Chapter One – From strength to vulnerability

Chapter Twenty: The road to democracy

While Natal Newspapers titles were concerned at one level with their internal rivalries, they were also very busy projecting the trials and tribulations of a nation trying to steer itself to a full and honourable democracy.

Part of the movement in public affairs was the changing face of F.W.de Klerk’s government. Most notably, General Magnus Malan suddenly resigned from the cabinet and from politics early in 1993, after a controversial term as a politician. From being a respected professional soldier, he had – as Defence Minister - become a hated figure among liberation fighters, because of his robust prosecution of the war against them. Later he had been moved to Water Affairs, claiming “I’ve dealt with the Reds, now I’ll deal with the Greens”. His retirement occurred as there was mounting pressure for him to be made to take the rap for cross-border raids on ANC units in neighbouring territories during the rough 1980s. He was later prosecuted with other generals on murder charges, but acquitted.
The climate for a constitutional settlement was again beginning to improve after having stalled over the Boipatong massacres. A spur to the improving climate was the agreement by the ANC, proposed by Joe Slovo, in February 1993 of a five-year “sunset” period of transition. This would enable white civil servants to be guaranteed their jobs after a democratic government was elected, and for minority parties to be represented in a coalition government during the first five-year period after the adoption of a democratic constitution.
A controversial development, muddying the constitutional debates with emotional political considerations, was the successful appeal of Winnie Mandela to the Appeal Court against her six-year jail sentence for involvement in the abduction of Stompie Sepei, who was later murdered in circumstances that also led to allegations against Mrs Mandela. The six-year sentence was reduced to a R15 000 fine . . . and Winnie was free to stand for election to the new democratic parliament the next year.
In June 1993, Argus announced it was unbundling its black newspaper Sowetan to allow a trust and Sowetan’s own staff to take a 50% shareholding. This was a significant step, following rumblings the year previously over the white monopoly of press ownership in South Africa. Mandela himself had raised the issue very directly in a speech to an international press congress in Prague. He made the point that 85% of the press was edited by whites when 85% of the people of South Africa were black, suggesting strongly that this should change fast.
I had been sent by head office to attend the congress, and drew their attention to the contents of Mandela’s speech. His pressure had much to do with an effort launched by Argus to facilitate the diversification of press ownership in the country at the same time as steps were being taken to speed up the training and promotion of black journalists and black management staff for promotion to executive positions.
If negotiations at the World Trade Centre outside Kempton Park were beginning to make progress towards a consensus political settlement, delegates to the constitutional conference were shaken out of their optimism on June 15 1993 by the action of a large group of white right-wingers who defied police security round the building, drove a vehicle right through the big windows of the building to gain access, and then terrorised delegates.
The climate for negotiations was further upset in October 1993 by a South African Defence Force raid across the border into Transkei to attack a suspected nest of Apla terror fighters. Five youths were killed in the raid, with a strong suspicion that the raiders had hit the wrong target. The Mercury commented that, whatever the military rights and wrongs of the raid on the house in Umtata, politically the essential difficulty with it was “that it amounts to nothing else than the government’s misusing the SADF as its own private army. And that, in today’s explosive climate, is playing with fire.”
In spite of the upsets periodically rocking the negotiation process, progress had been so great since the release of Mandela and the unbanning of the ANC and PAC that Mandela and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and received their award in October 1993. There was dissatisfaction in some quarters that de Klerk, with his apartheid background, should have been honoured, and de Klerk himself was offended by remarks made by Mandela at the time of the award ceremony, but overall, the award was welcomed as a sign that good sense was prevailing over political rivalries and that South Africa was on the way to democracy, freedom and peace.
By chance, in the same week, the killers of ANC leading light Chris Hani – Janusz Walus and Clive Derby-Lewis – were given the death sentence for the murder. Though the sentences were later commuted to life imprisonment, the conviction of the two white killers by a South African court was a heartening signal to those who believed the courts had been biased to give light sentences to white offenders compared with the sentences given to blacks for serious crimes.
As the date for the first democratic elections approached – a date that had become non-negotiable, so political activity became frenetic as April 1994 drew nearer – King Goodwill Zwelithini had talks with President de Klerk in Pretoria to push his claim for acceptance of constitutional arrangements to secure the integrity of the Zulu kingdom.
This visit to Pretoria caused a small crisis for the Mercury following a report it published, saying “KwaZulu government officials remained tight-lipped yesterday over an apparent ‘rent-a-mob’ exercise to ferry ‘Zulu-speaking workers’ to Pretoria at a cost of R101 000”.
The use of the term “rent-a-mob” caused the king to write to the Mercury saying: “I find it outrageous that my people, who wish to support their king at an historic meeting, should be labelled a ‘mob’. Must I infer that I am king of a mob? Nowhere in the report do you identify who made this claim. It follows that I must accept that this is the opinion of your newspaper. My people have been stigmatised by politicians and the newspapers have played along with this dangerous game. Today’s report in your newspaper is but an example. It has already cost the lives of thousands of my people and brought untold suffering to hundreds of thousands of my subjects. I expect an unconditional apology to my people.”
This was a potentially dangerous, and totally unintended, confrontation with the king, with whom the Mercury actually already had very good relations. I felt the king, or his advisers, had got hold of the wrong end of the stick with this report, so published the contents of his letter in a news report, together with a footnote from the editor, on the same page that the “rent-a-mob” report had appeared, page 2.
In the footnote, I said: “The phrase ‘rent-a-mob’ has been widely used in the Western world to describe events where public figures or movements have paid money to ensure the presence of a large crowd to support them. It is in this context that the reporter used the phrase, against the undisputed fact that the kwaZulu government contributed handsomely to the expenses for the attendance of a large section of the crowd at the Union Buildings – that section that used subsidised transport to attend the gathering.
“Use of this well-known phrase, which is accepted jargon in political quarters internationally, does not imply that the crowd assembled with the help of financial aid or inducement is necessarily a mob in fact or in intent, a mob being defined by the Oxford English Dictionary in various ways – from a ‘tumultuous crowd’ to ‘the disorderly and riotous part of the population, the roughs, the rabble’.
“Without wishing to offend King Goodwill, it must therefore be pointed out that it is unfair to suggest the Mercury implied he is the king of a ‘mob’ or that such implication is the opinion of this newspaper. An editorial in this newspaper on the same day stated ‘ . . . the position of the monarchy should then be written into the constitution of Natal KwaZulu’. That shows the respect in which the Mercury holds the Zulu king and that is the opinion of the Mercury.
“Our relations with the Zulu people are good, and it would be sad indeed if the placing of the wrong construction on words of well-known meaning, in the context in which they were used, were used to trammel that relationship.”
The Mercury heard no more from the king on this matter, though some readers sided with the king’s original complaint against the Mercury on this point. Worse was to follow when Ilanga, the mouthpiece of the IFP, ran a front page lead report saying the Mercury editor had insulted the king and should be called to a public gathering at Kings Park Stadium to apologise in person before the king.
This was mischievous journalism that could have led to an extremely dangerous situation if it had been pressed. I wrote a strong letter of complaint to the editor of Ilanga for the way it had twisted the report and given it such prominence. Fortunately, the matter was not taken further and tension around it died away.
It was only a week later that events in the newspaper industry momentarily stole attention away from the political frenzy the country was working itself up into over the coming elections. On February 10 1994, the Mercury carried the announcement of the take-over of Argus by Tony O’Reilly’s Independent group. In the announcement, O’Reilly assured his editors of their independence.
The Mercury commented on the take-over, saying Argus editors had been allowed their freedom, and had used it well in flying the flag of liberal democracy and free enterprise. But in the process of staving off political take-over attempts and newspaper bankruptcies, there was no doubt the mining houses had gained a near-monopoly of the English-language press, in itself an undesirable development. “The successful bid of Independent Newspapers plc (INP) effectively solves the problem. His (O’Reilly’s) assurances of editorial independence augur well for a happy association, and his investment demonstrates a confidence in the country, which SA applauds. We in turn have confidence that Argus Newspapers under its new controlling shareholders will go from strength to strength.”
But this newspaper issue was strictly a sideshow to the main news of 1994, where politics was centre stage most of the time.
The row over the status of the Zulu king in the new constitution continued to grow. An angry crowd gathered at the Durban City Hall to push the cause of the king, and were infuriated when told de Klerk would only address their demands some days later. At Kings Park soccer stadium, before a massed crowd, King Goodwill made a declaration refusing to accept South Africa’s interim constitution and proclaiming his intention to promulgate a constitution for KwaZulu and Natal.
The IFP was refusing to take part in the election until the issue was satisfactorily resolved. To stave off this crisis, the ANC agreed to a special sitting of Parliament to amend the constitution to extend the date for parties to register for the election, and Nelson Mandela said a negotiating forum would be convened to discuss amendments that would meet the complaints of the IFP and of right-wing whites who were also unhappy with the interim constitution for other reasons.
In fact, the following week a large group of farmers assembled at Newcastle to demand the establishment of a volkstaat.
The constitutional difficulties with these two groups dragged on for weeks as the election date grew ominously close. Even as late as April 15, de Klerk and Mandela were seeking a second leadership summit with Buthelezi and King Goodwill after mediation had failed.
It was on that day that the Mercury declared its support for the Democratic Party in the coming elections, saying the DP was the party likely to contribute the most to the building of a true democracy in South Africa. “We do not begrudge the ANC its impending victory. It is a national movement clearly representing the majority, and deserves to govern. But we do not believe the elections are any longer about who should govern. The decision has already been made and is simply waiting to be effected. The ANC will rule.
“For the first time, the role of all those who want to build a genuine democracy is to switch from pleading for the rights of the disfranchised majority to pleading for the rights of the endangered minorities. What the country needs is NOT an all-powerful ruling party. It needs parties to balance the known strength of the majority party. It is all-important to stop the ANC from obtaining a majority anywhere near the two-thirds majority needed to write the country’s final constitution. The further the ANC can be kept from a two-thirds majority, the greater the chances are of real and meaningful compromises to achieve a consensus constitution.
“To provide the greatest safeguards for minorities, division of power is the one right that has not been assured. Federation would add the extra dimension to other rights guaranteed through the franchise and the bill of rights. Of the opposition parties which support a federal solution, the DP has by far the best credentials . . . the DP may not be a big party, but 20 of its MPs will do more for democracy than 200 from the ANC or 80 from the NP.”
Those sentiments, however, were looking past the immediate problem facing the country at that moment – which was to hold a free and fair election in the face of threatening violence from the IFP and the white right. On April 18, the IFP youth movement was threatening to march through Johannesburg and continue a programme of mass rolling action. People were again being detained under a state of emergency. And on April 19, a brilliant news photographer on The Star, Ken Oosterbroek, was shot dead while photographing scenes at a gun battle between IFP-supporting hostel dwellers and the National Peacekeeping Force on the East Rand.
Just at this moment of darkest gloom, things turned for the better. A Kenyan mediator succeeded in persuading Buthelezi that the IFP should take part in the elections. His decision was greeted by wild scenes of rejoicing in the streets all over Natal and KwaZulu. The breakthrough was achieved through agreement being reached that the issue of the constitutional position of the king, and of extending the powers of the provinces, would be addressed through mediators after the elections. Sadly, it was an agreement the ANC reneged on after the elections were held.
If the IFP were momentarily happy and willing to participate in the election, the white right wing were still a seriously aggrieved group, having no hope of achieving their desired volkstaat. On April 24, a huge car bomb exploded on the corner of von Wielligh and Bree Streets in central Johannesburg, killing seven people and injuring 92 others. The next day, whites threw a bomb into a black restaurant in Pretoria. South Africa was back to the climate of the worst days of the ANC terror campaign against apartheid, only this time it was whites making blacks the target of murderous terror acts.
The Mercury called for an end to political indemnity. It pointed out that, with the aim of bringing the killing to an end, indemnity had been offered and accepted, with the cut-off date being repeatedly moved for the sake of political settlement. “But political killings go on. What is happening in practice is that the sense of grievance has been transferred from the extremists of the majority to the extremists of the minority groups . . . We want past political criminals out of public life, not as candidates for election, not posted to the diplomatic service as the ANC is offering them."
The elections then took place in an atmosphere of surprising peace, with queues stretching for miles in come cases as enthusiasm was shown throughout the population for voters to record their choice. The outcome was not unexpected as far as the domination of the ANC was concerned, but it was of interest that its majority fell short of two-thirds, thereby giving opposition some bargaining power for negotiating the country’s final constitution. Opposition parties were seriously fragmented, none of them showing any sign of constituting an alternative government of the future.
With electoral fraud rampant in Natal, a political settlement had to be arrived at to enable the disputed counting to end. The IFP emerged with an absolute majority at provincial level. In the Western Cape, the Nationalists won provincial control, but in the seven other provinces, the ANC dominated.
The inauguration of Nelson Mandela as South Africa’s first black president was a memorable ceremony at the Union Buildings, attended by political leaders and heads of state from around the world.
I felt particularly lucky and privileged to have been invited as editor of the Mercury to be present to witness the installation of Mandela and to participate in the great celebratory party on the lawns at the side of the Union Buildings afterwards. I was included in a party of leading personalities from KwaZulu Natal flown up from Durban specially for the great day. We left Durban at 5.30am and were bused from Jan Smuts Airport to the Union Buildings, returning in the evening.
Though the ceremony ran behind schedule, because of the late arrival of some heads of state, who came in their droves from around the world, the occasion was extremely well organised, the highlight being the fly-past of three different types of South African Air Force planes over the Union Buildings, so synchronised that jets, propellor-driven planes and helicopters arrived over the inauguration scene at exactly the same moment.
The spirit of camaraderie among leaders of all colours was quite remarkable. It was as if the whole nation was free for the first time ever. Later, of course, the rivalries returned, but the one important day of South Africa’s journey to democracy was not marred by any pettiness. It was indeed a memorable occasion.