South African History Online

Port Elizabeth, 29 October 1992

Chairperson,
Comrade Leaders of Delegations,
Brothers and Sisters.

It is an excellent thing that we meet here today as part of our process of
regular consultation about matters which are of critical importance to the
future of our country and people.

I thank you for the opportunity you have given me to speak at this opening
session.

I want to take this opportunity to present some ideas directed at the central
objective we all share of taking our country forward towards its speedy
transformation into a non - racial democracy.

COMRADES LEADERS:

The reality we all have to face is that our people are bleeding as they have
never done before. They bleed from the criminal political violence which has
already claimed too many lives and whose most recent manifestations are the
heinous massacre at Folweni in Natal, the persisting destruction of the Sabelo
family and the murder of Reggie Hadebe, Deputy Chairperson of the ANC in
the-Natal Midlands.

They bleed from the criminal violence perpetrated by robbers, thugs, rapists,
racists, the abusers of women and children, ritual murderers, people unbalanced
by the prey of intense social pressures and are victims of the demented frenzy
of other ogres in our communities.

They bleed from the pestilence of poverty which has thrown people out of
jobs, denied them access to food, accommodation, clothing and health.

They bleed from the drought which ravages humans, beasts and the environment,
compounded by the crimes of those who intercept drought relief and thus derive
personal gain from the desperate suffering of those who were already abjectly
poor, but are now thrown into the pit of hopelessness because the rains refused
to come.

A fetid cloud of despair envelops our country. Its stench has begun to be
felt by many nations beyond our borders and beyond our continent.

People begin to ask - what happened to the hopes that the events of recent
years inspired! What has dimmed, or perhaps eclipsed, the rainbow that lit and
decorated our skies with such promises of joy! Whence the soulless and soul
destroying and fetid cloud of despair!

Many questions are asked and to each an answer must be given.

When we promised the people freedom, were we offering them a mirage?

When we held out a future that will be crowned with happiness and prosperity,
were we seeking to blind them to the continuing reality of growing misery and
poverty

When we proclaimed that we represent their true interests, were we hiding
from the people our inability to deliver what life itself demands?

Many more questions are asked and to each an honest answer must be given.

To be honest in our answers we will each as leaders, have to disrobe
ourselves of the mantle of self-righteousness

We will each have to open our minds to critical self-examination and
examination

We will each have to admit past wrongs and admit to public correction.

We will each have to question the truths that we considered given and learn
to live with a reality which demands that we change the assumptions which inform
our action.

We will have to, each one and those we lead, accept that we must break out of
a mould which constrained and stultified. when we should have evolved a frame
which injected freedom anti dynamism to what we had to do to promote the public
good

We shall have done all our people and all humanity an historic service,
carrying with it a priceless reward, it' at the end of our meeting, we shall
have identified the problems our nation faces and said what it is that we should
do, to turn those problems into a record of the past.

We must, then, admit that the process of transformation has been slow,
lethargic and insufficiently responsive to the sense of urgency which we all
know should be the hallmark of our approach to the process of change.

If we accept this, as I am convinced we must, then we will also have to
accept that we shall have to elaborate the ways and means by which we can
expedite the process leading to the formation and adoption of a new Constitution
by an elected Constituent Assembly.

Among other things, this must mean that we should resist with all the energy
we can muster, the notion that we should enter into protracted negotiations on a
new negotiating forum in order to accommodate certain groupings which, for
reasons of myopia. decided not to board the train when it left the station many
months ago.

It also means that we should contest vigorously the idea that agreements
already reached in the CODESA process should be discarded and the process of
negotiations started from the beginning.

An agreement exists between the ANC and the National Party according to which
these two organisations will engage in an intensive and extensive bilateral
discussion to find common ground on all the outstanding issues on the CODESA
agenda.

We meet here today because it is the firm belief of the ANC that prior to
this meeting, we should consult as broadly as possible so that the views we
present at the forthcoming meeting should be as representative as possible.

In keeping with this view, we are therefore presenting to this important
meeting two mayor documents for your approval. One details our proposals for the
agenda of the bilateral meeting. The other contains a strategic perspective
which we would like this meeting to adopt as its common position.

Further, we are convinced that if we proceed in the manner we have described,
as part of a thorough process of preparation for the resumption of the formal
multilateral negotiations, we will, together, create the conditions for the
success of these negotiations, for speedy movement forward, as well as avoidance
of the deadlock that confronted all of us at the Second Plenary Session of
CODESA.

Consequently, what we request of you today is both endorsement of this
approach and all the necessary input, on a continuing basis, to ensure that we
carry your broad mandate as we go into the process of detailed bilateral
negotiations.

The meeting might also find it fit to consider the organisational steps it
should agree upon to ensure a continual process of consultation among ourselves
so that, after this meeting, we do indeed use both legs, the one being of
multilateral consultations and the other being the preparatory bilateral
negotiations.

At the meeting between ourselves and the government on the 26th of September,
we entered into agreements which relate to the issue of violence, and which must
be implemented.

Nevertheless, important as these agreements were, we cannot pretend that they
address this matter comprehensively

We need to reflect on this matter of violence continuously to determine what
needs to be done to reduce it and hopefully bring it to an end.

We, for ourselves, have accepted the urgent need for a meeting of the
signatories of the National Peace Accord to find practical ways to end the shame
of the debilitating bloodletting that has been imposed on the people.

As we examine this matter, we must surely look at our own conduct, going
beyond narrow partisan considerations, and play our rightful roles as the
leaders of the process of democratic transformation, the principal guardians of
peace and militant combatants for the protection of life itself.

We must re-examine many questions, - not necessarily at this meeting -
including how to stop the process of retribution for past wrongs, whether the
very culture of our people allows for the burning of coffins in public and
whether the burning of effigies is not too evocative of earlier scenes of people
killed by burning.

I give these only as examples to make the point that we must really be
engaged in ways that we may not have been before, to contribute the maximum we
can to end the terrible violence which afflicts our society.

We must aim to arrive at the situation whereby by the end of the year we have
reached all the necessary agreements that will enable us to move forward
speedily to the election of a Constituent Assembly and the Interim Government of
National Unity.

We must confront any tendency which seeks further delays in the process of
transformation. Our people want freedom. The country disparately requires to be
put on a new footing so that we can address the enormous problems we will
inherit from the apartheid system.

The world waits for the change that is overdue, ready to engage with us in
the process of reconstruction and hopeful that what we will do with our own
country will vindicate the hopes of the nations who joined us in the struggle
against apartheid and make an important contribution to the rebuilding of our
world as a place of peace, democracy, equality, and prosperity.

As we conduct our work here today, I trust we shall all be inspired by the
conviction that we must move our country forward speedily in conditions of
peace, so that it too can, at last, begin to experience the joys of peace,
democracy, equality and prosperity.

Thank you.