Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jan 12, 2011 Editorial
In a speech delivered last May, Thabo Mbeki, immediate past President of South Africa, revealed the crucial “compromise” that effectively sealed the end of apartheid. The excerpts below should be of interest to those opposition figures that claim they envisage a future Government of National Unity. The absence of rancour and “cussing out” should be noted.
“The open process of negotiations, of talking to the enemy, took almost 4 years, from 1990 to 1994. It proved to be a complex process but which in the end proved to be unstoppable. As I have already indicated, during the negotiations we made the proposal to the enemy that the final agreement should include a so-called ‘sunset clause’ which, among others, would provide that the apartheid National Party would form part of a governing coalition during the first five years of our democracy. This led to the formation of the Government of National Unity.
I mention this once again because of its critical importance in the process of persuading the party of apartheid to enter into an agreement that would end white minority rule. Before and during the process of negotiations, the apartheid regime had consistently put forward the notion of ‘power-sharing’, proposing formulae that were obviously completely unacceptable to the liberation movement. However, in time it became clear to us that what was blocking speedy movement forward in the negotiations was the regime’s fear of loss of power. Even though over the years the leaders of this regime had come to understand the aims, objectives and nature of the ANC better, they nevertheless continued to harbour significant mistrust about our intentions.
On December 21, 1990, like the other parties to the negotiations, the ruling apartheid National Party signed the CODESA Declaration of Intent. Among other things, the Declaration committed all signatories to negotiate a Constitution which would “ensure that South Africa will be a united, democratic, non-racial and non-sexist state in which sovereign authority is exercised over the whole of its territory…(and in which) there will be a multi-party democracy…”
However, despite the fact that it had signed the Declaration, the regime was determined that when the democratic elections took place, these should not result in its total loss of power, even if it lost the elections – hence its insistence that the new Constitution should include a provision for the implementation of its version of ‘power-sharing’.
When we ‘put ourselves in the shoes’ of the enemy, we accepted the rationality of its fear, within its conceptual paradigm, of the total loss of power, and understood that to fully commit the regime to the negotiations, we had to find ways of addressing this fear rather than just rejecting it out of hand. I believe that it was when we presented the regime with our own version of power-sharing that finally we cleared the way to the conclusion of the negotiations which gave birth to a democratic South Africa.
When we consulted the various governments in Southern Africa as we prepared the Harare Declaration, one of the leaders in the region, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, advised us that we should integrate into our planning the fact that as much as the apartheid regime had not defeated us, neither had we defeated it.
In plain language he said – do not seek to defeat in the negotiations an enemy you have not defeated on the battlefield! But also do not allow the enemy to defeat you in the negotiations, whereas it had failed to defeat you on the battlefield!
He warned that any other posture would result in a failure of the process of negotiations, which would create an immensely difficult strategic situation for the liberation movement, because it would be difficult to remobilise both the domestic and international forces to resume the offensive which had forced the apartheid regime into retreat.The CODESA Declaration of Intent and the Government of National Unity were born of this advice.”
May we be blessed with such statesmen in the months ahead.
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
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