been issued, and to cancel would mean his losing face.31 The delegation broached the possibility of a second conference. Hall recalls with immense feeling: ‘We put our case, which De Klerk listened to – and then he shat all over us. He said church and business had no job even thinking about this, it was the responsibility of government to protect all citizens of South Africa.’32 Business and the churches, de Klerk said, had no mandate from government to convene a peace conference. The government was in communication with all parties and did not need facilitators. The Summit would proceed as planned (Gastrow, 1995 p.24). The visitors emerged from what they thought was a confidential meeting, to be ambushed by TV lights and cameras – arranged, Hall thought, so that all would know ‘we’d been sent away with a flea in the ear’.33 An SACC delegation of Chikane, with its Natal-based President Khoza Mgojo and Bishop Stanley Mogoba, had visited Buthelezi on 20 May. He reiterated that the SACC’s close relationship to the ANC ruled out the churches as conveners (Gastrow, 1995 pp.23–4). Shuttle diplomacy continued urgently over the next few days, Heyns and Alberts working behind government scenes. Remarkably, agreements were secured: the ANC would pour no further scorn on the President’s Summit, and the government promised ‘that no final decisions would be taken’ at it, ‘in exchange for the ANC and its allies to join a formal peace-seeking process. … and the summit became a building block and not a stumbling block in the peace process’ (Eloff et al., 1997 p.18). The SACC, after an emergency discussion on 21 May, joined the boycott. RC Bishop Wilfrid Napier explained their mix of reasons: The main reason was that the conference was not going to serve much of a purpose because the principal protagonists on the one side were not going to be present. It was important for the churches to be seen to be siding with those people who they had sided with during the worst times in our country. Also if we kept our independent position there was a better chance of getting involved in a peace process which would bring all the main players together.34

Brigalia Bam adds that the SACC wished not to appear to take the President’s 31 Eloff interview. 32 Hall interview. 33 Ibid. 34 Southern Cross 28/7/91.

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side; and there was some feeling that the government had usurped the churches’ role as convener of a peace conference.35 The NIR pulled out ‘with real regret’ the day before the Summit, agreeing that the conference would be ineffective but the NIR would ‘whole-heartedly support anyone able to get a second more representative conference off the ground’.36

The President’s Summit The President’s Conference on Violence and Intimidation took place 24–25 May 1991 at the parastatal Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria. Some 200 moderates and a scattering of right-wingers filled the auditorium. All the parliamentary parties except the CP attended, with the IFP, AWB, the six ‘homelands’ and four ‘independent’ states. Civil society was present in force: the DRC, white charismatic churches, SACOB, CBM, AHI; non-­COSATU trades unions; academics, professional institutions, research institutes, NGOs and women’s and youth organizations. De Klerk (1999 p.207) oddly says that Tutu spoke, but he was certainly not present. McCauley, greeting Buthelezi as he arrived, was disappointed to find continued frostiness towards the Rustenburg Committee. Johan Heyns led a long, earnest opening prayer, confessing the present situation of deep division, asking for ‘a baptism of love, which each one present will feel. Infuse our hearts with an irresistible longing for, and will to, peace.’37 Louw Alberts, CSIR Chair that year, was prominent in the conference chair. De Klerk called violence and intimidation ‘the single most important stumbling block in the way of a peaceful dispensation’.38 The statistics of violence were rehearsed, along with its multiple causes: the uncertainty around the negotiation process; efforts by political leaders to broaden their power base; revenge and retribution; poor socio-economic conditions; unemployment; criminal exploitation of unrest; ideological militancy and the absence of a culture of tolerance. Many ideas that fed into the NPA negotiations were raised. The Legal Resources Centre urged the State to focus on remoulding the police force. Prof. Lawrence Schlemmer, Director of the Centre for Policy Studies at Wits University, ‘called for the establishment of active, full-time task forces of communicators and mediators in each local area to interact directly with and listen to the grievances, fears, interests and misperceptions of people of the kind who are active in the violence’. Prominent IFP ‘dove’ Dr Oscar Dhlomo, who had quit politics to head an Institute for Multiparty Democracy, suggested a ‘Code 35 Bam interview. 36 ‘Draft Article’ possibly for NIR News 57, faxed to Pauquet 30/5/91, Carmichael/ Pauquet. 37 SABC footage in The Peacemakers video, Carmichael/Pauquet. 38 SACOM press release; Puisano Supp., June 1991.

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of Conduct should be drafted and endorsed by all political parties and accom­ panied by a vigorous grassroots campaign of education for democracy’.39 Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini took the opportunity to declare himself above politics and not against the ANC or anyone else. Chief Buthelezi denounced the ‘propaganda’ that paves the way to war: ‘If violence is ever to end in South Africa, killing talk must stop.’40 He insisted on the need for normalization of the ANC–IFP relationship, and proposed a peace secretariat to establish local ‘peace action groups’ (Gastrow, 1995, p.24). He made repeated attempts to suggest resolutions, which the session Chair politely ignored. Watching his frustration it dawned on Eloff that the Chief had probably not been briefed on the ANC–Government agreement that this Summit would make no decisions. Eloff speculates that if and when Buthelezi realized this, it would have contributed to his sensing a rift with the NP, and fuelled his suspicion that the ANC and government were beginning to collude against him.41 AWB leader Eugene Terreblanche spoke. He was, in Alberts’s words, ‘a brilliant speaker’, able to keep an audience enthralled by his mere choice of words and expression. He ‘kept me on the edge of my seat for ten minutes – and when he’d finished I couldn’t tell you what he’d said!’42 Terreblanche’s rhetoric that day included: ‘As u vrede wil hê en dit is my bydrae, dan moet u aan elkeen van die volke die reg gee om homself te wees.’ (‘If you desire to have peace – and this is my contribution – then you must give to each one of the people the right to be himself.’)43 On the second day, working groups discussed the political, socio-economic, social, educational, security and legal aspects of violence. Practical suggestions emerged, notably for codes of conduct for the police, defence force, and political parties and organizations, and for socio-economic development. There was agreement on the need for public involvement, and to draw all political parties and groups into future peace talks.44 McCauley spoke briefly, commending the services of the Rustenburg Committee as conveners (Steele, 1992 p.154). In the final plenary, Heyns formally proposed that the ‘National Conference of Church Leaders’ (Rustenburg Committee) should ‘take up the initiative to bring all parties together to establish peace’, in ‘truly nationally representative discussions’ (SAIRR, 1989–90 p.99). Godsell applauds him for bravely providing ‘the essential bridge’ from Summit to Peace Accord: The absolute hero of this conference is Johan Heyns, because right at the end of the second day, he gets up and he says: Look, we’re talking about really important topics – really in philosophical terms we’re talking about when 39 Ibid. 40 SABC footage in The Peacemakers video, Carmichael/Pauquet. 41 Eloff interview. 42 Alberts interview. 43 Puisano Supp., June 1991. 44 SACOM News, in Puisano and Metro Digest, vol. 9, no. 6.

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Only Heyns, Godsell believes, could have ensured acceptance of this way forward. De Klerk then invited everyone to take his hand and cooperate on the road to peace, which could only be attained through negotiation and reconciliation, with the involvement of all main parties.46 He announced he was appointing a dual follow-up process: ‘a continuation committee and a more independent facilitating ability, which would disband once a fully representative forum had been established through negotiation’.47 The ‘Continuation Committee’ comprised Heyns and one representative each from SACOB, AHI, government and IFP. It was to review the conference’s recommendations and draw up action proposals. In fact it never met, but eventually merged with the ‘more independent facilitating ability’. The latter consisted solely of Louw Alberts, appointed once more as ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary. De Klerk gave him an official mandate, as the Rustenburg Committee’s Co-chair, to start a dialogue with parties and groups that had not been present and explore how a future, wider Conference could be convened. The President summed up: The mandate of the Conference is: there must be continuation. The main role-players should be part of such a continuation mechanism. Secondly, we must assure at all costs that we don’t stop there and that there is a broadening of the whole peace initiative, and that also those who were not here must be brought into a mechanism where our main goal, the ending of violence, can be addressed successfully.48

The President, having earlier rejected any facilitating role for church and business, found his Summit ending with both embedded in the process. At the ensuing press conference he admitted, just a little sheepishly: ‘The church, obviously, has a role to play when one talks about reconciliation. The Rustenburg Conference, where there was a coming together of the South African Council of Churches members and other churches, I think would be accepted as a more representative voice of the church in general.’49 The President’s Summit had been useful, it had satisfied the need for grandstanding, and aired a number of practical suggestions. The future was open. Alberts got to work. 45 Godsell interview. 46 UMSO July 1991. 47 Ibid. 48 SABC footage in The Peacemakers video, Carmichael/Pauquet. 49 Ibid.

7 Convening the Parties Introduction Church and business could now form a convening group, mandated by government and the ANC-Alliance and reluctantly endorsed by Buthelezi. It successfully called and facilitated a ‘planning meeting’ representative of the whole spectrum of political parties and organizations except the far right, on 22 June 1991. The meeting agreed the issues to be addressed to combat violence, and appointed a Preparatory Committee to take the process forward.

Forming the ‘Facilitating Committee’ Two days after the Summit, on Monday 27 May, Louw Alberts, Frank Chikane, Johan Heyns, Ray McCauley and Ron Steele met at the SACC. Alberts explained his brief from the President, and asked all to play whatever role might be requested with ‘quiet consultation and confidentiality’ (Steele, 1992 p.155). They agreed to draw in others from church and business and meet as a facilitating group on Tuesday 4 June. Suddenly, with the Rustenburg Committee in the news, Buthelezi granted it an audience. The Rhema Church chartered a plane and, early on 3 June, Alberts, Chikane, Heyns, McCauley, Steele and three others arrived in Ulundi. Disappointingly, Buthelezi spent the morning in the Legislature, leaving them to discuss the Rustenburg Declaration with the IFP’s irenic national Chairman, Dr Frank Mdlalose, and other officials who gave them a grilling, dwelling on past resentments and treating the Committee as merely an extension of the despised SACC. Buthelezi joined them for lunch. A cautiously positive joint statement emerged: ‘In the light of the open communication which took place, the meeting we believe, will probably have given momentum to our respective involvement in the peace process.’1 Points for further discussion had been noted, including ‘more factors regarding the violence’ which were not been addressed by the Rustenburg Declaration, of which future peace initiatives ‘would have to take due cognisance’. 1

Citizen 6/6/91.

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Steele (1992 p.157) felt the day was ‘a clear warning sign that any future peace negotiations or constitutional talks were going to be arduous and exhausting’. They flew back into a ‘fiery sunset’, vowing to continue and realizing the alliance with business would be vital. The following afternoon, Tuesday 4 June, saw the first meeting of the ‘Facilitating Committee’: eleven members gathered for several hours in the Carlton Hotel’s Town Room.2 The Rustenburg Committee provided seven: Co-chairs Louw Alberts and Frank Chikane, Johan Heyns, Ray McCauley, Desmond Tutu, Khoza Mgojo, and Gerrie Lubbe, a minister in the Indian ‘Reformed Church in Africa’ and lecturer in Islamic Studies at UNISA. As Chair of the South African Chapter of the World Conference on Religion and Peace (now Religions for Peace), Lubbe represented the inter-faith dimension. Val Pauquet, the Rustenburg Committee’s Communications Officer, attended and was appointed press officer, embarking on a permanent role in the peace process. Business initially provided four members: John Hall, Sam Motsuenyane, President of NAFCOC and dedicated developer of black business, Bobby Godsell, and a newcomer, ex-diplomat Sean Cleary. Urbane and English-accented, Cleary had made his mark as a mediator in Natal/KwaZulu. His diplomatic career had culminated in two years as Chief Director of the Administrator General’s office in Namibia. He left the diplomatic service in 1985, made independent input into the Angolan peace talks, and in 1990, with Harvard-trained mediator Robert Conway, founded a small NGO, the South African Foundation for Conciliation (SAFCON), to offer peacemaking interventions within South Africa. His exploratory conversations with business leaders and ANC and IFP ‘doves’ in Natal/KwaZulu gave birth to a group of political and business leaders, which he facilitated, who met discreetly on Wednesday evenings in the Durban Club. Funding came from the SA Sugar Association, Durban Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, and Natal/KwaZulu Chamber of Industries.3 The group’s leaders, Frank Mdlalose (IFP) and Jacob Zuma (ANC) would each time invite three others, who included Dennis Madide, Musa Zondi, Walter Felgate, Alec Erwin and Willies Mchunu. Erwin credits this group with playing ‘quite an important role in really preventing the violence escalating very badly’.4 From this group, Mdlalose and Zuma started making frequent joint visits to speak in conflicted communities, travelling together in one car, sharing the problems they faced as ‘doves’. ‘Dove’ Mdlalose found Buthelezi difficult, telling how the Chief would later talk along the lines of ‘this so-called Peace Accord’. On the ANC side: ‘JZ told me that his chief opponent in his party in the Province 2 3 4

Pauquet’s ‘Highly Confidential’ Minutes survive uniquely in Carmichael/Pauquet papers. Cleary interview. Erwin interview.

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was Harry Gwala. Harry Gwala was bent against JZ ever talking to me’ and compared it with Chamberlain speaking to Hitler in Munich.5 As an ‘insider-partial’ mediation team, Zuma and Mdlalose assisted local leaders to establish lasting peace in Mpumalanga township.6 Cleary was now invited by business, and inducted by Alberts, into the national facilitating group. Erwin had assumed he must have ‘intelligence’ connections, possibly even British.7 Chikane assumed he was a government plant.8 But he was simply being himself.9 Alberts rehearsed the developments so far, and the official mandate given him at the President’s Summit, although ‘because of sensitivities to anything convened by the State, it was agreed to play down this point’.10 All agreed to being a united catalyst to ‘bring all the main players in the South African scen­ ario together to discuss the violence in the country’. Having achieved this, ‘if their ongoing input is required, they would be available’. They would act in their individual capacities, by shuttle diplomacy, keeping a low profile. The ‘Facilitating Committee’ constituted itself on this basis. The chair, intended to rotate, was first accorded to Alberts.11 Alberts discussed strategy with de Klerk, finding that the President expected ‘Peace Conference Two’ to materialize quickly and to bring the top leaders together. Alberts, however, recognized the need for considerable ground-work and believed it must be done by ‘lieutenants’: We had one day an argument for more than half an hour over a long-­distance telephone about this. He [de Klerk] thought I would bring him and Nelson Mandela, and Buthelezi together round a table and they could then talk peace. My attitude was: political leaders can’t talk peace, because they’re looking over their shoulders to see what will their voters say, if they say the wrong thing. So they have the voting public in mind all the time when they pretend to talk peace. My approach was – that’s where I differed with de Klerk – let’s get the second lieutenants together, let them talk and then report back to the captains, and the captains then correct them and say ‘No, that won’t do!’ but the captains then don’t lose face with the voters, because it was the lieutenants who made the mistakes! And I in the meantime had spoken to a number of lieutenants, and I told de Klerk this and he said: ‘Now you’ve painted the Government into a corner!’ Those were his words. ‘We have no option but to cooperate now, on this level. Then he said – he told me, over the phone, he said: ‘It’s not going to 5 Mdlalose interview. 6 Cleary, Mdlalose interviews. 7 Erwin interview. 8 Chikane interview. 9 Cleary interview and communications to author. 10 Minutes 4/6/91, Carmichael/Pauquet. 11 Ibid.

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The facilitators agreed that they must initiate a serious multiparty peace process, negotiated by high-ranking leaders reporting back to their principals. They set Saturday 22 June, just eighteen days away, for ‘senior leaders’ from all parties to meet in a consultative think-tank, to gather ideas and start a process towards a second peace conference. Hall arranged for Barlow Rand to host the consultation at its corporate headquarters, Barlow Park in Sandton just north of Johannesburg, where ample boardrooms and a 100-seat auditorium sat amid landscaped gardens. Delegates would arrive at 1pm for a ‘finger lunch’. The meeting would last from 2pm to 10pm. Pauquet released a press statement on ‘National Conference of Churches’ letterhead, announcing that a ‘facilitating committee’ had formed to bring leaders together ‘to deal with the violence and intimidation problems in South Africa’. Its composition represented an ‘extremely serious and sincere attempt … to bring about a balance between religious leadership and business leadership, two spheres which touch and affect everyone in South Africa. At the same time individuals’ knowledge and expertise were considered in order to optimize the group’s think-tank capacity’.13 ‘Strictly confidential’ faxed letters, signed by Alberts on behalf of the ‘Vrede Fasiliteringskomite’ (Peace Facilitating Committee) went out to party leaders on 6 June from Pauquet’s office. They conveyed an ‘urgent and serious request’ to send three representatives to Barlow Park on 22 June for a ‘planning meeting’ at which all could participate in orchestrating the time, place, agenda and so forth for a further event.14 Agenda items were invited. Alberts initially invited only those parties and political organizations that had nation-wide coverage, i.e. parliamentary parties, the IFP and liberation organizations. He omitted the South African government as such, the governments of ‘homelands’ and ‘independent states’, and their small ruling parties (although they had attended the Summit); and he omitted the SACP. De Klerk forwarded an invitation, sent to the NP, to Constitutional Adviser Fanie van der Merwe.

Preparing the ‘planning meeting’ The facilitators gathered at 7am on Monday 10 June at Barlow Park, the first of numerous Peace Accord meetings to be hosted there. Present were Pauquet, 12 13 14

Alberts interview. NCC Statement, Carmichael/Pauquet; Citizen and Star 5/6/91. Invitation, Carmichael/van der Merwe; transl. van der Merwe.

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Chikane, Alberts, Heyns, McCauley with Steele, Tutu with Rev. Mazwi Tisani, Lubbe, Cleary, Hall, Motsuenyane, and a fellow black businessman, the cheerful young Jabu Mabuza, an initiator of the Foundation for African Business and Consumer Services (FABCOS) for small business development. Hall took the chair, never to leave it. Heyns opened in prayer. Alberts reported he had faxed ‘every political leader’. His omission of the SACP was discussed, and reversed: all national-level political groups must be invited, although some were likely to refuse. Chikane had been overseas, but his delegates sent to the ANC, PAC and AZAPO had reported positive responses plus a request to invite trades unions. Chikane and Hall were delegated to invite two representatives from each main union. McCauley, who had been liaising with the IFP, reported an ‘apparent, sudden change of support from an Inkatha representative’. The meeting deputed Cleary to ‘find out what had caused the about-turn’ and report back to Hall. If necessary de Klerk might be requested to make an informal phone call urging Inkatha to attend, but such were the sensitivities that this should be only a last resort.15 Colleagues assumed Cleary had ‘pull’ with Buthelezi. He himself believes McCauley was the only facilitator possessing such influence; but he had at least an entrée to IFP leadership. The Committee suddenly noticed its gender imbalance. Women were still rare among church and business leadership. Brigalia Bam, Chikane’s Deputy, had returned after holding senior positions in Geneva to find even the young Chikane rather blind on this issue, and had consciously accepted that political liberation must come first, that of women must wait.16 The meeting recorded: ‘Recognizing the importance of Youth and Women’s group representation, it was decided that these would become major items on the agenda that would flow out of the June 22 meeting.’ This was forgotten. The NPA contained no requirement for women (or youth) to be represented in the structures. The issue was only finally addressed in the Constitution. The meeting noted a clear distinction between these peace talks and the hoped-for constitutional talks. The peace conference would aim ‘purely at addressing the violence in the country and not the negotiation process’, but since making peace itself implied negotiation and compromise, the facilitators asked that ‘every political group should, if necessary, be prepared to sacrifice their political leverage’.17 And it was, they believed, possible to address violence locally without a prior national political settlement, but impossible finally to disentangle the violence from the overall political conflict. The facilitators all agreed to attend on 22 June, but would ‘remain very much in the background and in no way be prescriptive’. If any were asked to continue 15 16 17

Minutes 10/6/91, Carmichael/Pauquet. Bam interview. Minutes 10/6/91, Carmichael/Pauquet.

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in the process, ‘this would be dealt with as it arose’. Tutu closed the evening in prayer. As news was awaited from the IFP, no press statement was issued. On Sunday evening, 16 June, the facilitators again converged on Barlow Park: Hall, Alberts, Chikane, Heyns, Cleary, Godsell, Mabuza, Steele, Tutu accompanied by Rev. Rowan Smith, and Pauquet. Theuns Eloff joined them. Tutu opened in prayer. Cleary had made progress: ‘any obstacles in the way of Inkatha’s attendance appeared to be surmountable’. Responses to invitations were good except that all three white right-wing bodies – the Conservative Party, tiny Herstigte Nasionale Party, and the militant Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) – sent refusals. Heyns would persist in trying to cajole them into attending.18 That evening Deputy Minister of Constitutional Affairs Roelf Meyer arrived at Barlow Park, asking to address the Committee because the government had ‘reservations’ concerning 22 June. The meeting deputed Tutu, Heyns, and Alberts to hear him. The government, Meyer said, was in full support of their work but its concerns were: that Parliament was due to close on Friday 21 June but business might ‘overflow’ onto the Saturday; that some parties (no doubt the ‘homelands’) had been excluded; and it wished to suggest ‘it may be a good idea’ for ‘the three main players’ to consult one another beforehand, ‘to form a common basis’. Finally he wanted to stress the ‘importance of the Government being a player over and above the NP’. The trio reported back. After much discussion it was decided to press ahead with 22 June. Bodies not yet involved would, ‘with many other groupings’, be included in any processes decided at the meeting. The suggestion that the ‘three main players’ should meet beforehand was turned down. Time did not allow, and the facilitators were aware of the ‘extreme sensitivities of all groups regarding the so-called main players’. All participants must be equally welcome, without prior deals between perceived ‘main players’. A statement of purpose for the meeting was drafted: the intention was to bring leaders together to share their parties’ agendas for peace and not their ‘ideo­ logical or party political programmes’; and to explore mechanisms and share possible solutions to address those agendas for peace. The gathering would itself decide on any follow-up action. A draft ‘process agenda’ was started. After the opening prayer and welcome, Chikane and Alberts would present a résumé of the history, status and role of the Facilitating Committee. Godsell and Steele were deputed to complete the rest of the agenda, to be faxed to all participants on Thursday and finally agreed on the day. Hall, Alberts, Tutu, Godsell, Cleary and Motsuenyane would chair. This was a working meeting, not an opportunity to address the nation, so the media would be invited to a photo session at 1.30pm, then the doors would be closed. 18

Details of the meeting from Minutes 16/6/91. Carmichael/Pauquet.

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Hall’s offer of Barlow’s staff to register those arriving was gladly accepted. A press statement heralding Saturday’s event would be released on Tuesday. Alberts led a final prayer. So far, Afrikaans business had been absent. The ‘Continuation Committee’ appointed at the Summit included the Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut (AHI) but had never met. The AHI’s energetic young President, Attie du Plessis, a director of the insurance company Sanlam, returned from overseas early that week. Lunching at a Lord Prawn restaurant he took a call from Prof. Joe Poolman, the AHI’s Executive Director: ‘On Saturday morning there is going to be a big story at Barlow’s, where there will be a peace initiative.’19 Du Plessis asked: ‘Were we invited?’ Hearing no invitation had come, he felt the Afrikaans business constituency had been excluded. He called John Hall: ‘John, why were we not involved? Why aren’t we involved in it?’ Hall said: ‘But why should you—’, du Plessis replied: ‘It’s very, very simple: if SACOB is there, we – it’s not a matter if we want to be there: we will be there!’ He was there and immediately coopted as a facilitator, ‘all of a sudden knee-deep into the peace process’.20

The ‘planning meeting on violence’, Barlow Park, 22 June 1991 On Saturday 22 June representatives from twenty-five political parties, organizations, and unions enjoyed Barlow’s ‘finger lunch’ and filed into the audi­ torium.21 Altogether, including CBM staff and Willie Esterhuyse, who slipped in with Mbeki, about seventy individuals were present.22 It was already an historic event, bringing the three ‘main parties’ together for the first time. Apart from the absent right-wing it was the nation’s first truly broad multiparty gathering. As a political negotiation guided by skilled facilitators, it was a ‘first’ for everyone present. The pre-conference photo opportunity caught the twelve facilitators in cheerful mood. John Hall chaired the opening, remarking that the facilitating group represented South Africa in microcosm, yet they had worked remarkably 19 Du Plessis interview. 20 Ibid. 21 Extant documents include: draft Agenda, Hall’s welcome text, list of sixty-six intended delegates (some changed on the day), Fanie van der Merwe’s handwritten notes, and in lieu of Minutes, Pauquet’s detailed press release (22/6/91) (Carmichael/Pauquet/van der Merwe). The twenty-five bodies present were: ANC, SACP, COSATU, IFP, NP, SA Government, DP, PAC, AZAPO, Ministers’ Council of the House of Delegates, Labour Party, National People’s Party, Merit People’s Party, Solidarity, SACOB, AHI, Amalgamated Engineering Union, SA Boilermakers’ Society, Metal and Electrical Workers Union of SA, SA Electrical Workers Association, FEDSAL, WOSA, NACTU, FABCOS, UWUSA (from delegate list, van der Merwe’s notes, and press release 22/6/91). 22 Esterhuyse interview. Gastrow (1995 p.29) estimated 120 but all records confirm about 70 attendees.

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Photo 7.1 The ‘Committee of Twelve’ facilitators, 22 June 1991. Left to right: Johan Heyns, Louw Alberts, John Hall, Frank Chikane, Bobby Godsell, Jabu Mabuza, Khoza Mgojo, Ray McCauley, Desmond Tutu, Gerrie Lubbe, Sean Cleary, Sam Motsuenyane. Beeld 24 June 1991; by permission of Beeld.

well together. Ray McCauley, moderating his usual passionate style, gave a scripture reading and prayer. Chikane outlined the process so far, quipping that none of the facilitators understood exactly how this had all come together, so attempts by the media to provide explanations should be discounted! Bobby Godsell introduced the draft agenda. The initial session would be a brainstorm allowing every party five minutes for one spokesperson to present their viewpoints on the violence and suggest mechanisms to end it and promote peace. CBM staff would capture the proposals on flipcharts. During the tea break they would group the issues that emerged, then the meeting would check for common agreement on which issues required action. After supper the same method would be applied to the question by what process could the agreed aims be realized? Staff would again group the suggestions, and the meeting would decide next steps. This agenda was agreed. The process then took over. Desmond Tutu and Sean Cleary chaired the brainstorm. First was COSATU General Secretary Jay ( Jayaseelan) Naidoo, well armed with a game plan from the ANC-Alliance’s backroom discussions. He highlighted three problems: violence between political organizations, violence from the police and security forces, and reconstruction. Hence the issues to be discussed before a second Peace Conference were: a Code of Conduct for political parties, including approaches to dangerous weapons and intimidation; a Code of Conduct for police and security forces; dispute-resolving mechanisms through structures at local, regional and national levels, with a full-time Peace Secretariat; and socio-economic reconstruction. The second Peace Conference should be widely representative and must make binding agreements. Naidoo’s template found general assent. Subsequent speakers added points: the desirability of peacefulness and tolerance; the responsibilities of the parties themselves; and specific suggestions, such as a monitoring mechanism, a bill of rights, and a ‘peace pledge’. Thabo Mbeki for the ANC endorsed COSATU’s position and added a process suggestion: that the three ‘main’ parties plus the Facilitating Committee should form a Preparatory Committee which would draft the binding agreements and prepare for the Peace Conference.

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For the IFP, Walter Felgate had little to offer except to reiterate their demand for an IFP–ANC bilateral meeting to ‘normalize’ relations and allow a working relationship, which had been agreed in principle but must now materialize. He pointedly insisted that this peace process must be seen as a continuation from the President’s Summit, although he conceded that the ‘Continuation Committee’ had not met and must now merge with the new arrangements. On reconstruction, he claimed that a R63-million initiative was being planned in Natal/ KwaZulu between the IFP, COSATU, ANC, and business. Zach de Beer reiterated the suggestions tabled by the DP at the Summit: a monitoring system to provide early warning of problems; re-educating the police to be protectors and not opponents of the people; good control of marches and rallies; a ban on carrying weapons, and a Code of Conduct for political parties. He hoped the Facilitating Committee would continue, because if peace were left to the politicians a mess would result. Roelf Meyer pledged the government’s support, hoping that a programme of action, not just another peace conference, would emerge. He wanted more parties to be drawn in, mentioned the need for budgeting, and listed the ideas which the government had noted at the Summit: Codes of Conduct for political parties and police; action on youth and training; a standing Commission of Inquiry on violence and intimidation; a communications campaign, and a Peace Secretariat. On the left, the PAC expressed general support for a peace process but AZAPO spoke of dark forces lurking behind the scenes and demanded that the government be excluded from this process, otherwise AZAPO might have to leave. The Workers Organisation for Socialist Action (WOSA) blamed capitalism and apartheid for the violence, demanded that the government stop it, and urged the formation of self defence units representative of all local structures. Attie du Plessis for the AHI pleaded that peace could only come with a strong economy, so business leaders and unions had a duty to bring a spirit of understanding to shop floors and boardrooms. Flipchart sheets capturing these and further points were hung on the walls of the auditorium. When only seventeen parties had spoken the contributions were becoming repetitive and the meeting agreed there was sufficient consensus on the issues. To the admiration of the audience, Godsell rapidly grouped the points under four headings: a Code of Conduct for political organizations; a Code for the security forces; reconstruction; and mechanisms to enforce the agreements, to include a standing Commission of Inquiry together with peace structures at national, regional and local levels. The session had gone extremely well, oiled by Tutu’s excellent chairing and ‘impish sense of humour’, a hugely valuable asset ‘which was capable of deflating any pomposity, and there was plenty of it from the floor’.23 ‘There were attempts 23

Cleary interview.

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at brinkmanship,’ says Peter Gastrow, ‘which Tutu quite powerfully dealt with. John Hall didn’t have the clout to do it, he tried to handle it through, er – trying to be kind to everyone and defuse, whereas Tutu would use the stick, and say: “No that’s unacceptable, what you’re saying!”’24 At 4.15pm the meeting broke for tea. It was clear what needed to be done – but how? Tutu stayed sitting on the podium, quietly praying. Theuns Eloff sat at the back of the auditorium, sketching a process diagram. The steps must lead to the signing of agreements at a Peace Conference. ‘I basically said: We’re here and we want to get there; how do we do it?’25 The Peace Conference would need a multiparty convening committee. Prior to that, multiparty working groups must address the four agreed issues, so a process was needed to get to those working groups. The ‘Eloff process diagram’ emerged, showing this meeting setting up a steering committee which would create working groups to draw up agreements on the four main issues, and report back. The steering committee would then become the convening committee for the peace conference where the agreements would be signed. ‘So I just sort of worked back. I said: it’s not rocket-­ science! – but at the time it was difficult for the protagonists to see it’.26 Jayendra Naidoo remembers that Eloff ‘captured very well the highly structured input that the COSATU delegates were making, because it was a game-plan that we had prepared well in advance’.27 Eloff walked down to the podium and showed his diagram to Tutu. After the break Tutu announced: ‘This young man has something to say to us.’ Eloff explained his proposal. The meeting adopted it, then fell into lengthy, politely contentious discussion on the composition of the steering committee. It was agreed to include the facilitators, as Mbeki and others suggested; and the ‘main parties’ had to be there. But others also wanted in. Zach de Beer felt strongly the DP should be included. Cleary privately urged him: ‘if you want to play a constructive role the only way you’re going to be able to do that is if you be seen to stand for liberal values, but not be seen to be a power actor’.28 At 6.15pm, the composition still undecided, the meeting adjourned for supper. Hall doubted the possibility of a working committee emerging from the twenty-five organizations. ‘I remember saying to Tutu: “This thing looks as if it will be a real mess.” Tutu said: “Wait, it will all work itself out.”’29 24 Gastrow interview. 25 Eloff interview. 26 Eloff interview. Eloff says he took his flipchart diagram home and lost it. His reconstruction for the Apartheid Museum starts with the President’s Summit, as does his process diagram in Gastrow (1995 p.28). 27 Jayendra Naidoo interview. 28 Cleary interview. 29 Hall–Pauquet interview 1994, Carmichael/Pauquet.

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Supper was a standing buffet. Hall later quipped that ‘God must have told me not to provide chairs!’30 He observed ‘the chap that was moving around was Thabo Mbeki, moving from group to group to group’. Willie Esterhuyse too was watching Mbeki’s ‘shuttle diplomacy’. Cleary had earlier noticed him sitting in the front row quietly conversing with Roelf Meyer.31 The meeting reconvened at 7pm with Sam Motsuenyane and Louw Alberts in the chair. Zach de Beer broke the logjam by announcing the DP would not seek to be on the follow-up committee, and other parties stopped pressing to be included (Steele, 1992 p.161). Mbeki spoke: the PAC and AZAPO did not wish to serve on any committee with government, so he suggested the committee consist of the ANC, SACP, COSATU, IFP and UWUSA, the government and NP. Cleary reflects that if Mbeki had secured agreement from Meyer to assign three places each to the ANC-Alliance and NP/Government, Frank Mdlalose would have been unlikely to refuse three places for IFP/UWUSA. Mbeki’s suggestion was adopted: the ‘Preparatory Committee’ would consist of the facilitators plus three representatives each from the three ‘main players’. Johan Heyns closed in prayer. The Preparatory Committee arranged to meet at Barlow Park on Monday 24 June. Instead of Minutes, Pauquet issued a full press release that evening on the letterhead of the ‘National Conference of Churches’: The organisations attending today’s planning meeting commit themselves to: work for peace in South Africa (supreme priority); involve their members and supporters at all levels in such work; work together with others in joint initiatives for this purpose, regardless of political differences; study and research the causes of violence, to expose without fear or favour the findings of such research, and to propose action required to deal with such causes.

The statement gave details of the Preparatory Committee, saying it would form working groups on four key issues: a Code of Conduct for political organizations; a Code of Conduct for the security forces; socio-economic development and reconstruction; and enforcement mechanisms such as a statutory standing commission and peace secretariats at national, regional and community levels. The Committee would at the same time consult with ‘other relevant parties and organisations not represented at today’s meeting, with a view to convening an inclusive forum at which binding agreements would result, as soon as practically possible’. Progress would be reported by the first week in August. The statement closed with the names of all twelve of the ‘Facilitating Committee’ and a list of the twenty-five parties and organizations present.32 30 Hall interview. 31 Esterhuyse, Cleary interviews. 32 Press release 22/6/91, Carmichael/van der Merwe/Pauquet.

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Roelf Meyer reflects on the sluggish progress of the earlier ANC–Government bilaterals and President’s Summit – and then came this new attempt led by church and business: What remains in my mind very strongly is the fact that civil society played a major role, and I think that is one of the key points that one has to register, and which is often being ignored in our own memory, … and often I speak about it because I say to others in conflict situations: ‘Here is a model that you can use, led by civil society.’ And it was really Bishop Tutu, Johan Heyns, Louw Alberts and others, who grabbed us by the neck and said: ‘You have to address this.’ … And that is how it started to work together.33

Media reaction was upbeat. The panoramic photo of facilitators appeared in the Afrikaans daily Beeld, its report headlined ‘Soos ’n Wonderwerk …’ – ‘Like a Miracle: Government, ANC and Inkatha now work together for the first time after peace conference’. Alberts had introduced the word ‘miracle’, saying it was ‘iets van ’n wonderwerk (something of a miracle)’ that so wide a spectrum of people could together achieve such goodwill and determination.34 The day, Alberts continued, had been ‘a link in the chain of the work that must be done to get peace in the land – but it is a very important link. There is much more work to be done, but we have definitely taken a great step forward.’ Despite great differences the atmosphere had been very positive. No participants had spoken sharply, or tried to gain political leverage. Heyns called it a great success, Suzanne Vos (IFP) agreed it was very positive, Roelf Meyer said it left him feeling ‘positive and optimistic’. Gill Marcus (ANC) reserved comment.35 The general sense was that while much was still to do, ‘we have begun to build the peace process’.36 What was different about the June meeting is that it was not a cynical exercise. In that conversation there was a recognition of the importance of finding a meaningful solution, as the step forward. Because, you can have peace process after peace process where all you do is say: ‘Well let’s form working groups, and then we’re going to send people …’ It was not like that. The June meeting started a process. So then we were at the mercy of John’s hospitality, which was chicken drumsticks with a silver foil at the end of it! And after the meeting he introduced us to whisky, it was the first time I was drinking whisky! Which I’d thought was such a bourgeois high-class drink, a step above the Coke and beer that we would drink ourselves!37 33 34 35 36 37

Meyer interview. Beeld 24/6/91. Ibid. Author’s translations Lubbe, in Krugersdorp News 5/7/91. Jayendra Naidoo interview.

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Steele (1992 p.163) reflects that: ‘The intensity and ugliness of the violence … made any small forward step seem like a giant leap.’ Peter Gastrow (1995 p.92) reflects on the political conditions that brought the parties to Barlow Park. All the major political groups had realized it was in their self-interest to enter negotiations and all saw violence as the most serious obstacle, therefore all were cooperating with the common objective of addressing violence so that constitutional negotiations could commence. In most warring societies, he observes, not all the factions perceive peace to be in their own self-interest. There was one reluctant participant: Buthelezi did not act as if he were persuaded that the Peace Accord was in Inkatha’s self-interest. He wanted to be in the constitutional negotiations, but was not about to warm to the route that was being offered. Two days later, the Preparatory Committee convened at Barlow Park.

8 Negotiating the National Peace Accord: The Process Introduction The National Peace Accord was negotiated, and the National Peace Convention planned, in just three months, chiefly the hectic weeks 11 July to 14 September 1991. The Preparatory Committee aimed to bring about ‘consensus amongst the three major parties on a Peace Agreement which can be endorsed by other interest groups at a national convention and implemented nationally, regionally and locally as a matter of urgency’.1 It established four Working Groups to negotiate the agreements, and a fifth, the ‘Process Group’, to coordinate the work, compile the Accord, and plan the signing ceremony. This chapter looks at the peacemaking process, the next at the negotiation of the agreements.

The Preparatory Committee At 7pm on Monday 24 June ten facilitators, ten negotiators and three supporting staff – Val Pauquet, Theuns Eloff and his PA Pam Saxby – gathered at Barlow Park. The ANC-Alliance sent Thabo Mbeki, Aziz Pahad, Jayendra Naidoo and Sam Shilowa; the IFP, Frank Mdlalose, Walter Felgate and Suzanne Vos; and the NP/ Government, two Deputy Ministers: Roelf Meyer (Constitutional Affairs) and Johan Scheepers (Law and Order), and Constitutional Adviser S. S. (Fanie) van der Merwe. The facilitators present were John Hall, Jabu Mabuza, Bobby Godsell, Sean Cleary, Louw Alberts, Johan Heyns, Gerrie Lubbe, Ron Steele (for McCauley), Tom Manthata (SACC, for Frank Chikane) and Paddy Kearney (Diakonia Ecumenical Centre, Durban; Natal Church Leaders Group, possibly for Khoza Mgojo). Absent were Motsuenyane, Tutu, Chikane, and Mgojo.2 This ‘Preparatory Committee’ met on six evenings between 24 June and 12 1 2

Minutes, Preparatory Committee 24/7/1991, Carmichael/Pauquet/van der Merwe. Neither Manthata nor Kearney reappeared, and Michael Cassidy (AE) graced no meetings, but all three were listed as Preparatory Committee members. Cassidy attended the signing in that capacity.

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September.3 The CBM supported it with space and staff in its own offices. For the churches, Val Pauquet worked from home. The government gave increasing assistance through its Constitutional Development Service (CDS). Funds came initially from the CBM, then the government shouldered responsibility. The CDS, based at 260 Walker St, Pretoria, was not yet a full Department but had a Minister in Gerrit Viljoen, a Deputy Minister in Roelf Meyer, and a director in ‘Constitutional Adviser’ Fanie van der Merwe. An unusual government asset, it was originally established to service P. W. Botha’s constitutional plans, and now existed to facilitate political change. Fanie van der Merwe, a friendly, slight, silver-haired, and supremely competent civil servant, had served on the committee to talk with Mandela, and became Constitutional Adviser early in 1989. His shrewd forward thinking laid the groundwork for de Klerk’s speech of 2 February 1990. He assisted the return of the ANC exiles. He now became indispensable to the negotiation, first of the Peace Accord, then of the Interim Constitution. Maritz Spaarwater, formerly NIS, organizer of the encounters in Switzerland, had noticed activity shifting to the CDS and requested a transfer (Spaarwater, 2012 pp.198–9). As ‘Chief Director Negotiations Support’ he facilitated CDS assistance to the peace process, and served briefly on the NPC. Evidently, this spook had earned acceptance! Pam Saxby, who had worked for Bishop Tutu in Johannesburg, headed the CBM-based secretarial team. Although white she aligned ideologically with Black Consciousness and shared AZAPO’s concern that a negotiated settlement could leave the economic situation unchanged. ‘Theuns actually asked me to put my political feelings aside in order to give the very best I could to the process, and so, that’s what I did.’4 Saxby took minutes for the Preparatory Committee and Process Group until relieved by Frans du Preez (CDS). She enjoyed the mercurial Aziz Pahad, and epicurean Sam Shilowa, to whom she cheerfully gave late-night lifts back to Soweto. Van der Merwe struck her as ‘a lovely man’, genuine, ‘a shining light in the whole thing because he was so dedicated to the process’.5 The Preparatory Committee made Hall its permanent Chair. The media imagined Louw Alberts still led the initiative, but he was aware of being side-lined. CBM staff encouraged a shift to the non-aligned Hall and Tutu – whom they also saw as more politically adept, although Hall himself claimed, referring to the whole period, that: ‘I travelled through the process with self-enforced naiveté.’6 English-born, aged 56, John Christopher Hall was appointed CBE for chairing this negotiation. Tall, avuncular, self-deprecating but partial to appreciation, Hall got on affably with most people but could be irritatingly blasé. His father 3 June, 24 July, 14 and 29 August, 11 and 12 September. 4 Saxby interview. 5 Ibid. 6 Eloff interview; Hall interview.

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was a metal trade union worker, his mother something of an entrepreneur. The family emigrated when John was 14. His father fell ill and John left school early, studied while working as a bank teller, administered a ranching business, travelled the world selling ferrochrome, and became a corporate mandarin. Never an activist, and without political connections, as Managing Director at Middelburg Steel & Alloys he supported its progressive reforms, and became a CBM board member. SACOB’s then Director-General Raymond Parsons recalls his ‘strong leadership’ as President.7 From his labour-relations experience he understood the importance of achieving consensus. Lubbe comments: ‘He played a marvellous role, I admired him and I liked him, and he was as cool and collected as you could get.’8 Hall enjoyed recounting how one evening the IFP contingent picked on Eloff, accused him of disrespect, and began a mass walk-out. Hall felt inspired to say: ‘“You’d like to caucus on this issue would you?” – words just came into my head – and they obviously couldn’t say “No.”’ Hall found them a room, ‘and they sorted out the problem and came back. I don’t know that they were trying to break it up, but they were always trying to break it up, in one way or another.’9 Essop Pahad was, to Hall, the Alliance’s awkward squad. Pahad was aware that: ‘I was representing the SACP and he (Hall) was one of the representatives of big monopoly capital’, but it was possible to work together, ‘it showed you could find a way, coming from very diametrically opposed ideological positions and political understanding – you could come together and come to a common agreement about some things’.10 Hall got on with Essop’s brother Aziz: ‘drinking and getting smashed out of my mind … at my office at Barlow Park where he told me all the secrets of the ANC but I couldn’t remember them next day!’11 (The advantages of having a chauffeur.) Barlow’s contributed hospitality, venues, offices, seconded personnel, the occasional corporate jet, and Hall’s ‘one day a week’ – all worth, he guessed, at least three to four million rand over the four years.12 The 24 June meeting tabled the issues: (1) a Code of Conduct for political parties, to include stay-aways and boycotts; (2) a Code for the security forces, to include ‘self defence committees’; (3) socio-economic development to include ‘youth and training’ (the latter intention was forgotten, to recur later); and (4) monitoring and implementation mechanisms to include peace secretariats at national, regional and local levels. A Standing Commission, ‘peace ambassadors’, a peace pledge, investigating the causes of violence, and communication and the 7 Email to author. 8 Lubbe interview. 9 Ibid. 10 Essop Pahad interview. 11 Hall interview. 12 Ibid.

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media. The meeting set up five Working Groups (WGs): four to negotiate agreements and a vital fifth, the ‘Process, Secretariat and Media Group’, to coordinate the other four and plan ahead. At Mbeki’s suggestion each WG consisted of one church and one business facilitator (business acting as convener) plus three delegates from each of the ‘main’ parties, and any coopted experts. The NP/Government shared its quota with other parliamentary parties, enabling the DP (white), Solidarity (Indian), and Labour Party (Coloured) to field one delegate each. The CDS assigned each WG an office and secretary. According to the Minutes WGs would choose their own Chairs, but in reality Meyer, Mdlalose and Mbeki, citing a mysteriously un-minuted decision, allocated them: one to each main party and two to business. The relative demoting of the church facilitators, starting here, had repercussions in the later carping attitude of the SACC to the peace structures (which was not generally reflected in the churches at regional and local levels). Names of delegates were requested by 28 June but work would commence only on 11 July, after the ANC National Conference. First draft agreements were expected by 24 July, the next Preparatory Committee meeting. Media relations being vital but sensitive, a sub-group of Pauquet, Aziz Pahad, Vos and CDS Communications Adviser Marius Kleynhans was mandated to compose or vet any statement needed before 24 July. Kleynhans was new. An ebullient liberal political journalist recently returned from Washington, he threw himself in with gusto, sending Pauquet thirty-six pages of useful contacts. Determined to make the Peace Convention a media spectacular, he was continually refining organizational plans and communications strategies. Pauquet found her space being squeezed. When Kleynhans was dubbed Media Coordinator it was ‘on the understanding that each member of the Media Committee should be encouraged to be fully involved in its activities’.13 The 24 June meeting closed at 10.10pm with prayer by Gerrie Lubbe. Pauquet faxed the Minutes, plus the 22 June press release, as the first communiqué to the 22 June participants.

Process, Secretariat and Media Group The ‘Process Group’ was the kingpin. It rapidly collated and harmonized the agreements submitted by the WGs, and arranged further negotiations; and while bringing the Accord to birth it simultaneously organized the future peace conference. Its Chair was Roelf Meyer; its facilitators Theuns Eloff and Gerrie Lubbe; its members Fanie van der Merwe (NP/Government), Jac Rabie (Labour Party); Jayendra Naidoo (COSATU), Aziz Pahad (ANC), and Sam Shilowa (SACP); Dr Vincent T. Zulu, Suzanne Vos and Faith Xolile Gasa (IFP); 13

Process Group Minutes 23/8/9, Carmichael/Pauquet.

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Val Pauquet and Marius Kleynhans (media); and Pam Saxby (Minutes secretary). Eloff faxed the members to meet at the CBM offices on 12 July. The four negotiating groups had met the previous day. The government and ANC came with positive proposals, many of which meshed together. Agreement on most issues was reached quickly. Backroom ANC-Alliance brainstorming took place with the Alliance’s lawyers at Cheadle, Thompson and Haysom (‘Cheadle’s’ for short) in their Braamfontein Centre offices and the private dining room of the nearby Turn ’n Tender steakhouse. The latter, something of an institution, founded in 1977 by Mervyn Aaron and his brothers, had always been multiracial (at first illegally). It was, Cheadle remarks, ‘our kind of local pub and place that we would eat, but in the Peace Accord negotiations we would often meet there, … I remember dinners with Thabo Mbeki, with the Pahad brothers, the two Jays, ourselves, preparing our negotiating strategy.’ Mbeki ‘was so on top of everything, he was quite brilliant’.14 The legal team included Cheadle, Nicholas ‘Fink’ Haysom (mediator in Natal/KwaZulu and Thokoza), often André Lamprecht, occasionally Peter Harris, initially Azhar Cachalia and later unionist Johnny Copelyn. Scheepers admired the ANC for being well prepared, practical and positive.15 The IFP, with no such creative backup, was mainly reactive. Its lead negotiator was the gracious Dr Frank Mdlalose but Walter Felgate, who was at the time Buthelezi’s speech-writer, was its chief spokesperson and inclined to be obstructive. For the government, Roelf Meyer says de Klerk and his Ministers gave him a clear mandate and steady support and were ‘very constructive in helping to bring about the Peace Accord. I can really say it was a constructive effort from the Government side.’16 The WGs submitted encouraging reports to the 12 July Process Group, all on track to present preliminary drafts by the 24th. WG1 had agonized over the IFP’s ‘dangerous weapons’ and ANC’s self defence units (SDUs). The Process Group moved the SDU issue to Group 2 (security issues), leaving weapons, for now, with both WG1 and WG2. On arrangements for the Peace Conference, Naidoo tabled a visionary ANC-Alliance proposal for a broad-based gathering involving hundreds, over the weekend 9–11 August. Participants would come from government, political parties and movements, unions, civics, traditional leaders, councillors, youth, women’s, and sports organizations, and security forces. Most organizations might send ten representatives; the NP, ANC and IFP thirty each. The Conference would discuss, agree and adopt by consensus, ‘a binding Peace Accord covering all the matters under discussion’. Every party would sign, absentees signing later. Government should bear all costs including publicity, 14 15 16

Cheadle interview. Scheepers interview. Meyer interview.

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intensive media follow-up, and continued funding of the ‘ongoing structures established by the peace accord’.17 This ANC-Alliance vison conjured memories of the Congress of the People at Kliptown in 1955, where 3,000 endorsed the Freedom Charter. The ‘Peace Accord’ – the term appeared here for the first time – would be similarly endorsed by ‘the people’. Realistically the coming Conference would be much more compact and less ‘grassroots’, but the assumption that it would discuss, amend and agree the Accord before adopting it persisted until just days before the signing. Plans began to be laid for a one-day ‘National Peace Convention’, to agree and sign a Peace Accord consisting of the Working Group agreements harmonized into one document. The dream of a Convention to unite South Africa began to be realized. A committee of Naidoo, Eloff, Vos and van der Merwe was appointed to consider the day’s programme and draw up invitation lists, paying particular attention to any bodies, including the right wing, capable of derailing the process. Most organizations could send five delegates. For letterhead purposes, the Group agreed to name this process the ‘National Peace Initiative’ (NPI). Confirmation that the government would take on the funding and continue its administrative support came on 23 July.18 On 19 July the Weekly Mail published its ‘Inkathagate’ revelations, detailing the secret channelling of Foreign Affairs funds to Inkatha via the security police, as late as March 1990. Buthelezi denied any knowledge and ordered repayment to the government. The Preparatory Committee happened to meet on the day that Frank Mdlalose, as Inkatha Chairman, handed over the cheque, ‘Mr Aziz Pahad could not help remarking towards the end of the evening how amazing it was that the funding scandal had in no way impinged on the business of the Peace Committee’ (Steele, 1992 p.170). No one, perhaps, was surprised by the revelations – and peacemaking had taken precedence. With negotiations making good progress, by 24 July the Preparatory Committee was considering September for the Convention. By 14 August the date was confirmed as Saturday 14 September. Van der Merwe scouted for a venue. The front-runner was the ‘World Trade Centre’ near Johannesburg airport, equipped with offices and warehouse-like spaces divided with curtains, where Codesa later landed. Then a cancellation made available the prestigious Carlton Hotel in Johannesburg’s CBD, with its palatial convention room. By 14 August a draft Convention agenda lay before the Process Group. Arrivals from 8am, prayers by several faiths (a ‘first’ for South Africa, organized by Gerrie Lubbe); the welcome from the ‘Convention Chairpersons’ – typed on the first draft as ‘John Hall and Desmond Tutu’ – and the presentation of the Accord by the Working Groups. After discussion and the incorporation of 17 18

‘Proposal with regard to Process …’, discussed at Process Group on 12 and 24 July. Carmichael/Pauquet. Van der Merwe’s notes 23/7/91, Carmichael/van der Merwe.

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amendments, the leaders would sign and the day close with a press conference and cocktail party. In the event a consultation process before the Convention, followed by last-minute editing and agreement by the principals, replaced any idea of amending the text during the ceremony. Another sub-committee, the ‘Management Committee for Process’ (‘Manco’), with core members van der Merwe, Vos, Naidoo and Eloff, arranged the details: an indaba logo – a stylized birds-eye view of delegates seated at a round table – a blue-and-white colour scheme, ushers, banners, table flags, first aid, peppermints, menus, TV lighting, and recording. The CBM secretariat expanded, working with the CDS on correspondence, accommodation and travel arrangements.

Invitations The invitation list, prefiguring that for Codesa, entailed multiple minor negotiations. The core invitees were the organizations present on 22 June. At the Process Group on 12 July, van der Merwe tabled a preliminary checklist of other bodies: the right-wing CP, HNP and AWB; the ruling parties of the six non-­ independent ‘homelands’ (SGTs) and two government-friendly black organizations: the National Forum (a grouping of black governmental organizations) and the Federal Independent Democratic Alliance (FIDA).19 He omitted the ‘independent’ homelands (TBVC States) Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei, which Pretoria still treated as foreign countries but the ANC-Alliance spurned as illegitimate, to be reintegrated into South Africa as soon as possible. The Preparatory Committee on 24 July agreed, without controversy, to include as full delegates the governments and ruling parties of the six SGTs.20 It heard careful explanations of the sensitivities surrounding the TBVC States, the international organizations (UN, OAU, Commonwealth, then still siding with the ANC against the government), traditional leaders and Contralesa, and referred these problems to the principals, to be resolved at the 2 August Process Group. The Peace Initiative having been ‘conceived by religious and business leaders’, the Committee wanted substantial contingents from business and church. Sub-committees of Chikane, Lubbe, Heyns, Miley Richards and McCauley/ Steele for churches, and Hall, du Plessis, Motsuenyane and Mabuza for business, were tasked with devising formulae to invite twenty leaders each. Business decided on a neat set: three each for SACOB, NAFCOC, FABCOS and AHI; two for CBM, SACCOLA, SEIFSA, and the Chamber of Mines. The churches over-ran their brief, but the thirty initially invited diminished to twenty-four 19 List, Carmichael/van der Merwe. 20 KwaZulu (IFP), QwaQwa (Dikwankwetla Party), Lebowa (United Peoples’ Front), KwaNdebele (Intando Yesizwe), KaNgwane (Inyandza National Movement), Gazankulu (Ximoko Progressive Party).

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including the Muslim and Hindu prayer leaders, a Jewish rabbi, and the Bishop of the large Zion Christian Church; and all found seats. The five largest white unions were added, with one delegate each. Consultation with definite invitees began immediately. Hall, Eloff and Cleary would reach out to the right wing; ANC-Alliance representatives would approach the PAC, AZAPO, NACTU, WOSA and the civics. Government representatives would contact the DP, Solidarity, other parliamentary groupings, the National Forum, the four Provincial Administrators, and SGTs. Foreign embassies were assigned one observer each, but the Process Group accepted on 2 August that ‘Government is opposed to the inclusion of international agencies’. The UN, Commonwealth, and OAU still maintained sanctions at the ANC’s behest, and the government still strongly opposed any foreign mediation or ‘interference’. The principals had agreed to invite the TBVC States – but should they be treated as ‘foreign’ observers or full delegates? They even had differing views on their own futures. Venda, a rural northern area bordered by a South African-­ patrolled strip along the Limpopo River, was quietly friendly to the ANC and MK; Transkei under Major General Bantu Holomisa gave sanctuary to ANC, MK and APLA; and both anticipated reincorporation into the new South Africa. Very different were Lucas Mangope’s Bophuthatswana, and Ciskei under Brigadier Oupa Gqozo. Both were intolerant of ANC activity and opposed reincorporation. All four territories underwent a more or less chaotic reincorporation shortly before the 1994 election. The Process Group noted that the TBVC States qualified for two delegates if they were ‘observers’, but five if treated as ‘political parties’. Their ambassadors ‘might be included as political representatives, but not as ambassadors’.21 On 14 August the Process Group recommended a compromise: invite them as ‘observers with the right to sign and apply the Peace Accord’. Muddle ensued. That evening the Preparatory Committee allotted them two seats as mere observers. Invitations were issued accordingly, and by secretarial error invitations also went to their ambassadors as foreign observers. Holomisa’s reaction is noted below. The TBVC States did arrive with five delegates but none, as yet, officially signed.

Consultation and responses The Preparatory Committee on 14 August initiated plans for an evening’s pre-convention briefing and Consultation on the penultimate draft Accord, for all the Convention invitees. Prior to the Consultation it held a closed briefing for editors, which about a dozen attended, at the CDS offices in Pretoria on Monday 19 August. The previous day a Sunday newspaper printed a report based on an earlier draft of the Accord. The Committee sharply censured the leak and 21

Minutes 2/8/91, Carmichael/Pauquet.

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called for responsible reporting. There are hints that the briefing was a qualified success: Hall, Meyer, Mbeki and Mdlalose spoke and answered questions, but lacked coordination. Eloff ensured that before the Consultation the same presenters met and strategized. Some fifty invitations to both the Consultation and Convention were faxed on 15 August and posted next day with copies of the Draft Peace Accord, inviting comments. Invitations to the Convention as observers went to some thirty-five ambassadors and forty-three media editors. The Consultation was hosted by the Premier Group in Killarney, Johannesburg, for two hours from 5.30pm on Friday 23 August. It was attended by two delegates each from thirty-five organizations, about one third being new to the process.22 The Preparatory Committee was present in force. Meyer, Mdlalose and Mbeki presented the Draft Accord. The atmosphere was positive, the Accord’s legitimacy grew. Written comments were requested by 9 September.

Reactions from TBVCs Major General Bantu Holomisa, Chair of Transkei’s ruling Military Council, a thoughtful hands-on politician, reacted with indignation to the erroneous invitation as observers. ‘In their seating today,’ he replied, the Cabinet has noted that the issues to be addressed at the proposed Convention on 23 August and later on 14 September are crucial for the restoration of peace and stability in South Africa as a whole. Transkei has a deep-seated concern in the issue of Peace in the light of the severe loss of life its inhabitants have suffered in Natal and the Reef townships during recent months. Transkei government which bears responsibility for its subjects inside and outside the borders of this territory … would have liked to contribute directly in any discussions held concerning the issue of peace … where its people are victims.23

Observer status, however, would preclude Transkei from participating and influencing decisions. Unless this changed, ‘we do not see our way clear to honouring your invitation’. Since the liberation movements gave no better accreditation to 22

23

Attendance: SA Government, ANC, SACP, COSATU, NP, IFP, UWUSA, DP, PAC, WOSA, SEIFSA, CBM, SACCOLA, AHI, SACOB, FEDSAL, Chamber of Mines, FABCOS, Federation of Independent Trade Unions (FITU), SA Electrical Workers’ Association, Radio & TV and Sweetmakers Union, Contralesa, Natal Provincial Administration, National Forum, Labour Party, Solidarity, National People’s Party, Merit People’s Party, Inyandza National Movement, Dikwantkwetla Party, Intando Yesizwe Party; QwaQwa and KaNgwane governments; Venda and Ciskei as observers (NPI lists, and press release 23/8/91, Carmichael/NPI). Letter to NPI from Holomisa 21/8/91, Carmichael/NPI.

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the ‘South African minority government and its self-governing states than they do Transkei’, it was illogical to ‘place us in an impotent position’.24 At the Process Group on 22 August, the ANC was asked to address Holomisa’s letter and try to secure his participation. Transkei was absent on 23 August. Holomisa meanwhile made a hit with the NPI staff, phoning in person, being fun, and treating the secretaries as human beings.25 Very different was Ciskei’s military ruler, Brigadier Gqozo. When he overthrew the unpopular Lennox Sebe in 1990 the ANC thought Gqozo a potential ally; but he fell under right-wing influence and the ANC was soon calling for his removal. He showed interest in the Peace Accord, but as a weapon to rein in the ANC. Ciskei was represented on 23 August by its legal advisers, Advocate Izak Smuts and Mickey Webb. Afterwards they faxed to say they would be reporting to their principals in the Ciskei government and police, and: ‘It will assist us greatly to import the same spirit and understanding which prevailed at the meeting’ if they could be sent the ‘suggested amendment by Dr Gerrie Lubbe … who proposed that the supremacy of Lord God should be acknowledged in the Accord.’ They also requested the attendance list ‘to impress upon our principals the stature of the meeting’.26 Among its comments on the draft Accord, Ciskei wanted a clause explicitly inviting TBVC States to sign should they wish. Venda, but not Bophuthatswana, attended the Consultation. Neither sent comments. On 29 August a fudge was agreed: the Preparatory Committee increased the TBVC ‘observers’ to five and agreed they could ‘endorse’ the Accord. Eloff phoned Holomisa and wrote to all four leaders, explaining that their ‘observer status applied only to the nature of the invitation’: they could fully participate, and sign the Peace Accord, and this compromise between the parties had been necessary to accommodate the ‘political sensitivities surrounding … the independent states’.27 The Peace Initiative believed they could contribute significantly ‘to help build lasting peace in our country’. Apologizing that the embassies had erroneously been invited, Eloff adds: ‘We would appreciate your understanding’ that if the government attends, ‘the Embassy will not be eligible’. Holomisa replied on 2 September: the Transkeian government would now attend. It would try to comment by 9 September. It sent thanks to the drafting committee for its work and urged it ‘not to be discouraged by comments that are likely to come’.28 Comments duly arrived on the 9th, saying so much work was needed to correct the Accord that the process should be begun afresh. Ignoring 24 Ibid. 25 Saxby interview. 26 Letter 24/8/91, Carmichael/NPI. 27 Eloff to Holomisa 30/8/1991, Carmichael/NPI. 28 Holomisa to Eloff 2/9/91, Carmichael/NPI.

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the catch that all-party talks could not be convened before something had been done to address the violence, Transkei suggested the ideal sequencing would be to activate the Accord after calling a constitutional conference, thus making it ‘part of a package’ towards enfranchisement.29 Holomisa faxed again that afternoon, asking for the Convention programme and giving names of the government delegation. He would lead it himself, with army chief Brigadier T. T. Matanzima plus two personal staff. He also demanded invitations for Xhosa chiefs: ‘Since the Zulu King and his entourage of Chiefs will be attending, I would like to make you aware of the Transkei delegation of Chiefs that will also attend the Peace Conference which should be accorded the same status as the Zulu King.’30 Eloff conveyed the Process Group’s ‘No’ on 12 September. Two sets of traditional leaders had been invited: the ANC-leaning Contralesa network and IFP-leaning KwaZulu Chiefs Caucus. In addition, SGTs had been encouraged to include traditional leaders in their delegations. Meeting late in the evening of 23 August, the Process Group had added Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini, agreeing to negotiate his entourage telephonically. Five were agreed, one doubling as a WG member. Holomisa insisted: it was imperative that the interests of the subjects of Transkeian chiefs, who ‘have been killed in the wave of violence raging in South Africa’, also be represented. He would pay all expenses. ‘You are therefore requested to provide five seats for our chiefs in the conference room.’31 Two at least seem to have arrived, as their names feature on the attendance list in addition to the official delegation.

Reactions from extreme Left and Right The reactions from the extremes of the political spectrum gave stark reminders of South Africa’s incompatible worldviews and deeply held conspiracy theories. Eloff composed cajoling letters in Afrikaans to the white right-wing (AWB, CP, HNP) offering to meet and pointing out the important role they could play on the National Peace Secretariat.32 Alberts and Heyns made repeated attempts to persuade the CP’s Dr Treurnicht to participate, and an Afrikaner member of Rhema arranged for McCauley to meet him privately. Treurnicht’s conviction that the ANC was a Communist front remained unshaken.33 No reply from him is extant, but he spoke at the CP’s Transvaal Congress in Pretoria on the same day as the Peace Convention, publicly denouncing the peace process as 29 Letter 9/9/91, Carmichael/NPI. 30 Ibid. 31 Letter 12/9/91, Carmichael/NPI. 32 Letters 16/8/91, Carmichael/NPI. 33 Steele interview.

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a Communist trap into which the government was naively walking. The NPA, he declared, was ‘another step closer towards the handing over of power by the Government’; it was ‘a dangerous document that was clearly to the advantage of the ANC, the SACP and COSATU’, and ‘there would never be peace in South Africa without freedom for the various nations’.34 The reply from HNP leader J. A. Marais elaborated on the anti-Communist theme. The entire situation, Marais maintains, had been engineered by the Communists. The violence was directly due to the unbanning of the ANC and SACP, the latter being in control. The SACP had caused the violence, to create insecurity in order to place the blame on the security forces and thus stake a claim for control of the police. The Accord made the SACP ‘part of an agency responsible for law and order in South Africa, thereby sharing authority with Government’ and indirectly supervising and weakening the police. It thus made way for the ‘armed struggle’ and a communist government. ‘The HNP’, Marais concludes, ‘will not be a party to an accord which is obviously part of a hidden agenda whereby the ANC–SACP will be allowed … to gain authority jointly with the present misguided and disabled government.’35 True, the ANC did seek some control of the security forces, and it endorsed community policing, but neither constituted a Communist plot. Right-wing bodies were absent from the Peace Convention. None signed, but a scattering of CP and even AWB members did join peace committees. The extreme left – PAC, AZAPO, and allied unions NACTU and WOSA – professed support for peace and attended the Convention but refused to give implicit recognition to the government by co-signing any document. Uniquely, the PAC later joined the OFS RPC. AZAPO accused the government of causing the violence in order to produce ‘a political settlement short of our people’s political, social and economic demands’; therefore, AZAPO did not believe the violence would stop.36 A SAPA release on 20 August reported that the PAC and WOSA would neither take part in constitutional negotiations, nor sign the Accord – ‘a pact with the main legislators of the violence’, who were using it ‘to weaken the mass struggle for freedom’.37 The armed wings of the PAC (APLA) and AZAPO (AZANLA) had not suspended armed activities.

Including women? There was still no appreciation of gender balance. Only the IFP sent female negotiators: Faith Xolile Gasa, Mrs E. T. Bhengu, and Suzanne Vos, who subsequently served on both the NPS and NPC. Women for Peace (WFP) persistently 34 35 36 37

SABC TV midday news, 14/9/91, SABC video, Carmichael/Attie du Plessis. Letter 12/9/91, Carmichael/NPI. Letter 13/9/91, Carmichael/NPI. SAPA 20/8/91, Carmichael/Pauquet.

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requested inclusion. Elizabeth Mundell of its NEC faxed Louw Alberts on 16 July. WFP had, she wrote, attended the President’s Conference. If organizations other than political parties were invited to any future conference, WFP wished to attend: ‘We feel very strongly that women should be heard on issues which directly affect them such as violence, and that their voice should not be heard only through political groupings.’38 Janet Semple followed up on 11 September: WFP understood the 14 September peace meeting was restricted to politicians, business and churches, but felt that ‘at such an important meeting to promote peace, non-politically aligned groups should also be present’. WFP, with a country-­wide membership of over 1,000, had campaigned against all violence. ‘We would like to be considered for invitation … and certainly for future meetings’.39 Women were ubiquitous in administrative and volunteer roles in the peace structures. The OFS regional staff boasted gender parity. Women’s and youth wings of the parties served on Local Peace Committees. WFP rep Patience Pashe in Alexandra became LPC Chair – but the relative absence of women in leadership positions was frequently noted, not least by the UN Observers, themselves gender-balanced and headed by Angela King of Jamaica.

A Media Code? The Process Group on 12 July raised the media’s role in the peace process as a ‘matter of the utmost importance’. On 24 July the Group agreed to discuss a possible ‘Media Charter’ to ‘regulate media procedure on peace-related issues so that the media’s response to such issues encourages a climate of peace’. It should be ‘based on the existing Media Code’. The IFP was complaining of being ignored by the press, so it should also address parties’ access to the media. Ciskei and Transkei, supporting the concept, clearly wanted to weaponize any Code against opponents.40 On 28 August the Media Sub-committee was asked to peruse a ‘Draft Media Accord’ which editors might endorse at the Convention. No text is extant. The NPA contains no Media Code. In October 1992 a rough ‘NPA Media Charter’, possibly from these discussions, appeared in a Marketing Committee proposal, but went no further.

Most reluctant signatory Buthelezi wrote to Eloff on 27 August expressing his admiration for the time and energy that Eloff and the working groups had put into the Peace Accord, and the speed of their achievement.41 He hoped to get the mind of the IFP Central Committee on the draft Accord before 14 September, but complained time was too 38 39 40 41

Letter 16/7/91, Carmichael/Pauquet. Letter 11/9/91, Carmichael/NPI. Ciskei and Transkei comments 9/9/91, Carmichael/NPI. Letter 27/8/1991, Carmichael/NPI.

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short for meaningful consultations: ‘One thing we should bear in mind is that it is the ordinary people in areas where violence has been endemic who must decide on these issues. While consulting the leadership at top level is well and good there is just not enough time to consult with our members at grassroots.’ How serious Buthelezi was about consulting the grassroots, and whether he had the means to do so, is unclear. Buthelezi’s uneasiness ran deep. Acting as a resentful victim he turned to the government with a mixture of complaints and threats, seeking assurance of their continued understanding and support. On 29 August he received a phone call from de Klerk. Next day Gerrit Viljoen, Roelf Meyer and Fanie van der Merwe travelled to Ulundi. Buthelezi handed them a five-page memo and then, as was his wont, read it out.42 The memo reiterates Buthelezi’s fixed view that the Accord resembled the agreements signed by himself and Mandela on 29 January 1991 which ‘now lie in tatters’. Hence, ignoring very real differences, he professes little faith in it. But what rankled most is the failure of the ANC to respond to his request for a bilateral to ‘normalize’ relationships, and the perceived failure of the government to side with him in this matter. He thought the Preparatory Committee had given some kind of guarantee that the IFP’s participation would be rewarded with a bilateral. Only a bilateral would be real politics, capable of clearing up differences. In its absence, signing a peace accord was mere symbolic show. ‘If the ANC’, he threatens, ‘is using the present peace process as just another form of struggle against the IFP then we will roll up our sleeves and struggle where it is taking place and get on with it.’ That the ANC was ‘using’ the process was proven by its demand that the SAP should take over the KZP – or at least, that the ANC as an ‘interested party’ should be involved in discussions about the future of the homeland police forces (NPA 3.4.1). This appeared to Buthelezi as ‘party political action against the IFP’. As Minister of Police he would have nothing to do with it. Clause 3.4.1 should be excised. Moreover he had instructed Felgate to have clause 2.4, the agreement to ban all weapons at political meetings, removed from the Code for Political Parties – but it was still there. Could a Working Group ‘dictate to us’? ‘Principals’, Buthelezi insisted, ‘over-ride Work Groups. I said “No” to that clause and “No” it shall be, and there is now no further discussion on the matter.’ (The clause quietly migrated to 3.6.3.) Further, any clause on the carrying of weapons must make clear that this matter is ‘solely and explicitly’ between the SA government, KwaZulu government, and the IFP. It is not just a party political issue but affects ‘the whole Zulu nation’ so discussions must also include the King and the Legislative Assembly. Buthelezi was about to consult them both, and did not wish to discuss ‘cultural 42

Memo, Carmichael/van der Merwe.

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weapons’ today because the IFP Central Committee would be discussing them tomorrow and he could not pre-empt that debate. Buthelezi was ‘incensed’ at efforts to ban traditional weapons ‘while the Government and the ANC work jointly and in unity to keep the whole question of the armed struggle out of the peace process’. Such unequal treatment was unacceptable. ‘The Government has closed its eyes to the refusal by the ANC to disband Umkhonto we Sizwe … and yet there is this enthusiasm to disband our legally constituted police Force.’ The Peace Accord, ‘however valuable we can possibly end up making it’, must not be confused with constitutional negotiations. If the ANC introduces such confusion, there will be a clash. Buthelezi’s memo became a rant, first against the ANC’s trashing of the IFP’s image, which could not look worse even if he were labelled the spoiler of the peace process; and second about ‘the fact that the Government and the ANC are trying to get nearer to each other so that they can end up in some kind of working relationship in this interim phase’. He presents an ultimatum: ‘Government must choose.’ The more he learns about ‘how the ANC intends negotiating … the less we will be able to play according to the rules of negotiation which government and the ANC use between themselves’. Why had Roelf Meyer not just slammed the ANC down for ‘reinterpreting’ 3.4.1 to include themselves as an ‘interested party’? Finally, about ‘the event of 14th September’ Buthelezi sees little hope of consensus on every clause, but protests his ‘deep commitment to the eradication of internecine Black-on-Black violence and the normalisation of political relationships between dominantly black parties’. The violence was ‘disgracing to us as a nation and so harming prospects of negotiations getting off the ground properly’. Hence he was fighting so hard to prevent politics taking over the peace process. He may, he suggests, have to go to the Convention to sign, on behalf of the IFP and KwaZulu, only the ‘praiseworthy’ parts of the Accord and not those that had been ‘used as Party political footballs’. Buthelezi is clearly conflicted, desiring to be present but only by treating the Accord as a draft in progress: I believe the National Peace Convention is going to be an historically significant day. It will be a day on which there is the greatest pledge ever for joint action for peace. We should not make it an artificial commitment on paper agreements that will not work. Let us go to the 14th Sept Convention with clear and strong commitments for peace and progress towards negotiations fighting to improve what we are doing. Let us look at the National Peace Accord as it will be drafted by the 14th September as a National Peace Accord in the making. Let us give it that living, ongoing status as something we are using to fight violence and which we are improving on as we go. Handled in this way, there need be no Party political point-scoring on that day before the world’s cameras. It could be a day of vast gains for SA in the eyes of the world.

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No record of the government response is extant. On 3 September the Manco recorded that the IFP would attend ‘but have certain reservations about signing’, to be ‘addressed bilaterally before 14th’. ‘I think’, reflects Bobby Godsell, ‘there’s no doubt that Buthelezi weighed the cost of being there against the cost of not being there, and decided it was better [to attend] – he was unbelievably reluctant, and this didn’t leave him as a firm insider into the political process, which became then very apparent in 1994’, when he entered the election only at the last moment.43 Meyer reflects that the IFP had previously been hand-in-hand with government but had often annoyed it. He gives credit to Buthelezi for having impressed on government that any negotiating process had to be inclusive; but as the NPA negotiations began he realized it was going to be tough to accommodate the demands of the IFP to be included as the third, in an obstructive rather than constructive manner.44 Walter Felgate, seen as close to Buthelezi, phoned McCauley continually throughout the NPA negotiations to complain the IFP was being shoddily treated. McCauley would cool him down and the IFP continued in the process, but as a victim, not a positive contributor. Steele saw ‘obvious mistrust, not only of the ANC, but also of the church, especially of the involvement of Bishop Tutu and Frank Chikane’; he formed the impression that ‘the Inkatha officials were being paralysed by past anger and mistreatment, which stopped them grasping the opportunities of the present and the future’ (Steele, 1992 p.168). Looking back on his misgivings twenty-one years later, Buthelezi said: ‘No, there was no mutual trust’, because ‘the ANC had not given up the MK, which they used as a bargaining chip right through the negotiations’ and while they had ‘sophisticated weapons like AKs … they would say that some of the people in our party, by carrying traditional weapons, they were dangerous … more a threat than sophisticated weapons of war’. That was ‘the major problem I had’. Asked if he had had misgivings because he did not yet see peace coming, he replied: ‘I didn’t see sincerity. … There wasn’t sincerity, in trying to compare – you know, sticks and spears with AK-47s’ and to say the armed struggle had not been abandoned, and use it as a bargaining chip.45 Johnny Copelyn, lawyer, union delegate and not an ANC member, reflects that ‘what Buthelezi wanted to achieve out of the Accord was legitimacy as a political party: he wanted to be seen as the same as the ANC, that he was just different but an equal contender’; yet the IFP had nothing to contribute from a technical point of view, their concern was limited to Natal/KwaZulu and the PWV, and rather than see the violence as a problem to be solved cooperatively, their attitude was: “It’s your fault!”’46 The ANC, Copelyn adds, was not 43 44 45 46

Godsell interview. Meyer interview. Buthelezi interview. Copelyn interview.

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so dissimilar. They too contemplated not signing, ‘were contemptuous of the negotiation process’, raised peculiar difficulties and ‘were operating at different levels sort of openly and underground’.47 According to Jayendra Naidoo the status of the IFP as equal negotiator ‘made the Peace Accord process unpopular with many in the ANC, because the ANC was trying hard to get a two-sided table, and exclude IFP’. Hence, ANC Secretary-­General Cyril Ramaphosa ‘was not wildly behind the Peace Accord … I mean yes he was as a human being, but strategically he was not a supporter of it’. The supporter was Mbeki, ‘and Mbeki was very realistic, and of course we were realistic in COSATU’.48 Journalist John Battersby rated Ramaphosa’s role much more positively, as ‘a prime mover behind the scenes’ in the peace initiative, quoting him on the signing of the Accord: ‘The peace accord has provided a spur to the whole project of resolving the South African conflict … I think the peace accord will be instructive with regard to testing whether the police can adhere to rules and regulations which have been drawn up to ensure their impartiality.’49 As negotiations went down to the wire, Buthelezi found a new issue on which to put his foot down: the question of who should co-chair the National Peace Convention.

Who chairs the Peace Convention? Archbishop Desmond Tutu was outstanding among the facilitators. A Nobel Peace laureate, internationally famous, he had contributed brilliantly to the chairing on 22 June. There seemed no doubt that he and Hall should preside at the signing, and both might have a continuing role in the peace process. Their names were typed, as ‘Convention Chairpersons’ throughout the day, on the first draft Convention programme, tabled at the Process Group on 14 August, but just hours later an updated draft lay before the Preparatory Committee, which named Hall but left his Co-chair’s name blank. The alteration was certainly due to the IFP. Walter Felgate had attended the Process Group, in dark mood, objecting to clauses on weapons and control of ‘homeland’ police forces. Hall’s name plus a blank space were typed on all subsequent draft programmes. Tutu, in handwriting, slips in and out. On 28 August the Process Group mooted the possibility of four Co-chairs, the nominations to come from all three parties. Next day’s Preparatory Committee confirmed that ‘all relevant options’ must be consulted with the parties. The Manco planning sub-committee met on Friday afternoon, 6 September. Van der Merwe’s handwritten note reads: ‘ANC feels strongly that Tutu should 47 Ibid. 48 Jayendra Naidoo interview. 49 Christian Science Monitor 1/10/91.

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joint-chair with John Hall. (Also objection to prayer by T?) If we can’t agree on Monday then refer to facilitating group (Preparatory Committee) and abide by their decision.’50 Ds Gerrie Lubbe, churches’ facilitator of the Process Group, shared his anxieties in a phone call with Ramaphosa, whom he had found to be a firm supporter of the Accord: He let me have a telephone number and a time, it was a weekday, and I phoned him then and said to him: ‘Look, we have a problem that Buthelezi wants to move Tutu out of the picture.’ And Cyril then said: ‘Don’t you worry, we will stick to our guns and Tutu will go ahead, he will be there. We will not allow Buthelezi to get rid of him.’51

It proved not so easy. On Sunday 8 September van der Merwe and Felgate sat in a government–KwaZulu bilateral, wrestling with a list of issues including the chairmanship and prayers. Van der Merwe noted: ‘Go for John Hall and Jabu Mabuza. One opening prayer – religious group decide.’52 That same Sunday, in Thokoza on the East Rand, eighteen IFP rally-goers were killed by ‘unknown gunmen’. The press unhesitatingly blamed the ‘Third Force’ trying to disrupt the signing. Tutu issued a statement condemning the attack, conveying ‘my and our Church’s condolences to the bereaved and our sympathies to the injured’. He added: ‘The peace accord to be signed on Saturday contains mechanisms which would help us get to the bottom of attacks such as this and to bring the perpetrators to justice.’53 The crunch came when the full Preparatory Committee assembled at Barlow Park, on Wednesday evening, 11 September. The question of the Chair was to be decided. The church facilitators unanimously wanted Tutu. ‘In view of the fact that the day was to be extremely symbolic, with the three major political leaders signing the Peace Accord, it seemed only natural that a former Nobel Peace prize winner would add to the symbolic dressing of the event’ (Steele, 1992 p.170). The meeting was calm until the Chair item was reached, then the IFP suddenly ‘threw a wild card on the table’ by proposing Methodist Presiding Bishop Stanley Mogoba (Ibid.). Steele leapt to make the counter-proposal of Tutu. Felgate made cutting remarks about Tutu’s unsuitability: ‘“whilst we all respect our archbishop” he was unacceptable as a Co-chairperson because of his past statements – apparently a reference to Tutu’s support for the liberation movements and sanctions’.54 50 51 52 53 54

Van der Merwe’s notes, Manco 6/9/91, Carmichael/van der Merwe. Lubbe interview. Handwritten meeting note 8/9/91, Carmichael/van der Merwe. Archbishop’s statement 9/9/91, Carmichael/Pauquet. For Thokoza see p.74. Hennie Serfontein, Vrye Weekblad 20–26/9/91.

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Tutu recused himself. He went to sit, and pray, in a private room. Pam Saxby, who had worked for him in Johannesburg, followed to ask if he was all right. ‘I just didn’t like to see him being hurt like that. And he didn’t want me to know that he was hurting.’55 He took no further part in the evening’s proceedings. The ANC delegation of Mbeki, Jayendra Naidoo and the Pahad brothers said little, while the facilitators argued with the IFP contingent of Felgate, Mdlalose and Vos. ‘In frustration it was agreed to call off the debate and the Facilitating Committee was asked to meet separately to see how the matter could be resolved’ (Steele, 1992 p.171). After the meeting, thrown by what had happened, the remaining facilitators gathered in Hall’s office. Chikane, himself the butt of slighting remarks, revealed his own feelings of hurt and exhaustion. Heyns comforted him. Mgojo spoke about the hurt to Tutu. They left well after midnight, resolved to seek an emergency meeting with Buthelezi (Ibid. p.172). That same evening, Buthelezi had told the BBC French Service it was ‘farcical’ that the ANC would sign the Peace Accord while simultaneously refusing to hold the bilateral that the IFP was demanding.56 Cleary and Hall secured an audience with Buthelezi next morning, Thursday 12 September, in the small town of Mandeni where the Chief was at a function. McCauley joined them at Lanseria Airport, to fly in a Barlow’s jet. Buthelezi met them in a private room. The atmosphere was cordial yet frosty. Buthelezi was adamant: if Tutu chaired, he would refuse to attend. Ostensibly this was because church leaders should stay within their domain and not stray into the political arena, although straying was allowable for businessmen. Buthelezi’s lack of faith in the whole initiative was evident: he again cited previous agreements, complaining bitterly that ‘nothing had changed’. McCauley was asked to pray, and did so at length, adding ‘a plea from his own heart for the Chief to give the Peace Accord a chance’ (Steele, 1992 p.173). Finally Buthelezi assured them that he would attend provided Tutu did not chair, and conceded that the Archbishop could conduct the final prayer (an available slot, as the Preparatory Committee had agreed on the opening prayers but left the ending undecided). Feeling immense relief the three flew back, hoping Tutu would be willing to accede. Tutu, ‘well aware of how sensitive the situation was becoming and not wanting to be a stumbling block’, gracefully agreed (Ibid. p.174). He was indeed hurt, but as a contemplative he drew on deep wells. Years later his comment was: ‘the cause is a great deal more important than personal pricks’.57 He accepted he was persona non grata with the IFP and realized this would prevent his serving as Co- or Vice-chair of the National Peace Committee, which otherwise, in his own word, would have been ‘logical’.58 55 Saxby interview. 56 Star 13/9/91. 57 Tutu interview. 58 Ibid.

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The church facilitators decided that, in solidarity with Tutu, neither they nor Mogoba should replace him. They would leave the co-chairing to business. Consequently, while Tutu’s final prayer inevitably made a memorable impact, the public profile of the churches as peace facilitators was lower at the Convention than it should have been. Buthelezi’s attendance now seemed assured, but one final push was added. Early on Friday morning General Olusegun Obasanjo, former Nigerian head of state, a member in 1986 of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group on South Africa, was leaving after a short visit. Foreign Minister Pik Botha was at the airport to say farewell. Hearing of the government’s anxiety about Buthelezi, Obasanjo asked for a phone and told him Africa would hold him accountable if he did not sign.59

59

Vrye Weekblad 20–26/9/91.

9 Negotiating the National Peace Accord: The Agreements Introduction This chapter gives an overview of the Accord’s development, then focuses on each of the negotiated chapters: the political Code of Conduct, a Code and provisions for the security forces, socio-economic reconstruction and development, and the peace structures. Roelf Meyer, lead government negotiator for both the Accord and constitutional negotiations, hails this experience as the real beginning of multiparty talks. It was a ‘collective effort’ of politicians, business and civil society ‘all working together in finding an answer to the problem’.1 The process was planned together, the experience was mostly one of consensus, ‘and it resulted three months later in the signing of the Accord, which was a major success’. The facilitators all had ‘day jobs’ so meetings began late afternoon and ‘we worked like hell in those three months, day and night’: It was our real first experience of negotiations together. Prior to that, you know, we were talking to each other but no real negotiations. … what I’m saying is that was the first real, successful, experience in negotiations by all concerned in South Africa. And that was why to my mind … it was a major achievement.2

Fanie van der Merwe, looking at a copy of the NPA, concurs: ‘What was achieved at Codesa, was already achieved here. … it’s an amazing document, that one.’3

Constructing the Accord Negotiations began in the Working Groups on 11 July. The WGs submitted first drafts to the Process Group by 2 August, to be collated by a Compilation Com1 Meyer interview. 2 Ibid. 3 Fanie van der Merwe interview.

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mittee brilliantly led by Fanie van der Merwe and Theuns Eloff. Compilation began on the evening of 7 August in Attie du Plessis’s Sandton office.4 Preambles and principles from each Group were extracted and became the Accord’s Preamble and its first chapter, ‘Principles’. Language and terminology were harmonized. By noon on 8 August the first ‘Draft National Peace Accord’ was ready for referral to the parties. It went to Mandela, Ramaphosa and the ANC’s NEC; to de Klerk, his Cabinet and SSC; to Buthelezi, who took it to King Zwelithini, the IFP Central Committee, and KwaZulu Legislature; and to the Auditor General for budgeting. Feedback was incorporated. Two areas of potentially intractable disagreement were apparent: the existence of MK, and the carrying of ‘dangerous’ or ‘traditional’ weapons. On the morning of 14 August, prior to the evening’s Process Group and Preparatory Committee, a worried Hall gathered the facilitators at Barlow’s for an emergency caucus. The government was trying to use the process to press the ANC into ‘terminating’, rather than ‘suspending’, its armed activity, while the IFP’s objections to ‘dangerous weapons’ clauses in particular, threatened to cause deadlock (Steele, 1992 p.166). Debate was pessimistic until McCauley suddenly gave a pep-talk, determination re-emerged and a strategy was agreed: the facilitators would speak separately with the parties and if the issues were not resolved that evening, a sub-committee of Eloff, Naidoo, Copelyn, Scheepers, van der Merwe, Felgate and another IFP member would be delegated to seek acceptable formulations in consultation with the principals. By evening it was accepted (but not fully by IFP) that MK matters should be left to the ANC– Government bilaterals; and that ‘dangerous weapons’ would be further debated while pressing forward on other matters. So ‘momentum was maintained’, although ‘verbal skirmishes’ between ANC and IFP now became frequent and the IFP was frustrated that its own hoped-for bilateral talks with the ANC were failing to materialize (Ibid. p.168).5 That evening’s Preparatory Committee led into a midnight session at Barlow Park for the WGs. Refinements, additions and constant reworking culminated in a sixth Draft Accord for presentation at the Consultation on 23 August. The Consultation added two sentences to the Preamble, drafted by Ds Gerrie Lubbe, to ask God’s blessing as was usual in South Africa, but with an added inclusive perspective: Noting that the majority of South Africans are God-fearing citizens, we ask for His blessing, care and protection upon our Nation to fulfil the trust placed upon us to ensure freedom and security for all. 4 5

Members: Johan Scheepers, Jayendra Naidoo, Johnny Copelyn, Faith Xolile Gasa, Vincent T. Zulu. Also Memo 14/8/91, ‘Proposed process …’, Carmichael/Eloff.

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Peacemaking and Peacebuilding in South Africa Bearing in mind the values which we hold, be these religious or humanitarian, we pledge ourselves with integrity of purpose to make this land a prosperous one where we can all live, work and play together in peace and harmony.

After the Consultation, comments were invited from all parties by 9 September. Peter Gastrow (DP) and Steve Collins (IDASA), commenting from Durban, both echoed Buthelezi’s regret that consultations on the political Code had not been held at grassroots in Natal/KwaZulu. Now the leaders were hampered when explaining it because no ownership of it had been implanted among the people. Radio might help to rectify this, but intensive local work would be vital for success.6 Both Holomisa and AZAPO suggested scrapping the draft and starting afresh with research and analysis – which, they confidently anticipated, would reveal the government as the cause of the violence. Holomisa, hyper-wary of the SSC and possible covert activities, advocated a Code of Conduct for governments, and an inclusive country-wide, multiparty, multi-government security control mechanism at ‘State Security Council level’, reporting to the National Peace Committee, to ensure that ‘the recommendations made by proposed structures will be given effect to and also … that the security establishment does not take any decision or action which may lead to destabilisation’.7 Holomisa suggested an international body should oversee the peace structures, and thought much more work was needed on the alleged complicity of the SAP in violence, the SADF Code, the position of homeland police, dangerous weapons, and the roles of chiefs and headmen in implementing peace. Transkei therefore recommended the signing be postponed and the Peace Convention be used for ‘exchanging views’. Finally Holomisa wanted everyone, ‘independent’ homelands included, to be involved in negotiating the Accord.8 Ciskei noted that the TBVC States appeared nowhere in the draft, so a clause should be inserted to ‘encompass those territories’ and allow them if they wished to sign the Accord.9 The terms SAP and SADF should be replaced by ‘police’ and ‘Defence Force’ throughout (this, for most sections, was agreed). Ciskei also wanted ‘countries’ instead of ‘country’ in clause 1.2: ‘freedom of movement within the country’. The Editing Committee avoided implicitly recognizing Ciskeian independence by simply deleting ‘within the country’! Ciskei wanted the Accord to forbid political party activity, including strikes, in schools; to incorporate a ‘media code’ with legal sanctions to ensure fair reporting of violence; outlaw unfounded allegations or accusations; and ‘actively ensure that all local party executives comply with this Accord if signed by their national leaders’. 6 Gastrow (DP) and Collins (IDASA) faxes to NPI 6/9/91, Carmichael/NPI. 7 Holomisa fax 9/9/91 p.5, Carmichael/NPI. 8 Ibid. 9 Ciskei fax 9/9/1991, Carmichael/NPI.

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After the signing, Ciskei’s legal representative Mickey Webb followed up on 24 September: Ciskei had submitted representations about two ‘serious stumbling blocks in the peace process’: the political use of schools, and the need for media responsibility and thus control. When would these be incorporated?10 By then, amendments were the responsibility of the nascent National Peace Committee. No response is extant. The Commissioner of Police wanted a new clause 3.1.6: ‘The Parties agree to promote that the people … shall at all times respect the integrity and dignity of the South African Police’ and neither hinder nor obstruct them.11 The editors modified this to: ‘Parties, organizations and individuals acknowledge that they too have a contribution to make in the process of sustaining, developing and encouraging a police force of which all South Africans can be proud.’ This would include having respect for their professionalism and ‘assisting the police in the performance of their legitimate duties’ (3.1.6). The IFP ensured the addition of ‘tribal authorities’ to RDRCs (7.4.4.4) but not, as it also wished, ‘town councillors’. It ensured the Preamble would recognize the KZP: ‘The police force, which by definition shall include the police forces of all self-governing territories ….’12 With Buthelezi in mind the IFP also suggested expanding the ban on incitement to include words ‘describing a political leader, political party or an organization in terms calculated to depict them as enemies of the people, or the struggle, or describing them as being treacherous to the cause of justice and peace or casting them as being in consort with any enemy of the people’. The editors agreed on: ‘including that directed against any political party or personality’ (2.4). QwaQwa’s Dikwankwetla party made just one comment: that the objective of development ‘is not reconcilable with the continued application of economic sanctions’.13 The editors added a final clause to the Preamble: ‘This Accord will not be construed so as to detract from the validity of bilateral agreements between any of the signatories.’ A new Editing Committee was tasked with the final negotiating and drafting. Again led by Eloff and van der Merwe, its members were Naidoo, Copelyn, Cheadle, Felgate, Vos, Scheepers – and Deon Rudman, Chief Director of Legislation in the Department of Justice, a legal drafting expert, shortly to become an invaluable member of the National Peace Secretariat. The Editors started work at 3pm on 9 September in the CBM offices, tasked with producing a Final Draft Accord that was ‘99% acceptable to all parties’, thus avoiding substantive amendments at the Convention. Minor alterations on 10 11 12 13

Letter 24/9/91, Carmichael/NPI. Amendments proposed by the Commissioner 9/9/91, Carmichael/NPI. IFP, Provisional proposed Amendments 9/9/91, Carmichael/NPI QwaQwa fax 9/9/1991, Carmichael/NPI.

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the day were still anticipated. Only on 11 September was this ruled out, but the Accord was still viewed as work in progress. Over five hectic days the Editing Committee tweaked details, reconvened Working Groups, created another interim draft, referred to principals, and thrashed out last-minute agreements. Negotiating went late into the night on Thursday 12 September at Barlow Park, and recommenced at the Carlton Hotel on Friday morning. ‘It was’, says Cheadle, ‘a very fraught time, I mean I was working during the day and then doing this at night … I remember at one moment Fanie says to me, “I don’t believe in negotiating through exhaustion!” And of course it’s what we’d learnt in the unions.’14 The final text, finessing the intractable points of weapons and private armies, and promising further work on weapons and an SADF Code, emerged at midday on Friday 13 September to be rushed to the principals for agreement.

Working Group 1: the political Code of Conduct (Chapter 2) Group 1’s task was relatively easy: to lay down norms for political behaviour. Sean Cleary chaired, and Frank Chikane played host in the SACC offices. Cleary informed Jayendra Naidoo, Maritz Spaarwater and Walter Felgate of the Group’s members, and convened them for 4.30pm on Thursday 11 July.15 Cleary’s Minutes, elegantly penned, record Chikane opening with prayer, then Meyer unexpectedly disclosing that he, Mdlalose and Mbeki proposed to assign the chair to Cleary.16 Dr Madide reacted: ‘while the IFP had no objection to the substance of the decision, it felt that such a decision could not be taken by persons not represented in the Working Group’. Zach de Beer suggested the meeting endorse Meyer’s proposal. It did. The WG succeeded, as directed by the Chair, in agreeing on ‘the principles governing democratic, multiparty politics’, and contextualizing them into ‘the reality of the political transition in South Africa, recognising the absence of constitutional guarantees of democracy at this time’. Model codes were available. Cleary had circulated one, which Madide approved; the DP had tabled another at the Summit, which Meyer endorsed. Mufamadi brought an ANC-Alliance draft, ‘noting that it had been based on the Namibian Code and influenced by the DP and Cleary drafts’. Madide read out a draft to be considered at the forthcoming IFP congress. Chikane offered ‘the Code prepared for 14 Cheadle interview. 15 Members: Sydney Mufamadi (COSATU; head of ANC ‘Peace Desk’), Willies Mchunu (ANC) and Essop Pahad (SACP) for ANC-Alliance; Dr Dennis R. B. Madide (KZ Minister of Finance), Mrs E. T. Bhengu and Inkhosi S. H. Gumede for IFP; and Roelf Meyer, Dr Barend ‘Boy’ Geldenhuys MP and Dr Zach de Beer MP (DP) for NP/Government. Fax 9/7/91, Carmichael/Pauquet. 16 Minutes, Carmichael/van der Merwe.

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the week of public demonstrations in Natal in June 1990 and a summary draft prepared by SACC staff ’. Each party agreed to make a composite draft and fax it to Cleary, who would return a consolidated version for consultation in the parties. If necessary Meyer, Mufamadi, Madide and Cleary would iron out differences before the Group met on 24 July to approve the draft for submission to the Preparatory Committee that evening. Chikane closed the meeting in prayer. The submitted draft opened with a preamble: We, participants in the political process in South Africa, representing the political parties and organisations indicated beneath our signatures, condemn the scourge of political violence which has afflicted our country, formally renounce all such practices as have contributed to such violence in the past, and commit our parties and organisations to adhere to the following Code of Conduct.17

In the first round of editing, preambles were consolidated into a single Preamble for the Accord, and these words, lightly modified and shorn of the renunciation clause, became the Accord’s opening statement. The draft went on to announce South Africa’s first multiparty agreement to becoming an inclusive democracy, and to list the rights and principles that underpin democracy. These became the Accord’s first Principles. During final editing Johan Heyns proposed the addition of ‘responsibilities’, so Chapter 1, ‘Principles’, finally opens: 1.1 The establishment of a multiparty democracy in South Africa is our common goal. Democracy is impossible in a climate of violence, intimidation, and fear. In order to ensure democratic political activity all political participants must recognise and uphold certain fundamental rights described below and the corresponding responsibilities underlying those rights.

Six rights follow: freedom of conscience and belief, speech and expression, association, movement, peaceful assembly, and participation in peaceful political activity. Four principles are laid down: that sovereignty derives from the people, who elect their government and hold it accountable; citizens must therefore be informed, and parties and the media must be free to impart opinion and information; ‘there must be an active civil society, with different interests freely represented’; and ‘political parties and organisations, as well as political leaders and other citizens have an obligation to refrain from incitement to violence and hatred’ (NPA 1.2–3). The final Code, NPA Chapter 2, opens with the first draft’s next affirmation: that political parties perform an essential role in the democratic process by organizing their members, debating and advancing different views, and working to translate ideas into policy. In recognition of this role, signatory parties under17

Task Group Documents 2/8/91, Carmichael/van der Merwe.

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take to ‘actively contribute to the creation of a climate of democratic tolerance’ by condemning political violence and acting positively to ensure that parties have free access to their members and supporters (2.2). They will not ‘kill, injure, apply violence to, intimidate or threaten any other person’, nor ‘remove, disfigure, destroy, plagiarise or otherwise misrepresent any symbol or other material of any other political party or organisation’, nor prevent any person from attending a political gathering, or from propagating that party’s message (2.3). They will ‘refrain from incitement to violence or hatred’. Initially, the Code incorporated a controversial ban on carrying weapons at ‘political meetings’. After so much violence around rallies and marches, the Code commits signatories to communicate their plans beforehand to the authorities, to consider foreseeable consequences, and maintain effective communication with other parties at all levels (2.5). This clause contributed to the emergence of the new cooperative style of peace monitoring, which undoubtedly prevented a considerable amount of violence. During final editing a clause was added committing parties to assist the police in dealing with those involved in violence, and not to protect their members from the processes of justice (2.6). This Code of Conduct, occupying a mere page and a half, packed a nation-building punch. It proved a key peacebuilding tool.

Working Group 2: security forces, police Code of Conduct (Chapters 3 and 4) WG2 had the hardest task, producing Chapter 3, a catena of practical agreements mainly concerned with policing, and Chapter 4, an aspirational ‘Police Code of Conduct’; and drafting an SADF Code. Attie du Plessis chaired, and hosted the Group in his Sanlam offices in Johannesburg’s smart satellite municipality of Sandton. Johan Heyns, his co-facilitator, acted as ethical mentor.18 Du Plessis, a keen Afrikaner whose brother Barend was a verligte cabinet minister, appreciated the well-prepared Naidoo and had the novel experience of hearing from Jeremy Cronin, over lunch, about the latter’s seven-year imprisonment, 1976 to 1983, for distributing Communist literature.19. Johan Scheepers, Deputy Minister of Law and Order, a lawyer strongly interested in police transformation, had one-on-one meetings with Naidoo, ‘my wonderful opponent, a very friendly guy and a very nice guy to get to negotiate

18 Members: Aziz Pahad (ANC), Jayendra Naidoo (COSATU), Jeremy Cronin (SACP); Dr Ben Ngubane, Mr N. B. Nkheli, Senzo Mfayela (IFP); Deputy Ministers Johan Scheepers (Law and Order) and Danie Schutte ( Justice), and Miley Richards (Labour Party) (NP/Government). 19 Du Plessis interview.

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with, we sat long hours, many evenings, till very late’.20 Among his principals, he found neither Minister Hernus Kriel nor all the top police Generals wholly welcoming towards new policing policies, but de Klerk gave firm support: ‘I think Mr de Klerk played a major role in listening to what we had to say in the reporting back.’ There were many suggested amendments ‘and I would say a lot of them were accepted’.21 The background for this Group was the deeply ingrained mutual distrust, and frequent violence, between the police and the majority, country-wide. Police had been the enforcers of apartheid, and were still seen as inflictors of violence. By far the majority of deaths by shooting in the 1970s and early 1980s, whether political or crime-related, were caused by police; in 1985 alone, police killed 699 black Africans including 187 juveniles, with 2,312 wounded (Marks, 2005 p.49). Detainees in police cells and Security Branch offices had been tortured and some seventy killed between 1963 and 1989. Resistance involved attacking the police, destroying ‘soft’ vehicles, ‘necklacing’ the black police and torching their homes. The ‘ordinary’ blue-uniformed police were desperately under-staffed, undertrained and under-equipped, and seen as corrupt and implicated in crime and taxi violence. Paramilitary riot police – about to become the Internal Stability Division – were distanced from the people, patrolling in armoured ‘Casspirs’ and ‘Nyalas’. Poor police–community relations were further complicated by the ANC–IFP conflict with its attendant accusations of partiality. The ANC repeatedly cited two incidents: the shooting at Sebokeng on 26 March 1990, and another at Daveyton on the East Rand on 24 March 1991. In Daveyton, a rally to launch an IFP branch was due to start at noon in the central stadium. IFP buses and marchers were expected. An ANC group gathered about a mile away, armed with ‘axes, spears and sticks … discussing strategy in the event of an Inkatha attack’.22 A Riot Police Casspir arrived. An altercation ensued. Howarth (2012 pp.147–51) confirms that the police were attacked while alighting from their Casspir and a young policeman was stabbed and killed. The crew shot twelve residents dead and injured thirty. They pleaded self-defence. The ANC simply condemned the shootings as ‘savage and unprovoked murder.’23 The SAP itself was seeking a new model to replace its old militaristic style. Early in 1991 it initiated a major review, convinced that it would be possible, by consensus, to begin its transformation during the transition years. The resulting Strategic Plan of November 1991 ‘gave its endorsement to Community Policing, which had been the leading influence in policing in western democracies since the 1980s but was entirely new to the South African police’ (Marks, 2005 p.57). This new orientation found its first public expression in the NPA, making its 20 Scheepers interview. 21 Ibid. 22 Christian Science Monitor 27/3/91. 23 Ibid.

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signing ‘an historic event … that radically redefined the mandate for policing, and public order policing especially’ (Ibid. p.58). The peace structures were the first mechanism to enable police and community to work together. The fundamental principle of community policing is ‘policing by consent’, with mutual support and understanding between police and community. It requires structures and training. In the UK, police–community consultative mechanisms became a statutory requirement in 1985. Certain London boroughs, notably Camden where Cape Town-based lawyer Dianna Yach was working, pioneered two mechanisms: police–community forums and accredited ‘lay visitor’ schemes to monitor the treatment of detainees in police cells. Yach, and Chief Superintendent Peter Stevens, who was seconded from Camden to the Commonwealth Observer team with the NPA, helped develop these concepts in South Africa; but the country already had champions of community policing, notably criminology professors Wilfried Scharf and Clifford Shearing at UCT, and law professor Tony Mathews and his advocate wife Mary at the University of Natal. In June 1991, as the Accord negotiations began, a seminal conference on policing the current conflict was jointly hosted in Pietermaritzburg by the Mathews and Prof. Philip Heymann of Harvard Law School. Among papers on policing in the UK, USA and Namibia, lawyer/mediator Nicholas (Fink) Haysom sketched the vision of a professional, neutral force, representative of the community, with mechanisms for local accountability and an independent complaints structure. Haysom’s vision informed the Accord. Judge Richard Goldstone drew lessons from his investigation of the March 1990 Sebokeng shootings. Calling for a new tolerance and respect on the part of the police, he tabled a list of practical questions on policing mass demonstrations (Mathews, Heymann, & Mathews, 1993 pp.131–2). He would thoroughly pursue this topic under the NPA (see p.406). At its initial meeting on 11 July, WG2 decided to focus first on policing. ANC and government tabled drafts, and such was the general consensus on the new direction for policing that Scheepers could report a 90% overlap, with the significant difference in that the ANC wanted the public to control the police whereas the government merely wanted the public to set out their needs. Inkatha, Scheepers reported, came with no plan and wanted to reopen discussion on the necessity for a Police Code.24 Heyns urged that the Code should include ethical norms. The ‘Code’ that emerged is framed as a personal moral commitment to the fundamental principles of community policing. It is headed by an SAP Mission Statement: We undertake, impartially and with regard for the norms of the law and society, to protect the interests of the country and everyone therein against any criminal violation, through efficient service rendered in an accountable manner. (NPA p.17) 24 Van der Merwe’s handwritten note of Scheepers’s report, Carmichael/van der Merwe.

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The Code recognizes that the integrity of the whole police service depends on ‘the degree of personal moral responsibility and professional altruism evident in the behaviour and actions of every individual member’ and that police authority and powers depend on, and are subject to, ‘public approval, and the ability to secure and retain the respect of the public’ (NPA pp.17–18). Members commit themselves to ‘absolute impartiality’; to give effective and friendly service to all; to encourage police–community relationships; to use minimum force and avoid ‘illegal and informal’ coercive actions; never to ‘sacrifice principles by resorting to reprehensible means to secure good ends’; to deal with fellow police according to the law, reporting them if they commit an offence; and to ‘make my personal life an example worthy to be followed by all’ through self-control, honesty, impartiality, and dedicated unselfish service. A few practical matters, such as an assurance that alleged offences by any police member would be thoroughly investigated, were left untidily in the Police Code but received proper treatment in the ‘General Provisions’ chapter. The reciprocal responsibility of the public, to obey the law and cooperate with the police, is mentioned. The Preparatory Committee briefly considered making recommendations for a ‘Code of Conduct for Communities’, but that idea did not progress.

Chapter 3 – security forces: general provisions The Accord’s third chapter is a compendium of agreements, mechanisms, and undertakings related to putting community policing into practice. The police promise to protect the whole population from crime ‘in a rigorously non-­ partisan fashion’, using minimum force, exhibiting conduct that retains the public’s respect: responding promptly, keeping proper records, investigating crimes, and facilitating the judicial process. In return: ‘Parties, organisations and individuals’ acknowledge their reciprocal responsibility to sustain, develop and encourage ‘a police force of which all South Africans can be proud’ (NPA 3.1). It had been a chronic complaint that police vehicles and personnel were hard to identify. ‘Jayendra got very worked up, I remember it so well,’ says du Plessis, ‘on the specific thing of a police car just arriving as a normal car and actually it’s the police.’25 People were arrested, bundled into unmarked vehicles and swallowed into a maze of detention cells across multiple police stations. The NPA provides that uniformed police ‘shall carry a legible external form of identification’. Vehicles must have registration plates and, except for undercover work, ‘an identification number painted on the side’ (3.2.4.5–6). Scheepers found the police happy to paint numbers but the army protested that its vehicles had other uses as well, and was allowed just to ‘display’ numbers when acting in support of the police. Communication had been poor or absent. The Accord stipulated that local police liaison officers be appointed to consult regularly with the local peace 25

Du Plessis interview.

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committee or, in its absence, community leaders. In practice the police placed representatives on all the local and regional peace committees. To improve accountability a ‘Police Reporting Officer’ (PRO; ‘Ombudsman’ in early drafts) would be appointed in each police region, to receive complaints of police misconduct and work with a new national police investigation unit. Appointees would be lawyers, or former prosecutors, magistrates, or policemen, nominated by the Law Societies. PROs were to report their recommendations to the Commissioner of Police, the complainant, and if necessary the National Peace Committee (3.2.4). They took some months to appear and their powers were disputed, but the scheme represented a considerable advance. On public order, this chapter provides that wherever confrontation seems likely, senior officers should be in charge and attempts must be made to negotiate solutions (officers’ training courses began to include negotiation skills). A public address system should be available, orders given in a language the people understand, and reasonable time allowed for dispersal. Force must be the last resort, to protect lives or property (3.2.5). To develop policy, training and efficiency, a ‘Police Board’ was established, composed equally of top officers and members of the public (3.3.1–3; see Chapter 19). A new special investigation unit for political violence was to be formed, to liaise with the Standing Commission, NPC and the proposed Special Criminal Courts (3.2.2.6). With ‘Inkathagate’ and ‘Third Force’ rumours in the news, the ANC was keen to prevent further covert activity or clandestine funding. Chapter 3 allows covert activity only for fighting organized crime, and excludes the use of public funds for any party-political purpose (3.5.2). Should such activities be suspected, powers of search and investigation were accorded to the Commission (3.5.6), which Goldstone would wield to great effect. The two most intractable issues, the carrying of ‘dangerous weapons’ and the existence of ‘private armies’, landed in Chapter 3, necessitating many extra hours of negotiation for WG2 and the final editors. Both topics were hot and emotive, striking at the protagonists’ fears, identity, and pride.

‘Dangerous weapons’ A variety of weapons other than firearms featured in the violence. The ANC strongly protested at the IFP’s habit of carrying them at events such as rallies and funerals. The weapons in question, euphemistically dubbed ‘cultural accoutrements’, were primarily the Zulu stabbing spears (assegais) and clubs (knobkerries), carried with sticks and cowhide shields, but axes, pangas (machetes) and sharpened stakes also featured. In Natal/KwaZulu the colonial Natal Code of 1891 had absolutely forbidden the general public to carry such weapons; but Buthelezi held that as a chief he had a ‘duty to uphold the tradition of carrying

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cultural accoutrements’ ( Jeffery, 2009 p.277). Inkatha supporters were encouraged to attend fully equipped. ‘Cultural’ events were generally also ‘political’ and vice versa. The ANC demanded a ban; the IFP argued that most deaths were caused by firearms. Police statistics suggest otherwise: in 1991, 69% of the 5,138 murders in Natal/KwaZulu were effected by ‘other weapons’.26 The many permutations of the drafts reflect the emotive and intractable nature of this issue. Police had been ignoring the Natal Code in favour of the Dangerous Weapons Act (1968), which appeared to ban possession in public of any object ‘likely to cause serious bodily injury if it were used to commit an assault’. But it contained a catch-all exception clause stating that mere possession was not an offence if the weapon’s possessor was ‘able to prove that he at no time had any intention of using such weapon or object for an unlawful purpose’. Since intentions cannot be proven, police legal advisers ruled that the police could only disarm someone if an offence was actually committed. Even ‘unrest area’ regulations contained similar exception clauses. When lawyers in Natal appealed to the 1891 Code, Minister of Law and Order Adriaan Vlok amended it, introducing seven exception clauses including a ‘cultural’ exception: a person was exempt if ‘able to prove that he had the bona fide intention to carry such dangerous weapons in accordance with traditional Zulu usages, customs or religions’.27 De Klerk, persuaded that traditional Zulus could not even be properly married without such weapons, signed the amendment in August 1990 (De Klerk, 1999 p.249). Mandela’s view was that the government had thus added ‘fuel to the flames’, ‘permitting Zulus to carry so-called “traditional weapons” to political rallies and meetings in Natal and elsewhere. This gave me grave doubts about Mr de Klerk’s peaceful intentions’ (Mandela, 1994 p.705). The ANC’s ultimatum to the President in April 1991 demanded that disarming be an absolute requirement, without exceptions. De Klerk and Vlok flew to Ulundi to negotiate with Buthelezi. They found him adamant. When on 10 May the government announced a prohibition on weapons in unrest areas, spears and knobkerries were absent from the list. The ANC saw the display of weapons as a politically motivated provocation to violence, on a par with verbal insults. The first draft of the political Code reflected this view: All political parties and organisations shall respect and give effect to the obligation to refrain from incitement to violence or hatred. In pursuit hereof:

26 Weekly M&G 4/4/96. 27 Ibid.

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Peacemaking and Peacebuilding in South Africa • All political parties and organisations shall actively discourage and seek to prevent their members and supporters from carrying any weapon of any description to any political meeting; • To the extent that it is customary on certain cultural occasions for those participating to carry traditional or cultural objects which may serve as weapons, such occasions will not be used for party political purposes, or for political attacks or criticism of any other party or political organisation; and • no language calculated or likely to incite violence or hatred shall be used.28

As drafting continued, the exemption for cultural occasions disappeared. WG2 at first favoured a total ban on weapons on both cultural and political occasions for as long as violence persisted, to be imposed by a Government Proclamation – yet it still allowed an exception for weapons at ‘bona fide cultural events’ with magisterial permission, even in violent areas.29 By 8 August, the plan for a Proclamation was temporarily dropped in favour of the proposal that in quiet areas the RDRC or NPC might give permission to carry weapons, and in violent districts the magistrate could allow this provided he obtained approval by consensus from the RDRC and the local police commander, and that an ‘adequate police presence’ could be provided.30 WG2 suggested the Standing Commission might publish schedules declaring which areas were violence-free. Uniquely, the 8 August draft inserted a penalty clause: if violence were to occur due to the presence of ‘cultural weapons’, the organization responsible would be banned from organizing a similar event for three months. Buthelezi absolutely vetoed this clause. It duly vanished. So also did a passing suggestion that only ‘cultural leaders’, not the crowd, should bear weapons. In the penultimate Draft Accord of 23 August, the ‘Dangerous Weapons’ section had two clauses: 3.6.1 The parties agree that the disastrous consequences of widespread violence and the urgent requirement of peace and stability on which to build the common future make it necessary to act decisively to eliminate violence or the threat of violence from a political sphere. 3.6.2 In pursuit of this understanding the parties agree that no dangerous weapons or fire-arms may be possessed, carried or displayed by members of the general public attending any political gathering, procession or meeting.

‘Discussions’, the text continued, ‘between the Government and the ANC and the Government and the IFP on the effective implementation’ of 3.6.2 were continuing. 28 Task Group Documents 2/8/91, Carmichael/van der Merwe. 29 Ibid. 30 Draft NPA, 8/8/91, Carmichael/van der Merwe.

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The final negotiation was carried out on the Editing Committee, beginning at 3pm on Monday 9 September and concluding, with little sleep, at noon on Friday 13th. ‘Dangerous weapons’ was the chief sticking point. Cheadle recalls ‘wanting to tear my hair out with Felgate!’ and ‘meeting with Mandela and Cyril Ramaphosa … they were absolutely adamant that there should be no exception granted’.31 Buthelezi now insisted that the injunction to parties to ‘actively discourage’ carrying of weapons on ‘political’ occasions be excised from the political Code. The editors simply transferred it to the ‘Dangerous Weapons’ section in Chapter 3, as clause 3.6.3, where it somehow passed as a purely security matter: ‘All political parties and organisations shall actively discourage and seek to prevent their members and supporters from possessing, carrying or displaying weapons or firearms when attending any political gathering, procession or meeting’ (3.6.3). The sticking point was reduced to Clause 3.6.2: ‘the parties agree that no dangerous weapons or firearms may be possessed, carried or displayed by members of the general public attending any political gathering, procession or meeting’. Agreement was inexplicably reached late on Friday morning when van der Merwe suggested deleting the adjective ‘dangerous’ from Clause 3.6.2. The section was still headed ‘Dangerous Weapons’, and the injunction to the police to ‘endeavour to disarm those persons illegally bearing dangerous weapons’ (3.2.1.3) stood; but the alteration was suddenly enough, amid mental reservations and exhaustion, and with the renewed promise of a Government Proclamation ‘to implement the principles of paragraph 3.6.2 after consultation with the interested parties’ (3.6.4), to secure assent. Interpretations varied. Government and ANC sources explained that the effect was to forbid all weapons; IFP sources insisted the details were to be negotiated with government. The government, not the NPC, was responsible for negotiating the Proclamation. In the months after the signing Meyer, Scheepers, and van der Merwe held separate consultations with Jacob Zuma and Siphiwe Nyanda (plus Thabo Mbeki for the final agreement) for ANC, and an IFP team of Drs Frank Mdlalose and Ben Ngubane. Meanwhile, in Durban in December, Justice Didcott ruled that the President’s amendment of the Natal Code was invalid. This raised hopes for a complete ban – but the Proclamation, gazetted on 28 February 1992, simply repeated the 1968 exceptions. The IFP accepted, then rejected it. The ANC, in practice, reserved the right to carry whatever its opponents were carrying. The real-life police position was trenchantly expressed by Brigadier Margaret Kruger, SAP legal adviser in Natal and future RPC member: I said to Innes Sonnekus the legal official in Pretoria: ‘Innes, I don’t know how you think I’m going to police this thing, because – I don’t know if you’ve 31

Cheadle interview.

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Peacemaking and Peacebuilding in South Africa seen the size of [warlord] Thomas Shabalala, but if you’ve seen the size of Thomas Shabalala’s spear, he’s going to turn me into a sosatie! Thomas is not going to lay down his spear, so we are not going to be able to implement this legislation in the Province.’ Of course that caused huge issues with Pretoria. But I was adamant, it was just going to cause more violence.32

On 16 July 1992, in anticipation of an ANC ‘mass action’ week, the ANC and IFP signed an agreement brokered by Goldstone on the conduct of demonstrations. For the first time, it absolutely banned carrying ‘dangerous weapons’. The IFP signed but registered its objection to that clause. As late as March 1996, when the Government of National Unity banned the public display of weapons in parts of KwaZulu-Natal, IFP spokesperson Ed Tillett protested at this ‘psychological emasculation of Zulu men’.33

‘Private armies’: MK and SDUs The other intractable issue concerned the ANC’s MK and Self Defence Units (SDUs). The government was adamant that no ‘private armies’ were allowed, whether left or right. MK was unbanned, but the IFP deemed it a ‘private army’. To Buthelezi MK seemed an existential threat, a force intent on killing IFP. The grassroots shared that fear. A hostel spokesperson in Alexandra in 1992, clearly terrified, believed MK cadres were hunting IFP leaders in Natal/KwaZulu and in the Wits/Vaal hostels.34 The ANC retorted that MK was the legitimate national army, and although armed activities were ‘suspended’ it would not be disbanded until political change was irreversible. Ronnie Kasrils’s copy of the NPA contains one handwritten marginal note: ‘SADF not accepted as a national army’.35 In December 1990 the ANC called on MK members to assist SDUs, and MK’s national conference in Venda in August 1991 urged members to play their part in communities under attack. It appears, anecdotally, that few did so, although most remaining MK members trickled home from camps in Tanzania or Uganda in 1991–92 (Cherry, 2011 p.122). The distinction between formal MK and informal SDU members was already blurred. The NPA negotiators had no remit to negotiate a final ceasefire. Nevertheless the government team made one attempt to invite the ANC to ‘end’ armed activity. A paragraph proposed by Scheepers appeared in WG2’s first draft, the italics indicating it was subject to discussion: 11. ARMED STRUGGLE: The following paragraph was proposed, but it was agreed upon that it shall be proposed at the next meeting of the Preparatory Committee for discussion: 32 33 34 35

Kruger interview. Sosatie = kebab. Weekly M&G 4/4/96. Author’s Alexandra Peace Notes 13/9/92. Carmichael. Ronald Kasrils papers, File B 3.7, ad NPA 3.7.3.

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In the interest of moving as speedily as possible towards a negotiated peaceful political settlement and in the context of the agreements reached, the ANC announces that it was ending and not merely suspending all armed actions with immediate effect. As a result of this decision, no further armed actions and related activities by the ANC and Umkonto we Sizwe will take place. It is agreed that the liaison committee, established in the D. F. Malan accord, will resolve all outstanding questions arising out of this decision.

After WG2’s meeting on 7 August, du Plessis informed Hall that the ANC-­ Alliance had objected: this was a matter for the bilateral ANC/Government Liaison Group and lay outside the Group’s terms of reference. After the facilitators’ caucus on 14 August, and before that evening’s meetings, Scheepers withdrew the paragraph. In final editing the IFP attempted to eliminate SDUs and MK by adding ‘allowed or’ to the clause: ‘No private armies shall be allowed or formed’ (3.7.3). Soon after the signing, the IFP lodged a formal complaint with the NPC against the ANC for keeping MK.36

SDUs and SPUs It was incontrovertible that the ANC and Civics had promoted SDUs, but the ANC maintained the fiction that SDUs were community-based, not politically based, and hence not ‘private’. They were shadowy bodies, usually not well organized. In November 1990 Ronnie Kasrils published a clandestine handbook, For the Sake of our Lives! Guidelines for the Creation of Peoples’ Self-defence Units.37 Explicitly an ANC document, it gives directions for establishing and deploying SDUs, depicting them as disciplined and heroic. When it was leaked to Business Day in mid-April 1991, it had reportedly been discussed in the ANC’s regions and was due to be distributed to branches. It is unclear how widely it was known; it did inform the actions of Thokoza SDUs in 1993.38 Kasrils argues that, to maintain the people’s trust, the ANC must build defence units against the onslaught by ‘security forces, vigilante groups and hit-squads’ (1.1). In 1990–91 this translated into fighting the police and IFP, perceived as a single enemy. SDUs should not be ‘affiliated’ to a political party (1.3) yet they needed ‘firm political direction’ (1.10) and MK cadres ‘must play a leading and active role’ (1.6). Instructions are provided for recruiting, training, structure, intelligence, fortification, barricades, street defence, night patrols, and first aid; and on how to persuade hostel dwellers, black soldiers, and police to change sides. Ironically, Kasrils advocates using ‘rudimentary weapons’ such as clubs and spears: ‘We need to face the fact that it is going to be a problem to obtain the necessary firearms’ (6.6). 36 See pp.161, 211. 37 Ronald Kasrils Papers, B3.2, SDUs. 38 See p.373.

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What of peacemaking? The book admits a ‘political solution to this problem must be sought’ (1.3). Talks with Inkatha were ‘important’ and campaigns to improve township–hostel relations ‘imperative’. Nothing is said about improving police–community relations, except that pressure must be put on the regime to ‘force the government to curb the killers’. When Business Day exposed this handbook the ANC said it merely taught community defence. A police spokesperson retorted that it appeared to teach armed aggression, and no private armies would be tolerated. An ANC spokesperson claimed five SDUs had just been set up in the Vaal, including Boipatong and Sebokeng, and would operate mainly through night patrols to search suspicious-­ looking cars.39 Most ‘SDUs’ seem in reality to have been youths mounting nightwatches, supplied by older ‘comrades’ with guns and food. Local ANC leaders were aware of them but, if questioned, denied knowledge. The ANC continued to disown SDUs at the TRC, saying they were under community control and consequently the ANC had no records of MK’s involvement (Cherry, 2011 p.119). And yet – Scheepers reported from WG2 that the ANC was arguing that SDUs were a political matter, so should be discussed on Group 1, and that although the Group had agreed there should be no ‘private armies’, the ANC nevertheless insisted ‘they are going to keep their SDUs’.40 At final editing the ANC proposed: ‘Such units may only be established by LDRCs and shall be accountable to LDRCs.’ Instead a new clause was agreed: ‘All existing structures called self-defence units shall be transformed into self protection units’ (NPA 3.7.6). The ‘SPUs’ are defined as non-political neighbourhood associations, bearing licensed arms, ‘to prevent crime and to prevent any invasion of the lawful rights of such communities’ (3.7.1). A ‘liaison structure’ should exist between the SPU and the police (3.7.4). When police invited the ANC to apply this provision they met with evasion, and no transformation of an SDU into an SPU is recorded.

NPA as Police Directive The Accord was to be issued, ‘where applicable’, as a directive by the Commissioner of Police, and ‘if necessary, the Police Act and regulations will be amended accordingly’ (NPA 3.8.1). The Accord also became binding on the SADF ‘in as much as it performs any policing function’ (3.8.4); and on the governments and police forces of any signatory SGT (3.8.5). Where the police force of any SGT was ‘alleged to be a party to the conflict’, the Commission was to investigate and make recommendations (NPA 3.4.1–2).

39 SAPA reports 16/4/91 in Ronald Kasrils Papers, B3.2. 40 Van der Merwe’s note of Scheepers’ report to Government after 11/7/91, Carmichael/van der Merwe.

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SADF Code of Conduct The ANC pressed for a Code of Conduct for the army (SADF) because SADF units had been deployed in the townships since 1984 in support of the police, and because the ANC feared continued covert operations by Military Intelligence. By 1991, however, the SADF were generally earning respect in the townships, being better disciplined, less biased and more effective at confronting violent groups than were the police. SADF officers reportedly saw no need for a code beyond the existing Military Discipline Code. The fundamental question concerned the military philosophy that should govern the future ‘SA National Defence Force’ (SANDF). An initial draft was submitted in early August by the SADF and Deputy Minister of Defence Wynand Breytenbach.41 A progressive document, it shifted the focus of military allegiance from the government of the day to law and the Constitution, placing responsibility on each individual soldier: 11. The soldier is protected against the abuse of military authority by the legal requirement to refuse orders which violate the South African Constitution, national laws, applicable international conventions and the provisions of this Code. Every soldier accepts full responsibility for his or her orders and the execution thereof. The soldier equally enjoys the right of every citizen to be protected by the laws of the country.42

The ANC reacted positively. As with the police provisions, it wanted additional items including an Ombudsperson and a National Defence Commission. It was 9 September when a second draft went to the MK leadership.43 It was not ready for inclusion in the NPA, which just carries a note that a Code was ‘being negotiated under the auspices of the NPC’ (3.9). Meanwhile, the Accord itself applied to the SADF ‘inasmuch as it performs any ordinary policing function’ (NPA 3.8.4). Work continued, although the IFP boycotted that sub-committee in protest at the existence of MK.44 A press furore resulted when the draft Code, tabled in confidence at the Full NPC on 30 April 1992, was leaked. It enjoined soldiers to ‘refuse to obey any orders which are manifestly beyond the scope of the authority of the superior officer issuing them and are so manifestly and palpably illegal that a reasonable person in the circumstances of the soldier would know them to be palpably illegal’.45 This provision, normal in Western armies, was shockingly new to South Africa. The final text, a one-pager, was tabled at the NPC Executive on 5 October

41 Natal Mercury 23/9/91. 42 Draft 9/9/91, faxed from Cheadle, Thompson and Haysom, Carmichael/NPI. 43 Ibid. 44 See p.211. 45 Addenda, NPC Admin Agenda 10/8/93, Carmichael/Pauquet.

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1993, replacing section 3.9 in a draft revised NPA.46 The eventual SANDF Code incorporated its contents, including the undertaking to disobey clearly illegal commands.47

Working Group 3: socio-economic reconstruction and development (Chapter 5) There was general agreement that poor socio-economic conditions, if not themselves the cause of violence, contributed to it; and violence itself created needs for relief and reconstruction. The formidable task of pointing ways forward was entrusted to WG3. COSATU representative Alec Erwin, National Education Officer for the National Union of Metalworkers (NUMSA), chaired this Group; its facilitators were Jabu Mabuza and Desmond Tutu. The ANC supplied its senior economic advisor Don Mkhwanazi, with Jeff Radebe (ANC Southern Natal Chair), industrial-­relations academic Blade Nzimande (SACP), unionist Willies Mchunu and Jacob Zuma (founder in 1991, with Frank Mdlalose, of the ‘Peace and Development Foundation’ in Natal/KwaZulu). IFP representatives were Walter Felgate, personnel officer S. Johnny Mhlungu and Lionel P. H. M. Mtshali, KwaZulu Minister of Education. The NP/Government sent the Deputy Ministers of Education and Development, Piet G. Marais, and Agriculture, A. T. ‘Tobie’ Meyer (Roelf ’s elder brother), and Ismail Omar (Solidarity). Erwin and most of the political members were Natal-based and knew one another from previous peace efforts. The Group met in Johannesburg on the evening of 11 July.48 No minutes survive but Marais, reporting to government, said the ANC had tabled a document, and that Inkatha did not want to come to any conclusions at this first meeting but would make proposals next time.49 The Process Group noted on 12 July that Group 3 ‘may take the longest to arrive at practical recommendations because of the enormity of the issues’. Mabuza recalls a division of labour into short-term and long-term issues, Tutu and himself focusing on the short term.50 The Group realized the topic needed far longer, and many more role-players. After meeting probably twice more, WG3 reported to the Preparatory Committee on 24 July that it intended to set out general principles while focussing on immediate, short-term reconstruction needs. It envisaged greater problems with regard to identifying ‘long-term developmental priorities’.51 It was granted an extra week to submit its draft, because one party (IFP) had not completed 46 47 48 49 50 51

NPC Executive Minutes 5/10/93, Carmichael/Pauquet. www.resdal.org/Archivo/d0000124.htm [accessed 20/2/21]. Fax re. travel expenses 23/9/91, Carmichael/NPI. Van der Merwe’s notes of reports, Carmichael/van der Merwe. Mabuza interview. Minutes 24 July, Carmichael/Pauquet.

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consultations. By 2 August the Group had opted for a minimal, compact text. It directed the NPC and RDRCs to establish permanent SERD sub-committees, and gave guiding principles for inclusive, community-based reconstruction and development, with pointers to immediate action. Its first draft also proposed two regional SERD sub-groups, focussed on Natal and the PWV.52 Regrettably this proposal, which might have brought an early concentration of SERD resources to these regions, did not survive further. Just two pages long, Chapter 5 looked to mobilize public and private resources, meet immediate needs for relief and the reintegration of the displaced, reform cumbersome governmental structures and facilitate equitable longer-term development in housing, services, education, health, job creation and land use. It represents a first sketch towards the ANC’s Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) of April 1994. Its content, and how SERD worked in practice, are explored in Chapter 15.

Working Group 4: implementing the Accord (Chapters 6–10) Experience had shown that it was inadequate to rely on the good intentions of the protagonists to build the peace they made, and that implementation mechanisms would be essential to translate the Accord from aspiration into concrete reality. Peace is a process, as trainers were soon repeating, and processes need facilitating. Previous agreements had lacked robust, pro-active follow-up. There was no model for a formal, nation-wide network of peace structures, an ‘infrastructure for peace’. Inspiration for what emerged came entirely from within South Africa. The confidence that such mechanisms could be effective came from the knowledge that shop-floor committees had enabled Recognition Agreements and Codes of Conduct to work in practice. WG4 was chaired by Dr Frank Mdlalose (IFP), facilitated by Bobby Godsell and Rev. Ray McCauley (usually represented by his aide Rev. Ron Steele) and had high-powered membership.53 Godsell played host at the Anglo American offices, 44 Main St, Johannesburg, where it convened, with sandwiches provided, from 2 to 5pm on Thursday 11 July. Steele (1992 p.165) writes, ‘I gained great admiration for Bobby Godsell and his incisive way of assisting the political players. I hope that Ray’s and my prayers had something to do with it!’ Prayer 52 Task Group Documents 2/8/91, Group 3, 4.2, Carmichael/van der Merwe. 53 Gert Myburgh MP and Deputy Ministers Danie Schutte ( Justice) and Johan Scheepers (Law and Order) (NP/Government); Musa Zondi and V. B. Ndlovu (IFP). The ANC-Alliance initially nominated Johnny Copelyn (COSATU) and two of MK’s high command: Chris Hani and Ronnie Kasrils. Kasrils does not recall being nominated. Hani and Kasrils were withdrawn, after being invited by Godsell but before the first meeting, and replaced by Thabo Mbeki (ANC) and Sam Shilowa (SACP).

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and sandwiches make invaluable accompaniments to peacemaking. The Group’s task was to plan the peace structures and examine how the Standing Commission, about to become law, could be integrated into them. Discussion began with the tabling, by government, of proposals for peace structures from national down to regional and local level (Ibid.). As Cleary points out, government had its model in the previous National Security structure.54 The negotiations were smooth, entailing few alterations. The resulting peace structures were headed by three complementary national bodies: a National Peace Committee (NPC), National Peace Secretariat (NPS), and the Commission of Inquiry Regarding the Prevention of Public Violence and Intimidation (Goldstone Commission).55 Beside them stood a fourth, the highly specialized Police Board, working far from the public eye but contributing significantly to police transformation. The NPC presided; the NPS, the ‘engine room’, was responsible for establishing and supporting the regional and local structures.

Special Criminal Courts Schutte announced an additional proposal, for Special Criminal Courts, at WG4’s first meeting. A brief Chapter 10 proposing these Courts concludes the Accord. The slowness and inefficiency of the justice system, which frequently released alleged violent offenders on bail, had caused much mistrust and resentment. Schutte proposed the Department of Justice should consult with the Law Societies and Bar on establishing Special Courts to accelerate the process, necessarily using ‘special procedural and evidential rules’, offering witness protection, and being located where violence was occurring. Mobile courts were mooted. The proposal fell away when, instead, the Criminal Procedure Act was amended to allow fast-tracking of ‘political’ violence cases.

Speeding to agreement: the last-minute knife-edge Buthelezi had been in constant touch during final editing, but the text agreed at noon on Friday 13 September needed approval by the other two principals. Fanie van der Merwe with Deon Rudman speeded along the highway to Pretoria (limit 120kph). Caught at 160kph, he for once pulled rank, waving his ID and asserting he could not be stopped. The report-back to de Klerk and his ministers, in the President’s office in the Union Buildings, was uneventful until the phone rang. It was Mandela.56 Johnny Copelyn and Jayendra Naidoo, arriving during a meeting of the ANC’s NEC, had presented the text to Mandela. Copelyn understands that Mandela had ‘indicated to an inner circle that he was fed up with this whole 54 Cleary interview. 55 See organogram, p.200. 56 Fanie van der Merwe interview.

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programme and thought negotiating with Buthelezi was really giving him too much status’; the ANC should make agreements with government, and it was up to government to bring its dependants into line.57 Mandela had not, Copelyn thought, ‘really listened to the Accord concept. … and I would say people had expected that there would be no Accord, because we couldn’t reach agreement on this traditional weapons point.’ Surprisingly the Accord now existed, but on being presented with it ‘Mandela said that: No, look, this is all poppycock as far as he’s concerned. He must phone de Klerk, and de Klerk’s got to sort this thing out.’ The room full of fifty people agreed that, rather than just sign, he should phone de Klerk. He did so in front of everyone, and told de Klerk the text was unacceptable as drafted and he must bring Buthelezi into line. ‘De Klerk said: “Look, Mr Mandela, I’m sorry to say this to you but Chief Buthelezi is not going to just take my instructions. … and we are committed to this Accord, I believe Inkatha is committed to it, I really would appeal to you to also try and commit yourself to it.”’ The Convention, he said, was all prepared, the government would be there, and ‘“if you feel that the ANC don’t want to be there, well I – well there’s nothing I can really do about it.”’58 It was, Copelyn thought, ‘Mandela at his worst … I thought he was absolutely out of line, he had no idea of the substance of this thing, and no real thoughtfulness in negotiation.’ Discussion went on, ‘and I tried again to say: “Look we’ve actually reached an Accord, we don’t have to fight about this thing!” And suddenly, you know, he said: “Look, fine. We’ll sign this thing as it is then.”’59 Van der Merwe and Rudman were still in the President’s office. Van der Merwe’s recollection is that Mandela said he was not going to sign because his people were telling him the IFP did not intend to abide by the weapons clause. At this, van der Merwe says, de Klerk gave up and went home, telling him to deal with it. Racing back to the Carlton, van der Merwe found Mdlalose, got Mandela on the phone, gave Mdlalose the handset and listened as the doctor in his most reassuring bedside manner told ‘Madiba’ that of course the IFP intended to comply. Mandela responded that, very well, he would be there and would sign.60 Of the three principals, only de Klerk had no last-minute hesitations. Godsell has an abiding memory of that night before the signing ceremony, standing with Danie Schutte at the capacious Anglo photocopier, frantically reeling off copies of the National Peace Accord. Over 400 were produced, on one-sided A4 paper in deep blue covers with cloth strip binding, displaying the Convention’s indaba logo. All was ready for the signing.

57 Copelyn interview. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid. 60 Fanie van der Merwe interview.

10 Signing up to Peace: The National Peace Convention This historic day, quite unparalleled in the annals of our land.1

Introduction Members of the Preparatory Committee, staff, and delegates from afar spent Friday night in the Carlton Hotel, rising thirty stories from Main Street in the central business district. In its spacious second-floor conference hall, a blue backdrop and white table flags displayed the Convention logo. Registration tables bore 400 ‘briefcases’ containing the Accord, agenda, leaders’ statements, Peace Pledges for non-signatories, and an organogram of the projected peace structures. All was prepared for a seamless roll-out. Then came a surprise.

The impi and the Archbishop At 6am, dawn broke and the street below came alive with several thousand uninvited guests, Zulus from the hostels complete with shields, sticks, knobkerries, spears and a scattering of less traditional sharp objects. Ostensibly, they came spontaneously. The King’s presence had been heralded in the media. ‘So’, Buthelezi unswervingly maintains, ‘I really wouldn’t think there was anything mysterious about it, that people would quickly whip up feelings and say: “Let’s go and honour the King.”’2 He and his colleagues simply repeated: ‘You can’t prevent them from honouring their King!’ Just one news report leaked what many suspected: ‘Derrick Mgaga, the IFP’s Natal regional secretary, said word was sent out to IFP branches in the Transvaal to come to the Carlton yesterday, and to bring their “cultural weapons” because King Goodwill would be there.’3 1 2 3

Desmond Tutu, closing prayer. SABC video, Vrye Weekblad 20–26/9/91. Buthelezi interview. Peta Thornycroft, David Breier, Carina le Grange, and SAPA, ‘Armed Zulus Steal the Limelight’, Sunday Star 15/9/91. Mgaga also represented an inkhosi in Transvaal hostels.

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The crowd was hardly apolitical. Numerous IFP T-shirts and flags accompanied posters hailing Buthelezi as ‘Prince of peace’. A song proclaimed: ‘Mandela, you will not rule the world!’ A handwritten banner complained: ‘We die because our liberation movements are colonized or married to foreign “isms”’ Live TV coverage of the whole day, on a spare SABC channel, began at 8am.4 The ‘impi’ numbered around four thousand and growing. White public order (riot) police in camouflage but without rifles, nonchalant but nervous, lined a hastily cleared path to the entrance. They had offered to store ‘traditional weapons’ in a Casspir. There were no takers. An ANC observer would immediately think: ‘The police are doing nothing.’ Inside the Carlton, weary negotiators woke to the curious Ssssh, Ssssh sound as shoals of warriors jogged this way and that, hissing and chanting, led by their indunas. Memories are vivid: ‘They surrounded the hotel, and we were in there. Phew!’ (Halton Cheadle). ‘Some of the ANC members, and especially those from Xhosa-speaking parts, came to me and said, “We are intimidated by the impis in the street”. And I said, “What are you talking about?” They said: “Come and have a look!”’ (Theuns Eloff). ‘All of them in regalia, with shields, knobkerries and spears, and extremely tense’ (Zirk Gous, SAP). ‘I hear the blooming noise out there! And we go down, and it’s impis! Streets full of impis, armed to the teeth! And here I find Oom Frank [Mdlalose] standing. And I say to him, “But Oom Frank, what is this now?” He says, “Agh, you can’t stop them from honouring their king!”’ (Fanie van der Merwe). ‘I remember my brother panicking, because my brother was driving me to the Carlton Centre, and when he saw these men with their – he said: “I can’t leave you here!” And I said to him: “I have to come to the meeting!”’ (Brigalia Bam). ‘Can you imagine what the fear was, that this has been, you know, one of those set-up Dingaan things! This time we were brought into the kraal to be slaughtered, actually!’ (Aziz Pahad). As the morning progressed, ‘I could see some of the mob swigging bottles of alcohol’ (Steele, 1992 p.177). TV trucks moved in front of the hotel entrances, to block any attempt to rush them; but the crowd remained disciplined. The media had no doubt that this was an intentional show of strength by Buthelezi. TV commentator Lester Venter reflected that Buthelezi had realized by about halfway through 1990 that the process was becoming bilateral, had started dealing himself in. Later in the day Venter reflected that in fact the impi had served the conference well: ‘A considerable degree of displeasure’ had been voiced by diplomats and many delegates: and I think what lay at the heart of their displeasure was that the presence of the Inkatha impis brought a distinctly political tone, a sectarian character 4

This chapter is indebted to the SABC TV videos, lent to the author by Attie du Plessis and digitized.

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Peacemaking and Peacebuilding in South Africa to the proceedings – and that’s not even to mention the fact that all of these people were armed, with spears, clubs, shields – so-called traditional weapons, while the very point of this Convention was to defuse the sort of situation created in those circumstances – and I think it’s fair to deduce, that the Inkatha delegation … realized that that presence was working counter-­ productively and that it was a detraction from the level at which people wanted this conference to take place: that is, the level above party political considerations, above ethnic and other ideological considerations.5

Most incensed was Media Coordinator Marius Kleynhans, his weeks of careful build-up subverted: ‘I was livid! I wasn’t part of any Zulu scheme! … I wanted the next day’s newspapers and the evening’s to have this Accord as the main paragraphs – and what was on the front pages? The Zulu intimidation!’6 Dramatic images did indeed appear, but coverage of the Accord itself was thorough and positive, and peace headlines predominated for weeks afterwards. The police were nonplussed. The SAP’s Captain Peche had an altercation with IFP official Musa Myeni who obstreperously refused to order the people away from the entrances. If the people were removed, he threatened, Buthelezi would not sign!7 Col. Zirk Gous, ex- Security Branch, who was leading a police initiative to get to know the different parties in the region and about to become the police representative on the RDRC, ‘got a call from our colleagues from the public order police to say: “Guys, big problems here.”’8 Reaching the impi he found a short Zulu wearing a ‘Hagar the Horrible’ Viking helmet, claiming to be a leader and explaining they wanted to honour the King. A rumour circulated that ANC counter-forces were coming. The police prepared to segregate the parties, but no ANC materialized. ANC leaders said they had instructed supporters not to come, to avoid clashes. It was a first practical test for mediators. Minister of Law and Order Hernus Kriel was overheard saying: “They must go, but we can’t use force.”9 None of the IFP delegation dared speak to Buthelezi. Maintaining that the demonstration was purely for the King, Mdlalose took Cleary to speak with an elderly Zulu prince. The facilitators swallowed their anger – Heyns, Lubbe recalled, was ‘very angry’ – and shuttled about trying to ensure the ANC leadership accepted ‘the notion that this impi was being deployed in honour of the king and not as a provocation to the ANC’.10 Eventually Eloff got Roelf Meyer to ask de Klerk to speak to Buthelezi. ‘And I gather that Buthelezi initially said “Look, they have 5 6 7 8 9 10

SABC TV video, Carmichael/du Plessis. Kleynhans interview. City Press 15/9/91. Gous interview. Star on Sunday 15/9/91. Cleary interview.

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a democratic right to be here, I can’t speak to them, you know” – and F. W. [de Klerk] strong-muscled him, and said, you know, “You will talk to them.”’11 At the lunch break the King and Buthelezi stood, with their business-suited entourage, on the low roof of the hotel entrance, using large megaphones to address 5,000 attentive faces below. TV cameras on a balcony above relayed the panorama. Sticks and spears waved in unison to the royal salute: ‘Bayete!’ The few women ululated. After twenty minutes Buthelezi suggested that the people might now feel free to go, which they did promptly and peacefully. Not far away, near Westgate station, two of them were killed.12 As the crowd dispersed the SABC’s Adrian Steed interviewed a jubilant Archbishop Tutu on the TV balcony.13 Did this Accord have a chance of succeeding? It was, Tutu said, ‘an incredible document, it’s incredible when you come to think of who put it together’. This very unlikely meeting ‘is happening, and that is a miracle! … I don’t mean that we have got our troubles behind us, but this is the start of a very important process: peace for all of our people in this country, stability and prosperity – they’re a possibility!’ The Accord contained ‘mechanisms and many, many useful suggestions’ to reach the grassroots. The Codes of Conduct aimed at cultivating tolerance, ‘to say: ‘Enough is enough. Stop this violence, or very soon we will have very few people to enjoy the new South Africa which is just on the horizon.’ Tutu felt almost everyone present was really committed to peace, and ‘we are on the threshold of wonderful possibilities in our country’. Once people get talking, ‘they make a major discovery: that they are human, and that they long for the same sorts of things: they want peace, they want a good home for their children, they want good schools; and colour and race are total irrelevancies, and that we have in common, humanity.’ Steed probed: the Zulus in the street were ‘grassroots level’. Was the message going to filter down there? Tutu responded ‘I’m quite certain that ultimately they will have moral pressure from their leadership’, saying they could honour their king – ‘but remember that there are other people around: live and let live!’ That should percolate to everybody in this country. ‘I mean, we’ve got to put the best appearance to everything, and believe that everybody is a saint until the contrary is proven.’ Steed commented that the situation could have been explosive. Tutu applauded the police for showing they could handle explosive situations by defusing them, ‘and this is precisely what this Peace Accord is talking about, that the police must be seen as the friend of the people’.14 Tutu said he was ‘sad that the right-wing did not pitch up’. He wanted to believe they too were committed to peace and the resulting investments and development: 11 Eloff interview. 12 City Press 22/9/91. 13 SABC TV video, Carmichael/Attie du Plessis. 14 Ibid.

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On whether the peace structures would work, Tutu responded animatedly: ‘Well let’s give them a shot! I mean we’ve never had anything like this, where the major parties have reached such a broad consensus! Let’s give them a shot! I mean, we’ve nothing to lose – except our lives if it doesn’t work!’ Steed remarked on Tutu’s ‘jubilant mood’. Tutu rejoined: ‘I believe that this is God’s world and God is in charge, and God wants us to live, all of us, harmoniously together: and, if God is in charge, St Paul says: “If God is for us, who can be against us?”’ Steed asked for a ‘final word for our viewers please?’ It was: ‘I want to assure you that this country is a great country, and that it’s got some wonderful people, and that peace will happen, with justice.’ A week later Tutu repeated these points in a newspaper article, urging readers to build on the hope of the Accord ‘by implementing, monitoring, enforcing and improving the agreement’.16 A taste of the leadership the Archbishop might have given had he stayed in the peace structures.

The Convention: morning session The morning’s Convention programme had proceeded regardless of the impi. Nearly 400 delegates, staff, and observers were seated by 8.45am. Until lunchtime a partition divided the hall, the Convention taking place in the ‘Highveld Room, the world’s press gathered in the ‘Lowveld Room’ watching on CCTV. At lunch the partition was removed for the signing ceremony. Mandela arrived punctually with Cyril Ramaphosa, Jacob Zuma, Thabo Mbeki and Joe Slovo, followed by de Klerk with Ministers Gerrit Viljoen, Hernus Kriel, Kobie Coetsee and R. F. ‘Pik’ Botha, and the Zulu King whose literally heavy security detail caused the hotel escalator to halt. Eventually Buthelezi entered, after a tense wait while business leaders attended to his broken reading glasses. Buthelezi and the IFP delegation of Frank Mdlalose, S. J. Mhlungu, K. Musa Zondi, Mrs E. T. Bhengu and Mrs F. X. Gasa all vigorously shook hands as they passed the government team. No one doubted who were the main signatories, but the occasion celebrated equality: every political organization sent five delegates, and they and the unions were invited to sign – although several unions, black and white, said there had not been time to consult their members, so they would support the Accord without signing. 15 Ibid. 16 Tutu, ‘Miracle Must Work or We’re for the Birds’, Star on Sunday 22/9/91.

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AZAPO’s top four attended: President Pandelani Nefolovhodwe, J. T. Seoka, M. Mabopane and Libon Mabasa. WOSA sent its full five, as did the PAC led by President Clarence Makwetu, Benny Alexander and Barney Desai (replacing Dikgang Moseneke). The SGTs and TBVC States were fully represented, the Transkei and Ciskei delegations led by Holomisa and Gqozo, Bophuthatswana and Venda by high-ranking deputies Rowan Cronje and T. G. Ramabulana. Civil society, represented by the churches, business and employers’ organizations, could sign Peace Pledges. The diplomatic corps (35) and media editors (43) made a 78-strong force of observers. The Agenda carried no names for the Chairs. John Hall stood up to welcome everyone and disclosed that he and Sam Motsuenyane had that honour. The meeting grew solemn as Hall called for a minute’s silence to remember all victims of violence. Ds Johan Heyns prayed intensely in Afrikaans, a Hindu swami quoted Tagore, a Muslim Imam read in Arabic and English. A liberal Rabbi was present, but did not lead a prayer. It was the first national occasion when traditions other than Christian offered prayers. A telegram arrived for Heyns from one shocked TV viewer: ‘If you are a born-again Christian you will get up and walk out NOW.’ Heyns showed it to Gerrie Lubbe, organizer of the prayers, seated next to him. ‘And – I admired him, he stayed put, you know! He didn’t go; but that was the kind of resistance there was.”17 Hall set the scene for a ‘day which will go down in history as a commitment by the country’s leadership to peace’.18 It was a stage in the process that began with the President’s Summit, then the gathering on 22 June, the negotiation – and the Accord was still ‘not necessarily the final version’. The Preparatory Committee, Hall continued, had committed to its own ‘Code of Conduct’: to look to the future, be part of the solution, and treat one another with mutual respect. That vow had ‘held our Committee together in times of considerable difficulty’. The process had been ‘both enlightening and uplifting as we have experienced South Africans finding each other as never before in the spirit of negotiation and compromise. It is actually possible.’ Church and business might seem ‘strange bedfellows’ but ‘the inspiration of church and the pragmatism of business leaders’ had made their unique contributions. The facilitators had also in a way represented the general public. Today’s signing ‘will reinforce the commitment to peace by those representing the majority of the population’; and hopefully the Accord ‘will restore to the security forces the respect they so urgently need so that they can establish law and order in the communities’. Sam Motsuenyane, with deep gravitas, took over the chair. Each Working Group had ten minutes to present their chapters, before comments from the floor. 17 18

Lubbe interview. SABC video, Carmichael/du Plessis. Text, Carmichael/Pauquet.

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Cleary solemnly read clauses from the Preamble, Principles, and political Code. All had agreed that ‘the establishment of a multiparty democracy in South Africa is our common goal’. As Cleary concluded, Hall interjected with a single brief mention of the impi: ‘We did have a comment from the floor about the sight of armed people outside. In these times, peace and safety must be assured, and we trust the people outside have that in mind.’ Attie du Plessis outlined the ‘general provisions’ for the police, mentioning that work on the SADF Code continued. Johan Scheepers presented the police Code of Conduct and the new measures for accountability, saying the thrust of the Accord was towards the professionalization of the police, with better selection and training, keeping the needs of the community in clear view. Jabu Mabuza, also sticking closely to the text, enthusiastically relayed the chapter on SERD with its principle of grassroots community involvement. The peace structures would be expected not merely to respond to crises but to establish sub-committees to tackle immediate needs and identify developments to prevent violence. Bobby Godsell sketched the peace structures, drawing attention to the basic organogram in the Convention packs. ‘Clearly, affirming peace at a Convention such as this one will not of itself produce peace on the streets.’ Implementation was all. The structures will ‘translate the peace words of this Convention into the peace deeds of the weeks and months that lie ahead’. South Africa was entering into the practicalities of a negotiated transition. The structures were practical expressions of this changed process, with three new national institutions: the NPC to enable continued cooperation between the parties and ‘drive the peace process’, the NPS to establish and support the regional and local peace committees, and the Commission to inquire into violence and intimidation. The regional committees would include civil leadership as well as political. But it was at local level, through the LDRCs, that the conditions for ‘real and lasting peace on the ground’ must ultimately be established. LDRC members would be drawn from local leadership, political and civil. It was intended to appoint additional Justices of the Peace to be ‘the eyes and ears of the local peace committees’, to hear complaints and mediate disputes. The hope was to establish the peace structures in days or weeks, not months or years. If people lent support, ‘we are convinced they can transform the daily lives of all South Africans’. They could, but Godsell’s time-scale was just a tad ambitious. The floor was open. Runners took ‘Permission to speak’ forms to the Chair. Speakers had two minutes at the lectern. The Editing Committee sat poised to capture any suggested amendments, for the future NPC. Up first, Ismail Omar from the Solidarity Party, praising the multiparty nature of the Convention, suggested a moratorium on all political activities while establishing the Accord. Major-General Bantu Holomisa, taking four minutes, affirmed that Transkei would underpin any efforts for peace (and he signed a Peace Pledge on Transkei’s behalf) but reiterated his criticisms: the

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Accord did not spell out the causes of violence, nor provide certainty about the constitutional path to be followed – and uncertainty about that would breed violence. The causes, and the reasons why previous accords broke down, should have been investigated. A Code of Conduct for the ‘various governments’ was needed, to curb whoever had access to State machinery. The Preparatory Committee’s initiative was appreciated, but everyone should have been involved. Amichand Rajbansi (National People’s Party) expatiated on the need for a culture of tolerance, engagement at grassroots, and involving everyone across South Africa’s diverse society through a peace slogan, an emblem, and a joint Peace Day. Bishop Stanley Mogoba said he spoke on behalf not of a church but of the suffering people. Violence was ‘a national shame’. Not all at grassroots were reachable by newspapers and TV, so opposing leaders must be seen together at rallies, nationally and locally with local leaders on the ground. He called for a series of joint rallies and backed a moratorium on all other major political activities, until 31 December (unrealistic, in view of the impending Patriotic Front gathering and the push for constitutional talks). A Transkeian chief underlined the peacemaking role of traditional leaders and regretted they had not been consulted more. M. J. Mahlangu of the Lebowa ‘homeland’ welcomed parties to organize in chiefs’ areas – but please do it without killing, and ask permission for rallies. He thought the time not right for SPUs; they could lead to violence. David Dalling of the DP said there existed a ‘bureaucratic morass’ around permissions for rallies and marches, which sparked confrontations with the police and urgently required simplification. QwaQwa’s Chief Minister, Dr T. K. Mopeli, complained that police only investigated after a complaint was laid and hence failed to act on the spot. Du Plessis responded that the police had now made an undertaking to protect, so they must be pro-active. P. J. Heymans for the white and black white-collar unions in FEDSAL, and AZAPO-supporting NACTU, both said they hoped to consult further and then commit themselves. An oddball named V. P. Shange, of the ‘PAC in South Africa’ declared they were now ready to sign, as the government was now willing to negotiate – but the greatest cause of violence was unemployment, so he was appealing to industrialists to provide jobs, and to the church to remember ubuntu … Eventually Motsuenyane stopped the flow, and Hall clarified that Shange was an ‘observer’ who did not represent the mainline PAC. Nor did he sign. Before the coffee break at 10.45, Motsuenyane drew attention to the Peace Pledges included in the conference packs. Individuals or non-signatory organizations could align with the Accord by signing a Pledge committing themselves to peaceful political activity, supporting and participating in the peace structures, acting to prevent violence, supporting socio-economic reconstruction and development, and promoting peace. Ninety individuals, some twenty churches, business and labour organizations, all four provincial administrations,

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and Transkei all signed and notified the CBM office.19 Many thousands signed similar pledges in the ensuing three years. During the morning break the SABC’s Adrian Steed and Lester Venter provided commentary, standing on the balcony above the impi. Venter, well prepared, was struck by the Accord’s remarkable number of provisions to control police conduct, and intrigued by the provisions for reconstruction and development. Steed prompted him on the ‘Third Force’. Venter responded that no evidence of it had yet been shown, but public disquiet about some possible agent provocateur remained. Venter clearly did not share the view that the ‘Third Force’ was the government in disguise. It was a task for the peace structures, he added, to determine whether it existed, and eradicate it if so. Prophetic words. On ‘traditional weapons’, Venter admitted to confusion. It seemed the Accord stated none may be carried, so ‘on the face of it’ what we are seeing ‘is in fact a contravention of the Accord!’ However, some distinction had been drawn between weapons per se and ‘traditional weapons’. As he understood it the Accord called on government to make a proclamation to ban ‘traditional weapons’. The conversation moved on to the Commission, and the proposed Special Courts that might travel and set up local hearings as soon as possible after incidents. The SABC switched to the news. A few violent deaths across the Reef. Dr Treurnicht speaking to the Conservative Party conference. Then back to the hotel balcony for brief interviews, first with US Ambassador Bill Swing, upbeat about this historic day and an Accord that he gave a first-rate chance of success; then with Louw Alberts in Afrikaans. The commentators finally deliberated on whether or not MK was a ‘private army’. After the break, a wiry traditional leader took great delight in attacking the government for stealing the land, and suggested restitution. Clarence Makwetu, President of the PAC, with the demeanour of an elder statesman, claimed that the PAC’s commitment to peace was well known: ‘We have worked tirelessly and successfully to restrain our members from perpetrating acts of internecine violence, and … we have publicly refused to side with any party directly involved in the current spate of township violence.’ The PAC had not attended the Government’s Summit but had supported this church-sponsored initiative since it began. It would continue working for peace but Makwetu firmly believed the violence came from outside, from what some called a ‘Third Force’: I have decided to come to this podium to stress the fact that it is not ordinary township people who are perpetrating the violence. From our direct experience, it is clear that all township residents oppose the current senseless spate of violence. Mr Chairman, I submit that the violence is perpetrated by unfaced professional hit-men. Initially we all thought that there was a 19

Notifications and lists, Carmichael/NPI.

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conflict between UDF and members of Inkatha Freedom Party – but that is no longer the position. That’s why we talk of professional un-faced hit-men.

Makwetu’s example was the train violence (in which Goldstone was to reveal there really was ‘Third Force’ involvement). How would ‘a man walking into a train, mowing down everybody in the train’ know who was ANC or IFP? This surely showed the existence of ‘a force’, well trained, financed and equipped, able to disappear immediately, without trace. To applause, Makwetu complained the Accord did not get to the root of this trouble and he believed its structures were not oriented to do so. He read out the PAC Statement: The PAC of Azania has in the past attended and been part of the process which has been commenced by the National Peace Initiative. We have again today agreed to attend deliberations in order to underscore and express our view that internecine violence as we have witnessed it in recent times in our country is unacceptable and must be stopped. … The PAC has not been involved in the perpetration of the violence but we are maximally active in peace related efforts in line with our position [text: ‘slogan’] of ‘Peace amongst the Africans.’ In view of our policies [text: ‘policy of non-collaboration’], we can’t be seen serving in apartheid structures which by its very nature is violent and containing elements which we positively identify as part of the perpetrators of violence. For this reason we are unable to sign the proposed Accord and we rather propose the involvement of the international community in the investigation and monitoring of the situation in the townships and to ascertain who is responsible for the violence. We welcome the principle of working for peace [text: in the townships] running through the Accord and although we will not sign it, the PAC makes this solemn pledge that we will, as we have done in the past, spare no effort, brave all obstacles and work tirelessly for peace amongst the Africans. We are prepared to engage the non-statutory structures of the National Peace Committee. In conclusion we strongly urge all parties which are involved in the perpetration of acts of violence against the oppressed to desist forthwith from such conduct in order to contribute to a climate of peace amongst our people. (Signed: Clarence Mlamli Makwetu, President).20

The extant SABC tape jumps, omitting M. C. Zitha of KaNgwane and possibly other speakers, to Jay ( Jayaseelan) Naidoo (COSATU) calling on all to sign the Accord, a ray of hope despite its weaknesses. COSATU committed itself to work for peace and negotiation through it, correcting its perceived weaknesses. Condemning the carrying of weapons, Naidoo called on everyone to create a climate of peace. 20 W. Roland Papers, Pamphlet Box 51, BRN/72303.

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AZAPO tabled a statement: ‘Why Azapo supports Peace Initiatives and yet did not sign the Peace Accord’ and a ‘Peace Pledge’. It repeated its refusal to sign and thus give a mandate to an illegitimate government, of which the SAP, and the SADF with its covert and special units, were extensions and the very structures the people were battling. The ‘Peace Pledge’ condemns violence, aims for ‘peace and stability’ and lays blame squarely on the government. Just as the regime had helped to wreck Mozambique, Angola and other developing countries, so now ‘the primary purpose of the present violence is aimed at producing a political settlement short of our people’s political, social and economic needs’. AZAPO did not believe the government was about to ‘simply forgo the use of this kind of violence’, hence it could not ‘indirectly or directly legitimize the present regime’. Johnny Copelyn was sitting near Minister of Defence Roelf Meyer. As the speaker excoriated the wicked SADF, he heard Meyer’s muffled objection: ‘Is he talking about me?!’21 Johan Heyns spoke to explain that all efforts to involve the right-wing had failed so far, but the right-wing was co-responsible for creating peace, and peace efforts should include the whole political spectrum. The Convention should urge right-wing parties and groups to commit themselves to the Accord, even if they were not signatories. Buthelezi spoke only later on, when signing, but Mandela and de Klerk contributed to the morning’s discussion. Mandela began disconcertingly: I am happy that I have been allowed to make my remarks before President de Klerk is called upon to do so. There is one respect, in which I stand head and shoulder above him, and perhaps above all of you. [tense pause] Mr de Klerk is a young man of fifty; I am seventy-three! [laughter, applause].22

Then, in what Lester Venter hailed as a very statesmanlike speech, above party, Mandela affirmed that the mechanisms created by the Accord would enable it to succeed and should be appreciated and given full support. All parties should sign. ‘The African National Congress has some reservations about this Accord, and some of these reservations are serious. But we have accepted that in an Accord of this nature, compromise is absolutely essential [applause].’ No party, he asserted, should be undermined or weakened by another, because the strength of all was needed to carry the people into a new South Africa. Describing the signing as an important milestone on the road to reconciliation and peace, Mandela closed in Afrikaans, calling for reconciliation. De Klerk began: ‘I know when I’m licked, and I want to state publicly: I don’t compete with Mr Mandela when it comes to age, or physical height! [laughter].’ The government, he said, pledged itself to the Accord and regarded it as a point of departure in the pursuit of lasting peace: 21 22

Copelyn interview. De Klerk was actually 55.

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The eyes of all South Africans yearning for peace are upon us. I hope that the international community will take note that South Africans have the will, and the capacity, to rise above the old conflicts, the conflicts of the past, to take hands and to join forces in their quest for peace and progress.

The politicians had come a long way in this Accord, and the process must go on. Broader discussions should begin as from tomorrow to bring more organizations into the peace initiative. It was regrettable that some still did not see their way clear to endorse it; but those signing would represent the vast majority of South Africans. After de Klerk, CBM Chair Murray Hofmeyr passionately urged everyone to sign and join in working for peace. ‘This is a fundamental turning point in South Africa.’ The development of people, the empowerment of communities, growth in the economy, and peace all go together. Economic growth was absolutely fundamental, as was peace: It has been suggested that you cannot sign peace accords, you cannot address the issue of peace, until you’ve got proper democracy. Ladies and gentlemen let us face the absolutely fundamental truth that we will never get to democracy unless we can get peace. So let us not hesitate in this process for that reason. Let us rather look at it this way: that by taking forward this process of achieving peace, we are giving ourselves an absolutely wonderful opportunity of working together. We talk about the multiparty negotiations: these aren’t something completely new and different which come from a different source; these things are being made increasingly possible to the extent that we can work together and talk together as has been done to set up this occasion. I do appeal to you to sign the Accord and to give it whatever support you can. And I want to say for the CBM that we would like to continue to help in whatever way we possibly can, to achieve these objectives, because heaven knows it’s going to be a thought too terrible to contemplate unless we can achieve it. Thank you. [much applause]

UWUSA, the IFP-supporting union, hoped for a common effort to end sanctions and stay-aways, which were stumbling blocks to growth. Past peace accords had failed, but with the involvement of the Church surely this one, with God’s help, would ‘inject into the minds of the people of SA that peace is the only way that could enable an individual to lead a normal life.’ The Rev. Allan Hendrickse, Labour Party leader, also waxed theological: the people had been victims of crucifixion, government policy had created a culture of violence; but today was the dawn of resurrection, of a common hope for South African nationhood. Perseverance was now needed to create a culture of peace. Chief Minister S. J. Mahlangu of KwaNdebele declared himself proud to be South African, and that the Accord marked a new era.

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More cautiously K. C. A. V. Sehume, Minister of Education in ‘independent’ Bophuthatswana, assured the Convention that Bophuthatswana was fully committed to peace and democracy and wholeheartedly committed to the principles of the Accord, but as observers they had not expected to sign and had not discussed doing so. The Chair of the Federated African Business and Consumer Services (FABCOS), of which Jabu Mabuza was CEO, declared this an important moment in our historical development. Black business had suffered in the violence. FABCOS pledged itself to the Accord, ‘one of several instruments which can be used to bring about lasting peace’. As Hall closed the morning’s discussion he requested all organizations that intended to sign the Accord to submit their form before lunch so that arrangements could be made. He introduced Theuns Eloff to read a short statement from the parties on the Preparatory Committee, on the future process: Mr Chairperson, we must be realistic. Peace is not going to descend on South Africa just because of this Accord. The test, whether this Accord brings peace, will be in the first instance: whether the Code of Conduct for Political Parties and Organisations are adhered to by those parties and their followers and all South Africans in general, whether they are represented here or not, and secondly furthermore whether there is a commitment by all to implement the structures proposed and to actually have them established as soon as possible. We as the three parties can give the meeting the assurance that there is a commitment by all the parties and organisations currently involved in the Preparatory Committee, and specifically to establish four mechanisms: one, the Statutory Commission on Violence and Intimidation; two, the National Peace Committee; three, the National Peace Secretariat; four, Special Criminal Courts and provisions relating to police activities. Proof of the commitment of the parties and organisations on the Preparatory Committee is to be found in the fact that it has been decided that the National Peace Committee is to be constituted within the next week. This Committee will in terms of clause 8.1.1 of the Accord consist of those political parties and organisations currently represented on the Preparatory Committee together with representatives drawn from other signatory parties where the Committee believes such inclusion will give effect to the National Peace Accord. Therefore, our appeal is: Let us set aside political differences in the cause of peace; let us work together; let us hold up each other’s arms in the interests of our country and all its people.

Eloff broke briefly into Afrikaans, then translated: ‘We do believe that this Accord does not necessarily provide all the answers. But we also sincerely believe that it does create the structures and is a vehicle which will bring peace, if all South Africans work together and support these structures to be created [applause].’

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Lunch break A generous hour and half for lunch began at 1pm. Sandwiches awaited the support staff. Delegates, networking in the Top of the Carlton or Roof Garden, enjoyed creole pumpkin soup, chicken breast stuffed with spinach, and ice cream on a biscuit basket with chocolate sauce.23 TV coverage switched to a studio discussion, prefaced by a review of the past week’s violence: Sunday’s massacre of IFP rally-goers in Thokoza, a limpet mine at a Soweto shopping centre, taxi shootings and train attacks, totalling 115 deaths including several policemen. Injured victims were interviewed, saying the violence seemed senseless. One suggested there must be a right-wing force. VIP ‘talking heads’ followed. Sowetan editor Aggrey Klaaste, never afraid to advocate introspection, said he was ‘ashamed to be black … we degenerate into savagery’. The ANC’s Floyd Mashele said signing the Accord was good – but how many organizations would honour it? The IFP’s Walter Felgate, greyhaired, bearded, in a bright yellow shirt and beige jacket, claimed the IFP had ‘always appealed for peace. There’s never been any decision by any Inkatha leader ever, to use violence for political purposes.’ But people – ANC, IFP, and innocents alike – ‘get drawn into violence. We’re living in a terrible situation. It’s now time to stop laying blame.’ De Klerk regretted that some political organizations were still refusing to participate … then the extant SABC video suddenly cuts to the scene outside the Carlton, where Buthelezi and the King are addressing the crowd. Meanwhile, Deon du Plooy, at a computer in the CDS’s temporary office in the Carlton, typed the list of organizations that intended to sign and the names of their signatories. It filled three loose A4 sheets, headed ‘Signatories to the National Peace Accord, signed in Johannesburg on Saturday, 14 September 1991’. Du Plooy inserted the sheets into a smart brown-leather folder (which Fanie van der Merwe mis-remembered as a leather-bound copy of the Accord). He left it on the lectern and went for lunch.

Signing Ceremony At 2.30pm, the ceremony about to start, the folder had vanished. Motsuenyane and Eloff spun out their introductory remarks while van der Merwe extracted Du Plooy from lunch. Printed afresh, the lists were arranged on the lectern beside a copy of the Accord. Brigadier Oupa Gqozo, military ruler of Ciskei, came forward first, to make an idiosyncratic, qualified endorsement of the Accord. Ciskei had the right to sign in a normal manner but instead Gqozo brought his own text. With a nod from Motsuenyane he walked to the podium. ‘Before I sign this Accord,’ 23

Menus, Carmichael/NPI.

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he announced, ‘I would like to read a few words from the Protocol document that I have in my hands here.’ His ‘Protocol’ conveyed a warning to all parties to respect the Ciskei government, and hinted at its hope to continue existing in a future ‘Southern Africa’: I, Brigadier Oupa Joshua Gqozo, hereby pledge myself and the Government of the Republic of Ciskei to the principles and the aims of the National Peace Accord adopted in Johannesburg on 14 September 1991. My Government furthermore considers itself bound by the provisions of the Accord in respect of all signatories to the Accord that similarly consider themselves bound to my Government. The conclusion of the National Peace Accord is a major step on the way to freedom, peace and prosperity in South Africa and Southern Africa. We call on all our peoples to rally in support of their leaders in our quest for peace. Signed: O. J. Gqozo, Johannesburg, 14 September 1991

Gqozo signed his ‘Protocol’. It was preserved with the other signatures and eventually bound with them, together with the record of Ciskei’s official signing as an Additional Signatory, on 4 March 1992.24 The regular signing followed. Nominated signatories sat facing the audience. The ‘main’ parties, on the front row, were to sign last. The rest formed a long back row. Apart from KwaZulu, the same person signed for both the government and ruling party of South Africa itself and the six SGTs. Hence twenty-three individuals signed the Accord, but for twenty-nine different bodies. Jabu Mabuza as usher hovered beside the lectern, indicating where to sign. The signatory bodies signed in reverse alphabetical order: UWUSA, Solidarity Party, QwaQwa government and Dikwankwetla Party, National People’s Party, National Forum, Merit Peoples’ Party, Lebowa government and United Peoples’ Front, Labour Party, KwaNdebele government and Intando Yesizwe Party, KaNgwane and Inyandza National Movement, Gazankulu government and Ximoko Progressive Party, Federation of Independent Trade Unions, Democratic Party, Contralesa, and the Amalgamated Union of Building Trade Workers of South Africa. Then the front row: Joe Slovo (SACP), Dr Dennis R. B. Madide (Minister of Finance, KwaZulu government), John Gomomo (President, COSATU); Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi (President, IFP), Nelson Mandela (President, ANC) and finally, by consensus, F. W. de Klerk signing both for the National Party and the government of South Africa. Signatories spoke for two minutes after signing, the ‘main’ signatories speaking longer. This was a torrent of emotion, hope, and prayer, with much repetition but fresh urgency each time. Occasionally the hall responded with heartfelt applause. Bobby Godsell turned to Ron Steele, saying the whole process had 24 See p.212.

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been for him ‘an amazing spiritual experience’ (Steele, 1992 p.180). There was, Steele reflects, an immense amount of prayer being offered worldwide, and a ‘spiritual dynamic’ present in the room.25 Motsuenyane reflected the mood when, to considerable applause, he asked the few smokers in the hall to cease, because ‘This is a very solemn occasion.’ A depth beyond cynicism and suspicion had momentarily been reached. The words ‘wonderful’, ‘amazing’, and ‘miracle’ were not used lightly. Dr Senakgomo of UWUSA, struggling for words, said their signature was a symbol of hope that peace, injected into minds, would lead to a better, normal life for all the people. J. N. Reddy (Solidarity) thanked the negotiators for ‘a monumental and unprecedented scheme for peace and reconciliation, which must give us all hope for the future of our country’. He repeated the suggestion for a leaders’ peace rally and a moratorium on political activity. ‘I believe, Mr Chairman, that deep in the hearts of all South Africans across the lines of colour, there is a binding thread which yearns to express itself in creating a united nation to which we will all owe our loyalty.’ Dr T. K. Mopeli, Chief Minister of QwaQwa, hoped for a change of heart at grassroots and the involvement of non-signatories; but ‘we do not have the slightest doubt that the sound and proper groundwork for the next constitutional step has been laid: we can now without any fear start making appropriate arrangements for a multi- or all-party conference which should be held in the foreseeable future.’ Amichand Rajbansi (National People’s Party) hailed this ‘historic day’ on which our three ‘giant’ leaders had ‘made a tryst with destiny’. He quoted Tagore, cited Gandhi and Nehru, called for all to rise above party politics and for ‘a massive social upliftment programme’ to commence immediately, enthused about South Africa becoming a giant in Africa – and after four minutes he was reined in. J. S. A. Mavuso (National Forum) simply said this signing was an answer to prayer. In all his striving in the ‘liberatory struggle’, he had looked forward to a day like this. ‘Mr Chairman, it’s a confirmation of my faith, and my organization’s faith, in the resilience of the people of South Africa of all colours, that we South Africans, we can rise to the occasion with God’s help.’ To a ripple of amusement, Motsuenyane appeared to call the ‘Married People’s Party’. The Merit People’s Party’s MP, P. Padayachee, said many things were not yet being done: ‘Let us go out and do!’ The Rev. Allan Hendrickse, Labour Party leader, verged on a sermon: we must now go down from this mountain into the valley, to meet the challenge of the people’s needs with genuine commitment, dedication and togetherness, living for a tomorrow that will work for all South Africans, forever. Deep-voiced Prince S. James Mahlangu, Chief Minister of KwaNdebele, thanked all who had spent sleepless nights to bring us to this point. 25

Steele interview.

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‘The door to peace is now open.’ The Accord was a means, a process ‘which must be used to prepare ourselves for the building of the new nation, the new South Africa that is non-racial, democratic, and non-sexist: and we have proven today that we can do it!’ M. C. Zitha, Chief Minister of KaNgwane, adapted Neil Armstrong’s words: ‘One small step for man, one giant leap for all South Africans.’ The balding, bespectacled Prof. Hudson Ntsanwisi, alumnus of UNISA and Georgetown, Chief Minister of Gazankulu, quoted Henley’s poem ‘Invictus’: ‘Out of the night that covers me / … / I thank whatever gods may be / for my unconquerable soul.’ It was ‘time for us South Africans to thank the Almighty for our unconquerable souls, because we have gone through a period of darkness and carnage, that we don’t like to face again.’ He prayed: ‘May the darkness become the sunshine that will show us the light of life. May the Lord help us.’ Motsuenyane welcomed the sole female signatory, Audrey Rose, Assistant General Secretary of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions (FITU). ‘There would have been something wrong, if we didn’t have a lady.’ Saying they had lost countless members to violence, Rose was strongly applauded as she ended: ‘On behalf of our children, we support this Peace Accord.’ David Dalling signed for DP leader Zach de Beer, who was overseas. He referred to the recent political impasse as a logjam now broken by the Accord: ‘We have been living through the most traumatic and dangerous times, stuck to the evils of the past, unable to grasp the nettle of the future. Today South Africa can at last begin building hope and a new tomorrow.’ Citing de Gaulle’s call during the Algerian War for a ‘peace of the brave’, Dalling asserted that ‘this conference room is filled by people who are brave’. Brave enough to sign and implement their commitment. ‘Let us do it! Together!’ Dalling says he was actually feeling cynical: ‘They made all these promises, which they did not keep, which I didn’t think they would!’26 The DP, nevertheless, supplied the structures with some of the most dedicated peacemakers. Contralesa’s Vice-president, Chief L. S. Mothiba, said that amid the unacceptable losses of life, no one should be quicker than the traditional leaders to associate themselves with the Accord. ‘We hope that signing this Peace Accord will facilitate the transformation of the present government into the new government.’ B. Nicholson, Director of the Confederation of Metal and Building Unions, pleaded for an end to sanctions, which caused poverty and thereby violence. Business and labour should together create jobs and show South Africa to be a leader in inter-racial cooperation. The last speaker before the main signatories was a young long-haired white builder, J. C. S. de Oliviera, National Organizer for the Amalgamated Union of Building Trade Workers, looking forward to building a new South Africa. 26 Dalling interview.

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Longer speeches were allowed for the ‘major’ signatories, the ANC-Alliance, NP/Government, and IFP/KwaZulu. The SABC video has gaps but most of the missing contributions can be reconstructed. SACP General Secretary Joe Slovo spoke first: Mr Chairperson, in signing this historic Peace Accord I solemnly commit the SACP to both the spirit and the detail of its terms. Our country and its people in their overwhelming majority demand that we make this Accord work, they want us to make it work not grudgingly, not cynically, not cosmetically, and that means among other things that the various implementation and monitoring structures that we have agreed upon must be put into place with a great sense of urgency. Mr Chairperson, tomorrow, if not today, we will see speculation about the next step in the process of democratizing our country. Let us not allow legitimate speculation of this kind to divert attention and energies away from the implementation of what we have agreed upon. We know that without peace there can be no democracy, and equally without democracy peace will be under continuous threat. That is why there is a connection, a very close connection, between this Accord and the wider negotiating process, and that connection is, to transform what is here on paper into reality. It must be a reality that is tangible not just for us, but is tangible for the people out there in the townships, in the trains, in the buses, in the garrisons, and police stations of our country.

The video skips, curtailing Slovo and omitting Dr Madide (KwaZulu government) and John Gomomo (COSATU). Film of Buthelezi, Mandela, and part of de Klerk’s speech is also missing but their scripts survive, as do clips used in ‘The Peacemakers’. Buthelezi ,who had so publicly vacillated, resorted to his role as a lay preacher. Speaking rapidly, he quoted or summarized the entire first chapter of Genesis. He then read out the most positive, certainly the most fulsome, words he was ever to utter about the Accord. Finally he drew a parallel between the commitment of the IFP to the Accord and its wish to ‘normalize’ relationships’ with all other parties – pointedly referencing the ‘normalization’ of relations between IFP and ANC for which he had repeatedly called: ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’ And then God set about shaping the darkness, and as the Bible says, ‘the earth was without form, and void: and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said let there be light and there was light … And God saw everything that He made, and behold, it was very good and the evening and the morning were the sixth day.’ God created a world in which we must live. He put us in that world as his place for us. And God ordained that man should live with man in peace on this earth.

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Peacemaking and Peacebuilding in South Africa And Christ ordained that there shall be peace. He sent his disciples to the four corners of the earth so that there can be peace. The whole order of God, the universe, this place of South Africa, your neighbourhood, your street and your neighbours were created to live in peace. It is my fervent hope that all know that God’s creation did not end in Old Testament times. God is busy creating a new order in South Africa. He is busy putting right that which is wrong and He is raising up that which is right. I believe that the National Peace Accord is an instrument of God for equality and justice and we should use it knowing what it is. However men failed, history marched forth from primordial days through the ages to the emergence of man and then through more ages of his development and then through millenniums of development where man now stands ready to conquer outer space. Of all his creations it was the creation of man to conquer evil and to live in love and harmony that surpassed all God did in the universe. God created man to live as the vision in the National Peace Accord perceives as the ideal for man. And I believe that when God looks down upon the earth and upon South Africa in the continent of Mother Africa, and sees the killing and the ugliness of hate, He would see the Accord as an instrument he would wish his disciples and all Christians to uphold. And God in all His great wisdom and in all His manifestations will expect Muslims and Hindu and Jew and all other religious orders to uphold the Accord. And He would expect political parties to uphold the Accord. And I commit Inkatha Freedom Party to uphold the Accord. I commit the IFP’s leadership to lead to uphold the Accord. And I commit Inkatha’s followers to uphold the Accord. And I stretch out a hand and say in these commitments we wish to normalise relationships with every political party and organisation in South Africa.27

Buthelezi appears to have made some effort to find positives and to enter into the overwhelmingly hopeful spirit of the occasion: ‘I believe that the National Peace Accord is an instrument of God for equality and justice and we should use it knowing what it is.’ Yet there remained an uncertain connection between surface statement and volcanic depth. The least threat or slight might sweep away his positivity. ‘As he signed and came back to his seat, Mr Mandela nodded his head and acknowledged Chief Buthelezi’ (Steele, 1992 p.179). Stately and dignified, Mandela walked to the podium and signed. His speech showed no indication of his earlier doubts:

27

W. Roland Papers, Pamphlet Box 51, BRN/72303.

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Honoured Guests, Peacemakers and South Africans: The ANC has been a driving force in negotiating and concluding the National Peace Accord. By signing the Accord today, together with political allies and opponents, we are creating an historic opportunity for peace. We have today committed ourselves to recognised democratic principles, to peaceful coexistence, to economic and social reconstruction and to the liberty and dignity of all South Africans. However, we are under no illusion that this Accord is a magic wand. Our signatures alone cannot light the path to peace. Each party represented here has its own history, interests, hopes and fears. But this Peace Accord requires us all to share one thing: a common commitment to peace. We in the ANC dedicate ourselves to three things: We dedicate ourselves to nurturing the spark of hope which we have lit this day. We dedicate ourselves to devote all our efforts to make this Accord work for peace. We call on our fellow signatories to do the same. It is our hope that through the light of our joint efforts we will expose and root out the warmongers whose only wish is to see South African pitched against South African in a bloody war of attrition that will plunge our whole country into darkness. We cannot allow the conflicts of the old South Africa to extinguish our vision of a democratic South Africa, united in prosperity and peace. We call on our people to use the Peace Accord creatively to promote peace. Use the committees which we have created today for resolving conflict and violence. Take responsibility for peace in your community. We call on the international community to support this Accord. We propose that the General Assembly of the UN should publicly resolve that no member nation will give support of any kind to any organisation which does not sign and uphold this Accord. In return, we offer our hope that the flames of violence will be consigned to history. May the light of peace become a beacon to all peoples and a sign of what we can do together.28

Mandela’s penultimate clause, calling for sanctions on non-signatories, had originally been aimed at the right-wing – but since it applied equally to the far left it was to have been omitted. It inadvertently remained, causing some consternation to the PAC. F. W. de Klerk signed twice, as NP leader and State President. He commenced in Afrikaans: ‘Geweld bring ontbering mee – dood, verwoesting, lyding, armoede …’ Violence brings hardship. Its wages are death, destruction, suffering, poverty. Peace does not hurt anybody. Its advantages are incalculable. Violence comes easily. All it requires is giving free rein to aggression, selfishness and recklessness. 28

Script, Carmichael/Pauquet; also W. Roland Papers, Pamphlet Box 51, BRN/72303.

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Peacemaking and Peacebuilding in South Africa Peace is difficult to achieve. It requires work, dedication, discipline and agreement. Violence is sin. Peace is God’s command. Therefore we choose peace.

He continued in English: The signing of this Peace Accord is but a single step on the arduous road to peace that still lies ahead. But this first step represents an important breakthrough. It establishes a firm foundation on which we can continue building. The darkness of violence is making way for the light of peace. I say thank you to all those who made today possible, in particular to the church and business leaders and the members of Working Groups and the Preparatory Committee. The Accord is not perfect. All of us would probably have wanted some or other further clause to have been inserted. Each of us would probably have preferred certain clauses not to have been included. This also applies to me. I nevertheless signed the Accord, because the Government and the National Party can fully identify with the principles and aims contained therein. I believe that the Accord must be a living document. In the days ahead we will have to further develop and refine the shared principles and aims in our battle against violence and intimidation. Equally, we will have to build consensus regarding a new constitution and a strong economy.

Looking forward to future negotiations, de Klerk interjected verbally, in English: We widely differ, even with regard to departure points. The challenge therefore is an awesome one: but we must also say that time is of the essence, because I sincerely believe that until we start also negotiating constructively about what the future must look like, it will be difficult to implement this Accord. Because, the followers of leaders must see their leaders visibly talking to each other. That will bring calm-ness. They must hear them talking peace, talking about the future, finding ways and means of cooperating rather than listening to them making inciting speeches. Therefore, negotiation must be one of the follow-through activities of this Accord, and of this day.

The next two paragraphs, committing the National Party and government to the Accord, were spoken in Afrikaans: ‘As Leier van die Nasionale Party …’ As leader of the National Party I confirm the National Party’s commitment to a peaceful process. I reconfirm the National Party’s dedication to the principles of democracy and the maintenance of Christian norms and values. We will carry our message to the people of South Africa strongly and clearly. Equally firmly we will defend the right of every other political leader to also spread this message. This means that we endorse in every respect the Code for Political Parties which appears in the Accord. On behalf of the Government of South Africa I accept all the responsibilities and obligations placed on the Government by this Accord. The Govern-

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ment will scrupulously fulfil the responsibilities and will do everything in its power to ensure that the envisaged structures function properly.

Returning to English: Ladies and gentlemen, this Accord is not the only agreement on the matters which are being dealt with in this document. There are also other undertakings and mutual agreements between leaders and between political parties and organisations. It is equally important that those undertakings and agreements should be honoured. If that does not happen, it is not only a single agreement which is being violated, but this National Peace Accord is also affected. Principles which are contained in this Accord demand that we should honour meticulously existing bilateral agreements. In conclusion I want to focus on leadership. All of us as leaders derive our leadership positions from specific constituencies. And among the supporters of some parties and organisations there are some who do not really want peace. Many of them see red at the moment, they have blood in their eyes, many of them are filled with anger and revenge. This Accord demands from leaders with followers who feel that way, to do something about it. It is easy to fault your opponents, and even to point the finger at the security forces and put the blame elsewhere. It is much more difficult to acknowledge and to rectify your own faults and those of your supporters. However, exactly that is now a priority. Each and every leader is now called upon to secure the commitment from his supporters to honour this Accord.

De Klerk’s concluding exhortation was delivered in Afrikaans: ‘Kom ons, as leiers …’ I urge you today: come, let us, as leaders, guide our country out of this crisis of violence and intimidation. Let us lead our country and all its people to tolerance and cooperation. Let us do this, let us lead by our example, by powerful persuasion and by clear statements. Come, let us move forward in humble and prayerful obedience to and dependence on the Almighty God who determines the fate of all mankind.29

Regrettably there is no iconic photo of ‘the signing the National Peace Accord’. The plans had, until 11 September, included a table for signing but it then disappeared. All signatories were to be seen as equal, signing at the lectern. Only a TV camera perched inelegantly above the lectern witnessed each signature. Post-signing, the video reveals the lost leather folder in Mabuza’s hands, as he carefully inserts the signed pages into it. The signatures featured in peace advertising and finally, in 1995, were deposited in Parliament.30 29 SABC TV video; English text Carmichael/Pauquet, also W. Roland Papers, Pamphlet Box 51, BRN/72303. Text including Afrikaans: Carmichael/NPI. 30 See p.450.

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Photo 10.1 The ‘main’ signatories: President F. W. de Klerk, Nelson Mandela, Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, at the National Peace Convention, 14 September 1991.

Summing up, religious commitment, Tutu’s prayer Sam Motsuenyane summed up the day: At the beginning of this historic peace conference, we committed this meeting to God and God has in His wonderful way responded. The National Peace Accord has been signed by the majority of organizations and parties represented here. The strengths and weaknesses of the present Accord were adequately highlighted during the deliberations. Although this is by no means a perfect document, it is nevertheless seen as an important beginning, in the right direction, on the road to peace. Wise words of advice, caution and encouragement have come from many erudite speakers who have had the opportunity to state their views today. Much emphasis in the speeches is laid on practical commitment to the implementation of the Peace Accord, for peace cannot be assured simply by the signing of a document. We go forward, ladies and gentlemen, from here to implement the spirit and the letter of the Peace Accord and in this way to declare war against violence in our country. By our presence at this occasion we are saying to our families, our friends, our constituencies, and South Africans everywhere, that we intend to live by this Accord. We agree to live by these conventions and we pledge ourselves to transcend private agendas and partisan politics and look to a greater good;

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and we realize the decisions we are making today and henceforth will determine the future of our children and their children’s children. There is still a chance for those of us who have not come on board on this day. Let us go forward in faith, cooperate with the National Peace Committee, and be preachers and disciples of peace: and only in that way can we render South Africa safe for us all. In winding up the proceedings of the day, I will turn again to God, and commit our future to Him.

Motsuenyane invited SACC President Rev. Khoza Mgojo ‘to make a pledge on behalf of the religious people’, and Archbishop Tutu to offer the final prayer. ‘Bishop Tutu says he’s not God, but on our behalf we would like him to open the telephone lines that connect this conference and South Africa to God.’ The SABC cameras mischievously focused on Joe Slovo’s red socks. Khoza Mgojo, SACC President and NPA facilitator, moved to the lectern. It is a great honour for me to make the following statement of commitment on behalf of the churches and the faiths represented here at this historic Peace Convention. When I say churches and faiths I mean the Christian churches, the Muslim community, the Jewish community, and the Hindu community. As churches and people of faith, we facilitated the process leading to this important day. We are grateful to see its fruition in the signing of the Accord. We believe that peace, the Shalom, is a gift from God, and we have seen the miracle work of God happening before our eyes today. However, we also believe that being peacemakers is also our solemn responsibility, together with every political party, government, and organization signing the Accord. As those whom God has called as peacemakers, we boldly and humbly commit ourselves to work with the signatories for the achievement of the success of the Peace Accord. We see ourselves supporting the Accord specifically at the grassroots level where we meet the people of God. We also commit ourselves to pray, in every sanctuary, that God will bless your efforts to bring the true peace and reconstructive action to our embattled communities. We call on every person of faith to study the Peace Accord and commit themselves: 1, to participate peacefully in political activity and to respect the rights of all others to do the same; 2, to support the institutions of peace established by the Accord; and the 3rd one, to do everything in their power to assist in the prevention of violence. Ladies and gentlemen, let us not say that it is impossible. One great leader once said the word ‘impossible’ is only found in the dictionary of fools. We people of faith want to assure you today that nothing is impossible with God. Well done, fellow South Africans. Thank you. [applause].31 31

SABC TV video.

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Motsuenyane interjected: ‘Whilst the Bishop is moving to the podium, I need to thank my colleagues in the Preparatory Committee for all the inputs that they have put into this work to make this day the success that it has been. Thank you very much, all of you!’ [applause]. Tutu began, in characteristically irrepressible fashion, with one of his funny stories: Just a few remarks before I ask you to join me in prayer. When God created human beings, they say that happened by creation from dust. And God put the first lot into the oven to fire them, as you fire bricks. God got busy with many other things, and forgot that he has put this lot into the oven. When he came to and rushed to open the oven, they were all burnt to cinders, and they say this is how black people came about [laughter]. And then God put in the second lot. This time God got over-anxious and opened the oven too quickly [giggles]. And this lot was underdone. [Giggles from the audience, Mandela smiles broadly and laughs.] And this is how, they say, white people came into existence! [widespread laughter]. Basically, what the facilitating and preparatory committee discovered was that we share a common humanity, that transcends sex, race, colour, creed, culture. And so we made this fantastic scientific discovery, that we were all human beings. May I say as a second preliminary: today in the calendar of many churches is Holy Cross Day. [pause] Coincidence? Providential? For on the Cross, Jesus Christ broke down the middle wall of partition, and by His blood brought peace, and so this Accord is being signed on an auspicious day, for Jesus is our peace, and in Jesus there is neither male nor female, Greek nor Jew. And may I assure you that this Convention is soaked through with the prayers of many, many people round the world. In terms of our church, I asked the Anglican Communion worldwide: please uphold this Convention; and so, the miracle that is taking place here is one that is being undergirded by the prayers, the love, the concern not just of South Africans, but of people in Timbuctoo and every other part of the world. And the last of my preliminaries, let me just give you a taste of the flavour of the meetings that we have been having. At one point someone representing the Inkatha Freedom Party said something and then someone representing the ANC said: ‘Ah-ah! Ultimatums are not good for negotiation.’ And Roelf Meyer could not contain himself and said: ‘Ah! ANC, that applies to you too!’ [laughter] Laat ons bid: Masithandaze: Let us pray: God we praise and bless you that you are God. We thank you for this momentous day, this historic day, quite unparalleled in the annals of our land. We thank you that you have brought us to this watershed point, where the Peace Accord has been signed.

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God, we have seen a veritable miracle unfolding before our very eyes this day. When former so-called ‘terrorists’ can be on first name terms with Cabinet ministers, and they can joke, and argue, and finally come to a common mind, God, then there is hope for our beautiful country. When those who were at one another’s throats, and may still be at loggerheads, can hammer out a Peace Accord with such a measure of consensus and convergence, God, then there is hope for our beautiful country. When those who have been separated by the iniquity of apartheid can realize that they share a common humanity, and that they long for the same things: a good education for their children; adequate and comfortable accommodation for their families; security, stability and prosperity; that they are of equal and infinite worth because they are created in your image, God, then there is hope for our beautiful land. Thank you, God, for the spirit of unity and togetherness. Pour out your blessings on our leaders and their followers, to uphold the letter and spirit of this Peace Accord, and beat our swords into ploughshares. Bring all violence to an end and give us your peace [repeated in Afrikaans, SeSotho, Xhosa]. Send us forth to be instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love, where there is injury, pardon, where there is despair, hope, where there is darkness, light, where there is sadness, joy. May we all, leaders and followers, realize more and more that the peace of South Africa, that the stability and prosperity of our land, and the security and happiness of all her people, are greater than any one leader or organization and their self-­ aggrandizement and selfish power-play, lest history judge them harshly. I have two prayers that I am going to ask you to repeat after me. One is a prayer adapted by the Bishop of Natal and the other is the prayer adapted by Bishop Trevor Huddleston. Will you please say after me: Lord God, renew your people, and begin with us.

Heal our land, tend our wounds, make us one, and use us in your service.32

God, bless South Africa, guard her children, guide her leaders and give her peace.33

Tutu closed with the blessing in Afrikaans: ‘The Peace of God, which passes all understanding …’34 Motsuenyane thanked Tutu; announced refreshments, the 4pm media conference, and the cocktail party for all delegates at 5pm on the Carlton’s roof; and closed the Convention. 32 Prayer by Michael Nuttall, Bishop of Natal. 33 Bishop Trevor Huddleston’s ‘Prayer for Africa’. 34 SABC TV video. Vrye Weekblad 20–26/9/91 published Tutu’s prayer.

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The signing ceremony, with its subsequent media conference, was the sole occasion on which de Klerk, Mandela and Buthelezi sat side by side. Photographers caught every nuance of body-language. The photos have been much used, sometimes cropped to show just Mandela and de Klerk. Mandela, in the centre, alone wore his name label. At one moment, probably at Tutu’s funny story, all three succumbed to merriment.

Handshakes The press made a great deal of failing to get photos of the ‘troika’ shaking hands, and one widely published photo was misinterpreted as showing Buthelezi refusing both de Klerk’s and Mandela’s hands. They were in fact simply conversing. De Klerk is not offering a handshake but making a characteristic conversational gesture.35 Mandela makes a similar gesture. Buthelezi was indeed unwilling merely to perform handshakes, as he saw it, for the press, but had vigorously shaken de Klerk’s hand that morning. The real snubs occurred off-camera, when King Goodwill Zwelithini twice refused Mandela’s hand. Buthelezi remembers: ‘I was myself very humiliated because we went out to the bathroom, and I introduced the King, who didn’t know Mr Mandela, to Mr Mandela, and Mr Mandela proffered his hand to the King, and the King wouldn’t shake hands with him. I was quite hurt. I was quite hurt by it actually.’36 SACC deputy head Brigalia Bam tells a similar story. Mandela asked her to take him to where the King was seated, ‘so that he could greet him properly. And I went with him. And Mandela came, and saluted him, which is the tradition, and then after saluting him he extended his hand, and the king did not strike [shake] his hand.’37 It would, Bam explains, have been proper for him to shake Mandela’s hand, because Mandela too was royalty, and had correctly saluted the King with the greeting, ‘Ah!’ Shortly before the 1994 election, Mandela told Bam that the King later apologized and sent two cows in reconciliation, initiating a significant friendship.38 That may well have happened after November 1992, when Mandela appealed to the King to restore peace, the King rebuffed this ‘Communist man’ who must not be allowed to rule, and Mandela described on Radio Zulu how he had been ‘deeply hurt’ by the King’s refusal to shake hands at the Convention.39

35 As de Klerk demonstrated at interview. 36 Buthelezi interview. 37 Bam interview. 38 Ibid. 39 Natal Witness 19/11/92.

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Media Conference More than 100 journalists, intent on uncovering disagreements, faced the signatories at the media conference. Hall took the chair, a heap of written questions beside him. Most were directed to the ‘top three’. On the absence of the right-wing, Mandela said ‘the mobilization of the country for peace’ would take time, but he expected many who still had reservations to change and join in. De Klerk agreed. He would have preferred them present and would continue trying to convince them to come to the table. He believed right-wing supporters were more realistic than the leaders: they did not want violence but were good ‘God-fearing people’ who would come to support the process. The Washington Post raised the impi question: could the President ‘tell us whether the police gave permission for the IFP to hold a demonstration in the streets outside the hotel?’ If not, why was it allowed to continue? A slightly nervous de Klerk took the podium, explaining he had not ‘made an exact analysis of the legal position’. As far as he was aware no permission had been given, but Johannesburg was not an ‘unrest area’ so there was no prohibition on shields and knobkerries, and in the absence of violence the police had no power to disarm. The people had appeared to enjoy themselves, posed no threat, and left peacefully having honoured the King, ‘so no crimes were committed as far as I’m concerned’. Hall started reading out the next question but Mandela, seething with anger, ignored him and seized the lectern: I totally reject the position stated by the State President. If the people outside were members of the ANC, the police would have used force. And if they had remotely refused to move, they would have used firearms. Yesterday, they were raiding Phola Park, which is known to be the stronghold of the ANC, and they confiscated there the very weapons that were carried outside today. That is what is happening almost daily. There are different standards from the point of view of the Government, and what the State President has said does not apply, would not have applied, if those people that gathered outside were members of the ANC. I thought I should make that very clear.40

The ironies could hardly have been greater. The search of Phola Park had followed the previous Sunday’s massacre of eighteen IFP rally-goers in Thokoza. While the press leapt to blame the ‘Third Force’ the real perpetrators, as revealed in court and at the TRC, had been the Phola Park SDU. De Klerk leapt back to the podium: Mr Chairman I would just like to say that we have just signed an Accord – the government insists that the security forces must be absolutely impartial in 40 SABC TV video.

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all its actions. For the information of Dr Mandela, I after consultation with the Minister of Law and Order, specifically gave instructions that the crowd outside must be handled in such a manner that, should any supporters of any other movements turn up – and we were advised that it was quite possible that supporters of the ANC would arrive – that there would be adequate space available for them and that they would be treated in exactly the same manner as the others who were outside. There was a specific instruction and this can be checked with the relevant general.41

As de Klerk sat down Mandela commented from his seat: ‘We stopped members of the ANC from coming here, because of our concerns that … there could have been trouble.’ The angry exchange between de Klerk and Mandela over the impi presaged a similar spat, over the existence of MK, on the opening night of Codesa. Buthelezi stood up to protest that people had every right to gather to greet their leaders, without a permit. ‘And a false impression is created when it is said that if they are members of the ANC the police would have acted differently. It is a falsehood, that the police treat us differently.’42 Asked whether he understood the ban to include ‘cultural weapons’, he brandished his two-footlong beaded swagger stick and quipped, to general laughter: ‘No, because I’m carrying one!’ De Klerk insisted that the definition of ‘weapons’ be left for the coming Proclamation. The Citizen wanted to know whether ‘No private armies shall be allowed or formed’ meant that the ANC agreed to disband MK? Mandela’s severe visage returned. ‘We have no intention of dissolving uMkhonto we Sizwe, either now or in the future.’ The matter was being discussed with government ‘in a spirit of reconciliation and of attempting to find amicable solutions’, hence MK had not been addressed directly in the Accord. De Klerk pointed the media to the DF Malan Accord, by which ‘certain actions, with regard to weapons, with regard to infiltration of men … would come to an end’. Negotiations were continuing, hopefully soon to reach agreement. Kyoto News Service inquired whether the ANC would cease ‘mass action’ such as boycotts? Mandela explained that the ANC believed in problem-solving by discussion, but if no headway was made ‘the only other method we can use to redress our grievances is … the force that we have, and mass action is part of the power which we use, where the method of discussion, persuasion and negotiation fails’. ABC News prompted a closing of ranks between all three sparring leaders, when it asked Mandela and Buthelezi how, if leaders had publicly aired their differences only an hour after signing, they would persuade their supporters to 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid.

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tolerate different points of view and not retaliate for acts of violence. De Klerk leapt to the microphone. It was, he said, precisely because the weapons issue was difficult that the Accord provided for further discussion and ‘charges the Government with the duty to try and resolve a still outstanding problem’. Mandela added that he had taken up the issue of the impi with the State President, not with Buthelezi, and signing the Accord did not mean that differences should not be expressed. ‘What has happened is that we have committed ourselves to this Accord; and we will debate any differences … frankly and openly, and I would advise you to accept that.’ Buthelezi endorsed Mandela, testily adding that black people had every right to differ and not be ‘a monolith’. The Accord was not meant to eliminate robust debate. It did indeed aim to eliminate ‘killing talk’, meaning vilification and character assassination – but to conclude that an exchange of views between Mandela and himself indicated that the Accord would not filter down to supporters was, ‘with due respect … a reductio ad absurdum’. The wonderfully named Sacramento Bee of California inquired: ‘Is it anticipated that the principles of the Peace Accord could be part of a Constitution?’ De Klerk responded that many of its principles could obviously ‘form the basis of a Bill of Rights, and inasmuch as they are constitutionally adaptable, will also be reflected in the Constitution’. Fairness, anti-violence, recognition of the situation of the needy, should all feature in ‘a whole new dispensation. … yes, the spirit and the message of this Peace Accord should be the basis of the new South Africa’. The Financial Times asked: since the Accord committed political parties to remove obstacles to development and economic growth, did the ANC intend to lift sanctions? ‘We introduced sanctions’, Mandela replied, ‘in order to attain certain objectives’: the dismantling of apartheid and the extension of the vote to all. The government had renounced apartheid and repealed some laws, but discrimination still existed and suspicion remained, so sanctions must remain. If sufficient mutual trust had been built, ‘it would have been possible to act purely on the declaration of the Government that they believe in one person one vote on a common voters roll. … but unfortunately, in our discussions with the President we have found the road very bumpy’. The ‘bumps’ – the NP’s insistence on power-sharing and ‘group rights’ – emerged in de Klerk’s reply to John Battersby (Christian Science Monitor), who observed: ‘Dr Mandela expressed the opinion today that a troika of leaders was not an appropriate way of solving the country’s problems, could the other two leaders respond?’ De Klerk responded that the National Party’s proposals for a new Constitution involved ‘joint responsibility by the leaders of the main parties’, and the three were a reality. The ‘big question’ was: ‘do we get, if we look ahead, a winnertakes-all system, or do we get sharing of power?’ In the future government, there should be no ‘winner’ taking all, but instead ‘joint responsibility between the major leaders’. Mandela confirmed his rejection of a ‘troika’ in favour of affirming

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and including all equally, from the PAC to homeland and religious leaders who shared the quest for peace; but Buthelezi demurred, pointing to the violence: it was illusory to think the government, IFP, and ANC were not the three most involved. Had any of them not signed, the Accord would be worthless. Hall wrapped up with thanks to all for answering in the spirit of the Accord. Finally, a day that began with an impi on the street ended with a cocktail party on the roof – a fitting vignette of the astonishing incongruities of South Africa in 1991.

Cocktails and autographs The Carlton boasted a roof garden, with restaurant and swimming pool and striking sunset views of distant gold mine dumps and the haze over Soweto. Delegates went autograph-hunting, fortified by a feast of drinks and open sandwiches – roast beef, cheese, ham, chicken, egg and tomato; hot chicken drumsticks, beef sosaties, meat balls, pizza, samoosas, sausage rolls, sirloin of beef with sesame buns. Attie du Plessis got his Accord signed by Buthelezi, de Klerk and, with Aziz Pahad’s help, Nelson Mandela, and fifteen others – a prized memento.43 Johnny Copelyn, constantly late for family dinners over the recent Jewish New Year, sought a peace-offering for his wife: ‘I said to Thabo: “Look, Thabo, I’m in terrible trouble man, can’t you do something for me, you know – just write a letter thanking my dear girlfriend for releasing me for all this time?”’ Mbeki wrote a message on Copelyn’s Accord.44 Halton Cheadle also wanted one. Mbeki handed Cheadle’s Accord to Mandela, who wrote a charming note of thanks and apology to Cheadle’s two young daughters for keeping their father away from them so much!45 Alec Erwin kept his table flag, signed by Dennis Madide, Velaphi Ndlovu, both Jays, Blade Nzimande, Jeff Radebe and Bishop Michael Nuttall.46 Pam Saxby recalls a gesture well meant, but illustrative of the age: ‘Roelf Meyer sat me on his knee and gave me a kiss, to thank me for all the work I’d done!47 The facilitators dined in the Carlton’s ‘Three Ships’ restaurant, courtesy of André Lamprecht’s Barlow’s expense account. It was a team farewell. The facilitators were to gather just twice more: during the pre-election crisis in April 1994, when Hall and the churchmen visited King Zwelithini, and in April 1995 to deposit the Accord in Parliament. 43

Seen at du Plessis interview. Other signatures: Frank Mdlalose, Thabo Mbeki, Ben Ngubane, Johan Scheepers, Jabu Mabuza, Jayaseelan and Jayendra Naidoo, Danie Schutte, Theuns Eloff, Fanie van der Merwe, Kobus Meiring, John Hall, Walter Felgate, Roelf Meyer, Aziz Pahad. 44 Seen at Copelyn interview. 45 Seen at Cheadle interview. 46 Seen at Erwin interview. 47 Saxby interview.

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Pathway to Codesa During the evening Eloff approached Roelf Meyer: ‘“Roelf, you know, now is the time to hit the iron while it’s hot: do you have plans to now start with constitutional negotiations?” And he said: “No, the time is not yet right, the ANC still have a few principles that we argue over, we need a little bit more time.”’48 Perhaps not enough time was allowed for informal discussion of principles, particularly the ‘group rights’ issue, but the logjam was already moving. On 8 September the Sunday Times ran a banner headline: ‘Secret Talks Breakthrough’. ‘Dr Gerrit Viljoen’, it reported, ‘said yesterday that in his view there was unanimity on the agenda, logistics, chairmanship and participants’ for multiparty talks.’ Once the Peace Accord was signed, ‘the government would hold a series of bilateral meetings with the ANC, Inkatha and other parties to finalize agreements on the convening of the all-party conference’. Mohammed Valli Moosa said the ANC wanted the conference to start as soon as possible, ‘certainly this year’. Only the Patriotic Front gathering in October would cause a short delay. Meyer vividly remembers a Friday evening ‘about a month’ later, it must have been 1 or 8 November, when Rodney Pinder of Reuters invited him and Joe Slovo to the annual Foreign Correspondents’ dinner.49 ‘Now, the opportunities for Joe and I to interact up till that stage were not that often. We saw each other at the formal meetings and so on, but real interaction didn’t happen.’ Pinder left them together ‘and Joe and I started to talk and said to each other “Well, the Peace Accord is there. Now we’ve made peace on the subject of violence, why can’t we start with the constitutional negotiations?”’ That Sunday, ‘Mandela made a statement to say, you know, maybe the time for talks has arrived.’ In the evening, ‘Cyril phoned – I’ll never forget! And he said to me: “You’ve heard what Mandela is saying. Shall we not start to talk?”’ They held an immediate bilateral, then Fanie van der Merwe went into overdrive once again, repeating the now-familiar exercise of contacting all the parties and drawing them in. A multiparty Preparatory Meeting took place on 29 November and constitutional talks, the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa), opened on 20 December. Meanwhile, with the press clamouring for speedy results, the establishment of the peace structures began.

48 Eloff interview. 49 Meyer and Pinder interviews.

PART THREE

Peacebuilding

Figure 11.1 Organogram of the peace structures 1991–92.

Figure 11.2 Organogram of the peace structures 1993–94.

11 National Peace Committee: Promoting Peace Introduction The first necessity was to establish the National Peace Committee (NPC), from which the other structures would derive. The NPC was not statutory; its legitimacy rested solely on multiparty consensus through the Accord. By remaining non-statutory it remained approachable by the PAC and other organizations that refused any formal relationship with the government. By nominating the persons to be appointed to the NPS, Commission and Police Board, it conferred its own consensual legitimacy on them. The reports submitted to the State President by the NPS and Commission went also to the NPC. The NPC was to ‘monitor and to make recommendation on the implementation of the NPA as a whole, and to ensure compliance with the Code of Conduct for Political Parties and organizations’ (8.2). It had powers to ‘promote the aims and spirit of the National Peace Accord’ (8.4.1.1); to convene the signatories ‘where necessary’ and to ‘negotiate and conclude further agreements to achieve the objects of the National Peace Accord’ (8.4.1.4). The NPC provided the space, outside the constitutional talks, for parties at national level to complain about each other. Although it was not called the ‘National Dispute Resolution Committee’, it had the function of resolving disputes concerning transgressions or interpretation of the political Code. It could refer complaints to a sub-committee or arbitrator (9.2–6) but had no coercive powers beyond publicly shaming the offenders. It developed amendments to the Accord, mainly concerned with the complaints procedure, which however were not incorporated due to the difficulty of reconvening the signatories to agree them. The NPC established and oversaw national sub-committees for Publicity, SERD, and Complaints. It was most active during its first year, when the Full NPC met frequently. Then Publicity, and finally SERD, moved to the NPS and, as Rupert Lorimer who served on both bodies remarks, in terms of activity the NPS ‘really supplanted the NPC’.1 In terms of maintaining contact while the 1

Lorimer interview.

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Map 11.1 Map of South Africa showing the eleven regions under the National Peace Accord, and the four ‘independent states’ reincorporated into South Africa in 1994. Adapted from Gastrow (1995) by permission of Peter Gastrow.

constitutional talks were in abeyance from May 1992 to April 1993, the monthly NPC Executive meetings continued to bring the three main parties together and there were no walk-outs. The NPC had no direct relationship to the eleven regional peace committees (see Map), which were established and serviced by the NPS, but it was represented at meetings of the NPS and regional Chairs.

Establishing the NPC Up to 23 August the draft Accord had proposed that ‘the Preparatory Committee continue as it is presently constituted, except that there should be a neutral chairperson and vice-chairperson drawn from the business community and

Photo 11.1 A few among the thousands of peacemakers. Left to right, from top: Antonie Gildenhuys, John Hall, Mvume Dandala, Aziz Pahad, Val Pauquet, Bulelwa Mdoko, Senzo Mfayela, Herman Fourie, David ‘Slovo’ Matlhanye (Makhado), Peterson Phoswa, Hannes Siebert, Malibongwe Sopangisa, Dawn Lindberg, Barbara Nussbaum, Mntomuhle ‘B’ Khawula, Iqbal Motala, Patience Pashe, Con Roux, Neil Naidoo, Susan Collin Marks.

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the churches’.2 As then constituted, the Preparatory Committee consisted of the three main parties plus twelve church and business facilitators. Few of the latter would have had time to continue, but it was probably a missed opportunity that the final Accord reduced the NPC’s civil society membership to just the Chair and Vice-chair. The political representation was expanded to include the ‘main’ parties plus ‘representatives drawn from other signatory parties’ (8.1.1). As Cleary had expected, the politicians ‘took back the process’.3 Regional and local committees benefitted from a much stronger civil society component, which could keep pressure on the politicians to honour their commitments, and keep business, the churches and other civil bodies bound into the peace process. Proposals made in 1994 for a possible new national peace body all envisaged increasing its civil society component. The NPC had no security force members. Instead, top police generals served on the parallel Police Board. For the first NPC meeting a familiar group of political personalities gathered early on Friday 20 September in a venue unfamiliar to most: the Ministry of Defence in Pretoria where they were hosted, just this once, by Minister Roelf Meyer.4 Not all felt comfortable! Meyer still led the government team, but as its lead negotiator he soon transferred to the constitutional talks, followed by van der Merwe. Mbeki, supplanted by Ramaphosa as the ANC’s lead negotiator, led the ANC-Alliance on the Full NPC throughout, leaving the Executive to Sydney Mufamadi who joined as head of the ANC’s ‘Peace Desk’ (or as some called it, ‘War Desk’). Dr Frank Mdlalose, Chair of the IFP Central Committee, continued to lead the IFP contingent. John Hall was present, in continuation of his chairing role at the Convention – and, as Aziz Pahad admits, because he had become an indispensable provider of business support.5 government support through the CDS was represented by Constitutional Adviser Fanie van der Merwe, Chief of Negotiations Support Maritz Spaarwater, media consultant Marius Kleynhans, and Frans du Preez, the junior CDS official who had been minute-taker for the Process Group. The meeting constituted itself as the ‘Interim National Peace Committee’, with Hall as Chair. It discussed the composition of the Full NPC. Should all signatory bodies be represented? Would many more sign, and the NPC become 2 3 4

5

Draft NPA 23 August: 1.11; 8.1.1. Carmichael/van der Merwe. Cleary interview. Present: John Hall (Interim Chairperson), Roelf Meyer and Deputy Ministers Danie Schutte ( Justice) and Johan Scheepers (Law and Order) (NP/Government); Dr Frank Mdlalose, Walter Felgate, Suzanne Vos (IFP); Thabo Mbeki and Aziz Pahad (ANC), Essop Pahad (SACP) and Jayendra Naidoo (COSATU) (ANC-Alliance); Fanie van der Merwe, Maritz Spaarwater, Marius Kleynhans, Frans du Preez (CDS). (Agenda, Minutes, van der Merwe’s notes: Carmichael/van der Merwe). Aziz Pahad interview.

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unwieldly? Should SGT governments be included? Meyer, certain that governments had an interest, suggested that every line function concerned with implementing the Accord be represented. A Working Group of van der Merwe, Felgate and Naidoo was delegated to bring recommendations on membership, the Chair and Vice-chair, nominations to the NPS and Commission, how to ‘promote the aims and spirit of the NPA’, sub-committees, further work on the SADF Code, financial and administrative support, and an interim ‘hot line’ for emergencies pending the formation of structures. Kleynhans and Hall issued a statement announcing the birth of the Interim NPC. Press interest was intense – when were the structures going to stop the violence? On the evening of 24 September the teams returned to familiar Barlow Park, the NPC’s permanent home. Membership was agreed: the Full NPC would consist of three representatives each from the NP, SA government, ANC, COSATU, IFP, and KwaZulu government, and one each for UWUSA, SACP, DP, Labour, Solidarity, National Forum, Contralesa, and the governments and ruling parties of KwaNdebele, KaNgwane, QwaQwa, Lebowa and Gazankulu. The Full NPC thus totalled 37 individuals, representing 23 of the 29 signatory bodies, the ANC and IFP blocs each holding 7 seats. The Executive would consist of two (in practice, three) representatives each of the ANC-Alliance, IFP, and NP/Government, the Chair and Vice-chair. The CDS confirmed it would give permanent administrative support, providing an address at its Pretoria offices with Frans du Preez, assisted by Sylvia Briggs, as full-time NPC Secretary, and taking responsibility for documentation, archives and finance. The Working Group’s suggestion that the other main parties should also second staff, was not pursued. It had suggested that, as a ‘hot line’, panels from each party should exchange contact details. In practice, all did so. To ‘promote the aims and spirit of the NPA’ the Working Group recommended the immediate establishment of two national sub-committees, for Publicity and Communications, and Socio-economic Reconstruction and Development (soon contracted to ‘SERD’). The CBM’s NPI office, about to close, passed on a pile of correspondence. Congratulations were still arriving. The Japanese government believed the Accord ‘provides an important basis for the progress of the negotiation process in South Africa’; the USSR hailed it as ‘proof of seriousness of intentions of influential political forces to move along the way of establishment of democratic and non-racial state’.6 One item urged intervention in Thokoza/ Phola Park; another complained of post-Accord attacks on IFP members in Natal. Orders were arriving for NPA copies. The CDS undertook to print and distribute an initial 300,000 in English – 6

NPI files, Carmichael/Pauquet.

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the IFP-supporting newspaper Ilanga serialized a Zulu translation but official Zulu and Afrikaans translations appeared only in 1993. The printed Accord was a pale-blue covered, A5-sized, 33-page booklet bearing the Convention’s round-­ table indaba logo. This ‘Blue Book’ was the ‘Bible’ of the peace structures and a blueprint towards the new South Africa.7

Leading the NPC The Full NPC constituted itself at noon on Tuesday 1 October 1991 at Barlow Park, unanimously electing John Hall as Chair. Hall described himself as ‘a small potato … I just chair the meetings – I don’t drive the peace process.’8 Yet as ‘Mr Peace’, the public face of the process, he did publicly voice the exasperation of civil society at the failures of political leaders to honour the Accord or encourage their own grassroots to do so. Believing the roots of violence to lie in poor socio-economic conditions, he made considerable efforts to promote SERD. He arrived at the conclusion that ‘political’ violence would only finally end with a new political dispensation, while growing in confidence that the peace structures could at the least ‘keep a lid’ on the violence, sufficiently to enable the political process to succeed. The Vice-chair was to come from the churches. Buthelezi’s veto of Tutu as Convention Chair (and the latter’s impending departure on a four-month sabbatical) put the Archbishop out of the running. No doubt prompted by Felgate, the Working Group recommended Bishop Stanley Mogoba, Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa, who had been the IFP’s suggestion as Convention Chair. The NPC unanimously elected him. Stanley Mogoba, then aged 58, came from near Pietersburg (Polokwane). He had been a classmate of Tutu’s 1951–53 at the teacher training college in Pretoria. He followed Robert Sobukwe into the PAC but was always a moderate. As a teacher in Mamelodi township, Pretoria, in the 1960s, young activists sought his advice. The police were hunting for PAC ‘masterminds’, and arrested him after he had persuaded a group not to burn down Mamelodi’s Dutch Reformed church.9 He was sentenced to three years on Robben Island. ‘They took everything from me, Bible and everything, and I had nothing to read. And as I was idle in that room, one day Denis Brutus was asked to sweep the passage.’ He and Brutus had shared the same transport to the Island, and grew close. Brutus asked what Mogoba was reading; ‘“No, I’ve got nothing to read, they’ve taken even the Bible away from me, they say I’m so bad I can’t read the Bible!” So Denis said: “OK I’ll bring you something.”’ Next day, Brutus hid a little book in his shirt ‘and when the warder wasn’t looking, he threw it inside 7 8 9

NPA text at www.peaceagreements.org/viewmasterdocument/462 [accessed 14/10/21]. Sunday Times 22/9/1991. Mogoba interview.

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my cell’.10 It was a commentary by a Catholic writer on the story of Jesus and the rich young man (Luke 18.18–30). To Mogoba’s surprise it brought his call to ministry, ‘and from that moment on I had so much happiness in my heart! So much!’ Still harassed by the authorities, he served as a minister and theological teacher, becoming Presiding Bishop in 1988. Based in Durban, he regularly flew up to attend the Full NPC and Executive. Compared with Tutu, Mogoba’s media profile was modest. His statements were crafted with studious care. His acceptability to the IFP was based on his not being ANC, and on his peacemaking with the Natal Church Leaders Group: ‘I think it was just the stance I’d taken, I’d spoken a great deal on this question of reconciliation.’11 ‘What stands out for us about Stanley’, say Methodist communicators Theo and Ruth Coggin, ‘is that he talked about peace … way before it was fashionable or acceptable; and he was quite severely ostracized for that.’ He would say that all wars end with a peace conference, so ‘“Hurry up and have the peace conference sooner rather than later!” He was very courageous, and … very instrumental in finally creating an environment in which people could talk about peace and the end of conflict.’12 The Methodist Church, the largest in South Africa, strongly encouraged its members to be active peacemakers. As Vice-chair Mogoba persistently called on the political leaders to share joint rallies. One or other always managed to refuse, but Mogoba and Tutu, by personal entreaties, did succeed in bringing Mandela and Buthelezi together in a much-delayed bilateral summit on 23 June 1993.13 Less successfully, Mogoba pressed for a joint ‘national peacekeeping force’. Its formation was delayed until early 1994, too late for any chance of success. Essop Pahad comments: ‘I think Stanley was a bit too reserved and wasn’t always sure about to what extent could he assert his own authority as the [Vice] chair.’ He chided him: ‘“Stanley, Stanley, why are you so quiet? You must move, you have to actively participate!” And he would just smile.’14 Mogoba’s reserve may have contributed to the somewhat perverse perception voiced by SACC critics, that the churches had been ‘excluded’ from the peace process.

Early months Although few minutes of NPC meetings survive, documentation is available in press statements and reports. The first attendance list to survive is that of the third Full meeting, 17 January 1992.15 A similar array of names can be envisaged 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Coggin interview. 13 See p.228. 14 Essop Pahad interview. 15 Present: John Hall, Stanley Mogoba, Thabo Mbeki, Sydney Mufamadi; Sam Shilowa,

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for 1 October. The NPC’s early meetings were full of excitement, as structures and activities were initiated. The inaugural meeting established two national sub-committees, for Publicity and Communications and for SERD (see Chapters 13 and 15).16 Much business in subsequent meetings revolved round their reports. It agreed a shortlist of candidates for appointment to the Commission. Nominations of NPS members were due by 3 October, but the IFP’s objection to one (undisclosed) name was to delay agreement for a month. The Departments of Law and Order (in charge of police) and of Justice reported their progress in implementing the Accord. The SAP undertook that all members would sign the Police Code, although practice apparently varied: some local newspapers show officers signing on behalf of their members. They were developing guidelines for the use of minimal force at gatherings, while endeavouring to disarm those bearing dangerous weapons (NPA 3.2.1.3). A seven-­member investigative unit to curb police misconduct was being created in each of the eleven SAP regions, under the overall command of a Major-General (3.2.4.1). Lt-Gen. Ronnie van der Westhuizen would head the special unit to investigate ‘political violence’, presently envisaged as comprising thirty sixteen-­ person teams (3.2.2.6). The SAP had nominated five top generals to the Police Board (3.3, see Chapter 19); and announced that the six SGT police forces would also join the Board. They were awaiting the NPC’s nominations (which finally came on 4 March). At the NPC news conference on 2 October, police spokesman Captain Craig Kotze pointedly added that the SAP had honoured the Pretoria Minute by setting up a 96-member nation-wide liaison structure to curb ANC–police violence, but the ANC had nominated only thirty-one members, so the mechanism was struggling while lethal attacks on the police continued. Hall remarked to the press on the tremendous enthusiasm shown for the Accord by all NPC members, despite already receiving twelve formal complaints of post-Accord violence and intimidation. Asked when local peace committees Jayendra Naidoo, Johnny Copelyn, N. Nhleko; Essop Pahad (ANC-Alliance); Suzanne Vos (IFP), Inkhosi Gumede, L. P. H. M. Mtshali (KwaZulu Government); Jac Rabie (NP); Danie Schutte, J. Maritz Spaarwater (SA Government), Dave Dalling (DP); Craven Collis (Labour Party), T. S. Barnabs [sic], Rev. R. Joseph (Solidarity), J. S. A. Mavuso, Ms S. Turner, J. O’Connor (National Forum), R. T. Ramasia (QwaQwa Government); Rev. T. J. Mohapi, J. S. S. Phatang (Dikwankwetla Party); M. A. Malete (Lebowa Government); J. S. Maake, M. J. Mahlangu (United Peoples’ Front), N. J. Mahlangu (Kwandebele Government, Intando Yesizwe Movement), Chief S. D. W. Nxumalo (Gazankulu Government), B. M. Tlakula, E. Mathe, N. M. Mtsetwane (Ximoko Progressive Party), Ms Lorraine Fourie (CDS), Ms Val Pauquet (Media Officer), Ms van Heerden. Apologies: Mr H. J. Kriel, Mr J. H. L. Scheepers, Dr F. T. Mdlalose, Mr V. S. Mahlangu, Mr S. S. (Fanie) van der Merwe, Mr I. Omar, Mr Aziz Pahad (NPC Minutes 17/1/92, BVS72/4). 16 Details in Business Day 3/10/91 and other reports of NPC press conference on 2/10/91.

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would appear, he could only say it was early days, some existing initiatives might be incorporated immediately as LDRCs, but it was all ‘a huge new business’ and he was not ‘the managing director of peace’.17 October saw a spate of attacks on commuter trains.18 A revenge attack from Soweto’s Nancefield Hostel on commuters at nearby Nancefield Station early on 23 October killed nine and injured thirty-six. The ANC and IFP blamed each other and all blamed police negligence. Would this derail the Accord? Police swamped the area. Hall led an NPC visit to the station. Both parties reaffirmed their commitment to the NPA and officially distanced themselves from violence, the IFP spokesman being regional warlord Themba Khoza, soon to join the Wits/Vaal RDRC. Showered with press scorn, the NPC held together.19 The NPC Executive met on 11 October with the five-member nascent NPS. ‘Flashpoints’ were noted for immediate attention. The NPS was mandated to contact the local peace initiatives in Thokoza. On 7 November the NPS, seven strong, was formally constituted by the Full NPC at Barlow Park.20 The same meeting requested Goldstone to establish urgent investigations into train attacks, the Cape taxi war, and recent fighting at President Steyn and Western Deep Levels gold-mines; and it received first reports from the sub-committees. The Publicity sub-committee presented a ‘three-year communication strategy’ for briefing to advertising agencies.21 Lorraine Fourie, provided by the CDS as Publicity Campaign Manager, was drafting ‘simplified’ NPAs in ten languages for mass distribution.22 The SERD sub-committee had started discussions with development agencies. Johan Scheepers, for Law and Order, sent apologies but submitted a fourpart Second Report on police compliance with the Accord.23 Part A announced that the SAP was incorporating negotiation into its training and making efforts to improve community relations, and it requested the ANC to make its SDUs known to the SAP so that the transformation into legal SPUs could begin (a request that fell on permanently deaf ears). The SAP were still frustrated at the inefficient bilateral liaison with the ANC. Parts B–D were a catalogue of police complaints against the ANC for alleged breaches of both the NPA and earlier Minutes.24 It contained very few complaints against the IFP, and Scheepers subsequently withdrew this Report, explaining that ‘some administrative misunderstanding’ had led to its lack of ‘comprehensiveness’.25 17 Citizen 3/10/91. 18 See pp.417–19. 19 Daily Dispatch 24/10/91. 20 NPC release 7/11/91, Carmichael/Pauquet. 21 Ibid. 22 Star 7/11/91 23 NMP/327/0178/28 (ANC Archive). 24 NMP/326/0173/10 (ANC Archive). 25 Annexure G, NPC Minutes 17/1/92, BVS72/4.

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An invitation had arrived from British Minister of Overseas Development Lynda Chalker, offering assistance and inviting ANC, IFP and NP representatives to London in November to observe community policing methods. Scheepers was already signed up. The Johannesburg daily, The Star, instituted a peace feature, headed ‘Peace Train’, and began proposing a real Peace Train to take political leaders to speak jointly in Soweto. The NPC replied cautiously: this might become feasible in future, but was currently premature.26 The indispensable Val Pauquet returned to centre stage, appointed on 7 November as Media Liaison Officer for both NPC and NPS. She became, de facto, Hall’s PA for his NPC work. For modest financial reward, she worked from her outhouse office at home in Randburg. In December she sent out the first ‘NPC Newsletter’, from Hall to all signatories and NPC members. Hall dwelt on how the Accord had initiated a complementary process to the now imminent constitutional negotiations: As you know, the Accord makes the political leaders accountable to the people of South Africa for their actions should they contravene it. This makes the Accord an extremely powerful document indeed, provided the general public are made aware of the power it gives them. … while the constitutional issues are being thrashed out at macro level, communities must establish peace and stability within their own areas. The Peace Accord provides the mechanism that will draw community leaders, business, churches and law enforcement agencies into a powerful force to counteract violence and promote regional economic development.27

Delegates at Codesa briefly speculated on whether peace structures were still needed, now that constitutional talks were underway. Recurrent violence, and Codesa’s own difficulties, rapidly ended such speculation and brought lasting respect for the parallel peace process.

1992: struggle for peace Just after New Year 1992, well-known singer Paul Simon flew in for a concert tour, with the support of the ANC. It was threatened with violent disruption by the PAC, AZAPO’s youth wing AZAYO and the Black Consciousness Movement of Azania, determined to uphold the cultural boycott. Two Soviet-made hand-­grenades exploded against the promoter’s office door. NPS Chair Antonie Gildenhuys, backed by Hall, invoked the PAC’s and AZAPO’s declaration of support for peace at the signing, and offered to facilitate a meeting.28 The PAC accepted, while belligerently challenging the NPS: had it yet identified the ‘Third 26 NPC Minutes 7/11/91, BVS72/1. 27 Newsletter 18/12/91, Carmichael/Pauquet. 28 NPC release 8/1/92, Carmichael/Pauquet

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Force’? Or uncloaked the murderers in the IFP, NP, SAP and SADF?29 Without needing meetings, the intervention defused the crisis. The NPC reported that the PAC and AZAPO had dissociated themselves from any violence relating to the concerts, and would only picket and hand out pamphlets.30 The concerts went ahead, incident-free. By the third Full NPC meeting, on 17 January 1992, the SADF Code sub-­ committee had made progress but the IFP now threw in a spanner, laying a formal complaint requiring that ‘the existence of MK, a private army, in flagrant contravention’ of the NPA’s ban on ‘private armies’ be ‘referred to the NPC forthwith’ in terms of Chapter 9 of the NPA.31 The IFP would stay in the peace structures but would, in protest, refuse to discuss the SADF Code except through a legal observer, until MK was disbanded. The NPC referred this complaint to its Executive where it remained unresolved, preventing any adoption of the Code by the SADF.32 The IFP followed up with a complaint against the ANC for running SDUs, which the ANC simply denied.33 Importantly, these matters stayed with the NPC, off the table of the constitutional talks. Danie Schutte reported from the Justice Department that work was proceeding on the Internal Peace Institutions Bill, to go through Parliament ‘this year’ to give statutory recognition to the NPS and regional and local structures. Before closing, the 17 January meeting applauded the news that an LDRC had been born that morning in Mooi River and its township, Bruntville, a ‘flashpoint’ in Natal/KwaZulu. Cyclical conflict had taken hold between the ANC-­ dominated township and its IFP-dominated hostel. Individuals were attacked while attempting to shop in Mooi River. The hostel was partly destroyed. Judge Goldstone personally chaired this inquiry, saw the need for an ongoing peace process and took the initiative to gather the ANC, IFP, business, farmers, local government, churches, and SAP for the launch meeting.34 Hall enthusiastically greeted this ‘major step towards reconstruction and development … an example of what can be done when communication is effective.’35 Unfortunately, in the absence of the necessary support this local initiative proved premature. M. C. Pretorius, Chair-designate of the Natal/KwaZulu RDRC, attended the launch and returned on 21 January, after the RDRC’s own inaugural meeting on the 20th, to chair the first LDRC meeting. The ANC refused to allow IFP into the venue and the LDRC foundered. It was September before a new Goldstone committee, chaired by Dirk van Zyl Smit, came to Mooi 29 PAC Statement 9/1/92, Carmichael/Pauquet. 30 Natal Witness 11/1/92. 31 NPC Minutes 17/1/92, BVS72/4. 32 See p.161. 33 NPC Minutes 4/3/92, BVS73/7. 34 NPC release 17/1/92, Carmichael/Pauquet. 35 Ibid.

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River. It navigated through stormy hearings in the town hall featuring the area’s firebrands: the SACP’s Harry Gwala and the IFP’s warlords David Ntombela and Philip Powell. It produced a new commitment to peace and supplied a mediator, Nico Coetzer, to facilitate the new LDRC, which then flourished.36 Violence ceased in 1993 and the committee was able in 1994, supported by the region’s SERD team, to facilitate the reconstruction both of the hostel and of 100 damaged houses.37 Delighted at the excellent attendance on 17 January, Hall wrote his next Newsletter.38 Three RDRCs and four LDRCs now existed. He urged members to popularize the slogan ‘Peace now, not another death later’, and generally to promote the publicity campaign. How many Accord copies could they distribute? Could they bring local peacemaking ideas to share at the next meeting? Could they supply contact details of influential local leaders – church, teachers, business, community, especially in flashpoint areas – whose support the NPC might enlist? It was just becoming technically possible to create a national digital database for peace publicity, and this suggestion was to recur, though never to be quite fulfilled. Among the NPC’s duties was to invite non-signatory parties to sign. Ciskei signed the Accord formally at the Full NPC meeting on 4 March.39 Incongruously, it had withdrawn from the Border/Ciskei RDRC the previous day, protesting at verbal attacks by the regional ANC. The Ciskei delegates said they well understood the need to participate, but parties and organizations (i.e. the ANC) must first recommit themselves to the NPA.40 An NPC press release promised that ‘it is intended to invite both the Ciskei and the ANC to make use of the process provided in the Accord to address the widely publicised strategy of the ANC to destabilise the Ciskei government’.41 The story is taken up in Chapter 17. The only other late signatories were the short-lived Afrikaner Volksunie (AVU), which signed on 3 September 1993, and the Natal and Transvaal Indian Congresses.42 Venda indicated interest but arrangements for signing were not concluded. In lighter vein, 4 March saw Chief Scout Garnet de la Hunt, Assistant Chief Scout Nkenkwe Nkomo, and Bishop Mogoba as National President of the Scouts, sign a pledge aligning South Africa’s 65,000 Scouts with the Accord. Daily News 4/9/92; Report: Violence at Mooi River, 21/12/92, HURISA summary. KZN SERD Report 1994 pp.7–8, Carmichael/Walker; Claude papers. Newsletter 31/1/92, Carmichael/Pauquet. NPC Minutes 4/3/92, BVS73/7. Signatories: Minister N. Nogcantsi (Chairman, Council of Ministers) and legal representatives Advocate V. Notshe and Mickey Webb. 40 NPC release 4/3/92, Carmichael/Pauquet. 41 NPC Executive release 3/3/92, Carmichael/Pauquet. 42 NPC Executive 19/8/93; Administration 6/9/93, Carmichael/Pauquet. 36 37 38 39

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Scheepers reported on the completion of the Proclamation on dangerous weapons.43 The NPC agreed that the government had thereby discharged its obligation under the NPA. The Proclamation said nothing new. Unsurprisingly the IFP announced it still had problems, which it would discuss further on the Executive. For the NPS, Gildenhuys reported that eight of an intended eleven RDRCs, and eight LDRCs, had now launched but were ‘impeded by lack of funds’.44 With so few committees yet in place, and de Klerk’s referendum for white voters on whether to continue the negotiations due on 17 March, violence was rising, and on 13 March the NPC made the first of many calls to leaders to recommit themselves to peace: ‘In the last week 100 deaths have occurred nation-wide. This is a tragic indication that the political temperature of South Africa has reached a dangerous level. … the flickers of hope that have been lit by the peace accord need to be fanned by a renewed commitment to the peace process.45 The referendum gave de Klerk a resounding 68.7% mandate to continue negotiations. Hall’s Newsletter of 20 March was upbeat, welcoming the widespread feeling of relief and anticipation. Talk Radio, an influential component of the media, was giving good exposure to peace spokespersons. The NPC had encouraged the composition of the Peace Song and it had a promising media launch.46 The first training workshop for regional Chairs was planned for that weekend, 20–21 March. The peace committees would, Hall wrote, give the ‘decent people’ at grassroots, surely the majority, the means to organize for peace. The eleventh RDRC launched on 8 April, and on the 10th the NPS began regular meetings with the RDRC Chairs, which Hall or a deputy also attended. The April gathering, at Barlow Park, called on the signatories to condemn violence and encourage tolerance. It was a call to politicians to honour the Accord, from regional leaders representing civil society. A protracted effort to reconvene the signatories now began. Hall wrote to de Klerk, Buthelezi and Mandela: In the light of the ongoing violence, especially in Alexandra, I believe it is imperative that all political, church and business leadership and Codesa, seriously consider a firm re-commitment to the National Peace Accord with specific emphasis on clause 2.2. … the public needs to be constantly assured – through consistent reference to the Peace Accord by leadership – of the efficacy and validity of the document. … we need urgently to decide whether such an official re-commitment to the accord be made publicly, collectively or individually.47 43 44 45 46 47

See p.157. NPC release 4/3/92 Carmichael/Pauquet. NPC release 13/3/92, Carmichael/Pauquet. See pp.255–7. Hall to Mandela 15/4/92, NMP/327/0178/05 (ANC Archive). NPA clause 2.2

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Possible venues for a ceremonial re-commitment might be a dinner in Pietermaritzburg, an actual ‘Peace Train’, a press conference, or the Full NPC meeting on 30 April. ‘I believe’, Hall concludes, ‘that this is a matter of extreme urgency and would appreciate your advice on how this event should be structured as soon as possible.’ The top signatories, however, did not rush to recommit themselves. When the Full NPC met on 30 April it applauded the news that twenty-three LDRCs now existed, but again noted their functioning was ‘seriously inhibited by lack of finance’ while the Internal Peace Institutions Bill, expected to bring a dedicated budget, was proceeding at snail’s pace.48 The NPC commended the Internal Stability Unit for introducing name-tags and strongly recommended it to abandon its ‘warlike’ camouflage uniforms (it did not). A suggestion that police from OAU countries might act as objective monitors of the SAP was welcomed, although the whole topic of International Observers, and police observers in particular, was still contentious. The draft SADF Code was tabled as a confidential document. It enjoined soldiers to disobey illegal orders, and was duly leaked, prompting shock-horror in the press.49 Despite solid support from churches at regional and local levels, the general commitment made by Khoza Mgojo at the signing ceremony, and Bishop Mogoba’s presence, church support at the collective national SACC level was beginning to be a worry. The NPC responded to reports of a recent SACC Summit on violence by requesting Hall to approach it ‘to clarify certain issues which have given cause for concern’.50 The problem was ongoing suspicion of the government, strongly rooted among some SACC staff. General Secretary Frank Chikane, speaking in London on 14 July, relayed the view commonly held in ANC circles, that vigilance was essential ‘to prevent the South African government gaining international credibility, because it was actively destabilising the very organisations with whom it was negotiating’.51 Only the government, Chikane added, possessed the legal force to stop the violence. May 1992 opened with reasonably peaceful May Day rallies. The headlines could have been very different: after an ANC rally featuring a belligerent anti-hostel speech, Alexandra’s month-old ‘Interim Crisis Committee’ (ICC) physically intervened to prevent almost certain battle between marching rally-­ goers, the ISU and SADF, and hostels.52

48 49 50 51 52

regards the commitment to publicly condemn violence, and promote ‘democratic pluralism and a culture of tolerance’, and to ‘support the right of all political parties … to have reasonable freedom of access to their members’. NPC release 30/4/92, Carmichael/Pauquet. See p.161. NPC release 30/4/92, Carmichael/Pauquet. Natal Mercury 15/7/92. The ICC’s ANC rep. Mike Beea, the author, and Paul Mashatile (ANC) defused the standoff.

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Three days later Law and Order Minister Hernus Kriel stirred ANC anger by tabling a fourteen-page document at Codesa’s Working Group 1.53 It was an updated version of the withdrawn SAP Second Report to the NPC, detailing the ANC’s sins. In the past four months, it said, more than 3,000 unrest-­related incidents had occurred, resulting in 711 deaths (475 shot, 144 hacked and stabbed, 110 necklaced and stoned). There was ‘incontrovertible’ evidence of a lack of commitment to peace and free political participation on the part of some leaders. Mandela and Holomisa had shown ‘remarkable aggression’ in blaming the government, security forces, and even de Klerk personally, for the violence. It was unfair, Kriel’s document argued, to judge the SAP alone, and no other bodies, by what it had done pre-1990 – and it was ‘difficult to explain why the security forces would instigate violence when the security forces themselves were one of the prime targets of the violence’. The mere existence of MK, it complained, encouraged others to form militias. The government proposed the full use and strengthening of existing mechanisms, and regular public meetings between the leaders to counter the grassroots perception of their ‘inherent antagonism towards one another’ which ‘fuels violence’.54 An hour’s angry debate reportedly greeted the ‘Kriel document’, delegates insisting that the NPC, not Codesa, was the right place to table it. Shortly afterwards, during the ‘Codesa 2’ plenary on 16 May, the ANC rejected the government’s insistence on special constitutional rights for minorities, and Codesa deadlocked. The country entered a jittery state. On 22 May the New Nation reawakened fears of government conspiracies and a ‘Third Force’ when it published the secret signal of 7 June 1985, sent within the NSMS, recommending the ‘permanent removal from society’ of Matthew Goniwe and his fellow activists. It had only recently been leaked to Holomisa. Four days later, on 26 May, the Full NPC held an emergency meeting lasting seven hours, to address the surge in violence.55 Thirty-eight attended, including experienced mediator Charles Nupen.56 Hernus Kriel sent apologies. Tempers were heated. The ANC representatives alleged the government and police were launching violence against them. Mdlalose reportedly complained that the ANC was ‘getting away with murder on a daily basis and the government does not seem interested’ (Barnard, 2017 p.62 n.6). The agenda focused on the role that peace committees could play in restoring services and facilities in the communities; and whether leaders could act 53 54 55 56

Star 4/5/92. Citizen 5/5/92. Minutes 26/5/92, NPC release 27/5/92, Carmichael/Lorimer. ‘Main’ attendees: Thabo Mbeki, Sydney Mufamadi, Jayendra Naidoo, Essop Pahad (ANC-Alliance); Frank Mdlalose, Suzanne Vos, Dennis Madide, Inkhosi S. H. Gumede, V. B. Ndlovu, Philip Powell, K. Hodgson (IFP/KZ); Danie Schutte, Maritz Spaarwater, Maj-Gen. J. F. Koen and Mr Krull (NP/Government).

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together through the committees to establish transitional ‘democratic structures, as agreed upon by Codesa’. All agreed on the urgent need for improved police–community relations, welcomed the fact that police were serving on LDRCs and attending training with them, and confirmed that ‘RDRCs and LDRCs would … be asked to monitor police activities and incidents of violence as stipulated in paragraph 7.4.5.5 of the Accord’. The need for full-time peace committee members, in fact for staff, was recognized but funding was desperately low. The meeting called for ‘a statutory fund to serve the peace process’, administered by the NPS, and agreed that a signatories’ meeting be held as soon as possible to advise on making the Accord more effective. The NPC Executive was mandated to prepare a signatories meeting – which, however, proved endlessly elusive. To deal with the numerous complaints of breaches of the political Code, the NPC mandated its Executive to establish ‘a small sub-committee’ as provided under NPA 9.2, ‘to examine and prioritise complaints and to seek responses from the appropriate parties, organisations or individuals’.

Complaints Investigating Committee (CIC) The complaints procedures were, in Hall’s estimation, an important component of ‘keeping the lid’ on violence. Although the NPC lacked coercive ‘teeth’ it could and did expose the parties to public censure. The procedures also afforded a cooling-off space for explosive political resentments, and an arena where honour might be satisfied non-violently, the most high-profile example being Kaunda’s deft adjudication of Buthelezi’s complaint against Mandela arising from Mandela’s UN speech, discussed below.57 Chapter 9 of the Accord, on ‘enforcing’ the agreements, directed that wherever possible disputes concerning alleged transgressions should be settled between the parties at grassroots level, using mediation, arbitration and adjudication. If referred to the NPC, the NPC could refer the dispute to another committee (9.2). Most problems were indeed settled locally, larger or more complex matters being referred to Goldstone. But a deluge of complaints large and small did reach the NPC nonetheless. Immediately after signing, the IFP was drawing attention to shootings and arson in Richmond and Bruntville.58 Sydney Mufamadi at the ANC ‘Peace Desk’ retaliated with a mirror-image catalogue.59 The police document submitted on 7 November, later to become the Kriel document, records attacks on police, and ANC intimidation of its opponents, throughout South Africa.60 57 58 59 60

See pp.224–5. Letter 18/9/91, Carmichael/NPI. Sent 14/10/91, NMP/327/0178/02 (ANC Archive). NMP/326/0173/10, Part A.1.2 (ANC Archive).

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By early January journalist Denis Beckett could write in awe, under the headline ‘So Few to Handle so Much from so Many’, about the ‘gigantic files of complaints’ piling up in the NPC offices.61 They revealed ‘far more drama is going on than ever meets the public eye; that every side perceives itself as the victim of aggression by others, and that the Peace structure … has a long way to go before it can do more than scratch the surface’. Hall was upbeat: the NPA was a ‘Magna Carta’ and everyone should know they could send in complaints. ‘We’ll shame errant leaders into complying …, which is much stronger than trying to legislate them into doing it. Public opinion will do the trick.’62 In April the NPC had agreed the Executive should call leaders to appear before it, to challenge them to cease making inflammatory speeches. Now, on 26 May, it decided on a special sub-committee. NPS Chair Antonie Gildenhuys requested the Association of Law Societies to suggest names, and the NPC appointed a Committee of six attorneys from Johannesburg firms: Johann Barendes Gresse (Chair), Ms P. Anne Stern, Ms Mornice P. R. Woods, Mr Christo Stockenström, Mr Grant Kaplan and Mr P. M. Lebuso. All served pro bono, without fee, to assess complaints, decide on referrals, and hold hearings to adjudicate high-profile cases. Fortnightly meetings, and hearings, were hosted at Barlow Park, where the CIC was constituted on 18 June 1992. The CDS provided expenses; the NPC Secretary acted as secretariat. On receiving a complaint, the NPC secretary wrote to seek comment from the alleged transgressor. Complaint and reply were laid before the CIC. By the end of July ninety-five formal complaints had been lodged, most ‘concerning ANC utterances and behaviour’.63 Many were referred to local and regional peace committees, and those concerning the police to the Police Board. The CIC reserved just five high-profile cases for itself, all concerning alleged ANC transgressions. Publicity was generated but in no case did the accused attend the hearings.64 At an ANC rally in Pietermaritzburg on 26 June 1992, Buthelezi and others were condemned to death in a mock trial and pictures of de Klerk and cabinet ministers were paraded, captioned: ‘Kill the murderers’. The CIC found the ANC and SACP to have breached almost the entire political Code.65. In a Saturday Star article on 18 April 1992, journalist John Carlin quoted firebrand Harry Gwala as saying he had little time for peace accords and forums: ‘“Make no mistake,” says Gwala, “We will kill Inkatha warlords.”’ Gwala, and Reggie Hadebe, were summoned to appear before an Adjudication Panel of three CIC lawyers at Barlow Park on 18 September. Only Gwala responded, in 61 62 63 64 65

Star 5/1/92. Star 30/1/92. Sowetan 25/8/92. Gresse interview. NPC release 24/9/92, Carmichael/Pauquet.

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writing. Four IFP complainants attended and Gresse invited them to respond to the absent parties. Philip Powell claimed Gwala’s inflammatory statements ‘set the tone for political activity’ in the Natal Midlands and had caused the peace process in the area to collapse.66 He tabled the names of eighty-eight IFP officials allegedly killed by ANC. The adjudicators judged that Gwala’s letter showed he did not view the NPA in a serious light and was ignoring its spirit; and that Gwala, and through him the ANC, had contravened NPA clause 2.4 by not refraining from incitement to violence or hatred, and clause 2.3 by intimidating or threatening persons in connection with their political beliefs. They ordered Gwala and/ or the ANC to remedy these breaches by distancing themselves from the events complained of, or ensuring they did not recur.67 Hadebe claimed that as he had been absent (being in hospital), he was not bound by the order. Hall said he would be happy to reopen the hearing.68 Nothing further happened. The CIC found that the ANC Youth League had transgressed the NPA by holding mock trials of ‘murderer’ de Klerk, Buthelezi, Pik Botha and others at a rally in Cape Town on 15 July. In response Mufamadi at the Peace Desk faxed Hall: ‘Violation of chapter 2, para 2.4 by Inkatha President, Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi’.69 It charged the Chief with numerous ‘belligerent and bellicose statements’, and in particular he was widely reported to have warned an IFP Youth Brigade rally on 5 September that unless they ‘bugger up the ANC, they are going to bugger up you and your future … the ANC has to be stopped in its tracks before the future is destroyed’. Inkatha youth must ‘politically annihilate’ MK and save democracy by joining self-protection units. Reportedly, not mentioned by Mufamadi, twelve IFP members had been massacred en route to that rally.70 Slanging matches continued. By late February 1993 the CIC had investigated 159 complaints, from petty (including one against a traffic officer) to serious.71 The CIC recommended that signatory parties appoint permanent contact persons to attend hearings and receive findings; and the media should be allowed into hearings. The Star reported on 8 April that complaints now totalled 183 and Deputy Justice Minister Danie Schutte said the government would commit to giving the NPA more effective sanctions – but any improvements required consensus agreement. In fact, transgressions were probably being handled as well as the situation allowed. ECOMSA Observer João Caetano da Silva wrote that while many 66 Adjudication report 18/9/92; First NPC release 24/9/92, BVS76/20. 67 Adjudication report 18/9/92, BVS76/20. 68 Second NPC release 24/9/92, BVS76/20. 69 Letter 21/10/92, Mufamadi to Hall. NMP/327/1078/19 (ANC Archive). 70 https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/cis/omalley/OMalleyWeb/03lv02 424/04lv03275/05lv03294/06lv03303/07lv03310.htm [accessed 19/10/21]. 71 Comments on NPA submitted by the CIC, February 1993, BVS229/4.

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political analysts saw the Accord’s lack of penalties as a weakness, ‘given the present stage of multilateral negotiations, it would not be realistic to expect that the different parties would agree yet on the establishment of sanctions for violators’.72 Wise words – the premature inclusion, or intention to include, a punitive tribunal in a peace agreement may permanently stall the process.

Accepting responsibility A breakthrough occurred in April 1993 when Mandela, speaking in Mamelodi, said openly for the first time: ‘I’m not going to blame the IFP and the Government only. We must face the truth – our people are just as involved in the violence.’73 What had tipped the balance was the ‘Table Mountain massacre’, the shooting of six schoolchildren including three sons of an Inkatha branch Chairman, in Natal on 2 March. ANC members were arrested. In revenge IFP members indiscriminately killed ten commuters in a minibus and four ANC members travelling to the hearings. At first, describing the children’s killers as ‘animals’, Mandela had made the standard claim that ‘state security services’ aiming to foment ANC– IFP hostility were responsible. Two weeks later he acknowledged the ANC’s co-responsibility for the violence. The massacre of IFP children prompted an unprecedented visit to the scene by Tutu and Chikane. At the funeral Buthelezi himself asked his followers not to retaliate. Hani too was deeply moved: We were jolted by the massacre of the children, the ten people in the minibus … The people of South Africa were shocked and horrified. The churches, the people, the ANC, and SACP, Inkatha, the international community. We said it was the work of animals. The same words were used by Mandela and Buthelezi. We visited the areas worst hit. It hit us in the face like a cold blizzard when we saw the destruction of villages, the stopping of ordinary life. We must move with speed. We are saying to ANC people that they must talk to Inkatha people on the ground. They must not wait until the big talks begin … We say to them that Inkatha is not your enemy, we are all victims of apartheid. Disagreements should not lead to physical fights. We must pursue the strategy relentlessly, even if we get another atrocity next week. … That development has sobered people in both Inkatha and the ANC alliance.74

Proposed amendments to the NPA tabled at the NPC Executive on 5 October 1993 included a new ‘national arbitrator’ appointed by the NPC, and routine compliance meetings, but the process was still essentially one of conflict resolution, preferably within the peace committees, and public shaming remained the sole sanction. 72 Sunday Times 9/5/93. 73 https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/cis/omalley/OMalleyWeb/03lv02 424/04lv03275/05lv03294/06lv03303/07lv03310.htm [accessed 19/10/21]. 74 Ibid.

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The NPA was effective in this area in that it provided an official non-violent channel for the expression of hurt and anger, it eroded unaccountability, confronted perpetrators, directed public shame, and held up a mirror to the parties in which they finally admitted to recognizing themselves.

Mass action and peace monitoring When Codesa deadlocked in May 1992 the ‘Channel’ of Roelf Meyer (NP/ Government) and Cyril Ramaphosa (ANC-Alliance), and their civil service teams headed by Fanie van der Merwe and Mac Maharaj, prepared to maintain clandestine contact; and the growing peace structures formed a nation-wide safety-net. The ANC-Alliance announced a programme of ‘rolling mass action’ to demonstrate its popular strength. Marches, strikes and boycotts were to commence on 16 June and culminate in a general strike in the first week of August. To the IFP, mass action meant intimidation. For the peace structures it was a spur to the development of peace monitoring. On 15 June, Hall urgently faxed the leaders: At a meeting last Thursday [11 June] of the National Peace Executive of the Peace Accord it was agreed by political parties that mass action protest would be peaceful and conducted according to the principles of the Accord. It was also agreed that a system of hot lines between parties would be established to prevent events getting out of control. It would now seem that emotions are running high and that leaders must commit themselves to protest being peaceful and to the combined structures of the Accord being fully utilized to ensure control. This would include the deployment of security forces who would only be used in extreme circumstances in collaboration with political leaders through the Peace Accord. … Yours sincerely, John Hall.75

The catalogue of atrocities now received another entry. About 10pm on the winter night of 17 June, for some immediate reason that remains unknown, the simmering resentments between the township of Boipatong and its IFP-­supporting KwaMadala hostel boiled over in a mass attack on the township. Thirty-­nine residents including children died immediately, six more later. The press spread allegations of police involvement. Wits/Vaal held an emergency meeting and the just-formed Vaal LDRC set up an Interim Crisis Committee, which began a successful local peace intervention. Goldstone investigated, assisted by British experts. All the investigations, culminating at the TRC Amnesty Committee, found the police guilty of incompetence but not complicity.76 If there was insti75 NMP/327/0178/07 (ANC Archive). 76 https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02039/04lv0 2133/05lv02139/06lv02144.htm [accessed 27/2/21].

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gation from outside the hostel, it seems it must have come from somewhere within the IFP leadership.77 The ANC, without reserve, absolutely blamed the government and terminated all talks. Determined to ‘internationalize’ the situation, it requested through the OAU a special meeting of the UN Security Council on the violence in South Africa. At first, the planned NPA signatories’ meeting stayed on track. On 1 July, Hall faxed formal invitations to the signatories to join the Full NPC at Barlow Park on Thursday 30 July. Much had been done, he wrote, to implement the mechanisms of the Accord; but the NPC was profoundly concerned at the ‘continuing senseless violence’. ‘We now appeal to you, as a leader of a signatory party … to help resolve problems which have arisen and to recommit yourself and your followers to bringing an end to the violence.’78

UN Security Council special meeting, 15–16 July 1992 At the Security Council, Mandela charged the government with secretly ‘fostering and fomenting the violence’ in a ‘cold-blooded strategy of state terrorism’ as part of a devious strategy to maintain itself in power (Mandela, 1993 pp.190–1). Inkatha, he scornfully declared, was merely its ‘surrogate’: In order to confuse the issue and evade its responsibilities, the government insists that the source of the violence is rivalry between the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party. The fact of the matter, however, is that the IFP has permitted itself to become an extension of the Pretoria regime, its instrument and surrogate. … It is not an independent force with whom the ANC must enter into an agreement to end the violence, as the Pretoria regime suggests. (Ibid. p.195)

Mandela asked the Council to request Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to send a Special Representative to South Africa, to investigate the measures needed to end the violence and to implement them, ‘including the continuous monitoring of the situation’. Next day Buthelezi, Foreign Minister Pik Botha, other Codesa parties and the heads of Ciskei and Bophuthatswana addressed the Security Council. 77 According to Kruger (interview), Rev. Celani Mthethwa, KZ Minister of Justice, was later implicated. The IFP’s Senzo Mfayela could not identify any immediate cause for a retaliatory attack, and says: ‘It still puzzles me. … I think for me, well this is a very subjective view, if there’s one incident I’ll take as an instigated incident, it would be Boipatong’ (Mfayela interview). De Kock (1998 p.241) writes: ‘We [Vlakplaas] never took part in attacks launched by the IFP and we were not involved in the Boipatong massacre.’ Zirk Gous (interview) also denies police involvement. 78 NMP/327/0178/08 (ANC Archive).

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NPA tested Mandela’s dismissal of the IFP as the government’s ‘surrogate’ placed the signatories’ meeting in jeopardy. Buthelezi, back in Ulundi on 18 July, told the IFP annual conference that Mandela had declared war and destroyed trust. He could not sit in the same room with a person who had ‘thrown down a gauntlet which we have to pick up or suffer total political ignominy among those sections of the community who are prepared to die for the ideals we serve.’79 Instead of attending on 30 April, they should send a delegation to demand the disbanding of MK. Buthelezi was also still seething at the mock trial of IFP leaders conducted at an ANC rally on 26 June. With characteristic innuendo he threatened that if violence escalated further, ‘We might be pushed into a situation in which violence will have to run its course before we can again begin the negotiations.’80 The NPA, the City Press remarked, ‘teetered on the brink’.81 More accurately, the NPA proved itself as the safety-net into which the affair now fell, and which the UN now stepped forward to strengthen. The US and British ambassadors to the UN were aware of the Accord and its significance. US Ambassador Edward Perkins said the US administration ‘had full confidence in the Goldstone Commission and supported the efforts of the NPA’; Britain’s Sir David Hannay said a troika of EC foreign ministers would shortly visit South Africa to ‘explore ways of restoring momentum to the negotiations. “We would expect such help to be aimed at reinforcing the peace structures that South Africans have already built.”’82 Canada’s foreign minister had already offered: ‘If an international observer team acting in support of the National Peace Accord could play a useful role, Canada would be prepared to assist in any way deemed helpful by the parties to negotiations.’83 Boutros-Ghali sent Special Envoy Cyrus Vance, former US Secretary of State, on a ten-day fact-finding visit. Vance recommended the proper resourcing of the structures by the government, and support through a UN Observer Mission.84 On 20 July, still hoping Buthelezi would attend on the 30th, the NPC despatched invitations to RDRC Chairs.85 On the 21st the IFP, in dramatic wrecking mode, presented a formal ‘Complaint to the NPC: Violations of the NPA in Dr Mandela’s address to the UNSC’.86 Mandela’s words, it charged, had inflicted ‘incalculable damage’ on the IFP’s international reputation. The ANC was 79 City Press 19/7/92. 80 Ibid. 81 Ibid. 82 Business Day 16/7/92. 83 Daily Dispatch 29/6/92. 84 See pp.301–2. 85 Invitation 20/7/92, Carmichael/Lorimer. 86 Complaint 21/7/92, Carmichael/Lorimer.

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attempting to side-line or eliminate the IFP, refusing to agree with it to end the violence, and it was solely responsible for destroying negotiations and the peace initiative. The IFP proposed a ‘National Conference of Review’ endowed with statutory powers, to examine both the peace and negotiations processes, with the aim of preventing one party – the ANC – from causing the breakdown of negotiations or contravening the NPA. The IFP requested a postponement of the signatories’ meeting, asking the Chair instead to convene an urgent NPC meeting on 28 July, where it would lay out its argument for postponing until its complaint against Mandela had been settled. Buthelezi followed up on 23 July, announcing he would not attend the ‘summit’, citing Mandela’s alleged violations and the continued existence of MK. Suzanne Vos added that the party also wanted a postponement until IFP complaints of intimidation arising from mass action had been ‘properly’ dealt with. Mbeki objected to postponing: ‘We would hope that everybody who is interested in ending the violence would indeed attend.’87 But on 24 July the NPC Executive decided to postpone, and convened the Full NPC for 11 August ‘to endeavour to resolve the matter and to discuss the date and agenda of the postponed meeting of signatories’.88 The IFP asked that if no resolution was reached on 11 August the dispute should go to mutually agreed arbiters, and that no meeting of signatories be held until it was resolved. In his Newsletter of 3 August, Hall expressed regret at the postponement at such a critical time, when ‘all lines of communication need to be open’. The meeting would have taken the form of a workshop reviewing the Accord’s effectiveness since its inception. Reports, including statistics, would have helped determine a way forward, and he had hoped that a ‘five-point plan’ of his own devising, signalling a concerted will to tackle the problems at grassroots, would have been adopted: (A) A commitment to a plan to make the Accord more effective. (B) The determination of Leadership Concern Areas which would require the support and reinforcement of RDRCs and LDRCs in those areas. (C) A review of hostels and a plan to resolve the problems emanating therefrom, utilizing RDRCs and the Goldstone Commission. (D) A review of squatter camps and a plan to resolve problems emanating therefrom, utilizing RDRCs and the Goldstone Commission. (E) Monitoring/liaison to re-establish the credibility of the police within communities.89 87 Business Day 24/7/92. 88 Letter to Chairpersons 27/7/92, Carmichael/Lorimer. 89 NPC Newsletter 3/8/92, Carmichael/Pauquet.

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Hall adds: ‘There has been much comment on the future and effectiveness of the NPA and its significance as a tool of reconciliation and negotiation. The UN has recognized its importance and our political leaders are fully committed to the Accord.’ As Bishop Mogoba said: ‘At this time, the country is looking to the NPC for light. If this light goes out, I fear the consequences.’90 During mass action week, commencing Monday 3 August 1992, a small team of twelve UN Observers accompanied the peace structures.91 On 11 August the Full NPC received the IFP’s formal complaint against Mandela. ‘Heated discussion took place.’92 The meeting reached consensus that adjudication must be urgently organized. Hall’s ‘five-point plan’ was put on hold in hope of rescheduling the signatories meeting for 14 September.

Kaunda’s adjudication The NPC Executive requested former presidents Kenneth Kaunda (Zambia) and Julius Nyerere (Tanzania) to act as adjudicators.93 Hall wrote to both. Nyerere declined, Kaunda accepted and agreed to sit with retired South African appeal judge G. P. C. Kotze as a local legal expert. The CDS covered the costs. Kaunda flew in on 17 October. The hearing, at Barlow Park, occupied the day on Monday 19 October. The party teams included their Full NPC representatives: Thabo Mbeki, Sydney Mufamadi and Aziz Pahad, with lawyers Nicholas (Fink) Haysom, Norman Mancim and Azhar Cachalia for the ANC; and Dr Frank Mdlalose, Walter Felgate and Suzanne Vos, with lawyers David Gordon and Roger Knowles, for the IFP. The adjudicators remarked on the ‘cordial atmosphere … Dr Kaunda and I have been most impressed by the spirit in which both parties have made their presentations’.94 The adjudicators promised their findings by the weekend. Kaunda held conversations with both Mandela and Buthelezi, keeping Hall in the loop. The adjudicators delivered their conclusion that honour had been sufficiently satisfied by the hearing itself, that it would be unhelpful to make a finding for one side against the other, and that it was safe to hand the situation back to the NPC. The NPC’s press release on 25 October stated: Dr K. Kaunda and the Hon. G. P. C. Kotze have concluded that because of the compelling arguments put forward by both parties, adjudication is difficult and the seeking of alternative solutions is preferable. 90 Ibid. 91 See pp.296, 298, 384. 92 NPC release 11/8/92, Carmichael/Pauquet. 93 NMP/327/0178/12 (ANC Archive). 94 NPC release 20/10/92, Carmichael/Pauquet.

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‘I am very hopeful because I feel that the country has mechanisms to deal with such difficulties. Any country that can find, among its own people, such as those in the NPC who can generate confidence and trust from both disputing parties, has a future,’ said Dr Kaunda on the eve of his departure to Zambia. Mr John Hall, chairman of the NPC, will now explore the avenues which have emerged from the initiative. “What has taken place over the last days and the subsequent action, is completely in accordance with the NPC – the prevention of confrontation through negotiation,’ Mr Hall said.95

Feelings took time to settle. Only in May 1993 did Buthelezi confirm that he no longer regarded Mandela’s speech as a barrier to a signatories’ meeting. Another crisis had already burst: on 7 September, Hall and Gildenhuys were present at Bisho, unable to prevent the second ANC march from ending in bloodshed.96 The government requested a signatories’ meeting; Hall faxed the signatories: ‘The RSA Government has requested the Chairperson of the NPC to convene a meeting of the signatory parties to the NPA on Tuesday 22 September 1992, please inform of your availability.’97 The IFP’s complaint not yet being resolved, no meeting took place – but the Bisho affair shook the ANC and government into renewed talking. On 26 September they signed their bilateral Record of Understanding, containing agreements to ban dangerous weapons and fence off hostels, which again infuriated the IFP. On 1 October, Hall faxed the signatories again, requesting that ‘all Action relating to demands for political freedom’ (code for threatened ANC-Alliance marches on Bophuthatswana and Ulundi, aimed at toppling both regimes) ‘be suspended pending the meeting of the signatories’, which should be soon but depended on the IFP/ANC adjudication, now due in a fortnight.98 The signatories’ agenda, Hall wrote, should include the ‘five resolutions’, with political tolerance topmost. ‘We have discussed the concept of a “Political Tolerance Accord” which would require a commitment from the parties to suspend “unconventional” political activities.’ A moratorium on marches until that meeting seemed ‘a reasonable request’. The threatened ANC-Alliance marches were quietly shelved. In complete contrast, Hall announced the NPC was teaming up with the American Chamber of Business in SA (AmCham) for a fundraising Golf Day and Gala Dinner on 9 October.99 Hall’s Barlow Rand Mineral Resources office relocated on 31 October 1992 from Johannesburg’s CBD to Randcoal House, 21 Chaplin Rd, Illovo, where he 95 96 97 98 99

NPC release 25/10/92, Carmichael/Lorimer. See pp.385–7. Fax dated 14/9/92. NMP/327/0178/14 (ANC Archive). NMP/327/0178/16 (ANC Archive). See p.346.

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enjoyed a view of the Wanderers golf course. Barlow’s made adjoining offices available for SERD and Fundraising. The NPC Executive met in the boardroom.

Place of reconciliation: towards an ANC–IFP bilateral Following Kaunda’s face-saving adjudication the Full NPC held a reconciliatory gathering at Barlow Park on 24 November. Thabo Mbeki announced: The IFP and ANC have consulted together and I have been instructed to say the following: We – the IFP and ANC – will have a bilateral meeting as soon as possible, attended by leaders of both organisations. The preparatory meeting will take place for that meeting attended by delegations of the two organisations. The number of delegates will be determined by the parties. That summit will take place preceded by in depth preparations. The issue of a multiparty conference will be one of the items on the agenda. We believe that the meeting should confirm the earlier decision of the NPC to have a meeting of the signatories and that the meeting should request the NPC chairman to consult with the signatories as to the date of such a meeting.100

Frank Mdlalose concurred: ‘We are in agreement with the position as outlined by the ANC and would add that the discussions we had tonight were thorough, practical and without rancour. We believe that we have arrived at a practical solution and having reported to our principals, hope for a quick follow-up.’ Hall expressed delighted if somewhat patronising relief: We have come up with the most heartwarming result that we have all been waiting for so long. I can only say that through this whole peace accord process … we have seen the ability of people who have got to know each other through the process, to find ways of overcoming their problems. I am proud of you!101

Hall renewed his attempts at a signatories’ meeting. On 15 December he contacted Mandela’s office suggesting 14 January 1993.102 Mandela apparently accepted, but on 5 January the NPC Secretary faxed again saying the date was ‘no longer feasible’.103 In all, 1992 closed with a sense of achievement. ‘Political’ violence had somewhat abated. The peace structures had held and begun to mature. International friends had arrived. Offices and staff were appearing. Peace committees could relax and enjoy Christmas parties.

100 ‘NPC November Peace Agreement’, BVS77/23. 101 Ibid. 102 NMP/327/0178/21 (ANC Archive). 103 NMP/327/0178/24 (ANC Archive).

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1993: challenges and growth Over Christmas the marketing campaign launched its new, positive slogan taken from the Peace Song, ‘Peace in our Land’, and went into motivational mode: ‘What did you do for peace today?’ In his New Year message Mandela described violence as the greatest disaster confronting South Africa, and claimed the ANC had taken key steps to end it. It had: • Called for an urgent meeting of all signatories to the NPA to strengthen the Accord and publicly renew their joint commitment to peace in our land. • Secured international involvement through the OAU, UN and the Commonwealth. This initiative resulted in the stationing of monitors in all parts of South Africa. • Actively engaged in local and regional peace initiatives as part of a determined effort to bring people together at grassroots level.104

Hall was cautiously optimistic, although ‘Unfortunately we do have this record of two steps forward and one step back.’105 Gildenhuys remarked that many disputes which had occasioned the formation of LDRCs had been resolved, police–community relations were improving, and: ‘There is a greater realisation by political groups that violence is not the key to political power.’106 The Executive met in optimistic mood on the evening of 14 January 1993. The ANC–IFP bilateral seemed on course. The agenda for the signatories’ meeting was discussed.107 Its objective was swinging away from recommitment to the Accord and towards ‘strengthening’ it, in particular seeking how to improve its response to complaints. The Executive authorized a new sub-committee to make recommendations on ‘strengthening’. Its convener was Hall’s new assistant, Paul Hatty, seconded by Barlow’s for full-time NPC work. Hatty, an engineer, was a former Managing Director of GEC South Africa. Used to getting things done, he found this work frustrating. The sub-committee included lawyers for the main parties. It began seeking submissions in February and Hatty finally tabled its proposals at the Executive on 5 October. The proposed amended NPA contained the draft SADF Code, and updated terminology, but no striking changes.108 Hall wrote to the signatories on 10 February, saying the Executive still saw a signatories’ meeting as a high priority, particularly to explore making the NPA 104 Sunday Times Ext. 3/1/93. 105 Daily Dispatch 5/1/93. 106 Ibid. 107 Business Day 15/1/93. 108 NPA, Proposed Changes. Carmichael/Pauquet; NMP/327/0175/03 (ANC Archive).

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more effective, possibly by introducing legislation to give it ‘teeth’.109 Could the leaders indicate their availability for 12 or 19 March? Mandela’s office immediately put Friday 19 March in his diary.110 The date then changed to 26 March but the IFP was adamant that the Mandela–Buthelezi bilateral must take place first.111 March slipped by, the parties becoming preoccupied with the resumption of constitutional talks, now to be named the ‘Multiparty Negotiating Process’ (MPNP), on 1 April.112 The promised ANC–IFP bilateral was also proving as elusive as ever. Preparatory meetings commenced, led by veterans Frank Mdlalose and Jacob Zuma. Reportedly, the working groups made promising progress. Then violent incidents, the adamant rejection of further contacts by Natal’s ANC ‘hawks’, and the refocusing of energies on the constitutional talks halted progress.113 The bilateral became reality only through the joint personal intervention of Tutu and Mogoba, who finally brought Mandela (Methodist) and Buthelezi (Anglican) and their entourages together for the bilateral summit, held at the Lutheran Conference Centre at Kempton Park on 23 June 1993. At the morning break: We told the people who were serving tea, please bring two cups only, so we gave the two cups to the two leaders, and then while they were having tea we went to fetch our own cups, away from them – and that ‘tea for two’ did the trick! Because, Mandela and Buthelezi had not had time to talk to each other.114

In April, Danie Schutte, hitherto Deputy Minister of Justice, became Minister of Home Affairs. The NPS portfolio moved with him and the NPC followed, completing its move from the CDS in June. Frans du Preez was reassigned to the constitutional talks; Andries van Rensburg of Home Affairs took over as NPC Secretary. By now the centre of activity under the NPA was firmly with the NPS, the regions, and the rapidly expanding local committees. The greatest challenge to peace came with the tragic assassination of Chris Hani on Easter Saturday, 10 April 1993. The Wits/Vaal region was ready to coordinate and monitor the subsequent events.115 In September the National Peace Campaign brought a flowering of peace activities.116 The NPC Executive still met monthly through 1993, despite the MPNP com109 NMP/327/0178/25 (ANC Archive). 110 Ibid. 111 NPC Executive minutes 12/2/93, BVS3/2/B/3. 112 NPC Newsletter 17/3/93, Carmichael/Pauquet. 113 The constitutional talks, in abeyance since June 1992, recommenced on 1 April 1993 as the MPNP, their central structure being a Negotiating Council and, briefly, a Negotiating Forum. 114 Mogoba interview. 115 See pp.305–6, 310–14. 116 See pp.269–86.

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peting for leaders’ time.117 The Full NPC met only on 3 May and 14 September. Weekly ‘NPC Administration Meetings’, early morning staff meetings in Hall’s office, began in July. Reporting to the Executive, they dealt with considerable amounts of ongoing business.

Mediating a national education crisis In early April, a National Education Crisis Committee (NECC) was demanding the creation of a multiparty transitional National Education Forum. Teachers threatened to strike. Simultaneously, COSAS students demanded the abolition of the R48 matric exam fee and announced mass student action for early May. The NPC intervened. Hall facilitated talks between Minister Sam de Beer (an NPC member), the NECC and COSAS. Attitudes remained stuck and the mass action week began, with stones, petrol bombs and the deaths of two security force members. COSAS threatened to disrupt all education, commandeer unused ‘white’ schools, and bring a march of 50,000 into Johannesburg on Friday 7 May. Hall called urgent talks, took a corporate jet to Cape Town on 4 May, raised airfares for student representatives and, with Mbeki, Mufamadi and Phiroshaw Camay, facilitated a four-hour meeting with government.118 At 2am on 5 May, agreement was reached on a National Education Forum. The Johannesburg march was prevented by the security forces forcing students off transport as they approached the city, while Wits/Vaal mobilized clergy to monitor the city and Soweto. Local COSAS marches in Alexandra, Mamelodi, Cape Town and elsewhere were successfully planned, marshalled and monitored through the peace structures. The exam fee was suspended. The NPC continued to facilitate communication.

Monitoring and ‘barriers to peace’ When the Full NPC met on 3 May 1993 it was extensively debriefed on the Hani events, showing that violence had occurred only where marshalling and peace monitoring were inadequately resourced. It concluded that it was essential to recruit and train many more monitors and marshals.119 The Executive had in February adopted its own monitoring method, keeping a ‘watching brief ’ through a checklist of ‘barriers to peace’, reviewing them at each meeting and deciding whether to act, refer to the MPNP, or maintain a ‘watching brief ’. All the ‘barriers’ listed in Hall’s 21 May NPC Newsletter were political issues: MK and private armies; the SAP, SADF and KZP; the Record 117 Jan., 12 Feb., 10 Mar., 29 Apr., 2 May, 21 Jun., 29 Jul., 19 Aug., 5 Oct., probably 25 Nov., 14 Dec. 118 Business Day 5/5/93; Sunday Times 16/5/93; NPC Newsletter 21/5/93, Carmichael/ Pauquet. 119 See Chapter 14.

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of Understanding; freedom of political activity; mass action; significant groups not yet signatories; peace in Natal; the Border/Ciskei issue; the education crisis. Most stayed on the ‘watching brief ’ list. The May meeting heard that despite Kaunda’s hearing, Buthelezi’s resentment at Mandela’s UN speech still appeared to be a ‘barrier’ to a signatories’ meeting. It requested the IFP ‘to clarify their preconditions’.120 Within three weeks Buthelezi informed the UN Observers that Mandela’s speech was no longer a barrier.121

MPNP Technical Committee on Violence The MPNP set up seven Technical Committees. Like Codesa it respected the NPA structures, not supplanting but making use of them. It requested NPC representation on its Technical Committee on Violence. Paul Hatty was delegated, and became the Committee’s Convener and Chair. As an engineer-­manager, now called to manage politicians and academics, he found this his most frustrating task. The discussions, he reports, were dominated by arguments over carrying dangerous weapons! Submissions from the public were sought. Hatty took them seriously, reading and noting them. When the realization dawned that they were in fact of no interest to the politicians, and that the committee existed as window-­dressing and not for serious work, he lost his cool, called a break, said a quick prayer for guidance, and angrily resigned.122

Youth initiatives At the same time, Hatty was delegated to represent the NPC in exploring several proposed initiatives for youth. Chris Hani, addressing an East Rand peace summit on 2 April 1993, eight days before his assassination, had proposed a body modelled on the American Peace Corps, to capture the imagination of young people, channel their idealism, and provide a constructive alternative to the unruly SDUs. ‘There were’, Hani said, ‘many young people in the townships who would be happy to serve a two-year stint in an organisation given the task of fighting crime, repairing schools and building parks and other community facilities.’123 With help from the private sector and cooperation from the government, we would be able to offer modest allowances and finance training programmes for peace corps members as well as many urban renewal projects. The young volunteers would create the basis for a new pride by township 120 121 122 123

NPC minutes 3/5/93, BVS237. NPC Newsletter 21/5/93, Carmichael/Pauquet. Hatty interview. Hani in Weekly Mail 8–15/4/93.

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residents in their neighbourhoods, which itself would make it more difficult for criminal elements to gain a foothold.124

Hani envisaged a prestigious organization, with an emblem and perhaps a uniform, as a step towards further education and employment. He wanted it to have legal status, and suggested it could fall under the NPA. Mandela (1993 p.240) endorsed the idea at Hani’s funeral. Had Hani lived, his ideas may well have become reality. Tragically, his death removed the one person around whom, in this uncertain period, so grand a scheme might have become reality, but the NPC Executive agreed on 21 June 1993 to a request from the MPNP to investigate the introduction of a ‘National Youth Peace Corps’. The prospect of this work prompted the birth of the weekly ‘NPC Administration Meeting’. On 5 July a business meeting about the MPNP’s request took place in Hall’s office, with Hall, Paul Hatty, Val Pauquet, Secretary Andries van Rensburg and his assistant Miempie Boone.125 This core group continued to handle ongoing NPC business, meeting at 8am weekly or fortnightly through 1993, then monthly until August 1994. Its minutes were circulated, as were Executive minutes, to Full NPC members and signatories. The 5 July meeting aimed to formulate an action plan for the youth project within eight weeks; and it rather precipitately laid down some principles: ‘The main focus of a youth project would be on [local] communities’. Education and training support would come from regional level, ‘policy formation and resource allocation’ from ‘national level’. Hall undertook to request R250,000 from Minister of Home Affairs Danie Schutte. A ‘database project leader’ and computer-literate secretary should be appointed within ten days. Instead, the initiative found it needed to liaise with Sheila Sisulu of the National Youth Development Coordinating Committee (NYDCC), or Youth Forum, a network of some eighty organizations founded by the churches-based Joint Enrichment Project ( JEP). With Robin Lee and Bob Tucker the NYDCC had already produced a vision statement for a ‘National Youth Development Initiative’ involving education and training combined with community service, ‘within the context of national reconstruction and development’.126 It prioritized marginalized youth and therefore excluded the DP, NP and CP youth wings. It envisaged possible programmes in rural and environmental conservation; education and training; urban infrastructures and housing; health, social and urban environment; and peace. Tucker talked about launching in September 1993. A National Youth Development Forum did launch in September, with a ‘National Youth Service Initiative’ (NYSI) as its intended project. A third idea came in August from NPC member Lampie Fick, Deputy 124 Ibid. 125 Minutes 5/7/93, Carmichael/Pauquet. 126 Annexure, Admin. Minutes 10/8/93, Carmichael/Pauquet.

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Minister of Home Affairs, in a striking concept-paper: a government proposal for a ‘Service and Training Youth Brigade’, to present to Sisulu and the NPC.127 Fick noted surveys that showed 27% of all youth (2.8 million persons of all races) felt alienated from society. The government was willing to make a ‘substantial contribution’, together with the private sector and international contributors, to a comprehensive programme for marginalized 17–23-year-olds, costing R60–100 million a year, to address violence and stimulate the economy. The Brigade’s mission would be to develop character and practical skills. Three months of basic training could include skills from fire-fighting to literacy, and a chosen sport. Thereafter the work skills programme would provide an array of courses: agriculture, carpentry, bricklaying, book-keeping, home economics and so on. The service function would see members, in an ‘attractive’ uniform, engaged in community recreation projects, harvesting, building water supplies and so on. Members would receive a monthly minimum wage and yearend bonus. Fick suggested that a Youth Foundation, starting with a R40 million government grant and expecting non-government funds, be established under the auspices of the NPAT. The NPC Executive plus suitable experts could constitute the Brigade’s Governing Body. Many meetings later, despite efforts to integrate these concepts, Hatty remarked that the government’s proposal and the NYSI’s ideas seemed not to be in accord – and the NYSI had set up ten offices but was ‘experiencing difficulties in launching suitable projects, primarily due to lack of capacity in the community’.128 The DP and NP youth were complaining about being excluded. By 12 April 1994 Fick was proposing a separate Trust for youth development, under the NPC, chaired by Hatty, to which existing organizations could apply, but no new government funds were available and no Trust materialized.129 Post-election, the NYSI succumbed to mismanagement and misuse of funds. It was, Hatty remarks, another missed development opportunity: ‘There was a lot of potential, some good projects and people – but if you don’t have good management nothing’s going to work!’130 Only the Wits/Vaal Peace Corps became, for a limited time, a reality.131

Towards the election A Full NPC provisionally scheduled for 19 October 1993 was replaced by talks with UN S-G Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who spent that day meeting South African delegations in Maputo. The IFP and PAC resisted his pressure to participate in 127 128 129 130 131

Annexure A, NPC Exec. Minutes 19/8/93, Carmichael/Pauquet. See also p.341. Admin. Minutes 4/3/94, BVS162. Admin. Minutes 20/4/94, BVS162. Hatty interview. See p.377.

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the election. With Hall and Gildenhuys he discussed strengthening the NPA and the importance of a strong UN Observer presence over the election, remarking to the press that ‘South Africa’s Peace Accord was unique in the world’.132 The year’s final NPC Executive on 14 December considered the NPC’s role vis-à-vis that of the new TEC and IEC: there were overlaps but an overall ‘watching brief ’ on conflict and potential violence was still indicated.133 Complaints still awaiting responses were tabled, nine against the ANC, two against the IFP. SERD, and oversight of the Police Reporting Officers, were moving to the NPS. Discussions about the youth projects continued. NPC members then became consumed with election preparations. The Executive met on 10 March to deal with immediate election matters and start discussing the structures’ future role. A mid-April meeting was postponed. Instead, a significant visit was made.

Intervention with King Zwelithini The IFP was still boycotting the election, threatening untold violence. Hall wrote to the church facilitators on 5 April: ‘At this time in our country, I am more convinced than ever that the church has a vital role to play in reconciliation.’134 They met in Hall’s office on 11 April, Tutu secured an audience with King Zwelithini, and on 15 April, Hall, Mogoba, Alberts, Tutu, Heyns, McCauley, Mgojo, and Pauquet flew to a day-long meeting with the King, prompting him to make an impassioned call for peace among his subjects.135

International mediation and Washington Okumu That same day, 15 April, Washington Okumu began the mediation that brought the IFP into the election.136 On 1 March, Mandela and Buthelezi had agreed to international mediation of the constitutional impasse regarding the Zulu kingdom. The CBM made arrangements for the mediation team, led by Henry Kissinger and Lord Carrington. The NPAT agreed to bridge the in-country costs – an estimated R2 million if, as expected, the mediation lasted several weeks.137 Michael Cassidy, appalled that the international team lacked any Africans, brought Washington Okumu to South Africa (Cassidy, 1995 pp.146–90). Schluter’s mother in

132 133 134 135 136 137

Citizen 20/10/93. Minutes 14/12/93, BVS162. Letter 5/4/94, Carmichael/Pauquet. NPC release 15/4/94, Carmichael/Pauquet. See pp.53–5 for Okumu’s previous involvement in South Africa. Letter, Coleman to Hall 28/3/94, BVS142. As the mediators rapidly departed, the government managed the in-country expenses directly through the NPS, including those of Washington Okumu (NPC Admin Minutes 20/4/94 BVS162).

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Photo 11.2 NPA Facilitators after meeting King Zwelithini, 15 April 1994: Louw Alberts, Val Pauquet, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, John Hall, Ray McCauley, Johan Heyns. Used with permission.

Kenya paid his airfares.138 Cassidy arranged meetings, Buthelezi and Mandela confirmed Okumu as Adviser Extraordinary to the mediation, and he joined the Kissinger–Carrington team. After one day of closed talks at Anglo’s bush retreat at Mbulwa the international mediators decided they could not help, and departed. Encouraged by Cassidy and Buthelezi, Okumu alone stayed on. Over a night of discussions with the IFP’s advisers, he devised a formula that Buthelezi might accept. Early on 15 April he chased Buthelezi to Johannesburg’s Lanseria Airport, but just missed his departure. Whether fortuitously, miraculously, or deliberately, Buthelezi’s pilot reported a gyrocompass malfunction and, minutes after take-off, turned back to Lanseria (Cassidy, 1995 pp.172–3).139 Okumu presented his suggestions, and continued to mediate through a whirlwind five days of tri-partite talks. The IFP entered the election on 19 April, with one frantic week to go.

138 Schluter interview. 139 On inspection the gyrocompass displayed no fault. In The Prince and I, published posthumously by his estate in 2017, Mario Ambrosini (d. 2014) speculated that ‘Buthelezi’s director-general, the all-powerful Stan Armstrong’, knowing Okumu had arrived and wanting to avert civil war, sent instructions to the pilot to say there was a technical error, and turn back (p.215).

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Final meetings Post-election, on 23 May, the NPC Administration group joined the NPS and Chairs for a meeting on Robben Island, which delegated a Committee including Hall to lobby for renewed government funding.140 The Executive held what proved to be its final meeting on 20 July. The much-postponed signatories’ meeting materialized at last on 25 October.141 Administration Meetings closed on 16 November. Van Rensburg handed the NPC’s administrative affairs to Pauquet. The NPC never formally disbanded but its final function was the deposition of the Accord and its signatures in Parliament on 6 April 1995.142

140 See Chapter 20. 141 See pp.445–8. 142 See p.450.

12 National Peace Secretariat: Getting to Grassroots Introduction The National Peace Secretariat (NPS), aptly described by its Chair as the ‘engine room’ of the process, was a statutory, government-funded body mandated to establish, support, and coordinate the regional and thereby local peace committees. It made immediate interventions in several ‘flashpoint’ localities while setting up eleven regional committees, each of which could establish as many local committees as needed. It developed capabilities for training and facilitation. As the organograms (p.200) indicate, it gradually absorbed the functions of communication and marketing, fundraising, and socio-economic reconstruction and development from the NPC. The NPS was attached initially to the Department of Justice because the structures were conceived as alternative dispute resolution mechanisms working with special Justices of the Peace. In April 1993 it moved to Home Affairs. It reported to the State President and NPC. The NPS was not, as is often imagined, the secretariat of the NPC. It was its own compact, multiparty committee, a strongly task-oriented team chaired by a neutral lawyer. It was served by an administrative staff of civil servants seconded from Justice and later Home Affairs, plus others on contract, employed by the ‘Directorate of Internal Peace Institutions’ (DIPI). The NPS met weekly or fortnightly in Johannesburg, Pretoria, or a region. Members attended RDRC/RPC meetings and assisted the regions with monitoring and dispute resolution. The NPS was the point of reference for the International Observer missions, and the Chair met weekly with the Heads of Mission. There was no command relationship between NPC and NPS. The relationship was left undefined. Jayendra Naidoo explains the fudge: ‘the National Party wanted to have more management control … through the Peace Secretariat, and I think we were a bit soft in the negotiations, we thought: “We’ll be there, we’ll manage it.” Which we did. But that left it [the NPC] kind of stranded.’1 The two Chairs maintained a close working relationship, the NPS Chair attended 1

Jayendra Naidoo interview.

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the NPC Executive and the NPC was represented at meetings of the NPS with regional Chairs. Over time, NPC activities gravitated towards the NPS. In turn, by 1994 the regions were increasingly gaining autonomy. As it operated out of the public eye, few realized what the NPS was or what it achieved. Being both statutory and mandated by consensus, it was a true transitional hybrid. As was the universal rule under the NPA, decisions were made by consensus. There were no walkouts. Effectively the NPS was a mini-Ministry of Peace.

Establishing the NPS Membership was capped at nine, ‘at least four’ being nominated by the NPC and one by the Department of Justice, plus up to four others (7.3.1). The Justice representative was also the Executive Director of DIPI. The Full NPC was not ready to agree on names at its inaugural meeting on 1 October, and a month’s delay followed. Meanwhile the Justice Department seconded Deon Rudman, who had helped finalize the Accord, to be its representative and Director of DIPI. A one-time magistrate, friendly and efficient, Rudman revelled in the work: ‘travelling all over the country, in cars and flights … attending marches, trying to resolve sit-ins. The police would call us, especially in the small areas where a local committee was not [in existence] or could not resolve the issue.’2 Offices were found for the NPS, DIPI and Goldstone Commission in the NGK Synodale Sentrum at 228 Visagie St, central Pretoria. Taking advantage of the four undefined seats, Minister of Justice Kobie Coetsee requested names from the Association of Law Societies and nominated a lawyer: tall, bespectacled Dr Antonie Gildenhuys, a leading commercial lawyer and senior partner in the Johannesburg firm of Hofmeyr van der Merwe, outgoing President of the Transvaal Law Society, and a Dutch Reformed Church member with no political associations. Gildenhuys proved a humorous and indefatigable leader, a good and independent Chair.3 He was ‘like a bulldog, he just went for it and he made a huge success I think of establishing this’.4 Sue Segar, a young communicator working with him in 1994, found him ‘brilliant’ and ‘charmingly eccentric’.5 Gildenhuys himself jokingly recalls discussing the invitation with his wife, concluding that, well, ‘someone has to do it!’6 He accepted, on the wholly unrealistic basis of ‘one day a week’. NPS work, he reckons, actually occupied between 30% and 60% of his time, 100% in crises. He lived in Pretoria; his law firm’s offices were on 2 3 4 5 6

Rudman interview. Jayendra Naidoo interview. Du Preez interview. Segar interview. Gildenhuys interview.

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the twenty-fifth floor of the Sanlam building in central Johannesburg, where the boardroom occasionally hosted NPS meetings. His firm was supportive and he managed to keep up some legal work by acquiring a driver, paid initially from his own pocket, and working while commuting in cars, planes and hotel rooms. The NPC’s nominees always came from the three ‘main’ parties and DP, with a brief Labour presence. By 11 October, three names were agreed: Advocate Gert Myburgh (NP), MP for Port Elizabeth North; COSATU’s Jayendra Naidoo (ANC-Alliance); and Suzanne Vos (IFP), the Australian-born journalist, IFP Central Committee member, and ‘blonde white Zulu of Sandton’.7 Vos also served permanently on the NPC. Myburgh expressed the typical NPS attitude: enthusiastic optimism tempered by a realistic determination to face ‘periods where the successes will not be so easily forthcoming … and remain committed to the ultimate end which is a stable and peaceful society’.8 His recipe for peace was: ‘mutual trust with the recognition of individuality’, which he said he immediately felt in the NPS, a place of mutual respect where members came with different backgrounds and expectations ‘but with peace as the common denominator’.9 The IFP were objecting to a further, undisclosed name. The press, clamouring for local peace committees, sniffed for details and voiced exasperation. The five-member embryo NPS met the NPC Executive on 11 October at Barlow Park, and listed local ‘flashpoints’. Most fell around Johannesburg or in Natal/KwaZulu.10 Outliers were the right-wing Transvaal town of Schweizer-Reneke, and gang-ridden Cape Flats. Thokoza’s peace effort was highlighted for adoption as an LDRC. On 24 October the Justice Department recognized the ‘Interim NPS’, mandating it to act immediately as an ‘informal’ body until made statutory by a forthcoming Internal Peace Institutions Act (which took a year).11 The NPC agreed two further members: Advocate Peter Gastrow (DP), MP for Durban Central, and Craven Collis (Labour Party), a President’s Councillor and member of the House of Representatives. Two places stayed open, in hope the CP and PAC might fill them.12 7 So described by Weekly Mail 2–7/4/93. 8 Evening Post 16/11/91. 9 Ibid. 10 Thokoza/Phola Park, Katlehong, Vosloorus, Tembisa, Alexandra, Soweto, Bekkersdal; Port Shepstone, Mooi River, Richmond, Howick, Greytown, KwaMashu, Inanda, Hammarsdale, Empangeni (NPC release 7/11/91, Carmichael/ Pauquet). 11 Cape Times 25/10/91. 12 Gildenhuys chaired throughout. Collis resigned in July 1992. Chris Fismer MP (NP) replaced Myburgh in August, and was succeeded by Nic Koornhof MP in June 1993. Additional members Johan Steenkamp MP (NP) and Senzo Mfayela

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It had originally been assumed that NPS members would be full-time. That stipulation disappeared in the penultimate draft Accord, and despite the heavy workload the politicians resisted becoming full-time, believing they needed to retain connections and influence in, and express the views of, their own organizations.13 Duly appointed by the State President, the seven-strong NPS was formally constituted by the Full NPC at Barlow Park on Thursday 7 November 1991. Gildenhuys, the sole non-political member, found himself in the chair. Next day, gathered in his law firm’s boardroom, they agreed the agenda for Monday 11 November, their first working meeting: ‘(a) Determine regions. (b) Discuss steps/procedures to establish committees. (c) Identify priority areas’.14

Top down or bottom up? A criticism that rumbled on in radical circles, not least among vocal SACC staff, held that the peace structures should have been built ‘bottom up’ not ‘top down’. But few local peace initiatives already existed, and they were insufficient to constitute a movement. The urgent situation nation-wide left no alternative but to cascade the structures top-down, albeit through an inclusive consultative process at both regional and local levels that conferred a considerable degree of local legitimacy. Either way, grassroots work was going to take time. The advent of local peace committees came as a culture shock to communities where politics meant ‘no-go’ areas and youths still fought the police. Alien ideas suddenly parachuted in: political tolerance, talking with the enemy, even working with the police – who themselves were undergoing rapid change. At first, the concept of neutrality did not exist. It had to be established by non-aligned chairs and mediators, who were essential for building up the structures. Slowly the majority began, hesitatingly, to place trust in them and take up this unprecedented invitation to resolve differences peacefully. By 1994, the process was fully owned at grassroots level.

Establishing the Regional Committees Until 1994 South Africa consisted of four large provinces, pockmarked by the ten apartheid ‘homelands’. The NPS agreed on eleven workable regions, mapping closely onto those of the SAP and ANC (see Map, p.202). Each region (IFP) joined in October 1992, Sipho Gcabashe (ANC) in March 1993 (Tokyo Sexwale was originally nominated). Rupert Lorimer MP (DP) replaced Gastrow in August 1993. Rudman was seconded to the TEC on 17 November 1993; Nic Grobler replaced him, as Acting Director of DIPI. Pule Sebidi (ANC) replaced Jayendra Naidoo in January 1994. 13 NPS Minutes 5/10/93, BVS230/6. 14 Agenda 11/11/91 BVS228.

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revolved around a Regional Dispute Resolution Committee (RDRC; ‘RPC’ from 1993). RDRCs enjoyed political, civil-society and security-force membership, and – a last-minute IFP addition to the text – ‘relevant local and tribal authorities’ (7.4.4). Each RDRC was responsible for creating as many LDRCs as necessary. They were to attend to matters referred by the LDRCs, NPS or Commission; advise the Commission on causes of violence and intimidation; settle disputes by negotiating with the parties concerned, recording the settlements and monitoring the outcome of any peace agreements; guide LDRCs in their duties; report to the NPS; and consult with relevant authorities ‘to combat or prevent violence and intimidation’ (7.4.5). Rudman collected regional contacts from NPS members, signatory and other parties, provincial government, police, business, church and other civil society networks. Invitations went to all of these to attend an exploratory meeting, officially an NPS meeting. ‘So we went round everywhere by light aircraft and so on, so all the Committees were set up, we convened meetings in every province.’15 Logistics, from flights to minute-taking, were handled by Rudman and a young Directorate official, Corrie Bezeidenhout. Gildenhuys usually chaired, briefing the meeting on the NPA, the structures, and the objectives of an RDRC. The representatives brainstormed on other organizations to be invited to a further meeting and discussed nuts and bolts: the appropriate number of representatives, the composition of an executive, and possible chairpersons, usually from business and churches. On agreeing to proceed, the meeting appointed a small continuation committee to prepare and issue invitations to a second, more comprehensive meeting, at which the NPS formally constituted and launched the RDRC. The first exploratory meetings began in Durban on 18 November, for troubled Natal/KwaZulu. The ‘NK RDRC’ launched on 11 December, followed by Border/Ciskei (12 December), Wits/Vaal (7 February 1992), Western Cape (16 February), OFS (18 February), Northern Transvaal and Far Northern Transvaal (26 February), Eastern Transvaal (18 March), Eastern Cape (26 March), Western Transvaal (27 March) and finally Northern Cape on 8 April. Subsidiarity was then the rule: the NPS would provide support while giving the region maximum autonomy. Each RDRC would plan according to its own circumstances, establishing sub-committees and as many LDRCs as it deemed necessary. Excitement was tempered by the realization that there were no funds available at regional and local levels for offices, staff, or any activities except some publicity. The CBM stepped in with offices and basic staff for Natal/KwaZulu and Western Cape. IMSSA brilliantly supported Wits/Vaal. In Western Trans15

Jayendra Naidoo interview.

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vaal the Chair’s legal firm provided space. Several regions accepted assistance from the government’s very talented South African Communication Service (SACS), but its former history as the Department of Information, apartheid’s propaganda arm, rendered it unacceptable to others. The Justice Department’s offer to accommodate LDRCs in magistrates’ offices was likewise unpalatable. At first, government funding came hand to mouth from the existing Justice budget. It covered DIPI, the NPS itself, and facilitators’ fees. Real funds began flowing only in September 1992 after strong recommendations from UN Special Envoy Cyrus Vance, and with the long-awaited promulgation, in November, of the Internal Peace Institutions (IPI) Act. The NPS could thereafter calculate its own budget, R41 million (£8.2 million) for the financial year April 1993 to March 1994, R65 million (£13 million) for 1994–95.16 Financial autonomy for the NPS came in September 1993, and for the regions in mid-1994. The DIPI staff increased to over 370 by April 1994, comprising 314 Regional Directors, co­ordinators, fieldworkers and secretaries working from 83 offices; 20 NPS Project Division staff; and 40 DIPI administrators.17 All peace committee members were unpaid volunteers, except for a handful seconded by business. Many grassroots members were unemployed. All received expenses (7.15.2) but the Accord seemed to promise more: local and regional members were ‘entitled to remuneration and allowances to be paid by the State’ (7.11). The IPI Amendment Act added, in October 1993, that amounts were to be determined by the Minister. Hopes for attendance allowances were raised, but the NPS and government interpreted ‘remuneration’ as ‘out-of-pocket expenses’.18 Attendance allowances were shelved as too difficult and expensive. Yet, uniquely, NPS members negotiated an attendance allowance of R300 per day for themselves, for meetings and ‘other events as agreed by the NPS’.19 This was never widely known! Peace monitors too were unpaid, except for food, until the 1994 Election. A remarkable volunteer spirit carried the structures through.

Local Peace Committees As Jayaseelan Naidoo remarks, ‘people were dying locally, not nationally’.20 Union members in particular understood the essential role played by shop stewards’ committees at factory-floor level in implementing the codes and agreements signed between unions and management. WG4 focussed immedi16 Budget request 9/6/94, BVS7/2; DIPI report to NPS 11/4/94. Carmichael/ Lorimer. 17 DIPI Report 11/4/93, Carmichael/Lorimer; List, BVS99. 18 NPS Minutes 29/1/92, BVS228/1. 19 NPS Minutes 14/2/92, BVS228/1. 20 Jayaseelan Naidoo interview.

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ately on the local: ‘The parties regard the participation of grassroots community leadership as the essential ingredient of peace and the establishment of Local Dispute Resolution Committees (LDRCs) as the most important mechanism.’21 The Group’s first draft of Chapter 7 assumed that only signatory parties would sit on LDRCs. This was quickly changed to ‘representatives reflecting the needs of the relevant community’ so a wide range of civil society and community-­based organizations could qualify (7.4.7). Liaison with the police was required. Police membership, although implicit, was not specifically mandatory but in practice all branches of the police, and SADF if in the area, joined the local committees. In the first draft, the parties were to undertake ‘to use all means at their disposal to secure the participation of their local leadership to support, participate in and implement local peace initiatives’.22 This commitment was surprisingly omitted from the Accord but the onus remained on regional leaders, especially RDRC members, to encourage local participation. As the NPS supported and networked the RDRCs, so the RDRCs supported LDRCs. Regions varied considerably in their speed of establishing LDRCs. Wits/Vaal raced ahead, Natal/KwaZulu lagged badly, but 83 existed by May 1993, and 263 by April 1994. They had formidable responsibilities: to attend to matters referred by the RDRC or Commission, while: creating trust and reconciliation between grassroots community leadership of relevant organisations, including the police and the defence force; settling disputes causing public violence or intimidation by negotiating with the parties concerned; … eliminating conditions which may harm peace accords or peaceful relations. To promote compliance with … peace accords and agreements entered into in the relevant area; to agree upon rules and conditions relating to marches, rallies and gatherings; and liaise with local police and local magistrates on matters concerning the prevention of violence, the holding of rallies, marches and gatherings. (7.4.8.1–9)

The NPA envisaged that special voluntary Justices of the Peace ( JPs) would provide an official legal arm to LDRCs (7.5). The JPs could investigate complaints of violence and intimidation (provided other bodies were not already doing so), mediate, issue orders, and ‘pronounce as a judgment the terms of a settlement reached at LDRCs or RDRCs’. This raised the classic dilemma of transitional justice: was ‘justice’ or ‘peace’ to be prioritized? Rudman developed a JPs’ training course and implored the structures to forward names, but no resident of a violence-affected community dared volunteer. Legal orders were inappropriate in a ‘war’ situation where one group’s hero was another’s criminal. The courts still operated, the Goldstone Commission was available for serious investigations, the PROs for complaints against the police, while RDRCs and 21 Task Group Documents 2/8/91, Group 4 Report, 2.3; Carmichael/van der Merwe. 22 Ibid.

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LDRCs emphasized understanding and trust, in a spirit of restorative rather than retributive justice. The JPs scheme proved inappropriate and never came into operation. While establishing the regions the NPS itself established the Greater Soweto DRC and Phalaborwa LDRC; and it offered LDRC status to the Thokoza process and an existing committee in nearby Germiston. In January 1992 it intervened in Ennerdale, a semi-rural Coloured township south of Johannesburg.23 Ennerdale typified the stand-off between government and people that troubled the entire country. Its residents were in conflict with the administration over rent, water, and electricity payments, and on 27 January police broke up a community meeting, leaving twenty-seven with gunshot wounds. The local churches, led by white liberal Baptist Minister and bridge-builder Rev. Desmond Hoffmeister, alerted the NPS. Accepting Ennerdale as an urgent flashpoint, Gildenhuys and Naidoo chaired long and fractious meetings, teasing out the strands of hurt and anger, arranging technical advice and taking community representatives to meet government ministers in Cape Town. In June, having established good communications, Ennerdale was handed to Wits/Vaal. No LDRC developed but the people had been heard, the crisis was resolved and violence ceased.

Facilitators and the Training Committee The NPS expected the structures to require the help of professional facilitators, as ‘interim’ Chairs and for special mediations. South Africa was rich in this resource. In 1990 the leading network, the Independent Mediation Service of South Africa (IMSSA) had moved beyond labour relations to create a Community Dispute Resolution Service, now ideally placed to assist the peace process. The NPS met on 12 November with Paul Pretorius and Nicholas ‘Fink’ Haysom of IMSSA, and Cleary’s SAFCON colleague Robert Conway. Baseline rules were agreed: the NPS would handle all requests and contracts for facilitators, at a maximum fee of R1,500 per day. This was the going rate, but a drain on the Justice budget – and compare a basic wage of R2,500 per month at that time.24 A few worked pro bono, but the bill in 1992 approached R150,000. The NPS subsequently acquired two full-time facilitator/trainers: the academic John van Breda who, anticipating the intrigues of high politics, found himself plunged into taxi wars; and Zambian politician Dr Paul Lusaka, seconded by the Commonwealth, a gentle diplomat who achieved success even in Durban’s complex Bhambayi settlement. Emphasis was also put on training the committees in the skills of mediation and negotiation. There was an obvious need to ‘empower participants in the peace process’ at every level ‘to promote their interests through peaceful nego23 BVS34; NPS Minutes 29/1–3/6/92, BVS228/1. 24 NPS 12/11/91, BVS228/1.

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tiations; and to change the prevailing political culture from one characterized by adversarialism and intolerance, particularly at grassroot level, to one characterized by joint problem solving and development’.25 The NPS set out to provide the peace committees with ‘the tools of the trade’.26 Naidoo presented a strategy document and on 29 January 1992 he, Gastrow, Rudman and Collis became the NPS Training Sub-committee, with an Advisory Group of Charles Nupen (IMSSA), H. W. van der Merwe (Centre for Intergroup Studies), and his American colleague Dick Salem, who drew up a training outline. Naidoo chaired, succeeded by Gastrow in 1994. The first training workshop took place on 20–21 March 1992, for the NPS and regional Chairs, at Glenburn Lodge near Johannesburg. It included negotiation, communication, empathetic listening; facilitation and dealing with cultural differences; dealing constructively with violence, political posturing, and anger; and bringing parties to settlement. It was a new experience and ‘quite intense’, recalls the OFS Chair, businessman Henri Lerm. ‘Different scenarios were put on the table and we would discuss it, and break up in groups, and the groups would do role plays’.27 Lerm and his Co-chair Rev. Simon Mabunda featured in the press release: ‘Communication between them is open, they believe, “because they are prepared to learn from each other.”’ Violence affected them both, but differently: ‘When Henri goes home he watches the TV news to see how violence affects his business. I watch it to make sure a relative has not been thrown off a train.’ Lerm commented on the goodwill that emerged in the Free State when communities eventually got together. ‘As whites, though, we tend to be prescriptive, while our black counterparts – because of years of suppression – tend to be defensive. We have to learn from each other – we are all in the same boat.’28 The workshop was repeated in Natal/KwaZulu on 23–24 March. Reception was positive, feedback suggesting longer workshops and the inclusion of knowledge of the NPA. Anton Venter of DIPI became Training Coordinator, local assistants and translators were recruited, and by November 1992 twenty-eight workshops had been held, from Western Cape to Northern Transvaal. The Committee began briefing the International Observer teams as they landed.29 A panel of fifty accredited trainers was formed, a Who’s Who of the nation’s mediators.30 For the first six months the Justice Department bore the costs, including accommodation for participants. At Rudman’s pleading, trainers’ fees fell to 25 26 27 28 29 30

NPS Report 26/2/92, BVS228/2; Carmichael/Pauquet. Gert Myburgh, Evening Post 16/11/91. Lerm interview. NPC release 23/3/92, Carmichael/Pauquet. NPS Report 4/11/92, BVS228/2. Paul Pretorius, Mark Anstey, Atholl Jennings, Ron Kraybill, Edwin Molahlehi, Thabo Molewa, Mandla Tisane, Phiroshaw Camay, Saths Moodley, Chris Mbileni, Felicity Steadman, Susan Collin, Dr Louise Nieuwmeijer and thirty-seven others.

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R1,000 per day. Naidoo sought funding, and in September 1992 the Danish government granted R1 million and the Joseph Rowntree Trust R50,000, making possible the training of around 5,000 committee members in a further 239 workshops.31 Training was standardized, becoming more even in value as trainers’ workshops were held and guidelines formulated. The gold standard was set by university lecturer Mark Anstey, assisted by his colleague Gavin Bradshaw.32 His training for the LPC in Uitenhage, Eastern Cape, commenced on the Friday morning on the weekend 22–24 January 1993. The arrivals gravitated into black and white blocks. By lunchtime they had interviewed and introduced one another, gained insight into each other’s lives and backgrounds, and begun to mingle. Friday afternoon was spent on different concepts of conflict, followed by a session on the NPA and the function of LPCs. On Saturday morning participants delved deeper into conflict and possible approaches to it: gaining entry, negotiation, mediation, and the concepts of peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding. Then skills for chairing: how to manage caucusing, shuttling, and impasses; and dealing with the press. After lunch came a role play, ‘The Blikkiesdorp March’, modelled on Anstey’s experience in Despatch.33 Mixed teams threw themselves into unaccustomed roles: Bearing in mind the tensions which exist in Uitenhage it was a remarkable experience to witness the Black Anglican priest assume the role of the leader of the AWB, the Mayor of Uitenhage lead a toyi including a white policeman through the group resisting the march. Apart from the concrete learning points raised, the exercise provided a major impetus in team building. The evening was completed with a shared dinner lubricated with a little ‘hooch’ – perhaps the first time the local authority, police and members of the Alliance in the area have had a small party together.

After dinner came a session on the Goldstone Guidelines on control of marches. On Sunday morning the Uitenhage LPC reflected on itself, identifying its potential, obstacles to effective functioning, and making action plans. Initial unwillingness on the part of police to participate in peace committee training, and thus to deepen relationships, improved after representations from the NPS. In the East Rand township of Vosloorus the police left the first workshop early, so the second workshop, a residential weekend 30 October–1 November 1992, concentrated on police–community interaction.34 Introductions on Friday evening included the sharing of expectations, and agreement on 31

Provisional NPS Report 1994, BVS20/13. Final Report (unchanged) Carmichael/ Lorimer. 32 Report, Uitenhage course, BVS103. 33 See pp.298–9. 34 Programme, Carmichael/D. Storey.

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standards of behaviour. Saturday and Sunday mornings focused on ‘negotiating and police procedures’ and general police–community relations. Saturday afternoon was given to understanding the NPA and the role of the LPC, with plenty of group work and feedback. Vosloorus remained the quietest of the three ‘Kathorus’ townships. In March 1993 the Training Committee was augmented with six expert trainers.35 Herbert Mkhize and Jacki Salk joined as staff. For the NPS, Chris Fismer MP succeeded Collis and was succeeded by Senzo Mfayela. Jointly with the Police Board, the Committee organized two pioneering national Police–­Community Relations workshops, one on 30 June–1 July 1993 at Johannesburg Airport Sun, another with the NPS on 25 October at Glenburn Lodge.36 Sixty-one regional and local follow-up workshops were held.37 In January Naidoo left the NPS and the training Chair, moving to the National Economic Forum. Peter Gastrow succeeded him. Anton Venter was now Co­ordinator of the newly titled Training Division. The Division became consumed by the urgent training of thousands of peace monitors and party marshals ahead of the April 1994 Election. All else – Community Police Forums, SERD training, peace education – went on the back burner in expectation of being front-lined after the election. Funding of up to R12 million was received from the British Overseas Development Administration, and the Division (and separately Wits/Vaal) oversaw the training of 1,930 party marshals and 20,161 peace monitors.38 After the election the Committee put forward a proposal for the establishment of CPFs throughout South Africa, with training in depth for police and community.39 It was also keen to address continued conflict-resolution training, advanced monitor courses, ‘Education on Mutual Understanding’, staff and organizational development, and SERD capacity building ‘including the building of Social Compacts’. Should the peace structures close, the Division suggested becoming an institute or government unit, preferably in the State President’s Office. Instead, it vanished with the structures. In evaluating its impact the Training Committee suffered, as did the structures in general, from the ‘counterfactual’ problem: how to prove that violence was not happening due to its good work? It had imparted conflict-resolution skills to thousands, mainly at grassroots, but success in averting violence and building understanding ‘received minimal media coverage. … the media was 35

Charles Nupen, Chris Mbileni, Athol Jennings, Vasu Gounden, Ron Kraybill and Gavin Bradshaw. 36 See p.427. 37 Recorded in ‘Guidelines for MECs and Commissioners: Evaluation and Implementation of CPFs’ 22/6/1994, BVS20/13. 38 See pp.316–20. 39 See pp.431–2.

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looking for sensational coverage, and as these events were successfully addressed and prevented, they were classified as non-events’.40

Supporting the regions The weekly NPS meetings frequently lasted eight hours, with reports on regions, training, infrastructure, problems around personnel and plant, finance, the appointment and payment of facilitators, the attempted implementation of JPs, research and evaluation, the Internal Peace Institutions Bill, international visitors and Observers, marketing and communications, and responding to crises. The meetings were held in Pretoria, Johannesburg, or quite frequently in a regional centre, one of several ways to maintain close contact with the regions. Members were assigned to attend full RDRC meetings, and constantly responded to requests for assistance with regional problems or mediating and monitoring difficult events. As an IFP representative on the NPS, Senzo Mfayela constantly travelled to ‘hold the hand’ of IFP representatives on peace committees, who felt exposed to attack even by ‘hawks’ in their own party, assuring them they were valued and doing the right thing by attending.41 Friday 10 April 1992 at Barlow Park saw the inaugural meeting of the NPS with the regional Chairs and Co-chairs. These gatherings became a regular monthly or two-monthly event, attended by the NPC Chair and the heads of the International Observers missions. The April meeting refined the regional boundaries and raised the burning question of resources.42 It heard reports from Naidoo on the two recent training sessions and future training plans, and from the NPC’s Publicity and SERD sub-committees. Flamboyant businessman Graham Higgo of the food company Reckitt and Coleman, Chair of Western Cape RDRC, opined that publicity and SERD should be under the NPS and that young business experts should be seconded to the regions to determine SERD needs, make proposals and raise funds. He wanted a business plan ‘to eliminate violence and introduce reconstruction and development’, with time-limited objectives. Everyone must know what to do and what was expected of them, so successes could be measured. A sub-­committee of three businessmen – Higgo, M. C. Pretorius and Henri Lerm – was delegated to produce this first-world plan. No more was heard of it. From Wits/Vaal, mediator Charles Nupen asked what resources the political parties themselves had allocated to promoting the peace process? And to whom should one speak when their members fail to attend meetings? Naidoo, 40 ‘Input from the Training Unit: NPS’, BVS97. 41 Mfayela interview. 42 NPS Minutes 10/4/92, BVS228/1.

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already exploring ideas that would blossom in the 1993 National Peace Campaign, suggested a National Peace Week to get public opinion and support behind the Accord. The NPS and Chairs meetings functioned as an informal parliament of the peace structures, a consultative forum where information was imparted, reports and ideas shared, needs expressed and policy discussed. The Regional Directors joined these meetings in September 1993; in January 1994 they established their own monthly meetings.

Becoming formally statutory NPC member Danie Schutte, Deputy Minister of Justice, began drafting the Internal Peace Institutions Bill early in 1992. Until it was passed, the NPS functioned fully but was officially ‘informal’. At the Bill’s second reading in Parliament on 16 June, Schutte paid tribute to the significant role being played by ‘the enthusiasm of a large number of people’, thanking the NPC, the ‘Interim NPS’, DIPI, and, by name, the regional Chairs.43 CP MPs scornfully cited death statistics and violent rhetoric as proof the Accord had failed. NPS member Gert Myburgh MP retorted that the structures were growing and making a difference. The DP’s H. J. Bester noted the date: Soweto Day was an historic turning point and ‘I think it should be remarked that this is in fact an historic Bill, because it is the first product of multilateral negotiations to be piloted through the tricameral Parliament.’ Its negotiators had included parties ‘not represented in this Parliament, including parties which substantially represent Black South Africans’.44 De Klerk signed the Bill in mid-July, but a sticking point remained. The Bill replaced the Accord’s wording on NPS membership with a new provision. In addition to the Justice representative, the State President would appoint eight others: six from a list of ten submitted by the NPC, and two directly, at his own discretion. Why these direct appointments? Was the aim to manipulate the structures and gain grassroots intelligence? The SACC’s Dr Lamola imagined so. Gildenhuys informed the Chairs on 26 August that the ANC was still objecting, and consequently the NPS was still hampered by an ‘overwhelming workload’ and the lack of a dedicated budget.45 Finally, agreement was reached that the NPC would ‘designate’ all eight members, leaving no presidential choice. By error this decision was not incorporated before the Act was promulgated, but it was honoured, and was included in the IPI Amendment Act in October 1993. Offices and staff began appearing in September 1992. The Act came into force on 4 November. Gildenhuys wrote to the regional Chairs, delighted to confirm their formal existence. 43 SA Hansard 1992, Vol. 25 p.11323. 44 Ibid. p.11336. 45 NPS/Chairs Minutes 26–7/8/92, BVS229/3.

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Peacebuilding and restructuring, 1993–94 Visiting the Wits/Vaal RPC early in 1993, Gildenhuys voiced the hope that this would be ‘a year of peacebuilding as 1992 had been a year of putting structures in place’.46 The NPS and Chairs, meeting in the Strand Pavilion Hotel near Cape Town on 8–10 February, recorded the committees’ desire to change their name to ‘Peace Committees’.47 The change, implemented immediately, became official in October in the IPI Amendment Act. The year 1993 was one of extraordinary contrasts. On the one hand, it saw the peak of ‘political’ deaths, at 3,794 (SAIRR, 1995/96 p.52). These were mainly confined to scattered parts of Natal/KwaZulu and the ‘Kathorus’ area of the East Rand. On the other hand, peace was steadily being built. The structures spread and matured, bringing stability to many localities. Chris Hani’s assassination precipitated the coming-of-age of peace monitoring. Naidoo initiated the immensely successful National Peace Campaign, giving peace a new, ‘cool’ identity.48 The constitutional talks that recommenced in April proceeded by ‘sufficient consensus’, riding out the boycotts by the IFP and right-wing. Peter Gastrow chaired an NPS Research Sub-committee, wanting ‘a research-oriented evaluation of the NPA and its structures’.49 An evaluation commissioned from UK-based NGO International Alert, using external and local evaluators, took place in April–May 1993. Its report was a disappointment. Its pertinent recommendations were already being actioned, and it missed basic facts and dynamics. The NPS quietly buried it.50 Broader research on the popular reception of the Accord was usefully carried out by the Marketing Committee.51 Two new Zulu peacemakers joined the NPS: IFP employee Senzo Mfayela in October 1992 and Sipho Gcabashe (ANC) in March 1993. Of Gcabashe, Radley Keys says: ‘he was involved in the peace process in this Province second to none’.52 Together, they took on peacemaking as their personal responsibility.53 Like Zuma and Mdlalose the pair became a determined team, travelling in one car to grassroots meetings, setting partisan views aside to focus on the victims as human beings, facilitating help and building trust. They visited leaders, including Humphrey Ndlovu (IFP) and Bheki Cele (ANC), in their homes, to talk about the principles of the Accord and say to them: ‘“You are angry. Tell us why? What are your issues, what are your problems?” … We managed to get 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

Wits/Vaal Minutes 2/2/93, Carmichael/Lorimer. NPS/Chairs Minutes 8–9/2/93, BVS229/4. See pp.269–79. NPS Minutes 11/1/93, BVS11/2/1. NPS Minutes 5/10/93, BVS230/6. See pp.261, 265–6, 288. Keys interview. Mfayela interview.

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to possibly the most feared of the leaders at the time.’ They ‘held the hands’ of nervous peace committee members: We moved around a lot, all over the country, visiting representatives, especially the ANC and IFP reps on those committees, and trying to service them at personal level. And just ensuring that they go home knowing that by attending that peace meeting, they’ve done something right. Because you can’t imagine how much siege mentality existed with those guys at provincial and local level. You know, to leave home, leave your wife and children, you’ve no idea whether you’ll come back alive. … You know, people living in that environment, they need a lot of holding of hands.54

After a Germiston/Katlehong LPC meeting, Mfayela left for the airport. An IFP representative walked home. Before reaching it she was ‘necklaced’, burnt alive, a sad statistic in the 1993 ‘Kathorus’ violence.55 In the months before the election of 27 April 1994, when the IFP was boycotting the constitutional talks, it did not boycott the peace structures. It encouraged its members to continue attending, though many at grassroots were unsure about doing so.56 Typically, in Alexandra daily contact was maintained, but not attendance, until that frantic week before the election. At a retreat in Kruger Park, 19–21 November 1993, the NPS planned a ‘restructuring’.57 Most functions had now gravitated under it: marketing in August 1992, and now SERD and fundraising. A smart new office suite was acquired in Braampark, Braamfontein, Johannesburg, to house Frikkie Botha’s office as Secretary to the Chair, and the functions, now named ‘NPS Project Divisions’: Training, SERD, Communications, Fundraising, and Facilitation. DIPI stayed in Pretoria. Corrie Bezeidenhout of DIPI managed the Braampark office, chairing a weekly ‘NPS Coordination Group’ of Division heads. Val Pauquet and Elspeth Graham continued to administer media relations and PR from home. The NPS still met regularly, although the functions and regions now largely ran themselves. Gildenhuys indicated on 12 April that he wished to retire as Chair on 30 June to resume full-time legal work, allowing someone with ‘fresh vigour and vision’ to lead the structures into their ‘second era of SERD’.58 He was persuaded to stay. Perhaps an opportunity was missed. Gildenhuys was excellent but just possibly a lively, persuasive SERD expert might have succeeded in blazing a trail forward for the structures.

54 Ibid. 55 Ibid. Probably Mrs Ntuli, on the IFP’s June 1993 deaths register. Carmichael/ Lorimer. 56 Mfayela interview. 57 Memo 22/11/93, BVS177. 58 NPS and International Observers Minutes 12/4/94, BVS130.

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Final meetings After the election the NPS was engaged in the debate on the future and the question of funding.59 The last regular NPS meetings occurred in Cape Town, on the evening of 3 November 1994 and a final wrapping-up on 8 February 1995.60 Pagers and phones were handed in. Copyright on the doves symbol was transferred to the NPAT. The NPS office records were destined to go to the National Archive (but in the rushed closures, the regional and local records had not been collected). The plan for a ceremonial handing-over of the NPA in Parliament was shaped. Expenses for a reunion, which merged with the handing-over on 6 April, were enthusiastically voted.61 Gildenhuys thanked everyone. The parties thanked him for his ‘valuable guidance and steadfast leadership’. The NPS adjourned. The IPI Act was repealed in July. It had been a unique band of workers, undertaking a remarkable piece of work.

59 See Chapter 20. 60 Minutes BVS232/16. 61 See p.450.

13 Mobilizing the People, Making Peace Cool We see this as part of a total strategy to end the violence. We hope to eventually make it unfashionable.1 What was so exciting was [that] it was a helluva change from selling baked beans and motor cars! And I guess it was a great privilege to be able to sell something like peace.2

Introduction Publicity was the one activity for which government had funds readily available. The NPC instantly established a Publicity and Communications Sub-committee and appointed leading advertising agencies, a PR agency, and Media Liaison Officer. The advertising campaign began over Christmas, aiming to ‘sell’ peace itself, raise awareness of the Accord, encourage participation in the structures, and create a popular movement for peace. Each Christmas saw a fresh advertising launch. In between came launches of the Peace Song and Peace Doves symbol, the National Peace Campaign with its September 1993 Peace Day, and the declaration of 1994 as a Year of Peace. Slowly, media coverage changed from sceptical to enthusiastic as the structures grew and peace events balanced and in many places replaced reports of violence. The T-shirts were wildly popular. Peace became ‘cool’. The Publicity Sub-committee moved to the NPS in August 1992; it was reconstituted as the Marketing Committee, and launched a research-based grassroots mobilization strategy with a major research workshop in March 1993. It established an Arts and Entertainment Sub-sub-committee. It adopted the Cape Town-based Media Peace Centre which aired peace programmes on radio and TV and pioneered mediation through ‘video dialogues’. Over Christmas 1993 the NPS Marketing Committee was replaced by the Marketing Division under Communications Coordinator Mark Manley. Manley ran workshops country-wide to encourage leaders to become active in peacebuilding, and 1 2

Peter Vundla, Sunday Times 15/12/91. Lascaris interview.

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oversaw the advertising to encourage a peaceful election. Closure aborted the Division’s plans for continued grassroots peacebuilding, peace education, and the promotion of social cohesion.

How to ‘sell’ peace? The Publicity and Communications Sub-committee was appointed at the NPC’s first meeting on 1 October 1991. It convened on 22 October. Chaired by Hall, it initially consisted of two representatives from each main party: Saki Macozoma and Bernie Bernickson (ANC-Alliance), Suzanne Vos and Dr Denise Bjorkman (IFP/KZ government), Tertius Delport and Jac Rabie (NP/Government).3 Communications expert Lorraine Fourie was lent by the CDS. On 7 November the NPC appointed Val Pauquet as Media Liaison Officer for both NPC and NPS. The government guaranteed R7 million for publicity, R1.4 million being earmarked for a three-month opening phase. Next day the committee briefed eighteen advertising agencies, giving them just ten days to propose how to communicate the principles of the Accord, educate people on the rights and responsibilities it afforded them, inform them about the peace structures, and emphasize the need for political tolerance. Ten agencies made presentations on 18–19 November. The contract went jointly to high-flying internationally-connected Hunt Lascaris TBWA, headed by John Hunt and Reg Lascaris; and Herdbuoys, South Africa’s first black-run, black-oriented agency, headed by Peter Vundla. Herdbuoys brought their public relations partner, Network International, run by Coloured returned exile Ursula Johnson and her white colleague Elspeth Graham, also specializing in the black sector. Hunt Lascaris received a permanent monthly retainer of R70,000, mere costs to them but a good slice of the budget. Ursula Johnson moved to other work, leaving ‘Elspeth Graham and Associates’ (Elspeth, her daughter Helen, and Cathy Makhene) to run the PR campaign. They did so energetically and imaginatively, liaising closely with Pauquet and working from Graham’s home on a retainer of just R4,000 per month. The agencies felt strongly that what must be ‘sold’ was not so much the Accord, but peace itself. Peace had to become ‘cool’. A three-phase marketing plan was outlined: (1) raise awareness of the Accord; (2) mobilize people to set up peace structures; (3) create a popular peace movement, featuring T-shirts and peace events. In practice Phase 2 was the responsibility of the RDRCs, and the launch of the vital Phase 3, scheduled for April 1992, took a year longer. Herdbuoys and Fourie began creating a ‘simplified NPA’ (SNPA), a glossy A3 handout folded to A4, explaining the Accord’s main points and its structures, in 3

Minutes 22/10/91, Carmichael/Pauquet.

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English on one side, Afrikaans or one of nine vernaculars on the other. By April 1992, 96,000 SNPAs had been distributed in township newspapers or delivered to grassroots organizations. SNPAs were useful at training sessions but in face of 50% functional illiteracy they had little wider impact. The most effective communication was by word of mouth, through speeches at rallies or on radio. Local and national talk-radio afforded good opportunities for phone-in discussion and promoting peace events. Months later, on 18 September 1992 when the structures were beginning to take hold, an informational ‘Peace Tree’ supplement sponsored by BP was distributed nation-wide in the nine major Argus Group newspapers, in English, Afrikaans, Zulu or Xhosa according to region. It carried an exhortation: The National Peace Accord provides the basis for national peace and harmony, for the resolution of anger and bitterness and for ridding communities of fear. This makes it a critically important document. A negotiated settlement of our national dispute is simply not possible unless South Africans feel free to express their politics fearlessly. But making peace is not just for the politicians … it is as much, if not more so, a task for the people. It is up to all of us to make sure we really do have peace in our time. And the National Peace Accord is the very instrument to help us achieve it.

The ‘Peace Tree’ gave a succinct summary of the Accord and the rights and prohibitions it contains, the list of signatories, a map of the regions, and contact names and numbers for each regional office. Graham and Pauquet worked relentlessly with editors and journalists to build understanding of the peace process and better reporting of peace. Pauquet ran one-day media workshops bringing editors together with peace committee members, to promote mutual understanding and increase communication and media skills at grassroots. Although incurably fascinated by violence, the media proved keen to support the peace effort. Advertising space and airtime worth in total over R60 million were donated.4 In October 1991 Johannesburg’s daily Star launched a half-page ‘Peace Train’ feature. Political editor Shaun Johnson suggested the title, inspired by Cat Stevens’s song ‘Get Aboard the Peace Train!’5 It invited readers to sign a personal peace pledge, and top journalists Denis Beckett, Joe Latakgomo, and Helen Grange were assigned to publicize the Accord and report peace stories. The Cape Argus later also ran a regular column.

4 5

Financial Mail 5/11/93. Johnson interview.

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Advertising launch Christmas 1991, Peace Song, getting on the map As the Christmas holidays approached, Hall and Ursula Johnson wrote to political leaders urging them to promote the Accord in any seasonal messages.6 Phase 1 advertising launched across all media on 22 December, with the slogan ‘Peace now, not another death later’. A dramatic TV advert showed two hands pointing at each other pistol-like, then opening and clasping one another in a sudden transition from enmity to friendship. The voice-over challenged: ‘You can kill the future of our country with violence – or you can build hope through peace. It’s in your hands.’ The radio version was broadcast 148 times on ten vernacular stations over Christmas. The print version appeared full-page in newspapers, with a personal peace pledge to sign: ‘I condemn and reject all the violence in our country … I am committed to the principles of the NPA … I will do everything I can to promote peace.’ Many such pledges were signed, by many thousands – there is no complete tally. The ‘hands’ enjoyed thousands of free TV flightings, through to 1994. Another print advertisement reproduced the leaders’ signatures over the strapline ‘They signed in ink to stop the blood.’ Another, issued in February, was a composite photo of de Klerk, Mandela and Buthelezi, captioned ‘All leaders must help keep the peace’; a third urged all South Africans to take responsibility for making the Accord work. Vice-chair Bishop Mogoba, in a New Year message in the widely read Methodist newspaper Dimension, welcomed the Accord as one sign of South Africa’s becoming a single nation. Now peace must be made to work. Methodists should ‘sign the NPA’ and churches, business and unions hold peace events. Editorials in the secular press, however, struck despairing notes: With 1992 not yet two days old, there have been three bomb blasts in the Transvaal – apparently the work of right-wing groups – while unrest continues unabated in many parts of the country. Indications are that this year will be no different from the past seven as far as violence and misery are concerned. The Peace Accord lies in virtual tatters, and for many people in areas such as the Natal Midlands, the prospects for 1992 are gloomy to say the least.7

The Accord was not ‘in tatters’. Work was in progress, but would take time. Popular movements need a song. Graham’s contacts included music promoter Duma Ndlovu of Word of Mouth Productions. With NPC support, 6 7

NMP/326/0173 (ANC Archive). Evening Post 2/1/92.

Photo 13.1 ‘Peace Now …’ The first advertisement, Christmas 1991. NPC Publicity Committee, widely distributed.

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Ndlovu organized the composition of a new song, ‘Peace in our Land’, by Sello Chicco Twala. Pauquet describes it as ‘a searing, richly layered ballad’.8 It is a compelling, inspirational prayer to move from hurting to loving: South Africa, we love you Our beautiful land Let’s show the whole world we can bring peace in our land Father, we pray Day and night for unity Show us the way Father To bridge the gap of hate Politicians, stop fighting Come join hands and be one … Let’s bury our differences And live in harmony Sister, brother Mamma, daddy Stop killing one another Bring peace in our land9

Ndlovu persuaded forty of South Africa’s top musicians, a Who’s Who of national talent including Brenda Fassie, Yvonne Chaka Chaka, Sibongile Khumalo, P. J. Powers, Hugh Masekela with his trumpet, and the Soweto Children’s Choir, to record it together ‘Band Aid’ style. It was, Ndlovu remarked, ‘the first time that a predominantly black group has sung: “South Africa, we love you.”’10 A video, much played on TV, was made of the recording session. The media launch was on 11 March 1992, the general release came in May, followed by a relaunch in December in a peace album. Proceeds went into an ‘Artistes for Peace’ account for ‘victims of violence’, within the NPA Trust. The Peace Song seeped into the nation’s psyche. In September 1992 it was Number One on Radio Metro; in March 1993 it accompanied the launch of the Peace Doves logo; and on 2 September 1993 it anchored Peace Day at noon on every radio station. It was a grassroots hit, and South Africa’s first unifying anthem. The top leaders proved more elusive than the grassroots. By March 1992 a real ‘peace train’ event was considered possible and the NPC, with The Star and Transnet, sounded out the signatories about journeying together from Johannesburg 8 9 10

NPC Newsletter 20/3/92, Carmichael/Pauquet. Lyrics widely distributed. Quoted by permission of Sello Chicco Twala. NPC Newsletter 20/3/92, Carmichael/Pauquet.

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to Soweto, speaking jointly at various stops. Buthelezi replied warmly, expressing appreciation and thanks to Hall for his leadership of the NPC.11 Mandela’s office failed to reply, and received a reminder.12 Few replied positively. Security concerns and unavailability prevented any such train trips. The Publicity Sub-committee called on all leaders – church, business, and politicians – to commit to peace, pluralism and tolerance. It designated Natal/ KwaZulu and Wits/Vaal as priority areas.13 Lorraine Fourie met the NK RDRC on 15 and 29 April, and Wits/Vaal RDRC and LDRC Chairs on 29 April, suggesting intensive local campaigns, an ‘area-specific blitz’ under a Campaign Manager, to accompany LDRC formation.14 In consequence Alexandra township, where the Interim Crisis Committee (ICC) was appointed on 1 April, received the lively help of Shirley Pressley of SACS, who worked with the ICC to produce an effective newspaper-style information sheet. It introduced the Accord and ICC and responded to the community’s own questions, not least police-related ones: What happens (officially!) to seized guns? To corpses collected from the street? At top level the NPC began its efforts to get the signatories to recommit themselves. Hall spoke at Codesa on 2 May shortly before it broke down, berating the politicians: ‘How can South Africans trust politicians to honour the new Constitution if the NPA is not honoured to the letter?’15

Business and church support Business support was solid. Jeremy Ractliffe of the Murray & Roberts construction company sent Theuns Eloff their in-house magazine, complete with peace pledge insert. ‘We are having a strong response to the signing of the pledge, not only within the M&R group but also from many companies and people outside the group who are requesting further copies for distribution and signing.’16 M&R’s own Peace Dove graced its flagpoles and letterheads. The churches presented a paradox. Many clergy chaired regional and local committees; Methodist ministers were encouraged to give a day a week to peace work; the Natal Church Leaders Group, with long experience of navigating between reconciliatory and prophetic roles, was fully supportive; church members volunteered in large numbers. Yet Elspeth Graham says: ‘the churches disappointed me, because there were certain wonderful church leaders who would get up and shake their flock, and say “You’ve got to get involved” – and then 11 12 13 14 15 16

Letter 13/3/92, Carmichael/Pauquet. NMP/327/0178/04 (ANC Archive). NPC release 10/4/92, Carmichael/Pauquet. NPC Communication Campaign: April–June 1992, Carmichael /Pauquet. Star 2/5/92. Letter 7/4/92, Carmichael/Eloff.

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other churches, it might all have been going on in another world, it was nothing to do with them.’17 Some influential SACC staff remained in ‘struggle’ mode, conflicted about peace versus justice. The ‘Kairos’ view of the government as evil remained alive. At Christmas 1991 President de Klerk wrote to church leaders requesting a peace prayer day, once more nominating Louw Alberts as coordinator.18 The Rustenburg Committee, still co-chaired by Alberts and Chikane, was low on funds and energy but it designated Friday 5 June 1992 as a ‘National Day’, not ‘of Peace’ but ‘of Prayer and Healing’. Codesa endorsed it, Rev. Mvume Dandala organized it, employees received time off to attend midday services. A few days before the event the SACC Executive, depressed by a recent meeting with de Klerk, resolved, against Chikane’s advice, to call for prayer for the downfall of the government. Dandala literally saved the day with a diplomatic statement about differing perceptions, but the event became low-key.19 The SACC sponsored a consultation on Churches and the NPA in a Johannesburg hotel on 25 September, at which Dr M. John Lamola, head of the SACC’s Justice and Social Ministries Department, surmised that the draft IPI Act would render the peace structures an intelligence and control mechanism for the State President in black areas.20 This conspiratorial attitude was absorbed by the WCC’s Ecumenical Monitoring Programme in SA (EMPSA), whose Observers were hosted by the SACC. Commencing in September 1992 they served short tours of four to six weeks. They might visit peace committees but, unlike the UN, bore no responsibility to support them. They were briefed that the NPA had ‘grave weaknesses’ and was impotent to stop the violence because ‘most of the politically-related violence was of a covert nature’.21 In other words, it was emanating from the State. Methodist Bishop Peter Storey, Co-vice-chair of Wits/Vaal RPC, called for greater church involvement and led the defence of the Accord both at the 1992 Consultation and the SACC Annual Conference in July 1993. He averted any call for the churches to withdraw. The final Conference resolution expressed appreciation for the thousands working in the NPA structures (Storey’s words) but listed criticisms, claiming that: the NPS, being statutory, relied on the police; the structures were dominated by business; women were excluded; and local committees were insufficiently resourced. The oddest objection regarded: ‘The exclusion of the church from fundamental decision-making 17 Elspeth Graham interview. 18 Citizen 9/2/93. 19 Jay ( Jayaseelan) Naidoo (2010 pp.200–1) confuses this 1992 Prayer Day with national Peace Day, which was 2 September 1993 (see pp.271–8). 20 Lamola, paper on IPI Act. Carmichael. 21 EMPSA Report 1994:3 www.aluka.org/stable/10.5555/al.sff.document.ydlwcc2170.

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and its marginalisation to a token role within the NPA’. In sum, the NPA was ‘unjust’ and its operations ‘flawed’.22 Storey urged Hall to take note of the substance in some of these objections. He himself gave religious representatives a higher profile by establishing, in August 1993, a unique Religious Bodies Sub-committee in Wits/Vaal. It enabled religious representatives from the LPCs to share ideas, and facilitated the recruitment and training of over 700 of the region’s 6,919 monitors, including Chief Rabbi Cyril Harris.23

Move to the NPS, a new Committee and research-based strategy It soon seemed logical that the publicity and communications function should fall under the NPS rather than the NPC. Funds flowed through the NPS, and the peace structures under it were integral to the ‘marketing’ effort: they were communication hubs and were themselves the medium giving substance to the peace message. The NPC Publicity Sub-committee dissolved on 9 June 1992. Lorraine Fourie stepped down. A new and high-powered ‘NPA Marketing and Communications Committee’ assembled on 18 August at the Integrated Marketing Research Centre in Rivonia, Johannesburg, courtesy of leading researcher Teddy Langschmidt.24 Among others it drew in NPS members Antonie Gildenhuys, Gert Myburgh, Jayendra Naidoo and Suzanne Vos; experts Reg Lascaris, Teddy Langschmidt, Elspeth Graham and Cathy Makhene; Val Pauquet, and communicators close to the grassroots: Sowetan editor Aggrey Klaaste, his Managing Editor Moegsien Williams, Colin Judin of the SA Black Taxi Association, Rev. Mvume Dandala of Johannesburg’s Central Methodist Church, NPAT, and Hostels Peace Initiative, and SERD National Coordinator Warwick Barnes. Pauquet invited Mark Manley, a young motivator and recently Mayor of Randburg. The committee elected Western Cape businessman Graham Higgo as Chair, and Roger Scheepers, a colleague of Hall’s from Barlow’s as Vice-chair. DIPI provided Anton Venter as secretary. Higgo reignited debate on whether the Peace Accord, or the concept of ‘Peace’, should be marketed, and proposed it was the Accord. ‘More or less 95% of the community’, he claimed, were still unaware of it. The grassroots needed informing that their leaders had signed it. Others countered that what must be sold was ‘the vision of peace for the future’, seeing the goal as ‘to create awareness and to get the community to talk about peace and doing things for themselves. … The people should start to build a peace-loving nation themselves.’ All expressed 22 SACC July 1993, Final Resolution on NPA. Carmichael/P. Storey. 23 Author’s own records. 24 Minutes 18/8/92, BVS203.

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frustration that political leaders were not controlling their followers and were too prone to making inflammatory speeches. A compromise was agreed: to communicate both ‘peace’ and the Accord, starting at grassroots ‘to convince all the people to change their spirit and attitudes’. Knowledge of the Accord was relevant: it was ‘the primary tool to create tolerance and to convince people to be peace-loving’. The Marketing Committee made its home in the Hunt Lascaris TBWA offices in Wierda Valley, Sandton. There on 3 September they considered meanings of ‘peace’. They defined it dynamically, as ‘a deep, personal commitment which is lasting, unconditional, visionary and enthusiastic’.25 They agreed to ‘sell’ a positive vision: ‘a peaceful South Africa, a good economy, stability and patriotism’ – where ‘patriotism’ meant pride in the new united nation – while bearing in mind that others had differing preconceptions: ‘for instance the Whites believe that peace is the status quo stability while Blacks see it as other things’.26 The Peace Accord itself represented ‘the only process through which peace could be achieved’, and leaders needed reminding of it. This meeting expressed the need for a new, unifying, non-political peace symbol. Rob Campbell, a Hunt Lascaris associate, began exploring the design that became the Peace Doves, using Markinor research and focus-groups. Phase 2, renamed ‘mobilization’, was launching at Christmas. A major research workshop was yet to be held, to hear the views of the grassroots on how peace could be promoted. In the interim a ‘Strategy Committee’ of Reg Lascaris, Mvume Dandala, Aggrey Klaaste and Mark Manley was delegated to ‘define the goal and the product’ and outline a strategic plan. Their thoughts were poured into an untidy 149-page document, ‘From Violence through Peace to Unity and the Foundation of a Winning Nation’.27 ‘It wasn’t a map,’ says Lascaris, ‘it was a compass so we kept changing things!’28 The document’s starting point was that public awareness of the Accord was growing, if still vague, and it was now incumbent on all South Africans to convert it into a movement. The time had come to start inculcating peace itself. The population, as depicted by Langschmidt’s research, broadly consisted of an angry, expectant majority and a scared privileged minority, but all were somehow affected by the violence. All needed to be mobilized around the vision of inclusive peace and empowered to transform, relatively peacefully, this heterogeneous, divided society into the multiparty democracy of which the Peace Accord itself was ‘the first tangible sign’.29 People must feel they could take action and generate pressure for peace from ‘bottom up’. 25 Summary of meeting 3/9/92. BVS228/2 and Carmichael/Lorimer. 26 Ibid. 27 Dated 29/10/92, Carmichael/Pauquet/Manley. 28 Lascaris interview. 29 ‘From Violence …’ p.103.

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The means of mobilization would normally include the media, role models, and political leaders. Regrettably, the document mused, the political leaders presented a problem – but they could be sidelined if they failed to get on board. South Africa lacked a universally accepted peace model due to Tutu’s unacceptability to the IFP, but musicians and other societal role models could partly fill the gap. (In 1993 Jacqui Mofokeng did just that, dedicating her year as Miss South Africa to peace.) Media support was about to burgeon, both in financial terms and, during 1993, in mood. Phase 1 had cost the government R1.5 million, with donated media space bringing the real value to R4 million. The 1993 campaign was expected to attract donated space worth R8 million. The actual value, by late 1993, was an astonishing R40 million, with another R25 million to come. Of this, 80% came from broadcast media and 20% from print.30 Appended to the document was a letter from writer/producer Welcome Msomi proposing a truly grassroots peace concert tour, taking traditional and popular music to ‘rural areas and hostels; cities and towns’. Proposals for such events were growing in number. To help the NPS to assess them the Committee suggested an expert panel drawn from the arts and entertainment world. The idea grew into an Arts & Entertainment Sub-committee.31

Hostels Peace Initiative The Hostels Peace Initiative was an outstanding example of a bottom-up grassroots peace initiative, germinating in the environment created by the Accord. War had raged for two years between two Johannesburg hostels, the Zulu-­majority Jeppe Hostel (‘IFP’) and Xhosa-majority Selby Hostel (‘ANC’). In August 1992 a group of elders in Jeppe discussed how to end the killing. Among them was Jacob Dhlomo from Nkandla in KwaZulu. At home he was the well-respected owner of sixteen huts, with two wives and ten children. In town he worked as a tea-maker for FNB bank and shared a hostel room with ten others.32 Dhlomo volunteered to take a letter to the Selby leaders. Normally, to approach the opposing hostel was certain death. Dignified courage saw Dhlomo through. The Xhosa guards searched him, but accepted the letter and ensured he left safely. The reply was positive. More correspondence followed, then meetings with Selby men led by German Mlatsheni, beneath the Selby fly-over. They agreed to find a neutral chairperson for a large meeting. The ANC directed them to the SACC, where Lamola suggested Rev. Mvume Dandala at the Central Methodist Mission.

30 Financial Mail 5/11/93. 31 See pp.279–82. 32 Sowetan National Peace Year Supplement 28/2/94.

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Two hundred men, from Jeppe, Selby, and eight other Johannesburg and Soweto hostels, gathered with representatives of the provincial administration, Johannesburg Municipality, and UN Observers, at the Pioneer Hall in Rosettenville on 21 November. Rules were agreed: no one must lay blame nor be forced to apologize, since none really knew how the fighting had started; everyone would participate purely as a hostel resident; and the aim was to find a solution.33 The leaders gave Dandala a text, Isaiah 40: ‘Comfort ye my people …’ Dandala read, prayed, then chaired two hours of talking ‘until everyone in the room had said everything he wanted to say’ (Kuljian, 2013 p.107). Dandala asked what should happen next? If this were church, they would share the Peace: ‘The Peace of the Lord be with you.’ ‘And also with you.’ ‘Let’s do that then’, said a participant. These guys knew each other before this war. … I just stood back and watched. It was incredible … After thirty minutes, I said, ‘All right, let’s sit down’ and no one sits down where they had been sitting before. That was the breakthrough. After that, it was no longer them against us. The Johannesburg Hostel Peace Initiative was born in that moment. (Ibid.)

Those present took a pledge to preach peace to others and keep other hostels informed. Dandala, an NPAT Trustee and Marketing Committee member, is clear that ‘the HPI would not have worked, and moved forward with confidence, had it not been taking its cue from the NPA: Very clearly, we understood ourselves as trying to complement the work of the NPA. And those of us who were working … not just to promote peace but to intervene in the conflict, actually did not have to do a hard sell for peace, because the whole atmosphere was saturated with peace, and I think the greatest value of that campaign by the NPA was that it made those who did not really want peace to be the odd people out, rather than the other way round. … So that campaign, although one might not have been directly involved with the structures, but one felt the impact of that, big time.34

The structures gave practical help, through NPAT sponsorship, and more: I remember one instance, we were having difficulties on the East Rand and we had a hostel resident who was a security guard where he worked, and we needed this fellow urgently to be given dispensation from work for a while to come and work on something that only he could unlock for us. … so I picked up the phone and said to Mr Hall: ‘Help us to get to that company, and they must release this person,’ and within an hour it was done, and the person was available!35 33

HPI Report October 1992–September 1993; HPI statement February 1993; Carmichael. 34 Dandala interview. 35 Ibid.

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Weekly meetings at the Central Methodist Church monitored and developed the process. SA Breweries donated a Toyota Venture vehicle, and the NPAT paid its running expenses. Peace Prayer meetings began in city and Soweto hostels. By March 1993 thirty-two hostels had signed the Hostels Peace Pledge, committing to resist any attempts at fomenting violence and to promote peace for all. To normalize relationships between hostels and the surrounding communities, National Sorghum Breweries gave five cows for cleansing ceremonies: ‘it is customary that after any blood-shed through violence people wash their hands in making peace by slaughtering an animal, and asking God together with our fore-fathers or ancestors to help us in peace-making.’36 The Alex hostels held this ceremony. Chiefs, and King Zwelithini, were kept informed. Violence was replaced with soccer, the revival of choirs and traditional dancing, and the hope of education and (constantly elusive) job creation projects. The East Rand hostels were further away and more difficult, but Dandala became known and welcomed there. Post-election he helped bring hostel SPUs and township SDUs together and, for a time, to find employment as police reservists.

1993: mobilization – What have you done for peace today? The Marketing Committee presented its Phase 2 plans to the RDRC Chairs on the morning of 4 November 1992 at the Inanda Club in Sandton. The Peace Song’s title, ‘Peace in our Land’, would become the strapline for 1993. Print advertising would feature a cheerful group of ordinary people and the caption ‘This Christmas we need more than three wise men’, exhorting all to ‘work together for peace in our land’. The TV advert had the carol Silent Night wafting above contented sleepers in suburbs, rural areas and townships, with the voice-over ‘Imagine, if all of South Africa could sleep this peacefully every night …’ The ‘hands’ still gave their punchier message about ending violence. Work towards the ‘unifying symbol’, at that stage still an awkward-looking single dove, was in progress.37 Elspeth Graham launched the slogan ‘What have you done for peace today?’ She appealed to celebrities, politicians and the media for commitment to peace in their public speeches. She met editors to encourage a more nuanced approach to newsgathering in violent areas, and the promotion of goodwill stories.38 She 36 HPI Report October 1992–September 1993, Carmichael. 37 The NPS’s new IFP representative Senzo Mfayela enthused about the dove to the Wits/Vaal IFP leadership. Next day, regional leader and RPC member Humphrey Ndlovu appeared on TV at a Katlehong rally, announcing that his spear would run through ‘this white dove that they are bringing’! Mfayela was left trying to explain to the NPS… (Mfayela interview). 38 Graham report 1993, BVS253.

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sent lists of peace music to DJs, with a handout headed ‘How you can help Peace’, suggesting simple actions (sports days for children, tea parties, brainstorming ideas locally). Her objective for Phase 2 was to make ‘Peace’ a household word and convince everyone they could contribute.39 The Marketing Committee, like Hall earlier, aspired to create a national database of leaders at all levels, for a regular newsletter. Langschmidt’s researchers started a database but failed to get NPS funding. In February the NPS appointed Mark Manley as national Marketing and Communications Coordinator. Manley was intrigued by Langschmidt’s market research and the managed interactive ‘process’ approach he was advocating, using surveys and group consultations, listening to target audiences, trying to plan campaigns with people rather than for them, in an ongoing feedback process.40 Phase 2 envisaged a series of community-level consultative workshops. Just one was held.

Grassroots consultation The ‘Peace in our Land’ Community Workshop brought ‘grassroots’ delegates from sixty-eight national, regional and local organizations – ranging from the Alexandra All Sports Congress, through Women for Peace, Hostel Dwellers, PAC and AZAPO, to the IFP Women’s League and NP – to Glenburn Lodge near Johannesburg over the weekend 12–14 March 1993. Basic NPS funding was supplemented by sponsorship from Toyota, SA Breweries and Mondi Paper. Many delegates lived in ‘grassroot’ communities. All races were represented. A pre-workshop questionnaire revealed widespread awareness and appreciation of the Accord: it was ‘indispensable … the only existing structure which is still intact and functioning. … an eye-opener towards acceptance of each other … the one non-aligned body of repute in SA today’.41 Criticisms were that it had ‘loopholes’ for perpetrators (it was thought incapable of uncovering covert action) and grassroots participation needed to increase. During the workshop delegates added that it brought inclusiveness and trust, and had ‘created mechanisms for peacemaking, we didn’t have these mechanisms, … people didn’t know what to do’.42 The survey asked, ‘What is peace?’ The answers weave a rich tapestry: peace is security, reconciliation, democracy, prosperity, living in mutual respect and harmony, and freedom – freedom from fear, anxiety, want and chaos. Workshop groups explored tolerance, the causes of violence, and the roles of police and other players. They recommended more thorough implementation of the 39 40 41 42

Graham proposal 6/1/93, BVS204. Marketing Minutes 13/10/92, BVS203. Report, ‘Peace in our Land’ Community Workshop, Carmichael/Pauquet, pp.9–11. Ibid. p.104.

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Accord, with a massive peace education campaign; and they welcomed the new logo, now complete with two doves. John Hall and Antonie Gildenhuys came for a Q&A session: it was informative but cemented the workshop’s view that peace leadership was too monochrome. The participants were told that the grassroots should take ownership of the campaign. What the facilitators meant was that people should go and start initiatives in their localities. The Workshop, however, in a final session chaired by Charles Ndabeni of the SACC in the style of a community meeting, appointed a multiracial, multiparty ‘Committee of Twelve’ chaired by Ndabeni, spanning from Humphrey Ndlovu, IFP, to Annelize van Wyk, NP Youth, to continue advising the Marketing Committee. This was problematic, since the NPS had no funds to support a new body. It struggled and faded amid stifled recriminations, further complicating NPS– SACC relations, and the Workshop’s follow-up Newsletter, intended to be ongoing, enjoyed just one issue. Langschmidt’s ‘process’ approach had exceeded the NPS’s budgeting and management resources. Nevertheless, the Workshop and its 125-page Report had considerable impact. It gave ‘grassroots’ affirmation and impetus to the Accord and its communication strategy. It popularized the relatively new concept of ‘peacebuilding’, and set the goal that drove the communications strategy from now on: ‘To encourage real behaviour change – active participation in peace building – at all levels of South African society’ (p.121). It prepared the ground for the flowering, four months later, of the widely inclusive National Peace Campaign.

Peace Doves symbol ‘You’ve got to have a symbol,’ Manley insists, ‘because peace essentially has to operate out of your emotional centre … it can’t just be rational. And it’s got to be something that galvanizes the people.’43 Every previous national symbol had been divisive. ‘We needed some kind of uniting symbol.’ Designing it took three months. Rob Campbell’s research established that the dove was the most widely understood emblem of peace across all population groups. One gawky white dove (or duck?) appeared, holding an olive branch, flying within a blue roundel. A Zulu pointed out that, in Zulu tradition, a single dove was a sign of misfortune. After several mis-steps, inspiration struck and two healthy-looking doves appeared: one white with a olive sprig in its beak, one pale blue, soaring out side by side from a deep blue roundel. The ‘uniting symbol’ met approval from the Marketing Committee on 19 February and headed for its media launch on 18 March. The launch was a breakfast ceremony at the Afrika Cultural Centre, a barnlike edifice in an open yard behind Johannesburg’s Market Theatre. Fifty percent 43

Manley interview.

Photo 13.2 The new aspirational slogan for 1993, and new Peace Doves symbol. By permission of NPAT.

Photo 13.3 The three Chairs, John Hall, Richard Goldstone, and Antonie Gildenhuys, releasing white doves at the launch of the Peace Doves symbol, 18 March 1993. By permission of SABC.

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more attendees arrived than had registered. The Peace Doves logo was unveiled in an audio-visual presentation, then on banners as the Imlonji KaNtu Choir sang the Peace Song. There were dove lapel badges, bumper stickers, swizzle sticks, and the first of literally millions of T-shirts. The three Chairs, John Hall, Antonie Gildenhuys and Richard Goldstone, stood side by side to release white homing pigeons. They flew vigorously away – a good omen! The doves and song together contributed immeasurably to making peace ‘cool’. Grassroots youth and all wanted the T-shirt. Millions of ‘promotional items’ appeared: ‘button’ badges, T-shirts, caps, banners, hand-held flags, table flags, car stickers, bookmarks, and yards of cloth. South African manufacturers stepped in to make them all. National Flag, a Murray & Roberts subsidiary, produced over a thousand full-sized flags to fly at sports events and on corporate and civic buildings. The doves were a daily presence on TV and newspaper mastheads. They featured on the R2 coin and on packaging and bottle tops. SABC’s TSS-TV closed every night with the doves and Peace Song. ‘Taxis for Peace’ bore stickers and played the song. In 1994 shops sold ‘golden doves’ lapel pins. Fear was lifting everywhere, except in the intractable ‘Kathorus’ and parts of Natal/KwaZulu. As the corporate logo of the structures, the doves were emblazoned on peace monitors’ bibs, pennants, cars, and letterheads. ‘Within four months there was 95% recognition of that symbol in South Africa. And it had greater recognition in fact at one point than Coca Cola! Even in deep rural areas, we were pushing this stuff … to say: “Under this banner, we build peace.”’44 Peace had a visible identity, and the grassroots had taken ownership. Manley’s office authorized the use of the symbol in return for a donation, or for royalties if the items were sold commercially. Proceeds went to the NPS Marketing account to offset free distributions. Fifty-three businesses, from major supermarket chains to the railways, signed up for affinity advertising.45 Nando’s, the fried-chicken company, known for its cheeky puns, came up with two of its trademark chickens in peace-dove pose, with the strapline ‘Pieces in your hands’ – ‘which I thought was very cute and very clever, so we let that run, and they gave us a nice big donation!’46 Spontaneous peace events began to multiply: concerts, competitions, peace vegetable gardens, schoolchildren making posters or writing ‘Letters for peace’ to political leaders; the Comrades Marathon running for peace on 31 May; a strong student-led initiative linking high schools in Durban, Johannesburg and Pretoria; a ‘People for Peace’ initiative among Nedcor staff; a giant peace balloon flying over Bloemfontein on Sunday 6 June as 36,000 people 44 Manley interview. 45 Manley, Communications Report, June 1994, Carmichael/Manley. 46 Manley interview.

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Photo 13.4 ‘Bloemfontein for Peace’ balloon, with Mayor and VIPs on City Hall roof. Volksblad 1 June 1993. By permission of Volksblad.

held hands in a church-organized ‘peace chain’; a month-long ‘SA Love’ concert season at Johannesburg’s Market Theatre raising funds for the NPAT. National mobilization was beginning to be real.

National Peace Campaign The Community Workshop had resolved on a National Peace Day.47 The resolution came to the NPS in early June when Manley had just visited Israel and experienced Holocaust Remembrance Day with its the two-minute silence. He proposed, as the Peace Day’s focus, a one-minute silence marking respect for all who had lost their lives in the violence, followed by the Peace Song. He was mandated, with Naidoo, who was already in discussions about a national youth Peace Week, to convene a widely representative consultative meeting to explore a National Peace Day or Week, to be coordinated by the NPS but to belong to all. A dozen organizations sent representatives to a preliminary consultation on 28 June at COSATU House in Braamfontein. They ranged from the SAP’s cheerful NPA liaison officer Steve van Rooyen to child welfare, youth development, Afrikaans culture, unions and the CBM. A Coordinating Committee 47

Report, ‘Peace in our Land’ Community Workshop, p.99, Carmichael/Pauquet.

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emerged, ‘to mobilise people from all spheres of the community to unite around the common message of PEACE’.48 A comprehensive range of political parties, the peace structures, taxis, civics, youth, women and hostels were invited to come to a full meeting in the Wits/ Vaal RPC offices on 12 July armed with a mandate to organize a National Peace Campaign. Media interest was aroused. Elspeth Graham anchored the process, coordinated the administration and sent the invitations. The NPS had no budget for this, but DIPI eventually found almost R1 million to bankroll the Peace Day. An impressive seventy-two organizations attended. The date Tuesday 14 September, the Accord’s second anniversary, was suggested but Thursday 2 September was chosen, to be more inclusive of non-signatories and to launch September as a Month of Peace. The meeting endorsed the minute’s silence, and ‘Eric Peltz of the SAP startled other participants by proposing that the entire country be brought to a standstill – traffic, trains, buses, everything except emergency services and “aero­planes in full flight”’ (National Peace Campaign, 1994 p.9). The audience would have been even more startled had they heard Steve van Rooyen’s description of Peltz: ‘a huge chappie on my staff who used to be a police spy at UCT’.49 The ‘nationwide standstill’ would last five minutes: one minute’s silence, heralded if possible by bells or sirens, then four minutes of the Peace Song on all radio stations – to which the SABC’s Director-General instantly agreed. The meeting called on everyone ‘to set aside September 2 as a National Day of Peace, heralding a month of Peace’.50 All would be asked to wear Peace Doves or a blue ribbon, and to come out into the streets to hold hands. Any other events were up to the organizations, all of which were asked to endorse the call formally, alert their branches and develop their own programme, notifying Graham’s office. Labour and business representatives agreed to take part without disrupting work time. Hand-holding chains were pioneered by churches in Bloemfontein’s ‘Peace Chain’ on 6 June and in a ‘Young Healing Hands on Africa’ peace link in Johannesburg on Sunday 15 August. Catholic youths Yvonne dos Santos and Edwin Nketsi, supported by Wits/Vaal RPC, invited youth to form a chain between Johannesburg’s CBD and the stadium at the College of Education, with songs and a minute’s silence. Nine thousand took part in this ‘embryo’ of Peace Day, ending with food, speeches and music.51 While preparing the youth peace chain Jason Vieira, aged 13, suggested the slogan ‘I’m committed to Peace. Are you?’ Kenny Siphaya’s Brick ’n Tile factory in Soweto went into production, silk-screening car stickers with the doves and 48 49 50 51

Report of 28/6/93 in letter 1/7/93 from E. Graham, BVS203. Van Rooyen interview. Minutes, 12/7/93 BVS203. Santos and Nketsi letter 15/9/93, Carmichael/Lorimer.

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slogan, then employed thirty youths who sold 400–500 daily at traffic lights for R2 each. Sellers got 25%, the NPS received 10%, the makers got the rest. Kenny commented: ‘The more people see signs of peace, the more it will work in their minds and they will begin to think peace.’ 52 Mohamed Dangor (World Conference on Religions and Peace) was convener for religious bodies on the Coordinating Committee, but except for one minister from Natal, church representatives were absent. SACC disaffection probably contributed, while the energies of charismatics and evangelicals were absorbed by ‘Music for Peace’ on 15 August, an evangelistic concert with an international Gospel singer that packed an audience of 50,000, mainly white, into the Wanderers Cricket Ground, with Mandela as guest and Chikane speaking. Naidoo announced the Peace Day plans at a media launch on 13 August, ‘flanked by representatives of groups ranging from the SADF to the United Cricket Board’.53 Over 100 organizations had signed up. The armed forces, and the SA cricket team playing in Sri Lanka, undertook to wear blue ribbons and observe the standstill. Deon Rudman confirmed that ‘all civil servants’ would participate and all state buildings, including embassies abroad, would lower the flag to half-mast.54 The ‘top three’ sent messages of support. Naidoo met rightwing General Constand Viljoen through his peacemaking identical twin, Braam, and he too lent support. Only the CP opposed the Peace Day. The NPS financed, and Graham distributed, 3,350,000 pamphlets and 20,000 posters. Eskom and Telkom promised to accelerate delivery of electricity and phones to deprived areas. Plans for peace events rolled in.

Peace Day, 2 September 1993 For one minute, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange stopped trading. Every radio station observed the silence (with 20-second reminders to prevent interval music starting), then played the Peace Song. In Johannesburg’s Library Gardens: There must have been five, ten thousand people maybe, and masses of media. … The people kept totally silent. And then all the taxis, they stopped, and they all started hooting – you know, you can’t expect a taxi to stop and do nothing! And then I heard all the people chanting, ten thousand people chanting that they wanted peace now … and there was this cacophony right through central Jo’burg, of all the hooters going off … It certainly got the world’s media attention, which was part of the design, to actually give us support in terms of saying that: ‘Look! South Africans are building peace, you know, they’ve stopped everything for peace! Wow!’55 52 53 54 55

Sunday Times 5/12/93. Sunday Times 15/8/93. NPS Minutes 31/8/93, BVS230/5. Manley interview.

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Fieldworker Neil Naidoo surveyed the scene in East London: When South Africa came to a standstill, when we played that song, ‘South Africa, we love you!’ That was a time when you saw – I think it was starting to reflect the ‘Rainbow Nation’, at that point, where South Africa stopped! I remember our offices were opposite the City Hall in East London, and we had a balcony, and we had loud-speakers out there and we stood there – and you parked your car like anywhere, for that time, and it was just celebration!56

In Port Elizabeth: Basically the city came to a standstill at 12 o’clock, and everyone went out into the streets and held hands, and it was a first for South Africa, and it was really the spirit of the Rainbow Nation that Tutu was talking about where people of all colours and walks of life stood together in the centre of the street and people were hooting, and holding hands. We were in Main Street, in the main business district, and it was just amazing to see that everyone left their jobs, came down, held hands and I think it was a minute’s silence, and everyone had the – the two doves became sort of the symbol that everyone then – you know!57

‘Even in the war zones of Katlehong and Thokoza on the East Rand, the guns fell silent and peace flags blossomed’ (National Peace Campaign, 1994 p.18). Katlehong’s Kwesine hostel nervously welcomed visitors and ANC youths spoke excitedly about the unthinkable possibility of peace. Peace flags fluttered on ISU vehicles. Youths gave the ‘V’ sign, shouting ‘Peace!’ A six-strong Wits/ Vaal ANC–IFP peace monitor team began a seventeen-day Peace Walk from ‘Kathorus’ to Durban, visiting peace committees en route. ‘Madams and maids were standing out in the street holding hands – and they were talking to each other, in a culture where they didn’t talk normally’.58 ‘I remember clearly, we put bunting all over the place and we all stood in the street and people came out of the other buildings, and we had a lot of people, virtually the whole of Wierda Valley, in the street.’59 At Johannesburg airport, ‘a huge blue bow was tied round the tail of the Sabena aeroplane on the tarmac: they used to fly in in the morning and out in the evening, so they agreed to tie this enormous bow on it for the hours it was sitting there.’60 ‘One surprise was the foreign ships in Durban harbour all sounding their sirens, a cacophony which continued a lot longer than the proposed five minutes.’61 SAAF Impala jets trailed blue and white smoke over Cape Town, 56 57 58 59 60 61

Neil Naidoo interview. Koekemoer interview. Elspeth Graham interview. Lascaris interview. Elspeth Graham interview. SA Shipping News Sept./Oct. 1993.

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Photo 13.5 ANC and IFP Wits/Vaal peace monitors commence a seventeen-day peace walk from Johannesburg to Durban, Peace Day, 2 September 1993. Sowetan Supplement, 23 September 1993. By permission of Arena Holdings.

Durban, Johannesburg and Pretoria – and over a peace soccer match near Port Shepstone: We held a football match between ANC and IFP boys at the football field near Murchison hospital. It was in the area of Inkhosi Ndwalane. The boys stood in a wide circle holding hands and the Inkhosi said a few words. Two air force Impala jets flew in a circle above us as we were about to kick off letting out streams of coloured smoke. Surreal.62

A Durban bar offered free blue drinks to anyone wearing a ribbon. A human chain linked Natal with Transkei across the Umtamvuna River bridge. SAP liaison officer Steve van Rooyen, an Anglican, was at an ANC–Government function at Admiralty House in Simon’s Town: There was a chap by the name of Derek Masoek, he was the leader of the ANC Youth in Soweto and when that five minutes were over he came to me and said: ‘Steve, peace be with you.’ Now I had these perceptions of ANC: they would be Communist Party. He said: ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ I said, ‘Do you know what you’re saying?’ He said: ‘Yes, that was Jesus’s greeting to his disciples. Why do you look surprised?’ I said: ‘I thought you guys were anti-Christ!’ He said: ‘Nonsense, I’m Methodist, I go to church every Sunday!’ We didn’t know each other, and I think we were scared of each other because we didn’t know each other.63 62 Nicholas Claude, email 12/10/21. 63 Van Rooyen interview.

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Photo 13.6 Peace Soccer, Murchison, Port Shepstone, Peace Day, 2 September 1993. By permission of Campbell Library Collections, UKZN.

Schoolchildren linked hands between schools, or spelt ‘Peace’ on sports fields. At Johannesburg’s Northview High, singing pupils assembled in a dove shape to release 100 pigeons and 200 blue and white balloons.64 Prof. Jairam Reddy, Rector of the University of Durban-Westville, stood under a banner proclaiming ‘UDW for Peace’ to tell 10,000 flag-waving staff and students: ‘Never before in my thirty years of academic life have I been so moved. The immense potential for peace and reconciliation we witness must be unleashed in order to chart a new trajectory for the country.’65 After the evening news, the SABC’s flagship ‘Agenda’ programme showed a fifteen-minute documentary on the ICC and peace in Alexandra. News presenters wore their peace badges throughout the following months. The cherry on the top came from the BBC. Between 1.15 and 1.30 am on Saturday the Beeb ran a series of reports on the world trouble spots: Bosnia, Kazakhstan and others. The programme ended with a brief report on SA: voices of joy talking over the now familiar strains of our Peace Song. And for a halcyon moment SA was seen by the world as a haven of hope.66

‘I think’, says Jayendra Naidoo, ‘that was a hugely important moment in the psyche of the transitional process.’67 The Sowetan commented: It was pure magic! After all the bloodshed and strife, a warm emotional wave swept over South Africa yesterday as millions tied ribbons, hugged, kissed 64 65 66 67

Vista, NE Tribune 7/9/93. Natal Mercury 8/9/93. Sunday Star 12/9/93. Jayendra Naidoo interview.

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and made a bridge for peace. … For a rare five minutes we were a nation united as sweepers and accountants, housewives and schoolchildren, bosses and workers held hands in a massive show of solidarity against violence and its perpetrators. … The peace day has helped to dispel lingering self-doubt that we will be able to weld a united and colourful South African nation.68

But violence, the Sowetan went on to warn, would not stop immediately, so the message that the vast majority want peace needed to be remembered. For Zwelakhe Sisulu, editor of the Sunday Nation: It was a massive and moving rainbow coalition of all colours and ages that this week declared the people’s yearning for peace in their lives. … It is obvious that there are many people who have vainly struggled to make their voices heard and who have wanted to make a contribution to the peace process but could never find the appropriate point of entry. This they were given by the peace campaign.69

‘At least for a moment, the ordinary, decent people of South Africa had a chance to show how they feel and what they want.’70 For Sowetan editor Aggrey Klaaste it was ‘one of the most memorable days in South Africa’.71 Jayendra Naidoo reported that the Day ‘had been an outstanding success … it had been seen not as a campaign of leaders but that of the people’.72 In Parliament, Nic Koornhof called it ‘the most successful mass action South Africa has ever experienced’.73 Only a couple of the day’s deaths were deemed ‘political’. It was ‘almost a precursor to the Voting Day’.74 It was a psychological watershed: South Africa now knew that it could make it. The organizers had been cautious in ordering ‘promotional items’. Demand vastly outstripped supply. The NPS expended R737,465 on 22,150 T-shirts, 40,000 badges, 500,000 hand-held flags and 500,000 bumper stickers.75 Distribution was haphazard; some regions got none and sent agonized appeals to Pretoria. Wits/ Vaal received the lion’s share but was soon reduced to handing out photocopies of the Peace Song.76 The NPS apologized that no one had predicted such great demand. It sent each RPC 10,000 badges, 1,000 T-shirts, 10,000 hand-held flags and 10 large flags as a ‘final quota’; but demand, and distribution from Manley’s office, continued 68 Comment, Sowetan 3/9/93. 69 Sunday Nation 5/9/93. 70 Saturday Star 4/9/93. 71 Natal Mercury 8/9/93. 72 NPS Minutes 7/9/93, BVS230/6. 73 SA Hansard 17/9/93 p.13154. 74 Manley interview. 75 NPS Minutes 7/9/93, BVS 230/6. 76 Nussbaum interview.

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Photo 13.7 ‘Peace is Cool’, competition-winning picture by Ally Papa Mathibela of Potgietersrus, City Press, 12 December 1993.

for months. Where possible, a donation was requested. Where RPCs and LPCs wished to give items away to destitute communities or bring specific groups into the peace process, they were given free. Manley’s rule was: get as many donations as possible, distribute as many as possible, and ensure that target groups have and use promotional items.

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Peace events filled the following months. The Drakensberg Boys Choir sang concerts; 300 Girl Guides spelt ‘Peace’ in blue and white stones on a hillside above Mamelodi; the Standard Bank hot-air balloon toured the country giving peace rides. A national ‘Taxis for Peace’ initiative, sponsored by Shell and Star Music and backed by the national taxi organizations, launched at Randburg on 24 September. Taxis afforded ‘a means to communicate to millions of commuters each day’.77 Star Music distributed peace badges, bumper stickers, and a ninety-minute music tape featuring the Peace Song and peace messages from the singers, to 19,000 taxis nation-wide. Wits/Vaal RPC and Greater Soweto LPC organized a peace soccer match between the SABC and a ‘celebrities’ team of ANC, IFP, SAP and Radio 702’s John Robbie, on Sunday 17 October in Soweto’s Orlando Stadium. The SABC won 2–0, but much more important, as the IFP’s Hennie Bekker put it, was that ‘peace has won’.78 Witbank ran a marathon, Port Elizabeth a ‘mini-marathon’. On Sunday 5 December, Soweto celebrated peace with its first regular marathon, welcoming thousands of spectators and 3,200 runners, the route lined by 300 Soweto peace monitors. Miss South Africa, Jacqui Mofokeng, greeted the winners. At the Miss World pageant in November she had carried the Peace Flag as her national flag: ‘It is the most important thing in South Africa right now.’79 Sports, from climbing to yachting, responded to an NPAT invitation to ‘Keep fit for Peace’; and there was knitting, gardening, tree-planting, painting, and reading for peace. Christmas brought carols for peace, during which Kimberley lit a ‘Peace Torch’ to shine until Easter. When Bloemfontein attempted the Guinness World Record with a 3,500-piece charity jigsaw for Red Nose Day, 5 March 1994, the OFS RPC sponsored a 64-piece corner bearing the Peace Doves logo. During September 1993, ‘Peace Month’, some 470 deaths were ascribed to ‘political violence’, mostly in the usual intractable areas; but violence was indeed becoming unfashionable. Over most of the country, ‘public sentiment had swung overwhelmingly against it’ (National Peace Campaign, 1994 pp.23–4). The Natal Witness on 9 October hailed the planned multiparty Transitional Executive Council as another example of negotiation replacing violence, following the trend pioneered by the peace committees. SACS dedicated the December edition of its Accent magazine to the Accord. Reflecting on Peace Month, Naidoo noted that religious groupings had played an important role on the ground but the organizers ‘had not been able to access religious leaders in any meaningful way’.80 He felt the NPS should take the initiative and convene a meeting of religious groups. This, however, would fall 77 78 79 80

Jayendra Naidoo in Shell press release, BVS267. Business Day 18/10/93. Argus, Star 20/11/93. NPS/Chairs Minutes 29/9/93, BVS230/6.

Photo 13.8 Students Neziwe Ngubelanga and Ncumisa Deline promote the forthcoming Port Elizabeth Run for Peace, 29 September 1993. Evening Post, 27 September 1993. By permission of The Herald/Arena Holdings.

Photo 13.9 Northern Transvaal Regional Youth Peace Rally, Laudium, Pretoria, 12 September 1993. In Touch, 1.7 (1993), SACS. By permission of SA Government Communications & Information System.

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more naturally to the NPC, which did not act. On Christmas Eve The Star asked: ‘Where are the churches?’ In the past they had ‘worked ceaselessly for justice and peace’, but now ‘new challenges have arisen’: And new questions are being asked. Is the Christian Church doing enough to bring about peace in our strife-torn country? Is it meeting the test of the times by responding to the anguish of so many people’s suffering? The National Peace Accord … has made considerable progress in dispute resolution and violence prevention in the townships. But structures alone will not bring about the far-reaching changes needed to ensure a peaceful society. We need a change of heart – and the kind of love epitomised on that Christmas night long ago.81

Just before the election, the Peace Campaign and SACC made common cause in calling for a Weekend of Prayer, 22–24 April.82 Post-election, the SACC encouraged victims to testify to the TRC but otherwise found itself uncertain of its role. The energy of the churches was taken up by the new pastoral emergency of HIV. In the socio-political sphere the SACC arguably struggled to recover from its ambivalence over the Peace Accord.

Arts and Entertainment Sub-committee When the idea of an arts sub-committee arose Val Pauquet wrote exploratory letters to producer Mannie Manim, actor/producers Des and Dawn Lindberg, actor John Kani and all the great and good among the nation’s entertainers: The desire for a peaceful and just South Africa is entrenched deeply in the hearts of all of us and the future of every segment of our society is dependent for its survival, on stability being achieved. … in some way, we all have to play a part and the idea emerged recently from the Marketing Committee of the NPA, of forming an Arts and Entertainment group consisting of people who have made a major contribution in these fields. The initial idea is to meet and have a brain-storming session to see in what way the arts can contribute to the peace process.83

The ‘brainstorm-cum-workshop’ materialized on 10 March 1993 when the Lindbergs, Mannie Manim, Welcome Msomi, John Kani, Wally Serote, Duma Ndlovu and some twenty others gathered in the Wits University Theatre.84 Des recalls that even in this milieu trust needed to be built. Some were wary of anything ‘political’; some younger black artistes were suspicious of this Star 24/12/93. In mitigation it may be noted that the Anglican Diocese of Johannesburg, among others, was already focusing on the looming HIV crisis. 82 E. Graham press release 10/4/94, Carmichael/Pauquet. 83 Letter 23/10/92, Carmichael/Pauquet. 84 Report, attendance list, Carmichael/Pauquet. 81

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thing, being set up by ‘you whites’, ‘and we said: “No, no, no, you have to try and understand this: we’re all citizens of this community, which happens to be performing arts!”’85 The meeting was briefed on the Accord and given a preview of the doves logo. Then came a brainstorm on: ‘What is Peace?’ Pessimism gave way to enthusiasm and the vision of a grand Peace Festival reaching the grassroots, replacing the mind-set of fear with a ‘peace psychosis’. The future government, it was suggested, should replace the Department of Defence with a Department of Peace. A twelve-member ‘Arts and Entertainment Sub-committee of the NPS Marketing Committee’ emerged, chaired by Mannie Manim (Msomi pleaded lack of time) with Co-vice-chairs Dawn Lindberg and Khabi Moeletsi. No workshops were held elsewhere so this initiative was limited to Johannesburg-based artistes. From 15 June they met monthly in a room at the Civic Theatre to explore peace activities and encourage each other in undertaking them. A panel of Ndlovu, Graham, Manim and Des Lindberg was delegated to assess proposals, using the criteria of artistic merit, absence of commercial exploitation, and whether they might bring the peace campaign into disrepute. The NPS checked them for political acceptability. The NPS had no sponsorship funds, but letters of support signed by Gildenhuys conferred the right to use the doves logo, gave access to promotional items to hand out or sell, and could be useful in fundraising. The most ambitious event to be endorsed was Sharon Katz’s actual ‘Peace Train’. Spoornet, the railway operators, provided a sixteen-carriage sleeper train to take Katz’s hundred-strong multiracial children’s choir (entitled ‘When Voices Meet’) and the internationally known group ‘Ladysmith Black Mambazo’ on a ten-day concert tour. Leaving Durban on 12 December 1993, they sang, often with local children, in Pietermaritzburg, Bloemfontein, Port Elizabeth, Cape Town and Ladysmith. In February 1994 Johannesburg’s Civic Theatre hosted ‘An Exhibition of Art by Children of South Africa in the Name of Peace’ jointly sponsored by the NPC, NPS, and SA Post Office. Four of the exhibits became postage stamps. The vision of a grand Peace Festival was not pursued, but at the sub-­ committee’s first meeting Des and Dawn Lindberg floated the idea that every place of public entertainment might become a ‘Place of Peace’. Des had nationwide connections as Chair of ‘Theatre Managements South Africa’. The couple wrote to the NPS, explaining: We have put forward this suggestion in the belief that there is an intangible protection factor embracing people who go somewhere to enjoy performances by artistes. The people in an audience sit together, laugh, applaud, cry, and eventually leave the theatre together, better in some way than they 85

Lindberg interview.

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felt when they came in. The psychology of the PLACE OF PEACE status for a venue is rather like saying to people entering a building, ‘Please leave your weapons at the reception desk’. What the PLACE OF PEACE sign can come to mean is ‘Please leave your attitudes, hostilities, resentments, anger, and madness outside!’86

Their letter drowned amid other NPS business, but Des and Dawn, Ndlovu, Manim and Elspeth Graham met at the Lindbergs’ home on Houghton ridge on 20 July to develop the concept. Mark Manley was roped in. At last, on 16 November a full press release appeared and was widely reported: South African Theatres to become Places of Peace In response to an initiative of the Arts & Entertainment sub-committee of the NPA, theatre managements across South Africa and neighbouring countries are to declare their venues ‘Places of Peace’. … havens of peace where the only assault permitted is on the senses; where a cultural weapon is simply an idea and a riot is a way to describe a good comedy, and where people come together to share something on equal terms rather than fear or covet or seek to destroy. On entering a ‘Place of Peace’ attitudes, hostilities, resentments, aggressions, anger and sadness are left outside.87

Each venue would receive a plaque bearing the ‘widely accepted’ and ‘ever popular’ double-dove Peace Accord symbol, stating: ‘This is a place of Peace.’ On entering, people would be invited to sign a peace pledge and purchase a badge, sticker or T-shirt. Dawn provided guidelines for each venue to devise its own dedication ceremony, to include the signing of the National Peace Campaign peace pledge by representatives of workers and management (who must at some stage sign individually) and the distribution of peace badges to be worn by all staff. Owners and managers must solemnly bind themselves to defend fundamental freedoms and ‘build peace with all our might’. Places of Peace could sell promotional items, proceeds going to the ‘Artistes for Peace’ account in the NPAT. Johannesburg Civic Theatre was first, on 8 December 1993, followed on the 12th by the Durban Playhouse. Manley supplied Perspex plaques. By 4 February 1994, every theatre was a ‘Place of Peace’.88 Dawn hoped that voting stations might be declared ‘Places of Peace’ but the IFP boycott meant there was no official connection between the NPS and IEC until just before the election. Early in 1994 the freight operators Transnet lent four flat-bed trucks to the Performing Arts Council of the Transvaal (PACT), a keen participant in the Sub-committee. They became ‘PACT Peace Trucks’ decorated with the peace 86 Proposal, BVS 203. 87 Press Release 16/11/93, Carmichael/Pauquet. 88 Minutes 4/2/94, Carmichael/Pauquet.

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logo and flags, touring townships and rural areas to present Aids-awareness drama, community-based musical events, education projects and grassroots entertainment. After the April election the group renamed itself the ‘Arts, Entertainment and Culture Peace Committee’, but suffered the debilitating uncertainty that afflicted all the structures. On 5 May at the Lindbergs’ home they discussed collecting a new album of peace songs for Peace Radio 2000, peace murals, peace poetry competitions, and a peace theme for the 1995 Grahamstown Festival; but on 12 August at the Civic, Dawn asked if they should disband, as long-term planning was impossible.89 It was left that they might meet again in September. There was more to do, but records end here. Asked for their New Year wishes, the Lindbergs said: ‘Peace is not enough. For peace can turn back to conflict at the drop of a cultural weapon! Our wish is that all South Africans should start building the environment in which peace can be born, grow, thrive and endure.’90

1994: ‘Year of Peace’ After Peace Day the National Peace Campaign’s plenary Forum made a double plan. First, to hold a televised ‘Night of Commitment’ during which prominent leaders, including the ‘top three’, would make a simple joint statement of commitment to peace and receive thousands of peace pledges. Everyone should sign, light a candle, and possibly join a neighbourhood gathering. Mandela and de Klerk confirmed their availability for 2 November but no one, not Naidoo, Vos or Lorimer, could extract a reply from Buthelezi. The ‘Night of Commitment’ was shelved. The second plan was to declare 1994 a ‘Year of Peace’, starting with 1 January as a Peace Day, heralded by candle-lighting. The Clothing and Textile Workers Union, manufacturers, and retailers agreed to make one million specially designed T-shirts entirely in South Africa to sell at cost price, R10, and to call on people to wear peace T-shirts on 1 January to inaugurate the Year of Peace. The new design, the two-dove logo with five more blue doves flying along to join them, was launched at a press conference on 18 November, with a call from business and labour to observe the Year of Peace. This was not, said Naidoo, just a beautiful T-shirt, but a way of committing to build a culture of peace together.91 The media reported on cheerful fabric weavers and screen printers working overtime without pay, and promoted the Campaign pledge: I, the undersigned, joined by fellow South Africans of all colours and ethnic groups, from all religious and political groups, from labour and employers, from students to the unemployed youth and from all walks of life, hereby 89 Minutes, BVS250. 90 Celebrity interview in unknown magazine 30/12/94, in Lindbergs’ album. 91 Beeld 19/11/93.

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declare that I cannot stand by and fold my arms when the blood of my compatriots, of my brothers and sisters, of my parents and my children, is flowing in the streets of our land. I put my mark on this peace [sic] of paper as a pledge that I will work for peace in South Africa. Peace is in our hands. Peace must prevail in our land.92

Mandela and de Klerk jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Friday 10 December. It was also switch-on day for Christmas lights in Johannesburg and Cape Town, with celebrations of the coming Year of Peace. In Cape Town civic and church leaders signed a pledge, a peace candle went on pilgrimage from St George’s Cathedral round the churches, and church bells rang for peace at noon that day and every Friday until the election. In Johannesburg, Mayor Les Dishy hosted a celebratory function with Hall and Gildenhuys, sponsored by the NPS and Mercedes Benz. He handed in 50,000 Peace Pledge signatures, collected by Council staff and Junior Councillors. OK Bazaars began selling packs of blue and white New Year ‘peace candles’. The million special T-shirts went on sale in 1,000 shops, through 19 major chains, on 12 December. One Port Elizabeth store sold 600 in forty-five minutes. In East London 3,000 went in thirty-six hours. Fieldworker Neil Naidoo scoured the country in vain for 150 for a casino in Ciskei, which wanted its staff to wear them, and promised, in return, a percentage of takings to the RPC. After the holidays, manufacture resumed. On Thursday 30 December APLA killed four young whites at the Heidelberg Tavern in Cape Town, retaliating for SADF killings in Umtata. Over the weekend, fifty-one died in Natal/KwaZulu and fifteen on the East Rand. And yet, the media mood was no longer cynical. Peace too had found its voice. In Natal Khaba Mkhize wrote: Daggers are drawn between the forces of peace and violence this year – and I pick peace to win by a photo-finish. … Clearly peace is now a big industry in our country and millions are poured into advertising it. We see workers on TV churning out millions of blue and white T-shirts with the slogan ‘Million T-shirts for peace’. On New Year’s Day a peace train carrying about 400 revellers wearing peace T-shirts or blue peace ribbons started off from Durban station and ended its peace-spreading mission at Kelso on the south coast. Make no bones about it, the peace industry is pitted against the violence industry and the winner will be decided by the vote of the majority. And the majority is hungry for peace.93

In Kimberley the local editorial ran: ‘It would appear that the widespread appeal for peace in our strife-torn country this year was to no avail. Or was it? The Northern Cape had a peaceful New Year. The Northern Cape Peace 92 Campaign Pledge flyer, Carmichael/Pauquet 93 Natal Witness 7/1/94.

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Secretariat reports sales of more than 12,000 peace badges in the two days before New Year.’94 Cynics might say the demand for peace paraphernalia proves nothing. ‘We beg to differ.’ The sheer scale of interest, the peace services held across the country, the region’s relative calm, the bravery of peace worker Jeanne Nel returning to work after recovering from a grenade attack, ‘should be a humbling message to those who doubt the sincerity of the vast majority of us who want peace’.95 In the townships of Kagiso and Swanieville, scene of the May 1991 massacre, vast changes had taken place. New Year’s Day 1994 saw peace monitors and political representatives accompanying the police and army on a community-­ relations charm offensive. ‘A festive atmosphere reigned’ as ‘two police Nyalas and riot vehicles of the SADF, draped in the familiar peace flags, moved through the hostel area distributing sweets to residents.’96

New advertising, new arrangements By September 1993 the NPS and RPC Chairs felt persuaded that the national advertising task had been successfully accomplished and that the monthly R70,000 retainer paid to Hunt Lascaris would be better directed to regional and grassroots initiatives and to satisfying the voracious appetite for ‘promotional items’. The NPS agreed in October to end the Hunt Lascaris contract at the end of November.97 The final set of TV advertisements was ready to launch at Christmas. They were in a new mould. For the Peace Doves launch in March 1993 Hunt Lascaris had created a TV advertisement depicting a dreamlike scene, where to the strains of the Peace Song a multiracial group of well-dressed children run along a wooded lakeside path, then make and raise the Peace Doves flag. Attractive, but admittedly not very ‘grassroots’. It drew criticism as too cheerful and not ‘getting into the minds of the people where the conflict was’.98 The point was taken. For Christmas, Hunt Lascaris commissioned its associate Brent Quinn to produce a hard-hitting campaign presenting the stories of victims of violence. Quintet Productions spent two months filming in KwaZulu-­ Natal, seeking out individuals who were willing to speak about living amid the violence. ‘It’s unscripted, real and heart-rending to watch a child sobbing over the death of a father who used to buy her clothes and gifts. “He bought us food and we ate well,” says one tearful mite on camera … “But life is hard now.”’99 94 Diamond Fields Advertiser 5/1/94. 95 Ibid. 96 Sowetan 3/1/94. 97 NPS Minutes 19/10/93, BVS230/6. 98 Manley interview. 99 Financial Mail 5/11/93.

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For Lascaris, this was advertising in a new mould: ‘It is now small and human and touching.’ The Financial Mail reviewer remarked on how a mood of forgiveness came convincingly through. ‘This, says Lascaris, truly reflects the attitude of people affected. “This shows that the average man in the street wants peace. All the people we spoke to said they were prepared to forgive.”’100 Could this mode of advertising have worked earlier? Probably it came best now when anger and blaming had somewhat abated and the call to peace could, in most places, be heard. Langschmidt’s latest research showed 81% of black Africans saying the NPA was a good or very good idea, and 97% saying the same of peace.101 People were tired of violence. The tales of tragedy, instead of stoking flames, now reinforced the desire for peace; and peace now seemed possible. At the end of 1993 the Marketing Committee disbanded, leaving a working group of Gildenhuys, Vos and Steenkamp to interface between the NPS and its newly named ‘Communications Division’, headed by Mark Manley, based at Braampark. Manley’s office team, dealing with ‘promotional items’ and motivational workshops, included struggle veteran Lillian Keagile Sere, Pinky Ngxulelo, and a young journalist, Sue Segar, seconded from Sanlam, who took over NPS media liaison from Pauquet. Elspeth Graham still handled PR and coordinated the National Peace Campaign. The NPS was the Campaign’s originator, and a participating body, but was also expected to be a major funder. Inevitably, tensions arose around finance and control. The National Peace Campaign had played a complementary role to the NPS, under its auspices but without a formal relationship. The Campaign was an inclusive coalition of several hundred organizations: business, labour, women, religious, social/welfare, arts and entertainment, sport, education, youth, the SAP and SADF, mostly non-signatories. The NPS had provided funding but, having to work to a set budget, was nervous about the Campaign making decisions that carried financial implications. Gildenhuys addressed the Campaign Forum on 17 January 1994 urging it, if it wished to receive funding, to become a formal structure under the NPS. Some organizations were unhappy, delegates needed to consult, and there was no decision.102 Elspeth Graham presented the NPS with a budget for discussion. It included her retainer and estimated costs of future events: R12,000 for the pre-election Weekend of Prayer, and R1 million for a ‘Day of Unity and Reconstruction’.103 She and Naidoo articulated the Campaign’s wish to operate ‘under the auspices of the NPS – but not subordinate to it’. The situation remained unresolved. 100 Ibid. 101 Data from ‘The 1993 South African Economic Landscape’ (Dec. 1993), in NPS Marketing and Communications Report, 1994, p.66. Carmichael/Manley. 102 Campaign Minutes 17/1/94, BVBS19/10. 103 Budget 17/2/94, BVS 19/11.

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The Campaign’s final activity, the ‘Day of Unity and Reconstruction’ on 2 September 1994, eventually took place without cost to the NPS.104 Unlike Peace Day, planning was an uphill struggle. The focus again was a noon silence, then the as yet un-shortened composite National Anthem, Nkosi sikelel’ iAfrica and Die Stem. Everyone was encouraged to learn the words, but this occasion was but fitfully observed. The emotional high points of 1994 had come and gone with the election and inauguration, and there was no unequivocal call to mobilize for reconstruction and development. That had become the government’s responsibility.

Media Peace Centre The Western Cape region had a unique centre promoting the imaginative use of media in peacemaking and peacebuilding. The Media Peace Centre in Mowbray, Cape Town, was the brainchild of Hannes Siebert, a one-time DRC ministry candidate, now a journalist and Media Coordinator for the Western Cape RPC. Siebert devised workshops to help journalists to understand the work of peacemakers and explore their own role as mediatory actors when reporting politics and violence. In September 1993, through the Marketing Committee, he proposed a series of media initiatives to the NPS. Already engaged in a peace programme on local radio, Siebert had recently completed a pilot ‘video dialogues’ project in the informal settlement of Crossroads. Crossroads, with its history of anti-apartheid struggle, was a community alienated from authorities and police. It now suffered from warlords pitted against ANC ‘comrades’, crime and violent competition for resources. At the NPS meeting on the Laborie wine estate on 23 September 1993, Siebert showed excerpts from his ‘video dialogue’ interviews, explaining how they were used to get beyond endless accusations, to promote genuine exchange. The initiative began in June 1993 through the Nyanga/Crossroads LPC. Individuals from each ‘side’ were filmed, ‘giving voice to the different parties to the conflict’. Siebert tried ‘to press people for their constructive solutions’.105 The results were screened at a meeting of both sides together, with facilitated discussion. Emotions – anger, outrage – ran high at the showing, but there was also laughter. ‘It was a kind of catharsis – one member of the local ANCYL said, “You will see, this film will change us.”’ It helped reduce violence in Crossroads dramatically, down from an average fourteen deaths per week in June; and talks continued. Siebert hoped to make Video Dialogues in seven more violent communities, starting in Kathorus – but time and money (R65,000 per project) prevented this, apart from a late dialogue in 1997 in Thokoza. 104 NPS Minutes 19/7/94, BVS231/12. 105 Siebert, proposals, BVS26.

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Siebert presented again to the NPS and regional Chairs on 29 September, describing his radio work and ambitions for TV.106 The NPS adopted the Media Centre and funded it, on condition that a multiparty NPS Editorial Sub-­ committee vetted programme content for bias. The Centre’s Peace Radio 91.3FM, sponsored by business, opened on 4 October 1993 with a one-month licence, broadcasting locally round the clock from a Cape Town Waterfront studio. Led by a team of young DJs under Martin Baillie, it carried music, news, voices from an RPC Youth Peace Summit, and 150 lively local interviews on peace themes, with phone-in participation. Its success led to the launch on 14 February 1994 of Peace 2000 FM, broadcasting 4½ hours daily nation-wide on Radio 2000, focusing on peace, reconciliation, tolerance and conflict management with the full mix of studio discussions, phone-ins, documentaries, music, entertainment, news and weather.107 Its audience was over two million.108 Peace Café was a half-hour TV programme airing at 5.30pm on Tuesdays, created with and aimed at youth aged 14–25. With young presenters of differing political persuasions, and a laid-back café style, it launched on 14 December 1993 on the SABC’s nation-wide TSS-TV channel. It aimed to break down the stereotype of young people as destructive and violent, and highlight their creative participation in peacebuilding and nation-building. Both Peace Café and Peace 2000 ran until mid-1994. A series of half-hour Search for Common Ground programmes began in January on TSS-TV, showcasing how processes of mediation and conflict resolution work to establish areas of agreement and disagreement on tough issues. This was the one Media Centre initiative which the NPS declined to support, as being too controversial. With the structures likely to close, Siebert closed the Centre in August 1994.109 He found funding to continue some of its work, but not Peace 2000, which depended on intact peace structures. He went on to an international career in peace facilitation.

Visions for future peacebuilding? As the election approached the mission of the Communications Division remained unchanged: ‘To persuade each person in South Africa to accept responsibility both individually and corporately to build peace in their own contexts and environments’.110 106 107 108 109 110

Minutes BVS230/6. Discussion Document: Western Cape RPC, post-election 1994, BVS215. Siebert interview. Audit 1/9/94 BVS27; Siebert interview. Minutes, Regional Communication Officers 20/1/94, BVS177.

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The Division devised the pre-election print advertisements: ‘Now more than ever, give us peace in our land. The NPS urges all South Africans to vote and to vote peacefully. … Wear something that will identify you with your call for PEACE IN OUR LAND. A blue ribbon, a peace badge, a peace T-shirt ….’ ‘We must all accept the responsibility for building Peace in Our Land. Are you building peace?’ Between January and April 1994 Manley gave forty-three motivational ‘Leadership Presentations’ around the country, usually at breakfasts sponsored by American company Borden Foods, encouraging church, business, and civic leaders to identify with the peace effort, get their employees involved, and offer resources to continue the building of peace in the new South Africa. He expounded peacebuilding in terms of promoting growth: violence prevents growth but peace is a process involving the physical, spiritual, psychological (intellectual and emotional) and economic growth of individuals and society. Research was showing the population to be overwhelmingly for peace. To convert this attitude into behaviour, people needed to know how to be practically involved. Manley envisaged the continued building of peace and social cohesion post-election, through ‘a host of accessible activities, that average South Africans can engage in’.111 Churches, business, NGOs and community groups, could all be coordinated through the peace structures in a continuing mass peacebuilding movement. Manley recruited Sean Callaghan, who after bruising army service was working for the National Initiative for Reconciliation (NIR), and as a volunteer peace monitor in Alex. After the election Callaghan left the NIR to help Manley develop peacebuilding methods, in particular a proposed national curriculum of peace education across all educational institutions, primary to tertiary, to include human relations; understanding conflict, peace, and violence; conflict management and problem-solving; healing the wounds of violence; reconstructing social and physical infrastructure; nation-building; and promoting art, culture, and sport. ‘I was asked to put together a presentation on Peace Education, a concept paper on how we would take the whole idea of peace education into the schooling system. … I ended up writing a series of twelve peace education lessons for use in schools.’112 He drew on the NIR publications on justice and reconciliation, and used a workshop format with flipcharts and brainstorming. His lessons were published weekly in the New Nation Education Supplement. ‘We were innovating,’ says Callaghan. ‘I think the world has gone on to realize that peacemaking has to lead into peacebuilding, otherwise it must go back into conflict-making. And I don’t think that many of us understood that theory at that

111 Ibid. 112 Callaghan interview.

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point’.113 Callaghan went on to a career in peacebuilding in Rwanda and Iraq, continuing to promote thought about peace education: ‘this is what’s really needed to embed something – otherwise it’s just the cessation of conflict until there’s a reason to do it again’.114 The continuation of popular peacebuilding through the peace structures, however, was not to be.

113 Ibid. 114 Ibid.

14 Peace Monitoring: Building Peace on the Streets Introduction Much pre-Accord violence stemmed from confrontations at protests, rallies and funerals. The NPA mandates the structures to promote communication and agreements between parties and security forces around such events. This enabled a new kind of peace monitoring to develop, introducing cooperative planning and preventing violent confrontation. From August 1992 International Observers joined the monitors. Training developed, and 18,500 local monitors were deployed over the election in 1994.

Sharpeville Day, 21 March 1993 And there were these two elderly white people – must have been in their late sixties I would say, and very sort of proper people, and they were in this Peace Accord car and both of them were reading books, at this intersection. They didn’t know what was happening. Reading their books with their glasses on, like that. And the IFP were coming down like this about a hundred yards away, and the ANC over here, and in the middle this couple reading their books. Oh, it was funny! I went up and tapped on the window and – ‘Oh, hello Peter!’ – and I said: ‘Have you looked what’s coming down the road?’ And they looked out and it was just like a sea of armed people.1

The place was ‘Kathorus’, the adjacent East Rand townships of Katlehong, Thokoza and Vosloorus, the sole remaining centre of violence in the Wits/Vaal region. It was Sharpeville Day, Sunday 21 March 1993. Ten days earlier, the Germiston/Katlehong LPC had learnt that two rallies were planned: Chief Buthelezi would address the IFP in Vosloorus stadium while the ANC met in Katlehong stadium. The criss-crossing of armed rally-goers was a recipe for disaster. Human rights lawyer Peter Harris had just become Wits/Vaal’s Regional Director, assisted by recent law graduates Mahlape Sello and David Storey, and 1

Harris interview.

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a strong Wits/Vaal Regional Peace Secretariat (RPS) was developing. The RPS and Vosloorus and Germiston/Katlehong LPCs held emergency meetings with the ANC, IFP, hostel indunas and police, hammering out draft agreements to facilitate the rallies while keeping supporters apart. With the Thokoza LPC Chair, they formed a Coordinating Committee under the RPC.2 Coordination was, however, imperfect: the International Observers later castigated the RPS for over-riding early agreements made on the LPCs based on close familiarity with local conditions.3 On 20 March at an RPC press conference an unprecedented Agreement was signed by the ANC, IFP, SAP and SADF.4 Committing themselves to the Accord, the parties undertook to take separate routes, to hold a joint briefing for ANC and IFP marshals on the 20th and to ensure the presence of senior party officials committed to defusing crises. The agreement banned unlicensed firearms but tacitly ignored the inevitable display of ‘traditional’ weapons by both sides. A triple layer of responsibility was thrown around the crowd: first marshals, then monitors, then police. The police agreed to ‘maintain a low profile’ allowing first the marshals, then the monitors and International Observers, to manage problems before taking any police action. Hoping to minimize marching the NPS paid for a small fleet of buses for use by either party. The monitors were LPC and RPC members, RPS staff, and regional volunteers from churches and business. For the first time, monitors bore official insignia: day-glow orange armbands and A4-sized stickers proclaiming ‘Monitor Wits Vaal Peace Secretariat’, adorning their chests, backs, and cars, and orange pennants bearing the new Peace Doves logo. Leading monitors sported white ‘Observer’ jackets, supplied before a clear distinction was made between ‘monitoring’ as a pro-active role, and the more passive role of ‘observing’. Blue jackets distinguished the UN and European Observers, who lent some hand-held radios and early mobile phones. The region prepared multiparty monitoring units, to be stationary or mobile – ‘roving peace committees,’ as the Weekly Mail dubbed them.5 The police made the unprecedented decision to allow the monitors, Observers and party representatives into their control room (COMSA Report Phase II p.47). Katlehong and Vosloorus are separated by the marshy Natalspruit stream. The main road bridge was assigned to the ANC, and a causeway downstream to the IFP. Maps showing the routes were distributed, to no effect. Heavy rain turned the causeway to mud, and both sides coveted the bridge. Timing went awry from the start. The first flashpoint came when a contingent of about 500 2 3 4 5

RPC Executive Minutes 16/3/93, Carmichael/Lorimer. Letter 31/3/93, UNOMSA to Gildenhuys; UN Report to NPS on events on 21/3/93. Carmichael/COMSA. Agreement 21/3/1993, Carmichael/P. Storey. Weekly Mail 26/3–1/4/93.

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IFP from Kwesine Hostel in Katlehong, disciplined but bearing weapons, set off late, ignored the proffered buses and, proclaiming they would not be told where to march, made straight for the ‘ANC’ bridge. ANC buses, about to come in the opposite direction, were halted by marshals and monitors. ISU police in Casspirs, rifles cocked, halted the IFP. Gertrude Mzizi (IFP, Thokoza LPC) and Alfred Woodington (ANC-­ Alliance, RPC) were despatched from the control room, arriving with the police commander in an armoured vehicle. Mzizi addressed the impi. Some evaded the blockade by crawling under the Casspirs, only to face remonstrations from Woodington: ‘I could go to them without fear and say to them: “Look, this is not part of the agreement: just go back, so that your party be respected and the other people be respected.”’ The ANC were persuaded to wait, while the IFP jogged on to the Vosloorus stadium.6 To complicate matters the PAC, a non-signatory and not party to the day’s agreement, was holding its own Sharpeville commemoration at a school in Katlehong, close to the march route. ANC and PAC youths jeered at one another. As the day progressed four white monitors including NPS Communications Coordinator Mark Manley, British policeman Gavin Aarvold (an EU Observer), and a UN colleague, narrowly escaped being seized by PAC members in lynching mood.7 Afterwards, Harris set up a meeting with PAC leaders. After late starts and an afternoon downpour, the rallies, scheduled to end two hours apart, ended simultaneously. Spurning the buses, two masses of well-armed marchers were converging on the main crossroad near the bridge in Katlehong: an estimated 3,000–8,000 ANC coming south, 2,500–5,000 IFP coming west. To resume their agreed route the IFP must turn left. ISU vehicles were stationed to close their most direct route, going straight. A major battle threatened. The monitors persuaded both marches to halt while negotiations took place. The IFP agreed to wheel left, the ANC right. The monitors and Observers stood in a line diagonally bisecting the crossroad, holding hands and pennant sticks, ‘and the two groupings went past each other with us in the middle, and turned their respective corners’.8 The Weekly Mail carried a rare peace picture by ‘Bang Club’ photographer Kevin Carter.9 Richard Ntuli, COSATU representative on Germiston/Katlehong LPC, doubted coming home alive. He still weeps in gratitude. For Regional Organizer Mahlape Sello it was a baptism of fire:

6 7 8 9

Woodington, Ntuli interviews; UN Report; ‘Ordinary People’ video; Weekly Mail 26/3–1/4/93. Manley, Aarvold interviews; UN Report; COMSA Report Phase II p.48. David Storey interview. Weekly Mail 26/3–1/4/93.

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Photo 14.1 Thin Orange Line: peace monitors separate IFP and ANC marchers, Katlehong, Sharpeville Day, 21 March 1993. Weekly Mail 26 March – 1 April 1993; photo: Kevin Carter. By permission of Weekly Mail and Guardian.

So that 21st March was my first experience at war. Literally war [sigh]. Not with either side interested in taking evasive action. And things got to a point, I remember that the only thing that kept them apart was a line of peace people who held hands and made a line to keep them apart and as you stand there to be part of this chain, your instinct is to run for your dear life because whichever side you look, both is baying for the others’ blood! And you think, you look at either crowd and you think, this is stupid, this is monumentally stupid you know! If either one them chose to move, it would take literally one slap, and this whole line would go down and it was like we were never there. But the various leaders of the organisations played a critical role. … To the best of my knowledge, there never really was contact between the groupings. Had there been, I think it would have been the highest death toll in this conflict. … I was a month or so into the job, and all I recall of that incident was just a time of complete terror.10

10

Sello interview.

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‘For that you never heard of Nyoni Bridge, be grateful,’ wrote journalist Denis Beckett under the headline ‘A huge victory for peace’.11 ‘Had it been a year ago, Nyoni Bridge would have joined the list of household place names like Rorke’s Drift, Sharpeville and Boipatong.’ Why, Beckett asked, was it ‘high fashion’ to say the Peace Accord was failing? Was it not because, in a land where there were fifty murders a day, the alternative was not in fact fewer murders, but more murders? ‘The measure of success is not the gap between the 50 actual and the 0 desired, but between the 50 and the 100 or 1,000 we might have been having without the peace committees.’12 A few days later Carlson Ndaba, a cheerful man-mountain of a taxi man from Vosloorus and an outstanding monitor, told David Storey: ‘David, they’re talking about us on the taxi ranks. Now you know we’re all right, people are talking about us, they know what we do.’13 Shortly afterwards, Ndaba joined the regional staff. ‘We learnt a lot of lessons,’ says David Storey. ‘By the time Hani was assassinated a month later we were a lot better equipped.’14 It was a learning experience all round. Building on the control room experience and helped by ECOMSA police, Wits/Vaal developed its own radio control system, centred on a permanent Joint Operations Control/Communications Centre ( JOCC), in the RPS offices in Braamfontein. This together with sub-JOCCs, jointly staffed by monitors, political representatives, and police or army officers, became the indispensable nerve-centres for monitoring.

The newness of peace monitoring Peace monitoring under the Accord was a novel, largely unforeseen development. Previously, monitoring had been an activity of NGOs and essentially meant observing and documenting human rights violations, usually those of the security forces. The NGOs involved were generally trusted by ANC supporters but not by the State or Inkatha, and their reports had little effect on the perpetrators’ behaviour. In late 1992 several NGOs formed a ‘Network of Independent Monitors’ (NIM). Relations between independents and the peace structures varied. In Wits/Vaal, where peace monitoring developed strongly, independents were drawn in. Around Pietermaritzburg the peace structures were weak and human rights monitoring persisted. The Western Cape initially relied on NIM but ultimately built its own capacity, fielding 2,300 peace monitors by April 1994 (Odendaal & Spies, 1996 p.11).15 11 Sunday Star 28/3/93. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 David Storey interview. 15 Report, BVS 60/1; Letter 4/1/94, Carmichael/Marks.

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Peace monitoring under the Accord was integral to its implementation. The structures possessed convening power, access to the authorities, and a multiparty perspective. Peace monitoring took the Accord out of the committee rooms and made it work on the streets. The Accord laid responsibility on Local Peace Committees to ‘agree upon rules and conditions relating to marches, rallies and gatherings, and liaise with local police and local magistrates on matters concerning the prevention of violence, the holding of rallies, marches and gatherings’ (7.4.8.8–9). At an emergency meeting on violence on 26 May 1992 the NPC resolved that ‘RDRCs and LDRCs would … be asked to monitor police activities and incidents of violence as stipulated in paragraph 7.4.5.5 of the Accord’, which tasks RDRCs with ‘monitoring current applicable peace accords and future peace agreements entered into in the relevant region and settling disputes arising from them’.16 The political Code of Conduct bound the organizers of an event or march to inform the ‘appropriate authorities’ of its date, place, duration and route, taking into account ‘local sentiment and foreseeable consequences’ including any other meetings scheduled in that area. Parties and organizations must ‘at all times’ maintain communication with one another, sharing contact details and ‘appointing liaison personnel in each location to deal with any problems which may arise’ (2.5). It became the norm for events to be jointly planned, actively monitored, and debriefed afterwards. Monitors came from all parties and from civil society. The non-aligned civil society monitors, and eventually the staff, provided the impartial facilitators and mediators holding everyone together, holding the parties and security forces to their commitments. Peace monitors could rely on the formal status of the structures, could apply the moral authority of the Accord, were recognized by the security forces and main parties, and were generally respected and accepted. The Alexandra ICC had its first monitoring experiences soon after its formation in April 1992, when the whole committee was invited by the ISU to monitor its ‘sweeps’, searches of an area or a hostel for illegal weapons. We applied the criteria of civility, impartiality, and thoroughness. Our debriefings with police and army immediately afterwards were the first real interactions between the community and security forces. Monitoring of party rallies and marches followed. With the growth of peace monitoring disasters became rare, occurring only where monitoring was inadequate or a party deliberately breached the Accord.

Mass action and International Observers Monitoring took a step forward during the ANC’s ‘Mass action’ week in August 1992, when the first small group of UN Observers accompanied peace committee members on the ground. The government had become receptive to international organizations, with the arrival late in 1991 of the UNHCR to assist with 16

Minutes 26/5/92, 4.4.3. Carmichael/Lorimer.

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repatriating exiles, and of small observer contingents to Codesa from the UN, OAU, EC, and Commonwealth. The floodgates opened after the collapse of Codesa 2 and the subsequent special UNSC debate. UNSC Resolution 765 (16 July 1992) recognized the National Peace Accord, called on all parties to ensure its implementation, and requested Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to send a Special Representative to consult and recommend measures to end violence and create conditions for a peaceful transition. Boutros-Ghali sent Special Envoy Cyrus Vance, with UN staff.17 He spent 21–31 July in South Africa. Linking with the UNHCR’s Kallu Kalumiya (Uganda) he established a full UN office high up in the Carlton Centre. On 31 July Vance met the NPS and regional Chairs. They besought him to persuade the government to provide the peace process with proper resources, staff, and offices; and both sides raised the possibility of a UN Observer mission. Meanwhile the ANC, flexing its political muscle, announced its week of ‘mass action’ to commence on Monday 3 August. Boutros-Ghali offered help, Mandela requested UN Observers, and after consulting the government and parties Boutros-Ghali despatched seven more UN staff. Antonie Gildenhuys, Thabo Mbeki, and a government liaison officer welcomed them on arrival, Mbeki promising that mass action would be violence-free, and guilty members would be expelled.18 The Observers were deployed to the NPA regions.19 Coordinator Hisham Omayad stayed in Wits/Vaal. He explained to the media that the NPS and its structures were responsible for dealing with the situation and the Observers were there to facilitate that work. They had no enforcement powers but could be involved in negotiations to avert or end any violence.20 Mass action week opened with a general strike and local demonstrations. The NPS had promulgated a Code of Conduct for Mass Action, stipulating that everyone had the right to participate or not, that demonstrations must be peaceful, and the police must protect everyone impartially.21 Just in time for the week the Goldstone Commission published fuller Guidelines, signed by the ANC, IFP and SAP.22 On the Monday a mainly peaceful crowd marched with Mandela to the administrative seat of government, the Union Buildings in Pretoria. 17

Hisham Omayad (Ghana; Director, Department of Political Affairs, Observer at Codesa), Mr Shola Omoregie (Nigeria), Mr Virenda Dayan (India), Carole Davis (USA). 18 Citizen 3/8/92. 19 Kalumiya and Omoregie to Wits/Vaal; Mr M. G. Ramcharan (Guyana) to Durban; Mr J. Renninger (USA) to Pietermaritzburg; Miriam Freedman (USA) to Klerksdorp; Rehana Ahmed-Haque (USA) to Pretoria; Mr Shigeru Mochida ( Japan) to Bloemfontein; Joan Seymour (UK) to Cape Town; Jose Campino (Portugal) to East London and Port Elizabeth. 20 Citizen 3/8/92. 21 Code in Wits/Vaal records, Carmichael/Lorimer. 22 See p.406.

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Mass action: Alexandra That Monday, 3 August, thousands of residents of Alexandra in northeast Johannesburg marched from its dusty stadium, through township streets, across Pretoria Main Road into the light-industrial area of Wynberg, to present demands at the temporary Administration offices – the normal offices being occupied by ‘ANC’ displacees.23 The Interim Crisis Committee (ICC, LDRC) was kept abreast of the plans. Its role as monitor was to maintain constant communication so that no action, misinformation or rumour would lead to violence. The march had legal permission, but any mass gathering made the other side nervous. Two years later we could deploy 200 trained Alex monitors but that day, our DP member was ill, another non-aligned member unavailable, so the author’s small car plastered with ICC insignia was the monitoring presence. Methodist Bishop Peter Storey from the RDRC accompanied me for a couple of hours (Storey, 2018 pp.390–1). During the pre-march rally we shuttled between the stadium and main M1 hostel, liaising with the hostel and IFP representatives, ensuring everyone knew what was happening. The march would head away from the hostel, and no attack was intended. A cheerful procession, mixed in age, not visibly armed, set off from the stadium, growing to perhaps 10,000 as they went. Armoured ISU vehicles lumbered before and after – harassing, protecting, or ‘bringing’ them according to one’s perception. Traffic on Pretoria Main Road reversed smartly at the sight. Someone had omitted to brief the Sandton Traffic Police! I reached the offices ahead of the crowd and parked at the roadside. A white traffic cop appeared, literally shaking from head to toe. ‘Madam! Move your car! It’s going to be trashed!’ I said it would be fine; it was. The cheerful tide arrived. Demands were handed to the Town Clerk and British ITV reporter Mike Hanna filed his piece. ANC marshals had kept good control so far, but dispersal was disorderly. Groups straggled home, high-spirited youths running ahead, peeling off here and there with ISU vehicles sprinting after. I liaised with their commander and again spoke with an IFP group that stood, looking apprehensive, outside the M1 hostel. Back across the ‘border’ my car got just a little too invitingly close to an exuberant posse of ANC youth. Many of them later became keen peace monitors, but in the early days anyone visiting the ‘other side’ and emerging alive was highly suspect, and anyone obstructing the fighting was an annoyance. ANC youths had recently stoned the SADF commander’s car. Now a modest stone landed through my own rear window. Minutes later I greeted ANC leader Sizakele Nkosi, who handsomely apologized while a couple of amused-looking CIS police filmed the absent glass. It was a good day. No one got hurt. At five past midnight we were alerted that shots were being fired at an army vehicle near the M2 hostel. That was normal Alex life in August. Things got much better by Christmas. 23

Author’s Alexandra Peace Notes, 1992. Carmichael.

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Mass action: Daveyton The same day saw Hisham Omayad accompanying Wits/Vaal RDRC Vice-chair Rupert Lorimer MP to the volatile East Rand township of Daveyton. In its dusty stadium some 2,000 ANC supporters, mainly youth, were directing derogative chants at the local black police. Magisterial permission to march to the police station had been refused. Lorimer and Omayad negotiated police permission, and the march proceeded peacefully. ‘Mr Omayad ended his first day in South Africa’s killing fields with a sense of a worthwhile job well done. “This is far better,” he observed, “than sitting in New York reading the New York Times.”’24

Mass action: Despatch Early in the morning of Friday 7 August, Charles du Toit, labour relations manager at the Volkswagen factory and Chair of Uitenhage LPC in the Eastern Cape, received a call from ANC leaders in Daleview, the township of the neighbouring right-wing town of Despatch. He arrived to find that Daleview had decided to march, despite being refused permission. Some 500 people were massed at the top of the hill leading into town. Small groups of local AWB, khaki-uniformed and tooled up with rifles, stood on the road ready to stop them.25 The police had also contacted Mark Anstey, professor in labour relations in Port Elizabeth and conflict resolution adviser to Eastern Cape RDRC. They intercepted him going to work, helicoptered him to their ops room, ‘and I suddenly realized they were briefing me! And I didn’t have a clue – we were early days, you know – what to do with it! So I said to them: “Just put me out there, I’ll work it on the ground.”’26 Du Toit had meanwhile called union and ANC leaders John Gomomo and Linda Mti to speak to the crowd. Anstey arrived with Jose Campino a UN Observer and Portuguese diplomat, and a notable police officer, Brigadier Wynand van der Merwe, ISU commander in the Eastern Cape. ‘That was the first time’, says Anstey, ‘that I heard a policeman say to a group of conservative guys: “My job is to protect the right of those people to march, and that’s what I’m going to do. And it’s also my job to protect your safety, and your property: and we’re going to do both. … That’s my job, we’re going to do it.”’27 Hours of mediation involving regional ANC leaders brought an agreement to postpone the march by a week to allow for permissions and preparation. After an address from ANC regional secretary Gugile Nkwinti, accompanied by Campino, the crowd dispersed. Anstey and van der Merwe worked together to deliver the solution. The Brigadier met the Town Council. It agreed to negotiate, but the ANC wanted to 24 The Independent 4/8/92. 25 Du Toit and Anstey interviews; SAP video, Carmichael/D. Storey. 26 Du Toit and Anstey interviews. 27 Ibid.

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bring 5,000 to march (reduced from their initial demand of 10,000). The Council refused. The ANC walked out. The mediator and Brigadier addressed meetings of the broader white community: church, teachers, business. The area’s NP MP summed up the choice: an agreement, or bodies on the street. The Brigadier was determined to show who was responsible for the town’s security: was it to be himself, or the AWB’s self-styled ‘General’ Barend Mostert? By Thursday the AWB was isolated and the ANC and Town Council met to agree a plan. On Friday 14 August an unprecedented procession entered Despatch, paraded along its main street and wheeled back to the Town Hall. At its head marched Brigadier Wynand van der Merwe, followed by a squad of newly trained camouflage-clad ISU public order police, Unit 19, flown down from Pretoria. Then came 5,000 marchers from Daleview and beyond, with 500 marshals running alongside and containing them with ropes. At the tail, another ISU squad. Nearly 700 police lined the route. A watching helicopter directed the removal of a right-wing sniper from a roof. Anstey the mediator solemnly carried a large white NPA flag with the indaba logo. Daleview’s demands, and a bar of the Mayor’s favourite chocolate, were presented to the Mayor by Linda Mti. This is the first recorded example of a march pre-planned by a broad spectrum of parties and police. It initiated dialogue in Despatch where none had occurred before. The police had shown good faith, the rights of all parties had been upheld, the people had marched, the police were applauded, and the extreme right was shown up as an isolated minority. Anstey wrote up the event as a case study for peace committee and monitor training (Anstey, 1993 pp.117–27). According to regional Co-chair Brian Smith it raised the credibility of the peace committees in the eyes of ANC and police across the Eastern Cape.28

Monitoring the right wing Monitors had plenty of similar encounters with the right-wing, mainly in other rural towns. On 21 November 1992 British policeman Gavin Aarvold, heading the European Observers, found himself in Nylstroom in northern Transvaal, monitoring with Antonie Gildenhuys and UNOMSA head Angela King.29 Some weeks previously the magistrate had suddenly withdrawn permission for an ANC-led march from Phagameng township. Its residents retaliated by boycotting white businesses. The Far Northern Transvaal RDRC facilitated the replanning of the march. CP leader Dr Treurnicht fruitlessly protested. Police turned AWB reinforcements away at roadblocks, 1,000 police lined the route, 700 people peacefully marched; and the Nylstroom LDRC was born. Chris Fismer MP, an NP representative on the NPS from August 1992 to June 1993, facilitated a similar march in Ventersdorp in the Western Transvaal, the AWB’s heartland. He spent a week meeting the AWB, police and ANC, 28 Brian Smith interview. 29 Aarvold, briefing 28/2/94, Carmichael/Aarvold; Daily Dispatch 21, 23/11/92.

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hearing their fears and concerns, until ‘with a bit of give and take here or there’ the route was agreed: then the AWB said they will back off, and the police said OK they will not arrest anyone if they accept that arrangement. And then on the day, I remember with my own vehicle driving in front with a blue flag of the Secretariat, leading the march down and then afterwards go and shake hands with the AWB and shake hands with the ANC – and so, that sort of thing happened in many places in the country, I was involved with one or two or three.30

In right-wing Schweizer-Reneke in the Western Transvaal, a peaceful ANC march was facilitated by the NPS, with a UN Observer, in September 1992. The CP-controlled Town Council ‘wrote to Gildenhuys to thank him and, by implication, the UN for averting a clash’.31 Then on 7 August 1993 Johan Steenkamp MP represented the NPS in Schweizer-Reneke when the Council conferred the freedom of the town on Eugene Terreblanche and his AWB while the township, Ipelegeng, conferred its freedom on MK and its commander Joe Modise. Two thousand ISU police under national commander General de la Rosa relieved the AWB of their surplus arms at roadblocks. Steenkamp, Winston St Rose of UNOMSA, Western Transvaal RPC members and local monitors from the justformed LPC shuttled between the rival ceremonies. The day proceeded without incident amid a holiday atmosphere of braais (barbecues) and speeches.32 AWB snipers featured in a surreal incident in Midrand, Wits/Vaal, on a Saturday afternoon in November/December 1993. A tip-off came to Midrand LPC that ANC leader Mac Maharaj was coming to launch a branch in a school hall in (then semi-rural) Midrand, and the AWB intended to ambush and assassinate him. LPC Chair Roger Oxlee alerted the police, who sounded ‘totally uninterested’, then set out with two black colleagues to find the school. It stood on a hill, ‘and there was a valley you had to go through, a dry river bed and dongas’. We drove down into this area, parked and started looking. And there was a little bridge, and lo and behold there were two AWB men in camouflage uniform with machine-guns. I didn’t see them initially. They were fairly obvious once you got into this dry river bed. They’re lying in wait for this little entourage to come across this little bridge. And there were Roger Oxlee and two LPC members, armed to the teeth with blue and white peace dove badges, pinned to our shirts, taking on these AWB guys! I saw this guy lying in a ditch … and I went up to him and – at the time, I must say, you don’t think you probably were in danger, but the bottom line is the police didn’t arrive for – like, we were waiting for the police to arrive and they just didn’t 30 Fismer interview. 31 SA Dialogue, 4.10 (1992). 32 Johan Steenkamp interview; W. Transvaal RPC Minutes 2/8/93, BVS25.

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come, and then some ANC supporters started arriving, and I was having a kind of verbal debate with these AWB guys, saying: ‘What are you doing, and why are you doing it?’ Now, these are not people that you can have a logical discussion with. What this guy did is, he came up to me and I thought: ‘Oh-oh, this is it!’ And he grabbed my shirt and he ripped off my peace badge, and he tore my shirt! And threw it on the ground! But, we had rendered them powerless. And then the ANC people started taunting them, which of course wasn’t – so then we had to go to the ANC and say: ‘Get your members to keep quiet!’ And so, the whole thing just kind of dissolved. No one was arrested, nothing happened, they disappeared. By the time the police arrived the whole thing was over, and the ANC went on and launched their branch.33

Oxlee is extraordinarily gifted at chatting in philosophical mode for as long as necessary (as I witnessed during innumerable taxi mediations.) The incident appears in the Independent Board of Inquiry Report for December 1993 and January 1994: It has been alleged that masked AWB supporters had their guns trained on Maharaj when he visited a Midrand School to open a local ANC branch. Maharaj was pulled into a school building by ANC supporters, who claimed to have seen one AWB supporter armed with a rifle and telescopic sight and another with a handgun.34

Maharaj said he had reported this to the police a week later. He criticized them for neither recording the details nor investigating. A police spokesman said they would now investigate. If so, they never asked the LPC!

International Observer missions The early UN Observer group had departed on 13 August 1992, expressing great hope for the future of South Africa and planting an olive tree for peace at Johannesburg airport.35 UN S-G Boutros-Ghali relayed Cyrus Vance’s recommendations to the Security Council on 17 August. The resulting UNSC Resolution 772 urgently created the UN Observer Mission in South Africa (UNOMSA), mandating it to work with the peace structures and strengthen them; and it invited other international organizations to deploy Observers ‘in coordination with the United Nations and the structures set up under the National Peace Accord’.36 The Commonwealth, European Community, and Organisation of African Unity 33 Oxlee interview. 34 www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/inventories/inv_pdfo/AG2543/AG2543-2-2-4001-jpeg.pdf [accessed 31/3/21]. 35 Star 14/9/92. 36 http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/772 [accessed 31/3/21].

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all responded. Vance also strongly recommended that the government provide the peace structures with staff of the requisite calibre, and ‘operational centres’ (offices!). At last, resources began flowing.

UNOMSA Mindful of gender balance, Boutros-Ghali appointed Angela King of Jamaica as Chief of Mission. DIPI Director Deon Rudman appreciated her as ‘a very forceful and very strong lady’, and remembers the rum she brought him after visits home!37 UNOMSA was wholly UN-financed, its members UN staff seconded for renewable six-month tours. King’s deputy Ismat Steiner (Tanzania) arrived first, with a party of eighteen on 13 September. They would not, he said, ‘override’ the existing channels charged with preventing violence, but ‘if we can defuse tensions, we’ll do so.’38 After two days’ briefing by the NPS Steiner took six Observers to establish a secondary HQ in Durban. King landed with six others on 23 September. By November UNOMSA numbered fifty, serving in all eleven regions, rising to 100 by January 1994 and to 1,778, divided into Electoral and Peace Promoting Divisions, over the April 1994 election. UNOMSA was ‘first among equals’ among the four Observer teams. The Observers worked with, but not under, the NPS, which was their host and point of reference for liaison with the structures and with government. Heads of Mission met weekly with Gildenhuys, and attended the meetings of the NPS with regional Chairs. Observers were attached to local peace committees, thus Palestinian Mousa Olayan ( Jordan) and Gary Lamb (Guyana) were posted to Port Shepstone, Jim Anderson (UK) and Angela Masithela (Lesotho) to Alexandra. They gained invaluable local insight. Their presence added dignity to the committees, and their insignia, jackets, flags, cars and radios added gravitas to monitoring and set a standard for local monitors. They noted how their appearance elicited shouts of ‘Discipline, comrades!’ from ANC marshals. Colonel James Louwrens (SAP, NK RPC), flying with Observers to rallies in Natal/KwaZulu, was struck that leaders of all parties ‘did not allow violence’ in the UN’s presence.39 By January 1994 they had observed almost 10,000 events – and UN Observers normally only went into the field in company with peace committee personnel. Only the Commonwealth provided public reports, but all made comments: the habit of shooting in the air, especially at funerals, prompted an open letter to Gildenhuys from all four Missions, protesting at the unnecessary danger and requesting it be discussed by the signatories.40 37 38 39 40

Rudman interview. Evening Post 17/9/92. Louwrens interview. Evening Post 11/11/93.

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Andries Odendaal, Coordinator in the Southern Cape, remarks how Observers acted as a quiet calming presence during fraught negotiations, even in a language they did not understand; and how they brought unprecedented affirmation to marginalized small towns like Willowmore in the Karoo – their march was being taken seriously by the United Nations! Observers worked closely with the structures, and could alter preconceptions: one of the UN guys I got to know very well, Vladimir Zhagora he was from Minsk, Belarus, and we went to this one meeting in this small little rural town in the Karoo, and there were some of these very hard-line, big, white Afrikaans farmers at this meeting, and Vladimir introduced himself and he says: ‘I’m a Communist, I teach economy at the University of Minsk. And I’m here as a representative of the United Nations! And I want to hear what you feel and how you – what’s happening?’ And he at the end of the evening had them eating out of his hands. He was just a fabulous guy! And – it was like waving a red flag, and he did it in such an accommodating, welcoming, interesting way that – yeah!41

In Bekkersdal in Wits/Vaal, the fighting involved AZAPO and PAC youths as well as IFP and ANC. The non-signatories recognized the UN, so a peace pact could be agreed in the UNOMSA offices, allowing normal schooling and transport to resume.42 The International Observers saw possible future roles for the structures after the 1994 election, but their own role ended. UNOMSA closed on 27 June 1994, when the UN at last ceased to be ‘seized’ of the matter of South Africa.

ECOMSA Unlike the UN Observers, whose core remit was to observe and report, the other missions set out to make a difference. The European Community (European Union from 1993), consisting then of just twelve nations, decided it could offer specific assistance in training the South African police. It sent a team of fifteen, mainly senior police officers.43 Portuguese diplomat João Caetano da Silva, a non-police member, considered this worked well: ‘Because of their competence and technical knowledge’ it was easier for police to have ‘open interchanges of perceptions, not ideologies’ with the South Africans.44 At Goldstone’s request 41

Retief Olivier interview. Odendaal remembers this incident, in Merweville, as a deep friendly personal exchange after the meeting, between Zhagora and a CP councillor, Zhagora saying he had been but was no longer a Communist (email to author, August 2021). 42 Citizen 9/1/93. 43 Citizen 2/9/92. 44 Star 7/4/93.

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a further five European police officers came as Goldstone Observers. Assignments were for six months; salaries were paid by sending governments. British police, selected for their community policing expertise, were assigned by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to either ECOMSA or COMSA. Chief Superintendent Gavin Aarvold from Northumbria and Superintendent David Jackson from the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire served with ECOMSA for its first six months. At a lunch soon after arriving Aarvold was the first to explain the method of allowing ‘lay visitors’ into police cells, to prevent mistreatment in detention, to SAP Commissioner General Johan van der Merwe.45 ECOMSA deployed, at the end of October 1992, to Wits/Vaal, Natal/KwaZulu, Western Cape, and to Border/Ciskei, which was struggling. Jackson and his German colleague Uli Burgmer found themselves acting as the peace monitors in Ciskei, investigating rumours and reprimanding Gqozo’s gun-happy ‘Peace Force’ for shooting up a village for fun.46 ECOMSA assisted with marshal and monitor training. For the election the EU sent a separate 300-strong Election Unit in South Africa (EUNELSA), to work alongside ECOMSA. In ECOMSA’s Final Report, Chief Superintendent Les House assessed that its Observers had achieved a good level of cooperation with the SADF and SAP. The latter ‘have grasped the concept of community policing’ and ‘are far more open to change than probably at any period in their history’.47 In the preceding eighteen months the police had become much more likely to negotiate or consider options than to give one warning and follow with tear gas, baton rounds and live ammunition. Deaths in police custody were now a rarity.

COMSA Commonwealth Secretary-General Chief Emeka Anyaoku initially conceived of the Commonwealth Observer Mission as a prominent persons group working discreetly behind the scenes to effect change. It became a group of senior Observers with practical experience, able to make a difference, one specific area being community policing. COMSA’s secretariat was headed by Australian Max Gaylard, Director of International Relations, with Assistant Director and Africa section head Moses Anafu (Ghana). COMSA concentrated on Wits/Vaal and Natal/KwaZulu, where Anafu did significant grassroots peacemaking.48 It issued public reports every few months. The first team, twelve strong, as briefed by Chief Anyaoku in London and 45 Aarvold, Briefing 28/2/94, Carmichael/Aarvold. 46 Letter 28/11/92, David Jackson Papers, Bodleian Library. 47 ECOMSA Final Report, May 1994: David Jackson Papers, Bodleian Library, Box 8/10. 48 See pp.331, 357–9.

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arrived on 18 October. It consisted of politicians, soldiers and five senior policemen including a former Commissioner and a former Deputy Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, New Zealand’s Assistant Commissioner of Police, and Chief Superintendent Peter Stevens of London’s Metropolitan Police. The peace structures intrigued them: Among the most positive impressions that COMSA carries from the first phase of its mission is the image of men and women from vastly different walks of life, racial and ethnic backgrounds and political persuasions, sitting around a table under the NPA structures to resolve their differences. The Peace Accord is, in the first instance, a forum for the reconciliation of South Africa’s peoples, without which there can be little hope for a new tomorrow. (COMSA Report Phase I p.24)

COMSA was ‘firmly of the view’ that without the Accord ‘the levels of violence in South Africa would have been considerably higher’ (Ibid.) COMSA provided marshal trainers, and a detachment of twenty trainers for the NPKF. It seconded facilitator Paul Lusaka to the NPS. For the election COMSA’s ten Observers were joined by a sixty-strong Commonwealth Observer Group to South Africa (COGSA) led by Michael Manley ( Jamaica) and Sir Paul Reeves (New Zealand). COGSA’s lively Report, The End of Apartheid, gave much credit to the LPCs for resolving conflicts and bringing opposing sides together.49

OAUOMSA In their green jackets, OAUOMSA contributed a distinctive if rare African presence. Documentation is relatively scarce, but the OAU sent an initial fact-finding mission of eight experts in September–October 1992, whose report is extant.50 It was impressed by the Goldstone Commission but saw ‘urgent need’ to strengthen the regional structures. It recommended possibly deploying one Observer to the Commission, two to police–community relations, and six to the regions. A team of ten to twenty was maintained, headed by the experienced diplomat Ambassador Legwaila Joseph Legwaila of Botswana.

Chris Hani’s assassination: peace monitoring comes of age On the morning of Easter Saturday, 10 April 1993, Chris Hani, SACP General Secretary and former Chief of Staff of MK, was assassinated outside his home in ‘white’ Dawn Park, Boksburg. His killer, Janusz Walus, an anti-Communist Polish immigrant, had been sent by CP MP Clive Derby-Lewis. A quick-thinking Afrikaner neighbour phoned details of Walus’s car to the police. Within minutes, he was arrested. For the whole country, that Easter weekend suddenly changed. 49 Carmichael/Yach. 50 Report of Mission, BVS228/2.

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Deon Rudman’s young son called him off the golf course, and ‘for two, three weeks it was just total chaos, having to set up home in the office, staying there overnight, hardly ever going home’.51 Wits/Vaal Regional Director Peter Harris, David Storey, Jayendra Naidoo, Thabo Mbeki and Sydney Mufamadi drove to Hani’s home.52 There the Wits/Vaal RPS brokered the first of a series of agreements, an ANC–SAP agreement to allow the police to examine the crime scene, with all evidence to be turned over to an international investigation and international investigators to be called in.53 On TV that evening Nelson Mandela made a profoundly statesmanlike call for national unity, repeating Hani’s call for peace and emphasizing that a white woman had risked her life by giving the murderer’s details. He announced that Hani would lie in state in a night-vigil at the FNB Stadium near Soweto from Sunday 18 April, before the funeral ceremony on Monday. To channel emotions the ANC announced a national strike accompanied by local actions country-­ wide on Wednesday 14th. The Wits/Vaal structures would be monitoring multiple local events, a massive march into Johannesburg, and the funeral itself. Jayendra Naidoo recalls ‘it was the first time that the mobile telephone was used in a meaningful way. … André Lamprecht’s mobile telephone, we had a few of those, big battery-sized phones, you know!’54 It would be impossible to seek three tenders for other equipment that was urgently needed. Harris’s team decided to spend without authority and face the consequences. ‘So’, says David Storey, ‘Ilona Tip was given carte blanche to buy whatever she wanted … hire cars, food, fridges.’ DIPI faced a bill for 30 two-way radios at R113,907; plus 2,000 armbands, 30 megaphones, 1,500 T-shirts, 10,000 peace stickers, flags and badges, totalling R191,313.29; plus overtime for the DIPI officials who managed the supply lines.55 Afterwards, Wits/Vaal entertained Gildenhuys and DIPI officials to a blow-by-blow account of how each item became necessary. ‘After about four hours they kind of just said: “All right, all right!” and they left off.’56 Wits/Vaal got away with it, this time. ECOMSA police helped establish the permanent JOCC in the Wits/Vaal RPC offices in Braamfontein, with its hierarchy of call signs: ‘Diamond Control’ for itself, ‘Platinum’ or ‘Gold’ for sub-regional JOCCs, ‘Silver’ for mobile monitor units in cars, ‘Bronze’ for ‘static’ units on foot. Eastern Cape Chair Brian Smith was holidaying in Knysna. The police called: ‘“Look, there’s major unrest in the townships,” and they believed we should call a meeting of the Peace Committee.’ He raced back to Port Elizabeth (Gqeberha), 51 52 53 54 55 56

Rudman interview. Harris interview. David Storey interview. Jayendra Naidoo interview. Note filed by DIPI on 11 May, BVS37/2. David Storey interview.

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‘and obviously at that stage the ANC guys were very emotional and initially didn’t want to come – they said: “Look, we don’t want to meet with anyone you know, this is a state of war now” – so I managed to persuade them: “Look, let’s get together.”’57 With ANC leaders, police, and mediator Mark Anstey he toured the townships. The local Herald reported that the ANC had ‘reconsidered’ its plan to occupy white schools and government buildings, for which ‘a measure of gratitude is owed to the Peace Committee and the mechanisms of dialogue which it enshrines’.58 Wednesday 14 April was local action day. While 25,000 rallied peacefully in East London’s main stadium and Uitenhage had a successful march, a large march entered Port Elizabeth’s city centre. Gary Koekemoer, an IMSSA mediator, had just become Monitor Coordinator for Port Elizabeth LPC. With monitor Shena Ruth, he received petrol bombs from the marshals as they removed them from the marchers, and dumped the contents into the storm-water drains.59 But the SAP’s Wynand van der Merwe had left the region and, for reasons unknown, the police committed the cardinal error of stopping the march, forcing it to aboutturn. Becoming angry, the marchers threw stones and ‘petrol-bombed one or two shops on the way back, opposite the PE [Port Elizabeth] Showgrounds, and Shena and I then became involved in putting out the fire … while these masses of people were coming past!’60 Brian Smith afterwards gave credit to all that no lives were lost.61 The RPC arranged a hired train to take mourners to the funeral. That Wednesday the Grahamstown (Makhanda) LPC facilitated the planning of a march of 9,000 into town, for a memorial ceremony outside the City Hall. The route ran down from Makana’s Kop through the township, up into town on Beaufort St, turning right into Hill St, and right again to the Hall. LPC Co-chair Rev. Glen Craig monitored in front. Suddenly, the ISU unrolled razor wire to block Beaufort St and divert the march into the more direct, but shoplined, Bathurst St. I just got out a loudhailer and asked the marshals please to halt the crowd in the meantime, and keep them calm. I would negotiate with the police, which I did: I went to the chief guy and said: ‘This is not the arrangement, you know, you’re asking for trouble. Really we’ve got to do this peacefully, we’ve got to go according to our plan.’ And they listened to me, they rolled it all up and moved on down Beaufort St to Hill St. … And if that crowd hadn’t stopped we’d have been mincemeat on this razor wire, it was quite a bit scary!62

57 Brian Smith interview. 58 EP Herald 14/4/93. 59 Koekemoer interview. 60 Ibid. 61 Evening Post 16/4/93. 62 Craig interview.

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Speeches from a podium in front of the City Hall, occupied six thirsty hours. At Craig’s prompting the police brought a water tanker. Finally, ‘I led them out, with the marshals and the Street Committee people, and it all went peacefully, and they dispersed. And that was our first big test and it worked very well.’ A few Bathurst Street windows suffered as the stragglers went home. In Cape Town peace monitoring was undeveloped, having been left to the Network of Independent Monitors (NIM). There was no pre-planning. Leaders gathered inside St George’s Cathedral, where Archbishop Tutu called for the same commitment to peace and reconciliation that Hani had recently shown. With some 50,000 gathered outside, a large unruly element went looting. Police shot one looter. ‘A strong police contingent’, read the RPC press statement, ‘eventually succeeded in dispersing the crowd with the assistance of ANC marshals and church officials.’63 Regional Coordinator Chris Spies noted that in future all players must be involved in setting up a JOCC and must stay for the whole event; monitors must have radios; organizers must furnish proof of the number and deployment of marshals; a PA system and loudhailers must be available; and rallies should be in stadiums, not crowded city centres (Marks, 2000 pp.81–2). Mandela spoke in Soweto’s Jabulani Amphitheatre. He called for calm and dignity but some responded with jeers. At the close, while the small monitor and Observer presence was distracted by an arrest, part of the crowd headed to Protea Police Station and besieged it. Panicking police shot into the people, killing four including an ANC marshal who was trying to push the crowd back. It was that day’s most lethal incident. Southern Cape Coordinator Andries Odendaal began the day in the small town of George, riding with ANC leaders in a minibus searching for an unruly mob in Thembalethu township, to persuade it into a soccer stadium.64 A rival ANC faction stoned and rocked the minibus, which narrowly escaped. In the stadium, local church leaders calmed the crowd. They then accompanied it on an orderly march into town, led by Anglican Bishop Derek Damant. The municipality lent public address equipment, which Odendaal raced to fetch, for speeches outside the city hall. The following day the Southern Cape Sub-regional Peace Committee successfully launched in George, with Bishop Damant in the chair. Late that afternoon the police station at Mossel Bay called Odendaal. It had made unpopular arrests and was now under siege, with the township demanding that the police leave, as they were liberating the place. Odendaal went, calling a regional ANC leader who helped negotiate a solution. A week later George’s older township of Lawaaikamp marched across town to the rugby stadium, through streets inhabited by poor whites. Odendaal monitored. The police approached him with information: 63 Press release 14/4/93, Carmichael/Marks. 64 Odendaal interview.

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So we stopped the march and I went to the leaders and I said: ‘The police tell me they have reliable information there are guys with petrol bombs: can you check it?’ They went into the crowd and I waited, and they came back and they said ‘It’s all under control.’ I said: ‘Are you sure?’ They said, ‘Trust us, it’s all under control, we can go.’

Scouting ahead, Odendaal found gun-toting AWB supporters guarding a music shop. He asked them what was their plan? ‘So they said, “No, Meneer, we won’t shoot first – but let one stone fall on this roof, all hell will break loose.”’ Young ANC marshals then arrived, running in front of the march – ‘and the marshals picked a fight with these guys!’ So I just told the leader of the marshals, the guy was named Castro: ‘Castro, get your guys to turn their back to the shop and face the street.’ Which they fortunately did. And then the AWB went into this building, and I was standing on the sidewalk with this building behind me, and when the march arrived they went into ‘Kill the farmer! Kill the Boer!’ Behind me I just heard: click! click! (guns cocking). It was nerve-wracking! … And then of course they had to come back, the same procedure coming back. It was quite fun!65

In the Free State a march assembled in central Bloemfontein. Annatjie Olivier, recently appointed Regional Coordinator, her car decorated with peace insignia, saw a group of youth carrying tyres. For barricades? Necklacing? She persuaded them, ‘so that you don’t agitate the police!’ to put them in her car.66 She invited a female ANCYL leader to drive with her. ‘And she did – got into my car and now we were leading this march. And then the march split and we ended up in the middle.’ A youth approached and threatened Annatjie. The leader reprimanded him: ‘Back off, it’s not necessary to kill anyone today!’ The march stayed peaceful. The ICC in Alexandra had gained experience of joint planning and monitoring at a joint funeral on 27 March, a peacemaking moment when the no-go zones were declared open.67 On Hani’s death, the local IFP offered its condolences and then stood back from whatever events were planned. The Alex ANC decided to march to nearby Edenvale Hospital to demand that it become a community hospital for Alex, and march back via the ISU base, demanding replies to all previous memoranda. In theory 300 marshals were on duty; in practice hardly any were discernible. We had a handful of monitors, two UNOMSA Observers and one OAUOMSA, but no radios, mobile phones or JOCC. After two hours of speeches a good-natured crowd of about 5,000 walked across open veld, to wait outside the hospital while the demand was handed in. The ordinary SAP, as planned, kept at respectful distance, but the ISU deployed 65 Ibid. 66 Annatjie Olivier interview. 67 See p.370.

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strangers whose two Casspirs menaced the crowd. A wisp of smoke rose from the grassy roadside. The ISU thought it an attempt to burn the hospital, and consulting no one, they shot teargas. The crowd disintegrated, angrily breaking windows and damaging cars in a white suburb as they went home. The debriefing at the ICC, with the police, was the first such post-mortem in Alex history. The grass fire was explained. Ironically, it was to make smoke, a folk remedy for teargas, in case gas was used. A list of learnings went in to the RPS office, and we asked the British Consulate to sponsor hand-held and base radios, which vastly improved communication. Alex police did not use teargas again. The media concentrated on reporting the looting in Cape Town and shootings in Soweto. De Klerk, promising more troops and police, called that Wednesday ‘a dark day for South Africa’ but Cyril Ramaphosa judged that despite ‘quite a number of unruly people’ most had acted with commendable restraint, and the chaos ‘has not been so extensive that one can say that the whole event was disastrous’.68 For the peace structures the day was a mixture of success, relief, and sharp learning. Three days later, Saturday 17 April, a monitor showed remarkable courage at a march through Vanderbijlpark in the Vaal. The Vaal LPC had intervened to ensure the march went ahead, after the CP-controlled Town Council banned it. Right-winger Mike Odendaal drove at the marchers, handgun in hand, shooting two dead and wounding two others. LPC member Elize Coni, armed with a Wits/Vaal monitor pennant, charged straight at him, yelling: ‘What do you think you are doing?’69 On the Wednesday Coni had with equal bravery rescued a black woman during a Hani memorial service in Sebokeng. A year previously she had headed the Vaal LPC’s Interim Crisis Committee to build peace after Boipatong. The march into Johannesburg on that Saturday saw legs converging from different directions on the notorious police headquarters, John Vorster Square. Wits/Vaal coordinated the plans. On Friday evening monitors attached to the RPS and its twenty LPCs gathered for briefing at the Wits/Vaal offices.70 The region had hired thirty-two cars to supplement monitors’ own vehicles, and acquired fifty-five car and hand-held radios. The radios represented a quantum leap in communication. Monitor bibs did not yet exist, but 375 orange ‘body stickers’ and 200 pennants would be available at 6am on Saturday. During the briefing, news came through that high-level ‘Principles of Agreement’ had been brokered, to be signed by the SAP’s Regional Commissioner for the Witwatersrand and Thabo Mbeki for the ANC. The Agreement formally defined the respective roles of marshals, monitors, and police during the march 68 Daily Dispatch 15/4/93. 69 Rapport 25/4/93; COMSA Report Phase II p.19. 70 Author’s Alexandra Peace Notes, 1993, Carmichael.

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and funeral, again recognizing a triple layer of responsibility. The police would step in only if peace monitors reported that they and the party marshals had lost control. Maps were handed out, showing routes into the city centre for each township group, areas for car patrols, static monitors to watch each city block, and dispersal points for transport home. Most groups travelled in by train or minibus taxi. Alexandra, 12km out, would march, ideally down the M1 motorway. At 8pm news came through, relayed with whoops of delight by RPC Vice-chair Rupert Lorimer: ‘We’ve got the M1!’ The Alex ICC was issued with three car radios, tuned to each other and the JOCC. Just before 10am, a first wave of marchers accompanied by three monitor cars left the Alex stadium. A second wave followed. My own car went in front, with ANC activist Sizakele Nkosi at the rear and MK officer and ICC member Mandla Maseko driving, theoretically, in the middle. Our UNOMSA Observers and several police Nyalas drove along with the crowd. The atmosphere was serious, but with more than a touch of celebration. Altogether some 50,000 marchers were flowing into town. An ECOMSA policeman in the JOCC told us the Alex leg was early, could we halt? No chance! The mass flowed on and once in the city the youths took off, jogging, whistling and heading straight for John Vorster Square, in contempt of maps, plans, and one-way streets. Somehow the marshals and monitors kept discipline. Demands were delivered. Everyone returned safely, though a few windows were broken. The day, therefore, made no headlines, but the press were at least intrigued by the monitoring. The following day, Sunday 18 April, four unidentified gunmen drove through Sebokeng in the Vaal, firing at random, killing twenty-one residents. Rumour had it that the perpetrators were ex-Sebokeng policemen whose homes ANC youths had destroyed. The SAP offered a R250,000 reward. COMSA remarks that this massacre, hardly noticed, would have been huge news at any other time. ‘Fortunately, … further conflict was largely avoided because of the effectiveness of the Peace Accord structures’ (COMSA Report Phase II p.20).

Chris Hani’s funeral Chris Hani’s lying in state at the FNB stadium began at midday on Sunday. Wits/ Vaal set up two sub-JOCCs, one in a VIP suite in the FNB stadium, one shared with the security forces in a fire station near Dawn Park. The stadium JOCC was operated overnight by an unlikely young monitor, Daryl Swanepoel, NP Information Officer for Johannesburg. In white ‘Observer’ jacket and orange monitor armband, he found himself at one moment with an MK commander deploying MK cadres as marshals, at another

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directing where police should be.71 The stadium’s capacity, then 80,000, was already stretched. Food deliveries caused mini-riots. People complained of being shot at – but it transpired these were bullets raining down after firing in the air (which can be lethal). A serious situation developed just behind the stadium, where several white families lived in old, isolated, ex-mine houses. Most had evacuated, but two men refused police advice to leave. The houses fell in ‘no man’s land’ between police-controlled and marshal-controlled areas, and the only monitor presence was the occasional roving car. Funeral-goers were crossing the marshal line and approaching the houses. Reportedly some wanted to use a water tap and were refused. Relations soured. Swanepoel negotiated with the marshals to allow the police to cordon the houses, but during the night control was lost and confusion and arson supervened. According to COMSA, ‘when the owners of the houses set alight near the FNB Stadium called the police, they were told that the police could do nothing, because the ANC had taken responsibility for security’ (Ibid.) The police should, Swanepoel reflects, have ordered the men out. By the morning they were dead, the houses smouldering. It was the funeral’s worst incident. A final ANC–SAP agreement was brokered in the VIP suite.72 It stipulated what weapons the MK honour guard, flown in for the funeral, could carry, and how the police would deal with the AWB. Allegedly the AWB had made agreements to provide ‘security’ to some 200 homes in Dawn Park. This possibly meant AWB snipers on roofs with a clear view of the cemetery. The SAP, according to David Storey, agreed to position their own marksmen on other roofs and to inform the AWB that anyone who appeared to be about to fire would themselves be shot. In the early morning more crowds flowed towards the stadium. Hundreds of buses pulled into the car park, directed by Anglican monk Kingston Erson CR wearing orange stickers and a beatific smile, his scapular flying in the wind. Twenty-one bus-loads arrived from Alexandra alone, accompanied by four monitor cars.73 Harry Matlou, ANCYL member and a displacee representative on the ICC, drove with me. No car radio today – not enough to go round. We stood outside the stadium with Alexandra’s two UN Observers, Angela Masithela from Lesotho and Jim Anderson of Northern Ireland. Xhosa hostel groups jogged by, brandishing sticks and axes, being sprinkled with war ‘medicine’. One group chanted in Zulu. Masithela translated: ‘Let there be war. How long have we been talking to the Boers?’ Marshals reportedly had no control in the stadium. People toyi-toyied, visibly rocking the high stand. UNOMSA pulled its Observers out for safety. Smoke rose from the burning houses behind, where there was apparently a skirmish, 71 Swanepoel interview. 72 David Storey interview. 73 Author’s Alexandra Peace Notes 1993, Carmichael.

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with AK fire directed at the circling police helicopter. The rumour was that PAC youths were involved. Casualties arrived in the medical tent at the front. Joe Slovo and Archbishop Tutu spoke, roars rising in response. The burial was in South Park cemetery near Dawn Park, a 45km drive to the other side of Johannesburg, mainly on motorway. Buses began leaving for the cemetery. The UN said some 3,000 had already gathered there. Harry and I joined the exodus. Youths crammed onto bus roofs, or pushed the glass out of the windows and rode on the windowsills. Shattered glass literally paved the motorway. We encountered an elderly white monitor couple, who had just picked up a youth fallen from a bus and despatched him in an ambulance. A reported 10,000 had congregated, with no control, near Hani’s home in Dawn Park. Hungry mourners had harvested mealies (sweetcorn) from a large field and roasted them for breakfast. Several houses, and the field, were on fire. David Storey, deployed since 4am at the nearby fire station JOCC, found himself refusing permission for the security forces to control the crowd, because no ANC leaders had yet appeared at the JOCC to agree to allow police in. About 9am, with the army and police threatening to abandon the agreement and send in paratroopers, ANC leaders Mo Shaik and Jayendra Naidoo appeared and were taken up by helicopter to survey the scene. According to Storey, on landing they requested Siphiwe Nyanda to despatch the MK honour guard at the double from the cemetery to impose order around the Hani house. ‘As far as we were concerned that was the closest moment. If those guys had parachuted out of the air you could forget about the South African miracle!’74 Two COMSA Observers, both policemen, arriving from the stadium found armed AWB members gathered around the houses on the road opposite the cemetery. They spent the day patrolling the road. Buses from the stadium were offloading people on a wide grassy space in Dawn Park, near the Hani house. Most buses then left. People began clamouring to get home. OAU Observers summoned COMSA and UNOMSA colleagues from the cemetery to help sort out the chaos, and began calling the Wits/Vaal Braamfontein JOCC to get more buses. After viewing the burnt mealie field with a green-jacketed OAU Observer, Harry and I arrived at the grassy space at 2.09pm. My scribbled notes spell out the next few hours.75 A chaotic scene: hundreds of people milling about. Smoke from two burning houses and a caravan. Police and fire brigade run round extinguishing them. More mealies roasting. SABC radio interviews me and I suggest more marshals needed, trained in first aid, public safety, and care of the environment! Then young ‘comrades’ start trying to drive the parked buses, all monstrously overloaded. They break down after about 500 metres, apparently the gears seize. Police order the people off. Harry walks them back to the open ground. 74 Jayendra Naidoo and David Storey interviews (quotation from Storey). 75 Author’s Alexandra Peace Notes 1993, Carmichael.

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At 4.22 I estimate about 2,000 people are left, frightened at being in a white area. I go to the Hani house. Tokyo Sexwale is on his car phone to Wits/Vaal. Peter Harris tells him twenty buses are coming. International Observers have gone. At 4.53 the funeral party from the cemetery arrives. We collect isolated groups together. Buses appear in ones and twos, causing stampedes. We try to prevent each bus being rushed by the entire crowd. Or as Fulbright Scholar Suzanne Nossel put it: ‘With the authority vested in us by our day-glo orange stickers, we ordered Umkhonto we Sizwe cadres to marshal people according to their destinations.’76 Marshals are in very short supply. Monitor Ian Robertson’s car and mine guide full buses out of Dawn Park to the highway, and guide fresh ones in. It is dark and cold. Larger bonfires. A white driver brings a gift, a small truckload of bread loaves. People grab them. At 10pm all monitors except Nossel and me call it a day and depart. Nossel’s hand-held radio talks, fitfully, to the RPC in Braamfontein. We stay with Sexwale, getting Putco bus managers out of bed, until the last bus-load departs at 1.32am to sleep over at ANC HQ, Shell House. I stomp out the bonfires, check the stars for direction, and we drive back to a cheerful party with wine and sandwiches in the Wits/Vaal office. Huge relief. Finally home at 4.50am. Nossel wrote up the evening for the Weekly Mail. The Wits/Vaal office had provided a fact-checking centre for the media, to quash fast-spreading rumours. Rupert Lorimer had verified that none of the following happened: an ANC truck unloaded arms in central Johannesburg (it was film equipment); seven people died in a shoot-out on the motorway; a bus full of nursery children went missing; and widespread looting and damage had occurred in Johannesburg.77 Late that evening a train carrying 600 mourners pulled into Klerksdorp in the Western Transvaal. In the national stay-away, no taxis were available. The RPC had anticipated the problem and ‘it’s our job to facilitate’, so RPC members, UNOMSA, and Captain Neels Steyn of the SAP Community Relations Division were waiting, ready to give lifts in ISU and army vehicles. Suspicious at first, the people accepted. Steyn told the local paper they were well-behaved, organized, tired, and just wanted to get home. The operation took two hours and ‘prevented any unwanted incidents, but it was also an act of humanity’.78 On 24 April 1993 Oliver Tambo died. His funeral arrangements echoed those for Hani, but just 20,000 attended. Wits/Vaal fielded fifty monitors and Observers. They cooled the situation when the procession to Wattville insisted on driving provocatively past an IFP hostel. Afterwards they placed themselves between people and police, and shepherded lost mourners onto trains.79 76 77 78 79

Weekly Mail 23–29/4/93. Report 24/4/93, Carmichael/Lorimer. Western Transvaal Record 22/4/93. Chicago Tribune 6/5/93.

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Area monitoring A disturbed area ideally required constant pro-active monitoring. In several places – Alexandra, Kathorus, Daveyton, and later Bhambayi in KZN – it was possible to field constant patrols, with varying success. The Kathorus JOCC and Daveyton Peace Corps are discussed below.80 In Alex, peace was declared in March 1993 and when violence rocketed in Kathorus in May–June, Alex stayed calm; but in early August the Alex ANC heard that the ‘Toaster gang’, an unruly IFP-leaning mob based in Tembisa, were planning to stir up violence in Alex. The IFP corroborated the information. The ICC’s Security Task Group (STG) called an emergency meeting which instantly established a 24-hour ‘Joint Community Monitoring Centre’ ( JCMC). An ANC–IFP monitor team of twelve was formed, all young unemployed residents, male and female, most already serving on the ICC or its sub-­committees. The ICC landline became a 24-hour public hotline. The SADF agreed to supervise, posting a soldier and SADF radio in the ICC office. The ICC used its own British-donated radios. The region supplied two hired Toyota cars in which, with peace insignia, shifts of two to four monitors mounted a 24-hour patrol. They could cruise everywhere, engaging with people and security forces. If violence had been planned, it was forestalled. Peace reigned. The JCMC had its own Management Committee under the STG. For two months it did exemplary work, unpaid except for meals, becoming something of a citizens’ advice service. Then financial and disciplinary issues arose. They heard that the region was paying monitors in the Kathorus JOCC R100 per shift. STG Chair Deane Yates and ‘Snakes’ Nyoka, the Regional Coordinator assigned to Alex, produced a proposal costed at R26,250 for back pay, plus projections for future payment, which the region forwarded to the NPS. The NPS had the proposal on 19 October, and on the 26th Deane and Snakes attended the NPS to discuss it. An urgent answer was needed but a critical delay ensued, as approval ‘stood over’ until the NPS bosberaad on 19–21 November. Meanwhile the JCMC became restive and resentful. They never split on party lines, but presented a united front saying they wanted to work even over the Christmas break but must be paid – and in their absence violence could return. It was possible to raise R28,000 overnight by phoning CBM business contacts, and back pay was cleared off, but management capacity was now the greatest problem. The SADF supervisors found discipline increasingly difficult. Deane and I had insufficient time to give. When NPS approval came in November, the JCMC management committee had decided to suspend patrols. They resumed briefly for New Year after an emergency meeting on 30 December occasioned by the criminal murders of four policemen, then ceased. With more capacity, they would have continued. 80 See Kathorus pp.374–6, Daveyton p.377.

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The 24-hour hotline continued, staffed voluntarily by monitors from Alex and its surrounding ‘white’ suburbs. Sporadic violence occurred: the opportunistic assassination of hostel youth leader Simon Mlambo; one death in a skirmish started, due to lack of monitoring, by ‘ANC’ shooting at Zulus heading for a Pretoria rally; and ‘ANC’ sniping at another Zulu gathering which fortunately missed the ECOMSA Observers (and everyone else). But all through those tense pre-election months the ICC maintained contact, by frequent visits and a radio stationed in the M1 hostel. Alexandra did not slide back into war. In April the Alex LPC could bring the IFP community into the election at full speed.81

Peace monitor training Learnings from monitoring were shared within and between regions. National guidelines were available for mass action week in 1992. By October a sub-­ committee appointed by the NPS and regional Chairs had produced a brief discussion paper defining three core objectives of peace monitoring: to scrutinize and thereby influence the behaviour of the various actors; to measure and report on compliance with the NPA by parties and security forces; and to ‘try to ensure that incidents of violence are effectively dealt with in a manner which contributes to the ending of violence’.82 A proposed Code of Conduct for Monitors was attached, enjoining impartiality, truthfulness, objective listening, empathy for victims and avoidance of being judgmental. Peace monitors were more than observers, having a mandate to intervene and mediate before, during and after events Monitor training was a regional responsibility. The earliest quasi-training event was a Wits/Vaal briefing workshop for committee members and business volunteers at Barlow Park on 2 December 1992.83 Further developments awaited the appointment of Barbara Nussbaum in May 1993 as the sole full-time Regional Training Officer. The region deployed clergy to monitor the attempted COSAS march on 7 May, and the first formal training was for clergy, on 20 August at Bedfordview Methodist Church, led by Bishop Peter Storey, churches’ representative on the RPC Executive, and IMSSA mediator Phiroshaw Camay, Chair of Thokoza LPC.84 Nussbaum was present. The workshop’s programme – knowledge of the NPA, basic mediation skills, relating to other players – fed into the training manual she was developing. Bishop Storey elaborated on the text ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God’ (Matthew 5.9, NRSV). ‘Peace is not just a concept, it’s a process. Peace is hard, frustrating work: putting structures in place, communicating, being there.’ To be a monitor in a place of tension is ‘the simplest 81 82 83 84

See p.324. Addendum, Wits/Vaal Exec Minutes 1/9/92, Carmichael/Lorimer. Programme, Carmichael/Lorimer. Author’s Alexandra Peace Notes 1993, Carmichael.

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act of peacemaking’. The day’s ‘graduates’ signed on, to join the pool of regional monitors; they were encouraged to contact their LPCs, and to negotiate their release for peace work at least one day a week. Insignia for monitors developed gradually. From late 1993 most regions wore orange bibs. Western Cape, and at first also Eastern, adopted sleeveless pale blue jackets. The Wits/Vaal Monitor Training Manual, which was adapted by the other regions, was ready in December 1993, complete with trainers’ instructions and overhead projector slides. It covered knowledge of the NPA and its Codes of Conduct; the roles and responsibilities of monitors, marshals, and other key players; basic skills of listening, communication, conflict intervention and negotiating; briefing and debriefing; preserving evidence; problem-solving; teamwork; ‘dos and don’ts’; and ‘looking after yourself ’. The Code of Conduct for Monitors was incorporated into the Manual, to be signed by each monitor as they graduated. The training was for many a moment of personal growth, and it imparted highly transferable skills: listening, communicating, problem-solving, managing conflict. Years later Beauty More, head of the Thusong Community Centre in Alexandra, commented on its lasting usefulness and the confidence it gave. The ‘dos and ‘don’ts’ apply equally in everyday life: Do maintain self-control, stay calm and look calm. Smile and look relaxed, greet people. Show willingness to listen to everybody from any party; remain objective and fair … Always be prepared to find a peaceful solution. Try to develop trust, respect, cooperation and harmony amongst conflicting groups. Try to be open-minded, honest, reliable, and responsible. Treat people with empathy. Project the image of peace.85

Nussbaum included a prayer by Peter Storey, after hearing him say it at a briefing. ‘It expressed’, she remarks, ‘everything that we had said in 80 pages!’86 A MONITOR’S PRAYER God of the nations and of all people: I ask that today you will be with me in the work that I must do. Let my heart be open and my mind clear. In my attitudes, keep me fair. In my decisions, make me wise. In my actions, hold me impartial. If I encounter danger, give me courage. Under pressure, keep me steady. Help me to treat each person as equally important to you. Hear my prayer that today not one of your children will die, or suffer injury, and that peace will prevail. God, bless Africa. Guard her children, guide her leaders, and give her peace. Amen.87

85 Wits/Vaal Monitor Training Manual, p.9. Carmichael. 86 Nussbaum interview. 87 By permission of Rev. Peter Storey.

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Training workshops were usually residential weekends, requiring substantial funding. The British Overseas Development Minister, Baroness Lynda Chalker, visited in September 1993 and first Nussbaum, then the NPS Training Committee, submitted proposals. In response Britain’s Overseas Development Agency (ODA) gave up to R12 million (R4 for Wits/Vaal, R8 million for the remaining regions) covering the development of the Manual and the training of monitor trainers, monitors, and party marshals.

Marshal training Several sources contributed to develop marshal training. In May 1993 Wits/Vaal started exploring a course; in June, Clifford Shearing initiated similar research under Dianna Yach at the Community Peace Foundation in the University of the Western Cape. The two projects coalesced, and worked with the NPS Training Committee, COMSA, and the ODA, to produce a five-day course.88 A total of thirty-six courses, starting in September 1993, produced 1,930 marshals for the ANC, IFP, NP, and DP.89 The Commonwealth provided four lively trainers: Chief Inspector Louisa Elliston, a public order expert fresh from controlling football crowds in London; Chief Inspector Gerry Johnson; and two Zimbabwean policemen; plus Chief Superintendents Peter Stevens (COMSA) and Les House (ECOMSA). Local ISU officers took part, enabling improvements in police–marshal relations, and trained marshals acted as assistants and translators. Johnson led a semi-official ANC workshop in Transkei where ‘security guards’ gave unscheduled nighttime insurgency training. A ricocheting bullet struck a female trainee in the leg. It was, fortunately, just a flesh wound.

Pre-election monitor training Mass training began in earnest in January 1994 with the training of fifty-four volunteer trainers from Wits/Vaal LPCs, and smaller numbers for other regions. There were now 263 LPCs country-wide. Trainees, sent by LPCs, had to be over 18 with at least basic high-school education (Standard 8) and no disabling criminal record. Rev. Jaco Hoffman and Amanda Diener, training with young black people in Witbank, noticed as each person introduced themselves how the extent of youth unemployment became painfully clear. Many monitors were unemployed youth, proud to serve and to receive a new identity. Training meant an exciting weekend away. One crazy evening dozens of COSAS members, mostly too young, occupied a bus meant for legitimate Alex trainees, demanding to be taken. They were trained, but then subjected to a dressing-down by senior COSAS leaders and not accredited as monitors. 88 Manual, Carmichael/Manley. 89 Training & NPS reports 23/5/94, BVS97, Gerry Johnson’s report BVS78.

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Wits/Vaal aimed at 6,000 monitors and produced 6,919. Some defected to the IEC, leaving 5,000-plus to be deployed over the election.90 ODA consultant Clyde Williams oversaw the training in other regions, working from the NPS Training Division office, keeping meticulous records, encouraging each region to hit its target. Outside Wits/Vaal 13,242 were trained out of a total target of 15,000.91 The total number trained was therefore 13,242 + 6919 = 20,161, of whom some 18,500 were deployed over the election. The ODA described the programme as a grassroots initiative to support the Accord and ‘assist directly the process of peaceful transition and political change’.92 It was a real exercise in grassroots peacebuilding and democratization. ‘Graduates’ were deployed to get experience before the election. In Wits/Vaal the ideal unit numbered four: one ANC, one IFP, two neutral, including a unit leader and radio operator. Wits/Vaal religious bodies trained 700 of the 6,919, squeezing the training into a one-day programme. Radios for training were unavailable. Trainer Rev. Andrew Dotchin arrived with a bulging black plastic bag, full of yoghurt pots from his parish soup kitchen connected in pairs with string. These toy telephones were fun, and quite practical! Before the election, again courtesy of Britain, real radios appeared. In KZN, Training Coordinator Libby Dreyer also squeezed the programme into one day, using Wits/Vaal material and her own, translated into Zulu. During March, KZN trained 1,500 monitors, mainly for less violent areas, leaving the more difficult to staff. Payment became an issue. The IEC was paying its election monitors. Peace monitors, hitherto given only food, began to defect. The NPS had no budget for this, but had to pay or lose monitors. DIPI sent each region R100,000. In Wits/Vaal the amount finally paid was R1 million. Just from 26 April to 10 May, monitors received R25 per shift, contributing to a serious overspend of the NPS budget. The NPS was anxious that monitors should be insured, and insurance was negotiated; but remarkably few monitors suffered injury. Jeanne Nel (Director, Northern Cape) and UNOMSA Observer Adriano Cassandra had grenade injuries. UNOMSA’s Jim Anderson was stabbed in the arm when his car was hijacked in Alexandra (the community recovered it); Kathleen Jansen (Chair, Germiston/Katlehong LPC) suffered a stab wound, apparently while photographing a PAC march although photography was forbidden to monitors. Jeff Sibiya (IFP) was wearing his monitor jacket when killed ‘in crossfire’ during a SADF raid on Bayafuthi hostel, Katlehong. Isaac Shandu (IFP, Natal/KwaZulu) was assassinated at a taxi meeting; and an Eastern Cape monitor died in a car crash coming off duty. 90 ‘Preliminary Draft Report on the Wits/Vaal Peace Secretariat, 30 Nov 1994’ Carmichael/Lorimer. 91 ‘Input from the Training Unit: NPS’ BVS97. 92 Graham Stegman and Sue Wardell, ODA Memo September 1993, BVS101.

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The ideal event was violence-free, and the vast majority now met that ideal. Midrand LPC Chair Roger Oxlee treasures the memory of a COSATU/SACP march in the Olifantsfontein industrial area: ‘I think the significance of that march was the critical level of cooperation between all the parties. It was the most peaceful march! … That was what was remarkable about it: nothing happened! It went smoothly!’93 A final monitor training day was run in Alexandra in the pre-election week, to give official accreditation to IFP monitors now free and eager to join in this seminal event.

Peace monitoring over the election Due to the IFP’s boycott, the NPS could have no official liaison with the IEC, but relied on personal and pragmatic contacts (Peter Harris was seconded from Wits/Vaal to run the IEC’s monitoring of the election process itself). NPS policy was to monitor the pre-election rallies in the normal way and to monitor the whole country, over the election, as a large nation-wide event. Activities inside the voting station perimeters would be the IEC’s responsibility; peace monitors were responsible for the whole country outside. London’s Metropolitan Police were asked to help with deploying the Wits/ Vaal monitors. The Commissioner approached Chief Superintendent David Gilbertson, head of Notting Hill Police Station.94 He arrived in January, with his fiancée Bernie who worked with Peter Storey’s wife Elizabeth on the volunteer database. He found that unstable radio communications had been a constant difficulty, and discovered that Britain had offered to donate 1,159 hand-held Phillips radios, 200 car radios, 100 base stations and 50 repeaters to South Africa, which DIPI had hesitated to accept. In ten days he had them flown out in an RAF Hercules. ‘We went to the airport and collected them in lorries.’ The equipment helped give the structures, throughout South Africa, a formidable logistics and communication capacity. Installation was expensive, however, except in Wits/Vaal where two volunteers from the Swedish fire brigade installed the network. As a sideline, they also promoted trauma counselling. Gilbertson, battling through highveld thunderstorms, demarcated each LPC’s area of responsibility, ran training workshops for JOCC operators, and organized the communications system: ‘Diamond Control’ in Braamfontein, six sub-regional ‘Platinum’ JOCCs, twenty ‘Gold’ in LPC offices, and twenty-six mini-JOCCs. In January each LPC in Wits/Vaal acquired a full-time Monitor Coordinator to oversee the selection and deployment of monitors; and each established a new sub-committee, an ‘Election Task Force’, to coordinate all preparations: monitor training, the installation of base radios and computers, advising on 93 Oxlee interview. 94 Gilbertson interview.

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the siting of voting stations, and facilitating the delivery of voter education by churches and NGOs. Election Day itself was Wednesday 27 April, a public holiday and the first day of the new South Africa under its new flag. Selected voting stations opened on Tuesday 26th for security forces and other special needs. Voting continued on Thursday. A third day was necessary for KZN, some other ‘homelands’, and the East Rand. There were no voters’ rolls. Every citizen and permanent resident could vote anywhere, so guesswork alone guided the number of ballots – and the invisible ink and lamps to detect it – ordered for each station. To compound the problem, some 80 million ballot papers (40 million national, 40 provincial) were flying in from Britain and each now needed an ‘IFP sticker’ to be added in the voting stations. In many places the ballots ran out and the IEC organized the printing of millions more. More ink was made, and lamps were flown from Lesotho. To supplement the IEC’s poor logistical capacity, the army, business, and the peace structures came to the rescue. Near midnight on Wednesday, Bishop Peter Storey was suddenly phoned by the Director General of Home Affairs. Could he find 500 volunteer ‘church persons’ to be deployed in local counting centres? By Friday 1,126 had gathered at Ray McCauley’s large Rhema church, to be given a two-hour training and despatched country-wide (Storey, 2018 pp.413–15). The ending of the IFP boycott meant that peace monitors could assist the IEC. The convention that voting stations were off-limits for peace monitors had quickly broken down, and officially ended with another phone call near midnight on Wednesday, from IEC Chair Judge Kriegler to Antonie Gildenhuys, requesting the assistance of peace monitors in any way possible.95 By then they were already pitching in, as well as bringing an assurance of peace and a pastoral presence, bringing water and chairs to queuing voters, even serenading them and, in Vosloorus, delivering a baby. The world watched in amazement as a peaceful election rolled out: ‘It was just the most amazing scene, and it kind of made all the work we’d been doing every week all worthwhile!’96 In Uitenhage in the Eastern Cape ballots ran out early on the first day. Hundreds of white voters waited in a spiral queue in a small car park, a monitor with peace flag marking the end of the line, while LPC Chair Charles du Toit fetched more ballots from Port Elizabeth ‘in my car – no permission, no security, I just fetched the things!’ And then what happened, they closed down some of the polling booths elsewhere, because they just didn’t have enough staff to man these things – 95 Gildenhuys interview. 96 Rev. Brian Wilkinson interview (Chair, Klerksdorp LPC).

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Photo 14.2 Bishop Peter Storey and Soweto peace monitors, Soweto, Election Day 1994. By permission of Rev. Peter Storey. and they bussed these people in onto this from the townships! So you had the white conservatives all wound up like a spring, and then these bus-loads of – these were Coloured people I seem to remember – had just arrived, masses. Now they didn’t understand what was going on, so they were now entering this crowd, and they weren’t going to go and stand in the queue at the back there! So, chaos! But somehow we survived, I don’t know how! We argued with people and shouted and we used megaphones, and managed the crowds! And the police just sort of stood on the sidelines, because I think they were kind of not really sure of what they would need to do.97

Back in January, President de Klerk had visited homes in a Witbank squatter camp in the Eastern Transvaal. Afterwards, neighbours threatened those who had welcomed him with death. The LPC called an emergency meeting and rescued them.98 Its Chair, Rev. Jaco Hoffman, now drove to the far north of the district: And when we arrived in the middle of nowhere there was this snaking queue though the bushes. So, of course we ran out of ballot papers, and … we had 97 Du Toit interview. 98 Citizen, Weekend Argus 29/1/94.

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to rush around to try to deal with these issues! I jumped in my car, and drove 60km back to Witbank, and dealt with the IEC and just got them to follow me there, to just allow these people to be able to vote.99

The monitors’ task was, as regional Chair Peter Brandmuller put it, ‘to go and see that everything was going smoothly at all the polling stations’. He discovered to his surprise that this would involve ‘taking papers from the one polling station to the other – which to me was a new one, because that was normally not done! … but they weren’t prepared for this mass, and they actually had to move the papers’.100 Around Newcastle, KZN, fieldworkers Benedict Ndabandaba and Andrew Define too were moving ballots and ink. ‘Nobody was actually running the show, everybody was just trying to run it – the spirit was so good!’ Uneven distribution caused accusations that ballots were being stolen: ‘“there were no ballot boxes at this station, but at that station there is, and that’s an IFP station and this is ANC – so why? Because the IFP’s stolen our ballot boxes!” You say: “No boys, it’s because we’re so disorganized” – but nobody believes you!’101 ANC buses, they noticed, were by-passing voting stations in ‘IFP’ areas, to vote in ‘ANC’ areas, and vice versa. Not everyone who pitched in was official: I remember in Daveyton for example – the newspaper printers were working like mad printing ballots – watching a printer’s van come up, throwing ballot papers out just like newspapers at the Daveyton polling booth, and cars and bakkies coming from every direction, just loading up these ballot papers and off! … And many ballot boxes, my information was, were stuffed!102

According to Kriegler some apparent ‘stuffing’ was due simply to a lack of boxes, so some officers opened and stacked them neatly, to get more papers in!103 The IEC operation in Daveyton collapsed. Peace monitors stepped in, issued temporary voter cards and ran the voting. Well after midnight on the second day Alex monitors David Herman and Lynette Murray drove Christine Thakisi, the last official voter in the region, out to Daveyton, which stayed open to receive her at 3.30am. In ‘Kathorus’ COMSA Chair Russell Marshall, former Foreign Minister of New Zealand, had ‘the most adrenaline-producing three days of my life’.104 On the first morning he rode to Katlehong’s Kwesine hostel in an army vehicle, to 99 Hoffman interview. 100 Brandmuller interview. 101 Define interview. 102 Rupert Lorimer MP (Co-chair, Wits/Vaal RPC) interview. 103 https://successfulsocieties.princeton.edu/interviews/johann-kriegler [accessed 1/4/21]. 104 Marshall email 23/11/2011.

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find there was nothing – no booths, pencils, nothing – for the 3,000–4,000 voters in Kwesine. Phoning and messages produced no result. There were, if I remember correctly, forty-four polling stations in that general area where no booths or voting papers were delivered on the first day. The IEC had them all delivered by 6am the following morning after I went in to Kriegler’s office late in the afternoon to tell him what had happened. My initial reaction was that the non-deliveries were deliberate. I later concluded, and remember discussing this with Peter Harris, that the IEC staff had been just too scared to go there, which was not surprising.105

Next day Marshall again found a long queue. The material had arrived but the presiding officer, a local teacher, said she needed somebody to authorize them to start, ‘so we did, and nobody questioned our authority’. In the evening, with other COMSA Observers from the East Rand, they took the boxes to the counting station and, seeing that voting was incomplete at many East Rand stations, ‘with no authority whatever to do so, we “authorized” a third day of voting and I subsequently wrote a letter to the IEC, signed by Michael Manley [chief Commonwealth Election Observer] asking for the third day votes to be counted’.106 The third day was also authorized for KwaZulu-Natal, Transkei, Ciskei, Venda, Gazankulu and Lebowa. In Alexandra, in the week before the election the LPC organized a new voting station, accessible to the IFP, in a never-opened library building beside the M1 hostel. We provided voter education to that area’s 3,000-plus adults and trained thirty untrained peace monitors so they could be deployed and paid. The LPC minibus shuttled people to the Home Affairs office to get temporary IDs. The new voting station was a showpiece. Its staff were trained and presided over by the renowned headmaster of Pholosho Primary (and peace monitor) Sol Mashiloane and his teacher wife, Liz. Overcoming the fear of the hostels, they got Pholosho teachers and hostel people working together ‘and there was harmony, peace, there’. No ANC officials dared visit, but Helen Suzman MP and a stream of foreign diplomats did. When the boxes were taken everybody was happy, in fact I was even offered some food by one of the indunas at the Madala Hostel, he had to ask some of their wives to cook for me, then he even went to the extent of saying. ‘The manner you have conducted yourself here, really, we don’t mind to give you one wife!’ I told my wife look, they are offering me a wife! … And you know, the Observers from abroad, when they came in, they just roam around and said, ‘What, this is nice – but we heard stories about this place!’107

105 Ibid. 106 Ibid. 107 Sol and Liz Mashiloane interview.

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Liz Mashiloane adds: ‘It was a happy relationship with them, yeah, they were so happy as well because they were protecting us and nothing happened!’ Outside its twenty-three voting stations Alexandra was a sea of orange. The LPC deployed 198 Alexandran peace monitors and 50 from the surrounding suburbs. Apart from anger at supplies arriving late, no incidents occurred. Police attention had switched entirely to the white right-wing. On the first evening, a car parked on Alexandra’s First Avenue and whites got out. Lest it should explode, the car was cordoned with police tape. I happened upon this scene just as the car’s occupants returned. Three young whites, casually dressed, looking puzzled. They had come to vote in Alex! The Far Northern Transvaal RPC, realizing the IEC was simply not ready, petitioned de Klerk to allow army helicopters to assist, and then mobilized business vehicles. The Chair, businessman Laurie Searle, ‘was in the RPC office monitoring, we had radio contact, and basically liaising with the different stakeholders, making sure that the stuff got out there and happened, whether it was by car, truck or helicopter’.108 Military aircraft and business helped similarly in KZN. Bobby Godsell at Anglo received an SOS from Alec Erwin in KZN: And as I recall within six to ten hours we had hired every fixed-wing plane and helicopter available not just in KZN but also in adjacent areas. … You know, it was a good time, a time when people would go out of their way to facilitate what every sensible person understood was an absolutely vital coming of age event.109

Some Free State farmers refused to let their workers go and vote. Peace monitors defused the situation. Five of the OFS’s two-person roving staff teams were directed to the mountainous ‘homeland’ of QwaQwa with its seventy-five voting stations, where ‘the IEC had collapsed completely, and … we took over the running of some major balloting stations’.110 Boxes of ballots, landing by SADF helicopter at the parliament building, were being opened straight away. The monitors stepped in, ferrying boxes to remote voting stations where ‘the electoral officers … could open them under the supervision of the party agents’.111 Stephanie Smit, a fieldworker from Bethlehem, ‘coordinated the whole operation with little help from the IEC’. In the Eastern Cape, the irrepressible Rev. Canon Prof. Nancy Charton operated the Grahamstown JOCC, signing off transmissions with: ‘Alleluia! Alleluia!’112 Khayalethu Plaatjie, Grahamstown’s chief monitor, toured the voting stations with LPC Co-chair Rev. Glen Craig. Apart from one station 108 Searle interview. 109 Godsell interview. 110 Adendorff interview. 111 Ibid. 112 Charton interview.

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Photo 14.3 The OFS sub-regional coordinators, April 1994. Left to right: Wium Adendorff (South FS), Humphrey Gozongo (North FS), Barnard Steyn (East FS), Nicolle Schufferhauer (Goldfields), Talks Lichaba (Botshabelo). By permission of Wium Adendorff.

which asked them to stop the ANC conducting activities inside the perimeter, all was calm. To Plaatjie, the peace monitoring was ‘a powerful tool for free and fair elections’.113 In Johannesburg on the chaotic second night, the IEC called peace monitors to the main counting area at the NASREC exhibition centre to guard full boxes and manage crowds of party officials. Wits/Vaal’s primitive computer network, to capture reports from JOCCs, worked sufficiently well to be a useful resource during the counting.114

After the election Pre-election brainstorming on possible contingencies threw up scenarios in which celebrating crowds might ‘invade’ ‘white’ areas, but disorder was actually rare. One celebration erupted unexpectedly in Alex on Monday 2 May, with much shooting in the air. Community leaders, deployed through the LPC office, calmed the situation. 113 Khayalethu Plaatjie interview. 114 Gilbertson, ‘A Review of the Operational Effectiveness of the Monitoring Functions ... over the election period', para.5.2 (Appendix to ‘Preliminary Draft Report on the Wits Vaal Peace Secretariat, November 30, 1994’.) Carmichael/Lorimer.

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Mandela was inaugurated as President on 10 May. Monitors were privileged to join the crowd; and that evening in two places the imagined scenarios did become reality. In Stellenbosch, LPC Chair Rev. Simon Adams noticed an impromptu march from Kayamandi township, heading past his house towards the ‘Braak’, Stellenbosch’s historic grassy square.115 Calling other monitors, he followed. They persuaded the police, who were cordoning the road, to let the revellers pass: ‘Their President has been inaugurated! We want to celebrate!’ Police then stood on the Braak with loaded rifles as the people toyi-toyied, ‘and we had to organize ourselves between the commando and the people’. Around midnight the monitors shepherded the revellers home. Next morning, Adams confronted the police commander: ‘“You could have sent such a wrong message! If just one person was shot at, it could have been a bloodbath in the whole South Africa.” It was an oldish guy, and he was shivering. I said: “You never do it again, let this young man tell you!”’ In Grahamstown (Makhanda) the town and township face each other across a valley. The road runs downhill through the township, then up into town. About 11pm the police phoned LPC Co-chair Rev. Glen Craig. A crowd of about 5,000, ‘a whole impi!’ was wanting to take over the town! Craig collected about eighteen monitors, among them law students, the diminutive Rev. Canon Nancy Charton, and Methodist ministry student Alan Storey, a son of Bishop Peter. In the township they formed a line across the road between revellers and police. The revellers ‘came right up to us and they argued, they said: “It’s our town now, we can go into it.”’ I said: ‘Yes, but not in this kind of mood. It belongs to us all and we’ve just got to make sure that everything is peaceful and quiet, that’s why we’re here. We’re not the police, you know us, we’re the Peace Committee’. We stood there for about three hours, it was a long time! And we’d just hold hands, and sometimes they’d go through underneath our arms, and they’d come back again, just teasing us!116

Storey says when the monitors arrived the police told them they wanted the crowd to stay above a certain point, ‘and if they came past a particular lamp post they would use stun grenades, and the next lamp post teargas and the next lamp post rubber bullets. … They had shot stun grenades and teargas and I’m not sure if they had used rubber bullets yet.’117 So, we held a line and we’d try and just move up the hill a bit to get to the one lamp post where there’d be no action. And we spent the evening kind of moving: sometimes the crowd would surge – and all we were armed with were our orange bibs, and we would link arms, some people were punched, 115 Adams interview. 116 Craig interview. 117 Alan Storey interview.

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‘It was the last sort of big thing we led as a peace committee,’ says Craig, ‘and eventually we folded up.’ In Wits/Vaal, for months, the peace monitors were a fixture without which no event – a procession, a sports day, a VIP visit – was complete. When the peace structures closed it was without ceremony or public thanks, although Wits/Vaal did manage a certificate. But David Gilbertson’s conclusion in his ‘review of the operational effectiveness’ of the Wits/Vaal monitoring operation, is valid country-wide: Taken overall, the manner in which the Wits Vaal RPS and all its constituent LPCs discharged their duties ensured that one of the most historic world events of this century took place with minimal disorder. Clearly the Police, Defence Forces, International Observers and IEC all played key roles but our monitors, with their wide brief to foster peace and reconciliation and their active involvement in anything and everything aimed at supporting the electoral process, were the mortar binding the whole structure together. They were everywhere and in some respects it became a symbol of the first fully democratic election in South Africa.119

118 Ibid. 119 Gilbertson, ‘A Review …’ para.8.1 Carmichael/Lorimer.

15 First Explorations in Reconstruction and Development (SERD) Introduction Chapter 5 of the Accord, ‘Measures to Facilitate Socio-Economic Reconstruction and Development’ (soon shortened to ‘SERD’) recognized this activity to be integral to peacemaking and peacebuilding. The carrot of socio-economic improvement, the ‘peace dividend’ if violence stopped, was held up before conflicted communities. SERD looked toward the ‘pre-emption of violence and then toward integrating into the overall needs for socio-economic development’ (5.10). The NPC immediately launched a national SERD Sub-committee, which met major funding bodies, encouraged the formation of regional and local sub-­ committees, and in April 1993 embarked on an ambitious nation-wide SERD capacity building programme, which unfortunately fell victim to political suspicions. Training was devolved onto the regions. Regions forwarded project proposals to the NPC’s National Peace Accord Trust (NPAT) which, with modest funds from government and business, supported a variety of projects before concentrating on trauma counselling. In 1994 responsibility for SERD passed to the NPS, and the national Sub-committee was replaced by an Advisory Board of the Regional SERD Coordinators. Overshadowed by other activities pre-election, SERD developed unevenly but scored some notable successes. It became the structures’ main focus post-election. The structures expected to contribute significantly at grassroots to the new government’s Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) but SERD activity ceased with the closure of the structures in December 1994.

SERD’s mandate: Chapter 5 Chapter 5 of the NPA directs the NPC and RDRCs to establish SERD sub-­ committees, and rehearses the principles of ideal, inclusive, community-based development. Reconstruction and development projects must actively involve the affected communities. Through a process of inclusive negotiations involving recipients, experts and donors, the community must be able to conceive,

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The chapter develops these themes: inclusive, non-partisan involvement, mobilizing the whole community, each individual having a cooperative role and being ‘assisted and encouraged to accept responsibility for their socio-economic well-being’ (5.4). Gastrow (1995, p.87) remarks on the influence of COSATU on this text, emphasizing grassroots empowerment against neo-liberal growth-­ oriented approaches to development. Development, however, was an area where the interests of the existing and future governments were at stake. A caveat was introduced: ‘This development initiative in no way abrogates the right and duty of governments to continue their normal development activity, except that in doing so they should be sensitive to the spirit and contents of any agreements that may be reached’ (5.5). The NP negotiators sought to overcome the numerous local ANC-inspired objections to current government development plans, by the clause: ‘The parties to this process commit themselves to facilitating the rapid removal of political, legislative and administrative obstacles to development and economic growth’ (5.6). ‘Political obstacles’ meant obstructive actions by the government’s opponents. The inherently conflictual nature of development itself, is implicitly recognized. The SERD sub-committees were to ‘take initiatives’ to ‘facilitate, coordinate and expedite development’ (5.9.2–3), moving ‘from immediate issues related to violence and the peace process toward pre-emption of violence and then toward integrating into the overall need for socio-economic development’ (5.10). They were to facilitate crisis assistance, help the displaced, identify flashpoints where poor infrastructure (water, schools etc) had sparked violence (5.12), ‘identify areas of socio-economic development that would prevent violence’ (5.14) and ‘attempt to ensure that overall socio-economic development is cognizant of the need to reinforce the peace process and defuse the potential for violence’ (5.15). Immediate tasks would include reconstruction of property, reintegration of displaced persons, expansion of infrastructure and ‘improvement of existing community facilities and the environment’ (5.11).

SERD in action: Alexandra and Port Shepstone One night during violent school boycotts in the mid-1980s an arson attack destroyed Alexandra’s Evangelical Presbyterian church, which stood beside its one-time mission school. Only ruined walls remained, down in Sixteenth Avenue, away from the later fighting. The school moved to a new site, and church services into a surviving classroom. The Minister, Rev. Mike Nyawo, coordinated the ongoing relief work of the Alex Ministers’ Fraternal, and in March 1992, when displaced families fled the

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hostel area, thirteen households with their furniture found refuge in the classrooms. Worship moved back into the ruined church. In October, as churches representative on the ICC, the local peace committee, I asked Mike what we could do to help. Very shyly he replied: ‘Well, if we could get a roof on the church …’ UNICEF, just arriving in South Africa, donated the materials in view of the church’s long-term wish to create a community crèche in the classrooms. A further R103,000 came from business via the NPAT. Through the CBM, construction giant Murray & Roberts mandated its subsidiary, Ribco, to supervise the reconstruction. The ICC catalysed these links, wrote the proposal, facilitated the sub-contracting of work to Alexandra artisans and fielded problems. New doors and windows needed adjusting; plaster was redone. Then the lights went out and the churchwardens discovered the mains connection had been crafted with telephone cable, township-style. Reconstruction was complete by June 1993 and on 17 October John Hall, Chair of the NPC and NPAT, unveiled the plaque. Some five years later the displacees were rehoused, and the classrooms became a popular crèche. The church was the NPAT’s ‘Project No 1’. No. 2 was the ‘Displaced Youth Organization’, a displacee-initiated, ICC-facilitated, after-school study programme for displaced Alexandran teenagers. It flourished, achieving a high exam pass rate. The NPAT assisted with several other small projects in Alex, not least a fence to prevent the blocks where abandoned houses had stood becoming overwhelmed with shacks, thus enabling flats to be built there. Down on the ‘lower south coast’ of Natal/KwaZulu, fighting began in 1989 in the hills inland of Port Shepstone. Homes were burnt, people killed, hundreds displaced. In 1992 ANC refugees began seeking to return to the tribal areas of KwaNdwalane and KwaMavundla, and these were targeted for peacemaking by the Port Shepstone LPC, assisted by Ghanaian COMSA Observer Moses Anafu.1 Negotiations led to large peace rallies attended by the amakhosi (chiefs), displacees, local IFP and ANC leaders and wider community. The rallies appointed Resettlement Committees, to work under the LPC’s Reconstruction and Development Committee. Its Chair, Marion Wessels, was a Zulu-speaking sociologist who would go anywhere, any time of day or night. She worked intensively over many months to consolidate consensus between the communities, the displacees, and amakhosi, until two reliable Resettlement Committees were established, one IFP, one ANC, reporting to the Reconstruction Committee. Together they designed a unique rehabilitation project, called simply ‘Reconstruction of Shelter’.2 The LPC office hosted the meetings. A local business, Umzimkulu Carbonates, handled the administration. Rev. Ron Brauteseth, retired Methodist minister and LPC member, locally born, Zulu-speaking and widely trusted, was 1 2

See p.359. Report to NPAT, 19/10/1994, BVS144.

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Project Coordinator until March 1994 when he suffered a heart attack while unloading bricks and had to withdraw; his departure was ‘an immeasurable loss’, but the project continued.3 Small teams composed of one local ANC and one IFP member and a social worker made community surveys of the destroyed homes, establishing whether destruction had been due to the violence and whether the family wished to return. It was agreed to build a basic two-roomed house, 3m × 8m, costing R3,200, to donate to each returning family. So simple a structure was, in that context, appropriate. The NPAT granted the costs, R663,000 in March 1993 and final top-up of R100,000 on 26 October 1994. Wessels and her Committee also negotiated the installation of street lights on the violence-ridden section of the N2 highway climbing from Port Shepstone to Murchison; and the electrification of seventeen rural schools which could then double as evening Adult Learning Centres. Remarkably, all these activities continued through the violent months of 1993. So strongly had the groundwork been laid that it was still possible to welcome back ‘enemies’, within a common respect for the chiefs. The reconstruction featured in a TV documentary by ‘Positive Development News’, an initiative funded by business foundations and development agencies to document what they saw as ‘a unique development model that is evolving in South Africa’, providing concrete examples of social cohesion: where people from all walks of life – Business, Grassroots Democratic Structures, Development Agencies and Communities themselves – are coming together in focussed alliances, to play a powerful role in reconstruction and reconciliation to build a common future that will provide the foundations of a peaceful and prosperous inclusive society in this wonderful land of ours.4

Wessels reported in October 1994: ‘139 families have been assisted and a further 70 households are presently receiving assistance. At an average of 5 persons per household it can be estimated that over 695 persons have been provided with shelter. Construction is underway to assist a further 350 persons.’5 She emphasizes how emotions were as real as statistics: Providing a 3m × 8m shelter for a nine year old child to share with her surviving father, his second wife, her sister, her brother and her 2 half-brothers was a practical solution. What do you say to this same nine year old child who accompanies her father to thank you politely for providing them with shelter. The same nine year old child who hid in a cupboard with her older sister and listened to the screams and pleas of her mother, her grandmother, and 7 sisters and half-sisters being brutally chopped to death. How does 3 Ibid. 4 PDN Initiative information sheet 15/7/93, Carmichael/Pauquet. Video, Carmichael/Manley. 5 Report to NPAT 19/10/94, BVS144.

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one explain to this nine year old why adult men would brutally chop to death her innocent 5 month old baby sister and begging and pleading 67-year old grandmother?

Alluding to the RDP and Mandela’s post-election call for reconciliation, Wessels concluded: We believe that our community, one of the most violence torn in SA, has evidenced that through reconciliation and a unified approach development can be achieved. It is a continuing miracle and of great credit to all our participants that even in times of horrendous violence our development programmes have progressed.6

Grand plans for SERD The NPC immediately established a SERD Sub-committee. On 28 October 1991 it convened at Barlow Park. Initially it consisted just of John Hall as Chair, Alec Erwin (COSATU, ex-Chair of WG3), Sue Vos (IFP), Tertius Delport (NP), Johan Scheepers (NP), and Liz Clarke (KZ government).7 To Hall the businessman, it appeared obvious that economic deprivation was a cause of violence. He admired the Middelburg and Stutterheim forums, where business, community and government pooled resources and worked together, and believed that kind of cooperation should be possible on a national scale, with SERD as the vehicle to achieve it. First the peace structures would break the cycle of violence, then the local committees would function as the missing link between development funds and the needs of the communities. The route to peace and prosperity, as Hall enjoyed depicting on workshop flipcharts, lay across a crocodile-infested river. Remove the crocodile of ‘violence’ and the way would open to investment and jobs. The relationship between peace and development was in reality less linear and more complex. Port Shepstone illustrates the possibility, given determined facilitation and community buy-in, for reconstruction to advance, reinforcing confidence in the possibility of peace, despite resurgent violence. Di Oliver, SERD Chair in KZN, comments: ‘the work was very slow, it had to be very sensitive and not seen as supporting one political side, so in many places it didn’t get very far as project but there was a lot of engagement, which all contributed to people talking to each other rather than killing each other’.8 6 Ibid. 7 Later members included Walter Felgate (IFP), Dr Boy Geldenhuys and SJ (Fanus) Schoeman (NP/Government), briefly Trevor Manuel and L. Kanyago (ANC), Mr A. Parsad (COSATU), Peter Gastrow and Andries Lategan (DP), R. Joe Mokotjo (National Forum), Mr Eli Enslin and Nic Grobler (Government), Ms Sharon Turner and Ms B. Barrett. 8 Oliver interview.

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Among SERD’s crocodiles was party-political ambition. The ANC anticipated that, post-election, it would immediately bring development, securing approbation and votes. Consequently, members were reluctant to encourage development before the election. Attempts on the Wits/Vaal RDRC to set up a SERD Sub-committee in 1992 failed, revealing tension between the ANC representatives, reluctant to allow SERD any role except immediate post-conflict reconstruction, and the SACOB business representatives, keen to establish a pro-active Sub-committee to act immediately on the all-round improvement of socio-economic conditions in the region.9 As Northern Transvaal’s Director Braam Viljoen put it: ‘if you came up with positive long term plans for development, for example putting up lights, they knew that the new dispensation was coming, and they often had all sorts of funny objections. … they didn’t want the community to believe that we did it for them’.10 The same phenomenon was encountered by Jan Greyvenstein in OFS and Warwick Barnes nationally. Hall assumed that when each regional and local peace committee formed it would immediately need funds to implement SERD projects. He had as yet little appreciation of the time and skills required, nor how much the urgent priorities of crisis management would supervene. The SERD Sub-committee first tried to establish relationships with major funding sources. During apartheid, development funding in South Africa was fragmented into various government sources, and large non-governmental foundations supported by local business and overseas donors. SERD conceived its task as being to link these sources with real, agreed grassroots needs. The Sub-committee invited prominent banker Bob Tucker to convene a ‘Think Tank’ of funders, and on 5 November 1991, when no regional or local peace committees yet existed, he brought together Eric Molobi (Kagiso Trust), Michael Spicer (Anglo-American), the Independent Development Trust (IDT), Urban Foundation, Development Aid, Liberty Life, KwaZulu Finance Corporation, and Development Bank of Southern Africa.11 The Think Tank was intrigued by the possibility that LDRCs might be able to identify needs and facilitate action. If, however, they were to handle funds they must be properly constituted, and supervised by regional SERD Coordinators. Although peace work was likely to require urgent funding, applications took months and the agencies had as yet no fast-tracking to offer. The IDT did later provide an emergency track. The agencies defined ‘reconstruction’ strictly as a return to the former state, distinct from ‘development’ as creating a new state. Hall turned to the idea of an in-house national ‘Peace Accord Trust Fund’. He suggested that foundations might transfer money into it. His memo to them 9 10 11

Wits/Vaal RDRC Minutes, Carmichael/Lorimer. Viljoen interview. Report 5/11/91, Carmichael/Eloff.

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before meeting them again on 10 April explains why rapid access was needed, and asks for R5 million immediately to make it possible for LDRCs to do ‘small symbolic projects’ such as a borehole or repairs to a school, and for substantial funds for larger urgent projects in violent areas, ‘e.g. reconstruction of homes, health services, and infrastructure’. He also sought funds for projects in peaceful areas where development had been held up by ‘red tape’ or poor administration. The sum required for the second and third categories would start at a nominal R30 million.12 It proved impossible to transfer funds in this way, so in May the SERD Committee authorized itself to raise funds. It was urging RDRCs and LDRCs to establish SERD Sub-committees but most regions, lacking resources and busy ‘firefighting’, were slow to address SERD. In July, Hall arranged for Barlow’s to second Warwick Barnes, an accountant who had some development knowledge as Finance Director of the Urban Foundation, as full-time National SERD Coordinator. Barnes replaced Hall as the SERD committee’s Chair. He enjoyed full pay, secretarial support, and an office close to Hall’s. Barnes researched the ramifications of SERD, and set out principles in a memo for the regional Chairs: ‘SERD activities within South Africa’s Peace Accord’.13 He wanted a concerted start, with an overall policy, funds available, and all regions ready to act. The peace committees must be catalysts to facilitate the marriage of needs with providers, and avoid becoming development agencies running their own projects. Each region needed a well-qualified fulltime SERD Coordinator capable of creating databases of potential projects and available agencies, estimating costs, identifying flashpoints where development plans could trigger violence. Coordinators might also be able to get broken-down projects moving. There were, Barnes noted, numerous government-led development projects with approved funding which lay stalled, rejected by communities due to lack of consultation and consensus-building. If any seemed worth rescuing, he offered to arrange meetings between SERD personnel and the ‘National Coordinating Mechanism’, de Klerk’s development-oriented successor to Botha’s NSMS. The Mechanism, Barnes wrote, was itself attempting to catalyse action but lacked SERD’s potential to build grassroots consensus. Finally, Barnes remarked that the government had recently approved a R30 million budget for the peace structures, none which covered SERD. In his letter accompanying Barnes’s memo, dated 10 April, Hall said he had lobbied Finance Minister Derek Keys, prodding the government to consider its responsibilities for SERD, and he believed funding for Regional Coordinators was ‘possible within a month’. In reality it took a year longer. An exasperated Hall meanwhile appealed to business, prompting Engen (Mobil) to second Greg Mac Master, a 12 13

Memo for 10/4/92, Carmichael/Eloff. Memo 13/7/92, Carmichael/Pauquet.

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Coloured UDF activist and Chair of the Belhar Civic Association, from its HR department. In December 1992 he became Regional SERD Coordinator for the Western Cape. Mac Master spent December to February visiting communities and nascent LPCs, enjoying the striking Cape scenery and noting numerous development-­ related issues. Sixteen possible projects presented themselves, and some training began; but his first year’s work largely entailed conflict resolution and consensus-­building. Here and in other regions, the SERD Coordinators found their first task was to mediate multiple conflicts over service delivery and resources, preventing violence and encouraging local authorities to take consultation seriously. ‘We actually made progress but it was more in terms of human relations, community relations, … I think we actually prepared the municipalities for what happened after 1994 in terms of democratizing local government and them understanding the importance of reconstruction and development for local communities.’14 Mac Master identified SERD training as the communities’ most pressing need.

SERD training Barnes happened to know that the Gencor Development Trust had recently worked with a group of young white trainer/consultants to design an in-depth capacity-building programme. Gencor offered to make this ‘technology’ freely available to the peace structures and to grant R200,000 towards initial running costs. It strongly recommended using the same consultants, who could be contracted individually through ‘Delta Consulting Services’, run by the group’s leader, consultant/academic Dr Fritz Hölscher. Without exploring other alternatives, Barnes arranged for the consultants to present their programme to the NPS and regional Chairs on 4 November 1992, and then to RDRCs. Action still awaited the appearance of Regional SERD Coordinators, for which the government finally announced funding in March 1993.15 There was no obvious pool of community development experts from which to recruit. Appointments were made slowly, and all were learning on the job. In April, Hölscher presented an ambitious proposal for a nation-wide fourphase SERD training scheme, lasting between five and twelve months, adaptable to different regions and leading to actual projects.16 Phase 1 would be a nationwide orientation programme, requiring 100 workshops reaching thirty participants each, to disseminate an understanding of reconstruction and development both among peace committee members and the broader community. Regional and local SERD committees would form during this phase. 14 15 16

Mac Master interview. SERD Minutes 24/3/93, BVS134. Proposal 14/4/93, BVS134.

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Phase 2 entailed information-gathering: auditing local needs, resources, and any existing projects, and identifying potential local facilitators. In Phase 3, ‘capacity building’, selected trainees would learn the principles of proposal-­ writing and project management, working on a project and learning from experi­ ence. Phase 4, ‘implementation’, which could run parallel to Phase 3, included identifying and prioritising community development projects, facilitating local forums, and identifying and unlocking funding. The total cost was estimated at R3.5 million for the whole country over one year, including travel, accommodation, workshop costs, and trainers’ fees at R1,500 per day. No objections were raised, the SERD committee approved, and on 21 April 1993 the NPAT signed a contract with Delta. Barnes wrote to Hölscher, all too presciently: ‘We all, however, acknowledge that we are engaged in a volatile political and economic climate, and our activities will inevitably be influenced by these issues.’17 Within a month Barnes was reporting that workshops had begun in most regions.18 A participant in Kimberley, Northern Cape, attracted and impressed, typed up their notes to share with the region’s LPCs.19 ‘SERD projects’, the notes begin, ‘by being proactive can decrease the potential for violence in a current situation which does not augur well for peaceful transition.’ SERD’s aim must be ‘sustainable development’, which meant not just supplying a school building and leaving it. Communities must be empowered with knowledge and skills to make informed decisions, and not be mere ‘frustrated rubber-stamps to projects not yet understood’. The active core of a Regional SERD Committee could be four or five people; in a local committee it might be just one person. LPCs were asked to start advising the regional office about possible local needs and finance, and identifying local players who should participate, not forgetting women! At local level, the training might entail two to four days per month for four to eight months. Reception was generally positive, but suspicions were also rife. In the Eastern Transvaal, DRC minister Jaco Hoffman and Amanda Diener of the Witbank and Middelburg LDRCs wondered who were ‘these two guys’, Hölscher and his colleague Theo de Jager? They must be spies! ‘They facilitated a lot of these developmental ideas, and it never came off the ground in Witbank.’20 Getting it off the ground was meant to happen later; but doubts about rightwing leanings among some Delta consultants also bubbled up in Western Transvaal, and Jayendra Naidoo, learning that de Jager had previously worked 17 18 19 20

Draft letter, Barnes to Hölscher 21/4/93, BVS134. SERD Minutes 24/5/93, BVS135. Workshop report 11/8/93, BVS137. Hoffman interview.

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for National Intelligence, thought he smelt a rat. ‘Delta’ was not in any phone directory. Was it a ‘front company’ for covert activities? Barnes failed to allay Naidoo’s unease.21 Word reached Peter Wellman, an investigative journalist on The Star. On 5 August he sent a list of questions to Barnes: How had Delta been chosen? Was a certain T. de Jager involved? Were the consultants being exorbitantly paid? Barnes replied. There had seemed no good reason to refuse Gencor’s offer, and the fees were within the NPS range. He ascertained that de Jager’s previous work for National Intelligence had not been concealed from Gencor. Besides, de Jager had completed only four days’ training for SERD before withdrawing, citing work pressure. Wellman was invited to meet the consultants. Meanwhile he held back his article – but on 12 August the news editor splashed it on the front page: ‘Shady Company Lands Peace Contract’.22 ‘A former National Intelligence operative’, the item ran, ‘landed a lucrative consulting contract under the National Peace Accord through a shady Johannesburg company.’ The ANC and IFP, it claimed, were demanding the consultancy be suspended while inquiries were made. The rat became a crocodile. The regions cancelled their courses, and all training was suspended. Hall, after approaching Goldstone, who judged a full inquiry was not warranted, carried out his own investigation. Hölscher explained that Delta was just a ‘shell company’ owned by himself for his consultancy. He had no intelligence links. Mike Louw, now Director General of the NIS, confirmed that the NIS had employed de Jager, a politics graduate, as a researcher and subsequently an occasional lecturer.23 Barnes expressed his frustration to the NPAT. In this fragile environment it was demanding enough try to consolidate peace, and The Star had been strongly supportive – but the Delta article ‘has had the effect of discrediting the peace building process and the integrity of persons engaged in working for us’.24 October’s ANC journal Mayibuye ran an article on the purported ‘Infiltration of Peace Accord Structures’ and the ‘sinister web of connections’ in violence-torn communities which this implied. The NPAT cancelled the contract and Hall acknowledged it would have been advisable to invite other tenders.25 Expressing deep regret at the setback, he closed the affair with a press statement announcing that nothing sinister had been found, and any region that wished to use Delta trainers was free to do so.26 None did. De Jager complained to the Press Council, whose conciliator ruled 21 22 23 24 25 26

Barnes memo 17/8/93, Carmichael/Pauquet. Star 12/8/93. Letter 24/8/93 Carmichael/Pauquet. Memo to NPAT, 17/8/93, Carmichael/Pauquet. NPC Admin Minutes 6/9/93, Carmichael/Pauquet. NPC release 30/10/93 Carmichael/Pauquet.

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that The Star had twisted an innocent situation and should publish a total, front page, retraction.27 It merely reported that ‘Hall’s Probe Clears Company’, on an inside page.28 It was November 1993. Holidays, election preparations and monitor training were looming. In most places SERD went on the back-burner, expecting to flourish post-election. Gencor’s course material remained available. Two regions repackaged it in shorter formats. Greg Mac Master compressed it into four 2½-day workshops, with no practical component, and ran them in the southern Cape over three months (September–November 1993), not the ten originally intended. Although participants rated it ‘very good’, attendance was ragged; only eleven attended all four workshops, follow-up was lacking and no projects resulted.29 Post-election, Mac Master made plans for more comprehensive training. The Western Cape expected to be placed under the RDP and transferred, intact, to the new provincial government, the LPCs becoming ‘Peace and Development’ committees.30 Violence-wracked KZN had, in September 1993, appointed the vigorously pro-active Geoff Schreiner as Regional SERD Coordinator. He had some previous development experience through projects to support the long-term British Tyre and Rubber (BTR) strikers in Howick.31 He and fieldworker Edmund Mhlongo packed Gencor’s training into an effective five-day workshop with follow-up by fieldworkers. These workshops placed emphasis on the practicalities and difficulties of forming local development committees, and each workshop included designing a real project. Thirty members of local SERD committees from three different areas attended the first, resulting in proposals for the reconstruction of classrooms in Estcourt’s township of Wembezi, and a water supply project in Hopewell village. Both projects were delivered, by local SERD sub-committees, with NPAT grants. By November 1994 all of KZN’s SERD committees had experienced the five-day training, and three LPCs and several NGOs had done a oneday introductory workshop.32 But in December, when KZN alone kept its peace structures, SERD was closed and a vital peacebuilding element lost.

National Peace Accord Trust (NPAT) The NPAT was established as an autonomous trust with the objectives of assisting ‘the consolidation of the peace process in South Africa’ and carrying out, through the peace structures, ‘reconstructive actions aimed at addressing the 27 28 29 30 31 32

Press Council to de Jager 5/10/93, Carmichael/Pauquet. Star 2/11/93. Evaluation 10/3/94, BVS142; Odendaal interview. RPC Minutes 5/10/94, BVS27/3. Schreiner interview. KZN SERD Report 1994, Claude papers.

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worst effects of political violence’.33 It received the funds that the SERD Sub-­ committee had decided to raise, and its focus was almost exclusively on SERD. The initial fundraising event was the Golf Day and Gala Dinner on 9 October 1992, organized with the American Chamber of Commerce in South Africa (AmCham) with the aim of raising R1 million (£200,000) ‘for the peace process’ and encouraging local and American companies to support peace projects. Warwick Barnes, Val Pauquet and the NPA’s new marketing whizz-kid Mark Manley helped organize. Golf at the Royal Johannesburg Club was followed by a ‘glittering’ banquet at the Carlton Hotel, bringing together the business community, NPC, NPS, RDRC Chairs, NPC Sub-committees, heads of the International Observer missions, and US Ambassador Princeton Lyman, a keen supporter of the Accord. Lyman called the evening ‘a spectacular demonstration of the deep desire for peace and reconciliation that ran through the entire South African society’ (Lyman, 2002 p.108). Invitations had gone to 150 companies, and 40 accepted, among them Nedcor, FNB, Caterpillar, Union Carbide and Kellogg SA. Each donated a minimum R25,000, and over R1 million was raised. The NPAT met monthly, starting 26 October 1992 at Barlow Park. Its trustees were initially John Hall (Chair), Warwick Barnes, Colin B. Brayshaw, Henry J. J. Jeffreys, and Rev. Mvume Dandala. Later members included Jerome Ngwenya, Thabo Nyati, Suzanne Vos, and Johan Steenkamp. For the first year, funding decisions were made by the monthly SERD Sub-committee and the Trust then met to enact them, while reserving its right to act autonomously. The first disbursements, in October, were R50,000 for the Alexandra church and a R150,740 bridging loan to consolidate the Border/Kei Development Forum. RDRC members were involved in the Forum and it was accepted that it would substitute for a Border/Ciskei regional SERD Sub-committee. In March 1993 the Trust employed the American Maggie Seiler as National Fundraising Coordinator, and the government granted R5 million, promising up to R5 million more to match funds raised, which brought in another R3,698,193 over the year.34 The quid pro quo was that the government placed two representatives on both the SERD Committee and NPAT. Hall saw the Trust primarily as a source of ‘bridging’ loans to kick-start projects – and it bridged the R400,000 bill for water supplies to Welkom’s township of Thabong, to keep water flowing while a payment scheme was negotiated – but in reality most projects required grants. The largest was R663,000 in March 1993 for the Port Shepstone reconstruction project. Compared with the country’s needs the NPAT was mere play-money but it did engage in a wide diversity of activities. Its meeting on 28 June 1993 was a high point.35 Seiler reported a R275,000 donation from Malbak, R200,000 from 33 SERD Minutes 21/10/92, Carmichael/Pauquet. 34 SERD Minutes 24/3/93, BVS134; Letter, Crowley to Grobler 29/4/94, BVS142. 35 Minutes, BVS135.

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the Anglo American Chairman’s Fund, R50,000 each from Gencor and Genmin Development Trusts, and R146,000 from the ‘SA Love’ concert series at Johannesburg’s Market Theatre. These sums would be matched by government. The Alexandra church was complete, with a few donors to chase up. The Border/Kei Development Forum was doing well, the final loan repayment about to arrive. A pilot ‘Violence Intervention Project’ had launched in Wits/Vaal, and trauma counsellors were being trained for Port Shepstone. Project No. 5, the Community Policing initiative under Grahamstown LPC, had been fully adopted by the Canadian Embassy. Classrooms in Jan Kempdorp were nearly complete and costs would be reclaimed from the IDT. Barnes reported that most Regional SERD Committees were in place, but only four Coordinators. The original estimate of R227,000 for Gencor’s Phase 1 workshops had risen to R385,000, but training was proceeding and the total should stay within the R3.5 million budget. Two youth initiatives received mention: Wits/Vaal was granted R20,000 to research and formulate a proposal for its Peace Corps.36 A report on the situation of unemployed youth appeared together with a media release from Minister of Home Affairs Danie Schutte, floating the idea of a National Youth Battalion which might be created under the NPC.37 Rev. Mvume Dandala, a Trustee and facilitator of the Hostels Peace Initiative, brought a request for soccer balls, jerseys, boots and socks costing R17,324, for an inter-hostel tournament. The grant was approved. The Displaced Youth Organisation in Alexandra, now nearing a hundred members, requested R16,708 to continue its after-school study project. R20,000 was granted. The meeting noted that, on Seiler’s initiative, the Alex ICC was conducting a ‘resources survey’. This exercise, carried out by young Alexandrans, listed every community organization and resource. The resulting Alexandra Community Directory proved popular and was sold to raise funds for the Trust and thus for reconstruction in Alex. The Trust resolved to invite International Observers. This would bring Djamal Harbi of UNOMSA, an Algerian with long experience in UNDP, to attend its meetings. The final item on 28 June was the announcement that the Trust was to employ Christine Crowley, a British social worker who came to South Africa with returning exile Horst Kleinschmidt of Kagiso Trust, as National Project Coordinator. Crowley brought ‘specialist knowledge in the field of welfare services which we will need shortly for our Victims of Violence’. Crowley now vetted all proposals, in the unenviable role of gatekeeper. Jan Greyvenstein, OFS Regional Director, requested R20,000 to rebuild a showground hall in the small town of Koppies.38 It was important for peace. The ANC had held a march in 1993 which the Town Clerk, in good faith, had routed 36 See p.377. 37 Later proposed as a Service & Training Brigade. See pp.231–2. 38 Greyvenstein letter 23/2/94, BVS142; NPAT Minutes 24/3/94, BVS144.

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through the showground to avoid confrontation with white right-wingers. Somehow, the hall burned down, and in retaliation right-wingers had razed several shacks. The affair had caused the collapse of the LPC, which was now being re-established. The R20,000 was key to restoring relationships all round. To Greyvenstein’s frustration, the NPAT ignored the request for R20,000 while agreeing to grant R5,000 to rebuild the shacks (if he could send precise details of which shacks). Such decisions fuelled growing calls from the regions for financial autonomy.

‘Victims of Violence’ The NPAT’s ‘Victims of Violence’ theme (the term ‘survivors’ was just appearing) went back to March 1992 with the first launch of the Peace Song, when it was announced that the proceeds would go to the ‘NPA Victims of Violence’ fund – the future NPAT. During 1992 the SERD Committee surveyed fourteen organizations working with ‘victims’. The NPAT then commissioned The Family Institute under Dr Saths Cooper to carry out a pilot ‘Violence Intervention Project’ (VIP). The project selected two critical areas: Port Shepstone, and Boipatong/Sebokeng in Wits/Vaal. Funding came from the NPAT, EEC, Canada, and Kagiso Trust. Starting in Boipatong/Sebokeng in March 1993 the VIP offered telephone counselling on a free helpline, backed by intervention teams working on the ground. By the end of July, 3,904 calls had been received, 52% being from young people aged 15–29, of which 53.38% concerned public violence, 14.11 % domestic, 5.3% other violence, while 17.14% wanted clarification about the helpline, or expressed encouragement or were unrelated to violence.39 Phone advice was integrated with practical assistance and development projects. Family members affected by the Boipatong massacre a year previously ( June 1992) were drawn into ‘various trainings and community sensitisation activities’ and ‘self-help groups, cooperatives and small business entrepreneurship’. Sporadic violence was still occurring: Case Study 6: On 3 May 1993 at about 10.00pm, some youths in Sebokeng attacked Mr Z’s house whilst his wife and daughter were inside. They set the house alight and Mr Z’s 16 year old daughter was shot. She died immediately. Mrs Z was rushed to hospital with burns. The family decided to stay with relatives in nearby Sharpeville before the funeral. They are now staying with friends in town and intend selling their house in Sebokeng. Mr Z called the VIP Helpline before the funeral. He sounded shaken and very traumatised. After reflecting on his feelings and experience intense intervention was done. Mr Z was referred to the Red Cross for material assistance and is now receiving food parcels and clothing. Mr Z’s experience 39

VIP Pilot Report received 8/11/93, Carmichael/Pauquet.

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necessitated on-going face-to face counselling. He, and his wife (who has just been discharged from hospital and is coughing severely because she inhaled smoke …) are seeing a VIP counsellor.40

The pilot project revealed vast need and potential. On 2 December the Institute launched a nation-wide 24-hour toll-free counselling service in all main languages, with a referral network of over 450 agencies. The NPAT gradually concentrated its limited resources on trauma counselling. It hosted a range of providers on 8 November 1993 in the boardroom of Hall’s offices in Illovo. Ranging from the Salvation Army to the Department of Health and SADF and SAP welfare services, the guests bridged what had been a deep divide between State and NGO provision. UN Observer Djamal Harbi spoke from his experience of the Algerian war, saying psychological help was important for preventing later violence but vocational training and job counselling must be included; and it was long-term work, needing permanent structures.41 A network was formed, to promote the training of ‘Community Support Workers’, who might be volunteers or professionals such as nurses and teachers. It established a Training Committee, created a manual, and circulated a detailed proposal for what was initially called the ‘Auxiliary Trauma Counselling Service’ (ATCS). Its purpose was to train trainers to train lay counsellors in communities, working through existing organizations. The two focus areas were now Port Shepstone and ‘Kathorus’ on the East Rand. It was believed government would eventually take responsibility, but to meet the immediate need the NPAT, with some R11 million in the bank and about to receive another R5 million from government, approved the budget of R8,899,140 in principle, including a small stipend for volunteers, for one year to May 1995.42 KZN’s regional SERD team had not been consulted. A shocked Geoff Schreiner, unsure whether funds were still available for other projects, expressed his committee’s concern: would there still be access to immediate funding, which was essential for supporting the process of peace?43 Among other projects, Schreiner needed funds quickly for Wembezi. After a three-year conflict, many deaths and devastating damage, the Wembezi/Estcourt LPC had succeeded in November 1993 in bringing the ANC and IFP together in a lasting peace pact. The Wembezi Development Committee then formed, and at its five-day SERD training workshop in April 1994 it had identified the two high schools as the reconstruction priority. Local government found funds to start the project. To Schreiner’s relief, on 24 August the NPAT granted R50,000.44 40 Ibid. 41 Summary of discussions 8/11/93, Carmichael/Pauquet. 42 Minutes 22/4/94, BVS144. 43 Letter, Schreiner to Hall, late June 1994, BVS144. 44 Minutes 24/8/94, BVS144.

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During 1994 the regions, now gaining financial autonomy from government, repeatedly urged the NPAT to divide its capital among them. Hall pointed out that could happen only if regions had Trust Funds. Besides, some NPAT income, such as Peace Song royalties, was ring-fenced for ‘victims of violence’.45 He insisted that the NPAT had been set up to be independent, and would remain so. The NPAT thus survived the closure of the peace structures, and the counselling project gave Maggie Seiler a new career. The term ‘Community Support Educators’ (CSEs) was finally chosen for the volunteers to be trained to impart counselling skills to the community. By the end of 1995, eighteen had been trained in Port Shepstone, where community psychiatric nurse Sylvia Mdluli was a key leader. It is curious nevertheless that several members of the Port Shepstone LPC, which existed until 2001, who felt in need of counselling, were unaware of this service.46 Sixty-five CSEs were trained in Kathorus and a decade of intensive work followed, first with ex-SDUs and SPUs, then with a large number of MK veterans, many of whom felt abandoned. Seiler supported their campaign for greater recognition.47 The NPAT developed a flagship ‘eco-therapy’ programme, taking small groups into the Magaliesberg or Drakensberg for a four-day bush camp, including a 24-hour period spent solo. An eight-year follow-up, completed in 2007, of 125 youths who had persisted in violent crime after 1994 and then participated in NPAT interventions, showed that 80% left crime and 72% found employment, often in community support.48 The programme included organizational skills, but not job skills – which Thokoza’s ex-SDUs and SPUs say they would have welcomed.49 Seiler served the Trust, becoming Executive Director in 1995, until her death in 2011. Hall, still chairing, died in 2013. The NPAT continued, branching out to domestic and other forms of violence.

Future hopes for SERD As 1993 drew to a close, future SERD policy was set by a major review workshop on 27 October, organized by the NPS Training Committee. Held at the Technicon SA Conference Centre in Johannesburg it drew thirty participants from all regions.50 45 Letter to Chairs 13/4/94, BVS130. 46 Mbele, Qolosha interviews. 47 www.atlanticphilanthropies.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/NoPlacebytheFire.pdf (contains inaccuracies, but recounts Seiler advising MK veterans before 2007 ANC National Conference) [accessed 12/3/21]. 48 NPAT booklet, c. 2007, Carmichael. 49 Thokoza ex-SDU/SPU interviews. 50 Workshop Record, BVS139; Carmichael/Pauquet.

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Alec Erwin and Liz Clarke expounded NPA Chapter 5. Debra Marsden (CBM) spoke on development agencies and the transitional economic Forums, and Eric Molobi (Kagiso) on NGOs. Barnes expounded the principles of SERD and tabled amplified Guidelines for committees and Coordinators, reiterating the doctrine that SERD’s tasks were to gather information on needs and resources, and create synergy and cooperation among development players. It should sensitively assess existing projects for legitimacy and ask whether job creation and technical training were integrated into them, build appropriate development structures, and above all build capacity. The Gencor material was still available. Local SERD committees should be the primary means of implementation; regional committees should exist to support them. Barnes added a suggestion as to the ideal composition of local and regional SERD sub-committees: two representatives from the Peace Committee, plus community leaders, business and/or donor agencies, development experts, others with knowledge of the community, and government representatives. In reality, regional SERD Committees were composed of RPC members. A local project committee might approximate more to Barnes’s ideal. The NPS and regional Chairs had indicated they wished SERD to transfer from the NPC to the NPS. The workshop concurred, recommending a new SERD coordinating committee of regional representatives and NPS.51 Bureaucracy then flexed its muscles. The national SERD Sub-committee was rather summarily informed by Nic Grobler, government representative and Acting Director of DIPI, that it was being dissolved.52 Simultaneously, in December, Barlow’s ‘unbundled’ and ceased funding Barnes as National Coordinator. He retired, except as an NPAT Trustee. Christine Crowley succeeded him as national SERD Director, paid by the NPAT but seconded to DIPI, becoming a Division head in the new NPS offices. Responsibility formally passed to the NPS on 1 January 1994. From December to February SERD lacked a national body. The Regional Coordinators met for a workshop on 10–11 February and constituted themselves as the ‘SERD Advisory Board’. They decided, despite the uncertainties, to ‘look towards a two to three year forward plan’, and they formulated this mission statement: We commit ourselves to a vision of a democratic South Africa where all citizens have the basic essentials of life. In order to accomplish the above, we need to assist in the facilitation of the psychological, social and physical reconstruction of communities through development, upliftment, empowerment and mediation skills in pursuit of a peaceful, prosperous and violence-­free society/community.53 51 52 53

NPC Admin Minutes 3/11/93, Carmichael/Pauquet. Final SERD Minutes 30/11/94 Carmichael/Pauquet. ‘SERD. A Project Department of the NPS’, BVS142.

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SERD’s uniqueness, they continue, lay its ‘proximity to peace’, its link with grassroots through the LPCs, and its cross-party representation at all levels. Its objectives must be to help communities to formulate shared visions and projects; target resources on these; build and strengthen LPCs and SERD sub-­ committees; develop networking and databases; and foster cooperation with other organizations. In a further memo the Board committed to meet monthly, providing a forum for learning and the sharing and honing of plans; it aspired to establish a resource centre, gather information to inform policy, and advocate for the needs identified by the peace structures.54 But the Coordinators faced an uphill struggle, with little help: to define their task, train themselves and others, start projects, and contribute to the peace structures’ arguments for continuation, while adapting to the changing environment nationally and locally. Reports revealed varied acceptance of SERD in the Regional Economic Development Forums (REDFs) which had sprung up – among many transitional ‘forums’. The Border/Kei Development Forum was itself the SERD presence in that region, although memories of its origin were fading. In Eastern Transvaal, the Coordinator sat on the REDF. In the Western Cape, the ANCaligned SANCO had challenged SERD’s legitimacy – but two months later the REDF, heavily metropolitan-based, acknowledged its need for SERD’s assistance to expand into rural areas.55 A few Local or Community Development Forums (LDFs/CDFs) were emerging, invariably ANC-led, in anticipation of the party’s Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). The relationship between these and the peace structures was likewise unclear. No party thought to include a role for the peace structures in its election manifesto. In March most regions submitted outline ‘business plans’ or at least their intentions for 1994–95, responding to the questions: ‘Where are we?’ ‘Where are we going?’ ‘How to get there?’ and’ Order of Cost’.56 Crowley’s summary concluded that ‘where we are’ was very much a construction site. Some areas were still forming LPCs, some LPCs had SERD experience, others had not yet considered SERD. Anticipation was increasing, but resources and information were scarce. Capacity, funding, research and information all needed building up. Crowley attempted to produce a national SERD Business Plan and budget for 1994–95. The draft she sent to Nic Grobler at DIPI on 6 May argued for continuing and expanding SERD’s role, but acknowledged that the future elected authorities with their new-found legitimacy might not see a role for it.57 The draft plan boasts a percipient Introduction by Djamal Harbi of UNOMSA, based on his UNDP experience. It carries a warning. He observes that SERD, with its links to the grassroots, was going in exactly the right direction – but: 54 55 56 57

Memo ‘SERD Advisory Board’ appended to Minutes 16/3/94, BVS142. SERD Minutes 16/3/94, BVS142. Appended to SERD Minutes 16/3/94, BVS142. Business Plan 6/5/94, BVS142.

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would the new South Africa apply its ‘newly acquired practice of multi­party co-operation and democratic procedures’ to the field of socio-economic development and reconstruction? He describes how the ‘green revolution’ that introduced high-yield crops in the 1970s had been accompanied by UN efforts at ‘integrated rural development’ to prevent drift to the cities. Its efforts proved weak due to the UN’s failure to involve rural people in defining their own needs. South Africa’s inclusive peace structures gave it a chance to avoid this weakness: Working together at all levels will certainly bring about reconciliation, tolerance and compassion for the poor in this country. … SERD should be given a chance to become the advocate for community development, in solidarity with the deprived citizens, whose capacity building and empowerment should become its motto for the years ahead.58

The danger, however, was that ‘the new government will embark upon a centralised and authoritarian economic policy which will not make sufficient room for community participation and for local economic democracy’. That is precisely what happened. SERD badly needed a well-argued and costed advocacy document to expound its long-term peacebuilding potential. None appeared. Crowley’s draft plan paints the broad picture and introduces SERD principles well, but her examples, taken only from the recent regional ‘plans’, did not adequately tell the story of SERD’s learnings and achievements. It appears the draft was never completed. Its budget is not extant, but Grobler immediately made R3 million available from NPS funds, ring-fenced for ‘SERD community capacity building’ with the caveat that, until used, it was ‘subject to virement [transfer] and any government decision as to the future of the peace structures’.59 Crowley divided R3 million by eleven and informed the Coordinators they could each submit capacity building proposals for up to R270,000. Regions got the impression they were due this amount. Post-election, the Board gathered on 16 May. Geoff Schreiner and Edmund Mhlongo of KZN presented the experience of developing and running their fiveday training workshop and one-day introductory course.60 The structures’ future was now hanging on a funding decision by the new government, and the Board felt real anxiety that SERD was not adequately presented in the main supporting documents. It attempted to amplify the document written by Regional Directors, and asked Crowley to produce a comprehensive report of SERD activities from the beginning. This she attempted to do by circulating a questionnaire. By 20 June, having received only six responses, she began drafting.61 She managed a 58 Ibid. 59 Grobler to Crowley 13/5/94, BVS142. 60 Minutes 16/5/94 BVS144. 61 ‘Socio-Economic Reconstruction Activities in the Peace Structures’, BVS143.

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short introduction on Chapter 5 and the peace structures, and summaries of the six responses. They revealed considerable activity since March but this report too remained unfinished. The NPC/NPS ‘Lobby Group’, which lacked any SERD representative, had an inconclusive meeting with RDP Minister Jay Naidoo on 17 June. The Board’s anxiety about being heard increased. The NPS was discouraging ‘unofficial’ approaches, but on 30 June the Coordinators resolved that ‘a committee comprising Ms Crowley, Ms Makwakwa (N.Tvl), Mr Mnana (E. Cape), Mr Makqabo, and Geoff Schreiner (KZN) should approach Mr Naidoo regarding the role SERD could play in the RDP’.62 For reasons unrecorded, no meeting happened. On 26 July the Advisory Board, still full of plans and enthusiasm, worried that the government was simply unaware of how the structures could be used. They were right. Crowley, suggesting she should contact Naidoo’s office for an appointment (which still did not materialize), asked the meeting to formulate its views on the future.63 The Board suggested the peace structures be maintained at least until the end of the current financial year (March 1995) to enable facilitation and training to continue.64 There should be financial devolution to provincial governments, and clarity must be sought, before the next financial year, on SERD’s role in the RDP. Some provincial structure must be maintained to support the LPCs and there must be ‘a minimal national coordinating body’ to facilitate inter-regional communication and liaise with national government.65 The was a growing assumption that SERD’s future lay in the provinces, but trepidation lest the decision be ill-informed and not allow sufficient time for an orderly devolution. At the same time, the RDP itself was showing early signs of floundering. Protests about non-delivery were resuming. Fiona Martin commented that ‘a vacuum exists between the policymakers and the implementing structures’.66

Real progress It is remarkable, given the uncertainties, how vigorously SERD was beginning to progress on the ground. KZN was forging ahead. In the Eastern Transvaal (Mpumalanga) Fiona Martin, well known in business and community development circles, had been appointed Regional SERD Coordinator in April 1993. She was also in charge of monitoring, so her activities pre-election were limited to participation in the Regional Economic Forum and the joint management com62 Minutes 26/7/94 (wrongly dated August), recapping 30/6/94, BVS144. 63 Minutes 26/7/94 (wrongly dated August), BVS144. 64 Board’s proposal 26/7/94, BVS147. 65 Ibid. 66 Minutes 26/7/94 (wrongly dated August), BVS144.

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mittee of the Regional Economic Development Forum. She was then joined by a SERD fieldworker based in Nelspruit: ‘June, a young black guy, he was very good. He looked after the Lowveld part of the region, I looked after the Highveld.’67 By June they had held nine capacity-building sessions, done much facilitation work and established seven local SERD forums. In remote, extreme right-wing Morgenzon they negotiated with the supplier Eskom to electrify the township of 500–600 people, despite the Town Council’s opposition – the traffic police even blocked UN cars from entering. Uniquely, this region carried out peace education under SERD, using the Communication Division’s material: ‘what is peace, why should we work towards it, and how we could work on the multi-­ cultural differences and divides and so on’.68 The LPCs promoted vegetable gardens, introducing the ‘Peace Gardens’ NGO to manage projects. ‘Essentially it’s a one-metre square piece of garden, dug out and filled with compost, and they would teach the local community what to sow and when, for their own consumption.’ Martin submitted nine further proposals including a sewing project to the NPAT. In July she shared information with her fellow SERD Coordinators about a project to enable communities to develop small businesses, with backup and support. It was planned to explore this further at the Board’s intended workshop in September. The OFS region liked to deploy staff in pairs. In November 1993 it appointed two SERD Coordinators: RPC staffer Annatjie Olivier and Rev. Nico de Klerk. In the New Year de Klerk announced a gift of R480,000 for SERD from the telephone company Telkom.69 Of this, R240,000 was earmarked for education and technical training; R144,000 for free telephone installation for development organizations, the elderly, and the disabled; R48,000 for community development; and R48,000 for use of Telkom facilities for training. De Klerk invited individuals and organizations to apply. Encouraging other businesses to follow Telkom’s example, he pointed out how the OFS peace secretariat with its current forty-eight LPCs was a unique structure for coordinating development. It already possessed an unrivalled database of community needs: ‘If they want to give money for any form of development, they can be assured that the Peace Secretariat can make presentations or give information on almost all socio-economic development in the Free State.’ In June he reported that Telkom had provided twelve projects with grants of between R1,800 and R48,000. The OFS managed, pre-election, to establish an LPC in fifty-four of its seventy-­four small towns. Initially, most had no SERD involvement, but after the election this efficient region smartly reoriented itself. In June Olivier could report that its Regional SERD Committee had formed on 24 May and two 67 Martin interview. 68 Ibid. 69 Volksblad 8/1/94.

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SERD workshops had been held for peace personnel. Seventeen staff, mainly fieldworkers, were now concentrating on SERD, and the region’s conflict resolution function had been incorporated into SERD. What better for peacebuilding in this farming province than to impart skills in agriculture? Funding was secured for a large vegetable garden project on a farm close to Zastron, where two women, one the descendant of a British trading family in Lesotho, formed the local SERD team. ‘If it was possible to manage that system after 1994, it could have been a beautiful success story.’70 Similarly SERD negotiated with the Ficksburg municipality to use ‘a piece of land along the Caledon River, that was lying fallow’ for food gardens.71 When closure came, this project was about to start. Fieldworker Willem Ellis reflects: the elite had made peace, ‘but this was grassroots making peace, or being given the opportunity to move in that direction – and it was taken away.’72 Annatjie Olivier, with Playfair Morule, collated a list of ‘about one hundred’ possible or incipient development projects identified by fieldworkers and LPCs, only to face a lack of support and funding as closure loomed, ‘and it was problematic because now you’ve created expectations right through the process, … and people found each other and they started talking and they got excited about identifying projects’.73 Reporting to the Signatories in October, the region noted ‘growing discontent due to the slow progress of the RDP’.74 It suggested that its LPCs, of which thirty were still active and twenty-four could be reactivated, should facilitate the formation of, and join, Local Development Forums to implement the RDP, while maintaining an independent regional peace architecture to service them; but activity ceased on 31 December 1994. After its July meeting, the next SERD Advisory Board was to have been a residential workshop on 13–14 September. The agenda exists, promising reports on the position of the structures from national and regional staff, a paper on capacity building, input on Local/Community Development Forums, discussion of SERD’s possible future location in provincial and local government, and whether the peace structures might become an NGO or quango; and an entire second day to be led by Fiona Martin on small business development.75 For whatever reason, no workshop is recorded. Meetings ended. By the end of December 1994 the peace structures and offices, SERD’s matrix, were dismantled. All too often, the ‘peace dividend’ arrived haltingly or not at all.

70 Greyvenstein interview. 71 Ellis interview. 72 Ibid. 73 Annatjie Olivier interview. 74 Regional Reports 25/10/94, Carmichael/Lorimer. 75 Agenda, BVS144.

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Conclusion SERD was an early expression of ‘the process of realizing that economic development is best achieved when a multiplicity of stakeholders are operating together in the interests of the locality’.76 Like the RDP, which itself was summarily ended in 1996 in favour of macroeconomic policies, SERD belonged to everyone and no one. It had no secure home and defender among government departments. Yet it was fast gaining expertise. Since 1994 economic inequality in South Africa has grown, as has concern for social cohesion. An effective, well-informed, devolved, capably staffed ‘Department of Grassroots Development’ – and/or a new, imaginative, well-funded structure through which civil society, grassroots communities and government could work together – still perhaps awaits invention.

76 Mitchell interview.

16 Building Peace in the Regions I: Natal/KwaZulu, Wits/Vaal Introduction Each regional peace committee was entrusted with making and building peace in their region, establishing and supporting as many local committees as necessary. When staff were appointed, starting late in 1992, the structures acquired Regional Directors, coordinators, fieldworkers, and secretaries, to support the LPCs and promote the whole range of peace activities. Every region faced the historic divides between races, and between the government and people. This chapter offers a flavour of the two regions which in addition were called to make peace in the ANC–IFP conflict.

Natal/KwaZulu (from 1994 KwaZulu-Natal, KZN) This, the most violent region, struggled the most. Political disagreements inhibited the appointment of staff, making it the least well resourced. The violence was complex and intractable, a patchwork of tiny wars affecting particularly the Midlands, the North, the South Coast, and Durban townships. The ANC’s Bheki Cele, then an ANC MK activist just returned from Robben Island, Chair of Durban South ANC, says simply: ‘KZN was a hell on earth, no doubt about it. The trouble started much earlier and ended much later in this province. … But I’d be lying if I said the Peace Accord as a structure didn’t make an impact: it was positive.’1 He and others describe it as the unique place of meeting with the enemy, and even making friends. Unlike Wits/Vaal the structures in Natal/KwaZulu cannot be described as an efficient, fast-moving mechanism. It was much more about personalities and relationships. While the NPA was being negotiated there was a chorus of unease, from Buthelezi and non-aligned observers alike, at the lack of consultation at regional and local level. ‘In this region’, wrote Peter Gastrow (DP MP for Durban Central), ‘extensive grassroots involvement will be necessary in establishing the regional and local structures if they are to survive and be effective. I therefore 1

Cele interview.

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plead for a “bottom up” approach to be followed.’2 Steve Collins of IDASA in Durban similarly remarked that the negotiation process, ‘while being inclusive at a national level has not been discussed in principle or in detail in the region most affected by the violence’.3 ‘Peace will only be achieved once people on the ground in localized conflicts have an alternative to violence and really want peace.’4 These warnings were fully borne out. Top-down establishment was inevitable but needed to be balanced by providing far more resources at grassroots than the region ever managed to acquire. Peace came in patches, and was only declared province-wide in 1999. The NPS approached the establishment of an RDRC cautiously, first meeting with moderate ANC and IFP representatives in Durban on 18 November 1991: Frank Mdlalose, Ben Ngubane, Vincent T. Zulu and Velaphi B. Ndlovu (IFP), and Jeff Radebe, John Jeffery (often mis-spelt ‘Jefferies’), Sipho Gcabashe, Willies Mchunu and S. Mthetwa (ANC-Alliance).5 The ANC pointed out it operated three regions in Natal/KwaZulu: North, Midlands and South. They agreed to one peace region initially, as the IFP preferred, but it should then split into three. The split never happened. This meeting failed to agree on invitees to a second meeting, but after another bilateral and the usual comprehensive exploratory meeting, the Natal/KwaZulu RDRC was born on 11 December 1991 with forty-one representatives from eighteen organizations, and an office and manager, Gary Cullen, seconded by CBM. It had two Co-chairs. The IFP nominated M. C. Pretorius (Natal/KZ Business Forum, Natal Chamber of Industries), who had supported the Durban Club meetings. The ANC nominated the Catholic Archbishop of Durban, Denis Hurley (Natal Church Leaders Group), a well-loved pastor and peacemaker. The two had very different styles. Pretorius was ‘a forceful businessman who rather took over and commanded the floor’. He ‘wanted to settle matters quickly: “Agreed? Agreed!”, which didn’t suit the Natal people, they couldn’t express themselves, so decisions didn’t stick. I heard Archbishop Hurley express frustration about that.’6 Pretorius was ‘quite distant, he never really got down and dirty, you never saw him in the field’.7 Hurley was familiar with the grassroots but already in process of retiring and not as active as before. He occasionally went to Durban hotspots such as KwaMashu or Bhambayi. The Executive, meeting fortnightly, provided the arena where Bheki Cele sparred with the IFP’s Thomas Shabalala (warlord ruling Durban’s informal 2 3 4 5 6 7

Peter Gastrow MP, Durban, Comments on Draft NPA, 6/9/91. Carmichael/NPI. Steve Collins, IDASA Natal Region, Comments on draft NPA, 30/8/91. Carmichael/NPI. Steve Collins (IDASA) fax 6/9/1991, Carmichael/NPI. NPS Minutes 18/11/91. BVS228/1. Kearney interview. Kruger interview.

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settlement of Lindelani) and David Ntombela of rural Vulindlela. Cele says he had eyes for no one else, especially not the police, whom he simply distrusted. The SAP representatives were led by ex-Security Branch Col. James Louwrens, succeeded when he retired with PTSD by Major Margaret Kruger, a tall, lively, blonde legal officer. Both were genuine peacemakers, active on the ground, but the NPA, Cele affirms, ‘helped mainly on creating the platform between ANC and IFP’.8 Meetings were ‘about us, Inkatha and ANC and no one else! It pitted us together.’ Meetings were a ‘War Council!’ The DP (Peter Gastrow MP, Roger Burrows MP) ‘would really sit there and watch helplessly’ as the parties traded accusations ‘and threats even, in that boardroom!’ As Col. Louwrens puts it, it could be ‘quite a show, and I think the Chairman had a heck of a time defusing the situation!’ But, human beings being human beings, we started to thaw, to melt, and we began to make calls to one another. And people began to be amazed when they see Shabalala and I going to one ANC or IFP places. And I can tell you, it grew! Especially between Shabalala and myself, as individuals. We began to – the IFP people would phone and don’t care who they find, either they find me or him and vice versa. And we would begin to be called ‘twins’ – warlord twins! So, we moved, finally, and without carrying some people in our organizations – they thought we were selling out. But basically, myself, Shabalala, and later Ntombela, became very close. Very, very close. So, I can’t explain how it developed, but the way it developed it was really, really amazing. … I would say to people that are pushing the war from the side of the ANC, or from the side of the IFP: ‘If we can’t fight – and you all know who are we – why would you fight?’ It did, it did help.9

Independent human-rights monitor Mary de Haas was appalled that a peace committee could include warlords.10 But success depended on their presence. From 1994 Cele, Shabalala and Ntombela served together on the Provincial Legislature. Shabalala was murdered in 2005. In 2013 Ntombela, aged 87, exclaimed when given Cele’s greetings: ‘Bheki Cele is my best friend, even today: best friend. Sipho Gcabashe: best friends. Although they are ANC – I don’t mind!’11 Major Margaret Kruger observed the interactions: ‘He [Shabalala] and Bheki had a strange relationship, they actually got on together. You know it was this strange thing, if you took them away from being in front of their constituents you could actually sit down and negotiate things. But in front of constituents, they used to behave crazily.’12 8 Cele interview. 9 Ibid. 10 De Haas interview. 11 Ntombela interview. 12 Kruger interview.

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In this region of hawks and doves many were quite capable of being ‘at the forefront of peace and violence’.13 Cele reflects on how leaders had to conduct themselves: at a funeral, ‘you would rather not say anything about stopping. Because the operational word was revenge, it was for ever revenge.’ Perhaps you could raise the question in a smaller group, but ‘one thing you could not lose if you wanted to deal with violence was your credibility. Yeah, you would not lose that and hope to be listened [to].’14 When in 1994 two ‘doves’ led the province (and kept the peace structures alive) – Zuma as provincial ANC Chair, Mdlalose (IFP) as provincial Premier – it became easier: ‘Though I would be scared to go to the guys on the ground and call for peace, I would say: “The leader is calling the peace.” So it helped a lot, it helped.’15

Port Shepstone The region only ever established five local offices or ‘operations centres’.16 One served the Port Shepstone LDRC on Natal’s ‘South Coast’. Here the N2 highway turns inland, climbing up to Murchison and winding above deep valleys scattered with tiny vulnerable homesteads. The immediate hinterland, divided into many tribal areas, became a frontline in the IFP–ANC fight. There were clan and faction fights before, but ‘political’ killings arrived in the form of clashes between traditional leaders and newly mobilized UDF/ANC youth. The first ‘political’ death in police records was the lynching of tribal official Stan Blose in Boboyi near Port Shepstone in May 1989, by a crowd accusing him of strictness and collecting money for himself.17 Bloody, politicized industrial strife then affected local business. Once killings began they settled into intractable cycles of revenge. The first Chair, from February 1992, was Theo Cloete, General Manager of the Natal Portland Cement limestone mine and factory, situated just inland in the Oribi Gorge. ‘We got involved’, he says, ‘because it was our corporate duty to do so’.18 It was also grimly self-interested: ‘at one stage they shot all the workers on one shift, they’d killed them all in the bus, between Port Shepstone and our factory’. Much local relief work was carried out by Rev. Danny Chetty and his ‘Practical Ministries’ team. In September 1993 Chetty became the LDRC’s second Chair. Prior to the LDRC, the legal and business community had established an independent ‘Law Enforcement Facilitation Office’ (LEFO), which operated in 13 Dennis Nkosi interview. 14 Cele interview. 15 Ibid. 16 Port Shepstone, Umlazi, Newcastle, Empangeni and, ineffectively, Pietermaritzburg. 17 ‘Memorandum: Port Shepstone Distrik’ Maj. H. A. C. Fourie, c. September 1992, Carmichael/Fourie. 18 Cloete interview.

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rondavels in the grounds of the legal firm. It employed two young law graduates, Tracey van Biljon and Genni Blunden, who took multiple affidavits from survivors. Although attempting to be impartial, LEFO was perceived as ANC-biased. It acted as the initial secretariat for the LDRC, so the perception transferred itself to the LDRC, giving it an uphill task to engage the IFP. This LDRC’s area was vast, but violence was most intense near Port Shepstone. Its main protagonists, the psychologically unbalanced James Zulu (IFP) and Cyril Shezi (ANC, a local MK recruit), had both suffered the gruesome murders of close family. Shezi sat on the LDRC; Zulu was well known to its members, who included Ravi Pillay and Dr Siyabonga Cwele (ANC), lawyer Eric Barry, Rev. Danny Chetty, Rev. Ron Brauteseth, sociologist Marion Wessels, Leon Sassenburg and Johnny de Wet (NP), Moses Magubane and Julius Skhosana (representing amakhosi), local SAP commander Johan van Niekerk, and ISU delegates. ‘It was difficult to get rationality to prevail,’ comments Pillay, ‘although we did eventually I think; but at that point in time it was tit for tat, and pursue your agenda through violence.’19 Primary school heads Pauline Duncan and young IFP moderate Mntomuhle ‘B’ Khawula worked constructively from the start on the LDRC’s Education Sub-committee.20 After sharing a rondavel with LEFO, the LDRC office opened late in 1992 in a small rented house, with Chantelle van Biljon as secretary. Two keen, young, white graduates arrived as Coordinators: Bruce Walker in November, Nicholas Claude in January 1993. They, with International Observers, did the donkey work: meetings at chiefs’ kraals, keeping contact with the IFP and police, following up incidents, responding to crises, monitoring rallies and scrambling over hills to head off post-rally clashes, preparing LPC meetings and peace soccer matches – and just missing being blown up by an ANC youth grenade directed at police.21 Everyone was perceived as belonging to some party, so Natal/KwaZulu found it virtually impossible to recruit ‘non-aligned’ black fieldworkers. It resorted to secondees nominated by the parties. Lerato Qolosha (NP, a Sotho teacher from Transkei), Vusi Mhlongo and later Fana Sishi (ANC), and Jabulani Chonco (IFP) arrived in 1993–94 as seconded fieldworkers. A name that loomed large was that of Major Herman Fourie, ISU commander in southern Natal/KwaZulu. He did not attend the LDRC but sent representatives and liaised closely with the Coordinators. The ANC’s perception of Fourie typifies the ‘Third Force’ theories that swirled about. Quite simply, Fourie was the ‘Third Force’. ‘He was the mastermind of leading violence in this area, and 19 Pillay interview. 20 Duncan, Khawula interviews. 21 Claude, Sishi, Qolosha, Walker interviews; Walker fieldwork reports, Carmichael/ Walker.

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ensuring that the IFP is advancing.’22 ‘I was convinced that he was the military strategist for the IFP.’23 He was believed to exercise control through the amakhosi, particularly ‘B’ Khawula’s father, senior Inkhosi Calalakubo Khawula, Chair of South Coast IFP. Cele recalls hearing Fourie, in a meeting, apparently advising Inkhosi Ndwalane against the ANC. Kruger by contrast greets the suggestion that Fourie strategized for the IFP with hilarity.24 ‘B’ Khawula says Fourie did charm his father, and himself: ‘he knew how to establish friendship with the leaders. He was that kind of person.’ IFP communities did feel relatively comfortable with him: ‘when his unit got involved that is the time when at least in the IFP section we started to have something that we can hold on to in the security forces, to say: “At least we can talk to that one.”’25 ‘B’ adds that the IFP felt they were being killed, with no one being convicted. To Bruce Walker, Fourie was ‘a stock standard ISU commander’ and ‘surprisingly cooperative’.26 The truth appears to be simply that Fourie, who grew up in nearby Esperanza, spoke Zulu, understood Zulu protocol, but related to local leaders impartially, as a policeman. His written reports are strictly objective. Far from supplying weapons (of which he was accused, and cleared, in July 1994), he describes the hundreds of G3 rifles issued by KwaZulu to chiefs’ ‘bodyguards’ (132 in his area alone) as a ‘big headache’. The cruelty of the violence sickened him; memories bring tears. He warmed to the police among the International Observers: ‘Many of them were out with me in the fields, and … I can assure you that we as policemen, I really appreciated that because they could see, on ground level, what was actually the true facts and the truth behind everything.’27 Similarly, he appreciated Walker and Claude, who worked positively with his men on the ground. ‘I must say that it was a fantastic effort from everybody, that contributed to the peace at that time.’28 The Port Shepstone LPC continued, finally chaired by businesswoman Cynthia Mqwebu, until closure in 2001.

Peacemaking with the amakhosi COMSA made a unique impact in Natal/KwaZulu through the Commonwealth’s Assistant Director of International Affairs, Ghanaian Dr Moses Anafu. On COMSA’s arrival in October 1992 the region had only six LDRCs of an intended 22 Shezi interview. In the police view, Shezi, MK member and youth organizer, had in 1990–91 been ‘the ANC equivalent of Chief Khawula’; both had dockets opened against them (Kruger interview). 23 Pillay interview. 24 Cele, Kruger interviews. 25 Khawula interview. 26 Walker interview. 27 Fourie interview. 28 Ibid.

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twenty-six (and only eleven ever existed). COMSA set out to strengthen them and help form new committees. Anafu, himself the son of a chief, realized the extent to which the Accord was hampered by its poor connection to the traditional leaders, the chiefs (amakhosi) who constituted the Zulu aristocracy, and the headmen (indunas) whom they appointed. These commanded allegiance in their own areas and among their people working in cities. Chiefs wielded power in matters of land allocation, local taxation and customary law. Most were IFP-aligned. Many ANC displacees were youth who had opposed their chiefs and were chased away. Anafu calculated that the chiefs’ fear of being abolished was itself causing violence. Believing that traditional and modern governance can coexist, he aimed to allay that fear. He understood that, in order to reconcile, what chiefs wanted above all was ukuhlonipa (respect, recognition). He was able to impress upon the chiefs that, in return, they should respect everyone, being fathers to all irrespective of party. In preparation, on 10 November 1992, Anafu recruited Prince Maurice Vulingqondo Madlala, a young school principal and cousin of the King, as his assistant, getting him seconded to COMSA. They headed to Umbumbulu, a rural area south of Durban deeply disturbed by faction and political fighting. They approached Inkhosi Wellington Hlengwa, man of peace, IFP member, President of the Umbumbulu Regional Authority (the area’s House of Chiefs). Hlengwa convened the Authority on 20 November and the amakhosi gave support to the peace initiative. Anafu and Madlala meanwhile visited local ANC Chair Bheki Cele. On 27 November the amakhosi, IFP, ANC, business, churches, NGOs, and the RDRC gathered and formally authorized an LDRC. It launched on Friday 4 December, New Nation describing this as ‘an unsurpassed feat in the strife-torn Natal Upper South Coast (COMSA Report Phase I p.27). By March 1993 Anafu and Madlala had achieved similar success in Ndwedwe, north of Durban. Violence in Umbumbulu decreased markedly, but the understaffed RDRC was unable to give detailed attention to the LDRC and it suffered from poor attendance. On 25 April COMSA met the IFP members alone to hear their problems: lack of transport, insecurity on the roads, poor communication between local leadership and grassroots. The region appointed two mature men, Isaac Shandu (IFP) and Vasco Hlengwa (ANC), as voluntary Coordinators, equipped with a hired car, to disseminate information about the LPC and bring members to meetings. From 14 May, meetings were well attended. The Coordinators became peacemakers, Shandu saying in July: ‘We have now established free political movement in the area.’29 When incidents recurred in August–­ September, tension rose but the LPC still met weekly, with COMSA Observers, ‘an important stabilising factor in the area’ (COMSA Report Phase III p.31). 29 South Coast Sun 9/7/93.

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Shandu was the sole NPA staff member to be killed on duty. On 22 March 1994 he took an induna to a meeting in semi-rural Engonyameni. Both were shot by a hired gun who happened to be an ANC youth. A ‘political’ statistic – but the motive actually related to a taxi feud they were attempting to mediate.30 Anafu’s team moved south to Port Shepstone, where displacees wished to return home but any attempts to do so had ended in violence. With the LDRC’s blessing, Anafu went first to Chief Khawula, senior chief and South Coast IFP Chair. ‘He requested us’, says Madlala, ‘to make peace to continue.’31 They met his ANC counterpart, Dr Siyabonga Cwele, who called Pillay, Shezi and others to meet them. They tried, Madlala says, several times to persuade the powerful, traumatized and unpredictable James Zulu, IFP Chair in the overlapping Izingolweni area, that there was a need for peace. He agreed, eventually, to talk to the ANC. The team targeted two areas just inland from Port Shepstone, KwaNdwalane and KwaMavundla, ruled by chiefs Aaron Ndwalane and Samuel Mavundla. Inkhosi Ndwalane’s iron fist had alienated large numbers of youth. In 1990 they rebelled and forced him to leave. He violently regained control, in a reprisal campaign lasting from January 1991 to June 1992. Youths fled as far as Durban. After protracted negotiations the Chief agreed to act as the father of all, above politics, and receive them back; and the ANC and refugees agreed that if the Inkhosi was truly non-partisan, ‘they would have no problem in recognising his authority and according him due respect’ (COMSA Report Phase I p.28). For the first Peace Rally, on Sunday 6 December 1992, and despite continuous rain, 2,000 people gathered at Nyandezulu Primary School, with the chiefs, the LDRC, COMSA, ANC, IFP, returning refugees and the remaining community. Inkhosi Ndwalane and the ANC made public pledges of mutual respect and the LDRC’s ‘reconstruction of shelter’ initiative was launched with the appointment of a Resettlement and Development Committee.32 Inkhosi Mavundla had also fled during the youth uprising, but returned peacefully so reconciliation was easier. The second peace rally, in KwaMavundla on 12 December, was attended by some 500 and a second Resettlement and Development Committee was formed. The third and largest rally, on 13 December at Murchison in KwaNdwalane, was attended by 6,000. Regional ANC and IFP leaders urged their supporters to turn from violence and make peace real. Some 350–400 refugees returned on 23 December, after a three-year absence. The monthly death rate at the height of the violence had averaged 25–40. That December it was just two (Ibid. p.29). The LPC, its Coordinators, and the Reconstruction Committees facilitated communication, and a joint Peace Festival was held on 28 March 1993. 30 www.justice.gov.za/trc/decisions/2000/ac20009.htm [accessed 12/3/21]. 31 Madlala interview. 32 See pp.331–3.

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A bloody incident occurred at 2am on 5 April when ten out of twelve ANC youths sleeping in a house in Murchison were slaughtered with grenades and automatic fire by a group of twenty to thirty ‘unknown gunmen’. This apparently was the intra-ANC execution of a rogue SDU.33 The IFP was at that moment returning to the LPC after boycotting it in protest at its unauthorized submission to Goldstone, based on affidavits from the Law Enforcement Facilitation Office mainly from ‘ANC’ survivors. The ANC and IFP met at Chief Ndwalane’s kraal, and peace held. Some ‘ANC–IFP’ incidents marred 1993, but ‘reconstruction of shelter’ continued uninterrupted, a SERD triumph. The final massacre of the era occurred at Shobashobane near Izingolweni, inland of Port Shepstone, on Christmas Day 1995. A pocket of 240 ANC refugees including families, who had returned with weak permission and no ceremony, was attacked by several hundred neighbours, killing eighteen. The organizer was probably James Zulu (Engelbrecht, 1999 p.47). LPC fieldworkers and police had held meetings there just days previously, but all seemed calm and they were taken by surprise. Fourie, who had recently been moved, believes that had he still been commander, he would have taken warnings seriously.34 James Zulu, under investigation for this massacre and another murder, was assassinated in a possibly taxi-related shooting in 1998.

Durban Umlazi is a township clinging to steep hills in the south of Durban. With its hostels and IFP mayor, warlord Maria Xulu, it saw frequent clashes, and attracted an early and active LDRC. On Umlazi’s southern edge lay the informal settlement of Malukazi. Stephanie Miller, the LDRC’s Scottish-born Coordinator, describes months of negotiations culminating in the signing of a Malukazi Peace Pact on 1 August 1993. The ceremony involved soccer: There had been a lot of killings in Malukazi, and it gave the community the opportunity to have an IFP and an ANC team playing against each other, and a joint ANC/IFP team against SAP, which was quite a significant happening. We organized it and we borrowed the nets and equipment from the local child-care facility, and from the business community we got a person with earth-moving equipment to come and level our football field for us. And it was a very significant event. It was after significant killings had happened on both sides. … And I think the dispute in that area was not a political dispute originally, it was a dispute about water taps – everyone used a central tap – and it became politicized. One group wouldn’t let the people use the tap because it was in their area – and so it went. It was part of that resolution.35 33

Compare the execution of ANCYL members by a Katlehong SDU in December 1993. www.academia.edu/978827/THE_MOLELEKI_EXECUTION_A_RADICAL_PROBLEM_OF_UNDERSTANDING [accessed 9/10/21]. 34 Fourie interview. 35 Miller interview.

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Several areas in north Durban suffered intense violence. Over the weekend of 21–23 January 1994 over 100 participants from Inanda, Bhambayi, Ntuzuma, and Lindelani gathered for a peace conference at a holiday camp in Margate, south of Port Shepstone. It was organized by the RPC and funded by the business-based ‘Ad Hoc Northern Durban Peace Support Group’. Far from their blood-soaked streets, ANC and IFP shared rooms, played sports, and ‘discussed their parties’ policies in a friendly atmosphere’.36 Longlost friendships were recovered and leaders committed themselves to work for peace, intending to hold that elusive thing, a joint peace rally, in Ntuzuma soon. Siphiwe Ximba (ANC, Inanda) said: ‘We are going back to our people at grassroots level to report about our meeting and to spread the message of peace.’ Laughing and shaking his hand, IFP warlord Thomas Shabalala agreed. The achievement, he said, was a ‘miracle’: he had learned that the people were committed to peace; only criminals were not.37 KZN still had a way to go – but seeds of the future were planted at such break-aways.

Election and eventual peace Even KZN had a relatively peaceful election, extended to three days after serious logistical problems on day one. The NPS helped prevent an IFP walk-out with flying visits to Buthelezi, both by Gildenhuys and by Rupert Lorimer. Lorimer invited himself to breakfast with the Chief on the second day, flying down by military aircraft and helping to negotiate the third day.38 KZN alone kept its peace structures, but as a security mechanism shorn of the peacebuilding functions of SERD, Training, and Communications. On 14 May 1999, to end the fighting definitively before the second democratic election on 2 June, Premier Lionel Mtshali (IFP) and Jacob Zuma (ANC) signed a KZN Provincial Peace Pact, complete with Code of Conduct. ‘Politics’ had accounted for some 12,000 deaths in the province since 1985. Its peace structures closed at the end of 2001.

Wits/Vaal The Witwatersrand/Vaal area, centred on Johannesburg, is South Africa’s commercial and industrial heartland, stretching from Midrand in the north to the Vaal River, from Carletonville in the west to Springs and Heidelberg in the east. It exhibited most of South Africa’s problems; and it was a treasury of capacity and resource. In November 1991 the NPS decided a skilled facilitator was needed to bring this region together, and the choice fell on IMSSA’s Director, Charles Nupen. 36 Natal Mercury 24/1/94. 37 Ibid.; Sunday Tribune 23/1/94. 38 Lorimer interview.

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Nupen offered to host the region without charge in IMSSA’s head offices in Richmond, Johannesburg. This ‘interim’ arrangement lasted until March 1993. It came with the services of Nupen himself, his secretary Elizabeth Storey (wife of Bishop Peter) and, from April 1992, Ilona Tip, the phenomenally fast-working, multi-tasking Coordinator of IMSSA’s Community Mediation Service, assisted by a whizz-kid intern, Fulbright Scholar Suzanne Nossel. IMSSA convened the region’s exploratory meeting at its offices on 20 January 1992.39 Nupen agreed to act as interim Chair for four months. His permanent successor was André Lamprecht of Barlow’s, with Vice-chair Rupert Lorimer MP and, as Co-vice-chair from 1993, Methodist Bishop Peter Storey. The region launched at the Milpark Holiday Inn on 7 February 1992. The meeting agreed six priority areas for the establishment of LDRCs. A strategy sub-committee planned dates and the initial meetings were packed into the last week of March. By 9 April, Wits/Vaal had ten LDRCs and growing. The region moved into its own Braamfontein Centre offices on 1 March 1993, with human rights lawyer/mediator Peter Harris as Regional Director and law graduates David Storey and Mahlape Sello as Regional Coordinator and Regional Organizer. Harris built an impressive multiracial cohort of twenty-­ eight regional and forty-seven local staff. At its peak in 1994, twenty-three LPCs covered the region, most equipped with an office, secretary, fieldworker, and Monitor Coordinator, and supported by one of six Regional Coordinators. A hive of activity, Wits/Vaal led the development of peace monitoring and established sustainable peace – even, by mid-1994, in its most recalcitrant area, ‘Kathorus’ on the East Rand.

Peace in Soweto South-west of Johannesburg lies Soweto. An early NPS intervention here bore untold fruit. In November 1991, before Wits/Vaal was born, the NPS made ‘firefighting’ in Soweto an urgent priority. This vast township officially housed one million. Myriad tiny government-owned ‘matchbox’ houses, a few shack areas, and scattered one-storey hostel complexes formed several distinct residential zones across gently undulating ground. Tempers were high after train violence and ‘ANC–IFP’ incidents. The visit on Tuesday 19 November was a first for Gildenhuys: The first job was to set up Peace Committees and we thought we’d try in Soweto, and Myburgh said well, he’s arranged a police guard and I can travel with him, with a police guard! So I said: ‘No, what credibility will I have left if I arrive with a police guard and in the company of the NP?! I’ll go there on my own!’ I had my car, and a driver. The meeting was set for a church, Regina Mundi. … It had been arranged that police will precede me just to show the 39

NPS Minutes 20/1/92, BVS228/1.

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way or I’ll never find it. Two young policemen then, in front of me and they drove so fast, I think on purpose, that after a first few blocks we just lost them [laughter] and we had to stop at times and ask: ‘Please, where’s this church? Where’s this church?!’ And everybody very kind and they directed me, and I reached the church eventually. It took quite a few meetings to establish a peace committee.40

Regina Mundi Catholic church with its great ‘struggle’ pedigree was now supporting peace prayers and meetings. This exploratory meeting was limited to ANC, IFP and SAP. Five IFP arrived, including one woman and Themba Khoza, the region’s young, suave, smooth-talking organizer, correctly suspected of gun-running. The ANC’s four also included a regional leader, Floyd Mashele. The NPS lacked only Vos and Collis. The SAP, taking Soweto seriously, sent seven colonels and brigadiers. After his usual introduction Gildenhuys invited the parties ‘to inform the NPS of particular problems they experience in Soweto’. The ANC said the problems of political violence here are ‘very delicate’: the perpetrators are the hostel residents, and members or supporters of IFP. IFP meetings lead to bloodshed (e.g. Nancefield Hostel shootings). Both ANC and innocent community members are attacked. The police have ability to handle the situation but do not act efficiently, e.g. attacks on trains and meetings by heavily armed people. ‘The police support the IFP and it seems as if they act as spokesmen for the IFP.’ The IFP said the police act inefficiently to control violence. The ANC attacks train passengers. It intimidates people, in townships and schools, to support the ANC. It ambushes IFP marches. If the ANC leaders decide the killing must stop, it will. ‘Their aim is not only to kill the members of the IFP, but to kill all Zulus.’ They intend to demolish the hostels. There must be an honest commitment to stop. The SAP said there was no sense in accusing one another. An RDRC should be established to address the problems of the violence.41

Every sentence, captured in Bezeidenhout’s longhand, typed up in Pretoria, contained some truth. Both sides saw themselves as under attack. Both regarded retaliation and pre-emptive strikes as legitimate ‘defence’. To both, the police appeared at best distant and ineffective, at worst partisan. The police saw a turf war going on, largely beyond their control. Their task all too often was to collect the corpses. They just wanted a mechanism that would work, to end the killing.

40 Gildenhuys interview. 41 NPS 19/11/91, BVS228/1.

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Gildenhuys commented on the ‘deep-rooted enmity between some members’.42 Naidoo doubted the IFP representatives could be trusted – but it was better to ‘understand your adversary’ than to have no communication.43 This was the first ever opportunity for everyone to listen to one another. Asked to suggest what organizations must be invited to the next meeting the parties produced similar lists including the Soweto Chamber of Commerce and non-signatories PAC and AZAPO. Only the ANC listed MUCCOR (Ministers United for Christian Co-Responsibility), the local forum of progressive church leaders. The NPS noted the lists as provisional pending further advice at the next meeting, planned for 28 November. The NPS planned the agenda: introduction, membership, Chairperson, and the date, venue and formalities for launching the LDRC. Gildenhuys chaired. Remarkably, the meeting agreed the agenda without lengthy discussion. The organizations present were also remarkable, from AZAPO to the government-­ originated Soweto City Council. Themba Khoza came with Humphrey Ndlovu, the IFP region’s more senior heavyweight, and two IFP officials representing hostels. The ANC suggested there was room in Soweto for more than one LDRC. The IFP moved, and the meeting unanimously agreed, that this committee become the Greater Soweto DRC, not ruling out further committees for particular zones (LDRCs were quickly established in Meadowlands and Orlando; the other zones resisted partition). A list of twenty-two organizations was agreed, from the Hostel Dwellers’ Association to teachers’ unions, MUCCOR, Soweto Civic Association, Diepmeadow City Council, SAP, and SADF. AZAPO flagged itself as an observer. Organizations were encouraged to pick Soweto residents as their representatives, for speed of convening in emergencies. No attempt was made to choose a local Chair. The NPS undertook to provide possible names. Gildenhuys would chair the launch, scheduled for Monday 9 December, 10am at the Lutheran Centre.44 The launch actually took place on 12 December, with sixteen organizations present. The Greater Soweto DRC was constituted. No consensus having been reached on a Chair, Gildenhuys agreed to act temporarily. Mashele suggested an Interim Executive composed of ANC, SACP, COSATU, IFP, Soweto Civic Association, SAP and SADF, a heavily ANC-weighted list. Khoza preferred not to have an Interim Executive. Its appointment was referred to the next meeting, after the month-long Christmas holiday. Early in January a bloody attack took place on a house in Dobsonville, Soweto. The ANC blamed the IFP. Both police and press quickly revealed that this was an apolitical family feud; but the IFP had already issued an angry 42 Star 29/1/92. 43 Jayendra Naidoo interview. 44 NPS 28/11/91, BVS228/1.

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statement announcing that the Soweto DRC had collapsed. Appeals from other members and the NPS brought the IFP back and the Committee met on 20 January. Charles Nupen, already engaged in creating the Wits/Vaal RDRC, was introduced by Gildenhuys and took the chair. Denis Beckett, present to report for The Star’s ‘Peace Train’ feature, noted the effect of one civil society member: The first crack in the ice came at the hands of a French Catholic priest and long-time Soweto resident, Father La Font. At the most recent meeting while the committee seemed terminally deadlocked as usual, Fr La Font presented a plea which, according to one member, ‘shamed everyone into behaving like gentlemen’.45

Clashes occurred in early February between township residents and the Meadow­lands hostel. The cause was unclear. Nine died, many were injured and some houses were destroyed. The DRC reacted immediately, visiting as a multiparty group, establishing the Meadowlands LDRC and working positively with the police and army to prevent further violence.46 Charles Nupen, veteran of many labour disputes, remarked: ‘I thought I knew a lot about mediation. I have been back to the drawing board many times in the last weeks and am somewhat more humble as a result.’47 The GSDRC then set up a crisis centre and Violence Monitoring Committee, the earliest such initiatives under the NPA. Soweto’s SAP commanders set up an efficient, in-touch policing system across Soweto, a key factor in achieving much improved relationships with the community. An Orlando LDRC appeared beside Meadowlands. Soweto still suffered a few incidents but violence, including train violence, diminished through 1992–93. Under the watchful umbrella of the GSDRC this massive township, dotted with several large hostels, was saved from quite possible descent into the kind of destructive fury seen in 1992 in Alexandra and 1993 in Kathorus. Quick constructive action by the community and police, made possible by the NPA, made all the difference.

Peace in Alexandra Unlike Soweto, ‘Alex’ in northeast Johannesburg is a long-established township, with a strong, if fractious, communal identity. Old Alex, about four square kilometres in area, occupies a slope rising from the west bank of the Jukskei river. Laid out in 1912, before the 1913 Land Act, it provided generous house plots for black and coloured people, with freehold ownership. Slowly extra rooms were added to the houses. Under apartheid the freehold properties were appropriated, Alex was threatened with removal, and three vast multi-storey red-brick hostels were built, one women’s and two men’s, each housing some 3,000 ‘single’ 45 Unpublished draft faxed by Beckett to Pauquet 24/1/92, Carmichael/Pauquet. 46 Star 12/2/92. 47 IMSSA Review No. 16, 1994 p.30, Carmichael.

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persons. The abolition of influx control in 1986 brought a population increase from 80,000 to around 200,000. Shacks burgeoned, with consequent pressure on infrastructure. Political violence began in March 1991 and the two men’s hostels, M1 and M2, uphill and dominating the southwest quarter of Alex, became IFP fortresses. On 19 March 1992, following a year of violent incidents, intimidation and rising fear, a sudden mass displacement occurred from that quarter. Some 2,600 people fled over a few days. The quarter was dubbed ‘Beirut’, and it and ‘greater Alex’ became mutual ‘no-go’ areas. Police had been helpless to prevent the murders and intimidation. On 26 March the ISU teargassed a large protest march, unleashing a week of stoning and shooting, barricades and burning tyres, wild rumours and lurid headlines. The Wits/Vaal RDRC, already in process of exploring an LDRC for ‘white’ Randburg and Sandton, and Alexandra, held a seven-hour emergency meeting with representatives from Alex on 1 April.48 The meeting appointed an ‘Alexandra Interim Crisis Committee’ (ICC) of just five members: Alexandran Mike Beea (ANC), Bruce Anderson (white, British, IFP), Melanie Stewart (DP, Sandton Councillor), Deane Yates OBE (British-born, ex-headmaster, an Anglican Lay Minister well known in Alex, representing relief organizations), and myself (churches, an Anglican diocesan worker, nominated by the Alex Ministers Fraternal). Charles Nupen, on being asked for advice, replied: ‘Well we’ve found: keep meticulous Minutes!’ That evening Deane added a second word: ‘I learned one thing as a young army officer [in the Second World War]: “Lose touch and you lose the battle.” We must meet every day.’ Accurate minutes and fast action helped bring success. The ICC, which changed its name to ‘LPC’ only in 1994, brought the opponents together and succeeded, through daily hands-on work, in establishing communication, understanding, and, in March 1993, a peace that proved sustainable. The SADF under Col. McGill Alexander, posted to Alex simultan­ eously with the ICC, played a very positive role, as did the ISU under Brigadier Jaap Venter. ‘ANC’ displacees were now living in churches, disused schools, a community hall and the Council offices. Their abandoned houses were looted and burnt, a few being occupied by displaced ‘IFP’ families. A small number of Zulu families and individuals, perhaps 300 in all, had fled into the M1 hostel after being labelled ‘IFP spies’ and chased from ‘greater Alex’. Strangers who wandered into ‘Beirut’ were daily being killed or maimed, as spies, or in revenge, or in violent robbery. The perpetrators were generally tsotsi youths. The same fate awaited people walking out of that area, whether locals or unwary strangers. Tragically, visitors frequently walked or drove 48 Alexandra ICC Minutes: Carmichael, and Univ. of the Witwatersrand, Historical Papers, AG3056.

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through ‘Beirut’ and it was the main route to the Alex Clinic. Small groups made night attacks in both directions. The ICC aimed to go to every incident and establish what had happened, what people thought had happened and what they might do in consequence – and what might be done constructively. Identified by Melanie’s artistic ‘ICC’ badges and ICC posters stuck on our cars, we spent long hours in the community. We set out to counter rumours, disseminate facts, and confront everyone impartially. The army listened and agreed to patrol where the people needed them, and by working with the IFP, ISU and army we stabilized the ‘remainees’, preventing the misery of further displacements. The ISU invited the ICC to monitor its dawn ‘sweeps’, searching for illegal firearms. We found ourselves in the M1 hostel, or in the nearby ‘ANC’ shacks, at 4am, assessing the thoroughness, civility and impartiality of the searches. This led to our facilitating the first real conversations between police and community, and the appreciation among the community that the Accord could achieve concrete changes in police behaviour. The IFP’s Bruce Anderson was an interesting handful, romantic about Zulu warriors and rather naïve about violence, but learning fast. He provided an immediate entrée into the hostels and helped prevent further displacements. When his visa expired he was succeeded by Lucas Khoza, a respected elder

Photo 16.1 ISU Casspir and the author, near M1 Hostel, Alexandra, 25 September 1992. Photo: Peter Magubane. Author copyright.

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Alexandran; the young would-be warrior Peterson Phoswa; and independent pastor Rev. David Khumalo, himself displaced into ‘Beirut’. Mike Beea’s oratory helped avert a battle between township and police on May Day. His successor Mandla Maseko was an MK officer trained in Ukraine, captured and imprisoned on Robben Island, who returned home to Alex in 1991. Mandla was a fearless peacemaker, jogging daily through ‘Beirut’. COSAS gave the ICC an outstanding young peacemaker in David ‘Slovo’ Matlhanye (Makhado), who is living with albinism. Col. McGill Alexander (SADF), and Brig. Jaap Venter (ISU) and their successors also entered wholeheartedly into peacemaking. Slovo explains how he and his ANCYL peers were at first against the peace initiative: We thought that we must be aggressive, and not talk to those people. It was armed struggle. Being diplomatic was not there. And we were young, we were immature. And that was even when Codesa had started, but it was just ‘out there’ – and then, Codesa came to Alex! That’s what happened: Codesa came to Alex!49

The students were persuaded by Alex elders Patience Pashe (WFP) and Cubantrained Dr Thabo Mnisi (ANC) that the time had come for talking – and Slovo was impressed that the ICC had brought real dialogue and was out on the ground: ‘People could see it, it made contact with the people.’ The influence of such elders and of pro-active police and army officers, all with a strong commitment to the peace process, seems to mark a significant difference between Alexandra and Kathorus. The ICC grew to include the police, army, Women for Peace, Alex administration, displacees, and hostels. We established 24-hour communication between all parties by pagers, landlines, visits and, in 1993–94, two-way radio. The idea of a wider LDRC fell away but volunteers from Randburg and Sandton helped in Alex. On 25 June 1992 a business representative, Brian Wegerle of Nedcor, a founder of the Middelburg Forum, succeeded me as Chair. Wegerle concentrated on SERD, ANC–IFP bilaterals, and business breakfasts for publicity and fundraising. I majored on monitoring and crises, which included mediating the local and sub-regional taxi wars, working with the Goldstone Commission. The chair finally passed to Alexandran Patience Pashe, of Women for Peace. Nedcor sponsored a significant weekend away for the ICC in September 1992, to bond and brainstorm on visions for Alexandra’s peaceful future. The ICC formed a number of sub-committees, ‘Task Groups’ for Development, Security, and Communications, drawing in more Alex organizations; and a Tours Action Group (TAG) that enabled ICC members to introduce 49 Matlhanye (Makhado) interview.

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Photo 16.2 Alexandra ICC (LDRC) at planning weekend, Garden Lodge, 12–13 September 1992. Back row, left to right: Mike Beea (ANC), Col. McGill Alexander (SADF), Deane Yates (relief organizations), Brian Wegerle (business), Sgt Hilton Roe (CIS); Middle: ?Phineas Sokela (IFP/hostels), Steve Burger (Alex administration), Harry Matlou (displacees), Front row: Phillip Ndlangamandla (M1 Hostel), Heather Holmes (business), Patience Pashe (WFP), Liz Carmichael (churches), ISU representative, Boetie van der Merwe (displacees). By permission of Brigadier General McGill Alexander (retired).

numerous visitors and VIPs to Alex and the Peace Accord. The ICC minibus donated by Price Waterhouse was useful for the tours. The ICC and each Task Group met weekly. It was important to invite someone present to pray at the beginning and end of meetings. Members invoked their shared Christian identity, as well as common humanity – ubuntu – and being South African: ‘We are brothers and sisters – why are we fighting?’ Media relations were time-consuming. Newsrooms looked for sensation and relied heavily on police reports which only roughly discriminated between criminal and ‘political’ deaths. Police collected the bodies and could rarely investigate the cause.50 ‘Political’ was the default category. A headline in the Sowetan on Monday 2 November 1992 screamed: ‘Alex on the Boil’, claiming ten people had died in ‘running battles’ over the weekend. No battles had occurred! 50 Gous interview; Howarth, 2012 p.93 and passim.

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The reality was that three separate corpses were found near the ‘no-go’ border, possibly the result of ‘political’ violence. By Christmas there was calm, and 1993 would be entirely free of political killings in Alex, despite false alarms. On Sunday 17 January Radio 702 aired a press agency (SAPA) report that ‘quoted’ SAP spokesman Col. David Bruce as saying: ‘Violence has again erupted in Alexandra Township … after weeks of relative calm and stability.’ The victims, SAPA added, were IFP. In fact three unrelated murders, regarded by all as crime, had occurred in the ‘IFP’ area that Saturday. I phoned David Bruce. No, he had not said ‘violence has erupted’! SAPA then explained that ‘the lady on the midnight shift’ had added those opening words. SAPA promised to correct them and omit ‘IFP’.51 But the three murders doubtless already counted towards the HRC’s ‘twenty-six’ political deaths in Alex in 1993 (HRC, 1993 p.19). The ICC with its close monitoring counted none, and only two in 1994. Peace was declared in Alexandra at a remarkable funeral in March 1993. Peterson Phoswa’s common-law wife Maria Mnguni, who came from an ‘ANC’ family in ‘greater Alex’ but lived in an abandoned house near the M1 hostel with Peterson and their baby son, was killed in an internal, criminal attack. She belonged to both sides, was widely liked, and no political blame attached to her death. Her funeral on Saturday 27 March, coordinated through the ICC, brought the communities together. A working party produced ‘Monitor’ sashes from strips of bed sheets, to be worn by a joint team of young IFP and ANC (COSAS) members. New Wits/Vaal orange pennants flew from our car windows; the ECOMSA car displayed the EU flag, Maria’s ‘ANC’ family welcomed everyone. The Clinic reopened its side gate. The ‘no-go’ border was declared open. The hostels had joined the Hostels Peace Initiative. There were doubters, but no violence. When in August violence threatened from outside Alex, joint monitoring averted any trouble.52 On Peace Day, 2 September, a fifteen-minute documentary on the ICC featured on SABC TV’s flagship Agenda programme. Peace activities proliferated, and 198 Alexandran and 50 white volunteers were trained as peace monitors. Communication with the IFP was maintained throughout the tense pre-­election months. The election was exemplary.53 On 21 July 1994, after hundreds of hours of taxi mediation involving Roger Oxlee (Midrand LPC Chair), his indefatigable secretary Mavis Cook, Lutheran Minister Rev. Trevor Sibande, and myself, Alexandra’s two warring taxi associations joined with other associations in the sub-region to celebrate a lasting peace, with Goldstone’s Advocate Niel Rossouw and Regional Director Peter Harris as guests of honour. The ICC renamed ‘Beirut’ the ‘Re-Construction Area’ (RCA) and facilitated 51 52 53

Author’s Alexandra Peace Notes 1993, Carmichael. See p.315. See pp.324–5.

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endless emotive discussions about rehabilitating the abandoned houses and ‘upgrading’ the hostels. In 1995, after the closure of the formal peace structures, the displacees and hostel dwellers reconvened as the ‘Alexandra Plenary Group for Reconciliation and Reconstruction’, with support from churches, SACS, Toyota, the NPAT, Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, Australia, and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, and legitimized by the short-lived ‘Gauteng RDP Core Group’. On 1 May 1995, with the local political leaders, they signed Alexandra’s own peace agreement, a ‘Declaration of Reconciliation and Reconstruction’. Displacees were helped to relocate. Eventually, efforts were made to refurbish the hostels. Where the abandoned houses once stood, a fence sponsored by the NPAT kept the ground free of shacks, and in the early 2000s twenty-four new blocks of flats rose on it. The keys to success in Alex were the intensive grassroots work, at first dependent on non-aligned members ignoring ‘no-go’ borders; the initial advice; the positive contribution of key community and security force members; support from Wits/Vaal region, business, International Observers and embassies; and Brian Wegerle’s motto: ‘Be part of the solution, not of the problem.’

‘Kathorus’ The contiguous townships that form ‘Kathorus’ – Thokoza, Katlehong, and Vosloorus – each developed their own separate LDRC, none of which proved strong. The newly formed NPS immediately invited the existing Thokoza peace initiative (see pp.71–5) to form an LDRC. It did so at its second Peace Conference, at Macauvlei on the Vaal River early in November 1992. Grahame Matthewson of Dulux and Gertrude Mzizi (IFP) had served a year together on the informal ‘Thokoza Peace Coordinating Committee’ (TPCC). At Macauvlei, Mzizi told Matthewson a ‘most horrible story’: She and I were talking and she said: ‘You see those boys over there?’ I said ‘Yes.’ She said: ‘I was walking away from Khumalo Street, at the height of some of the violence. They were ANC SDU guys.’ And, she said, they attacked her, and they got a tyre over her head and they got the petrol onto the tyre, and they started trying to light matches and the matches wouldn’t strike. And a police armoured vehicle came around the corner and saw what was going on, and its sirens went off and these guys ran, and she was saved. And she called them over, and they laughed and she said: ‘You know the last time we spoke this is what you were doing’ – and they engaged on it! And I thought to myself: Well, here we are trying to get a peace accord where somebody who’s nearly been necklaced is now confronting the people – and they didn’t deny it! She knew exactly who they were, and they knew exactly who she was. And they engaged, and there was a rapport.54 54 Matthewson interview.

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The Conference received encouraging visits from Rupert Lorimer, Alberton business, and local government. The NPA connection brought police participation in the shape of the ISU’s constructive regional commander Brigadier Jaap Venter – who unfortunately seems to have played no further role in Kathorus. It was unanimously agreed to become an LDRC. The TPCC reformatted itself as a nine-person Working Committee, initially responsible to a Forum so large that it only met once, composed of two representatives each of the nineteen organizations invited to the Conference. The Working Committee, consisting of ANC, IFP, Thokoza hostels, churches, ANC Youth League, IFP Youth Brigade, Phola Park, Thokoza Chamber of Commerce, and Thokoza United Taxi Association, launched on 13 November. Next day it met the SAP and SADF separately. As trust built up, the security forces joined the Working Committee, but police–community relations across Kathorus remained persistently distant and violent. The Wits/Vaal region, launching on 7 February 1992, adopted the Committee as an LDRC. Matthewson and Candotti were shocked to discover how under-resourced the NPA structures were. Pretorius or Haysom chaired the early meetings, then from late February the permanent Chair was their fellow IMSSA facilitator Phiroshaw ‘PC’ Camay, a gentle, laid-back promoter of civil society and former unionist. Matthewson continued to convene. The year 1992 was relatively calm. Matthewson (1992 pp.7–8) reported in August that the LDRC was flourishing. It had successfully intervened in an educational and a taxi dispute, and ‘the active involvement of committee members during the recent mass action campaign undoubtedly had an impact and unlike in the past there were no recorded incidents of intimidation’ and no violence. Matthewson also notes weaknesses, with which other local committees also had to contend: parties being too polite to tackle real issues in committee; inconsistent representation; lack of negotiating and intervention skills; agreements made which parties could not implement; weak lines of communication between members of the same party, between the parties, and with the community; lack of trust and ‘excessive rumour-mongering’; and insufficient financial and administrative support. ‘PC’ did not lack courage. Matthewson recalls him driving nonchalantly through a police–SDU gunfight, waving and calling: ‘Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!’ The fight stopped. But what did not happen in this quiet period, due to lack of personnel, was in-depth, hands-on, pro-active peacebuilding to create new relationships between the hostels, squatters, residents, and security forces. Distance and profound distrust remained. In Germiston, a committee that formed in 1990 to deal with industrial conflict, under consultant Kathleen Jansen, became an LDRC in December 1991. In April 1992 Germiston’s township of Katlehong, bordering on Thokoza, acquired an LDRC chaired by Mike Ngidi from business (human resources). A merger in November 1992 produced the Germiston/Katlehong LDRC, chaired first by

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Jansen, then from late 1993 by Ngidi. In Vosloorus, Paul Pretorius facilitated the formation of an LDRC in April 1992. He was succeeded as Chair by his IMSSA colleagues David Storey and Vincent Mntambo. The three ‘Kathorus’ LDRCs gained energy when holding joint meetings but these were rare. Individually, none of the three LDRCs was rated ‘strong’. Kathorus should probably, as was several times suggested, have formed a well-­ resourced sub-regional unit. Moves towards this came late; meanwhile the Wits/ Vaal ‘Regional Peace Secretariat’ staff made interventions from outside. From January 1993 violence rose. ANC and IFP youths in Thokoza and Katlehong mobilized and began demarcating mutual ‘no-go’ zones. Reasons are unclear, but the renewed war mentality coincided with the arrival of MK cadre Robert McBride, a just-released ‘political’ prisoner, bomber of ‘Magoo’s Bar’ in Durban in 1986. Kathorus was the only part of Wits/Vaal region where ‘SDUs’ had significantly developed, albeit lacking in structure and discipline. The ANC ‘Peace Desk’ quietly sent McBride to organize them. Katlehong, and the much quieter Vosloorus, resisted control but, working with local ANC leader Duma Nkosi, McBride imposed order as set out in Kasrils’s handbook For the Sake of our Lives on Phola Park and the thirteen Thokoza SDUs.55 They conducted urban warfare accordingly, adamantly holding to the mantra that nothing, including peace initiatives, must interfere with ‘the defence of the community’.56 ‘Defence’ meant patrolling and attacking the police and IFP – whom they regarded, especially at night, as a single entity. Young ISU police, caught in the middle, collected the corpses and shot at anyone who shot at them (Howarth, 2012 pp.197, 225). Violence redoubled after an incident on Saturday 22 May 1993. A march led by ANC Vosloorus Chair Mondli Gungubele, ironically aiming to lodge a protest about the violence with Thokoza’s administrators in Alberton, proceeded up Khumalo St from the stadium. The march had permission but lacked the pre-planning that was by then normal. Camay, Matthewson, other LPC members and UNOMSA Observers were monitoring. Camay had assumed the ISU would block Khumalo St and send the march on a detour, avoiding the hostels, as they had done before; but they did not.57 Scouting ahead, he found hostel men out on the street ready to defend their ‘no-go’ area. He called for police reinforcements and pleaded with Gungubele to divert – ‘This is insanity!’ Gungubele insisted that no one would tell the ANC where to march, and the procession surged on, skirting monitors placed across the road. Matthewson reached the hostels with the first marchers just as a breakaway SDU group fired into the hostel from the rear.58 Gun-barrels appeared from the 55 56 57 58

Ntuli, Thokoza SDUs, McBride interviews; Kynoch (2013); for Kasrils see p.159. Thokoza SDUs interview. Camay interview. ISU Sgt Nick Howarth (2012 p.192), who saw them, states confidently that the

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windows and hostel defenders fired on the marchers, who replied with handguns. The casualties were thirteen marchers dead, sixty-three injured. Thokoza and Katlehong descended into violent lawlessness. By the end of May, seventy were dead.59 Armed youths skirmished with one another, ‘cleansed’ whole residential sections, and policed them as no-go areas. Homes, pets, possessions and people, all were lost in a sea of deep trauma. Displacements peaked in July–August. ‘We managed to escape’, said one family, ‘while they were killing our next door neighbours’ (IBI, 1994 p.21). Some 3,000 fled into the Katlehong hostels alone. Then the SDUs placed them under siege. Unable to get to work, many lost jobs. ‘ANC’ refugees found shelter in the Palm Ridge Community Centre, south of Thokoza. PRO Jan Munnik estimated that ‘residents from approximately 1,000 houses … previously occupied by both IFP and ANC supporters, had been forced out since approximately July 1993’ (IBI, 1994 p.40). The monitoring presence was brave but inadequate. Wits/Vaal RPC called an emergency meeting on 25 May.60 What went wrong? How to avoid a repeat, how to calm the situation? The meeting resolved to request a Goldstone inquiry, and to place a 24-hour JOC ( Joint Operations Centre) in the area. Wits/Vaal also established a Kathorus Relief Aid Forum, appointing Simon Mokoena as its Coordinator to network the relief organizations and disburse a R50,000 Canadian grant.61 Natalspruit Hospital, situated between Thokoza and Katlehong, hosted the JOC in a bare office in an outbuilding in the hospital yard. Wits/Vaal provided a landline phone and base radio. The staff were volunteer monitors, the locals being mainly from Vosloorus but this initiative was not well rooted in the community. Many monitors, including the ‘JOC Controllers’, had no knowledge of the area.62 Pay of R100 per shift was negotiated with DIPI. The JOC agreement, signed on 26 May by the regional ANC, IFP and SAP, bound all parties to make ‘senior members’ available by roster. In theory, when a problem arose ‘all parties will make their input and build consensus for a common approach’.63 In reality senior political leaders were frequently unavailable, so advice and coordination were lacking. Senior police officers, although based in a nearby SAP Control Room, posted constables to staff a police radio in the JOC. The SAP did offer to host the JOC, which was not accepted, but no Kathorus police commander stands out as a peacemaker. The monitors wanted a more senior police presence; the police felt the peace monitors were

59 60 61 62 63

gunmen were SDUs and not, as Goldstone concluded, ‘unknown’. Business Day 1/6/93. Minutes 25/5/93, Carmichael/Lorimer. Kathorus relief report and proposal Jan.–Apr. 1994, BVS88. Binckes interview. Agreement 26/5/93, Carmichael/P. Storey.

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not sharing information with them. Monitors avoided being seen speaking with police on the ground. Monitor patrols used hired saloon cars, with peace insignia. Irrespective of leadership skills, the driver doubled as unit leader. No night-time patrolling was done until Regional Coordinator David Storey discovered that a local monitor was doubling as an SDU member, explaining that he believed monitoring was the best way to ‘defend’ the community by day, but the SDU was best at night.64 Storey requested armoured cars. Two ‘Mambas’, made by Reunert of the Barlow’s group, were donated by Sandock Austral, painted white with the peace logo, nicknamed ‘Doves’, and launched to the media on 9 September, when violence was already falling. Feelings towards the ‘Doves’ were mixed. Camay avoided them. Mahlape Sello felt they had impact: she describes an evening patrol in the bare ‘killing fields’ around Kwesine Hostel.65 Shadowy groups seemed to be preparing to fight. The monitors were in touch with political leaders on both sides. No escalation occurred. The International Observers formed their own ‘East Rand Task Group’, served in the JOC, patrolled with senior local monitors and held wide consultations in the community. Concluding that peace had to come from those affected, COMSA thought that ‘in its efforts to assist the area, the RPS may have inadvertently discouraged local initiative’ (COMSA Report Phase III p.34). They recommended decentralizing control of the JOC to the local committees. In September the IFP withdrew, complaining its monitors were being intimidated and the operation had been hijacked. Gertrude Mzizi explained: ‘we realized that the structure was being used by the ANC to harbour attackers. These so-called monitors were only surveying the area so that they could identify Inkatha targets.’66 Mzizi was right. McBride and former Thokoza SDU members openly boast about using the monitoring to gather information. McBride even claims that monitors in the Mambas might secretly carry SDU radios to relay information of ‘enemy’ movements.67 An assessment of the JOC made in October for COMSA by Chief Inspector Louisa Elliston (London Metropolitan Police) found that the command structure was unclear, the JOC possessed no map, information was not evaluated, the monitors had no clear protocols (monitor training was still undeveloped), and the JOC was acting as a drop-in and meeting place, canteen, and phone booth. It needed to become a disciplined communication and control room.68

64 65 66 67 68

David Storey interview. Sello interview. City Press 2/1/94. McBride, Thokoza SDUs interviews. ‘Report on the JOCC’, 12/10/93, COMSA Observers’ Reports, East Rand. Carmichael/COMSA.

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In December UNOMSA pulled out due to the IFP’s absence, and Natalspruit Hospital asked the JOC to leave as it was compromising its neutrality. Violence was abating. All agreed to replace the JOC with a SERD-focused ‘Communication and Advice Centre’, supported and resourced by Wits/Vaal but controlled by the Germiston/Katlehong LPC, which opened in the Palmridge Community Centre on 6 January 1994. Suddenly, in February, the government attempted to address Kathorus’s needs by announcing the replacement of the ISU (perceived as biased towards the IFP) by the SADF, and the establishment of a developmental ‘Kathorus Task Group’ headed by an ex-air force commander. The Wits/Vaal offices hosted the Group. It merely coordinated the various initiatives already operating. For a few chaotic days in April the hastily trained, ill-disciplined National Peace Keeping Force (NPKF), which included MK members, replaced the SADF. The SDUs saw a final golden chance to destroy the hostels, assisted by NPKF comrades. In fighting on Khumalo St on 18 April, prize-winning photographer Ken Oesterbroek was killed, almost certainly by NPKF fire. Two days later the SADF were back. The area got through the election with significant help from the International Observers.69 When fighting subsided a high level of violent crime was revealed. In July 1994 Rupert Lorimer and Meverett Koetz of the RPC chaired a large community meeting on crime, at which all parties undertook to isolate the criminals.70 Also under the RPC’s umbrella, the SDUs got together with the SPUs and indunas in truly grassroots peace meetings, chaired by Thokoza peacemaker Richard Madonsela. This led to a joint police reservist scheme for ex-SDUs and SPUs, facilitated by Rev. Mvume Dandala. As an SDU member innocently put it: ‘The connection between the SDU commanders and the SPU and indunas is fairly good up to now, all of this we see by the fact that if there are lost people found at the wrong side, they are taken to the right side where they belong.’71 At least ten of the fifteen residential sections of Thokoza and Katlehong had been declared ‘no-go zones’ and the penalty for straying into a ‘wrong’ one was death. The meeting on 20 July mandated the leaders to make joint visits to open the borders, commencing on 23 July with Khumalo Street. Immediately after the meeting they went for a cheerful stroll together, venturing, in anticipation, to Khumalo St and even Phola Park. It is only tragic that these fighters had not been able to walk together months earlier. The Star of 4 August 1995 reported that Kathorus was now a ‘Special Presidential Project’ but residents felt uninvolved. Only 151 houses had been repaired, all council-owned, but residents feared to return despite the joint police reservist scheme employing ex-SDUs and SPUs. Left unoccupied, the houses had again been vandalized. 69 See pp.323–4. 70 Minutes 8/7/94, Carmichael/Lorimer. 71 Thokoza Peace Meeting Minutes 20/7/94, Carmichael/Lorimer.

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Daveyton: Wits/Vaal Peace Corps Among various youth schemes being proposed in 1993–94, only the Wits/Vaal Peace Corps became reality.72 It was effectively an area peace monitoring operation. In July 1993 when the Kathorus violence flared, the region commissioned Adele Kirsten to research a Peace Corps as a ‘mechanism to deal with the escal­ ating violence’.73 Unfortunately for its future viability, the project focused on violence-­reduction, not development. Daveyton, on the margin of the East Rand, fulfilled the requirements for the pilot project: a community that had suffered high violence but now had a functioning LPC and signs that the community could work together. The Danish government offered funding. Two hundred recruits, mainly young adults, underwent three weeks’ extended peace monitor training, with first aid added. In-service training was to follow. With a stipend of R400 per month, they began patrols in Daveyton on 2 March 1994. Calm reigned. As with Alexandra’s ‘Joint Community Monitoring Centre’, the monitors became a general advice service. The Corps was successfully replicated in Sebokeng with USAID funding, and training started in Alexandra, but funders wanted a more developmental model. The dissolution of the peace structures, and drying up of funds, ended the project in 1995.

Peaceline Wits/Vaal was the only region to develop a 24/7 toll-free hotline number. ‘Peaceline’ 0800 116555 was mooted by the RDRC in August 1992 and launched in April 1993. Flyers picturing a phone urged: ‘If you see violence, pick up this powerful weapon!’74 Di Levine, a social worker friend of Ilona Tip, organized and headed the Peaceline; it was supervised by IMSSA, but based in the Wits/Vaal offices, and funded by the Danish government. Telkom provided free lines, advertising was created pro bono by Ogilvy and Mather, and Radio 702 aired free ads. Early data-storage computers were donated, making possible immediate alerts to LPC members, JOCCs, police, emergency services and counsellors. Peaceline issued a regular ‘peace barometer’ showing the frequency of calls from different areas. ‘Essentially the aim of the Peaceline was to give members of the community access to the peace structures, so that anybody who was not involved but their community was being disturbed or they were being threatened themselves, would know where to go.’75 It ran until 30 June 1994, improving communication ‘from below’ and facilitating an effective response.

72 73 74 75

See pp.230–32 for the various proposals. Kirsten, Proposal 30/10/93, p.4, Carmichael. Alexandra records: Carmichael, and Wits Historical Papers AG3056. Levine interview.

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Conclusion The Wits/Vaal region created LPCs with exemplary speed, generally nurtured them well, and led the development of peace monitoring. It established sustainable peace in Soweto, Alexandra, the Vaal and other townships across the industrial heartland. Violence was more protracted in Kathorus, but by 1994 the intervention there too was becoming more locally based and effective. The region’s main problem was that its efficiency entailed over-spending its budget, particularly on hired cars for election monitoring, contributing significantly to the national structures’ financial difficulties post-election.

17 Building Peace in the Regions II: The Cape, OFS, and Transvaal Western Cape The Western Cape stretches northwards from Cape Town to the Namibian border, and far eastwards along Africa’s southern coast. It is home to the majority of the Coloured population, who were battered by apartheid. From the 1970s onwards Xhosa work-seekers migrated from the eastern Cape to create informal settlements near Cape Town. Being illegal, these were constantly at war with the authorities. The 1980s saw intense conflict between police, young ‘comrades’, warlords and people; and the start of complex taxi wars. Small towns throughout this region were affected by boycotts, protests, and land issues around squatter settlements. The IFP was not a significant player, but the structures saw plenty of action in this region. Its unique contribution was its ‘Media Peace Centre’, airing peace programmes on TV and radio and experimenting with ‘video dialogues’. Susan Collin Marks, an RPC member, has described this region’s work in vivid detail (Marks, 2000). A ‘Cape Town Peace Committee’ already existed, co-chaired by the Mayor and Archbishop Tutu. The NPS consulted with it on 20 November 1991 (Tutu was away on sabbatical). Its purpose was specifically to mediate the taxi wars, work that it quickly handed to the RDRC. After a wider meeting on 14 January the RDRC was launched at a well-attended plenary in Salt River Town Hall on Sunday 16 February (Marks, 2000 p.23).1 Graham Higgo, retired Chairman of Reckitt & Coleman, a Rotarian and founder member of NIR, was elected Chair, and the theologian Prof. Jaap Durand, Minister in the DRC in Africa, anti-apartheid Vice-rector of UWC, Vice-chair. In August when Higgo became NPS Marketing Committee Chair they exchanged roles, Durand becoming Chair; and in 1994 businessman Ernest Wilson became Co-vice-chair. The CBM provided an office in the suburb of Bellville and seconded its own Regional Director, Retief Olivier, part-time as the region’s Director. Olivier eventually became full-time Regional Manager. 1

NPS Minutes 14/1/92 BVS228/1; W. Cape RDRC Minutes 16/2/92, Carmichael/ Marks.

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The RDRC Executive deputed a sub-committee to form LDRCs. It hit a wall with its first attempt, a combined LDRC for the formal black township of Nyanga and its neighbour, the lawless shacklord-dominated informal settlement of Crossroads. The Executive heard on 19 March that just two out of thirty-five invitees had turned up to the exploratory meeting.2 Malibongwe Sopangisa, tall, friendly, capable and respected, was ANC Chair in Nyanga. He explains: ‘Nyanga was the base whereby we were accepting the people who were chased out of Crossroads by former warlords and the police of that government pre-1994. So, we were very reluctant to accept the Peace Committee initiative, because of that.’3 Ground-work to explain the Accord was then done by the RDRC’s ANC representative Vincent Diba. He found Crossroads very difficult. Sean Tait of the DP-related Urban Monitoring and Awareness Committee (UMAC) joined him, and a steering committee for Nyanga/Crossroads formed in July.4 A meeting in Crossroads in September surfaced numerous issues: the police, the PAC, community division, refuse and night-soil removal, taxi violence, shack demolitions and removals, and disputed site developments. The ‘NY78/Crossroads’ LDRC finally emerged, chaired by David Mkhize, with an office in Nyanga. Sopangisa, long experienced in dealing with shacklords, became its Fieldworker and ‘one of those silent quiet giants of the peace structures’.5 Through the LDRC this fractious area developed a communal voice; and Hannes Siebert’s ‘video dialogues’ brought a breakthrough in communication within the Crossroads community.6 Staff were now available. Further local committees were established by them, following a careful protocol (Odendaal and Spies, 1996 pp.5–6). First, one-onone meetings with organizations, explaining the NPA. Second, a meeting at which the NPA was further explained, and representatives went away to get mandates from their organizations. Third, a meeting to receive the mandates and form the LPC. Usually, black/Coloured and white Co-Chairs were appointed, and most took the process firmly forward. Training of the committees in conflict resolution and possibly in minute-taking and administration followed.7 Grabouw, up in the mountains east of Cape Town, had the region’s classic tensions: a white Town Council, Coloured township, and Xhosa squatters. Its LDRC launched on 10 November 1992, while mediating a consumer boycott. Its Co-chairs were businessman Bruce Green (a New Zealander), and AFM Pastor Wrench. ‘We met many nights to hours early in the morning talking out the 2 3 4 5 6 7

Executive 19/3/92, Carmichael/Marks. Sopangisa interview. Executive 5/8/92, Carmichael/Marks. Spies interview. See p.286. Report to Executive 7/10/92, Carmichael/Marks.

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problems: the problems of land issues which then brought out the problem of housing, lack of sanitation – you know, it’s still there!’8 We even intervened in the dreadful situation of Villiersdorp, it’s 34km away. We were called because, on the one side of the road were the whites standing with all their double-barrelled shotguns, and on the other side of the road were the Coloured and black community, and the Coloured community took over the offices of the Municipality. And Louise [Louise Michaels, Grabouw LDRC Coordinator] and myself went through, and we negotiated a truce and a peace, and the Coloured community left the offices – and the white community jeered us, didn’t think much of us at all, but we saved a very tense situation there.9

Chris Spies, Sub-regional Coordinator for the West Coast/Namaqualand, remarks how hard it was to form LPCs in the deeply divided towns. By April 1993 only three were fully operating: Nyanga/Crossroads, Grabouw, and Wolseley. Many more, however, were in process. By January 1994, nineteen existed, supported by fourteen offices and fifty-eight staff. Odendaal & Spies (1997 p.264) report the region had thirty-four LPCs at its peak. Each sub-region (Southern/Karoo, West Coast/Namaqualand, Metropolitan) had a Coordinator and Sub-regional committee. In September 1992, taxi men in Nyanga were stoning buses and abducting the drivers and the region formed a Transport Sub-committee. Its work led in March 1993 to an inclusive Transport Forum for the Cape Town area. Also in September 1992, a Monitoring Sub-committee formed; and from April 1993 SERD Coordinator Greg Mac Master was supported by a SERD Sub-committee drawn mainly from business. A Police–Community Relations Sub-committee was formed in July 1993, following the success of the Manenberg police–­ community Liaison Forum.10

Reaching the margins The little town of Pofadder (puff adder) is a byword for remoteness, South Africa’s ‘Timbuctoo’. Chris Spies relates: An AWB guy was taunted by two coloured kids, they walked past his car in the street, they saw the AWB insignia, they saw him beside and said: ‘AWB! AWB!’ [ah veer beer, high-pitched, taunting] and so he got in his car, drove 50 metres, took out his shotgun, and shot them dead. In the middle of the street. High school boys. And then violence erupted. And it was one of those things where you knew you just had to act very swiftly … for 8 Green interview. 9 Ibid. 10 See p.430.

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Peacemaking and Peacebuilding in South Africa the Peace Accord to make an impact you’ve also got to zoom in on those forgotten places like Pofadder. We heard about it in the morning, so afternoon we chartered a plane and I phoned ahead to the Mayor of the town and the ANC structures, and told them we were coming and we would love to meet the Town Council and the community that evening. And so we landed on this little dirt runway, in the middle of nowhere, and when the meeting started it was very tense, and this Mayor launched into a vicious attack on us, and scolded us for wasting money and coming to Pofadder, and it was none of our business and he was in control of the town and – he was just laying into us, and he was scolding me because I was the head of the delegation there. And I realized the core of his anger wasn’t me, it was something else. And I said to him in Afrikaans, ‘Oom, wat maak jou …’ ‘Uncle, what is it that is annoying you so much?’ And he looked at me, and I probed and I probed, and it came out that he was as angry as anybody else about this attack, but his anger stems from an embarrassment. He’s the Mayor of the town. He thought he had things under control, he worked towards better relationships with the people, so this bastard, killing the people here in this place had screwed up my town and I am over the top now. But he voiced his anger at us. So when I absorbed that anger, and when the community saw that he was also mad about the situation, it immediately established some little ground where they talked about how to prevent this kind of stuff in future. And so, the next day we had a huge meeting in the community hall, and whereas the ANCYL previously threatened to make this place completely ungovernable, we also provided an opportunity for the community to talk about their loss, and about what happened. And then all kinds of other things came out you know, complaints about the unemployment and the rates and taxes and the water and electricity – and I think we were successful in bringing down the immediate tensions, preventing the violence and establishing a base for this local council to work with the structures on the ground.11

Far north on the coast lies the tiny diamond-smuggling town of Port Nolloth. It had an LPC. The Deputy Mayor invited Spies to a public meeting to explain a new piece of legislation about local governance. Spies said he would bring the well-known law professor Kader Asmal, a man of Natal Indian descent. They flew up, to be welcomed resentfully by the Mayor, who said they needed no one to explain. They sat at the back. Then the Deputy Mayor tapped Spies on the shoulder: ‘Listen, we’ve reconsidered our position and would Professor Asmal still be willing to come and explain these things?’ And I said ‘I don’t know! We’ll have to ask him.’ So Kader said ‘Yes, fine.’ And so – it was so funny, they 11

Spies interview.

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invited both of us to the front table, and this guy sat here, the Deputy Mayor, and then I sat here and Kader sat there, and as Kader stood up to speak, you know, he was just bowling them over: I mean he was charming, he knew what he was talking about, and suddenly this image of this Communist started to crumble! And the Deputy Mayor leant over to me and said: ‘It’s really going well, isn’t it!’ It was so funny! Those are the kind of memories that stayed with me because for me it had a lot to do with the breaking down of perceptions, and facing reality situations that they were not accustomed to, and breaking the initial resistance, and then the rest took care of itself.12

Border/Ciskei The ‘Border’ region marks the historical interface between Xhosas and English settlers on the eastern frontier of Cape Colony. In 1991 it was a corridor of white farmland, part of Cape Province, stretching inland from the port city of East London, separating two ‘independent’ Xhosa bantustans, Transkei and Ciskei. Transkei, to the north, an ANC-leaning non-signatory, presented no problems beyond harbouring both MK and APLA. Ciskei’s ruler Brigadier Gqozo, however, was in a state of simmering conflict with the ANC, having fallen out with it after taking control in 1990. Only his own party, the African Democratic Movement (ADM) was permitted to operate in Ciskei. Gqozo reinstituted a system of village headmen and provided them with an ill-disciplined militia, the ‘Peace Force’, which received a three-week training, carried side-arms and pump-action shotguns, and was derisively nicknamed ‘Gqozo’s Inkatha’. The Ciskeian Police and Defence Force, headed by white South African officers, were happy to be repressive. The ANC simply aimed to abolish Ciskei; Gqozo hoped for a federal constitutional settlement that would allow its continued existence. Gqozo was attracted to the NPA as giving him status, and as a weapon against the ANC. After signing his own ‘Protocol’ at the Convention, he wrote to Hall saying he had just set up his own ‘Ciskei Peace Committee’ consisting of security force officers, to receive reports of infringements of the NPA by ANC militants!13 Hall requested the NPS to prioritize the region. After a messy process its RDRC was instituted on 12 December, with English-born Reg Mason, an IMSSA mediator and consultant to Mercedes Benz, as Chair. Secondees from the ANC and Ciskei assisted him to set up the first LDRCs. Publicly disappointed at the lack of finance for peace, Mason resigned in March 1992. He was succeeded first by Methodist Bishops Trevour de Bruyn and Simon Gqubule, then Rev. Dr Lectus Steenkamp. On 3 March 1992 Ciskei withdrew from the RDRC, angered by the ANC’s verbal attacks –yet it signed the NPA officially on the following day. Attempts at mediation by NPS members Naidoo, 12 Ibid. 13 Letter 4/11/91, BVS54.

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Myburgh and Gildenhuys in May–July were continually frustrated as meetings were cancelled. Then the marching began.

Bisho Ciskei’s capital was at Bisho, a small town 4km from King Williams Town (KWT). In the lexicon of transitional violence ‘Bisho’ signifies the tragic march of 7 September 1992, but the story begins a month earlier. The ANC’s Border region planned a mass action march into Bisho on 4 August to deliver a memo to the Ciskei Legislative Assembly demanding the departure of Gqozo, free political activity, and immediate reintegration into South Africa. This event being of national significance, Chris Hani, Sam Shilowa and other NEC members were to lead. Gqozo insisted the marchers would not enter Ciskei. Attempts at mediation by SA Foreign Minister Pik Botha failed. The RDRC called on the NPS to help. Early on 4 August Antonie Gildenhuys and Deon Rudman flew down, joining NPS member Gert Myburgh MP and UN Observer Jose Campino. The previous day Ciskei had refused entry to Campino. Now, their car flying the UN flag, the party shuttled between the marchers and the Council of State offices in Bisho.14 No agreement had been reached when the march set off at noon from Victoria Park in KWT to walk the 4km up the hill. Gildenhuys then brought a message to the march leaders: they could hand over their demands at the border, or advance 100m into Ciskei and hand them over, or send a small delegation to the Assembly building.15 The leaders refused. At 1.30pm the marchers were stopped at the border by 150 rifle-toting members of the Ciskei police and Defence Force (CDF). Pik Botha called Cyril Ramaphosa and Chris Hani to the phone in a nearby hotel, to warn them that the CDF would shoot if the march moved forward. The people were restive, threatening to push on. Gildenhuys continued to shuttle, and at 5.35pm he returned with a new offer: the people could enter Ciskei but only into the Bisho stadium, a modest earth-bank construction beside the road, just beyond the border. This compromise was accepted. The crowd surged in, Hani spoke, and the memorandum was handed to a representative of Ciskei’s Commissioner of Police. Everyone went home alive. The NPS team visited Gqozo that evening ‘and he was so satisfied and so happy that everything went well, that he presented us with cufflinks of the old Ciskei, gold cufflinks! And I think a tie-pin as well.’16 ‘This’, Gildenhuys remarked, ‘was a most dramatic day when violence threatened and negotiations won.’17 14 15 16 17

Saturday Star 8/8/92. Report, with timings: Pretoria News 5/8/92. Rudman interview. Daily Dispatch 5/8/92.

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The shuttling, however necessary, had not fostered rapprochement. ANC ‘hawks’ were frustrated. A second march was announced, for Monday 7 September. The ANC’s aim was now to hold a ‘People’s Assembly’ in Bisho for at least twenty-four hours; the Assembly would demand that South Africa remove Gqozo and install an impartial government pending reintegration, and that Ciskei must repeal Section 43 of its Internal Security Act which prohibited meetings of more than twenty persons – and inhibited ANC organizing. De Klerk contacted Mandela, and multiple pleas were made to the ANC to call off the march, or to Ciskei to allow it. Two days before the march Gqozo visited pastors Ray McCauley and Ron Steele in Johannesburg, wanting prayer and advice.18 ‘He was saying it was going to be war … he was going to stand his ground … he was not going to be pushed around by the ANC any more: that was it.’ They urged him to relent. ‘But no, he’s got to do it because he’s got to stand for his pride, and all that rubbish nonsense stuff.’ Gqozo left saying ‘“Okay, I won’t do anything.”’ Steele hoped their persuasion had worked, ‘but obviously his lieutenants had other thoughts’. On Sunday, local ANC activist Dr Crispian Olver took Ronnie Kasrils to reconnoitre the stadium.19 Its simple earth banks are low and easily climbed. It has two tunnel entrances, one southeast, one northeast. A wire mesh fence two or three metres high surrounded it. On the north, facing Bisho, the fence was partially rolled up towards its top wire, creating a gap. Some 50–100 metres northwards, facing the fence, were dug-out positions for infantry. The ANC had ‘intelligence’, which they believed, that the CDF soldiers would disobey orders to shoot. Regional ISU commander Wynand van der Merwe had a different message from the CDF’s commander Brigadier Marius Oelschig. Through the peace structures, he arranged a meeting with Hani and Kasrils: When I got to the ANC offices in East London I spoke to Chris Hani. Ronnie Kasrils was there as well but he was sitting down the hall. Hani was very militant. And I said to him: ‘The purpose of my meeting with you is to inform you that my information is that if you go into the Ciskei, they will shoot you. They are preparing to fire on you – and that is what I got from Brigadier Oelschig, they are going to fire on you.’ He didn’t respond, didn’t ask me anything. It was clear to me that he was not going to talk to me – and I left.20

Olver says this message was passed on, but not believed. The ANC planned that the marchers would enter the stadium by the southeast tunnel, then a ‘column’ led by Kasrils would exit by the northeast tunnel, go through the gap and enter Bisho. Kasrils thought that if the ‘column’ did not run straight at the CDF but 18 Steele interview. 19 Olver interview. 20 Wynand van der Merwe interview.

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turned left to skirt round them, no shooting would result.21 This plan, Olver says, was agreed collectively. Possibly some ‘doves’ were not fully privy to it. Meanwhile, seriously complicating matters, the regional ANC had applied for permission to enter the stadium and go no further, as before. In terms of the Accord and Goldstone’s recent guidelines, it was incumbent on event organizers to consider foreseeable consequences and disclose their plans fully. Gildenhuys, Hall and regional peace leaders all recall having an uneasy feeling, as the event approached, that not everything was being disclosed. ANC leaders would only say that the march would proceed to the border, and there they would decide what to do. The Ciskei police had prepared to stop the march at the border as before. Suddenly, after midnight, judicial permission was granted to enter the stadium and go no further. Although the national ANC leadership were rejecting this compromise, the Ciskei prepared to action it. Razor wire was arranged to funnel the march into the stadium’s southeast entrance – but the police line was not redeployed from the border to north of the stadium. The gap in the fence was neither filled nor guarded. As the march approached, only CDF soldiers lay in position facing the gap. Another CDF line lay on the east side of the main road, looking across it to the stadium. Gildenhuys and Hall, prepared to do more shuttling, stationed themselves on the road on the Ciskei side of the razor-wire, near the southeast entrance, waiting for the march leaders. Peace monitoring being as yet unsophisticated, no monitors had reconnoitred the stadium, and the monitors from various committees and organizations had all bunched up on the road around the two Chairmen. Kasrils arrived among the forerunners. Cheerfully urging Hall to tell the CDF to be peaceful, he vanished into the stadium. Minutes later, with people pouring over the stadium’s banks and the main leaders still to arrive, Kasrils led an excited, unarmed, mainly MK party, running instead of marching, out through the northeast tunnel and the gap. The CDF fired. The eastern CDF line panicked and joined in. After two long bursts of bullets and four grenades, 28 marchers and 1 soldier lay dead, with over 200 injured. The monitors bit the tarmac, scrambled into a ditch, sheltered briefly in a Casspir – and Gildenhuys and Hall then rolled under the border razor wire and went to help Ramaphosa and other shocked ANC leaders to deal with the rest of the crowd, and to ensure that the spontaneous all-night vigil on the South African side would be uninterrupted. Gqozo called Ray McCauley that evening: ‘Oh, my pastor, my pastor!’ McCauley and Steele visited him next morning, touching base with Hall at Johannesburg airport as they went. Gqozo ‘didn’t know what to do. He was now a destroyed person, he realized that he’d messed up, it was a lost cause

21

Kasrils interview.

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now.’22 But he was soon telling visitors how the ANC had charged his troops, and he still clung for a year to the dream of an autonomous Ciskei in a federal southern Africa. The NPS and NPC Executive held a joint emergency meeting in Johannesburg that Tuesday evening.23 Deploring persistent intolerance, they demanded that ‘all political leadership utilises the Peace Accord mechanism and that the laws of the land be protected by the signatories’.24 They vowed to ensure that in all future contacts with the groups concerned, all the mechanisms of the NPA would be placed at their disposal, including mediation, monitoring, the codes of conduct and the complaints procedure. For the inquiry, Hall collected written accounts from the monitors. ANC marches on Ulundi and Bophuthatswana were shelved. The ANC and government, having quietly continued to converse through the ‘channel’ of Roelf Meyer and Cyril Ramaphosa, resumed talks publicly and issued their bilateral ‘Record of Understanding’ of 26 September. Goldstone’s report on Bisho appeared on 29 September. It took both the ANC and Ciskei severely to task, and demanded free political activity – including in the ‘TVBC homelands’. Mass action, Goldstone insisted, was acceptable to make a point or convey a political idea, but not as a means of physical coercion.25 He called on ‘all political leaders and their supporters to cooperate with each other and with the National Peace Accord structures’ to ‘bring peace and tranquillity to our country’.26 Gildenhuys resumed shuttling. On 9 October he reported to the NPS on a ‘very useful’ meeting with Ciskei Ministers of State, who requested a facilitator for bilateral talks. Retired attorney Ben Mansell, a volunteer NPS mediator, chaired two lengthy bilaterals, then handed the issue back to the NPC Executive. Gildenhuys chaired a meeting on 5 December between four-person delegations from the Border ANC, led by its constructive President Smuts Ngonyama, and Ciskei government led by lawyer Mickey Webb. Ngonyama affirmed the ANC’s commitment to the Peace Accord and his conviction that continued incidents were a reason for talking, not postponing.27 Ciskei tried to insist on having its own RDRC but as Gildenhuys explained, writing to the parties, ‘dispute resolution committees are intended to bring conflicting parties together to work towards the solution of disputes existing between them; a structure which does not achieve this purpose, is not useful’.28 22 Steele interview. 23 Present: Hall, Gildenhuys. Jayendra Naidoo, Sydney Mufamadi (ANC-Alliance), Frank Mdlalose, Walter Felgate, Suzanne Vos (IFP). Sam de Beer, Danie Schutte, Chris Fismer (NP). Peter Gastrow (DP). 24 NPC release 8/9/92, Carmichael/Pauquet. 25 Goldstone Report: Bisho incident 29/9/92, 10.2.3. 26 Ibid. 11.4. 27 Pretoria News 28/10/92. 28 Letter 9/12/92, BVS79.

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The region grew fitfully, many LPCs being hampered by Ciskei’s absence, but UNOMSA reported in October 1993 that a large Bisho commemoration on 7 September had been well handled by the King Williams Town LPC and RPS, and the joint planning for that and other events had brought about a new rapport between Ciskeian police commanders and the ANC executive.29 The turning point came in January 1994: Ciskei withdrew from the conservative ‘Freedom Alliance’, met with an RPC delegation, and on the 20th rejoined the RPC, on the understanding that political differences would now be addressed in bilaterals, avoiding wrangles in full committee. LPCs could now operate fully, five new LPCs were initiated and peace monitor training began. Coordinator Ian Bentley tells of a PAC man who wandered into Kei Road from Transkei in this period, and began giving target practice to 12-year olds, aiming AK-47 rounds at a tree rather close to houses. ‘We persuaded him eventually it was not a good idea to be working with these young kids and terrorising people. He left the area after that.’30 Bentley dealt similarly with the AWB when they started pistol practice outside a meeting in Maclear Town Hall. ‘Maclear was the sort of place that had never resolved problems, so there were festering issues that kept repeating. So we had this mass of people, not just LPC, in the Town Hall, and we were trying to just get all the issues out and get them on the table. And then the gunfire started outside!’ Bentley persuaded them to practice elsewhere. In March, during Gqozo’s chaotic resignation and Ciskei’s reintegration into South Africa, the RPC, LPCs, staff and ‘large numbers of peace monitors … carried out their duties with distinction’.31 Coordinator Neil Naidoo applauds the ‘will and commitment by people. Those volunteers, you could call on them any time and they’d be there!’32

Eastern Cape When the Eastern Cape RDRC launched in Port Elizabeth (Gqeberha) on 26 March 1992, its Co-chairs were Anglican Bishop Bruce Evans and Brian Smith, HR director at Volkswagen in Uitenhage. Members included Koleki le Mnlana (ANC), Frans Smit (NP), Martheanne Finnemore (DP), Brigadier Wynand van der Merwe (ISU), and mediator-academic Mark Anstey.33 Bishop Evans shortly fell seriously ill. Smith continued alone. By January 1994 this region had twenty-six LPCs. Grahamstown (Makhanda), where the Albany Council of Churches provided an office and strong support, was particularly creative. Chaired by Presbyterian minister Rev. Glen Craig 29 30 31 32 33

UNOMSA Trends Analysis 28/10/93, BVS78. Bentley interview. Border/Ciskei Report 12/4/94, BVS78. Neil Naidoo interview. See Despatch mediation pp.298–9, training p.245.

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and Black Sash fieldworker Glenn Hollands, it had a unique launch in a service of dedication on Sunday 26 July 1992.34 It underwent training each evening for a week, by Ron Kraybill of the Centre for Conflict Resolution. Bulelwa Mdoko became secretary in 1993, with Khayaletu Plaatjie and Lindani Bekwa as fieldworkers. Experiences of peace monitoring in Grahamstown are mentioned above.35 The region’s main conflict was between police and community. In ‘a remarkable sign of these changing times’ Rev. Bob Clarke (Churches) found himself lunching at the exploratory meeting with young former activist Sox Leleki and ex-SB Col. Peter Meistre, now CIS head in Grahamstown.36 Meistre, who had detained Leleki in 1987 and whom some then regarded as ‘very brutal’, had become an enthusiastic promoter of community policing.37 He was, he says, interested in it before, but the peace committees gave him the framework to move in that area.38 He worked with Rob Midgley, the law professor representing Rhodes University, who now became involved in mediating gang-related violence, to roll out a grassroots consultation on community policing, funded by Canada. It established a ‘lay visitors’ scheme that monitored the treatment of detainees in Grahamstown police cells. Post-election, these initiatives grew into a province-wide Community Safety project.39

Mediation in Patensie Activist lawyer/community developer Mzu Banzana co-chaired the Port Elizabeth LPC with Methodist Minister Peter Woods, an ex-tank corps Adjutant. The impact of the Accord, Woods says, was: ‘Huge. Absolutely huge.’ One wet day, a call came from the LPC office: could we please go out to Patensie? A little citrus-farming town. ‘And we drive out to Patensie, it’s about 50km, in this misty terrible rain. And all we’ve heard is that the local township people are marching to town, and the farmers have drawn a laager in the local hotel, and the police had phoned.’40 Driving past the township, ‘we see what’s got to be the most rag-tag little group of marchers, I don’t think there were twenty of them, in the rain, like chickens, you know, wet! They were doing their best, they were chanting.’ Banzana jumped out, introduced Woods and himself and said: ‘“Listen, please just go back to the Community Hall, we’ll come and see you later.” So, reluctantly they kind of agree and they go back.’ 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

Grocotts Mail 24/7/92. See pp.307–8, 327–8. Daily Dispatch c. 1/4/92. Ruth Plaatjie, Meistre interviews. Meistre interview. Khayalethu Plaatjie interview. Woods interview.

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Peacemaking and Peacebuilding in South Africa We drive down into town, it’s one of these classic little South African towns with the Royal Hotel or whatever it is, with a stoep [veranda] around the outside – and under the stoep are all these big burly farmers in their sort of green parkas that they used to get from the Co-op, with hoods, I guess close to a hundred men and they’ve all got rifles. And there’s this very nervous little police Major jumping up and down, and he’s so relieved, I thought he was going to kiss me! … and this Major introduces me as Reverend Woods from the Peace Accord, and the first reaction from one of the farmers is: ‘Ooor, God!’ (Oh, my God!) and he rolls his eyes … And I think Mzu was introduced but he was totally discounted.41

As Banzana remembers it: ‘I mean, these white farmers were very rude towards us.’42 The bilingual Woods switched to Afrikaans. Taken aback, ‘then they start telling me the story about how their wives are afraid, because these people are coming, and you know, it’s Blood River all over again.’ Woods adds: ‘And – I mean, this was just the humour of South Africa at the time, but, every time they said the “k” word – they would go, in Afrikaans: “These bloody k-----s” – they would apologize to Mzu, they would say: “Sorry, not you sir, not you!” It was like comedy.’ Then a police Brigadier landed in a helicopter. Being ‘far more trustworthy than we were, to these farmers’ he had a meeting with them and emerged with a delegation of about six. ‘We went to the Community Hall and got a delegation from there. And they got together in the hotel – and at three o’clock that afternoon people walked out arm in arm!’ And I’ll never forget one of the farm workers, one of the marchers, saying to one of the farmers: ‘You see this rain that’s going to water your potatoes? We prayed for this rain on Sunday in church. And I want some of your potatoes when you harvest them!’ And they were joking – these are the people that were going to shoot each other, hours before! They’d just spoken, they’d got together, and climbed over the barricades, and spoken about why they were marching –and they were marching for the same reason they’re marching now: services, service delivery. And I remember as we were leaving the same farmer saying: ‘Listen, that soccer team that you’ve got: I’m sure I can sponsor you with jerseys.’ It just is for me one of those typical parables of how that whole thing worked, you know: when people will stop being afraid, and put down their guns just long enough. If you asked me if I’ve seen miracles in my life, I’ll say to you: I’ve seen very few, but that day at Patensie, with those farmers, and those rag-tag marchers, I saw a miracle! I mean, within hours, the people who were going to shoot were talking about buying soccer jerseys – in one day! Forty years changed in one day! Now that’s a miracle. … and I think 41 Ibid. 42 Banzana interview.

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that’s what the Peace Accord did, it put this dysfunctional family called South Africa in one room, and said: ‘Talk! And stay here till you sort it out!’43

Regional Peace Summit Well before the election, on Saturday 16 October 1993, the Eastern Cape RPC organized a pre-election Regional Peace Summit. About 800 delegates gathered in the University of Port Elizabeth Indoor Sports Centre, from regional government, religious bodies, business, cultural groups, police, and all political parties except the CP, Freedom Front, and PAC. All committed themselves to a Peace Pledge and an Electoral Code of Conduct.44 ‘We went out of our way to get quite high coverage of it in the local media, because we wanted the supporters of all the parties to get to know that this thing had been signed’ and that the leaders had committed everyone to it.45

Northern Cape The NPS left Waterkloof airbase early on 25 March 1992 in a small charter plane heading for the exploratory meeting in Kimberley. The Northern Cape was huge in area but very thinly populated. A conflict unique to this region was a chronic land dispute between the SADF and local herders in out-of-the-way Khosis, which eventually went to court. At the RDRC launch on 8 April, Rev. Arthur Mabija, an Anglican priest employed in human resources among mineworkers, and Eddie Cahill of the Northern Cape Chamber of Business were elected Co-chairs. Dr Pieter Barnard of SACS served permanently as Secretary. The first Regional Manager, Advocate Jeanne Nel, was seriously injured by an eastern bloc grenade thrown by an ANCYL member at a protest outside the Bophuthatswana Consulate in Kimberley on 25 May 1993. It killed a COSAS member and hospitalized UNOMSA Observer Adriano Cassandra with a broken leg. Stoically he told the press: ‘in the end peace will prevail. Every time there is a violent incident, we must just use it as an added impetus to work even harder for peace.’46 Nel, once conscious, took the same line. The ANC, having promised a peaceful event, disowned the action. By January 1994 the region had twelve LPCs, and claimed improved relations between the civics and local authorities.47 Nel’s long recovery and subsequent transfer to the OFS meant that the just-appointed SERD Coordinator, businessman Mike Bradnum, became Acting Director and SERD was again delayed. In 43 Woods interview. 44 RPC Chair’s Report, Sept. 1993 to Jan. 1994, Carmichael; correspondence BVS21/E. Cape 1. 45 Brian Smith interview. 46 Sunday Tribune 30/5/93. 47 NPS Report 1993, Carmichael.

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October the region claimed there were LPCs ‘in every city, town and village’, all awaiting SERD training – but its little towns never got their promised workshops.48

Orange Free State (OFS) Most of the Free State is flat highveld farmland, with small towns dotted about at distances. After a slow start, it developed an exemplary peace infrastructure. The exploratory meeting, a large gathering on 18 February 1992 at the City Hall in Bloemfontein, became the launch. A varied RDRC emerged, numbering about thirty bodies including several welfare organizations. The full committee met monthly, had secretarial help from SACS, and acquired offices in the City Hall. The OFS Co-chairs were colourful businessman Henri Lerm – whom the Regional Manager describes as ‘everyone’s friend, small guy, like a jack-in-thebox, always very busy, and in some or other way he managed to keep the group together’49 – and Rev. Simon G. Mabunda, a Methodist from Bethlehem. Lerm and Mabunda travelled to speak in other towns, but did not have the capacity to establish LPCs. To Lerm’s regret, Mabunda was over-stretched and resigned after six months. Lerm continued alone until resigning in December 1993 when he was included on the ANC list for election to the Provincial Legislature; his successor was theologian Prof. J. (Kobus) Smit. The ANC was strong. The whites were split 40% CP, 60% NP. Constant efforts were made to involve the CP. The AWB presence was small and some were willing to engage. There were minor bombings but none, despite threats, over the election. The PAC joined the RDRC. The region was in its way quite progressive, drawing on the positive aspects of paternalistic farming relationships. When staff at last appeared the OFS acquired Jan Greyvenstein, a young prosecutor with great organizing skills, seconded from the Justice Department as Regional Manager. In January 1993 he began establishing a core coordinating team: Annatjie Olivier, Lita Theron (later Currie) and Playfair Morule (ANC). Theron, just graduated, became Public Relations Officer and suddenly found herself, for the first time, relating to black people on the same intellectual level. It was an eye-opener. ‘A lot of people went through that similar experience.’50 Greyvenstein energetically established LPCs, with the ambition of having an LPC in each of the region’s seventy-four small towns. Worthy white citizens, he found, were perplexed: was there not already a committee? He learnt how ‘the entire Free State … was controlled by the National Security System’, of which he had not previously been aware.51 To form its local committees ‘they invited the minister of the DRC, and the principal of the school, and all the influential 48 49 50 51

See p.337. Greyvenstein interview. Theron interview. Greyvenstein interview.

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role-players, and they were controlling that town’ and reporting to the Joint Management Centre in Bloemfontein. De Klerk had dismantled the system in 1989. The same dignitaries were now invited into a peace structure, a whole new world of encounter and cooperation. By April twelve LPCs were in operation and eight in progress. Greyvenstein recruited fieldworkers until the region had fifty-two staff, balanced 50:50 racially and by gender. All were sent for conflict resolution training, then fieldworkers were deployed in multiracial pairs. The region had five Sub-regional Coordinators and ten offices, each of which had a multiracial team, in Bloemfontein, Bethlehem, Kroonstad, Ficksburg, Welkom, Harrismith, Botshabelo, Sasolburg, Zastron, and Jagersfontein. Each team was dedicated either to Conflict Resolution, coordinated by the central team of Johan van Wyk and Advocate Kenneth Khumalo, or SERD coordinated by Annatjie Olivier. ‘Wherever there’s conflict, or a SERD research, we’re going to move into a community with a white and a black component, … It has worked very well in the Free State.’52 The teams now established the new LPCs, the method being first to gather local political contacts from the RPC members, then visit the local police station to get their overview, then visit church and school heads, prior to an exploratory meeting. Academic Wium Adendorff started as a fieldworker in February 1993. After training he was paired with Moses Choane as a Conflict Resolution team covering the south. ‘And I remember many times that I wore the same clothes for three days, where we needed to intervene and you couldn’t leave the situation, because that whole thing was depending on – just on your being there, because that was the only anchor or perceived anchor that community had.’53 The aim was to ‘create a platform where people could find their own solutions’. Conflicts ranged from boycott situations in small towns, with racial tensions and destruction of property, to lethal fighting between Sotho and Pondo miners at a gold mine. Among this remarkable cohort of fieldworkers the names of Advocate Kenneth Khumalo, Stephanie Smit and Kelibone Francis Manalane stand out. Manalane was the provincial Chair of the PAC, which joined the OFS peace structures in April 1993. Aged 55, he had trained in Tanzania and spent ten years on Robben Island. He was paired with Willem Ellis, aged 26, and based in Ficksburg near the Lesotho border, a hotspot for taxi conflicts and militant whites. ‘We spent a year together in the car’, says Ellis ‘ – best year of my life.’54 The teams, says Adendorff, achieved deeply authentic relationships: ‘bridges that we built between people – firstly among ourselves, but which translated externally to be able to build bridges in communities’.55 52 Ibid. 53 Adendorff interview. 54 Ellis interview. 55 Adendorff interview.

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A smiling press photo from an RPC leadership meeting on peace, on 7 May 1993, shows Kobie Coetsee as NP leader in the province, and Patrick ‘Terror’ Lekota together holding a Peace Doves plaque.56 On Peace Day, 2 September 1993, ‘we arranged to have the old Free State cricket stadium … and we arranged with one of the bus companies to bring in students from Mangaung [Bloemfontein’s township]. We had thousands of students!’57 A memorable experience, with the silence, release of doves, speeches and singing. The region achieved fifty-four LPCs, of its target seventy-four. Rather than train new monitors for the election, it decided to concentrate on training all the LPCs in conflict resolution. The 250 monitors already trained, many from churches, were deployed locally over the election while the staff teams became roving monitors.58 After the election the region smartly reoriented all its resources to SERD.59

Eastern Transvaal On the morning of Wednesday 26 February 1992 the NPS flew to the coal and steel town of Middelburg on the eastern Highveld, for an exploratory meeting in the Municipal Training Centre. The Middelburg Forum was represented along with the usual parties and organizations. Ray Dibden (business) and Rev. Muntu Ndlangamandla (Lowveld Council of Churches) were accepted as Co-chairs at the launch on 18 March. The region based itself in Witbank, 26km from Middelburg, where the RDRC met in the hall of the main Dutch Reformed church and eventually acquired offices next door. The region straddled the Highveld grassland and Lowveld bush centred on Nelspruit. It included the ‘homeland’ of KaNgwane, supportive of the NPA but sliding into anarchy – the records reflect a long intervention there in 1993 – and KwaNdebele was added in November 1993. This region’s tensions were between people and police, black and white, progressives and right-wingers. White fear expressed itself in AWB bravado and food-stockpiling. ANC–IFP tensions existed in a few townships around Ermelo in the south. The first Co-chairs did not gel, and apart from LPCs in Witbank and Middelburg this region was slow to get going. It acquired staff in April 1993: Bert van der Walt as Manager, and Fiona Martin, officially as SERD Coordinator but so preoccupied with monitoring and other tasks that SERD only began post-election.60 Martin was business representative on the Witbank LPC, President of the Witbank Chamber of Commerce, and a future Mayor. She had been 56 57 58 59 60

Volksblad 8/5/93. Theron interview. Kgotso, OFS RPC Newsletter 1.2, April 1994, BVS23. See pp.349–50. See pp.348–9.

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involved with black leaders in a Witbank Community Development Forum: ‘we already knew each other. So that was great because trust had been built and it was much easier to establish the LPC.’61 In May–June 1993 Martin asked lawyer Peter Brandmuller, Chair of the Middelburg Forum, to stand as RPC Chair, as someone ‘as balanced as possible in their political views, because we had had somebody who was very right-wing and that hadn’t worked too well.’62 Brandmuller won, and was joined in September by a new young Co-chair, Seventh Day Adventist Pastor Clifford Nhlapo, Chair of the regional Council of Churches. They proved a dynamic team. Where issues arose ‘we reacted pretty quickly and successfully by trying to defuse it, by going there, talking to the leaders and calming the situation down.’63 Nelspruit LPC, which had fallen into eclipse, was revived. Offices and staff appeared in Nelspruit and Ermelo. By January 1994 the region had twenty-five LPCs. The Witbank LPC was chaired by Dutch Reformed minister Rev. Jaco Hoffman, described by Martin as young, liberal, fair and balanced, and busy changing the mind-set of his congregation. He was much used as a mediator. The LPC held its weekly Executive meeting, and monthly Full Committee, in the church hall. Among its ANC representatives were Paul van Castle, who became Witbank/Emalahleni’s first black Mayor, and ANC regional leader Jackson Mthembu, who worked at Highveld Steel and Vanadium, becoming a provincial Member of the Executive Council and eventually a pillar of the national ANC. The blue-uniformed SAP representatives Harold Westrater and Eddie Hall were ‘two amazing guys, they really made a difference! They were open, they were there, they were positive, there was a lot of energy.’64 In August 1992 police were seen delivering guns to a business block in Witbank where the KwaZulu government had an office. The ANC branch concluded that the police were supplying arms to KwaZulu and imposed a boycott on the block, threatening to burn it down unless the owners cancelled the KwaZulu lease. The block’s indignant owners complained to the NPC. The police explained the firearms were destined for a London antique gun dealer. The ANC region, Mthembu said, was telling the branch its action was wrong.65 The building survived. The township at Standerton had permission for a protest march against its poor conditions; but the police objected and confronted the marchers, ‘about 100,000’, with their Casspirs. ‘And we had a tiny little UN Observer, she was from India, only about so high, and I remember her standing in front of this huge Casspir and saying: “Well you’re going to have to run over me before you stop 61 Martin interview. 62 Ibid. 63 Brandmuller interview. 64 Hoffman interview. 65 Sowetan 25/8/92.

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these people going into town!”’66 They listened, agreements were struck, the route was redefined and the march proceeded. ‘There wasn’t any bloodshed that day. However it did get onto CNN that there was potential bloodshed … and that put that area into a very bad light. Anyway, that was one success story.’ Brandmuller recalls a big march led by ANC leader Mathews Phosa, into Witbank from the township, taking a memo to the police station. ‘The AWB told us, they came to our offices, they said: “If you let them march, we’ll shoot you!” So we said: “Well, we’re going to march.”’67 The road to the township runs parallel to the highway, which is raised and looks down on the road. Armed AWB stood threateningly on the highway; it was ‘a very scary day for the people, because it was a big crowd of them’.68 Martin’s monitor car with peace insignia drove before the marchers: ‘They’ll first have to shoot us and then the people!’ In town, Martin spotted two snipers on buildings. Phosa carried on marching while she radioed the police who, a little tardily, removed them. The day concluded peacefully. In ‘Peace Month’, September 1993, the region’s main celebration was an evening peace festival in Witbank Stadium on 16 September, with doves, dancing and a message from Miss South Africa, Jacqui Mofokeng. A fun run, schools art competition and Peace Marathon followed. The Co-chairs told the NPS and their fellow Chairs that the peace campaign ‘had gained a lot of respect in conservative circles’, and efforts should be made to involve them. Gildenhuys responded that the greatest successes in attracting the right-wing had occurred at local level, and RPCs and LPCs should take the initiative to include them.69 In November, AWB representatives in full combat gear attended the LPC formation in the old gold-mining town of Barberton, and two members were elected to the LPC. Gildenhuys had to assure the shocked Town Council that this did not breach the Accord: the AWB, although not a signatory, was welcome.70 He observed in March 1994 that ‘discord between the ANC and the right-wing’ in Eastern Transvaal ‘had largely been solved’ and good support from the AWB had been gained.71 ‘We built up great teams,’ Brandmuller reflects, ‘because when the elections took place and the Councils were established, we had the most fantastic group of people controlling these Councils, who had been involved.’72 The new province, Mpumalanga, seemed willing to receive the peace structures, but it did not happen. When they disappeared, Hoffman and Diener reflect, 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

Martin interview. Brandmuller interview. Martin interview. NPS and Chairs 29/9/93, BVS 230/6. NPS 23/11/93, BVS230/6. NPC Executive 10/3/94, Carmichael/Pauquet. Brandmuller interview.

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there were maybe two years of transitional euphoria and openness when everybody participated. But after that, white people and black people withdrew into their cocoons ‘and nobody had contact with anybody else, and nobody wanted to make contact and everybody just started getting negative. And there was no way you could get people together again other than really making an effort.’73 ‘Those structures facilitated contact, that’s all I want to kind of emphasize.’74

Western Transvaal The farming region of the Western Transvaal was the AWB’s heartland. There was drought, compounded with high levels of unemployment and marginalized youth among its black population. Klerksdorp, the main centre, began as a gold-rush town and four mines still operated, all prone to industrial unrest and inter-ethnic fighting. In Hartbeesfontein’s Tigane township an isolated pocket of IFP supporters, which included the Mayor, sparred with ANC youths. The RDRC launched on 27 March 1992. Lawyers for Human Rights joined the usual array of representatives. Consultant Ben van As was appointed ‘executive coordinator’.75 In April two lawyers were elected Co-chairs: human rights attorney Mohammed Iqbal Motala and Bobby Brady, whose firm Waks and Brady provided an office. Motala had a particular interest in the transformation of local government, and credits the NPA with playing ‘quite a critical role in ensuring that the local government transformation process was in fact successful, by bringing parties together to discuss issues. … it really was one of the processes which ensured that we had a peaceful transition’.76 After the mass action of August 1992 the region was congratulated for its ‘maintenance of open communication channels’ and consequent peace.77 Soon after UNOMSA’s arrival, the region’s Observers Olga Sergienko (Russia) and Winston St Rose (USA) visited Tigane’s IFP mayor, helped resolve a conflict in Koster, and recorded their delight at different groups’ willingness to be involved in peace.78 The commemorations for Hani were well planned and peaceful, as were potentially confrontational events in Ventersdorp and Schweizer-Renecke.79 Klerksdorp LPC Chair, Rev. Brian Wilkinson, tells of a meeting where ‘the Civics were on about schooling and how terrible the government has been with schooling’, and finally he asked: ‘“What is your need?” “We know about a prefab building that’s lying in the white area that nobody is using, that would make a 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

Diener interview. Hoffman interview. NPC release 27/3/92, Carmichael/Pauquet. Motala interview. W. Tvl Record 6–7/8/92. W. Tvl Record 8–9/10/92. See pp.299–300.

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brilliant school.”’ Business representative Colin Hyman, Chair of the Chamber of Business, and someone in the room who knew someone with a flatbed truck, rallied round and the prefab became the desired school. ‘That was the kind of way the meetings every week became practical, and easy going because people eventually, after lots of aggro, started listening to one another and helping one another!’80 As soon as SERD Coordinators could be paid, Rev. Jackie Ntsipe was appointed. Much conflict in the region centred on services and resources, and he became the region’s trouble-shooter, smoothing lines of communication and unpicking misunderstandings over water, sewerage, creches, feeding schemes, vegetable gardens, safety for officials making pension pay-outs, and the state of Tigane’s Community Hall.81 Ntsipe created a recycling and employment scheme that employed thirty workers every other week, in four townships, for several months. To reach the white right-wing, he organized a series of ten breakfasts for white church ministers, ‘social gatherings to explain the peace structures, to extend a welcome to the church community and to encourage the ministers to involve their congregation in peace and reconciliation activities’.82 Starting with an NPAT bridging loan, the NPS paid for the breakfasts as a core peace activity.83 In the pre-election months, right-wingers exploded multiple small bombs across the region, generally without causing injury. Four suspects were arrested in mid-February and another, a Klerksdorp doctor, turned himself in.84 Suspicions swirled as to who might be involved in which intelligence agency. ‘Police, MI, NIS, they were all checking on each other!’85 By January 1994 the region had nineteen LPCs. Post-election, much work was still to do: ‘we have seen a considerable amount of understanding developing in the peace committees themselves between people from differing backgrounds. This area is therefore seen as an important priority for the peace structures to address.’86 Closure meant this social cohesion work was not pursued. The RPC met for the last time on 5 December 1994. ‘The meeting closed with the members commenting that this is a sad day as the Peace Committee witnessed and accommodated all the anger, hurt and distrust that existed. The Co-chairpersons thanked the members and the staff for sharing the experience.’87 80 Wilkinson interview. 81 Ntsipe’s reports 2/8/93, BVS25/W.Tvl/1. 82 ‘Socio-Economic Reconstruction Activities in the Peace Structures’, 20/6/94, BVS143. 83 Grobler to Crowley 13/5/94 BVS142. 84 W. Tvl Record 10–11/2/94. 85 Brady interview. 86 RPC Reports for Signatories 25/10/94, Carmichael/Lorimer. 87 Minutes, BVS26/W.Tvl/2.

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Northern Transvaal The Northern Transvaal region was constituted in Pretoria on 26 February 1992, with Co-Chairs Rev. J. Mminele and businessman Philip Schalkwyk, who was succeeded in mid-1993 by Rev. Chin Reddy. By January 1994 it had eleven LPCs. Schalkwyk was reckoned a good Chair but his army background (a Brigadier-­ General tank commander) and his establishing an ‘Intelligence Sub-committee’ (which merely gave innocuous situation reports) attracted the suspicion of one voluble SACP representative. For the first half of 1993 the region had a notable Director in the verligte theology lecturer Braam Viljoen, General Constand Viljoen’s identical twin brother. He revelled in the way the peace committees enabled people and government structures to connect and communicate as never before: The fact that when you had big demonstrations – I had one at Hammanskral, and one at Garankua and several other places – the fact that you were there, and that you had the ear of the authorities, that you had the ear of the police, that you could suggest certain things and they had to listen to you, that meant a lot.88

The twins were not in contact, but this was about to change. After an NPS meeting with Chairs and directors at Johannesburg airport in April 1993, Braam shared with a small group his worries about the serious pressure being put on Constand to attempt a military coup. He and Prof. Jaap Durand, in person, took a seminal message to Afrikaner right-wing theoretician Chris Jooste, to pass on to Constand: that the ANC was willing to include a clause in the Interim Constitution committing to future discussion of an Afrikaner state (volkstaat). ‘In the end it was meaningless, but still he [ Jooste] was very excited.’89 Ostensibly pleading overwork, but in reality facing a moral challenge over an inflated travel claim presented to him, Braam resigned as Director after six months. Acting alone, he saw his brother, who was feeling his only choice was war. He then spent August to December 1993 facilitating twenty-two secret top-level ANC–Afrikaner Volksfront meetings.90 Mandela attended the first, in Houghton, pouring the tea while telling Constand why he would lose a war: because the world, and too many in South Africa, would be against him.91 The teams were Thabo Mbeki, Joe Nhlanhla and Joe Modise (ANC) and Generals Constand Viljoen, Tienie Groenewald and Kobus Visser (AVF). They built understanding and wrote a draft agreement. After December the ANC stopped coming – Braam 88 Viljoen interview. 89 Durand interview; also in Ernst Conradie and Christo Lombard (eds), festschrift for Jaap Durand, Discerning God’s Justice in Church, Society and Academy (Sun Press, 2009) pp.173–4. 90 Viljoen interview. 91 Ibid.

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suspected ‘the security people’ had discovered the talks, felt left out and interfered. Indeed, Niël Barnard did take these talks over, on behalf of government, until they culminated in the ‘Accord on Afrikaner Self-­determination’ signed by AVF, ANC and government on 23 April 1994 (Barnard, 2017 pp.253–60). Post-election, this region joined Wits/Vaal in talks about becoming provincial structures in the new province, Gauteng. Lack of funds prevented progress.

Far Northern Transvaal The NPS provisionally placed the whole country from Pretoria northwards into a single ‘Northern Transvaal’ region, but before establishing it there was an urgent need to form LDRCs in Phalaborwa and Pietersburg (Polokwane). Exploratory meetings were arranged for the morning and afternoon of 8 February. Gildenhuys, Myburgh, Naidoo, Rudman and Bezeidenhout travelled by government-chartered plane. A full house gathered at 8am in Phalaborwa: city councillors, business and churches in force plus taxi associations and the Ximoko Progressive Party of Gazankulu led by Prime Minister Hudson Ntsanwisi.92 There was unanimous agreement to form an LDRC, and to invite other organizations to send two representatives to the launch on 22 February, 8.30am at the Selati Club. Records of the Pietersburg meeting are lacking but evidently enthusiasm was shown and the question of a separate Far Northern region was raised, to which the NPS shortly agreed. Far Northern Transvaal, based in Pietersburg, included three SGTs: Gazankulu, Kwandebele and Lebowa, and ‘independent’ Venda. Its RDRC was launched on 26 February. The chair went to law professor J. A. (Koos) van den Heever of the University of the North, later passing to Chamber of Business Chair Laurie Searle, head of a Pietersburg construction business. For this region, wars between long-distance taxi associations were a burning issue. Eight people died in November 1992. Goldstone hearings began in December but prior to these ‘more than 182 meetings’ had been held with the associations.93 Clashes between traditional authorities and ‘progressives’ in rural areas involved both political intimidation and allegations of witchcraft, with ‘witches’ being killed; but by April 1993 the RPC could point to considerable success: the signing of the ‘Greater Phalaborwa Peace Accord’ by twenty-two organizations at an impressive ceremony in August 1992; the peaceful march in Nylstroom;94 two hospital strikes in Lebowa successfully resolved; consumer boycotts averted in many towns; disputes resolved between the civics and traditional leaders, and civics and Lebowa government.95 92 NPS Minutes 8/2/92, BVS228/1. 93 NPS Report 1993, Carmichael. 94 See p.299. 95 Ibid.

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By January 1994 fourteen LPCs were working. Gildenhuys addressed a pre-election rally of 2,000 peace monitors in Pietersburg Stadium on Sunday 24 April. ‘Peace’, he said, ‘comes when we allow everybody their place in the sun.’96 Speakers from the SAP, SADF, and IEC emphasized the importance of communications during the election. Amid entertainment (the Balatedi Malebogo Traditional Dancers, Seshego Drum Majorettes, Lebowa Police Brass Band) Laurie Searle exhorted the monitors: ‘the world is watching us, we cannot afford to fail.’97

96 Ke Nako Times 24/4/94. 97 See p.325 for the election in Far Northern Transvaal.

18 The Goldstone Commission: Seeking Truth, Recommending Peace Introduction In its ultimatum to the State President on 5 April 1991 the ANC demanded a Commission to inquire into security force behaviour. De Klerk’s reaction was to promise a Commission to inquire into all violence. The ANC rejected this initiative, but the President’s Act creating a standing Commission of Inquiry Regarding the Prevention of Public Violence and Intimidation came into force on 17 July 1991. The Commission would certainly not have been able to function unless it enjoyed wide legitimacy. It acquired that legitimacy through being adopted into the National Peace Accord. Chapter 6 incorporates the Act, mostly verbatim, with an added emphasis on impartiality, and the Commission became the main instrument, under the NPA, ‘to investigate and expose the background and reasons for violence, thereby reducing the incidence of violence and intimidation’ (NPA 6.3). Its purpose was not retributive, but to establish facts and make recommendations to prevent recurrences. In its restorative ethos it was a precursor to the TRC, whose hearings it to some degree foreshadowed. With the NPC and NPS the Commission completed a triad of major national-level peace structures. The Commission was a permanent structure, consisting of five persons each appointed for three years: a judge or senior advocate as Chair, assisted by a senior lawyer or law professor and three other ‘duly qualified’ members. It was initially suggested that the ‘main’ parties might each nominate one of these three members, but it was finally agreed that the National Peace Committee would present a shortlist, for choice and appointment by the State President. This conferred the final seal of legitimacy: The parties agree that for the Commission to be effective it needs to be a credible instrument. It will furthermore only obtain credibility if it is to be constituted after the National Peace Committee has been consulted. If this condition is met, the establishment of the Commission should be given unconditional support. (6.29)

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The Commission’s task was to ‘inquire into the phenomenon of public violence and intimidation’, its ‘nature and causes’ and ‘what persons are involved therein’ (6.6.1), and make recommendations to prevent violence. Any individual could bring a matter to its attention (6.13). The Commission’s mandate was limited to events occurring since the date of commencement of the Act, 17 July 1991, including earlier happenings only insofar as they were relevant to events postJuly 1991, or to preventing future violence. The later TRC’s remit was broader, covering all events from 1960 to 1994.

Establishing the Commission The first Full NPC on 1 October 1991 agreed a shortlist for the Commission’s Chair: judges Mahomed, Kriegler, Goldstone, Trengrove, Ackerman and Streicher.1 The appointment of Richard Goldstone, appeal judge and formerly Chair of the inquiry into the March 1990 police shootings in Sebokeng, was announced on 24 October. Advocate D. J. ‘Niel’ Rossouw resigned his post as Cape Province Attorney General to become Vice-chair. The three other Commissioners were Advocate Msakazi Solomon (‘Solly’) Sithole of the Pretoria Bar, Lillian Gugu Baqwa from Natal, the first black African woman attorney, and Gert Steyn, recently retired president of the Eastern Cape Regional Court. Goldstone added two lawyers as his assistants: Advocate Johan (‘J. J’.) du Toit and Johan ‘Torie’ Pretorius. The Ministry of Justice provided the Commission’s financial support, secretariat, and head offices in the same DRC Synod Centre in Pretoria that housed DIPI and the NPS. In 1993 the Commission moved to pleasanter surroundings in the SandPark Building, 24 Fredman Drive in Sandton.

Wasting no time The new Commissioners met socially in Pretoria on Saturday 26 October, then spent Monday and Tuesday discussing their mandate and deciding guidelines. Goldstone found the team congenial, constructive and impartial (Goldstone, 2000 pp.26–7). Outlining their discussions to the press, he underlined their determination to be completely independent and said their primary task was to gather facts relating to any violence or intimidation that had been perpetrated ‘to achieve any particular political aims’.2 They would seek factual knowledge from individuals and organizations, and anticipated that the Dispute Resolution Committees would become useful sources of such knowledge. Their inquiries would be held in public except where a hearing in camera might be in the public 1 2

Citizen 3/10/91. Business Day 30/10/91.

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interest or to protect a witness. The Commission intended to focus on issues of national significance, leaving local and regional matters to the peace committees. Requests had however been received for an immediate inquiry into the recent violence in Thokoza, and a three-person Committee had been appointed, chaired by Sithole assisted by Baqwa and attorney Raymond Tucker. Over its three-year existence the Commission presented the State President with forty-seven Reports: five Interim Reports outlining the Commission’s work or highlighting particular issues, and forty-two related to specific topics or incidents. In its first Interim Report (24 January 1992) it recorded that it had sent out 500 written requests for information to political parties, universities, newspapers, local authorities and civic associations, and received useful replies. It had initiated four inquiries, each one illustrative of nation-wide problems. Three concerned differing types of violence: in Thokoza, on the President Steyn gold mine in Welkom, and on trains and taxis. The fourth concerned the conduct of mass gatherings and demonstrations. Unlike previous inquiries, those conducted by the Commission began without delay and reported in the shortest possible time, making the results useful in real time. Normally each inquiry was conducted by a small Committee appointed by the Commission, endowed with full powers to order investigations, call witnesses and require documents to be produced. The Act specified that committees must comprise at least three members, chaired by a Commissioner. Demand for inquiries quickly outstripped supply and Goldstone requested the urgent removal of these restrictions. An amendment was gazetted in May, allowing committees to be of any composition. A further amendment in July provided for pro Deo legal representation of persons appearing before the Commission, at the Commission’s discretion. By 29 April 1992 in his second Interim Report, Goldstone felt sufficiently confident of the major causes of violence to set out a list. He prefaces it with the comment that, although many people were blaming a ‘Third Force’, no organized ‘Third Force’ had yet been detected. Goldstone’s list, in historical order, pins blame on the disparities among the population resulting from three centuries of racial discrimination crowned by the ‘extreme policy of apartheid’; a police force and army that had been used as ‘instruments of oppression’; the sudden legalization of the ANC, which had been perceived as the enemy of Inkatha, of white people, and of the security forces; the consequent climate of intolerance with the creation of ‘no-go’ areas in hostels and squatter camps; violence between IFP and ANC supporters which their leaders had failed to stop; and finally a history of ‘State complicity in undercover activities’, and ‘criminal conduct’ by individuals in the SAP and KZP, which the government had failed adequately to control. The latter failure served to ‘exacerbate the perception of so many South Africans that the government or its agencies are active parties responsible for the violence’. Little wonder then that the violence was so com-

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plex and widespread.3 In his Third Interim Report Goldstone added the ready availability of sophisticated firearms and explosives to his list of causes. The Second Report recommends, as immediate steps, adequate witness protection to facilitate the Commission’s investigations, and the ‘deployment … in local communities’ of ‘an effective police presence … who are able to work in close co-operation with LDRCs’.4 Goldstone suggests the recently formed ISU should be suitable for this. He spotlights the admission by an MK leader that not all its members were under full control, and the widespread mistrust of the KwaZulu Police and allegations of unlawful activities by its senior members. Controversially, this Report called for all hostels to be ‘immediately … securely fenced’ and for the outlawing of any carrying of dangerous weapons in public. In August 1992 South Africa’s first witness protection scheme was inaugurated. Some Goldstone witnesses received safe housing for three months or more; others, through the help of overseas governments, began new lives with their families in Denmark or Britain (Goldstone, 2000 p.53) The Goldstone Reports, after submission to the State President, followed the conventional path of circulation to relevant government departments for comment prior to public release. This delayed the Second Report by three weeks. Goldstone recalls its release being accompanied by a government press statement ‘suggesting, quite erroneously, that the Commission had ascribed the causes of violence … to the activities of the ANC and the IFP’ (Goldstone, 2000 p.29). He wanted full weight to be placed on his much longer list of causes, although he himself had at the same time issued a statement on the Natal and Transvaal violence stating that: ‘The Commission has no doubt that the primary cause of the violence in all of these areas is the political battle between supporters of the ANC and of the IFP’ and that only the leaders of those parties could, and must, stop the violence.5 A furore broke out. Despite Goldstone’s clarifications, the impression stuck that the Commission was simply blaming the two parties. In the aftermath, de Klerk undertook to release the Goldstone reports within twenty-four hours. Goldstone’s Third Interim Report, 21 December 1992, highlights a moment at a hearing in Natal. Mrs Priscilla McKay had spoken on behalf of Pinetown Child Welfare. ‘The Commission was impressed by her plea for education of the youth of South Africa on the question of political tolerance’ (2.2). Was this the time, Goldstone asks, for ‘the mass of peace-loving and peace-yearning South Africans’ to come together ‘to demand “leadership for peace”’? Could NGOs consider launching a ‘mass education drive for tolerance’ and actively engage the political leadership? Press response was cynical but Goldstone was sensing that 3 4 5

Second Interim Report 29/4/92, para.2. Ibid. 3.2.1. Natal Mercury 28/5/92.

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the people at large, despite the constant news of killings, were becoming ready for a mass movement for peace. Much had happened since April’s Second Report. Taxi and train inquiries were making headway. The Wallis Committee, looking into causes of violence in Natal/KwaZulu other than political rivalry, was highlighting numerous issues around the SAP, KZP, KwaZulu government and tribal leaders. When in May the ANC announced its plans for mass action, Goldstone was well aware of the potential for mass disaster. He appointed a Committee composed of himself, Niel Rossouw and the Dean of the Law Faculty at UCT, Prof. D. van Zyl Smit, to inquire into the organization and conduct of mass demonstrations. It convened a high-level ten-member international advisory panel, including Prof. Philip Heymann of Harvard Law School, Prof. Clifford Shearing of UCT, and Dr P. A. J. ‘Tank’ Waddington of Reading and London Universities, to give advice on best practice. In Cape Town, early in July 1992, this panel heard representations from the SAP, ANC Alliance, IFP, and Department of Justice. The resulting two-page ‘Interim Agreement’ of 16 July 1992, signed by the SAP, ANC, COSATU, SACP, and IFP ‘on the Conduct of Public Demonstrations’, popularly known as the ‘Goldstone Guidelines’, amplifies the provisions of the Accord.6 For the first time in South African history this Agreement affirmed the right of the public to demonstrate peacefully, and the duty of the police to protect this right. It placed on the organizers, the local community, and police, the responsibility of ensuring that events were peaceful. It affirms the obligation of organizers, in Clause 2.5 of the NPA, to give notice of events, and amplifies it by specifying the information to be supplied. It emphasizes the need to give sufficient notice to allow for negotiations with the local authority and SAP. Predictably the IFP, while signing, dissented from Paragraph 3: ‘Participants in demonstrations should not be in possession of dangerous weapons.’ Goldstone’s Guidelines were expanded to become the Regulation of Gatherings Act, No. 205 of 1993. It received de Klerk’s assent on 14 January 1994, awaited tardy assent from the TEC, and finally became part of the legislation of the new South Africa. Two major incidents, at Boipatong and Bisho, had necessitated specific inquiries. At Boipatong forty-five township residents were killed in an attack from the hostel on 17 June 1992.7 The ISU was accused of complicity – a standard trope at that time. A Goldstone inquiry was initiated and on 20 July it issued the ‘Waddington Report’, the result of a subsidiary investigation by Prof. Waddington. Goldstone had met Waddington, a British expert on public order policing, at the 1991 Pietermaritzburg conference, and had now invited him to assess the police response to, and investigation of, the Boipatong incident. Waddington came accompanied by Commander Tom Laidlaw, head of public order policing for 6 7

Addendum to Goldstone Report: Regulation of Gatherings 15/1/93. See pp.220–1.

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the London Metropolitan Police, and his colleague Detective Chief Inspector David Don. His report was deeply critical of the ISU’s command, control and modes of operation – not least of its ceasing all patrols while handing over shifts at 10pm and its inability to secure any of the murder scenes; but he found no evidence of police complicity, nor did any such evidence emerge in court or at the TRC. The Boipatong inquiry was completed in October except for tests on ISU command-post tapes which had been wiped, and possible additional expert inquiries into the police since neither SAP nor ANC had found the Waddington Report entirely satisfactory. Ongoing court cases delayed publication of a Report, and the appeals of seventeen hostel men who had been jailed were still sub judice when the Commission closed in October 1994. Consequently no full Goldstone Report on Boipatong was ever issued. The TRC relied at first on the early unsubstantiated reports and stated that there had been police complicity; its Amnesty Committee then examined the evidence and retracted this ruling. Goldstone’s Bisho inquiry followed the incident on 7 September 1992 when the ANC breached the Accord and the Ciskei Defence force opened fire, killing twenty-nine.8 Goldstone’s report, rapidly issued on 29 September, took all those responsible – the ANC, Ciskei authorities and Defence Force – severely to task, and reiterated the conditions for legitimate, responsible mass action. In the course of 1992 better information on the hostels brought about a significant change in the Commission’s stance on fencing. Its focus was now only on those hostels that were clearly implicated in violence. The Record of Understanding of 26 September 1992 between government and ANC provided for regular reports on these hostels to be made to the Commission by the police and Department of Housing. Importantly, the Commission initiated in-depth research by the Human Sciences Research Council to generate a proper understanding of the problems of the hostels and the issues surrounding them. During 1993 the Commission investigated issues ranging from the illegal importation and distribution of firearms, ammunition and explosives, to the literal gate-crashing of the constitutional talks by the AWB. It published in-depth reports on the taxi and train violence, presented its draft legislation on the regulation of marches and gatherings; and opened its research Institute. In August it published the Report of a multi-national panel of local and international experts which Goldstone had convened to ‘inquire into the curbing of violence and intimidation before, during and after the forthcoming election’.9 This Report made detailed recommendations on the operation of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) and called for international assistance for the training of police and marshals. 8 9

See pp.385–7. Report 11/8/93; Towards Violence-Free Elections in South Africa. Carmichael/ COMSA.

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In response to calls for an integrated peacekeeping force, the Report suggested the urgent formation of a ‘Peacekeeping Service’ combining police and party-affiliated forces, freshly trained and under civilian control, to replace the ISU in election-related policing; coordinate the efforts of the security services, peace structures, and NGOs in dealing with pre-election marches and rallies; and secure the election itself (pp.50–60). Action was taken too late, and the short-lived ‘National Peacekeeping Force’ (NPKF) bore little resemblance to this proposal. Goldstone’s Fourth Interim Report appeared on 6 December 1993, when the over-riding concern was to prepare for a free, fair, legitimate election. The report focused on two issues: hit squads, and the months of violence in Kathorus. On hit squads, the ‘huge toll’ of murdered political leaders and police made it impossible, Goldstone wrote, to doubt their existence; but credible evidence of any such squad had emerged only recently. Operating within the KZP, it had allegedly been responsible during 1992–93 for nine murders including those of ANC leaders and members. The new Commissioner of the KZP, Lt-Gen. Roy During, had requested the SAP to investigate. The SAP had invited the Commission to participate, which it did through its Natal Investigation Unit. Evidence suggested the squad had five members, all Caprivi trainees; three were in custody and more arrests were expected. While all was still sub judice, in view of the approaching election the Commission believed it was ‘in the public interest to make the above information public at this stage’ (2.5). It was a warning and an exhortation. The hope was that ‘this disclosure will be a spur to adequate steps being taken by all interested parties and organizations to prevent further deaths and injuries’ (2.6). Anyone with knowledge of hit squad activity was invited to come forward. On Kathorus the Commission expressed alarm at the chaos, the breakdown of community infrastructure, and frequent attacks on police. It expressed support for the efforts of the Wits/Vaal RPC, and opposed demands for the withdrawal of the ISU, assuming this would only leave the area at the mercy of vigilantes and SDUs and arguing that, regardless of whether the community’s criticisms of the ISU were justified, ‘there is no peace keeping force in South Africa other than the SAP and it appears highly unlikely that there will be another in the future’ (3.4). The Commission wondered if perceptions of the ISU might be altered if foreign police experts were deployed with it. The attachment of European Observers to Goldstone’s Investigation Units had materially helped to give them public credibility. At the end of 1993 the Commission announced an inquiry into ‘the role, functioning and training of SDUs’. Submissions were requested. Parties requested extensions of time.10 Unsurprisingly, this inquiry does not appear to have progressed. 10

Goldstone Report: Shooting in Katlehong 9/1/94, 6.13.

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The following year began with a quick report on a shooting incident on 9 January. A cavalcade of ANC leaders including Joe Slovo and Cyril Ramaphosa, with a large press contingent, had driven unannounced into Katlehong. It halted about 350m from the Mazibuko hostel, and a press photographer, Abdul Sharif, died in crossfire between the hostel and SDU members. Later, the ISU were attacked, and killed an SDU member. The ANC admitted their error in failing to give notice either to the SAP or RPS. In February the ‘Third Force’ suddenly came into sharp focus with the revelations of ‘Q’, discussed below. On 28 March the regional IFP held a chaotic, unmonitored anti-election rally in Johannesburg. The IFP had notified the magistrate but not the SAP or the Wits/Vaal RPC (of which the organizer, Humphrey Ndlovu, was a member). Hence no joint preparation took place. Tragically, some fifty died, some when ANC guards shot at IFP marchers outside the party’s Shell House HQ, others in random shooting in the Library Gardens. Gildenhuys, Lorimer, RPS staffer Naveen Naidoo and others did their best to monitor after the chaos had begun. Judge Nugent’s inquest report details the tragedy.11 Goldstone in his Preliminary Report regretted that the TEC had delayed the coming into force of the Regulations of Gatherings Act, with its legal requirement for thorough preparation. Goldstone’s Final Report, dated 27 October 1994, the day the Commission closed, looked back to its original appointment, noting it had operated as one of the three national structures under the Peace Accord. It recounts the establishment of the Goldstone Institute and its broadening into the Human Rights Institute. A few outstanding matters still awaited final reports (which were never completed). Witness protection had to continue. The Commissioners entrusted these matters to the new democratic government, in the presence of which the Commissioners believed unanimously that the Commission should now terminate with the expiry of their three-year term of office (4.1). In conclusion the Commission could say, with relief and satisfaction, that it ‘welcomes the marked decrease in public violence and intimidation since the national election. There is every reason to anticipate that this trend will continue’ (6.1).

The Commission’s role among the peace structures At the launch of the Peace Doves symbol in March 1993 the three Chairs – John Hall (NPC), Antonie Gildenhuys (NPS) and Richard Goldstone (Commission) – stood side by side to release white doves.12 The three peace bodies together provided South Africa with a multi-layered mechanism to deal with the violence and the emotions it engendered. The structures afforded a place to which to refer those issues, removing them from the table of the constitutional talks. 11 www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/shell-house-massacre-march-28-1994-the-inquest-fin [accessed 29/9/21]. 12 Photo p.267.

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The Commission served a similar function within the structures. It afforded a safe space where peace committees could ‘park’ contentious matters, knowing they would be credibly investigated and practical recommendations would emerge. If ‘Goldstone is dealing with that’, the issue – whether a massacre or hostels or taxis or police misconduct – was lifted off the agenda, freeing the peace committee to make progress on other matters. Reciprocally, the Commission could work with, and entrust follow-up activity to, the peace committees. It was open to all to suggest an inquiry or make submissions. In Alexandra the ICC agreed that members were free to make submissions as individuals, and there were no repercussions. In Port Shepstone, the LDRC Chair made an executive decision over the Christmas break in 1992, without seeking consensus, to send in a submission detailing the history of local violence, as if from the LDRC. While attempting to show balance it drew heavily on survivor statements made to the Law Enforcement Facilitation Office, a majority of which were ‘ANC’ and thus reflected the prevailing ANC belief that a ‘Third Force’, lurking within the police, was using the IFP to perpetrate violence. In consequence, the IFP boycotted LDRC meetings for months.

Goldstone investigation units In its first year the Commission had no means of carrying out its own investigations, and its information-gathering depended heavily on submissions. It was a considerable advance when, on 1 October 1992, five dedicated Goldstone investigation units became operational.13 Units were stationed in Johannesburg, Durban and Pietermaritzburg, Port Elizabeth, East London, and Cape Town. The Johannesburg and Natal/KwaZulu units, covering the most active areas, consisted of three or more handpicked SAP members and one SADF officer seconded to the Commission; two or three senior practising attorneys (part time, paid from the Attorneys Fidelity Fund), and one or two international ‘Goldstone Observers’. Among the SAP members the name of Lt-Col. Frank Dutton stands out: the hero of the Trust Feed investigation, now the energetic commander of the Natal units. The total number of SAP members was normally about thirteen. In March 1994 sixty more were added, greatly increasing the strength and number of units for the election period. The international members, clad in distinctive white vests with reflective yellow bands, emblazoned ‘Goldstone Observer’, were senior police officers from European Union countries, paid by their own governments and seconded 13

Letter, Goldstone to Rudman 22/9/92, BVS9; R. J. Goldstone and J. J. du Toit, ‘Report on the Investigation Units of the Goldstone Commission: 1 October 1992 – 30 September 1993, Reports on Goldstone Observers, in Jackson Papers, Bodleian ID6685/Box 8; Laidlaw Journal, Carmichael/Laidlaw.

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on six-month assignments specifically to the Goldstone Observer team. Their purpose was to add to the ‘credibility and objectivity’ and the ‘expertise and efficiency’ of the units.14 Observers accompanied unit members on investigations, attended meetings and inquiries, could sit in on interrogations, and reported on the thoroughness and impartiality of the investigations. The units were the investigative ‘eyes and ears’ of the Commission, not arresting or prosecuting anyone, although they might, with the agreement of witnesses, facilitate the provision of information to the SAP. They were particularly tasked with following up every lead that might uncover a ‘Third Force’ acting since 17 July 1991. On receiving a request for an inquiry the Commission could now send its SAP members to make a preliminary assessment and report to the Commission, which decided whether to investigate further. ‘If there is a dispute of fact, the matter will usually be referred to a Committee of the Commission for investigation’.15 In the case, for example, of alleged SAP involvement in an attack by Nancefield Hostel residents on the Power Park squatter camp in Soweto on 27 July 1993, the unit’s report ‘clearly indicated a dispute of fact’, and a one-person committee was appointed. The Johannesburg unit had the immediate task of investigating fresh incidents of train violence on behalf of the Steyn Committee. The Natal team was busy assisting the Wallis Committee in its inquiry into causes of violence other than political rivalry, where the allegations chiefly concerned the security forces. So heavy was the Natal workload that in February 1992 Dutton pleaded for eight reinforcements.16 An overall report by Goldstone and du Toit summarizes the units’ activities up to September 1993. The Johannesburg unit, covering the Transvaal and OFS, had investigated twenty-one allegations against police, finding no evidence of direct involvement in political violence. The majority of cases, the unit concluded, resulted from poor police–community relations, lack of communication and consequent lack of trust. Two cases were referred to the Police Reporting Officer. Trustworthy investigation was in itself effective in reducing violence. The East London unit reported that the Venterstad area had suffered nineteen violent incidents between April and July 1993, with five allegations of police misconduct. Effective investigations by the unit together with the PRO calmed the area. Similar success was achieved in Aliwal North, where the main complaint was against the ISU. Friction ended after an agreement for its immediate with14 Laidlaw, memo ‘International Observers …’, Jackson papers, Bodleian ID6685/ Box 8. 15 R. J. Goldstone and J. J. du Toit, ‘Report on the Investigation Units’, David Jackson papers, Box 8. 16 Laidlaw journal: 17/2/93, Carmichael/Laidlaw.

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drawal. Fort Beaufort had suffered seventy-eight incidents between February and April. The unit established that the cause was conflict between ANC and PAC. ‘With the assistance of the EC and UN Observers (attached to the Border/ Ciskei RPC) meetings were held between the SAP, PAC and ANC’, resulting in a local PAC–ANC peace agreement. After ANC–IFP fighting in Bhambayi near Durban the IFP claimed the ANC had brought in outsiders, MK and Transkei Defence Force, to launch attacks. Goldstone’s unit showed that all the dead had been local.

‘Third Force’: the DMI On the ‘Third Force’, the Commission was successful both in disproving some of the allegations that swirled about, and in unearthing genuine nefarious activities. The whole Commission examined the allegations of SADF funding to Inkatha, published by the Weekly Mail in December 1991 and January 1992. Its conclusion, much delayed, was that such activity had indeed taken place historically, not least the training of 200 KZP members in the Caprivi Strip in 1986, but no evidence existed for SADF involvement in the current violence.17 On 30 October 1992 Vrye Weekblad had published apparent evidence to the contrary. A 29-year old Mozambican, João Cuna, claimed that whites had recently recruited him into a hit squad to kill ANC supporters in Natal. He described having reluctantly participated in assassinating nine occupants of a house, followed by shooting randomly at a taxi rank. He mentioned the name of Ferdi Barnard, a convicted murderer now released, with a background in DMI ‘dirty tricks’. Here at last, Max du Preez’s editorial announced, was proof of the ‘Third Force’. Goldstone’s top investigator Col. Henk Heslinga, a career detective, took Cuna to Natal. The massacre story was now changing: thirty ANC had been mown down after a meeting.18 Heslinga found no evidence for the purported incident, but he tracked down the guesthouse in Camperdown near Pietermaritzburg where Cuna and two whites, one named Smith, had stayed, paying with a Diners Club card. Heslinga got the card slip and reported to Goldstone, who obtained the Diners Club invoices, which revealed an address: ‘Africa Risk Analysis Consultants’ (ARAC), operating from offices in Menlyn Park, an east Pretoria suburb. Some fifty signatories were using the card. Heslinga checked that the building existed, and Goldstone gave him a search warrant. The judge placed lawyer ‘Torie’ Pretorius in overall charge of the search, and arranged for plainclothes police from SAP headquarters to be ready to join him. 17 18

Goldstone Report: ‘Allegations Concerning Front Companies of the SADF …’, 1 June 1993. HURISA summary. Heslinga interview.

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Commander Tom Laidlaw of the London Metropolitan Police, who had assisted Waddington, was back in South Africa, coordinating the first group of Goldstone Observers and working with the Johannesburg unit. In his daily journal he records a meeting in the Commission’s Pretoria head office at 12.30pm on Wednesday 11 November 1992. Col. Heslinga was present, with three members of the Johannesburg unit: Detective Sergeant Piet van der Merwe, attorney Piet Botbijl and advocate W. Sceales, and the unit’s Dutch police Observer Floris Bouma. They discussed Heslinga’s findings, and the suspicion that ARAC was a front for the covert activities of Military Intelligence. Laidlaw laconically records: ‘Decided to raid the offices of the company ARAC so off we went.’19 Pretorius was delayed in a hearing and would join them later. Interviewed in 2012, Laidlaw described their arrival: And we went down there: there was only myself, the other Observer, an attorney, and the guy who looked after us, he was a Colonel in the SAP, and I think another chap, and we were the only ones who went down. Because we just assumed we were just going to go in and see some files and interview people and if necessary make arrests, and see if there was any evidence of guns there, and stuff like that, search the premises. But when we went in, we were met by a young lady at a desk, receptionist, and we announced ourselves as being from the Goldstone Commission, and she visibly paled and panicked, and I thought: well, that’s a strange reaction. Because I mean the Goldstone Commission, everybody’d heard of it and we weren’t really like the SAP investigating it – so why we had this reaction? Anyway, she said: ‘Well I want to help, but I can’t do anything until I get my boss back, and he’s out playing bowls.’ ‘Well, best get your boss back: tell him it’s the Goldstone Commission are here, and they want to see you.’ So she made a phone call, and sure enough about 20 minutes later, this chap turned up complete with white flannels, from playing bowls. And she turned out to be somebody of middle rank in the SA Air Force. And he was a Brigadier in the SADF.

Wednesday afternoon, Heslinga explains, was recreation time for the army. Very few people were in the building. While waiting for the commander Heslinga ensured the safe remained closed by confiscating the key. One person quietly showed him offices on the first floor where, he assured him, the CCB was still operating. Heslinga looked and found proof that former CCB head ‘Staal’ Burger, Ferdi Barnard and others, were indeed using these offices. The Brigadier, Tollietjie Botha, commander of Military Intelligence’s new covert unit, the ‘Directorate of Covert Collections’ (DCC), was disinclined to 19

Laidlaw’s personal journal as Observer, October 1992 – March 1993. Carmichael/ Laidlaw.

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cooperate; but on being shown the Vrye Weekblad report he agreed his office might have problems. ‘Can I contact my Generals please?’ I said: ‘No problem at all! Phone your General.’ So in an hour’s time Kat Liebenberg and Badenhorst and all these generals of the army and head of Intelligence they came at the office. But strangely, they didn’t know of the existence of ARAC! They knew about the Directorate of Covert Collections, … but the company that was registered, under which this whole activity took place, they didn’t know about that, that was news to them! And I showed them all the documentation and so on.20

The generals agreed to cooperate. Argument raged between the lawyers for each side over the extent of the Commission’s powers to seize sensitive documents. Between 5 and 6pm Torie Pretorius arrived, followed by seven plainclothes investigative police, ex-members of the Security Branch. By phone, Goldstone instructed Pretorius to take only the files relating to Ferdi Barnard. Four files were produced and handed over. Goldstone describes the contents: one file ‘related to an operation codenamed “Operation Baboon”, whose main purpose was to gather information with which to blackmail senior members of the ANC’; another related to a brothel run for blackmailing purposes. ‘I found it morally unacceptable that a man of Barnard’s past and reputation should have been employed by military intelligence in any capacity at all’ (Goldstone, 2000 p.43). ARAC’s methods had also given Laidlaw pause for thought: They were all from the services, and it was – I mean it may well have been perfectly legitimate, an intelligence-gathering operation, and if you do that then you don’t tell people, it is covert. But nobody else knew about it – you know, even people that should have known about it didn’t, and it appeared to me – and subsequent events I think went down this way – it appeared to me that there was almost a ‘Third Force’ operating. Now there’d been suggestions over the years of a ‘Third Force’ operating, and the feeling was that this was actually it. And when they eventually seized files and went through them … there were some interesting things coming out of it: there was one, a guy who’d actually been jailed twice for murder [Ferdi Barnard] and he was on their books, on their payroll. Now if you’re an MI intelligence gathering, why do you have to employ an ex-murderer on your books? Other than use him to go and rub out people you don’t like?21

Laidlaw and Bouma left before Goldstone’s team questioned Major Smith, the Diners Club signatory. As the coordinator liaising between the Commission and European embassies, Laidlaw was unsure as to the position of foreign Observers in relation to secret and sensitive material. He concluded, for himself, 20 Heslinga interview. 21 Laidlaw interview.

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that Observers need not monitor in such cases. This was not adopted as a rule. On 10 March 1993, at the first State President’s Questions in Parliament, the CP attacked the Commission by complaining, wrongly, that the raid had given the UN and Scotland Yard access to precious secret lists of informants.22 Rather than attempt a full investigation and risk a legal block, Goldstone gave a press conference on the raid on Monday 16 November. On the 18th de Klerk appointed air force General Pierre Steyn to investigate. Torie Pretorius, for the Commission, worked with him. Steyn reported verbally what de Klerk termed ‘a veritable rat’s nest’ of unauthorized activities in pursuit of the personal convictions of the DCC’s members, including stockpiling weapons, instigating violence, supporting the IFP and discrediting the ANC (De Klerk 1999, pp.262–3). None of this was tested in court, but in the ‘Night of the Generals’ on 19 December, balancing as de Klerk says the need to preserve the capacity of the SADF against the need to purge it, he compulsorily retired sixteen officers including Botha, and suspended seven, a total of twenty-three (Goldstone, 2000 pp.40–5; De Klerk, 1999 pp.258–67). The DCC clearly had not shed all the habits of its antecedents. The safe had been full of files and there were rumours of bonfires after the Goldstone raid. ‘I think’, says Heslinga, ‘they got a helluva fright.’23 No doubt the fright was salutary, but the full DMI story never emerged: the military did not approach the TRC to seek amnesty, and the DMI’s covert activities were never fully investigated. Cuna meanwhile retracted his massacre stories, offering various excuses for inventing them. He told Goldstone’s one-person committee, Advocate R. M. Wise, that he had in fact been recruited to assist investigations into arms smuggling from Mozambique, the operation in Natal had been to collect smuggled AK-47s, and no shootings took place. Although deeming Cuna unreliable, Wise accepted this version, finding no evidence to support the ‘Third Force’ allegation.24

‘Third Force’: Vlakplaas The persisting illicit activities among the ex-security police at Vlakplaas took longer to come to light. In February 1994 an informant initially known as ‘Q’, an ex-security policeman named Chappies Klopper, still stationed at Vlakplaas, approached a Danish diplomat with information that certain current and former Vlakplaas operatives, including Eugene de Kock, had continued after the disbanding of Unit C1 in 1990 to supply guns to IFP leaders Themba Khoza and Victor Ndlovu. Klopper alleged these activities were known to certain top SAP 22 Laidlaw journal 11/3/93, Carmichael/Laidlaw. 23 Heslinga interview. 24 Citizen 27/11/92; Goldstone Report 27/5/93, ‘Allegations published in the Vrye Weekblad …’. HURISA summary.

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officers: Deputy Commissioner of Police Lt-Gen. Basie Smit and his colleagues Lt-Gen. Johan le Roux and Maj.-Gen. Krappies Engelbrecht. Klopper was persuaded to speak to Goldstone, who started rapid investigations in South Africa and among protected witnesses overseas, an exercise that was laced with denials, tales of how previous investigations had been stopped, frantic efforts by some officers to frustrate this investigation, and assassination threats to Goldstone and his wife (Goldstone, 2000 pp.50–6). Goldstone presented the resulting ‘Interim Report on criminal political violence by elements within the South African Police, the KwaZulu Police and the Inkatha Freedom Party’ to the President on 18 March. That evening, as an urgent preventative measure in view of the impending election, the Report was released by de Klerk, with Goldstone, at a major press conference (De Klerk, 1999 p.318). This Report lists persons allegedly involved in the sale of guns to IFP leaders in the Transvaal and Natal/KwaZulu. It records information that train violence was organized by William Coetzee (‘Timol’) of the East Rand Security Branch, with de Kock, using Vlakplaas askaris and IFP members employed as security at ABSA bank; that the shooting of four ANC and one IFP members travelling in a ‘combi’ near Nelspruit in March 1992 was perpetrated by de Kock and others; and that convincing evidence existed that hit squads composed of Caprivi trainees were still active within the KZP. It names those, including de Kock, who still possessed false passports. All this evidence, the Report warns, was prima facie and not yet proven in court; but with the April election looming the Commission ‘exhorts the Government, the TEC and other relevant authorities … to take all possible steps to neutralize elements in the SAP and KZP’ which might cause violence before and after the election (26.2). The Commission also ‘earnestly appeals to all South Africans to recognize and appreciate that … there are over 100,000 members of the Police Force’ and the investigations would have been impossible without the courage and honesty of certain SAP officers and the support of the Commissioner, General Johan van der Merwe (26.3). ‘It would be unfair and dangerous to tar the whole Police Force with the brush of Vlakplaas’ (26.4). De Klerk had been supportive of the investigations throughout. The press, he writes, gave this Report ‘massive coverage. It appeared at last to corroborate the long-held suspicions concerning the existence of a sinister third force within the security forces’ (De Klerk, 1999 p.318). Protesting innocence, the named officers were suspended. Further details emerged during subsequent court cases and at the TRC. Goldstone found no grounds for the oft-repeated allegation that such ‘Third Force’ activities must have had the permission, knowledge or control of de Klerk and his cabinet. He records that when he saw de Klerk on 20 February 1994 to inform him of ‘Q’s allegations against General Basie Smit and others, the President ‘was visibly shocked … The spontaneity of his reaction convinced me that he had no knowledge of the complicity in the violence of the most senior police

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officials’ (Goldstone, 2000 p.52). De Klerk admits that he had been too ready to accept assurances from the Harms Commission and senior officers that there was no involvement by elements in the security forces in ‘totally unacceptable covert activities’ (De Klerk, 1999 p.204).

Train violence Immediately on being formed, Goldstone’s Johannesburg unit was engaged in the investigation of train violence. The commuter lines radiating from Johannesburg westwards into Soweto and eastwards to the East Rand townships carried 1,426,416 commuters on 1,127 trains each day.25 Violent crime on trains was no new phenomenon but a new genre of attacks, starting with random individual assaults on Soweto trains, began in July 1990, coinciding with the IFP launch. Its origins were unknown, and the ‘Third Force’ was therefore suspected. Scattered statements and admissions point to Vlakplaas. One Vlakplaas askari, Xola Frank ‘Jimmy’ Mbane, informed the TRC that a train squad existed, consisting of himself and five other askaris; that most briefings were given at Vlakplaas, and hostel dwellers from Nancefield in Soweto were sometimes also used as attackers.26 IFP leaders Themba Khoza, Humphrey Ndlovu and Musa Myeni were allegedly present at Nancefield planning meetings. Once initiated, attacks in and around trains became self-perpetuating and aligned with the ANC–IFP war. On 13 September 1990 a gang of ten black youths killed some twenty-six commuters travelling westbound from Johannesburg, between Jeppe and Benrose stations. The attackers were said to speak Zulu and some allegedly ran towards the Zulu-dominated George Goch hostel. Of five suspects arrested, four were Inkatha members. ‘According to the chief police investigator, the suspects believed that commuters attending a daily worship service on the train had insulted Buthelezi and prayed for his death.’27 TRC witnesses later added that King Goodwill Zwelithini had also been insulted.28 The source of this ‘information’ was apparently not established. On 29 October 1991 the Saturday Star estimated that ninety-one people had died in nineteen train attacks between August 1990 and October 1991 (SAIRR, 1991/92 p.xxxvii). Large-scale attacks continued into 1992. Altogether in over 600 incidents between 1990 and 1993, some 572 commuters died.29 25 Interim Report on Train Violence 6/7/92, 6.3.1. 26 Ibid., subsection 90, para.661. 27 www.hrw.org/reports/1991/southafrica1/8.htm, citing David B. Ottaway, ‘5 Zulus Arrested in South African Train Massacre’, Washington Post 9/11/90. 28 TRC Final Report Vol. 3 Ch. 6, subsection 89, para 646. 29 https://sabctrc.saha.org.za/glossary/train_violence.htm#:~:text=Train%20violence%20first%20emerged%20in,600%20incidents%20of%20train%20violence [accessed 31/3/21].

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The Goldstone train inquiry, chaired by Gert Steyn accompanied by Mr S. Moshidi and Advocate B. M. Ngoepe, opened on 4 May 1992. The violence by then had its own momentum, and they did not uncover any clandestine activity. In their Interim Report on 8 July they concluded that train violence was integral to the ongoing township violence. ‘The primary causes and participants appear to be the same.’30 A contributory factor was that certain prayer groups or political or union groups would travel daily in the same carriage, and might be targeted or might attack strangers who inadvertently entered the ‘wrong’ carriage. An IFP group from Tembisa complained simply: ‘Trains – people are coerced to sing songs – if they can’t, they are targeted for attack.’31 Steyn’s inquiry focused on identifying and removing the contributing factors: the appalling state of maintenance of rolling stock (missing train doors and windows, closed inter-leading doors, no means of communication), the vandalized stations and serious lack of security systems and policing. Weapons could easily be carried onto trains. Many had died by being pushed, or jumping in panic, out of the doorways and windows of moving trains. The first Interim Report (6 July 1992) called on all leaders to ‘do their utmost to curb the violence as a matter of urgency’, making use of the NPA structures (14.1), and made numerous recommendations for the reconstruction of railway infrastructure and the provision of security and policing (14.10). It added that the Commission should ‘urgently consider appointing a committee to look at the whole issue of hostels’ (14.8). In May 1992 the SARCC, police, ANC Alliance and Civics had signed a ‘Train Accord’ and formed a monthly forum, which earned praise from a UNOMSA Observer for its effectiveness in securing strong community participation.32 The IFP and PAC were not involved, but in January 1993 a new forum, the ‘Train Peace Initiative’, comprising the IFP, PAC, ANC and train bodies, began under the Wits/Vaal RPC. Flare-ups, including shootings at commuters and from trains, continued through 1992 but advances were made. By March 1993 detective work had improved, massacres ceased and the death toll dropped to an average nine per month. Goldstone’s second and final train Report, dated 6 May 1993, recorded that 9,000 bullet-proof ‘hopper’ windows had been fitted to 572 coaches, doors had been upgraded, station fences repaired, metal detectors introduced, a new Metro-Security Guard corps established, and policing much increased. Goldstone’s train inquiry deserves recognition as a successful SERD operation. The Goldstone Institute sponsored two follow-up publications providing an analysis of the train reports and recording progress on their recommendations.33 30 31 32 33

Train Report 6/7/92, 13.1. Tembisa Consultative Forum 20–22/9/91, Carmichael/Roux. Securing the Trains? May 1994 p.34. Issue No. 2 (1993), Nov./Dec. 1993, Securing the Trains? Working Paper, and No.

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Much was still to do but by May 1994 train violence had dwindled to sporadic attacks on individuals – probably, Mark Shaw suggests, simply for entering the ‘wrong’ carriage.

Taxi wars Most black commuters and travellers country-wide used minibus taxis (‘Combis’), typically a fourteen-seat Toyota Hiace, and taxi ownership was one means of accruing wealth for black businesspeople. Running from a ‘rank’ at each terminus, taxis could stop to collect or drop passengers anywhere on their route. In 1987 the government, against the advice of the national umbrella body, the SA Black Taxi Association (SABTA), had deregulated the taxi industry, meaning that ranks and routes became a free-for-all. Rapid urbanization had occurred without adequate provision of infrastructure, including ranking facilities. Each vehicle still required a taxi permit, but corruption meant permits could be bought. Owners employed their own drivers and clubbed together in Taxi Associations. Wars broke out between Associations over the right to use the most lucrative ranks and routes. Associations employed men to exert discipline over their drivers and chase ‘pirates’ away. These ‘squads’ doubled as armed militias. A taxi might end its journey riddled with AK-47 bullet-holes, seeping blood. Owners, drivers, passengers, and bystanders all fell victim. In several places (Alexandra, Nyanga) taxi men intimidated the bus-drivers, to eliminate buses. Some taxi conflicts became politicized, as in Kathorus. Police were widely suspected of involvement, through corruption and as clandestine taxi owners. Vendettas were generated. Statistics were imprecise but by 1991 some 100–200 deaths were occurring annually.34 Communities were angry and afraid. The peace committees were called upon to mediate, and interacted with the country-wide Goldstone taxi inquiry chaired by Advocate Niel Rossouw. His seven Interim Reports, from 10 June 1992 to 24 August 1994, described the phenomenon, analysed local causes, made recommendations and shared good practice. Gradually, over the period, taxi violence significantly abated The Commission initially appointed a Transport Committee covering both taxi and train violence, composed of Niel Rossouw, L. S. van Zyl, Adv. B. M. Ngoepe and Gert Steyn. All four sat, in the Dutch Reformed Church Centre in Cape Town on 16 March 1992, to investigate the fighting between rival taxi 3 (1994), May 1994, Securing the Trains? An Analysis of Train Violence and the Goldstone Reports, by Mark Shaw. Goldstone Archive, NMF. 34 According to the first and second Goldstone taxi reports: 66 deaths in Western Cape between 1989 and March 1992; around Springs (East Rand): 27 drivers dead between July 1991 and March 1992; in Lebowa over 100 dead May 1991 – May 1992.

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associations LAGUNYA and WEBTA and the peace effort through the Convention for a Democratic Taxi Association (CODETA), in which members of the Western Cape RDRC were heavily involved.35 LAGUNYA, as its name indicates, served the official black townships of Langa, Guguletu and Nyanga; its members were legal residents, possessing permits to run taxis. When informal settlements grew, illegal taxis appeared and formed the Western Black Taxi Association (WEBTA). With the abolition of Group Areas and ‘deregulation’ of taxi routes, WEBTA taxis were in effect legalized and received permits. Competition became violent. After this hearing the Goldstone Transport Committee split: Steyn and Ngoepe focused on trains, Rossouw led the taxi committee. Rossouw headed first to the informal settlement of Ivory Park in Midrand. Here two associations were feuding for control of this new commuter population, and fights were ongoing despite a peace agreement brokered by the NE Rand LDRC and the local government Midrand Taxi Forum.36 The next stop was nearby Alexandra. The Alex ICC (LDRC) invited Rossouw to look into the war between the long-established Alexandra Taxi Association (ATA) and its rival, the Alexandra Randburg Midrand Sandton Taxi Association (ARMSTA), which broke away from ATA in 1987. This endemic conflict was entangled in alliances and feuds involving half a dozen neighbouring associations. A two-week hearing, organized with the ICC, was held in September–October on the neutral ground of Alexandra’s Thusong Community Centre.37 Follow-up was entrusted to the two associations, which failed to implement agreements and fell again to fighting, and to the ICC, which picked up the pieces. Rossouw’s personal interest and occasional presence over the next two years gave significant support to the continuing mediation. The Alex ICC worked jointly, at all hours of day and night, with its neighbouring LDRCs/LPCs in NE Rand and Midrand. The final outcome was a festive sub-regional taxi peace celebration in July 1994, with Niel Rossouw as a guest of honour, where a lasting peace agreement was signed. Rossouw and Sithole spent the week of 1 February 1993 conducting a hearing in Groblersdal, Transvaal. Here a spider’s-web of rural associations carried passengers into town and one group, GTA, had gradually excluded others from the town rank. On-street stopping points were dominated by its rival, GUTAC. The needs of ‘long-distance’ taxis were ignored. In 1991 shooting and destruction of property began. SAP mediation resulted in some rival members forming another group, the Taxi Operators Peace Initiative Committee (TOPIC), but war broke out between TOPIC and GUTAC. On 14 December 35 First Interim Taxi Report 10/6/92. 36 Second Interim Taxi Report 2/7/92. 37 Third Interim Taxi Report 4/12/92.

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1992 they signed an interim peace agreement mediated by Rev. Chin Reddy of the Northern Transvaal RDRC. Rossouw was above all struck by the greed and power struggles he observed in Groblersdal. Violence sprang from taxis poaching on others’ routes, pressure from high association fees and maintenance costs, too many permits, and unwise Town Council decisions. Rossouw helped clarify differing interpretations of the peace agreement, urging that it be kept.38 His Fifth Report records that fighting had ceased but the agreed joint control was still not implemented.39 The Fifth Interim taxi report, effectively the final report, summarized the inquiry’s findings and recommendations so far. Apartheid had prevented the proper planning of transport infrastructure for a rapidly urbanizing population. Consequently the number of taxis had exploded. Government failed to communicate and consult. An opaque, slow and expensive permit system resulted in a widespread belief that the local road transportation boards were corrupt and unfair. Policing was inadequate in most areas; and Rossouw again highlights the behaviour of taxi operators: ‘In particular reference is made to intolerance, selfishness, provocation and greed’ (3.6.1). Rossouw recommended that deregulation be ended, consultation be undertaken at all levels, and new licensing bodies be created to operate a quick, transparent, inexpensive permit system with an appeals mechanism. Improved training was needed, from driving skills to business skills. Better ranks must be built. Traffic police should be involved. Dispute resolution mechanisms must be in place. Durban was held up as an example of good practice: it had developed a specialized police unit, and built carefully designed ranks. Permits were attached to ranks and routes, and a liaison committee for each route, including passengers, enabled close consultation.40 There were two late hearings: Rossouw’s Sixth Interim Taxi Report concerns King Williams Town (26 July 1994), the seventh Queenstown (24 August 1994). He was in no doubt of the need to establish an independent dispute resolution body, able to mediate and possessing powers of inquiry like that of the Commission, to continue ‘assisting the taxi industry to forswear violent conflict and embrace negotiation as a means of resolution of problems’.41 Discussions continued under the new government, involving a number of those who had been and still were active in taxi mediations through the peace structures. The taxi industry did not easily embrace change. Conflicts still break out, but the authorities have been able to prevent the long vendettas of the past.

38 39 40 41

Fourth Interim Taxi Report 23/2/93. Fifth Interim Taxi Report 26/7/93, 2.5.1 Memo, Addendum to Fifth Taxi Report. Sixth Interim Taxi report 26/7/94, HURISA summary.

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Goldstone research It was envisaged that, beyond mere investigation, the Commission would ‘initiate research programmes for the establishment of scientific empirical data on violence’ (NPA 6.12.4). Its first research project concerned the hostels. A false start had been made with the recommendation in the Commission’s Second Interim Report (April 1992) that all hostels should be fenced. After initial research by its Hostels Committee it backtracked, suggesting that ‘the problem should properly be seen as one of criminality in a limited number of hostels’ and only these need be fenced.42 Realizing the need for in-depth understanding and full consultation with all parties prior to any ‘upgrading’ of hostels, the Commission initiated, in August, a research project by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) to develop a proper understanding of the issues. This produced the Goldstone Hostels Report, Communities in Isolation, edited by Anthony Minnaar, published by the HSRC in March 1993. Weighty, balanced, and compassionate, it penetrated to the facts beyond the anger, rejection, and fear, humanizing the hostel-dwellers. In April 1993 the Commission, jointly with the Norwegian government, announced its own ‘Institute for the Study of Public Violence’. The initiative came from Norway in response to an appeal from Mandela in 1992 for help in stopping the violence. Consultations in South Africa led to Norway giving the Commission R2 million and the services of two computer consultants. Computer databases were the latest thing. The Institute was constituted as an independent NGO. Directed by Irene Menell, and housed in the Commission’s new Sandton headquarters, it was launched at a party on 29 October 1992. As Norway had wished, it was dubbed the ‘Goldstone Institute’. It aimed to assist the Commission by ‘the systematic collection, organization and analysis of its own materials including hearings, submissions, reports and recommendations’; to collect information on violence and set up a ‘broadly sourced and accessible database’ as a public resource, and to offer training in ‘documentation methodology’ to organizations involved in monitoring violence.43 The Commission’s archive was entrusted to it, and conversations on training archivists were held with the NPS Training Committee. A more ambitious plan was canvassed by an associated researcher, Mark Shaw, with law student Suzanne Nossel, who spent her IMSSA internship working for the Wits/Vaal region. Could the Institute become the ‘National Peace Accord Research and Policy Institute’? It would then aim to document all aspects of the peace structures, analyse their successes and failures, disseminate good practice

42 Interim Report: Violence in Hostels, 21/9/92. 43 ‘Recommending Peace’, Inst. for the Study of Public Violence, Nov. 1993: preface. NMF, Carmichael.

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and inform NPS policy for more effective peacebuilding.44 Menell herself suggested to the NPS that the Institute might be able to establish a public database of NPS documentation and a ‘database for internal documentation such as minutes, internal discussion memos, etc. as well as administrative records’.45 Had this been pursued the records of the peace structures might have been preserved, as a single, invaluable archive. In November 1993 the Institute began to publish a ‘Recommendation Followup Series’ to track the fate of the Goldstone recommendations.46 In issue No. 1, Recommending Peace (Nov. 1993), Mark Shaw and Sello Monyatsi summarized each Goldstone Report up to August 1993 and analysed the extent to which the 149 recommendations had been implemented. Just forty-one, they calculated, were fully completed; forty-two showed some progress; and in twenty-seven cases nothing had happened. Others were mostly under consideration or too early to determine. Overall, their assessment was positive: ‘it appears that the Commission has had a substantial influence on the debate around the causes of violence’. Many recommendations ‘have received positive attention’ and only needed greater effort to complete them.47 Failures to implement owed more to inefficiency than unwillingness. Specific follow-up issues examined the recommendations on train violence, and on gatherings. Beginning in September 1993 the Institute oversaw a research project on the effects of public violence and intimidation on children. Conducted through meetings and a survey of some 300 organizations, it mapped where children were affected, the extent of provision and service delivery, and the findings of existing research. It was intended as a step towards a national programme for the rehabilitation of children. It called for an independent Children’s Rights Commissioner and a state-funded national coordinating committee. Its 210-page Report was released on 27 October 1994, the day the Commission closed. The Institute had decided by May 1994, with closure likely, that it would continue independently, switching its focus and becoming the Human Rights Institute of South Africa (HURISA). In 2015, HURISA transferred the Goldstone archive, not entirely complete, to the Nelson Mandela Foundation.

44 Mark Shaw and Suzanne Nossel, discussion paper for Institute workshop 4/8/93, Carmichael. 45 ‘Brief prepared for the NPS’, Goldstone Institute, 7/9/93, for regional Chairs meeting 29/9/93. Carmichael/Lorimer. 46 Issues included: 1 (Nov. 1993), 2 (Nov./Dec. 1993); ?1 (1994), 2 (Apr. 1994), 3 (May 1994). 47 Recommending Peace p.49.

19 The Police Board, Community Policing, and CPFs Introduction Among its ‘General Provisions’ for the security forces, the National Peace Accord created a ‘Police Board’ consisting of police and public in equal numbers, ‘to consider and make recommendations to the Minister of Law and Order in regard to the policy relating to the training and efficient functioning of the police, with a view to reconcile the interests of the community with that of the police’ (NPA 3.3.3).1 It was a concrete expression of the philosophy of community policing, foreshadowing the use of such Boards in future policing structures. It brought together the top police officers and the country’s leading minds on policing policy, in a creative and influential think-tank. Its civilian members were nominated by the NPC but it had no obligation to report to the NPC (in May 1992 the NPC suggested that it should, and in June 1993 the RPCs requested reports, which then began to flow and were widely disseminated). A personal link with the NPS was maintained through Peter Gastrow, the DP MP who sat on both bodies. The ANC originally wanted the Board to have powers over police operations. It was, however, framed strictly as an advisory body to the Minister, with ‘no role in regard to the day to day functioning of the police’ (3.3.5). It was empowered ‘to do research’ and to call for representations from the public (3.3.4) and could make its recommendations public ‘in so far as it is essential in reconciling the interests of the community with that of the police’ (3.3.6). It had no power to enforce the implementation of its recommendations. These circumscribed powers and guarded language reflect the wariness with which the SAP in 1991 still regarded any intrusion by civilians in general, and the ANC in particular, into its operations. Mistrust was fully reciprocated on the ground; but the Board proved itself a significant element in a massive wave of change. Police–community relations were woven into the fabric of the peace structures, particularly at local and regional levels. Some particular instances are highlighted here. 1

Full review in van der Spuy (2008).

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Police Board Membership of the Police Board was loosely specified as: ‘members of the public and representatives of the police in equal numbers’ (3.3.1). The police moved quickly, announcing to the first Full NPC meeting on 1 October 1991 that they had nominated five top generals and that from January 1992 ‘homeland’ police training would be integrated with that of the SAP, and one police officer from each of the six ‘homelands’ would join the Board, bringing the police complement to eleven. It took the NPC five months, until 4 March 1992, to generate a unanimous list of eleven civilians. It was a formidable ‘who’s who’ of academics, lawyers and party representatives: criminologist Dr Clifford Shearing, Janine Rauch, lawyer Prof. Nicholas Haysom, Adv. L. J. L. Visser, Prof. T. F. Coetzee, Elrena van der Spuy, Adv. Pius Langa, Peter Gastrow MP (DP), Mathews Phosa (ANC), Mr Izak Steyn (IFP/hostels) and Adv. Don Brunette (former Deputy Attorney General, Natal), who acted as the first Chair.2 Brunette resigned in September, replaced as Chair by J. G. J. van Vuuren. Until police restructuring at the end of 1992, the SAP representatives were Lt-Gen. Hendrik P. M. de Villiers (Deputy Commissioner of Police), Lt-Gen. Basie Smit (Crime Combatting Investigation – and allegedly aware of Vlakplaas activities), Lt-Gen. L. P. E. Malan (visible policing), Lt-Gen. Johan Swart (ISU Commander), and Lt-Gen. Alwyn Conradie (Training). Restructuring brought in a completely new set of generals: Lt-Gen. André Pruis heading the new Community Relations Division, Lt-Gen. J. H. le Roux (Crime Prevention and Investigation), Maj.-Gen. M. J. A. Bester (Physical Services), Maj.-Gen. M. W. Cronje (Basic Training), and Maj.-Gen. A. F. de la Rosa (ISU commander). Appointed by Hernis Kriel, Minister of Law and Order, the Board was constituted in April 1992. Its inaugural monthly meeting on 2 June was addressed by the Minister and the Commissioner of Police. Security expert Peter Gastrow MP was Vice-chair. ‘That’, he says, ‘was a very interesting body and I really believe played an important role, it had very smart people there from all sides.’ I found it fascinating, maybe because it was an introduction into real hard power issues which had a direct impact on street level. … There were some very important initiatives there I think. And what was also important of course was that here you had the first forum where senior officers could start engaging with those on the opposite side – talking to people like Fink [Haysom], and Mathews Phosa from ANC. So they could engage with the Generals. Of course these were people who were keen to continue having a career … and it was in their interest to see to what extent there was room for compromise and for change. It was very interesting dynamics! I remember 2

NPC Minutes 4/3/92, BVS73/7.

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Peacemaking and Peacebuilding in South Africa it was fascinating. And there was a constructive tension there which was fascinating: if there hadn’t been, you were wasting your time. So there were clashes there occasionally – but I thought it was a very productive structure.3

The Board met at police headquarters in Pretoria. ‘We had the top management people of the police there, which means that you don’t waste time by then having to go back somewhere else. They could be held directly accountable, and they could immediately issue the orders, which was very good.’4 Visits were also made to police bases and training colleges. The Board was funded by the Ministry of Law and Order, but strongly asserted its independence as ‘a creature of the National Peace Accord and its signatories’.5 Reporting in May 1993 it insisted that it operated ‘with the full backing of the signatories of the NPA’ and was not to be seen as ‘part of the police hierarchy or as an instrument of the Minister of Law and Order’. To be credible in the sight of all, it had to ‘position itself between the public and the police, in such a way that it retains the confidence of, and links with, the community as well as the police. It therefore needs to be independent.’ Its independence was respected, but a lack of financial autonomy, until September 1993 when the SAP allocated a flexible budget of R300,000 for the Board’s own activities and R251,000 for police–community relations initiatives and research, hampered the Board’s research and planning.6 Work was pursued through five sub-committees. The Strategic Planning group (Shearer, Phosa, van Vuuren) made input into the SAP’s major Strategic Plan of 1993. In a marked break with the past, there was consensus that the public should be involved in shaping strategy, that the final Strategic Plan required the Board’s support, and that it should, for the first time, be made public. ‘This will ensure transparency of the new Community Policing approach.’7 The Training Sub-committee (Rauch, Shearing, Cronjé) discussed Rauch’s research on SAP training, which exposed its emphasis on drill, discipline and rote-learning. It formulated a proposal to the Minister resulting in the appointment of an International Training Sub-committee combining South African and international experts. International input, from police members of COMSA and ECOMSA, was welcomed ‘and common ground was established’.8 The British government invited a peace structures group to visit the UK in November 1992 to observe community policing methods; it took particular interest in the schemes for ‘Lay Visitors’ to monitor police detention cells. A Police Board group made a similar visit in June 1993. 3 Gastrow interview. 4 Ibid. 5 Police Board Report, June 1992–May 1993, 4.2.1. Nicholas Claude papers. 6 Police Board Report, September 1993, Carmichael/Lorimer. 7 Police Board Report, June 1993, Carmichael/Lorimer. 8 Ibid.

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The Board and NPS Training Committee jointly hosted a seminal National Workshop on Police–Community Relations, 30 June–1 July 1993 at Johannesburg airport Holiday Inn (Marks, 2000 p.175).9 A wide range of political, community, peace-structure and police personnel examined the present and future of police– community relations, drawing on experiences in the Wits/Vaal peace structures. A workshop with the NPS followed at Glenburn Lodge on 25 October.10 The intention was to follow up with a cascade of five-day workshops at regional and local levels. The Board approved funding and sixty-one police– community workshops were held in 1993.11 Demand had outstripped supply. NPS Training Committee Chair Jayendra Naidoo included extra funding in his approach to the British Overseas Development Administration. His primary request, however, was for urgent monitor and marshal training, and other requests were shelved. By September 1993 the Training Committee, assisted by the International Sub-committee, had submitted its first report to the Board. It represented ‘a total departure … a fundamental revision of basic training’.12 The Board unanimously recommended its adoption, for implementation in 1994. Community Policing aims at a constructive partnership between communities and police, to ensure peace and safety. To achieve this goal, four principles were laid down by the SAP in 1992–93: • consultation between the police and the communities about problems, policies, priorities and strategies; • adaptation of policing strategies to fit the requirements of particular circumstances; • mobilisation of all the resources available to a community to resolve problems of disorder and promote safety and security; • accountability through mechanisms that encourage transparency in the design and execution of policing policy.13

The brief of the Community Policing Sub-committee (Pruis, van der Spuy, Rauch, Gastrow, Steyn) included ‘monitoring, facilitating and assessing the community relations initiatives of the SAP’.14 It liaised with police–community initiatives within the peace structures and took note of the few nascent police– community consultation committees, precursors of CPFs. 9 10 11 12 13 14

Programme, inputs: Nicholas Claude papers. Minutes, BVS92. Guidelines for MECs 22/6/94, BVS20. Police Board Report, September 1993, Carmichael/Lorimer. Quoted from ‘The history and origins of community supported policing’, Annexure A to SAP memo presented to Wallis Committee of Goldstone Commission, March 1993. Goldstone Archive, NMF. Police Board Report, September 1993, Carmichael/Lorimer.

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According to the Board’s September 1993 Report, a ‘Human Resources and Personnel’ Sub-committee (Cronje, Steyn, Coetzee) was examining recruitment and promotion criteria, working conditions, the expansion of the SAP, and its internal disciplinary system. The ‘Sub-committee on Organisation and “Culture” of the SAP’ (Bester, Langa, Haysom, de la Rosa) was given wide-ranging work on the ‘general effectiveness and modus operandi of the SAP’, to include the operation of the ISU, Lay Visitors schemes, structures of ranking and command, the effectiveness of complaints mechanisms, and the civilianization or privatization of police functions. Beginning with an evaluation of the Waddington Report into the police response at Boipatong, it declared itself satisfied that the Report’s recommendations were receiving attention, and it made further recommendations. It amended an SAP proposal for a new independent complaints and investigation mechanism, which shortly became law. By September the Minister had approved the Sub-committee’s proposals for a Lay Visiting Scheme to monitor conditions in detention cells, to be trialled in three stations per police region. The scheme was implemented in 1994, but inconsistently maintained thereafter. The Board received regular SAP briefings on the ‘security situation’, balancing them with briefings from the RPCs in Wits/Vaal and Natal/KwaZulu which showed the police, the ISU in particular, in a very different light – one that ISU commander General de la Rosa dismissed as ‘unfair’ because he believed normal policing to be impossible in violent areas. By early 1994, writes Elrena van der Spuy (2008 p.43), ‘engagement with the “security situation” became more even-handed’. With the advent of the TEC in December, the Board supported the work of its sub-council on Law and Order. The Board’s final event was a farewell dinner in November 1994 at the Police Training College in Pretoria. Elrena van der Spuy (2008 p.54) concludes: Despite its short lifespan and the absence of any statutory powers, the Police Board deserves recognition for its role as a conduit of reformist ideas and practices associated with democratic policing. As an interim policy mechanism, the Board helped set the agenda for police reform in very particular ways … To some extent, the Police Board provided a social laboratory within which strategically placed individuals could both conceptualise and refine an agenda for police reform, which later provided an agenda of sorts for the new Ministry of Safety and Security.

The Board itself, with its unprecedented task, took time to become a cohesive group: ‘Suspicions and different backgrounds of individuals on the Board … caused the Board to have a cautious and hesitating start’.15 But it could add, in 15

Police Board Report June 1992 – May 1993, 8.2. Nicholas Claude papers.

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May 1993: ‘Considerable progress has, however been made and the Board is now in a position to deal with its tasks much more effectively.’

Relations on the ground This experience was repeated throughout the peace structures. Under de Klerk the Security Branch were partnered with the detectives (CID) and formed a new Crime Information Service (CIS). Many former SB members, now CIS, became representatives on local and regional peace committees. ANC activists found themselves serving with policemen who had held them in detention. The ordinary SAP and ISU, and from late 1992 the new Community Relations Division – who themselves might be ex-SB – also sat on the peace committees. Generally, the rule held that organizations did not object to each other’s choice of representatives. In a rare instance, the Eastern Cape RDRC Chairs were asked to request the removal of an SAP representative; they raised the concern and he did not appear again.16 More typically, a police representative nominated to a new committee in the Southern Cape and Karoo told the Coordinator he had a history with an ANC nominee, the activist teacher Reggie Olifant. The Coordinator undertook to visit Olifant. At mention of the policeman’s name, he visibly reacted: ‘He’s a bastard, why do you ask?’ I said: ‘Well, he’s going to sit with you on the Peace Committee.’ And then Reggie started telling me the story, he said, ‘This guy, he has tortured me, he tried to kill me, on a number of occasions my car was tampered with, and – this guy, he hated me beyond the call of duty.’

The Coordinator said okay, he would ask the police to nominate someone else. ‘So Reggie, he went quiet for a bit and then he said: “This process is bigger than me and he. For the sake of peace I’ll work with him.”’ At the first meeting, the policeman arrived first. He stood awkwardly, alone, ‘and then Reggie came in almost last. He scanned the room and he saw this guy and he walked straight to him and he said “Good afternoon, Captain” and then the policeman said, “Good afternoon Mr Olifant.” That’s it. They went to sit down, and worked together.’17 ‘Those guys,’ comments Western Cape monitor Stef Snel, ‘when they had to sit there in those meetings, it transformed them completely, when they were sitting eye to eye, they were having an honest discussion. The effect of those RPC meetings was huge, huge, huge. … that was hugely healing, that process; it made a lot possible.’18

16 17 18

Brian Smith interview. Odendaal interview. Snel interview.

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Manenberg Liaison Forum Coloured people in Cape Town had historically lived in ‘District Six’ close to the centre, facing the sea from the slopes of Table Mountain. Under apartheid they were forcibly removed to the sandy, unappealing ‘Cape Flats’ behind the mountain. Gang and domestic violence were rife, and during the 1980s fierce political battles raged with the police. Susan Collin Marks (2000 pp.169–79) describes how a remarkable bottomup initiative emerged in Manenberg on the Flats in 1992, reaching up to dovetail with the SAP’s drive towards community policing. Chris Ferndale, the social worker son of a Coloured policeman, was appointed by the National Institute for Crime Prevention and the Rehabilitation of Offenders (NICRO) to research the community’s problems. Police–community suspicion and conflict were recurrent themes. The community decided first to organize itself, through a series of meetings, and then it met the police. The result, in August 1992, was a Liaison Forum with a joint secretariat, using the NPA as its guide. Police and community alternated as host and Chair. Public meetings and workshops were held, on the NPA, the legal and judicial systems, domestic violence, and the mutual fears and grievances of community and police. According to Rob Midgley the Manenberg Liaison Forum stood beside the Grahamstown Policing Commission as national models for creating Community Policing Forums.19 The leading police figure was Major Gerrit Niewoudt, ex-SB, deeply Christian, SAP representative on the Western Cape RPC Executive, and provincial commander, from its formation in December 1992, of the Community Relations Division. Niewoudt brought fellow officers to meet RPC members socially, and worked to persuade his superiors that things were now done differently.20 The national Community Policing Workshop of 30 June 1993 gave a significant boost to his work. He became close to Nyanga/Crossroads LPC Fieldworker Malibongwe Sopangisa, who wrote a paper expressing community experiences and expectations of the police, and ‘had a lot of meetings with the police. That helped to change the ways in which policemen acted and reacted on the ground’ (Niewoudt, in Marks, 2000 p.65).

Wits/Vaal RPC PCR Sub-committee A number of peace committees developed Sub-committees that dealt specifically with police–community issues. The Wits/Vaal and Western Cape RPCs, and Grahamstown LPC, were among the leaders. Western Cape established its regional Police–Community Relations (PCR) Sub-committee in 1993, but the earliest emerged organically in 1992 from the Wits/Vaal RDRC meetings. 19 See p.387. 20 Nieuwoudt interview.

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The SAP representative Col. Zirk Gous (CIS) would update the meeting on violence statistics, and an ANC representative would routinely challenge him: How many arrests? How many prosecutions and convictions? Gous would reply that the SAP depended on the cooperation of the community, and that had not been forthcoming. In September 1992, Bishop Peter Storey suggested a workshop to explore both sides of this argument.21 Three weeks later, after a spat about SDUs, Gous pleaded for better police–community relations. Bilateral ANC–SAP meetings, facilitated by Storey, began.22 Multiple issues were identified, among them need for better two-way communication, improved cooperation with investigations, a new attitude at police stations, mutual accountability in ending violence, witness protection, and that justice be seen to be done; the SAP’s concern that there appeared to be a top-level ANC policy not to cooperate was also recorded.23 The IFP, Phiroshaw Camay, David Storey, and COMSA Observer Chief Superintendent Peter Stevens of the Metropolitan Police joined the discussions and the Wits/Vaal PCR Sub-­ committee was born. Among the many issues, it pioneered the negotiation of written agreements between event organizers, police and peace structures, beginning with an agreement on the declaration of ‘unrest areas’. A series of agreements were made to smooth the joint control of events following Chris Hani’s assassination. Plans were made for a ‘lay visitors’ scheme throughout the region, which were disappointingly forestalled by the Police Board’s more limited pilot scheme. The committee disbanded when Bishop Storey resigned the chair at the end of 1993. Election fever was taking over.

1994 and beyond: a note on Community Policing Forums (CPFs) The 1993 Interim Constitution committed South Africa to community policing, and to CPFs as the essential structures for its implementation. The Government of National Unity elected in April 1994 confirmed this commitment. The SAP became the SAPS, ‘SA Police Service’, and its ranks were demilitarized. The ISU became a dedicated Public Order Policing Service (POPS, which suffered decentralization in 2006, then partial restoration in 2014). Despite the return to military ranks in 2010 to emphasize ‘fighting’ crime, the community policing policy of the SAPS has held. In May–August 1994, with the peace structures still intact, the NPS Training Committee produced a proposal for the ‘Coordinated Establishment of 21 22 23

Minutes 22/9/92, Carmichael/Lorimer. Minutes 13/10/92, Carmichael/Lorimer. Minutes 27/10/92, Carmichael/Lorimer.

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Community–­Police Consultation Forums’ detailing how this could be accomplished nation-wide, at little cost, using the dozens of trainers produced for monitor training.24 The Committee offered to raise funds to supplement government funding, and to oversee the whole programme. This proposal foundered on the uncertainty enveloping the peace structures, and on the devolution of CPFs to provincial departments of Safety and Security, which prevented any roll-out of a national plan. In Gauteng, IDASA and the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation had already secured the consultancy to implement CPFs. The brief national ‘Guidelines’ document for Members of the provincial Executive Councils (MECs), issued on 22 June 1994, sketched how community policing had gained momentum through the NPA, and was then mandated by the Constitution. It lists the functions of CPFs, emphasizing accountability, monitoring police effectiveness and efficiency, advising on local priorities, and receiving and processing complaints. By this time CPFs existed, with varying degrees of efficiency, in just 173 police areas out of 850. The SAPS Act (No. 68 of 1995) gave Provincial Commissioners the responsibility of establishing a community policing structure consisting of local CPFs ‘broadly representative of the local community’ (7.19.1) and Police Boards at area and provincial levels composed of members from the lower forums. The selection of CPF members was initially entrusted to station commanders, but became consultative and democratic. Eric Pelser (1999) observed that some CPFs were flourishing, while others existed in name only. Greatest success was achieved where the community was informed and coherent, and local police were well equipped, capable of innovation, and steeped in the philosophy of community policing, not delegating the responsibility to a few. Pelser found the policy worked well in rich areas where the community was united, able to donate equipment, and focused on preventing crime, although the impact on crime was difficult to assess. In poorer areas trust in the police was slower to build, resources scarce, and the community more focused on socio-economic needs than crime reduction. Pelser noted that the devolution of community policing to the provinces had resulted in the lack of a comprehensive national strategy (each province produces its own guidelines, apparently with little cross-fertilization). In 1999 CPFs were chronically under-funded, and training had been neglected. Despite vicissitudes, community policing in South Africa continues to mature. A White Paper in 2016 recommended greater civilian involvement, with CPFs falling under the Provincial Civilian Secretariats for Policing. The SAPS Amendment Bill (2020) aimed to strengthen oversight by CPFs over the police, and proposed new National, Provincial and District Community Policing Boards. 24 Proposal, Carmichael/Lorimer.

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In 2020 a qualitative comparison of CPFs in rich Glenwood and deprived Cato Manor near Durban concluded that both communities desired a partnership with the police, but both felt crime was increasing and not everyone was aware of the CPF.25 Some members in Cato Manor were perceived to be using the CPF merely to advance their political careers (they denied this). In contrast to the 1999 situation, police–community relationships were generally more positive in poor Cato Manor than rich Glenwood, where people felt the SAPS showed insufficient care and interest in working with them. All in all, South Africa has shown a consistent commitment to community policing, beginning with the peace process: ‘there can be no doubt that the provisions of the National Peace Accord and the code of conduct together provided a vision for the fundamental transformation of policing in the country’ (Pelser, 1999 p.2).

25

Siyanda Dlamini (2020), ‘A Comparative Analysis of the Quality of CPFs in Local Cato Manor and Glenwood Communities, South Africa’, Cogent Social Sciences, 6.1 www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/23311886.2020.1809141?needAccess=true.

20 A Role in Future Peacebuilding? Introduction After the April 1994 election opinion was split between those who felt the peace structures had helped deliver the desired multiparty democracy and should now close, and those who believed far more peacebuilding remained to be done, in which the structures had important roles to play. President Mandela opened his first Parliament in May 1994, saying: ‘We have also directed that all relevant ministries should engage the structures set up in terms of the National Peace Accord so that these can be invigorated to pursue their noble mission in the context of the changed circumstances in our country.’1 Those believing the structures should continue intact seized upon the message of invigoration; those against seized on ‘changed circumstances’. All agreed, at least in theory, that considerable expertise had been built up, which should somehow be used – but how, was unclear. The peace structures had a mention in passing in the ANC’s RDP manifesto, as something to be built upon; but no party had thought to give the structures a clear future role. The structures were at their peak: 11 regions, some 263 LPCs, 83 offices and a total of 414 staff (357 seconded or on short contracts, 57 temporary).2 There was one major complication, and it was financial. The structures had exceeded their budget for the current financial year, April 1994 to March 1995. It totalled R65,706 million, of which R34,129 million supported the NPS and the regional and local structures. Election monitoring had brought an overspend of R18.5 million (roughly, car rental R11 million, setting up radio communications R4 million, paying monitors R3.5 million), and a new un-budgeted expense was envisaged: the outgoing Minister of Home Affairs, Danie Schutte, had approved ‘token’ attendance allowances for committee members, estimated at an extra R15,840 million. All told, the NPS needed an additional R35 million to cover all these needs for the current financial year. Otherwise, funds would run out in September. Most staff were on contracts requiring two months’ notice, so the issue was urgent. 1 www.sahistory.org.za/archive/1994-president-mandela-state-nation-address-24may-1994-after-national-elections [accessed 31/3/21]. 2 ‘Request for additional Budget Allocation: NPS’ 10/6/94, BVS 7/2.

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Money was available: the Department of State Expenditure authorized R35 million; but such a sum required Cabinet approval. Would it be granted? The new Minister of Home Affairs must bring the request to Cabinet – and the new Minister was Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi.

Future hopes The projected future plans of the SERD, Communications, and Training Divisions have already been outlined. There were many others. Wits/Vaal Training Officer Barbara Nussbaum began work on a reconciliation project: ‘I thought that in many ways reconciliation is an inner journey and a private journey, and I had the idea that I wanted to develop a curriculum that teachers, school principals, ministers of religion could use, … that all of those stakeholders could then add onto and deliver, and it was more about the inner journey towards reconciliation.’3 These services were integral to the operations of the peace structures, which had developed as an organic, interdisciplinary whole; but divisional personnel were largely left in the background during the coming lobbying with government. The ‘grassroots’ voice of LPCs was also absent until the final moment. A celebratory meeting of the NPS and regional Chairs, with the NPC Administration group, was held on Robben Island on 23 May. It approved Gildenhuys’s draft 1994 NPS Report – which was not the comprehensive, costed proposal for the future that was required at this stage, but became the main lobbying document. The meeting appointed a ‘Committee of Six’, or ‘Lobby Group’, to meet with Cabinet Ministers and urge support for the R35 million top-up. Its members were John Hall (NPC), Antonie Gildenhuys (NPS), Mahlape Sello (Wits/ Vaal Regional Coordinator), Rev. Chin Reddy (Northern Transvaal Regional Director), M. C. Pretorius (KZN RPC Chair), Dr Paul Lusaka (NPS facilitator), and Frikkie Botha (NPS Secretary). They had no time to convene and strategize before leaving Cape Town. They set off, with minimal planning, on a trail of eighteen lobby meetings, speaking by and large to extremely busy people for whom ‘peacemaking’ lay in the past and whose lexicon did not yet contain the term ‘peacebuilding’. Gastrow (1995 p.104) thought a ‘new round of inclusive negotiations’ was indicated. The ideal could have been a comprehensive, well-facilitated, national workshop involving the many stakeholders: peace structures, government, parties, provinces, and international supporters. Prior to the Robben Island meeting a small Task Group met on 11 May to consider ideas that were already documented.4 The Regional Directors had 3 4

Nussbaum interview. Jaap Durand, Peter Gastrow, Corrie Bezeidenhout, Harold Tessendorf, John van Breda.

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finalized a paper, ‘The Future of the NPA and its Structures’, on 11 April.5 They suggested three possible scenarios: to become an NGO, or a purely staff-based service arm for provincial and local government, or a government-funded Community Relations Service like that in the USA, without committees but under a Management Board, to build community capacity ‘to undertake peace-keeping, peace-making and peace-building projects’. Some International Observers, just before departing, had offered their analysis.6 They appreciated the strengths of the structures: their wide convening power; their established success as ‘a crucial ingredient in building a culture of consultation’, in strengthening negotiation skills, and promoting mutual problem-­solving; their particular success in promoting better police–­ community relations; and some successes already in SERD. The involvement of thousands of people across party lines, especially youth, in training as monitors and marshals had ‘greatly enhanced the sense of local participation in, and ownership of, the peace structures’. Weaknesses were ‘the inevitable perception’ that they were a transitional mechanism that had outlived their usefulness; that the majority of central staff and Chairpersons were white and male; and that the emphasis on SERD was relatively recent and under-developed. The Observers recommended focusing on pro-active reconciliation through bridge-building forums; conflict resolution training; civic education; police– community relations; and RDP facilitation at grassroots – for which additional expert SERD staff were needed. International experience suggested the new government would lack the capacity to deliver on all its RDP promises and would look for partners, although it ‘will want to claim credit for any successes’. The Task Group recommended that the structures become a ‘state-­sponsored NGO’, falling under the mandate of the IPI Act, accountable to Parliament for its expenditure but independent as to policy and decision-making. It would fundraise to supplement government funds.7 The civil society component should be strengthened at all levels, and the emphasis be on bottom-up decision-­making and servicing the grassroots, with staff kept to an efficient minimum and appointed to reflect South Africa’s racial and gender mix. Gildenhuys incorporated the concept of a partially state-funded NGO, preserving the structures intact, into his 1994 NPS Report. The draft was presented at meetings with Ministers in June–July and it was finally tabled, unchanged, in Parliament on 11 August.8 It gives a succinct account of activities over 1993–94, comments on the effective reduction of violence in most areas, relays the rec5 6 7 8

BVS162; Carmichael/Lorimer. ‘Future of the structures created under the NPA: Perspectives of members of the International Observer Missions…’ 11/5/94, Carmichael/COMSA, BVS5. ‘Future of the NPS and the Regional and Local Peace Committees …’ 17/5/94, BVS4 Provisional NPS Report 1994, BVS20/13. Final (unchanged) Carmichael/Lorimer.

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ommendation to become an NGO, and lists six areas for future work: SERD, reconciliation, conflict resolution, education for peacebuilding and democracy, police–community relations, and reconstruction of housing for displacees. This list was met with crushing scorn by an ill-informed confidential evaluator for Home Affairs. Government departments, he declared, could attend to all six matters at no extra expense.9 During July facilitators John van Breda and Rob Mac Gregor met in a grassroots workshop with the Wits/Vaal and Eastern Transvaal (Mpumalanga) LPCs, and captured the results in a ‘Discussion Document: A Proposal for Consideration by the NPS’.10 The message was that peace was not merely ‘negative’. It was ‘far wider’ and still needed to be built: It is related to the absence of violence but also extends to the wellbeing of society: access to facilities, processes and structures to meet their basic needs. Peace means freedom to go where you please, to go to bed with a full stomach, a worthwhile job, secure living environment for you and your family, proper schooling, an absence of ignorance and prejudice, adequate and accessible health care facilities and acceptable housing.

The LPCs envisaged continuing to play their part in capacity-building and facilitation. They suggested a National Peace Institute, a nation-wide development database, a Peace Education syllabus, and Entrepreneurial Development Centres for job creation housed in regional peace offices, possibly partnering with the Council for Industrial and Scientific Research. At the NPS on 25 July Gildenhuys remarked that these ideas ‘could be a useful starting point once clarity has been obtained regarding the future of the peace structures’.11 Western Cape Coordinators Andries Odendaal and Chris Spies reflected that, to build peace and ‘heal the wounds’, an LPC’s composition would need to change, ‘turning it from a committee of disputing politicians to a body of committed peace-makers, with a more comprehensive vision of peace and with intensive training’ (Odendaal & Spies, 1996 p.9). By late August morale was cracking and desperation seeping in. Why had there been no appeal to Mandela? To the Lobby Group’s disapproval, Hannes Siebert organized a petition to him, pleading that the structures be ‘allowed’ to continue the work that brought South Africa through, and made the election possible.12 The structures could become a ‘Peace, Development and Reconstruction’ institute or foundation, inclusive of civil society, headed by a small national coordinating body reporting to the President’s Office. A bureaucrat penned 9 10 11 12

‘Evaluation: NPS: Provisional Report’, BVS7/1. BVS215, BVSS231/12, BVS232/15, BVS234/9, Carmichael/Lorimer. NPS Minutes 25/7/94, BVS231/12 BVS232/16, Carmichael/Lorimer. Memo to the President, delivered 14 September, BVS149, BVS215, Carmichael/ Lorimer.

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Mandela’s anodyne reply, which went to Gildenhuys, not Siebert: the President was ‘heartened by the dedication to Peace, Development and Reconstruction’ shown by the petition, and ‘quite sure that the Cabinet Committee’s recommendations will reflect the same spirit’.13

Cabinet decision – a long wait At first, everything seemed simple. R35 million was needed, funds were available, and Piet Colyn, Director-General of Home Affairs, prepared Cabinet Memo No. 10, requesting Cabinet approval for this sum. Buthelezi signed on 21 June. Lobbying had begun on 17 June with a visit to Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, Penuell Maduna, and Hall and Gildenhuys felt some confidence that a Cabinet decision was imminent. Weeks passed. In July, Grobler learnt the request was on the agenda of the Cabinet Committee for Social and Administrative Affairs (CCSAA) on 1 August. He cut some staff. Deputy Minister Maduna told Gildenhuys he expected a Cabinet decision on Wednesday 3 August. Internal memos suggest that Piet Colyn regarded the structures positively and tried to preserve them, seeing the LPCs as their unique contribution. ‘Valuable experience has … been gained with regard to conflict resolution and bridging the gap between formal government structures and local communities. This valuable experience should still be utilized’ in regard to the RDP and community policing.14 His Deputy Director General suggested quite unrealistically that the 263 LPCs needed no injection of funds because they required only minimal support, which could come from ‘existing government structures such as the SA Communications Service’.15 Neither had grasped how much the LPCs and Divisions formed an integrated whole. Buthelezi was having second thoughts. In draft letters to Jay Naidoo and Sydney Mufamadi just after 25 July he wrote that it was clear that ‘the focus of the committees established by the NPS at local level has moved to the facilitation of development and reconstruction and bridging the gap between communities and formal government structures’.16 Since the original primary functions of the NPS had been fulfilled, Home Affairs had no further interest, and: ‘I consider it imperative that the structures as established under the NPA for those specific functions be discontinued.’ The local SERD and bridging functions were still relevant but must now be incorporated into the RDP and/or Safety and Security, should those ministries wish to avail themselves of ‘these established structures’. If Jay Naidoo and Sydney Mufamadi agreed, he proposed to withdraw the request for R35 million. 13 14 15 16

Letter, after 28 September, BVS149. ‘NPS: Report’, memo from Colyn to Deputy Minister 5/7/94, BVS5/2/B/6. Memo ‘Future activities of the NPS …’, late July, BVS5/2/B/6. Drafts, BVS5/2/B/6; letters were sent.

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Colyn had juggled the remaining finances and offered Buthelezi, with the draft letters, a balance sheet showing that the structures could survive until 31 October; and could continue thereafter with only essential staff at a cost of just under R7 million per month. On 17 August, Grobler told the Management Committee at Braampark that the funding request had been withdrawn pending a policy decision on the future of the structures – and that the Minister apparently thought all was well until October.17 At interview Buthelezi claimed that, although he was Minister, ‘decisions are collective in Cabinet, I could not dictate it if the rest of the Cabinet could not agree’.18 But he himself put up no fight for the structures. Effectively he was moving towards the position of Thabo Mbeki, now in power as First Deputy President. Even before the election, at an ANC gathering in Cape Town, Mbeki had articulated his intention that the structures should close. Greg Mac Master, Regional SERD Coordinator, was present. ‘I was actually disappointed … I think his fear or concern was, that the ANC needed to establish itself in the country, and the peace structures could actually develop a life of their own, and undermine the ANC.’ Mbeki was saying ANC members should mediate community conflict, ‘and that way raise the profile of the ANC’.19 After the election Hall and Gildenhuys sought Mbeki’s help, at least to get a decision. Hall warned gloomily on 20 August that: ‘Once the Humpty Dumpty of peace has fallen off the South African wall, it will be impossible to put the pieces back together again.’ Next day’s Sunday Times quoted him, but also Mbeki saying he saw ‘no need to maintain a formal peace organisation’.

An RDP role? What future might there be in the RDP? The Lobby Group, oblivious of the knives sharpening behind the scenes, sought to make contact with Minister Jay ( Jayaseelan) Naidoo. Once a visionary behind the NPA, Naidoo now coordinated the RDP as a ‘Minister without Portfolio in the Office of the State President’, from an office in Pretoria directed by Bernie Fanaroff. The work entailed racing between ministries trying to get budgets redirected and large projects planned – and losing sight of the grassroots.20 The Lobby Group met Naidoo on 17 June. Hall’s own notes, preparing for the encounter, betray the anxieties of business: informal settlements near industrial or commercial areas damage business confidence; homelessness and unemployment mean high potential for

17 18 19 20

Minutes 17/8/94, BVS7/2/1/2. Buthelezi interview. Mac Master interview. Jayaseelan Naidoo, Fanaroff interviews.

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unrest, and unrest would clearly be bad for the RDP.21 The Lobby Group had prepared for this meeting but felt it had tested Naidoo’s patience and went badly. Naidoo, who was completely preoccupied, has no recollection of it.22 The RDP had been elaborated in a colourful ‘RDP Base Document’, the ANC policy manifesto, which emerged before the April election.23 It painted the vision of an inclusive ‘people driven process’. Echoing NPA Chapter 5, it believed development is not about passive reception but must involve ‘active involvement and growing empowerment … building on the many forums, peace structures and negotiations that our people are involved in throughout the land’ (1.33). Community Development Officers must be trained (4.3.13). Provincial and local development forums were essential and must be adequately resourced (6.3.5). Naidoo’s office was now preparing a White Paper translating the RDP into government policy.24 The peace structures expected to contribute their proven capacity to organize and train, and to share their growing understanding of SERD. However, not only were the structures not getting that message across but moreover, as November’s White Paper would reveal, the vision of bottom-up development was fading. Both Naidoo and Fanaroff appear, albeit fleetingly, in the internal government discussions on the peace structures, but neither recalls being aware of the structures’ particular relevance to the RDP. They were frantically absorbed in getting ministries to set up RDP projects, to spend the 1994–95 RDP Fund of R2.5 billion. Mandela, Fanaroff recalls, ‘wanted the RDP on the ground in his first hundred days, which if we’d known anything about what we were doing we’d never have agreed to – but we didn’t!’25 ‘Good projects were proposed’, he adds, but ‘the capacity to do meaningful consultation and to implement was lacking … because there are no project managers in government so nobody knows what to do!’ Each Department was asked to review its budget priorities in light of the RDP. The peace structures came out well. Colyn wrote: ‘The Department is of the opinion that these structures do in fact contribute significantly at grass roots level to the RDP.’26 Naidoo’s office requested input for the RDP White Paper by 30 June. The request reached Gildenhuys on the 27th. He faxed it to regional Chairs, requested a SERD response from Crowley, and submitted his own rushed input on the 21 Carmichael/Pauquet. 22 Jayaseelan Naidoo interview. 23 www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/the_reconstruction_and_development_ programm_1994.pdf [accessed 21/3/21]. 24 www.gov.za/sites/default/files/governmentgazetteid16085.pdf [accessed 21/3/21]. 25 Fanaroff interview. 26 Response to CEAS, 13/6/94, BVS142.

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29th saying: communities need training and local forums need administrative support; duplication should be avoided; the peace structures already exist, and they should be used.27 None of this hit home. NPS facilitators John van Breda and Dr Paul Lusaka responded with a ‘Discussion Document: The Role of the Facilitation Function of the NPS’ in the RDP.28 They precisely pinpoint the lack, in the RDP document, of any details on how development projects ‘will be (a) planned for, (b) prioritized, and (c) actually implemented at grassroots level’. They offer the ‘facilitation function’ of the peace structures to: (i) manage existing conflicts (political, displacees, taxis); (ii) facilitate the reconciliation process at grassroots; (iii) pro-actively facilitate and coordinate the development functions of the State, civil society (communities) and private sector (developers/financiers) at national, regional and local levels and enable communities to decide their own development priorities; and (iv) resolve future development-related conflict. Who ever read this? When the RDP office established a project management service it operated entirely topdown. Naidoo reflects: I think if you had asked me: what is one of the central mistakes that we made? It would be this: the demobilization of people. That the State will deliver what you need: whether that’s jobs or houses or telephones or water or sanitation. What did that do? It made people bystanders in development. So you move from active participants in the fight for freedom, to passive bystanders in the process of development. But then we discovered that the state doesn’t have the capacity. And that we are not all on the same page when it comes to how we want to see development. Because remember that we won the landslide on the back of the RDP which was about how to build a people-centred democracy. And when we tried to implement that we found that rather than creating a new system we fitted into very much the old system. … We inherited a bankrupt state so we had very little money to do anything. And because we hadn’t thought through the issue closely enough of implementation, we found that we didn’t have the capacity to even achieve the goals we set out – even if we had money!29

In the event the RDP Office was summarily closed in March 1996, overnight, without consultation. Naidoo’s non-portfolio vanished. Scattered ‘RDP projects’ still appeared (housing, a clinic) but the vision of grassroots development vanished into Mbeki’s trickle-down policy of ‘Growth, Employment and Redistribution’ (GEAR).

27 Carmichael/Lorimer. 28 BVS215; Carmichael/Lorimer. 29 Jayaseelan Naidoo interview.

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Endgame The end of August approached, the deadline for giving some staff two months’ notice. On the 23rd Gildenhuys wrote to RPC Chairs: ‘To my disappointment, the Cabinet has not yet reached a decision.’30 He and Hall would at last seek an interview with Mandela (if they did, it did not materialize). They wrote to Mbeki, speaking of ‘confusion and despondency’ and offering to meet him, to expedite a decision, ‘whenever you may require’.31 No audience was offered. The NPS and Lobby Group resorted to holding a press conference on the 26th to publicize their predicament. Peter Storey, speaking in Johannesburg on 2 September, the ‘Day of Unity and Reconstruction’, suggested a few wagons be unhitched from the ‘gravy train’: ‘Three times that R30 million is being spent refurbishing government residences.’32 The media noted the problem. No popular outcry arose. Grobler had ordered a thorough ‘activity audit’ of the regions, checking their assets and finances, inquiring about their activities and future commitments. He reported to Buthelezi and Colyn on 4 October. Two regional audits survive, with Grobler’s covering memo.33 The audits reveal a keen desire to continue, with SERD as the main activity. They confirm that provincial Premiers, of whom several had served on peace committees, were positive about keeping the structures – but only if Cabinet voted permanent funding. Grobler noted that LPCs were already mediating tensions over the non-­ delivery of development, and many wished to be known as ‘Peace and Development Committees’. He recommends a new national body of political, business and religious representatives nominated by the regions, advisory to the RDP Minister who would have overall control; and the replacement of DIPI by provincial ‘Peace Units’ under the RPCs.34 On 31 August, Director General Colyn suggested to his Minister that, in light of Mufamadi’s concerns about the security situation on the East Rand, the peace structures might still have to be supported.35 He therefore offered a plan, Cabinet Memorandum 13, for Buthelezi to raise at the next CCSAA on 6 September.36 Marked ‘SECRET’, Memorandum 13 was the last chance to save the structures. It recommends that, since provincial governments were keenly interested in them, ‘Cabinet approve an additional estimated R7 million per month to sustain the regional and local peace committees for the remainder of the financial 30 BVS21/14. 31 Letter 23/8/94, BVS21/14. 32 Weekend Star 3/9/94. 33 Covering Memo, Report: ‘The Status of the Peace Structures’, BVS149. Northern Cape Audit 5/9/94, BVS5/2/B/7; OFS Audit, BVS23. 34 Memo, BVS149. 35 Letter, BVS149. 36 Memorandum 13 and covering note 31/8/94. BVS149.

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year’. Responsibility could be transferred either to the Deputy President’s office or to the RDP and Safety and Security, or Buthelezi could still retain responsibility; but executive functions would be devolved to provincial governments. The NPC and NPS, which now had only symbolic value, might be replaced by an unpaid national advisory body. For reasons unknown, Buthelezi withdrew this Memo from the 6 September CCSAA agenda, ‘at the request’ of Minister Skweyiya of Social Affairs.37 During this delay, the idea of appealing to the signatories took hold among the structures. On 26 September the NPS and regional Chairs requested Hall to convene ‘an urgent meeting of all signatories … to review the continued role of the peace structures’.38 Two days later, Memo 13 reached Cabinet, which established a six-strong Cabinet Committee – Buthelezi, Jay Naidoo (RDP), Sydney Mufamadi (Safety and Security), Zola Skweyiya (Public Service and Administration), Derek Keys (Finance) and Kader Asmal (Water Affairs) – tasked to ‘call together the signatories of the Peace Accord in order to consult with them, and submit proposals to Cabinet on how to deal with the matter’.39 In a subsequent secret personal memo, no doubt to Colyn, requesting him to formulate motivations for removing the structures from Home Affairs, Buthelezi complains indignantly that his Cabinet colleagues had attacked his Department for its ‘frivolous’ attitude to the structures: ‘they think that we are treating the issue of Peace Structures with flippancy or in cavalier fashion (my words)’.40 The Cabinet Committee met on 5 October in Mbeki’s office. Mentioned as present were Buthelezi, Naidoo, Mufamadi, Roelf Meyer (Minister of Provincial Affairs and Constitutional Development), and Colyn.41 It appointed an Interdepartmental Working Group of officials, to make recommendations. This Group deliberated for three hours in Colyn’s office on 11 October. Names mentioned as invited are Bernie Fanaroff (RDP, nominated by Naidoo), Deon Rudman ( Justice, nominated by Meyer) and Lt Gen. André Pruis (police, nominated by Mufamadi).42 Their Report was ready by 13 October.43 It praises SERD as growing significantly, if still in infancy; the ‘network of credible relationships’ the structures had established with ‘grassroots and many mass-based organisations’; and their success in conflict resolution, promotion of the culture of peace, representativeness and impartiality. Now, being ‘community-based’, the committees belonged under the provinces. 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

Note 6/9/94, BVS149. NPC release 26/9/94, Carmichael/Lorimer. Undated ‘secret’ Cabinet memo post-11 October, BVS9. Memo 30/9/94, BVS9. Letters, Grobler to Mufamadi c. 6/10/94, Grobler to Colyn 11/10/94, BVS9. Invitations, BVS9. Report, BVS9; Carmichael/Lorimer.

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Ignoring the integrated nature of the committees and the wider spectrum of their activities, the Working Group then recommended their removal from Home Affairs and their effective dismemberment, parcelling out their SERD and police–community relations functions respectively to the RDP and Safety and Security line functions in the provinces, according to a vague and mystifying formula: That those peace committee members and committees concerned with (a) development be located under the RDP desk of the provincial administration, and (b) safety and security be located under the MEC responsible for this function and be incorporated into CPFs.

In addition a ‘largely symbolic’ national body of provincial representatives should be established, reporting on peace issues twice yearly to the Premiers Group with the President or his Deputies present, ‘thus retaining a visible national peace commitment’. Mysteriously, the Working Group imagined there existed ‘98 local peace and development committees’ specifically supported by SERD staff. This number must have derived from the ‘activity audit’, and presumably represents those LPCs that were strongly reorienting themselves to ‘peace and development’. The SERD staff must be retained: one Administrator and one Coordinator per province, plus one Assistant Coordinator in KZN, one Sub-regional Coordinator in Western Cape, and the twenty-eight SERD fieldworkers. The Group assumed the structures’ remaining funds were sufficient to ‘place SERD under the RDP in each province’ until March 1995. It estimated the total future budget for 1995–96 at R8,975,404 per annum, including capacity building and bridging funds for projects. The Report imagines that ‘those established committees’ concerned with SERD would thus be encouraged to continue. The alternatives to accepting these recommendations were either that R9,677,755 must be found to maintain the existing structures, albeit at severely reduced levels, until March 1995, or the structures would phase out as they ran out of funds. Finally the Group recommends: ‘That the signatories of the Peace Accord be consulted before implementation of these proposals.’ It appears this Report was available at the signatories’ meeting. It was certainly not presented or discussed – yet the Cabinet Committee took no other action to discharge its obligation to ‘consult’ with the signatories. Meanwhile, after repeated postponements since 30 June, the Lobby Group at last met with Sydney Mufamadi, now Minister of Safety and Security and still also the ANC’s leading representative on the NPC Executive. The indecision had worried him and he had been requesting an urgent NPC meeting. The Lobby Group met him at police HQ in Pretoria on 4 October.44 He had 44 Report 4/10/94, Carmichael/Pauquet. The Group was: Gildenhuys, Val Pauquet

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invited any NPC Executive members to attend. Last-minute rescheduling from 11.00am to 8.00am probably contributed to their non-appearance.45 Val Pauquet represented Hall, and relayed four messages from Mufamadi.46 First: a Cabinet Committee was dealing with the matter. Second: Cabinet requests a signatories’ meeting, to re-own and take responsibility for the peace process. Third: get rigorous status reports and future intentions from the regions, apart from any DIPI audits. Fourth, stop lobbying. Premiers feel intimidated when asked for millions when they themselves are short of money for the RDP. The bottom line, Pauquet concluded, was that the value of the structures was undisputed but no finance was available. The government could envisage structures continuing in the PWV (Gauteng) and KZN, and might welcome being prompted in that direction. The NPC called the signatories’ meeting for 25 October. Gildenhuys urgently requested the regional Chairs to send a ‘two page status report’ by 14 October, assessing the situation with regard to potential violence and peace structure capacity, and making proposals to the signatories for rationalization and restructuring. The brief responses show the structures struggling, but are unanimously positive about their future roles.47

Signatories’ meeting Never since the signing had the signatories reconvened, despite the NPC’s repeated efforts. The ‘bantustans’ and several other signatories no longer existed. Hall invited each remaining signatory personally, emphasizing the acute need for an adequate budget and a clear decision on whether this support would be forthcoming.48 Hall showed no interest in, or awareness of, any alternative. It was a rump that met, in the Conference Room of the government’s former H. F. Verwoerd building, 120 Plein St in Cape Town, from 11.00am to 5.00pm on Tuesday 25 October 1994. Buthelezi attended, but neither Mandela nor de Klerk. A mere six of the original twenty-nine signatory bodies were present: ANC, SACP, IFP, NP, DP, United Peoples’ Front, plus one late signatory – the Natal Indian Congress.49 Multiple hats were being worn: among the Cabinet

45 46 47 48 49

(alternative for John Hall), Paul Lusaka, M. C. Pretorius, Mahlape Sello, Peter Batchelor (for Chin Reddy), Anton Venter, Frikkie Botha. Letter 29/9/94 BVS171. Report 4/10/94, Carmichael/Pauquet. Reports, Carmichael/Lorimer. Invitation letter c. 11/10/94, BVS215. Attendance: Signatories: Dep. Pres. Mbeki (ANC), Buthelezi (IFP), P. Maduna (ANC), D. P. A. Schutte (NP), A. Leon (DP), M. L. Ledwaba (UPF), D. P. David (NIC), E. Pahad (SACP). Cabinet Committee: Roelf Meyer. NPC Executive: J. Hall, Bishop S. Mogoba, S. de Beer, S. Mufamadi, Val Pauquet; NPS: A. Gildenhuys, J. Steenkamp, S. Vos, P. Sebidi, S. Gcabashe, R. Lorimer, S. Mfayela. Regional Chairs and reps: A. Mabija (NCape), B. Brady (WTvl/ Northwest),

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Committee, Buthelezi was also a signatory, Mufamadi also NPC. Thabo Mbeki, Essop Pahad and Danie Schutte all represented signatories, were present or past NPC members, and were now in government. To the annoyance of the politicians, peace structure personnel attended in force: the NPS, NPC Executive, and ‘by invitation’ fifteen RPC Chairs and Co-chairs from all eleven regions, four DIPI staff, the 2 NPS facilitators and – an afterthought added to the agenda – Alexandra LPC Chair Patience Pashe as guest speaker. Bishop Mogoba attempted to set the tone by reading Ephesians 4.25, ‘let us all speak the truth to our neighbour’, but the atmosphere was far from open and trusting. Hall had drawn up the agenda, treating this as a business meeting. From the chair, apparently oblivious of government thinking, he reviewed the present ‘intolerable uncertainty’ and how the Accord had ‘provided the foundation … for the miraculous transition’. This meeting, he declared, would succeed if it supported continuation and requested Cabinet for a clear funding decision. The structures could offer a ‘major service’ in conflict resolution, peace education, enabling communities to prioritize their development needs, monitoring the RDP ‘to ensure an even handed approach’, forming CPFs, and monitoring the local elections planned for 1995. Hall’s script continued, suggesting the reconstitution of the NPC to include a wider range of civil society, to be a symbolic presence with a watching brief over peace.50 This was apparently omitted, since it is not minuted. Gildenhuys spoke in terms that suggest awareness of the Working Group’s Report, warning that the peace structures should not be fragmented and their staff dispersed among different departments. That would destroy the ‘ethos’ they had built up; their ‘credibility and efficiency’ would disappear, effectively destroying them. He advocated that the peace structures be incorporated, whole, into the RDP, with which they shared the same aim of building ‘a peaceful and happy nation’.51 The RPCs should be located under the provincial RDP desks. Getting grassroots participation meant having committees, and new committees were unnecessary since the peace committees could be taken over and utilized by the RDP. He gave numbers: 11 RPCs and 167 LPCs were operational, plus some specialist committees. Of the staff, 339 remained of whom 167 had received notice. G. Hollands (ECape), Pastor P. Ntuli (ETvl), Rev. G. A. F. Ntolosi, Rev. C. Reddy (NTvl/ Northern PWV), M. Koetz, Rev. P. Storey, A. Lamprecht (Wits/Vaal), S. B. Moshokoa (FarNTvl), Mr J. H. Smit (OFS), Prof. J. Durand, G. Mac Master (WCape), Dr L. Steenkamp (Border/Ciskei; Border Kei), M. C. Pretorius (KZN). Directorate (DIPI): C. Bezeidenhout, John van Breda, Paul Lusaka, Frikkie Botha, Andries van Rensburg, Miempie Boone. Guest: Ms Patience Pashe (Alexandra LPC). (Signatories Minutes 25/10/94, BVS237/2). 50 Hall’s script, Agenda, Carmichael/Pauquet and BVS237/2, BVS237/6. 51 Signatories Minutes 25/10/94, BVS237/2.

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Some regions had sufficient funding to operate until March. Just R9.6 million would allow all to do so. Given government support, additional funds would be available for Wits/Vaal, Western Cape, and OFS. Violent deaths were still occurring: thirty-four in the week 12–18 October according to the HRC. The NPS, he suggested, should be replaced by a small coordinating committee elected and financed by the provincial structures. The Accord and its structures ‘had assisted in creating in South Africa what many consider to be a small miracle’. May they ‘be put in a position to continue their very important work’.52 An unstructured, inconclusive discussion ensued. Peace structure representatives supported Gildenhuys. Mufamadi was concerned to distinguish criminal from political violence, and with making CPFs function effectively. Buthelezi, perhaps not quite in touch with the situation, said the IFP supported continuation but the structures must now be located under a more appropriate government department. Essop Pahad voiced the opinion, now widely held on the government side, that the expertise gained needed to be utilized, but not necessarily within the structures. Patience Pashe spoke for the grassroots, describing how the structures had brought people together, pleading that this process needed consolidating, not abolishing. In conclusion, Mbeki echoed the airy generalizations of the Working Group’s Report: locating the structures in provinces could be accomplished by ‘locating the developmental aspect under the RDP desks, while the Safety and Security Department would link with the conflict resolution function of the peace structures’. As well try to relocate the Cheshire cat’s grin without the cat. The Minutes leave the impression that further meetings were to come: the Working Group would report to the Cabinet Committee, which would then table recommendations in Cabinet. Essop Pahad suggested an NPC meeting after the Cabinet decision. Buthelezi, however, was saying as people departed that a decision could be made next day. Glenn Hollands, Grahamstown LPC’s Co-chair, reported: ‘I can only describe the attitude of the cabinet ministers and signatories as cynical.’53 He concluded from the ‘vague and paradoxical proceedings’ that no new funds were forthcoming. ‘One cannot escape the conclusion that the signatories are now part of government and as such, do not want independent, autonomous peace structures operating outside the state.’ Bishop Peter Storey, Co-vice-chair of Wits/Vaal, believed the structures must remain intact while being redesigned. He had anticipated a real discussion, ‘in good faith, on both sides. We didn’t get one. We got an announcement, from Mbeki: You’re closed!’54 As they exited he told Essop Pahad: ‘“I really was under the impression we were trying to save South Africa from a 52 Ibid. 53 Hollands, Albany Fieldwork Report, Oct. 1994 (see Archival Sources) Box 168230. 54 Peter Storey interview.

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conflagration. … I now realize … we were just saving your arses so that you could sit on these green benches without bullet holes in your backsides!” And he was very angry. So was I!’55 Storey was only repeating what peace monitors at grassroots were saying: the politicians used us to get into power, and now are not interested in us! Val Pauquet’s NPC press release reported unanimous agreement on ‘regionalizing’, implying that the peace committees would be exported intact to the provinces to work on the RDP and conflict resolution.56 Cabinet, she ended, would decide on funding ‘within days’. Instead, next day, Wednesday 26 October, Mbeki, not Buthelezi, presented the item to Cabinet. It adopted the Working Group’s recommendations verbatim but shorn of any retention of SERD staff, with no future funding and no new national body.57 Buthelezi announced this decision on 28 October, glossing it as ‘restructuring’: Cabinet decided on 26 October 1994 on the restructuring of the Peace Structures. This decision followed on a meeting between signatories of the NPA, relevant cabinet members and Chairpersons of the regional peace committees on 25 October 1995. Cabinet approved that those peace committee members and committees concerned with development, could be located under the Reconstruction and Development Programme desks of Provincial Administrations. Those peace committee members and committees concerned with Safety and Security could be incorporated into Police Community Forums. The detail of the implementation of the above will be dealt with by the Directorate Internal Peace Institutions in consultation with the National Peace Secretariat and its structures and the Provincial Authorities concerned.58

Nic Grobler faxed two months’ notice to almost all staff. All structures not adopted by a province would cease to function by 31 December. It was the first news that many had of the Cabinet decision, and the dismissals felt brutal. A more sympathetic letter, jointly from Gildenhuys and Grobler, went to staff on 1 November. It made the first almost frank admission that the peace fabric was being unwoven. Buthelezi expressed surprise, telling Lorimer he had imagined a smooth

55 Ibid. 56 NPC release 25/10/94, Carmichael/Pauquet. 57 Cabinet Minute 26/10/94, BVS5/2/B/7; Addendum, KZN RPC Executive Minutes 3/11/94, BVS234/15. 58 Buthelezi, media statement 28/10/94, Carmichael/Lorimer; BVS171.

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handover.59 Questioned years later he seemed pensively regretful: Yes, there had been more to do. ‘It was sad, actually. It was sad.’60 Only KZN, led by Zuma and Mdlalose, undertook to continue its structures. Bridging funds until March were offered to Wits/Vaal by the British Overseas Development Agency but only if permanent funding was assured. The province (PWV, Gauteng) expressed exasperation: peace structures were ‘not part of provincial competence’, hence it was ‘unfortunately difficult to absorb’ them. The province would, however, welcome an opportunity to discuss the matter with central government, ‘and if funds could be made available on a continuous basis their decision could be reconsidered’.61 Other provinces concurred. DIPI could only offer a share of the small capital remaining. Work officially ceased by Christmas, with no ceremony and only scattered celebrations. Home Affairs vans collected the office computers and furniture. Committee members assumed that the records – which were all, officially, state papers – would be archived. They were not. ‘That’, explained a startled Nic Grobler, confronted with the question years later, ‘would have been a separate requisition. It should have been my responsibility, but I might never have done it.’62 Purely by omission therefore, a fascinating archive went on rubbish tips, leaving only serendipitous remains. The NPS records reached the National Archive, but Home Affairs lost its NPC archive.63 Pauquet preserved a complete NPC set but Hall helped store some boxes, which vanished when he moved house. Before the final NPS meeting on 8 February, Grobler circulated a briefing on the ‘Transfer of Peace Functions to Provinces’. So blithely envisaged by Cabinet, the ‘transfer’ was proving problematic: It is not at all clear whether or not peace committee members will realign themselves to the new structures as proposed. Considerable concern has been expressed with regard to the legitimacy of Community Police Forums and their ability to be truly representative. Peace committee members have been urged to take their expertise to such fora and assist them in overcoming this shortcoming. In regard to the RDP a lot of provincial territoriality has been encountered and peace committee members have felt that they will not be welcomed into any structures the RDP may set up. To achieve an effective and thorough integration would probably have required time and expertise which would have incurred an additional cost which it is not likely that the provinces, for example, would have been able to bear.64 59 60 61 62 63

Lorimer interview. Buthelezi interview. Briefing, NPS 8/2/95, Carmichael/Lorimer; BVS232/16. Grobler interview. Nothing was found on a ‘Promotion of Access’ (PAIA) request to Home Affairs in 2014. 64 Briefing 8/2/95, Carmichael/Lorimer; BVS232/16.

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The last contract staff departed on 31 March. The ‘Internal Peace Institutions Act Repeal Act’ was signed by President Mandela on 10 July 1995 and gazetted on 21 July.

Deposition in Parliament The NPC, being non-statutory, still existed, but apart from the ceremony described below it never met again. Val Pauquet led a discussion on an appropriate formal closure, and on 6 April 1995 the Accord was ceremonially deposited in Parliament, after a reception and lunch there for the NPC, NPS and media guests. Hall spoke briefly to a joint sitting of the Senate and Assembly already gathered to honour the OAU Chairperson, Tunisia’s President. He then handed to speaker Frene Ginwala the original signed pages, recently bound in pale blue cloth, an original A4-sized National Peace Accord, and a printed copy.65 This ensemble was enclosed in a pale grey book-shaped box inscribed ‘Signatories to the National Peace Accord’. Speaker Ginwala hailed the Accord as having involved all in the work for peace, and as recognizing ‘the fundamental link between peace and development’. The search for peace has been and remains an integral part of the transition to democracy in our country. The signing of the Peace Accord was a crucial landmark in this process. … The decision by the National Peace Committee to deposit this document in Parliament underlines the statement that I made when I was elected Speaker, that this House is both the fulfilment, and the repository, of the values and principles that at great cost have driven the changes through which our country and its people are passing. We now share the responsibility to exhibit this historic document, as a reminder to the people of South Africa of our collective responsibility to keep alive the spirit of the Peace Accord in order to ensure justice and peace in our land.66

The Accord was not exhibited. The box went into the Library of Parliament, acquiring access number 20001839 303.690968.NAT. Accessible in 2012, by 2016 it was missing. In 2021 the Library’s Reference and Information Services instituted a search, which continues.

65 Documentation and ‘Peacemakers’ video, Carmichael/Pauquet. 66 ‘The Peacemakers’ video, author’s transcript, Carmichael/Pauquet.

Conclusion: Impact and Unfinished Business The National Peace Accord was the first in the sequence of multiparty initiatives that marked South Africa’s transition. In June 1991, fifteen months after Mandela’s release in February 1990, the nation was mired in a complex of suspicions and violence. The ANC–IFP conflict had spread. It had not been possible to start multilateral constitutional talks and thus move towards an election. Still less was the nation ready for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. What it was able to do, once the politicians had accepted the intervention of civil society facilitators, was to negotiate a set of agreements, the National Peace Accord, to regulate the behaviour of political parties, the government, and security forces, and to mandate civil society to join in the work of peacemaking and peacebuilding. The creation of the NPA was South Africa’s first experience of constructive multiparty negotiation. Having signed the Accord, the nation had a means to tackle the violence and was free to start constitutional talks. Unionist and astronomer Bernie Fanaroff says of this ‘crucial initiative’: People were in terror of their lives on both sides, and the Peace Accord really began to stabilize that in a way that was actually much more effective than I’d expected. … I mean, we had a very jaundiced view of the police and the intentions of the police and the State, and I was surprised that the Peace Accord was as effective as it was and moved as fast as it did.1

Strengths and weaknesses The top party leaders bound themselves, as signatories, to ‘ensure as far as possible that all our members and supporters will comply with the provisions of this Accord and will respect its underlying rights and values’ (NPA p.4). It was a weakness that other considerations initially swayed the top ANC and IFP leadership. To maintain credibility with their supporters they did not unequivocally call for a cessation of violence but practised an ambivalent rhetoric of ‘defence’, legitimizing revenge while denying that their own supporters were responsible for any violence. It was a strength that the Accord mandated leaders of civil 1

Fanaroff interview.

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society, as fellow members of the peace committees, to challenge this rhetoric, shame the politicians, and gradually elicit from them the public admission that all sides shared the blame and could call for peace. The Code of Conduct for Political Parties and Organisations (NPA Chapter 2) set the standard for political behaviour, from top to bottom, throughout the transition. Workshopped at training sessions for peace committee members and monitors, and easily referenced at meetings, it proved a powerful tool for democratization. The Code also made parties responsible for communicating with the police, local authorities, and each other when planning events. The peace committees facilitated this liaison, and the consequent joint planning and monitoring of events prevented untold violence. Communication contributed greatly to the lowering of fear. Egregious breaches of the Code by one or other party did occur, and were lethal and sensational, but thankfully rare. The police Code and provisions for the security forces (Chapters 3 and 4) informed the relationships between political parties, communities, police and army, and together with the Police Board directly contributed to the development of community policing and good public-order policing. The carrying of ‘dangerous weapons’ (3.6), a fraught issue during negotiation, was managed pragmatically by monitors and police on the ground. Due to ingrained historical suspicion of the police, ANC-supporting SDUs did not transform into police-related SPUs (3.7). The persistence of SDUs was particularly a problem in Kathorus, where they engendered counterparts in IFP-related ‘SPUs’, which also developed in Natal/KwaZulu. But in many places SDUs, if they had previously been significant, faded as peace took hold. As well as the mooted police-related SPUs, two further provisions of the Accord did not materialize. ‘Special Criminal Courts’ (Chapter 10) were rendered unnecessary when provisions were made to speed up ‘political’ cases in existing courts. The suggestion that special Justices of the Peace should be attached to LDRCs (7.5) met with no enthusiasm. The concept sat uneasily with the structures whose ethos was one of dispute resolution, not the issuing of binding orders. No volunteers came forward from violence-affected areas. At first socio-economic reconstruction and development (SERD, Chapter 5) took a back seat while the newly formed peace structures were absorbed in ‘firefighting’. Then, a national SERD training plan ran into political problems. SERD nevertheless pioneered some successful projects and was becoming the structures’ major activity post-election. It remains unfinished business, of prime importance for building peace. The ‘Commission of Inquiry Regarding the Prevention of Public Violence and Intimidation’ (Goldstone Commission), adopted into the Accord as Chapter 6, proved an invaluable asset. Like the later TRC it sought truth and was restorative, producing recommendations as to better ways to conduct affairs. It took hot issues (investigating taxi and train violence, the question of hostels,

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specific events) off the table of the peace committees, and shone the cool light of reason on them. It pinpointed the ‘Third Force’. Its recommendations for the control of public gatherings became law. Its research initiative stopped short; but in just three years it could hardly have achieved more. Like the Commission, the peace committees too lifted the issues of violence off the table of the constitutional talks, by ‘diverting the endless accusations and counter-accusations as to who were the perpetrators and who the victims … away from the constitutional negotiations. Without the NPA it is unlikely that substantive negotiations would have concluded in the time they did’ (Spaarwater, 2012 p.197). When the constitutional talks suffered a breakdown from June 1992 to April 1993, followed by a major walk-out, the peace structures proved a resilient multiparty safety-net. They steadily grew, matured, continued inter-party communication at all levels and mobilized the masses for peace. The local peace committees, supported by the NPS and the regional committees, serviced by the national sub-committees for training, communications, and SERD, achieved credibility in their communities, grounded the peace process at grassroots and helped secure ‘buy-in’ for peace itself. Mediator Susan Collin Marks (2000 p.196) writes: The Peace Accord provided an institutional home for peacemaking, wove it into the fabric of society, and imprinted it on the hearts of countless South Africans. Despite its imperfections, it was an agent for societal transformation that, during the course of its short, sharp life, supported the people and politicians of South Africa as they crossed their Rubicon. For the first time in history, the methodology of conflict resolution was used to transform a nation.

Judge Albie Sachs says of the Peace Committees: They played a key role in at least three interconnected respects: first, they actually helped nip potential inter- and intra-community clashes in the bud; second, they got people from different and potentially warring communities to meet each other and work together for a common patriotic endeavour; and third they enabled tens of thousands of people throughout the country to feel that they were part of the national [effort] to get a new non-racial democratic constitution … it wasn’t just a deal being hammered out at Kempton Park.2

The unpaid nature of the committees was a strength in that all were equally volunteers and, even if unemployed, willingly expended vast energies to get the country safely to its first democratic election. Some form of stipend, however, with its attendant difficulties, would probably have been necessary for continuation beyond 1994. 2

Email to author 3/5/18.

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The NPA’s impact on violence: a tale of statistics ‘Political’ violence meant people were dying in assassinations, street battles, clashes with security forces, the clearance of ‘no-go’ zones, on trains and in taxis, and in sudden night attacks by ‘unknown gunmen’.3 In many localities, not least Soweto and Alexandra, the peace structures achieved a remarkable, sustained reduction in such violence. Yet bare national-level statistics seem to indicate that they failed in the one thing the NPA was popularly expected to achieve: the elimination of ‘political’ violence. NPS Chair Antonie Gildenhuys opened the section on violence in his 1994 NPS Report (written in May 1994, tabled in Parliament in August) with the slightly inaccurate statement that ‘despite the efforts of the peace structures’ monthly deaths had increased from 1992 to the elections.4 He went on nuance this statement, but the damage was done. The Sowetan, normally supportive of the peace process, headlined its report ‘Peace Body “Ineffective.”’5 It did relay the nuances, and the NPS complained of the negative headline, but the perception remained: the Accord had been ‘ineffective’ in reducing violence. The nuances were significant. The NPA had in fact achieved considerable success both in violence-reduction across most of South Africa and in a wide range of other peacemaking and peacebuilding activities. Violence had been contained. By early 1993 it had ended in many places and was essentially restricted to Kathorus in Wits/Vaal and parts of Natal/KwaZulu. The spike in mid-1993 was localized to those areas. In January–April 1994, 61% of political deaths occurred in Natal/KwaZulu and 30% in Wits/Vaal, almost entirely in Kathorus, while Soweto and other once-violent areas enjoyed relative peace and stability.6 Even in Natal/KwaZulu, peace held wherever peacemaking and peacebuilding had been intensively and consistently carried out. The greatest ‘counterfactual’ concerns the NPA’s impact on marches, rallies and funerals. Prior to the Accord, lethal violence had routinely erupted at such 3

4 5 6

‘Political’ deaths, usually designated as such by the police who literally collected the corpses, are estimated at about 21,000 over the entire period from 1960 to April 1994. Of these, 15,017 occurred during the transition years 1990 to April 1994 (Cherry, 2011 pp.135–6). Monthly deaths peaked at 547 in July 1993 (SAIRR, 1995/96 p.52). The SAIRR (1995/96 p.51) gives figures of 2,706 ‘political’ deaths in 1991, 3,347 in 1992, 3,794 in 1993, and 2,476 in 1994 (1,741 from January to April 1994, peaking at 537 in March, then 436 in April, declining thereafter). The ANC–IFP ‘war’ accounted for 90% of these deaths. Murders of police rose sharply country-­ wide: 107 in 1990, 137 in 1991, 226 in 1992, 280 in 1993, and 255 in 1994 (Ibid. p.53). Provisional NPS Report 1994 p.71, BVS20/13. Final (unchanged) Carmichael/ Lorimer. Sowetan 11/8/94. Provisional NPS Report 1994 p.71, BVS20/13, and final Report (unchanged) Carmichael/Lorimer.

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events, due either to police action or inter-party fighting. Under the NPA literally thousands of events were jointly planned and peacefully managed. Violence occurred only rarely – as at Bisho or at the ‘Shell House massacre’ – where one or other party deliberately ignored the Accord. The Accord was the new factor, and was resoundingly effective. As Odendaal and Spies (1997 p.262) conclude, the NPA should be judged not by the persistence of violence in some areas, but by its successes in creating peaceful areas and events and ‘its ability to contain the growing spiral of violence and to manage the manifold crises created by the lack of legitimate governance during the transition period’. Success meant that by ‘Peace Month’, September 1993, across much of the country the fear of violence had been replaced by the freedom to plan and enjoy peace events; and the attitude of the media had largely swung from pessimism to cautious optimism. In Parliament that month the DP’s Rupert Lorimer MP, NPS member and Co-vice-chair of Wits/Vaal, responded to right-wing Conservative Party criticism: All I can say is that without the National Peace Accord structures, the situation in South Africa would be immeasurably worse than it is at present. The peace structures have been tremendously successful. Every day, in the 130 LPCs that exist around the country, one will find those people defusing situations of violence. The successes of the peace structures are not news. Peace is not great news, but the failed attempts to bring about peace, when people are killed, make the headlines.7

The final proof came with the remarkably peaceful April 1994 election, when the peace structures brought not only the ethos of peace, reinforced by Peace Doves and blue ribbons, but also essential logistical backup for the IEC. The election finally ended the political uncertainties that were the overall driver of ‘political’ violence. Only in KwaZulu-Natal did such violence persist for five more years. Violent crime, however, remains a plague.

Transferable wisdom In the period after 1994, South Africa’s politicians were called upon to speak to their counterparts engaged in peace efforts in other countries. They shared their experience of reaching across divides with leaders from Northern Ireland, helping that process to reach the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Roelf Meyer and his civil service counterpart S. S. ‘Fanie’ van der Merwe, speaking into situations as diverse as Northern Ireland and Bahrain, emphasized that negotiations did not start at Codesa: they began with the National Peace Accord; and they would suggest that some analogue of the Accord might be 7

SA Hansard 1993 p.13150, 17/9/93, IPI Amendment Bill debate.

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the appropriate first step elsewhere, rather than plunging directly into constitutional talks and truth commissions.8 When a fractured and violent society seeks to transition to peace, both the methods devised and their sequencing will impact on success. South Africa’s transitional process unfolded in stages: first, the National Peace Accord, setting the ground rules and giving the parties their first experience of constructive multiparty negotiation; then talks to devise an Interim Constitution, running in parallel with the NPA process. The Accord provided for complaints against breaches, and for investigations through the Goldstone Commission, but not for retributive action. The Interim Constitution, agreed late in 1993, stated in a ‘postamble’ that ‘amnesty shall be granted’ for political actions by all sides in the past conflicts. The TRC process, which included the offer of amnesty in return for truth, was designed post-election, after learning from the previous truth commissions in Chile, Guatemala, and El Salvador. The TRC’s remit covered ‘politically motivated’ actions carried out by all actors between 1960 and 1994. Mandela appointed Tutu, just retiring as Archbishop, as Chair. Through this sequencing, and by including amnesty, South Africa was able to move forward in stages, without a clash between peace and justice which could have brought the process to a violent halt. The Accord has been eclipsed, in memory and in ongoing research, by the much-discussed, well-documented TRC; but when the two years of TRC hearings began on 15 April 1996 they marked the culmination of the series of transitional initiatives that began in 1991 with the National Peace Accord. Such a sequenced process may well be worthy of consideration in conflict situations elsewhere. Roelf Meyer also emphasizes the essential role played in the NPA by civil society: What remains in my mind very strongly is the fact that civil society played a major role, and I think that is one of the key points that one has to register, and which is often being ignored in our own memory, and which is often being neglected in our own promotion of the Peace Accord in terms of the broader context; and often I speak about it because I say to others in conflict situations: ‘Here is a model that you can use, led by civil society.’ And it was really Bishop Tutu, Johan Heyns then, Louw Alberts and others, who grabbed us by the neck and said ‘You have to address this.’

Finally, the NPA still offers the most complete model of a cascade of peace committees constituting a nation-wide ‘infrastructure for peace’. Andries Odendaal, drawing on his NPA experience, has discussed the ‘crucial’ nature of local peace committees and how best to support them in work both for the US Institute for Peace (Odendaal, 2013) and the UN Development Programme. Chris Spies, Peter Batchelor, Sean Callaghan, Hannes Siebert, Peter Gastrow, Nicholas ‘Fink’ 8

Fanie van der Merwe and Roelf Meyer interviews.

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Haysom, Susan Collin Marks, and Fanie du Toit are among others who have taken their knowledge of the NPA structures into their international careers in peacebuilding, in settings as diverse as Nepal, Malawi, Ghana, and Iraq.

After 1994 In South Africa, in the absence of a national movement for reconstruction and reconciliation, the spirit of the NPA fed into numerous projects and NGOs, often local. For a decade, Wits/Vaal trainers built capacity for community development through the ‘Gauteng Peace and Development Foundation’. In 2010, xenophobic attacks in townships prompted the Johannesburg-based NGO ‘Action Support Centre’ to initiate and train informal LPCs in hotspots around Johannesburg and Durban. These LPCs reportedly helped prevent the spread of renewed xenophobic violence in 2019–20 (Nganje, 2021 p.129). A very limited revival of the LPC, or rather ‘LDRC’, pattern began in 1997 in Zwelethemba township, Worcester, Western Cape, and spread to 180 communities in that province and 3 in the Free State.9 These ‘Peace Committees’ were groups of local citizens, recognized by police and authorities, who offered alternative dispute resolution through facilitated discussion to get at root causes (the remote cause of a fight might have been nuisance caused by a neighbour’s chickens), rather than calling the police or taking vigilante action. Meetings were governed by a Code of Good Practice aimed at ‘Peacemaking’ (resolving individual disputes) and ‘Peacebuilding’ (addressing underlying systemic problems). These Committees were supported by the Community Peace Programme at the University of the Western Cape, the police, and Department of Justice. The Office of the President paid a R300 fee for each hearing, of which R200 was distributed to the committee members and R100 placed in a Peacebuilding Fund to support local projects. The initiative claimed to have resolved over 40,000 cases and brought R2,500,000 into communities. It closed when Zuma succeeded Mbeki as President in 2009, and funding unexpectedly ceased.

The future The transition held out promises of concrete expressions of reconciliation, of socio-political justice and inclusive development, with growing social cohesion; but many have not experienced these benefits. Fanie du Toit (2018 pp.103ff) discusses how the Mbeki government’s failure to act on the TRC’s recommendations for reparations and prosecutions, for which it faced censure from Archbishop Tutu, began to place the transitional ethos of reconciliation itself in jeopardy. Government has in many ways failed to build on the promises of the 9 www.saferspaces.org.za/be-inspired/entry/peace-committee-model 24/1/21].

[accessed

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transition. Part of that failure may be put down to the lack of structures to channel the energies of civil society and mobilize people, with government support, in the way that was possible for the peace structures. F. W. de Klerk, Second Deputy President in 1994, comments: ‘There was a perception – which I think in retrospect was wrong – that they [the structures] had served their purpose and would no longer be needed in the New South Africa.’ The NPA structures – particularly at grass roots level – could have continued to play a very constructive role in promoting inter-community communication and cooperation after 1994. The country needs such neutral forums for continuing communication and is all the poorer because they are no longer available.10

Barbara Nussbaum adds: ‘so much trust was built up in those structures. … a lot was lost, I believe’.11 Expecting the structures to continue, probably under a renegotiated Accord, Gastrow (1995 p.104) concluded: ‘Peacemaking and peacebuilding in South Africa will always have to remain a dynamic process. Continual adaptations will therefore be necessary.’ Twenty years later Bradshaw and Haines (2015 p.1) could write: ‘South Africa is an example of “protracted conflict” … While South Africa transcended traditional conflict resolution methodology with its National Peace Accord and Truth and Reconciliation Commission, neither of these processes was seen through to its end and, as a result, the South African conflict resolution process remains in limbo.’ Peacebuilding aspires ‘to ensure that people are safe from harm, have access to law and justice, are included in the political decisions that affect them, have access to better economic opportunities, and enjoy better livelihoods’.12 It is a complex, long-term task embracing state-building and, more fundamentally, nation-building. It is national but also local and personal. In South Africa, despite having democracy, a free market economy tempered by social grants, and positive discrimination through ‘black economic empowerment’, millions still experience poverty. Economic inequality has increased. Education has not generally improved, and is frequently inadequate. Skills are low, unemployment high, social cohesion a matter of continuing concern. Governments alone cannot do everything. Social cohesion involves action together for the common good. The National Peace Accord showed that dialogue can bring answers, and that government, business, religious bodies and wider civil society can synergize to give birth to a new reality. Once ideas for 10 11 12

Email to author 14/3/2012. Nussbaum interview. www.international-alert.org/about/what-is-peacebuilding/ [accessed 5/11/21].

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action are collected and a process begun, well-resourced implementation structures are essential. Could new peace and development structures assist? Could fresh, un-corrupt, flexible initiatives, with concerted backing from civil society and government, break through to make a real difference? Peacebuilding in South Africa is work in progress. Much has been done. Much remains to do.

Bibliography Interviews and personal communications Gavin Aarvold 29/10/19, Simon Adams & Victor Honey 5/9/12, Wium Adendorff 11/9/13, Louw Alberts 2/2/12, McGill Alexander 14/9/12, John Allen 11/3/12, Moses Anafu 30/12/13, Carmel Andrew (email) 6/3/16, Mark Anstey 14/9/12, Brigalia Bam 21/8/12, Mzu Banzana 14/9/12, Rob Barbour 8/10/13, Warwick Barnes 15/8/12, Eric Barry (phone) 22/8/13, John Battersby 31/12/15, Mike Beea 26/9/12, Bhabelazi Belunga 20/3/13, Phindile Bennett (phone) 27/9/13, Ian Bentley (phone) 23/9/13, Robin Binckes 12/7/13, Prince Booi 18/9/15, David Booysen 4/9/12, Bobby Brady 8/2/13, Peter Brandmuller 9/2/12, Colin Bundy 16/1/11, Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi 11/9/12, Roger Burrows 16/2/12, Sean Callaghan 20/7/12, Phiroshaw Camay 6/2/12, Bheki Cele 26/1/13, Nancy Charton (phone) 21/9/12, Halton Cheadle 19 March 2012, Danny Chetty 29/9/12, Selvan Chetty 18/1/13, Frank Chikane 22/3/13, Nicholas Claude 15/2/12, Sean Cleary 16/3/12, Theo Cloete 18/9/13, Theo and Ruth Coggin 4/4/13, Colin Coleman 26/4/14, Susan Collin see Marks, Michael Collins (phone) 14/2/12, Steve Collins 8/2/13, Mavis Cook 7/12/11, Johnny Copelyn 6/9/12, Glen Craig 17/9/12, Gary Cullen 18/2/12, David Dalling 17/9/13, Mvume Dandala 19/1/13, Mary de Haas 29/1/13, F. W. de Klerk 19/3/12, Fleur de Villiers 9/5/18, Johnny de Wet (phone) 28/2/13, Andrew Define 22/9/13, Amanda Diener 11/12/13, John Doble 21/11/11, David Don 23/11/13, Libby Dreyer 8/12/11, Attie du Plessis 4/3/14, Frans du Preez 1/8/13, Charles du Toit 13/9/12, Pauline Duncan 19/2/13, 31/12/13, Jaap Durand 20/3/12, Willem Ellis 8/3/12, Theuns Eloff 1/8/13, Alec Erwin 12/8/16, Willie Esterhuyse 31/1/18, Bernie Fanaroff 11/8/16, Nico and Loel Ferreira 10/9/12, Chris Fismer 24/7/17, Herman Fourie 18/1/13, Peter Gastrow 13/9/13, David and Bernie Gilbertson 7/1/11, Antonie Gildenhuys 26/1/12, Bobby Godsell 12/12/11, Richard Goldstone April 2010, Vasu Gounden 18/2/13, Zirk Gous 15/8/12, Elspeth Graham 7/5/17, Paul Graham 5/2/13, Bruce Green 16/9/13, Johann Gresse 14/1214, Jan Greyvenstein 8/3/12, Jenny Grice (phone) 23/8/16, Nic Grobler 20/8/12, William Gumede 8/12/11, Colleen Haggard 18/1/13, John Hall 11/12/11, Peter Harris 10/1/11, Karen Harrison 16/8/16, Paul Hatty 15/7/13, Henk Heslinga (phone) 3/12/19, Jacobus Hoffman 11/12/13, Glenn Hollands 11/8/13, Heather Holmes 10/9/12, Vernon Hunter 22/8/13,

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Gillian Hutchings 8/7/13, Colin Hyman (phone) 23/7/13, Jeremy Ive (phone and emails) 2012–21, John Jeffery 6/9/13, Athol Jennings (phone) 12/2/13, Shaun Johnson 25/6/19, Ronnie Kasrils 15/9/2013, Sharon Katz (email) 11/2/19, Paddy Kearney (phone) 6/12/11, Radley Keys 24/1/13, B. Khawula 16/8/13, David Khumalo 25/9/12, Juli Kilian (phone) 8/2/18, Marius Kleynhans 13/3/12, Gary Koekemoer 14/9/12, Zev Krengel 9/4/13, Skip Krige (phone) 14/9/13, Margaret Kruger 18/2/13, Tom Laidlaw 2/11/12, André Lamprecht 6/12/11, Reg Lascaris 15/8/12, Henri Lerm 16/9/13, Di Levine 27/1/12, Des and Dawn Lindberg 31/7/19, Rupert Lorimer 24/12/2010, James Louwrens 21/1/13, Colleen Lowe Morna 20/2/12, Gerrie Lubbe 16/7/13, Linus Luthuli 23/2/13, Richard Lyster (phone) 14/2/12, John Mabuyakhulu 19/8/13, Jabu Mabuza 2/8/16, Greg Mac Master 29/8/16, Prince Vulingqondo Madlala 26/9/13, Mac Maharaj 15/9/15, Susan Collin Marks 13/9/13, Mannie Manim 27/3/19, Mark Manley 16/2/12, Russell Marshall (email) 23/11/11, Fiona Martin 9/2/12, Sol and Liz Mashiloane 11/12/11, Reg Mason (phone) 26/8/16, David ‘Slovo’ Matlhanye (Makhado) 2/8/17, Ida Matlou 22/2/14, Grahame Matthewson 5/2/12, Themba Mavundla 18/8/13, Ellen Mbele 31/12/13, Musa Mbongwe 6/9/13, Robert McBride 20/3/13, Frank Mdlalose 27/9/12, Bulelwa Mdoko 4/8/16, Songesi Elvis Mdoko 5/8/16, Peter Meistre 30/7/16, Elizabeth Mentile 17/9/13, Roelf Meyer 24/2/12, Senzo Mfayela 29/9/12, Rob Midgley 19/8/13, Stephanie Miller 28/1/13, Dominic Mitchell 16/2/12, Stanley Mogoba 21/8/12, Edwin Molahlehi 10/4/2013, Jacqui Mooney 22/1/13, Beauty More 25/9/12, Iqbal Motala 2/9/13, Sam Motsuenyane 2/4/13, Cynthia Mqwebu 22/2/13, Sydney Mufamadi 6/8/12, Evelyn Muller (email) 9/4/18, Jackie Murray 18/8/14, Lynette Murray 19/8/14, Abram Mzizi (brief phone call) 2/3/13, Gertrude Mzizi (brief phone call) 3/3/13, Jayaseelan Naidoo 4/10/15, Jayendra Naidoo 11/2/12, Neil Naidoo 24/8/16, Benedict Ndabandaba 25/8/13, Christo Nel 16/3/12, Sipho Ngcobo 18/8/13, Jerome Ngwenya 25/8/13, Gerrit Nieuwoudt 12/9/12, Dennis Nkosi 26/1/13, David Ntombela 30/1/13, Richard Ntuli 26/8/16, Charles Nupen 8/12/11, Barbara Nussbaum 8/9/12, Andries Odendaal 19/3/12, Di Oliver 6/3/13, Retief Olivier 12/3/12, Annatjie Olivier 12/9/12, Crispian Olver 9/6/18, Padraig O’Malley 22/10/15, Mario Oriani-Ambrosini 6/9/12, Roger Oxlee 12/3/12, Aziz Pahad 2/10/13, Essop Pahad 31/7/13, Raymond Parsons (email) 20/10/18, Patience Pashe 9/4/13, Val Pauquet 30/1/–16/8/12, Ravi Pillay 15/2/13, Rodney Pinder 18/11/13, Khayalethu Plaatjie (email) 11/8/16, Ruth Plaatjie (phone) 15/8/16, Kate Prinsloo 7/3/13, Lerato Qolosha 27/2/13, Stuart Round (phone) 15/10/17, Con Roux 29/8/12, Deon Rudman 28/2/12, Shena Ruth 10/8/13, Jerome Sachane 8/2/13, Albie Sachs (email) 3/5/18, Leon Sassenburg 7/3/13, Pam Saxby 16/9/13, Johan Scheepers 12/1214, Michael Schluter 13/1/16, Geoff Schreiner 17/3/12, Danie Schutte 17/8/12, Laurie Searle 31/1/15, Sue Segar 28/1/18, Mahlape Sello 3/3/12, Mark Shaw (phone) 15/8/16, Cyril Shezi 19/2/13, Hannes Siebert 8/10/13, Fana Sishi 27/2/13, Brian Smith 13/9/12, Tim Smith 16/1/19, Stef Snel 4/9/12, Malibongwe Sopangisa 6/9/12, Maritz Spaarwater 10/9/12, Chris Spies 20/3/12,

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Felicity Steadman 11/8/14, Ron Steele 23/8/13, Johan Steenkamp 9/9/12, Lectus Steenkamp 14/8/16, Melanie Stewart 17/3/12, Alan Storey 7/9/12, David Storey 20/2/12, Peter Storey 10/3/12, Daryl Swanepoel 19/3/12, Charles Talbot (phone) 13/2/13, Michael Tatalias 21/7/13, Nick Tatalias 17/7/13, Lita Theron (now Currie) 12/2/13, Thokoza ex-SDUs and SPUs 23/3, 12/4, 28/9/13, Ilona Tip 10/12/11, Doug Torr March 2012, Desmond Tutu 7/9/12, Tracey van Biljon (now Stretton) 11/8/13, Chantelle van Biljon 21/1/13, John van Breda 8/12/16, Boetie van der Merwe 8/10/13, S. S. ‘Fanie’ van der Merwe 29/2/12, Wynand van der Merwe 19/1/13, Steve van Rooyen 17/9/12, Braam Viljoen 8/4/13, Adriaan Vlok 14/8/12, Suzanne Vos (brief emails and phone) 2012–13, P. A. J. Waddington 17/11/13, Bruce Walker 14/2/12, Jonathan Walton 2/8/16, John Warren 30/1/12, Leon Wessels 7/1/11, Marion Wessels 18/1/13, Brian Wilkinson 14/9/13, Alfred Woodington 4/8/17, Peter Woods 15/9/12, Darryl Worth 20/8/16, Dianna Yach 17/9/13, Deane Yates 4/12/11.

Archival sources Material owned, lent to, or collected by the author is designated in the Notes Carmichael or Carmichael/name of source, e.g.: Carmichael/Pauquet. Alexandra Local Peace Committee records, 1992–99: University of the Witwatersrand, Historical Papers AG3056 (also Carmichael) David Jackson Papers relating to South Africa: 10 boxes, ID6685, Bodleian Library, Oxford (ECOMSA Observer, Oct. 1992–Apr. 1993; Goldstone Observer, Oct. 1993–Apr. 1994) Glenn Hollands Fieldwork Reports, Black Sash archive, Cory Library, Rhodes University Goldstone Commission archive: Nelson Mandela Foundation, Houghton, Johannesburg National Peace Initiative (NPI) records, 1991, from CBM’s NPI office: Carmichael/ Pauquet National Peace Secretariat: files BVS 1–296, National Archives of South Africa, Pretoria. Sub-files are indicated thus: BVS100/2 Nicholas Claude papers, in ‘Peace Accord – South Coast, KZN (Uncat Mss) Box 1 of 1’, Killie Campbell Africana Library, University of KwaZulu-Natal Nelson Mandela papers, ANC Archive, University of Fort Hare Ronald Kasrils papers: University of the Witwatersrand, Historical Papers, A3345 W. Roland papers, Cory Library, Rhodes University

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Film NPS TV advertisements, 1991–94, Carmichael/Manley Port Shepstone Reconstruction Project documentary, Positive Development News Initiative, Carmichael/Manley SABC TV ‘Agenda’ documentary on peace in Alexandra, 14/9/93, Carmichael SABC TV footage of National Peace Convention, 14/9/91, Carmichael/du Plessis ‘The Peacemakers: A Day in the Life of South Africa’s Peace Accord’: ‘Ordinary People’, weekly Mail TV documentary on peace monitors, 21/3/93, Carmichael/P. Storey ‘The Peacemakers’, collage of NPA history, 1991–95, ed. Val Pauquet from SABC TV news footage, Carmichael/Pauquet ‘The Secret Safari’, https://vimeo.com/55354730 [accessed 25/1/21]

Index Aarvold, Chief Supt Gavin  292, 299, 304 Abdurahman, Dr Abdullah  19 Action Support Centre  457 Adams College  22 Adams, Rev. Simon  327 Adendorff, Wium  326, 393 Africa Hinterland  28–9 African Enterprise (AE)  51, 53–4, 56–8 Afrikaner Volksfront (AVF)-ANC talks 399–400 Agnew, Rudolph  64 AHI  61, 108, 117–19, 130 AK–47 rifles  28–9, 74, 91, 139, 388, 415, 419 Alberton Industries Association (AIA)   72–4 Alberts, Louw, NPA facilitator  57–8, 60, 98, 107–8, 110–25 passim, 130, 136, 174, 233–4, 259, 456 Alexander, Benny  171 Alexander, Col. McGill  366–9 Alexandra  2, 3, 7–8, 70, 89, 158, 265, 377 Alexandra ICC (LDRC/LPC)  8, 30, 70,136, 229, 250, 258, 274, 302, 324–5, 365–71, 378, 410, 454, 446 Peace, ‘Declaration of Reconciliation and Reconstruction’ 1 May 1995  371 Peace monitoring & training  8, 229, 295, 297, 309–12, 315–16, 317, 319–20, 324–5 SERD  330–31, 340–41, 370–71 taxi wars and peace  370, 419–20 violence begins, 1991–2  93, 158, 213, 238 n.10 Alexandra Plenary Group for Reconciliation and Reconstruction (APG) 371

Amakhosi  39–41, 71, 331, 356–8 Amalgamated Union of Building Trade Workers of SA  180–2 AmCham  225, 340 Anafu, Dr Moses, mediation in Natal/ KwaZulu  304, 331, 357–9 ANC, 1912–1990  20–76 passim ANC founded 1912, Youth League 1944, Freedom Charter 1955 20–3 banned 1960, forms MK, leaders jailed or exiled  26–30 Inkatha-UDF/ANC conflict, ‘ungovernability’ campaign (1980s) 38–45 secret talks, in prison and externally (1980s)  64–5, 75–6 ANC, 1990 onwards  77–459 passim ANC unbanned 2 February 1990 81 ANC-Alliance forms with SACP, COSATU 62 ANC-IFP violence intensifies and spreads 83–93 bilaterals with government break down May 1991  94–103 multi-party planning meeting 22/6/91 117–23 NPA negotiations, signing 14/9/1991 111–97 NPC, NPS, RPCs, LPCs: ANC as member 201–400 passim Secret talks with right-wing AVF 1993–94 399–400 SERD attracts ANC’s ambivalence  334, 439 Anderson, Bruce  366–7 Anderson, Jim  302, 312, 319

469

470

Index

Anglo American  61, 63, 65, 75, 98, 163, 334, 341 Anstey, Prof. Mark  244 –5 298 –9, 307, 388 Anyaoku, Chief Emeka  304 Apartheid  7–8, 10, 17, 20–23 ‘grand’ and ‘petty’ apartheid   22, 37 internal collapse, apartheid declared a sin  52–3, 59 reforms under Botha; rejection of them 37–8 ‘theological’ justifications, refutation of them 50–3, 97 APLA  28 n.7, 30, 131, 135, 283, 383 ARAC  412 –4 arms smuggling, caches  28–9, 415 see also weapons ARMSTA 420 Arts & Entertainment Sub-SubCttee  252, 262, 279–82 Asmal, Prof. Kader  382, 443 ATA 420 AVU 212 AWB  37, 54, 108–9, 116, 130, 134–5, 245, 298–301, 309–13, 381, 388, 392, 394–6, 407 AWB joins Barberton LPC  396 peace structures mediate, monitor marches  298–301, 396 pre-election bombings (OFS, W. Tvl)  392, 398 AZANLA  30, 135 AZAPO  30, 54, 56, 68, 96, 115, 117 n.21, 119, 121, 131, 135, 146, 176, 211, 265, 303, 364 Baillie, Martin  287 Balindlela, Nosiwe  70 Ball, Chris  65–7, 115 Bam, Brigalia  57–8, 106–8, 167, 192 Bantu Education  22, 31, 32 ‘Bantustan’ see ‘SGT’ Baqwa, Lillian Gugu  403–4 Barbour, Rob  70–1 Barclay’s Bank  65 Barlow Park  114, 116–17, 121–48 passim, 205–226 passim, 238–9, 247, 316, 333, 340

Barlow Rand/Barlow’s  69–70, 98–101, 107, 117, 126, 142, 196, 226–7, 260, 335, 345, 362, 375 Barnard, Dr Pieter  391 Barnard, Ferdi  412–14 Barnard, Niël  34, 36–7, 39, 64, 82–3, 86, 215 secret talks with Mandela, ANC 75–8 Barnes, Warwick  335–45 Barry, Eric  356 Batchelor, Peter  445 n.44, 456 Battersby, John  93, 140, 195 Beaufre, General André  33 Beckett, Denis  217, 254, 294, 265 Beea, Mike  214 n.52, 366–9 Bekkersdal, peace pact 1993  238 n.10, 303 Bekwa, Lindani  389 Belhar Confession  53 Belunga, Babelazi  74 Bentley, Ian  388 Bernickson, Bernie  253 Bester, H. J  248 Bester, Maj–Gen. M. J. A.  425, 428 Bezeidenhout, Corrie  240, 250, 363, 400 Bhambayi  243, 315, 353, 361, 412 Bhengu, Mrs E. T.  135, 148 n.15, 170 Biko, Steve  30–1 Bingle, Rev. Dr Pieter  57 Bisho marches, shooting, Goldstone Report   225, 384–7, 406–7, 455 commemoration 388 Biyela, Bonginkosi  70 Bizos, George  27, 66 Bjorkman, Denise  253 Black Consciousness  30–32, 97, 125, 210 Black Local Authorities Act  37 Black Theology  30, 52 Blake, Gertrude  42 Blunden, Jenni  356 Boesak, Rev. Dr Allan  38, 52, 57 Boipatong conflict, massacre, inquiry  43, 91, 160, 220–1, 294, 406–7, 428 relief, peacemaking  310, 342 Bophuthatswana  22 n.2, 23, 130–3, 178, 221, 225, 387, 391

Index right wing ‘invasion’ March 1994 xxiv Boraine, Rev. Dr Alex  63 Border/Ciskei Region, RDRC/ RPC  212, 230, 240, 304, 340, 383–8 Border/Kei Development Forum  340–1, 346 Bosch, Rev. Prof. David  56 Botbijl, Piet  413 Botha, Brig. Tolletjie  413, 415 Botha, Frikkie  250, 435, 445 n.44 Botha, Gen. Louis  20 Botha, P. W.  11, 33–9, 56, 60–7, 75–8, 97, 125, 335 Botha, R. F. (Pik)  43, 107, 143, 170, 218, 221, 384 Bouma, Floris  413–4 Boutros-Ghali, Boutros  9, 14, 221, 232, 296, 301–2 Boy Scouts sign Peace Pledge  212 Bradnum, Mike  391 Bradshaw, Dr Gavin  245, 246 n.35, 458 Brady, Bobby  397–8, 445 n.49 Brandmuller, Peter  323, 395–6 Brauteseth, Rev. Ron  331, 356 Brayshaw, Colin  340 Breytenbach, Breyten  63 Breytenbach, Dr Willie  64 Breytenbach, Wynand  161 Briggs, Rev. Robin  56 Briggs, Sylvia  205 Broederbond  21, 36, 52, 54, 65, 97 Broederstroom Encounter  66–7 Bruce, Col. David  370 Brunette, Adv. Don  425 Bruntville  211, 216 Brutus, Denis  206 Buchanan, Bishop Duncan  57 Burgmer, Uli  304 Burrows, Roger, MP  354 business in peace facilitation see Anglo American; Barlow Rand; CBM; NPA facilitators Buthelezi, Bishop Manas  57 Buthelezi, Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha  22, 39–40, 51, 55, 68, 82–3, 88, 97, 102, 115, 417

471 and ANC  40 and de Klerk, government  95, 103, 109, 137–8, 165, 233–4 and Mandela  7, 85–7, 91, 93, 164, 207, 216, 221–2, 224–5, 228, 230, 233–4 Minister of Home Affairs 1994  435, 438–9, 442–9 and NPA negotiations  111–13, 115, 128–9, 136–43, 145, 146–7, 154–8, 164–70, 176, 179, 183–4, 188, 192, 194–6 and NPC  206–7, 213, 216, 218–25, 228, 230, 255, 258, 282, 290, 352, 361 and pre-NPA peace efforts  39–45, 55–6, 71, 73, 77, 83–4, 87, 91–3, 103–5, 109 and Tutu, SACC  52, 56, 91, 96–8, 103–5, 107–8, 111, 139–43 reactions to violence and insult  45, 105, 222–5, and passim

Cachalia, Azhar  66, 128, 224 Caetano da Silva, Joāo  218, 303 Cahill, Eddie  391 Callaghan, Sean  1 n.3, 288–9, 456 Calmeyer, Rev. Gordon  104 Camay, Phiroshaw  229, 244 n.30, 316, 372–3, 375, 431 Campbell, Rob  261, 266 Campino, Jose  296 n.19, 298, 384 Candotti, Paolo  72, 372 Caprivi trainees  41–2, 408, 412, 416 Carlin, John  45, 217 Carlton Conferences  69 (1990), 105 (1991) Cassandra, Adriano  319, 391 Cassidy, Michael  50–1, 53–4, 57–8, 124 n.2, 233–4 CBM (Consultative Business Movement)  54, 65–9, 82 supports Kissinger-Carrington/ Okumu mediation (1994)  233, 240 supports NPA negotiation  98, 101, 105–6, 108, 117–8, 125–32, 147, 174, 177, 205 supports peace structures  240, 269, 315, 331, 345, 353, 379

472

Index

CCB (Civil Cooperation Bureau, DMI)  35–6, 81, 413 Cele, Bheki  87, 249, 352–8 Centre for Conflict Resolution  10, 389 Centre for Intergroup Studies  4, 10, 244 Chaka Chaka, Yvonne  257 Chalker, Baroness Lynda  210, 318 Chamber of Mines  61, 130, 132 n.22 Chapman, Neal  65, 68, 82, 106 Charton, Rev. Canon Prof. Nancy  325, 327 Cheadle, Halton  98, 100, 128, 147–8, 157, 167, 196 Cheadle, Thompson & Haysom  125, 128, 161 n.42 Chetty, Rev. Danny  355–6 Chikane, Rev. Frank, 35, 38, 51, 57–8, 115, 214, 219, 259, 271 NPA facilitator  51, 96–7, 103–7, 111–18, 124, 130, 139, 142, 148–9 Choane, Moses  393 Chonco, Jabulani  356 Christian Institute (CI)  32, 51 churches and apartheid  49–53 denominations in SA  49–53 World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC)  52 World Council of Churches (WCC)  51–2, 58 see also Cottesloe; EMPSA; Natal Church Leaders Group; NPA facilitators; Programme to Combat Racism; Rustenburg Conference; SACC Cillie Commission  31 Ciskei  22 n.2, 23, 131, 221, 230, 383 see also Bisho marches and shooting and NPA  130–3, 136, 146–7, 171, 179–80, 212, 283, 304, 324, 383–8, 407 civic organizations  38–9, 70, 72, 74, 128, 131, 159, 270, 336, 364, 391, 397, 400, 404, 418 civil society in mediation, peacebuilding, peace structures  2, 16, 49, 108, 122,

144, 171, 204, and passim; see also business; churches; religious bodies Clarke, Liz  333, 345 Clarke, Rev. Bob  389 Claude, Nicholas  356–7 Cleary, Sean  112–13, 115–16, 118–21, 124, 131, 142, 148–9, 164, 168,172, 204 Cloete, Theo  355–6 Codes of Conduct committees, communities, governments  146, 153, 171, 173, 457 Electoral Code, E. Cape  391 ‘Goldstone Guidelines’ on public demonstrations  296, 406 labour relations  98, 100, 163, 241 NPS Code of Conduct for Mass Action 296 peace monitors   316–7 police /security forces  92, 109, 118–19, 121, 126, 144, 150–3, 172, 317, 387, 433 political parties and organizations  71–4, 92, 103, 109, 118–19, 121, 126, 144, 148–50, 169, 178, 201, 295, 317, 361, 387, 452 SADF see SADF Code Sullivan Principles  62 Codesa  1, 4, 85, 129–30, 144, 194, 197, 210, 213, 215–16, 221, 230, 259, 296, 368, 455 Codesa 2  215, 220, 258, 296 CODETA 420 Coetsee, Kobie, MP  75, 77, 84–5, 170, 394 Coetzee, Dirk  35 Coetzee, Prof. T. F  425, 428 Coetzee, William (‘Timol’)  416 Coetzer, Nico  212 Coggin, Theo and Ruth  207 Cohen, Leon  68, 106 Coleman, Colin  67–8, 105–6, 233 Collin, Susan see Marks, Susan Collin Collins, Canon John  25 Collins, Steve  146, 353 Collis, Craven, NPS member  208 n.15, 238, 244, 246, 363

Index Colyn, Piet  438–40, 442–3, 438–9 Commonwealth  130–1, 227, 243, 296, 301, 304–5, 318, 324, 357 see also COMSA Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group  75, 143 Communism  24–5, 33, 36, 75, 77, 96 Communist Party see SACP community policing  151–4, 424–31 and passim Community Support Educators (CSEs) 344 Community/Local Development Forums  350, 346, 395, 440 Complaints Investigating Committee (CIC) under NPC  216–18 COMSA  152, 291–2, 302, 304–5, 311–13, 318, 323–4, 375, 426, 431 see also Anafu Confederation of Metal and Building Unions 182 Congress of the People  23, 129 Coni, Elize  310 Conradie, Lt-Gen. Alwyn  425 Conservative Party (CP)  37, 54, 79, 96, 108, 116, 130, 134–5, 174, 231, 238, 248, 271, 299, 300, 303 n.41, 305, 310, 391, 392, 415, 455 see also right wing Consolidated Goldfields (Consgold)  53, 64–5, 77 Constitutional Development Service (CDS)  125, 127, 130–1, 179, 204–5, 208–9, 217, 224, 228, 253 Constitutional talks (Codesa, MPNP)  1, 4, 194, 197, 210, 215, 220, 228–31 Contralesa  132 n.22, 134, 180, 182, 205 Conway, Robert  112, 243 Cook, Mavis  370 Cooper, Dr Saths  342 Copelyn, Johnny  128, 139, 145, 147, 163 n.53, 164–5, 176, 196, 208 n.1 COSAS  93, 229, 316, 318, 368, 370, 391 COSATU  62–3, 66, 81 COSATU/UDF-Inkatha conflict and peace  41, 55, 71, 84, 89, 119 HQ bombed  35

473

NPA  98–102, 117 n.21, 118–21, 127, 132 n.22, 135, 140, 148 n.15, 150 n.18, 162, 163 n.53, 175, 180, 183, 204 n.4, 205, 269, 292, 320, 330, 333, 364, 406 Cottesloe Consultation and Statement  51, 58 Cradock Four  34 see also Goniwe Craig, Rev. Glen  307–8, 325, 327–8, 388 CREID 54 Cronje, Maj-Gen. M. W  425–6, 428 Cronje, Rowan  171 Crossroads, Cape  286, 380–1, 430 Crowley, Christine  341, 345–8, 440 CSIR 108 Cuna, João  412, 415 Cwele, Dr Siyabonga  356, 359 Dakar Encounter/Safari  54, 63, 64, 66 Daleview 298–9 Dalling, David, MP  173, 182, 208 n.15 Damant, Bishop Derek  308 Dandala, Rev. Mvume  203, 259, 260–1, 340–1, 376 see also Hostels Peace Initiative Dangerous Weapons Act (1968)  155 see also weapons Dangor, Mohamed  271 Daveyton  315, 323, 377, 398 shootings (1991)  95, 151 see also Peace Corps Day of Unity and Reconstruction 2/9/94  285–6, 442 DCC (Directorate of Covert Collections)  413, 415 De Beer, Sam, MP, NPC Exec member  107, 229, 387 n.23 De Beer, Dr Zach, MP  26 n.3, 65, 119–21, 148 De Bruyn, Bishop Trevor  383 De Coning, Dr Cedric  15 De Haas, Mary  354 De Jager, Dr Theo  337–8 De Klerk, F. W.  4, 21–2, 310, 322, 325 and Buthelezi  103, 115, 137, 155, 164–5, 168–9, 192 and churches and business  57,

474

Index

De Klerk, F. W. (continued) 68, 96, 98, 103, 105, 107–8, 113, 259 covert activities ended  34–6, 42, 77, 80–1, 393, 415–17 and Mandela, ANCAlliance  80–4, 90, 94–6, 100, 103, 105, 155, 164–5, 215, 217–8, 385 Mandela released, liberation movements unbanned  80–3 and NPA  128, 145, 151, 164–5, 170, 176–7, 179–80, 183, 185–8, 192–6, 213, 248, 255, 282, 445, 458, 402, 406 Nobel Peace Prize, joint with Mandela 283 peacemaking, initiating change  7, 30, 54–5, 57, 65, 68, 77–83, 86, 94–6, 99–100, 102–3, 108, 113–15, 125, 213, 335, 393, 405, 429 referendum 1992  213 as Second Deputy President 1994 458 as State President 1989  77, 80 De Klerk, Rev. Nico  349 De Klerk, Willem (Wimpie)  54, 65 De Kock, Eugene  35, 43, 221 n.77, 415–16 De la Rosa, Maj-Gen. A. F.  300, 425, 428 De Lange, Prof. Pieter  54, 64 De Oliviera, J. C. S.  182 De Villiers, Fleur  64 De Villiers, L-Gen. H. P. M.  425 De Wet, Johnny, MP  356 De Wet, Justice Quartus  27 Defence and Aid Fund  25 Defiance Campaign  23–4 Define, Andrew  323 Degenaar, Prof. Johan  64 Delport, Tertius, MP  253, 333 Delta Consulting Services  336–8 Democratic Party (DP)  3, 73, 180, 182, 205, 208 n.15, 231–2, 238–9, 248, 297, 318, 333 n.7, 352, 354, 366, 380, 387–8, 424–5, 445 democratization 3, 95, 183, 319, 336, 453 Denmark, Danish govt  245, 377, 405, 415

Derby-Lewis, Clive, MP  305 Desai, Barney  171 Desmond, Fr Cosmas  50 Despatch march  245, 298–9 DF Malan Accord  85, 159, 194 Dhlomo, Jacob  262 Dhlomo, Oscar  41 n.6, 55, 68, 108 Diakonia Centre, Durban  91 n.19, 92–3, 124 Diba, Vincent  380 Didcott, Justice John  157 Diener, Amanda  318, 337, 396–7 Dikwankwetla Party  130 n.20, 147, 180, 208 n.15 Dingane (Dingaan)  18–19, 27, 187 Directorate of Internal Peace Institutions (DIPI)  236–7, 239 n.12, 241, 244, 248, 250, 260, 270, 302, 306, 319, 320, 345–6, 374, 403, 442, 445–6, 449 Dishy, Mayor Les  283 Displaced Youth Organisation  331, 341 District Six  21, 430 Dlamini, Zweli  42 DMI (Dept of Military Intelligence)  35, 37, 412, 415 see also CCB, DCC Don, Det. Chief Insp. David  407 Dos Santos, Yvonne  270 Dotchin, Rev. Andrew  319 DRC in Africa  51, 53, 56, 379 Dreyer, Libby  319 Du Plessis, Attie  117, 119, 130, 145, 150, 153, 159, 167 n.4, 172–3, 296 Du Plessis, Rev. Justus  58 Du Preez, Frans  204–5, 228, 237 n.4 Du Preez, Max  412 Du Toit, Charles  298, 321–2 Du Toit, Dr Fanie  457 Du Toit, Johan (‘J. J.’)  403, 411 Duncan, Pauline  356 Durand, Prof. Jaap  379, 399, 435 n.4, 446 n.49 Durban Club meetings  112, 353 During, Lt-Gen. Roy  408 Dutton, Lt-Col Frank  410–11 Eastern Cape Region, RDRC/ RPC  240, 245, 388–91 and passim

Index Eastern Transvaal Region, RDRC/ RPC  240, 394–7 and passim ECOMSA  218, 294, 303–4, 306, 311, 316, 318, 370, 426 Edendale  44, 87 education  39, 61, 67, 69 crisis mediated by NPC  229 Bantu  22, 31, 39, 50 mission  22, 96 voter/civic  109, 321, 324 see also peace education election 1994, peace monitoring  320–6 Ellis, Willem  350, 393 Elliston, Chief Insp. Louisa  318, 375 Eloff, Theuns  54, 67–9 105–7, 109–10, 120, 124–34, 136, 145, 147, 167–9, 178–9, 196 n.43, 197, 258 Empangeni  44, 71, 238 n.10, 355 n.16 EMPSA 259 Engelbrecht, Maj-Gen. Krappies  35, 416 Ennerdale 243 Erwin, Alec  55, 70, 84, 112–13, 162, 196, 325, 333, 345 Esterhuyse, Willie  11, 52–3, 64, 75, 78, 117, 121 Evans, Bishop Bruce  388 FABCOS  115, 117 n.21, 130, 132 n.22, 178 facilitators  96, 98, 117–8, 243, and passim, see National Peace Accord facilitators Family Institute see The Family Institute Fanaroff, Dr Bernie  102, 439–40, 443, 451 Far Northern Transvaal Region, RDRC/ RPC  240, 400–1 Fassie, Brenda  257 Federal Independent Democratic Alliance (FIDA)  130 Felgate, Walter  41 n.6, 112 NPA negotiator  119, 124, 128, 137, 139–42, 145, 147–8, 157, 162, 179, 196 NPC Exec. member  204 n.4, 205–6, 224, 333n.7, 387 n.23 Ferndale, Chris  430 Ferreira, Nico and Loël  70 First, Ruth  25 Fisher, Roger  62

475

Fismer, Chris, MP, NPS member  238 n.12, 246, 299–300, 387 n.23 FITU  132 n.22, 182 For the Sake of our Lives  159, 373 Fort Beaufort, PAC-ANC peace agreement 1993  412 Fort Hare  22, 40 Fourie, Herman  203, 356–7, 360 Fourie, Lorraine  208 n.15, 209, 253, 258, 260 Freedom Charter  23, 25, 38, 75, 129 Freedom Front  391 G3 rifles  41, 357 Galtung, Johan  9, 14 Gandhi, Mohendas  19, 181 Gasa, Faith Xolile  127, 135, 145 n.4, 170 Gastrow, Peter, MP   3, 103, 106, 117 n.22, 119, 146 NPS member  238, 239 n.12, 244, 246, 249, 333 n.7, 352, 354, 387 n.23, 424–7, 435, 456, 458 Gauteng Peace and Development Foundation 457 Gaylard, Max  304 Gazankulu  22 n.2, 130 n.20, 180, 182, 205, 208 n.15, 234, 400 Gcabashe, Sipho, NPS member,  239, 249, 353–4, 445 n.49 Geldenhuys, Boy  148 n.15, 333 n.7 Gencor  66, 336, 338–9, 341, 345 gender, inclusion of women  60, 115, 135–6, 302, 393, 436 Germiston/Katlehong LPC 250, 319, 372, 376 and Sharpeville Day 1993  290–2 Gildenhuys, Antonie  9, 203, 210, 213, 217, 225, 227, 233, 248–51, 267–8, 280, 283, 285, 306, 361–5, 435–40, 442–6, 448, 454 and passim appointed to NPS, becomes Chair 237–9 mediator, monitor see Bisho marches; Ennerdale; Nylstroom; Paul Simon; Shell House see also NPS Gilbertson, Chief Supt David and

476

Index

Bernie  320, 326 n.114, 328 Ginwala, Speaker Frene  450 Godsell, Bobby  61, 98–9 at election 1994  325 NPA facilitator  102, 106, 109–10, 112, 116, 118–19, 124, 139, 163, 165, 172, 180 Goldstone, Judge Richard  152, 267–8, 303, 338 appointed Chair of Commission 403 Goldstone Commission  30, 35–6, 74, 80, 88–9, 91, 152, 164, 209, 211, 216, 220, 222–3, 237, 242, 305, 360, 368, 370, 374, 387, 400, 402–23 Goldstone Institute  4, 407, 409, 418, 422 Goldstone Observers  304, 408, 410, 413 ‘Guidelines’  158, 245, 296, 386, 406 Gomersall, John  69 Gomomo, John  180, 183, 298 Gordon, David  224 Gounden, Vasu  246 n.35 Gous, Col. Zirk  167–8, 221 n.77, 431 Gozongo, Humphrey  326 Gqozo, Brig. Joshua Oupa  131, 133, 171, 179–80, 304, 383–6, 388 Gqubule, Bishop Simon  383 Grabouw LPC  380–1 Graham, Elspeth  250, 253–4, 255, 258, 260, 264–5, 270–2, 279 n.82, 280–1, 285 Graham, Paul  84 n.13 Grahamstown (Makhanda) LPC  282, 307, 325, 327, 341, 388–9, 430, 447 Grealy, Rosemary  66–7 Green, Bruce  380–1 Gresse, Johann  217–8 Greyvenstein, Jan  334, 341–2, 392–3 Grobler, Nic  239 n.12, 333 n.7, 345–7, 398 n.83, 438–9, 442, 448–9 Groenewald, General Tienie  399 Groote Schuur Minute  83 Group Areas Act  21 Gwala, Harry  44–5, 84, 113, 212, 217–18

Hadebe, Reggie  217–18 Hall, Eddie, SAP  395 Hall, John  125–6, 203, 344 National Peace Convention Co-chair  171–3, 178, 193, 196 NPA facilitator, Preparatory Committee Chair  61, 101–2, 106–7, 112, 114–18, 120–1, 124–6, 129–32, 140–2, 145, 159 NPAT Chair see National Peace Accord Trust NPC Chair  204–35 passim; 253–68 passim, 383, 386–7, 409, 449–50 post-election lobbying for future  435, 438–9, 442–3, 445–6 Publicity Chair see Publicity and Communications Sub-committee SERD Chair see SERD Subcommittee Hani, Chris  27, 63, 163 n.53, 219, 384–5 assassination and funeral  228–9, 231, 249, 294, 305–14, 387, 431 calls for a Peace Corps  230–1 Harare Declarations ANC/OAU (1989)  78, 83 WCC (1985)  52 Harbi, Jamal  341, 343, 346 Harms Commission  35–6, 417 Harris, Chief Rabbi Cyril  260 Harris, Peter  128, 290, 292, 306, 314, 362, 370 seconded to IEC 320, 324 Harris, Roger and Miranda  66 Harvard Law School  62, 112, 152, 406 Harvard University  54 Hatty, Paul  227, 230–2 Heidelberg Tavern shooting  30, 283 Hendrickse, Rev. Allan  177, 181 Herdbuoys 253 Herman, David  323 Herstigte Nasionale Party (HNP)  116, 130, 134–5 Heslinga, Col Henk  412–15 Heymann, Prof. Philip  152, 406 Heymans, P. J.  173

Index Heyns, Rev. Prof. Johan  51, 57–8, 64, 77, 80, 97, 106–10 NPA facilitator  111–12, 115–16, 118, 121–2, 124, 130, 134, 142, 149–50, 152, 168, 171, 176, 233–4 Higgo, Graham  247, 260, 379 hit squads  95, 159, 408, 416 Hlengwa, Vasco  358 Hlengwa, Inkhosi Wellington 358 Hoffman, Rev. Jaco  318, 322, 337, 395–6 Hoffmeister, Rev. Donald  243 Hofmeyr, Murray  68, 106, 177 Hollands, Glenn  389, 446 n.49, 447 Holomisa, Maj.–Gen. Bantu  131, 133–4, 146, 171–2, 215 ‘homeland’ see ‘SGT’ Hölscher, Dr Fritz  336–8 hostels  71–2, 88–9, 160, 362 at election: Kwesine, Alexandra  323–4, 324–5 hostel dwellers  41, 72–3, 89, 93, 159, 265, 371, 417, 422 Hostel Dwellers Association  74, 265, 364, 265 Hostels Peace Initiative  262–4 peacemaking  262–4, 272, 284, 291–2, 295, 297, 314, 316, 341, 364–5, 367, 369, 371, 375 violence for and against hostels  35, 43, 72–4, 89–91, 93, 98, 104, 158, 209, 211–12, 214, 220–1, 312, 316, 319, 331, 363, 366, 373–4, 406–7, 409, 417 House, Chief Supt Les  304 House, Rev. Dennis  57–8 Howick, flashpoint  41, 238 n.10, 339 Huddleston, Archbishop Trevor  23, 50, 82, 191 Hunt, John  253 Hunt Lascaris TBWA  253, 261, 284 HURISA 423 Hurley, Archbishop Denis  11, 55, 353 Hyman, Colin  398 IDASA  63, 146, 353, 432 IFP (Inkatha Freedom Party)  2, 7–8, 29,

477

35, 42–5, 72–4, 84–5, 88–96, 102–5, 112, 137–8, 140–1, 145, 151, 155, 160, 175, 179, 197, 217–19, 222, 225, 233–4, 250 n.55, 262, 294, 303, 309, 314, 318–19, 320, 323, 352–7, 376, 379, 404–6, 409–10, 412, 415–18, 451–2, 454 bilateral, ‘normalization’ with ANC  109, 137, 142, 183, 226–8 election, 1994  232–4, 281, 316, 321, 323–4, 361 IFP Women’s League  265 IFP Youth Brigade  44, 218, 372 initiatives for peace preNPA  10–11, 41, 73–5, 91–2, 112–13 NPA negotiation  96, 105, 108–11, 115–16, 122–3, 128–9, 138–42, 145, 147–8, 150 n.18, 152, 154–9, 161–3, 165–8, 170, 175, 177, 179–80, 183–4, 190, 193, 196 in peace structures  204–11, 213, 215 n.56, 216, 218–22, 238–40, 247, 249–50, 253, 264 n.37, 265–6, 272–3, 277, 290–3, 296–7, 315, 331–3, 338, 343, 353–76, 387, 397, 425, 431, 445, 447 Imlonji KaNtu Choir  268 IMSSA  63, 73, 99, 240, 243–4, 307, 316, 361–2, 365 n.47, 372–3, 377, 383, 422 ‘Infrastructure for Peace (I4P)’, peace structures as  9 n.8, 12–14 Inkatha (pre-IFP)  7, 10–11, 33, 35, 38–41, 43–45, 55, 68, 70, 77, 86–7 becomes IFP (1990)  72, 88–91, 93, 417 ‘Inkathagate’  43, 129, 154 Institute for Contextual Theology  97 Intando Yesizwe Party  130 n.20, 132 n.22, 180, 208 n.15 International Observers  214, 217, 290–1 295, 301–5, 314, 328, 341, 356–7, 371, 375–6, 411 n.14, 436 see also UNOMSA; COMSA; ECOMSA; OAUOMSA; Goldstone Observers Inyandza Party/ National Movement  54, 130 n.20, 132 n.22, 180 IPI (Internal Peace Institutions) Bill  211,

478

Index

214, 238, 241, 247–8 IPI Act 1992  248 IPI Amendment Act 1993  248 IPI Act Repeal Act 1995  450 Ive, Rev. Dr Jeremy  53–5 Jackson, Chief Supt David  304 Jansen, Kathleen  319, 372–3 JCMC, Alexandra  315 Jeffery, John  84, 353 Jeffreys, Henry  340 Jennings, Rev. Athol  55, 244 n.30, 246 n.35 JOCC/JOC  294, 306, 308–9, 311, 313, 315, 320, 325, 374–6 Johnson, Chief Insp. Gerry  318 Johnson, Shaun  104, 254 Johnson, Ursula  253, 255 Joint Management Centres ( JMCs)  34, 67, 80, 393 Jonker, Rev. Prof. Willie  59 Jooste, Dr Chris  399 Joseph Rowntree Trust  245 Joseph, Helen  25 JPs  242–3, 247 Jubilee Centre  53 Jubilee Initiative  54 Judin, Colin  260 Justice, Dept of  75, 147, 164, 208, 211, 236–8, 241, 243–4, 248, 392, 403, 406, 443, 457 Kairos Document (KD)  56–7, 97, 259 KaNgwane  22 n.2, 53, 63, 130 n.20, 132, 175, 180, 182, 205 Kani, John  279 Kaplan, Grant  217 Kathorus  43, 71, 146, 249–50, 268, 272, 286, 290, 315, 323, 343–4, 362, 365, 368, 371–8, 408, 419, 452, 454 Katlehong  71–2, 238 n.10, 250, 264 n.37, 272, 290–3, 319, 323, 360 n.33, 371–6, 408–9 Katz, Sharon  280 Kaunda, Dr Kenneth  63, 216, 224–6, 230 Kearney, Paddy  124, 353 n.6 Kerchoff, Peter  55

Keys, Derek  335, 443 Keys, Radley  249 Khawula, Inkhosi Calalakubo  357, 359 Khawula, Mntomuhle B  356–7 Khoza, Lucas  367 Khoza, Pastor Dick  104 Khoza, Themba  91, 209, 363–4, 415, 417 Khumalo, Rev. David  93, 368 Khumalo, Adv. Kenneth  393 Khumalo Street, Thokoza  71–2, 74, 371, 373, 376 Khumalo, Sibongile  257 King, Angela  136, 299, 303 King, Mervyn  65 King Williams Town (KWT)  384, 421 Kirsten, Adele  377 Kissinger, Dr Henry  54, 233–4 Klaaste, Aggrey  179, 260–1, 275 Kleynhans, Marius  127–8, 168, 204–5 Kliptown  23, 109 Klopper, Chappies (‘Q’)  35, 415–6 Knowles, Roger  224 Koekemoer, Gary  272, 307 Koetz, Meverett  376, 446 n.49 Kolobe Game Lodge  54 Koornhof, Nic, MP  238 n.12, 275 Koornhof, Piet, MP  51, 53 n.5 Koppies 341 Kotze, Capt. Craig  208 Kotze, Judge G. P. C.  224 Kraybill, Ron  10, 244 n.30, 246 n,35, 389 Kriegler, Judge Johan  321, 323–4, 403 Kruger, Maj. Margaret  157, 221 n.77, 353–4, 357 n.22 Kuyper, Abraham  22 KwaNdebele  22 n.2, 130 n.20, 177, 180–1, 205, 208 n.15, 394, 400 KwaZulu (KZ; incorporated into KwaZulu-Natal, KZN, from 1994) election 1994  324, 361 IFP-ANC civil war, training  7, 11, 33, 38, 41–2, 44, 84, 87, 88 n.15, 103, 154–5, 158, 162, 262, 283–4, 355, 395, 412, 416, 452, 454–5 KZ Legislature 22, n.2, 39–41, 51, 85, 87, 89, 105, 137, 145, 406

Index KZN Provincial Peace Pact 14/5/99 361 in NPA negotiation 119, 134, 137–9, 141, 146, signs 180; 183, 205, 208 n.15; 211; 240, 242, 244, 249, 258, 262, 283, 302, 304, 319, 331, 352–61, 406, 454 peace structures see NK Region, RDRC/RPC pre-NPA peacemaking  10–11, 70–1, 102, 112–13, 128, 130 n.20 Kwa Zulu Finance Corporation  334 KwaZulu Police (KZP)  40, 42, 44, 71, 84, 92, 137, 147, 229, 404–5, 412 and hit squads 42, 408, 416 Kwesine Hostel  272, 292, 323–4, 375 Laager  18, 19, 25, 389 Labour Party  117 n.21, 127, 132 n.22, 150 n.18, 177, 180–1, 208 n.15, 238 Labour relations  62, 99, 126, 243, 298 Ladysmith Black Mambazo  280 LAGUNYA 420 Laidlaw, Cdr Tom  406, 413–14 Lamb, Gary  302 Lamola, Dr John  248, 259, 262 Lamontville 41 Lamprecht, André  95 n.2, 98–102, 106, 128, 196, 306, 362, 446 n.49 Langa, Adv. Pius  425, 428 Langenhoven, Hanna  78 Langschmidt, Teddy  260 Lapsley, Rev. Michael  36 Lascaris, Reg  252–3, 260–1, 272, 284–5 lay visitors schemes  152, 304, 389, 426, 428, 431 LDRCs/LPCs  101, 241–2, and passim Le Roux, Lt-Gen. Johan  316, 425 Leadership Presentations  288 Leballo, Potlako  26 Lebowa  22 n.2, 130 n.19, 173, 180, 205, 208 n.15, 324, 400–1, 419n.34 Lebuso. P. M.  217 Lederach, John Paul  13–14, 15 Lee, Robin  231 LEFO 355–6 Legwaila, Joseph Legwaila  305

479

Lekota, Patrick (‘Terror’)  66, 394 Leleki, Sox  389 Lerm, Henri  244, 247, 292 Levine, Di  377 Lichaba, Talks  326 Liebenberg, Gen. Kat  414 Lindberg, Des and Dawn  279–82 Loans, Rev. Arthur  71 Lobby Group  235, 348, 435–44 passim Local Dispute Resolution / Peace Committees see LDRCs/LPCs Lorimer, Rupert, MP  54 NPC and NPS member  201, 239 n.12, 282, 361, 455 n.49, 448, 455 in Phola Park  73–4 Vice-chair, Wits/Vaal RPC  298, 311, 314, 323, 362, 372, 376, 409 Louw, Mike  37, 63–4, 75, 79–80, 338 Louwrens, Col. James  302, 354 Lower Umfolozi Peace Accord  71, 92 Lubbe, Rev. Dr Gerrie  112, 115, 118, 122, 124, 126–7, 129–30, 133, 141, 145, 168, 171 Lubowski, Anton  35–6 Lusaka, Dr Paul  243, 305, 435, 441, 445 n.44, 446 n.49 Luthuli, Albert  22, 25, 27, 40 Luthuli, Linus  42 Lyman, Ambassador Princeton  340 Mabasa, Libon  171 Mabija, Rev. Arthur  381, 445 n.49 Mabopane, M.  171 Mabunda, Rev. Simon  244, 392 Mabuyakhulu, John  71 Mabuyakhulu, Michael  71 Mabuza, Enos  53–4 Mabuza, Jabu  115–16, 118, 124, 130, 162, 167, 172, 178, 180, 187, 196 n.43 Mac Gregor, Rob  437 Mac Master, Greg  335–6, 339, 381, 439, 446 n.49 Macmillan, Harold  25 Madide, Dr Dennis  112, 148–9, 180, 182, 196, 215 Madlala, Prince Maurice Vulingqondo 358–9 Madonsela, Richard  376

480

Index

Maduna, Penuell  438, 445 n.49 Magubane, Moses  356 Magwanqana, Chris  70 Maharaj, Mac  28–9, 63–4, 220, 300–1 Mahlangu, M. J.  173, 208 n.15 Mahlangu, N. J.  208 n.15 Mahlangu, Prince S. James  177, 181 Mahlangu, V. S.  208 n.15 Makhene, Cathy  253, 260 Macozoma, Saki  253 Makqabo, Mr  348 Makwakwa, Mrs  348 Makwetu, Clarence  171, 174–5 Malan, D. F.  20–1 Malan, General Magnus  36, 81, 95 Malan, Lt-Gen. L. P. E.  425 Malukazi Peace Pact 1/8/93  380 Mamba armoured personnel carriers 375 Manalane, Kelibone Francis  393 Mancim, Norman  224 Mandela, Nelson ANC leader (President from July 1991)  23–7, 73, 84, 86, 89–90, 105, 194, 296, 306, 308 and Buthelezi, IFP  40, 55–6, 77, 83, 85–7, 91, 93, 137, 167, 184, 207, 216, 221, 228, 233–4 and churches, business 22, 96, 98, 103, 255 and Codesa  194, 197 and de Klerk, government  81, 83, 85, 90, 94–6, 100, 103, 155, 176, 215 MK, imprisonment, secret talks  11, 26–7, 49, 75–7 and NPA implementation  213, 216, 219, 227, 231, 434 see also NPA signatories and NPA negotiation, signing  107, 113, 125, 145, 157, 164–5, 170, 176, 184–5, 188, 190, 192–7 Nobel Peace Prize, joint with de Klerk 283 President of SA  18, 327, 434, 437, 440, 442, 445, 450, 456 release, expectations  1, 7, 38, 45,

57, 65, 73, 77, 79, 81–3 secret talks with right-wing AVF 399–400 UN observers, calls for  296 at UNSC scorns IFP  221–5, 230, 232 violence, reactions to  90, 93, 219, 227, 442 see also ‘Third Force’ Mandela, Winnie  83, 86 Manenberg Police-community Liaison Forum  381, 430 Manim, Mannie  279–81 Manley, Mark  252, 260–1, 265–6, 268–71, 275–6, 281, 284–5, 288, 292, 340 Manley, Michael  305, 324 Mansell, Ben  387 Manthata, Tom  134 Marais, J. A.  135 Marais, Piet G., MP, Deputy Minister, Education & Development  162 Marcus, Gill  122 Marketing and Communications Committee (Division 1994) (NPS)  8–9, 136, 162, 227, 249–50, 252–3, 260–2, 264–9, 279–80, 285–6 Marketing Division (NPS)  252, 285 Marks, Susan Collin  4, 203, 379 Marsden, Deborah  68, 106, 345 Marshall, Russell  323–50 marshal training  318, 427 Martin, Fiona  348–9, 394–6 Masekela, Hugh  257 Maseko, Mandla  30, 311, 368 Mashele, Floyd  179, 363–4 Mashiloane, Sol and Liz  324–5 Masithela, Angela  302, 312 Masoek, Derek  273 Mason, Reg  383 Mass Action Week 1992  158, 194, 220, 223, 229, 295–9, 316, 384, 397, 406–7 Mass Democratic Movement  38 Mathews, Prof. Tony and Mary  152 Matlhanye (Makhado), David ‘Slovo’  203, 368 Matlou, Harry  312, 369 Matthews, Z. K.  23, 25

Index Matthewson, Grahame  72, 74–5, 371–3 Mavundla, Inkhosi Samuel 359 Mavuso, J. S. A.  181, 208 n.15 MAWU  41, 61 Mbeki, Govan  66 Mbeki, Thabo  10–11, 41 n.6, 55, 69, 84, 97 Consgold talks, meets NIS  64–5, 78–9 First Deputy President 1994  439, 441–3, 445 n.49, 446–8, 457 NPA negotiator  117–18, 120–1, 124, 127–8, 132, 140, 142, 148, 157, 163 n.53, 170, 196 NPC member  204, 207 n.15, 215 n.56, 223–4, 226, 229, 296, 306, 310, 399 Mbileni, Chris  244, n.30, 246 n.35 Mboweni, Tito  54 McBride, Robert  30, 373, 375 McCauley, Rev. Ray  51, 57–8, 60 NPA facilitator  97–8, 104–5, 108, 111–12, 115, 118, 124, 130, 134, 139, 145, 163, 233–4 Mchunu, Willies  70, 84, 112, 148 n.15, 162, 353, 355 McKay, Priscilla  405 Mdlalose, Dr Frank  55, 70–1, 91, 93, 111–13, 157, 249, 353, 449 NPA negotiator  121, 124, 127–9, 132, 142, 148, 161, 163, 165, 167–8, 170, 196 NPC Exec.  204, 208 n.15, 215, 224, 226, 228, 387 n.23 Mdluli, Sylvia  344 Mdoko, Bulelwa  203, 389 Media Code (proposed)  136, 146 Media Peace Centre  286, 379 media relations  127, 250, 369–70 see publicity; marketing Mells Park  64–5 Menell, Clive  68, 106 Menell, Irene  422–3 Merit People’s Party  117 n.21, 132 n.22, 181 Meyer, AT ‘Tobie’, MP, Deputy Minister

481

of Agriculture  162 Meyer, Roelf, MP, Deputy Minister of Constitutional Affairs 1991 Minister in government 1994  443, 445 n.49 NPA negotiator  1, 116, 119, 121–2, 124–5, 127–8, 132, 137–9, 144, 148–9, 157 168, 176, 190, 196–7, 455–6 NPC Exec. member, moves to Codesa, 197, 204–5, 220, 387 Mfayela, Senzo, NPS member  2, 41 n.6, 44, 89 n.16, 150 n.18, 203, 221 n.77, 238 n.12, 246–7, 250, 264 n.37, 445 n.49 Mgaga, Derrick  166 Mgojo, Rev. Dr Khoza  55, 107, 112, 118, 124, 142, 189, 214, 233 Mhlongo, Edmund  339, 347 Mhlongo, Vusi  356 Mhlungu, S. Johnny  162, 170 Michaels, Louise  381 Middelburg Peace Forum  69–70 Midrand LPC  300–1, 320, 270, 420 Miller, Stephanie  360 Minnaar, Dr Anthony  88–9, 422 Mji, Diliza  55 MK (uMkhonto weSizwe)  163 n.53, 30, 35, 300, 368 formation, training, activities  27–9, 36, 83, 314, 352, 356–7, 386, 485, 412 at Hani’s funeral  305, 311–12, 314 intractable issue  28, 30, 41, 85, 89 n.16, 75, 131, 138–9, 145, 158–9, 161, 174, 194, 211, 215, 218, 222–3, 229, 383 in NPKF; in SANDF; as veterans  28 n.7, 344, 376 peace committees and  30 SDUs and  28, 30, 158–60 Mkatshwa, Fr S’mangaliso  39 Mkhize, David  380 Mkhize, Gcina  42 Mkhize, Herbert  246 Mkhize, Khaba  283 Mkhwanazi, Don  162

482

Index

Mlatsheni, German  262 Mminele, Rev. J.  399 Mnana, Mr  348 Mnguni, Maria  370 Mnisi, Dr Thabo  368 Mntambo, Vincent  373 Modise, Joe  25, 27, 300, 399 Moeletsi, Khabi  280 Mofokeng, Jacqui  262, 277, 396 Mogoba, Rev. Stanley Mandela-Buthelezi bilateral 1993 228 NPA  107, 141, 143, 173 NPC Vice-chair  206–7, 212, 214, 233, 255, 455 n.49, 446 peacemaker pre-NPA  54–5, 107 Mokoena, Prince  93 Mokoena, Simon  374 Molahlehi, Edwin  244 n.30 Molebatsi, Rev. Caesar  53 Molefe, Popo  66 Moll, Cornell  70 Molobi, Eric  334–5, 66 Monitor’s Prayer  317 monitoring, independent, NIM  294, 308 see also peace monitoring Monyatsi, Sello  423 Moodley, Saths  244 n.30 Mooi River/Bruntville LPC  211–12 Moosa, Mohammed Valli  66, 197 Mopeli, T. K.  173 More, Beauty  317 Morule, Playfair  350, 392 Moseneke, Dikgang  171 Moshidi, S.  418 Mostert, Anton  65 Mostert, Barend  299 Motala, Iqbal  203, 397 Mothiba, Chief L. S.  182 Motsuenyane, Dr Sam, NPA facilitator  112, 115–16, 118, 121, 124, 130, 171–91 passim MPNP  213, 228–9 Technical Committee on Violence 230 see also youth project proposals

Mpumalanga (Province)  348, 396, 437 Mpumalanga Township  113 Mqwebu, Cynthia  357 Msomi, Welcome  262, 279–80 Mthembu, Jackson  395 Mthethwa, Rev. Celani  90, 221 n.77 Mthetwa, S.  353 Mthimunye, Martin  93 Mti, Linda  298–9 Mtshali, Lionel  361 MUCCOR 364 Mufamadi, Sydney  66 ANC Peace Desk head, and on NPC Exec.  204, 207 n.15, 215 n.56, 216, 218, 224, 229, 306, 387 n.23 Minister of Safety and Security  438, 442–7 NPA negotiator  148–9 Muller, Ampie  10 n.12, 11 Muller, Piet  11 Mundell, Elizabeth  136 Murray, Lynette  323 Murray & Roberts  258, 268, 331 Mxenge, Griffiths & Victoria  35 Myburgh, Adv. Gert, MP NPA negotiator  163 n.53 NPS member  238, 244 n.26, 248, 260, 362, 384, 400 Myeni, Musa  103, 168, 417 Mzizi, Abraham  72 Mzizi, Gertrude  72–4, 292, 371, 375 NACTU  117 n.21, 131, 135, 173 NAFCOC  61, 112, 130 Naidoo, Jayaseelan ( Jay)  1 n.1, 66, 84, 98 conceptualizes NPA  99–102, 105–6, 118, 175, 259 n.19 as RDP Minister  328, 348 440–1, 438, 439–41,443 Naidoo, Jayendra ( Jay)  2 n.5, 84, 102, 120, 313 National Peace Campaign Chair  248–9, 260, 269, 271, 274–5, 277, 282, 285 NPA negotiator  124, 127–30, 140, 142, 145, 147–8, 150, 164, 205

Index NPC  208 n.15, 215 NPS member  236–8, 239 n.12, 241, 243, 338, 364, 387 n.23, 400 Training Sub-Committee Chair  244–7, 427 suspicious of Delta SERD trainers 337–8 Naidoo, Naveen  409 Naidoo, Neil  203, 272, 283, 388 Nancefield Hostel  209, 363, 411 Napier, Bishop Wilfrid  58, 107 Natal Church Leaders Group/Forum (NCLG)  55–6, 92, 124, 207, 258, 353 Natal Indian Congress  19, 212, 445 Natal/KwaZulu peacemaking  11, 51, 70–1, 102, 112, 119, 128, 139, 146, 258, 302, 304, 331, 352–61, 454 Natal/KwaZulu (NK) Region, RDRC/ RPC  211, 240, 242, 244, 258, 352–61 SERD 119, 162 see also Port Shepstone, Geoff Schreiner violence  7, 10, 11, 33, 38–9, 41, 44, 84, 88 n.15, 89, 154–5, 158, 249, 268, 283, 319, 331, 406, 416, 428, 452, 454 see also weapons Natalspruit JOC  374–6 National Conference of Church Leaders see Rustenburg Conference National Convention (1908–09); calls for, 1960–61  20, 26 National Coordinating Mechanism  80, 335 National Day of Prayer and Healing 5/6/92 259 National Forum  130–1, 132 n.22, 180–1, 205, 208 n.15, 333 n.7 National Initiative for Reconciliation (NIR)  56, 108, 288 National Intelligence Service (NIS)  30, 36–7, 63, 125, 338, 398, 400 Consgold talks, contacts ANC in exile  64, 78–9 prison talks with Mandela  75–6 National Peace Accord (NPA) facilitators, church see Alberts; Chikane; Heyns; Lubbe;

483

McCauley; Mgojo; Tutu business see Cleary; Godsell; Hall; Mabuza; Motsuenyane negotiation 124–65 signatory bodies, signing  180–7 National Peace Accord Trust (NPAT)  232, 233, 251, 263–4, 269, 277, 281, 329, 339–45, 349, 371, 398 National Peace Campaign  3, 102, 228, 248–9, 252, 266, 269–84, 285–6 National Peace Committee (NPC)  54, 65, 74, 142, 147, 164, 175, 189, 224–5, 229, 238, 247, 253, 329, 445, 450 calls signatories to reconvene, recommit  207, 213, 222–3 226, 282, 387, 443–8 establishment, membership, activities   147, 154, 178, 201–35 NPA amendments proposed  219, 227 NPA deposited in Parliament 1995 450 nominates members of NPS, Commission, Police Board  74, 208, 217, 402, 238, 253 sub-committees see Complaints, Publicity and Communications, SERD National Peace Convention (14/9/91)  124, 166–97 National Peace Initiative (NPI)  129, 175, 205 National Peace Secretariat (NPS)  2–3, 74, 102, 134, 147, 164, 178, 236–51, and passim budget  214, 241, 243, 248, 253, 270, 285, 319, 335, 378, 434, 447–8 Greater Soweto LDRC formation 362–5 International Observers, liaison with  236, 296, 299, 300, 302, 306, 321 National Peace Campaign, endorsing peace events  269–89 passim regions, establishment and

484

Index

National Peace Secretariat (NPS) (continued) support  239–40, 247–8 and passim restructuring, future, closure  250–1, 434–48 statutory status see IPI Act see also Training Committee, Marketing and Communications Committee (Division in 1994), SERD Advisory Board National Peacekeeping Force (NPKF)  305, 376, 408 National People’s Party  117 n.21, 132 n.22, 173, 206, 181 National Security Management System (NSMS)  34, 67, 80, 215, 335 Naudé, Rev. Dr Beyers  26 n.3, 32, 38, 51–2, 58, 66, 106 Ndaba, Carlson  294 Ndabandaba, Benedict  323 Ndlovu, Duma  255–7, 279–81 Ndlovu, Hastings  32 Ndlovu, Humphrey  249, 264 n.37, 266, 364, 409, 417 Ndlovu, Velaphi B.  44, 163 n.53, 196, 215 n.56, 353 Ndlovu, Victor  415 Ndwalane, Inkhosi Aaron  273, 360, 357, 359 Ndwedwe 358 NE Rand LPC  420 Nefolovhodwe, Pandelani  171 Nel, Christo  54, 65–8 Nel, Jeanne  284, 319, 391 Nelson Mandela Foundation  423 Newick Park Initiative  53–5 Nganje, Fritz  15 Ngidi, Mike  372–3 Ngoepe, Adv. B. N.  418–20 Ngonyama, Smuts  387 Ngoyi, Lilian  21, 25 Ngubane, Dr Ben  150 n.18, 157, 196 n.43, 353 Ngwenya, Jerome  340 Ngxulelo, Pinky  285

Nhlanhla, Joe  399 Nhlapo, Rev. Clifford  395 Nhleko, N.  208 n.15 Nicaraguan peace commissions  14 Nicholson, B.  182 Nieuwmeijer, Dr Louise  244 n.30 Niewoudt, Maj. Gerrit  430 ‘Night of the Generals’  415 Nketsi, Edwin  270 Nkoane, Bishop Simeon  82 Nkosi, Dennis  355 n.13 Nkosi, Duma  74, 373 Nkosi, Sizakele  297, 311 Nkwinti, Gugile  298 Nobel Peace Prize  25, 27, 52, 141, 283 Northern Cape Region, RDRC/ RPC  240, 391–2 Northern Transvaal Region, RDRC/ RPC  240, 399–400 Nogcantsi, Minister N.  212 n.39 Nossel, Suzanne  314, 362, 422 Notshe, Adv. V.  212 n.39 Ntongana, Bishop Themba  57–8 Ntsanwisi, Hudson  182, 400 Ntsipe, Rev. Jackie  398 Ntuli, Pastor P.  446 n.49 Ntuli, Richard  292 Ntuli, Sam  74 Nugent, Judge Robert  409 NUM  62, 98–9 NUMSA  41, 62, 102, 162 Nupen, Charles  215, 244, 246 n.35, 247, 361–2, 365–6 Nussbaum, Barbara  203, 316–8, 435, 458 Nuttall, Bishop Michael  55–6, 86–7 Nyanda, Siphiwe  29 n.17, 157, 313 Nyanga/Crossroads LPC  286, 380–1, 430 Nyati, Thabo  340 Nyawo, Rev. Mike  330 Nylstroom  299, 400 Nzimande, Dr Blade  162, 196 Nzo, Alfred  91 OAU  78, 130–1, 214, 221, 227, 296, 305, 450 OAUOMSA  305, 309, 313

Index Obasanjo, Chief Olusegun  143 Overseas Development Agency (ODA) 318–9 Odendaal, Andries  14, 303, 308–09, 429, 437, 455–56 Odendaal, Mike  310 Oelschig, General Marius  385 OFS (Orange Free State) Region, RDRC/RPC  240, 392–4 Okumu, Washington  53–5, 233–4 Olayan, Mousa  302 Oliver, Di  333 Oliver, Gordon  80 Olivier, Annatjie  309, 349–50, 392–3 Olivier, Retief  379 Olver, Crispian  385–6 O’Malley, Padraig  40, 72–3 Omar, Ismail  162, 172, 208 n.15 Omayad, Hisham  296, 298 Oppenheimer, Harry  61 Oxlee, Roger  300–1, 320, 370 PAC  25–6, 30, 54, 56, 68, 81, 104, 206, 232, 313, 380 joins OFS RDRC/RPC  392–3 at NPA signing  171, 173–5, 185, 196 and peace process  73–4, 96, 115, 117 n.21, 119, 121, 131, 132 n.22, 135, 201 and peace structures  206, 210–11, 238, 265, 292, 319, 364, 388, 391, 412, 418 PAC-ANC conflict 25, 292, 303, 412 Padayachee, P  181 Pahad, Aziz  55, 64, 203 NPA negotiator  124–9, 142, 150 n.18, 167, 196 NPC Exec. member  204, 208 n.15, 224 Pahad, Essop  446–7 NPA negotiator  126, 128, 142, 148 n.15 NPC Exec. member  204 n.4, 207, 208 n.15, 215 n.56, 445 n.49 Parsons, Raymond  106–7, 126 Pashe, Patience  136, 203, 368–9, 446–7 pass system, laws  21–2, 25, 38 Paton, Alan  50

485

Patriotic Front  173, 197 Pauquet, Val  203 Lobby Group, deposition of NPA  444 n.44, 445, 448, 449–50 NPA negotiation  112–28 passim, 137 n.21 NPC and NPS  208 n.15, 210, 231, 233–4, 250, 253–4, 257, 260,279, 285, 340 Rustenburg Conference 1990 58–9 Peace and Development Foundation 162 Peace radio, Peace 2000 FM  282, 287 Peace Radio 91.3FM  287 peace agreements, local, under NPA see Alexandra; Bekkersdal; Fort Beaufort; Malukazi see also pre-NPA; Lower Umfolozi; Thokoza Peace Café  287 Peace Corps (Hani proposal; Wits/Vaal project)  230–1, 341, 377 Peace Day 2/9/93  173, 252, 257, 269–76, 282, 286 Peace Day 1/1/94 inaugurating Year of Peace   282–4 Peace Doves symbol design, launch 266–9 Peace Education  246, 253, 265, 288–9, 349, 437, 446 Peace Force (Ciskei)  304, 383 Peace Gardens, vegetable gardens  17, 268, 349, 350, 398 ‘Peace in our Land’ workshop, 1993 265–6 Peace Monitoring  94–5, 290–327 training 316–20 election 1994  320–28 peace pledges  118, 126, 166, 171–4, 176, 254–5, 258, 264, 281, 283, 391 Peace radio, Peace 2000 FM  282, 287 Peace Radio 91.3FM  187 Peace Song  213, 227, 257, 268–71, 274–5, 277, 284, 342, 344 peace trains, actual  210, 214, 257, 280, 283

486

Index

‘Peace Train’ Star feature  210, 254, 365 Peace Walk, 1993  272–3 Peaceline 377 Pelser, Eric  432–3 Peltz, Eric  270 Parsad, Mr A.  333 n.7 PFP 37 Phalaborwa LPC  243, 400 Phama, Michael  74 Phola Park  72–4, 193, 205, 238 n.10, 372–3, 376 Phosa, Mathews  396, 425–6 Phoswa, Peterson  203, 368, 370 Pieterson, Hector  32 Pillay, Ravi  356, 359 Pinder, Rodney  197 Pityana, Rev. Dr Barney  58 Plaatjie, Khayalethu  325–6, 389 Plaatjie, Ruth  389 n.37 Plaatjie, Sol  20 Places of Peace  280–1 Pofadder 381–2 police, varieties of Community Relations Division (1992)  314, 425, 429–30 Crime Information Service (CIS, 1991, Security Branch merged with Criminal Investigation Dept)  389 and passim Internal Stability Division/ Unit (ISU, 1991, formerly Riot Police)  151 and passim ‘ordinary’ blue-uniformed SAP  151 and passim Security Branch (Special Branch, SB)  23,31, 42, 34–5, 37, 43, 66, 129, 389, 415, 429–30 see also Vlakplaas SGT (’Homeland’) police  208, 425 and see KZP Police Board  154, 164, 201, 204, 208, 217, 246, 424–33, 452 Police–community relations,150–4, 425–31 and passim Poolman, Prof. Joseph ( Joe)  117 Population Registration Act (1950– 1991) 21

Port Nolloth  382 Port Shepstone LDRC/LPC  44, 238 n.10, 273–4, 302, 355–7, 359–60, 410 SERD, ‘reconstruction of shelter’ 331–3, 340–4 Potgieter, Dr Pieter  59 Powell, Philip  42–3, 212, 215 n.56, 218 Powers, P. J.  257 Preparatory Committee   xv, 111, 118, 121, 123, 124–62 passim, 166, 171, 178, 186, 190, 202–4 Pressley, Shirley  258 Pretoria Minute  83, 85, 200 Pretorius, Johan (‘Torie’)  403, 412–15 Pretorius, M. C.  211, 247, 353, 435, 445 n.44, 446 n.49 Pretorius, Paul  62–3, 73–4, 243, 244 n.30, 372–3 ‘private armies’  84, 148, 154, 158–60, 174, 194, 211, 229 process facilitation  15–16, 68 Programme to Combat Racism (WCC)  52, 58 Pruis, Lt–Gen. André  425, 427, 443 Publicity and Communications Subcommittee (NPC)  128, 201, 205, 208–9, 212, 240, 247, 253–8, 260 see also Marketing and Communications Committee, Marketing Division ‘Q’ see Klopper Qolosha, Lerato  356 Quinn, Brent  284 QwaQwa  22 n.2, 130 n.20, 132 n.22, 147, 173, 180–1, 205, 208 n.15 election 1994  325 Rabie, Jac, MP  127, 208 n.15, 253 Ractliffe, Jeremy  258 Radebe, Jeff  162, 196, 353 Rajbansi, Amichand  173, 181 Ramabulana, T. G.  171 Ramaphosa, Cyril  62–3, 97, 204, 220, 310, 384, 386–7, 409 and labour relations  98–9 and NPA  140–1, 145, 157, 170 Rauch, Janine  425–7 RDP  163, 346, 371

Index RDP struggles, office closed 1996  348, 350–1, 439–41 SERD’s anticipated role  329, 333, 339, 348, 350, 434–49 RDRCs/RPCs  239–41, 247–8, 352–401, and passim list of regions  240 see also Chapters 16, 17 map of regions  202 Recognition Agreements  41,62, 98, 100–2, 163 Record of Understanding, 26/9/92  225, 387, 407 Reddy, Rev. Chin  399, 421, 435, 445 n.44, 446 n.49 Reddy, J. N.  181 Reddy, Prof. Jairam  274 Reed, Daniel  90 Reeves, Rt Rev. Sir Paul  305 Referenda (1960, 1983, 1992)  26, 37, 213 Regional Dispute Resolution / Peace Committees see RDRCs/RPCs Regional Economic Development Forums  346, 349 religious bodies  49, 260, 271, 319, 391, 458 see also churches Relly, Gavin  63 Retief, Piet  18 Richards, Miley  130, 150 n.18 Richmond  44, 216, 238 n.10 right wing (white) CP, HNP, AWB, shun NPA  116, 134–5 monitoring the right wing  299– 301, 235 pre-election bombs  392, 398 see also Afrikaner Volksfront Robben Island NPS meeting, 1994  235, 435 Robbie, John  277 Robertson, Ian  314 Robertson, Rev. Rob  61 Rose, Audrey  182 Rosholt, Mike  61, 99 Rossouw, Adv. D. J. (Niel)  370, 403, 406, 419–21 ‘Rubicon’ speech  38

487

Rubusana, Rev. Walter  19–20 Rudman, Deon, NPS member, Executive Director, Directorate of Internal Peace Institutions  147, 164–5, 237, 239 n.14, 240, 242, 244, 271, 302, 306, 384, 400, 443 Rumour control  297, 304, 314, 367, 370 Rustenburg Committee  60, 96–7, 104, 108–12, 259 Rustenburg Conference and Declaration  57–60, 111 Ruth, Shena  307 SA Black Taxi Association (SABTA)  260, 419 SABC  167, 268, 277, 287, 313, 370 SACCOLA  61, 106, 130, 132 n.22 Sachs, Albie  2, 36, 453 SACC  34–5, 52, 56–8, 96–7, 104, 262 bottom-up communitiesbased peace conference proposed  96–7, 103, 105 NPA negotiations supported  105–7, 111, 124, 127, 148–9, 189 peace structures criticized  207, 214, 239, 259–60, 266, 271, 279 SACLA 51 SACOB  61, 101–3, 106, 108, 110, 117, 126, 130, 132 n.22, 334 SACP  24, 26, 45, 62, 77, 79, 81, 96, 114–5, 212, 217, 219, 305, 320, 406, 445 ANC-Alliance partner  62, 96, 121 negotiates and signs NPA  117–83 passim serves on peace committees  204–5, 364, 399 shunned by right wing CP, HNP 134–5 SACS  241, 258, 277, 371, 391–2 SADF in repression  28, 33–5, 39, 41, 67, 84, 90, 95, 176, 283 see also DMI with peace structures  242, 271, 284, 291, 297, 304, 315, 343, 364–6, 368–9, 372, 376, 401, 410, 412 SADF Code of Conduct  150, 161, 172, 205, 211, 214, 227

488

Index

SAFCON  112, 243 Salem, Richard & Greta  10, 244 Salk, Jacki  246 Sander, Mike  65 SANDF  28–30, 161–2 Sassenburg, Leon  356 Saxby, Pam  124–5, 128, 142, 196 Sceales, Adv. W.  413 Schalkwyk, Philip  399 Scharf, Prof. Wilfried  152 Scheepers, Johan, MP, Deputy Minister, Law & Order NPA negotiator  124, 128, 145, 147, 150, 152–3, 157–60, 163 n.53, 172 NPC Exec. member  204, 208 n.15, 209–10, 213, 333 Scheepers, Roger  260 Schlemmer, Prof. Lawrence  108 Schluter, Dr Michael  53, 55, 233 Schoeman, S. J.  333 n.7 Scholtz, Rev. John P.  57–8 Schreiner, Geoff  339, 343, 347–8 Schufferhauer, Nicolle  326 Schutte, Danie, MP, Deputy Minister of Justice becomes Minister of Home Affairs, peace structures move  228, 434 NPA negotiator  150 n.18, 163 n.53, 164–5, 196 NPC Exec. member  204 n.4, 208 n.15, 211, 215 n.56, 218, 387 n.23, 445 n.49 see also IPI Bill see also youth project proposals Schweizer-Reneke  238, 300, 397 SDUs Goldstone inquiry initiated  408 Kasrils’s handbook, activities  30, 43, 159–60, 250, 264, 344, 373–4, 376, 408, 431 NPA  128, 158–60, 209, 211, 452 ‘Search for Common Ground’ TV programme 287 Searle, Laurie  67, 325, 400–1 Sebidi, Pule, NPS member  239 n.12, 445 n.49 Sebokeng ANC-IFP and police

violence  89–91, 160, 310–11 peace interventions  310, 342–3 police shooting 26/3/90, random shooting 18/4/93  83, 151–2, 311 Segar, Sue  237, 285 Sehume, KCAV  178 SEIFSA  130, 132 n.22 Seiler, Maggie  340–1, 344 Sello, Mahlape  290, 292, 362, 375, 435, 445 n.44 Seme, Pixley  20, 22, 40 Semple, Janet  136 Senakgomo, Dr  181 Seoka, J. T.  171 September, Dulcie  36 SERD Sub-committee (NPC) 1991–93, regional/local SERD initiatives NPA gives mandate, projects start  329–45, 348–50, 360, 368, 376, 381, 391–4, 398, 418 see also National Peace Accord Trust NPS takes over 1994, SERD Advisory Board forms  345–50 politics, future, relation to RDP  320, 334, 344–51, 361, 435–44, 448–9, 452–3 SERD training  336–9 Sere, Lilian Keagile  285 Sergienko, Olga  397 Serote, Wally  279 Seven Days War  56, 87 Sexwale, Tokyo  239 n.12, 314 SGT (Self Governing Territory), ‘Bantustan’, ‘Homeland’  21–23, 37, 38, 39–40, 53, 66, 89, 104, 108, 114, 116, 130–1, 134, 137, 140, 146, 160, 171, 173, 180, 196, 205, 208, 239, 231, 325, 383, 387, 394, 400, 425, 445 list of the ten SGTs  22 n.2 Shabalala, Thomas  158, 353–4, 361 Shaka, King  18, 39 Shandu, Isaac  319, 358–9 Shange, V. P  173 Sharif, Abdul  409 Sharpeville Day 1993  290–4 Sharpeville massacre 1960  25 Shaw, Mark  419, 422–3

Index Shearing, Prof. Clifford  152, 318, 406, 425–6 Shell House massacre  409, 455 Shezi, Cyril  356, 357 n.22, 359 Shilowa, Sam  106, 124–5, 127, 163 n.53, 207 n.15, 384 Shobashobane massacre  360 Shop Stewards Committees  101, 241 shuttle diplomacy  11, 56, 103, 107, 113, 121, 168, 297, 300, 384–7 Sibande, Rev. Trevor  370 Sibiya, Jeff  319 Siebert, Hannes  203, 286–7, 380, 437–8, 456 Simon, Paul  210 Sishi, Fana  356 Sisulu, Albertina  66 Sisulu, Max  54 Sisulu, Sheila  231–2 Sisulu, Walter  25, 81, 86 Sisulu, Zwelakhe  275 Sithole, Adv. Msakazi Solomon  403–4, 420 Skhosana, Julius  356 Skweyiya, Zola  443 Slovo, Joe  25, 63, 170, 180, 183, 189, 197, 313, 409 ‘Slovo’ see Matlhanye small business development  69, 70, 115, 342, 349–50 Smit, Lt-Gen. Basie  416, 425 Smit, Prof. J. (Kobus)  392 Smit, Stephanie  325, 393 Smith, Brian  299, 306–7, 388, 429 Smith, Rev. Rowan  116 Smuts, Adv. Izak  133 Smuts, Jan  20 Sobukwe, Robert  25–6, 104, 206 Solidarity Party  117 n.21, 127, 131, 132 n.22, 162, 172, 180–1, 205, 208 n.15 Sopangisa, Malibongwe  203, 380, 430 Sophiatown  21, 50 South African Party  20 Soweto Children’s Choir  257 Soweto LPCs  243, 362–5 Soweto uprising 1976  31–2 Spaarwater, Maritz  78–80, 125, 148, 204,

489

208 n.15, 215 n.56 Sparks, Allister  4, 74 Spicer, Michael  334 Spies, Chris  308, 381–2, 437, 455 SPUs as allowed in NPA  160, 173, 209 as IFP units  42–3, 159, 264, 344, 376, 452 St Rose, Winston  300, 397 State Security Council (SSC)  34, 36, 64, 78, 80, 145–6 Steadman, Felicity  244 n.30 Steed, Adrian  169–70, 174 Steele, Rev. Ron  51, 57–8, 97, 104, 111–80 passim, 385–6 Steenkamp, Johan, MP, NPS member  238 n.12, 285, 300, 340, 445 n.49 Steenkamp, Rev. Lectus  383, 446 n.49 Steiner, Ismat  302 Stern, Ms P. Anne  217 Stevens, Chief Supt Peter  152, 305, 318, 431 Stevens, Prof. Richard  53 Stewart, Melanie  366–7 Steyn, Barnard  326 Steyn, Judge Gert  403, 411, 418–20 Steyn, Izak  425, 427–8 Steyn, Capt. Neels  314 Steyn, Gen. Pierre  415 Stockenström, Christo  218 Storey, Rev. Alan  327 Storey, David  290, 294, 306, 312–13, 362, 373, 375, 431 Storey, Elizabeth  320, 362 Storey, Bishop Peter  56, 58–9, 259–60, 297, 316–7, 321–2, 362, 431, 442, 446 n.49, 447–8 Stutterheim Forum  69–70, 333 Sullivan Principles  62 Suppression of Communism Act (1950); Terrorism Act (1967)  24 Suzman, Helen  38, 324 Swanieville massacre, 1991  104, 284 Swart, Lt-Gen. Johan  425 Table Mountain massacre 1993  219

490

Index

Tait, Sean  380 Tambo, Oliver  23, 25, 27, 39–40, 55, 63–4, 75, 78, 314 taxi wars: causes, investigation, mediation  419–21, 243, 368, 379 Taxis for Peace  268, 277 Tema, Rev. Elia  53 Terreblanche, Eugene  109, 300 Terreblanche, Prof. Sampie  11, 54, 64, 66 The Family Institute, Violence Intervention Project  341–3 Theron (Currie), Lita  392 ‘Third Force’ suspected  34, 36, 74, 81, 90, 141, 154, 174, 175, 193, 210, 215, 219, 356, 410, 417 uncovered  404, 409, 411–17, 453 Thokoza LDRC/LPC  75, 243, 371–2 Peace Conferences 1991 73–4, 74–5 violence 1990–91  72–3, 74 violence 1993, peace 1994  373–6 see also Kathorus; Natalspruit JOC; SDUs Tillett, Ed  158 Tip, Ilona  306, 362, 377 Tisane, Mandla  244 n.30 township councillors  28 n.6, 37, 39, 93, 95, 128, 147 ‘Track Two’ diplomacy  10, 49, 76 traditional leaders  20, 128, 130, 134, 173, 182, 355, 358, 400, 239 n.12 Train Accord, Train Peace Initiative  418 train violence  175, 362, 365, 416–9 Transitional Executive Council (TEC)  28, 233, 277, 409, 416, 428 Transkei  23, 27, 30, 131–2, 172, 324 and NPA  130–6, 146, 171–2, 174, 318 Transvaal Indian Congress  19, 212 trauma counselling  320, 329, 342–4 Treason Trial 1956–61  25 Treurnicht, Dr Andries, MP  31, 37, 134, 174, 299 Tricameral Constitution  37 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)  1, 12, 32, 34, 42, 59, 74, 160,

193, 220, 402, 407, 415–7, 456 Tucker, Bob  231, 324 Tucker, Raymond  404 Turn ’n Tender  128 Tutu, Archbishop Desmond  18, 22, 31, 38, 52, 56, 69, 83, 91, 96, 108, 206–7, 219, 228, 308 and Buthelezi  56, 104 Cape Town march, ‘rainbow people’  18, 79 –80, 272, 275 NPA facilitator  112, 115–16, 118–20, 122, 124–5, 129, 139–43, 162, 169–70, 189–92, 233–4   on reconciliation  59 on Rustenburg Committee  58–60 visits scenes of violence  91, 219 TVBC ‘independent states’  22–3 Twala, Sello Chicco  257 Ubuntu  8, 172, 369 UCM 30 Uitenhage LPC  245, 298, 307, 321, 388 Umbumbulu 358 Umgababa 92 uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) see MK Umlazi LPC  355 n.16, 360 ungovernability  33, 39, 382 Unit C1/C10 see Vlakplaas United Democratic Front (UDF)  10–11, 33, 38–9, 41, 44–5, 55, 66, 68, 80–1, 84, 97, 175, 336, 355 United Peoples’ Front  130 n.20, 180, 208 n.15, 445 UNOMSA  299–303, 309, 311–14, 319, 341, 346, 373, 376, 388, 391, 397, 418 UNSC Special Meeting, Resolutions 765, 772 (1992)  221–2, 296, 301 UWUSA  43, 117 n.21, 121, 132 n.22, 177, 180–1, 205 and Inkathagate  43 Vaal LDRC/LPC  220, 310 Van Biljon, Chantelle  356 Van Biljon, Tracey  356 Van Breda, John  243, 435 n.4, 437, 441, 446 n.49 Van Castle, Paul  395

Index Van den Heever, Prof. J. A. (Koos)  400 Van der Merwe, HW  10–11, 24, 244 Van der Merwe, Gen. Johan  304, 416 Van der Merwe, Det. Sgt Piet  413 Van der Merwe, S. S. ‘Fanie’ on ‘Committee’ for secret talks with Mandela 75 Constitutional Adviser  107 NPA negotiator and drafter  114, 124–5, 127, 129–30, 137, 141, 144–5,147, 157, 164–5,167, 179, 455 NPC member, moves to Codesa  197, 204–5, 208 n.15, 220 Van der Merwe, Brig. Wynand  298–9, 307, 385, 388 Van der Merwe Burger, Dr. I. S.  58 Van der Spuy, Elrena  425, 427–8 Van der Walt, Bert  394 Van der Walt, Prof. Tjaart  53, 64 Van Niekerk, Johan  356 Van Niekerk, Philip  44 Van Rensburg, Andries  228, 231, 235, 446 n.49 Van Rooyen, Brig. Steve  269–70, 273 Van Vuuren, J. G. J.  425–6 Van Wyk, Annelize  266 Van Wyk, Chris  65 Van Wyk, Johan  393 Van Wyk, Willem  65 Van zyl Slabbert, Frederick  63, 66 Van Zyl Smit, Prof. Dirk  211, 406 Vance, Cyrus  222, 241, 296, 301–2 Venda  22 n.2, 23, 130–1, 132 n.22, 133, 158, 171, 212, 324, 400 Venter, Anton  244, 246, 260, 445 n.44 Venter, Brig. Jaap  366, 368, 372 Venter, Lester  167, 174, 176 Verwoerd, Hendrik F.  22, 50–1, 60 n.21, 97 ‘Video Dialogues’  252, 286, 379–80 Vieira, Jason  270 Vilane, Jeffrey  71 Viljoen, Dr Braam  271, 334, 399 Viljoen, Gen. Constand  271, 399 Viljoen, Dr Gerrit  65, 99, 106, 125, 137, 170, 197 Villa-Vicenzio, Prof. Charles  59

491

violence Goldstone on causes  404–5 MPNP Technical Committee on 230 NPA and statistics  454–5 NPC meetings on  215, 229 prevention by peace monitors, marshals  229, 454–5 UNSC special meeting on  221 victims of see National Peace Accord Trust Visser, Adv. L. J. L.  425 Visser, General Kobus  399 Vlakplaas  34–5, 43, 91, 221 n.77, 415–17, 425 Vlok, Adriaan  35, 84–5, 89, 95–6, 155 Volkstaat 399 Vos, Suzanne  104 NPA negotiator  122, 124, 127, 129–30, 135, 142, 147 NPC Exec. member  204 n.4, 208 n.15, 215 n.56, 223–4, 387 NPS member  238, 363, 387 on Publicity, Marketing, Committees  253, 260, 282, 285 on SERD Committee and National Peace Accord Trust  333, 340 Vosloorus  71, 89, 238 n.10, 245–6, 290–2, 294, 321, 371, 373–4 Vula, Operation  83 Vundla, Peter  253 Waddington, Dr P. A. J. (‘Tank’)  406–7, 428 Walker, Bruce  356–7 Wallis Committee & Report  406, 411, 427 n.13 Walus, Janusz  305 weapons: carrying of dangerous, traditional, cultural  71, 84, 87, 90, 95, 103, 225, 230, 291–2, 452 displayed by impi at signing  166, 174–5, 193–5 issue for NPA negotiation  118–9, 128, 137–40, 145–59, 165, 208, 213, 157 banned in Goldstone Guidelines 1992 405–6

492

Index

Webb, Mickey  133, 147, 212 n.39, 387 Webster, David  36 WEBTA 420 Wegerle, Brian  69–70, 368–9, 371 Wellman, Peter  338 Wembezi/Estcourt LPC, SERD  339 Wessels, Leon  11, 34 Wessels, Marion   331–3, 356 Western Cape Region, RDRC/ RPC  240, 286–7, 379–81 Western Transvaal Region, RDRC/ RPC  240, 397–8 Westrater, Harold, SAP  395 Wiechers, Prof. Marinus  54 Wiehahn Commission  62 Wilkinson, Rev. Brian  321 n.96, 397–8 Willemse, General Willie  75 Williams, Clyde  319 Williams, Moegsien  260 Willowmore 303 Wise, Adv. R. M.  415 Witbank LPC, marches, peace  277, 318, 322–3, 337, 394–6 witness protection  164, 403, 405, 409, 416, 431 Wits/Vaal Region, RDRC/RPC  58, 91, 209, 220, 228–9, 232, 240, 242, 243,258, 260, 270, 272, 275, 277, 290–4, 306, 310–14 Women for Peace (WFP)  8, 135–6, 265, 368–9 Wood, Humphrey  64 Woodington, Alfred  292 Woods, Ms Mornice  217 Woods, Rev. Peter  389–91 WOSA  119, 131, 132 n.22, 135, 171 World Alliance of Reformed Churches

(WARC) see churches World Conference on Religion and Peace 112 Wrench, Pastor  380 Ximoko Progressive Party  130 n.20, 180, 208 n.15, 400 Xundu, Rev. Canon Mcebisi  66 Yach, Dianna  152, 318 Yates, Deane  315, 366, 369 Year of Peace, 1994  252, 282–4 Young, Michael  53, 64, 78 youth project proposals (NYDCC, NYSI, Peace Corps)  230–2, 341, 377 Zhagora, Vladimir  303 Zitha, M. C.  175 Zondi, Musa  112, 163 n.53, 170 Zonkizizwe 72 Zulu, Dr Vincent T.  127, 145 n.4, 353 Zulu, James  356, 359–60 Zulu, Prince Gideon  56 Zuma, Jacob  64, 157, 228 NPA negotiator  162, 170 pre-NPA peacemaker in Natal/ KZ  70–1, 86, 93, 112–13, 249 preserves peace structures in KZN  355, 361, 449 Zwelethemba 457 Zwelithini, King Goodwill  40, 86, 109, 134, 145, 264, 417 handshakes refused at signing  192 pre-election visit by Facilitators, 1994  196, 233–4