By Norm Dixon
JOHANNESBURG — The leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party, Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, has surely drained the last drop of patience from those here who wanted to believe he could be convinced to accept a peaceful settlement.
As the team of seven international mediators, led by Henry Kissinger and Lord Carrington, arrived on April 13 to try to find common ground between the ANC and IFP on differences over the interim constitution, Buthelezi overruled his own negotiators and refused to endorse terms of reference for the team. Buthelezi's petulance led the mediation team to abandon their mission and leave the country.
The mediation effort, as agreed by the ANC president and Buthelezi when they met on March 1, was to try to meet Inkatha's demands for greater regional autonomy and to clarify the position of the traditional leader of the Zulu people, King Goodwill Zwelithini.
In Inkatha strongholds in the KwaZulu homeland and parts of Natal, political violence has made voter education and campaigning impossible. People in large parts of the region are unlikely to be able to vote. A state of emergency has been declared in KwaZulu/Natal in an attempt to allow free and fair elections to take place.
On April 9, Mandela, Buthelezi, the king and National Party leader F.W. de Klerk met. Mandela proposed that the king be recognised as the constitutional monarch of the KwaZulu/Natal province with a range of powers. He also proposed financial arrangements that would make the king financially independent of the provincial government. Mandela pointed out that these proposals would give the king greater powers and independence than the KwaZulu government currently possesses.
The 13-hour meeting degenerated into a farce after the king's IFP minders refused to allow him to meet alone with Mandela. At the end of the summit, Buthelezi elevated the demand for the postponement of the poll to an ultimatum. Mandela reacted angrily and said that the ANC considered the election date "sacrosanct".
Prior to the arrival of the mediation panel, hopes were again raised when ANC and IFP negotiators agreed to terms of reference that did not tie mediation or its outcome to the postponement of the elections. The international mediators themselves said they were not prepared to alter the election date. Despite this, just hours after the mediators had touched down at Jan Smuts Airport, Buthelezi rejected the terms of reference and again insisted that the April 27 election must be postponed before agreement on other differences.
Knowing that he has no prospect of winning a majority in KwaZulu/Natal in a free and fair election, Buthelezi has launched a vicious civil war in the area and threatened to spread it to the economically vital PWV region, in an attempt to entrench his apartheid-derived power and privileges in structures immune to democratic control.
It is expected that the TEC will now intensify the state of emergency in KwaZulu/Natal. There has been considerable criticism of the security forces for doing little to halt the spiralling death toll. Since the emergency declaration, an average of 15 people a day have been killed.
The worst recent incident was the hacking to death on April 12 of seven people in Ndwedwe, north of Durban, who were grabbed by IFP supporters while distributing TEC leaflets urging people to vote. Residents of the townships to the east of Johannesburg are bracing themselves for an upsurge of attacks from IFP-controlled hostels in the area.
Meanwhile, the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) is training members of the IFP. AWB leader Eugene Terre'Blanche admitted on April 11 that "non-whites opposed to communism" were being trained in military techniques on his farm near Ventersdorp, in the northern Transvaal. ANC officials earlier reported they had seen a bus load of 50 IFP members enter the farm. Terre'Blanche admits that a "pact" exists between the AWB and IFP. He added that he was in contact with leaders of the IFP's Transvaal branch every week.
AWB spokesperson Frank Rundle told 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly on April 14 that the "AWB has been training Zulus to defend themselves against the aggressors. They are Zulus who are proud of their traditions and proud of their king. Many of them may be IFP members, we don't know, but they want to be ruled by their own king in their own territory just as we want to be ruled by our own people in our own territory."