Charter for a democratic S. Africa

Press, 24 September 1988, Page 25

Charter for a democratic S. Africa

When South Africa’s apartheid regime is overthrown, the African National Congress plans to establish a non-racist democratic state with a mixed economy similar to those of most other Western nations, judging by the A.N.C.’s recently announced “constitutional guidelines.” Mr Penwell Maduna, a representative of the A.N.C., is touring New Zealand to publicise those guidelines for the organisation’s Australia and Pacific Mission. He is a lawyer in the A.N.C.’s legal and constitutional affairs department, and lives in exile in Zambia.

He says his aim is to make those who have joined the international fight against apartheid aware of what sort of system is proposed once apartheid is overthrown. He says the A.N.C.’s Freedom Charter and the new guidelines have been generally accepted by friends of the A.N.C., and by the United Nations and the Organisation of African Unity. He describes it as a charter for all who live in South Africa, both black and white. “Everyone, even our foes, now accept that

there is no future for apartheid,” says Mr Maduna. “Even the Ultra-Right-wingers are prepared for change — so long as some small part of South Africa can be reserved for whites only — so they pretend to the world that they are doing something to dismantle apartheid.” He points out that when President Botha came to power his slogan was "adapt or die.” He now showed a tendency to be prepared to die for the system of apartheid, but was still pretending to be dismantling the hated system. The A.N.C.’s constititional guidelines promise a democratic, unitary, non-racial, multi-party, non-aligned South Africa with a mixed economy and an independent judiciary. Mr Maduna says they do not modify the 35-year-old Freedom Charter, but simply put it into constitutional terms.

The proposed post-apartheid

State would rest on the same basic tenets of constitutional law found in democratic states all over the world. “It’s what ordinary decent human beings would be prepared to accept,” he says. Although the present South African regime characterises the A.N.C. as Communist and warns that it would create a Marxist system, there is no hint of such a thing in the constitutional.guidelines, which Mr Maduna says have been accepted by Communist elements of the A.N.C. as well as all other factions. Mr Maduns says that to the regime now in power, all of its critics and opponents, even ministers of religion, are Marxist Leninists. It is a deliberate distortion, he says, to. say that the A.N.C. is Communist. Although it has Communists active in it, it has never been a Communist party. It is a broad front for national liberation and emanci-

By

GARRY ARTHUR

pation. He also scorns the regime’s prediction that a black-domin-ated system would quickly dissolve into inter-tribal fighting and rivalry. “It’s racist hogwash,” he says. “We don’t have problems of tribalism in the A.N.C. or in the United Democratic Front now, so why should we suddenly have those problems. Those, who say that blacks can’t govern themselves, also say that they can govern themselves in the so-called independent homelands.” He says that the fighting in which Zulus have been involved is not inter-tribal at all. It is between the forces of democracy and those who stand fully behind the apartheid regime, including its stooges, of whom the Zulu leader is one.

Mr Maduna also refers to “inter-tribal” fighting among whites, when the Afrikaaner Resistance Movement attacks meetings addressed by Ministers of the Botha Government. “Those are whites doing it to whites,” he says. “But you barely hear about this. It’s only blacks who kill; This is trash from racist minds to justify continued domination.” The new constitutional guidelines say that the institution of hereditary rulers and chiefs shall be “transformed” to serve the interests of the people as a whole in conformity with the democratic principles embodied in the constitution. They also include a land reform programme, which Mr Maduna describes as “land for the tillers.” The vast majority of tillers of the land are black, and

they are nearly all landless, so there would be redistribution of land to correct that situation. Today, much of the land belongs to monopoly capital, Mr Maduna says, and even the whites are suffering from that state of affairs. “We’ve got to ensure,” he says, “that the land-hungry multitudes get land that is taken from others. Let’s leave the question of compensation to the future. That’s when the fine details will be taken care of. It may be necessary to compensate some, but impossible to compensate others.” He points out that blacks are being dispossessed of their land now through wholesale removal of communities, and asks why the new occupiers should be compensated once the process is reversed. Those cases will be addressed immediately on the take-over of power. Will it involve reprisals against

those seen to be oppressors? Mr Maduna says he agrees with the A.N.C. leadership view — that the new democratic regime should concentrate on development, not reprisals. “We would have to choose between a Nuremberg-style trial with the resources needed for that, and the international implications, and simply forgetting about them and allowing them to die a political death like lan Smith in Rhodesia instead of keeping them in chains. They have powerful friends in the West and reprisals would do a lot of harm to a regime needing friends. “I’d say forgive them, but not forget. We could never forget. But it depends on them. If they misbehave ...”

Mr Maduna sees the A.N.C. now as being in a protracted struggle to create conditions for the people to triumph and for the new constitutional system to be installed. “Apartheid has to be

killed,” he says, “and in the ruins of apartheid society has to be built this new society. What we are doing is asking the international community to commit itself to this sort of solution.”