South Africa's Brittle Peace: The Problem of Post-Settlement Violence (Ethnic and Intercommunity Conflict)

South Africa’s Brittle Peace The Problem of Post-Settlement Violence Pierre du Toit South Africa’s Brittle Peace Et...

Author: Pierre Du Toit

7 downloads 933 Views 766KB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

South Africa’s Brittle Peace The Problem of Post-Settlement Violence

Pierre du Toit

South Africa’s Brittle Peace

Ethnic and Intercommunity Conflict Series General Editors: Seamus Dunn, Professor of Conflict Studies and Director, Centre for the Study of Conflict; and Valerie Morgan, Professor of History and Research Associate, Centre for the Study of Conflict, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland With the end of the Cold War, the hitherto concealed existence of a great many other conflicts, relatively small in scale, long-lived, ethnic in character and intrarather than inter-state, has been revealed. The dramatic changes in the distribution of world power, along with the removal of some previously resolute forms of centralised restraint, have resulted in the re-emergence of older, historical ethnic quarrels, many of which either became violent and warlike or teetered, and continue to teeter, on the brink of violence. For these reasons, ethnic conflicts and consequent violence are likely to have the greatest impact on world affairs during the next period of history. This series examines a range of issues related to ethnic and inter-community conflict. Each book concentrates on a well-defined aspect of ethnic and intercommunity conflict and approaches it from a comparative and international standpoint. Rather than focus on the macro-level, that is, on the grand and substantive matters of states and empires, this series argues that the fundamental causes of ethnic conflict are often to be found in the hidden roots and tangled social infrastructures of the opposing separated groups. It is the understanding of these foundations and the working out of their implications for policy and practical activity that may lead to ameliorative processes and the construction of transforming social mechanisms and programmes calculated to produce long-term peace.

Coming out of Violence Project General Editors: John Darby, Professor of Ethnic Studies, University of Ulster and Senior Research Fellow at INCORE (Initiative on Conflict Resolution and Ethnicity); and Roger Mac Ginty, University of Ulster Titles include: John Darby and Roger Mac Ginty (editors) THE MANAGEMENT OF PEACE PROCESSES Pierre du Toit SOUTH AFRICA’S BRITTLE PEACE The Problem of Post-Settlement Violence

South Africa’s Brittle Peace The Problem of Post-Settlement Violence Pierre du Toit Associate Professor Department of Political Science University of Stellenbosch South Africa

© Pierre du Toit 2001 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2001 by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin’s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). ISBN 0–333–77918–5 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Du Toit, P. van der P. (Pierre) South Africa’s brittle peace : the problem of post-settlement violence / Pierre du Toit. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–333–77918–5 (cloth) 1. Violence—South Africa. 2. Conflict management—South Africa. 3. South Africa—Politics and government—1994– I. Title. HN801.Z9 D8 2000 303.6'0968—dc21 00–065262 10 10

9 09

8 08

7 07

6 06

5 05

4 04

3 03

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire

2 02

1 01

For Laura

This page intentionally left blank

Contents Series Preface

ix

Preface

xi

Acknowledgements

xv

1

1 1 2 3 16

The Peace Process and the State Introduction The problem Conflict and the state The peace process and the state

Part I

The Development of the South African Peace Process

2

The Violent Transition Introduction: the conflict and the metaconflict Apartheid and the security dilemma Low Intensity Conflict Post-settlement violence

31 31 35 38 46

3

Negotiating Amidst Violence Introduction Pre-negotiations Substantive negotiations 1994 elections and the new parliament

53 53 53 61 66

Part II 4

An Analysis of the South African Peace Process

Violence and the Rules of War Introduction The structure of the conflict Violence beyond the table The culture of violence

vii

71 71 71 78 81

viii Contents

5

Why the Negotiations Succeeded Introduction Factors conducive to success Flaws in the negotiating process Summary: the negotiated transition as a peace process

85 85 85 101 112

6

The Role of Negotiated Institutions, the Economy and External Factors Introduction Negotiated institutions The economy External factors

115 115 115 121 131

7

Popular Responses and Symbolic Politics Introduction Popular responses Symbolic politics Conclusion

141 141 141 155 173

8

The Brittle Peace Introduction New rules for making peace A stronger or weaker state? New units of security in Southern Africa? New identities and symbols? The brittle peace

175 175 176 177 184 187 188

Appendix: Chronology, 1985–94

191

Notes

193

Index

217

Series Preface The process of making peace has been transformed during the 1990s. Between 1988 and 1998 at least 38 formal peace accords were signed. The United Nations, a major actor in peace negotiations during the 1980s, was directly involved in 16 of them. Of the 15 agreements reached since the start of 1996, all but two were agreed without UN assistance. The others were primarily negotiated by the parties engaged in the conflict itself, sometimes with external mediation. The term ‘peace process’ has increasingly been used to describe this new phenomenon. Many of these attempts to reach accommodation were structured and sustained. In the true sense of the word, they were ‘processes’. Most of them extended beyond strictly political and security matters to encompass issues of social and cultural inclusion and economic regeneration. They adopted new approaches and new procedures, often borrowing from contemporary or recent cases. This phenomenon was the subject of the ‘Coming Out of Violence’ research project, started in 1996 by INCORE (the Initiative on Conflict Resolution and Ethnicity) at the University of Ulster. It set out to identify those factors that expedited or frustrated five peace processes, those in Northern Ireland, Israel/Palestine, the Basque Country, South Africa and Sri Lanka. Research partners from each of the case countries monitored each peace process along six tracks: political and constitutional changes; violence and security; external influences; economic factors; popular responses and on-the-ground activity, and symbolism. This book forms part of a series of six publications on the research findings from the project. It has been preceded by The Management of Peace Processes, edited by John Darby and Roger Mac Ginty, which concentrated on the comparative lessons from the five cases examined in the project. Each of the other five books has been informed by the comparative framework that was the hallmark of ‘Coming out of Violence’. They are also detailed enough to capture the peculiarities and nuances of individual cases. ix

x Series Preface

The book series aims to describe and analyse the complexities of modern peacemaking. It also illustrates the positive lessons to be learned from the comparative study of peace processes. University of Ulster JOHN DARBY University of York ROGER MAC GINTY

Preface Inside every silver lining, the cynics remind us, there lurks an ominous dark cloud. South Africa is rightly singled out as one of Africa’s more noteworthy cases of democratic transition. But inside the silver lining of successful transition looms the dark cloud of post-settlement violence. Why has South Africa, newly democratised, not also become peaceful and free of violence? The expectation of a democratic peace has not only been rooted in popular perceptions but has also been found in academic forecasts of the quality of political life in post-apartheid South Africa. One analyst, for example, writing in early 1995, berated the entire political science community in South Africa for not refocusing their research to democratic politics quickly enough: ‘Quite understandably, the past few decades of South African politics have meant that analysts have focused their research and debate on matters such as race, ethnicity, ideology, revolution, movements and transition. However, the agenda is shifting toward democratic consolidation and the “ordinary” politics of executives, legislatures, elections, public opinion and interest groups.’1 Events have only half-confirmed this wishful prediction. Ordinary democratic politics is in operation, but alongside this the politics of violence is continuing, albeit in a very different form to that of predemocratic South Africa. Furthermore, the yearning to locate the determinants of democratic consolidation in such institutionalised politics only was premature. This study focuses on the issue of postsettlement violence, a topic which is as central to the prospects of democratic consolidation as that of the evolution of parliamentary politics. The focus of this study is not directly on democratic transition and consolidation, but rather on the process of making peace. A peace process is one where, broadly speaking, the conduct of conflict through means of public violence is being successfully halted. Democratising the unit within which violent conflict occurs is certainly part of the repertoire of peacemaking, but a durable peace may require more: sound economic policies, regional pacts xi

xii Preface

and treaties, new symbols of state, and bureaucratic renewal of state units such as the criminal justice system and the armed forces. This project is part of a larger comparative study on the management of peace processes, conducted under the auspices of the Initiative on Conflict Resolution and Ethnicity (INCORE) at the University of Ulster, the focus of which is captured in its title: ‘Coming out of Violence: the Problems of Building Peace’. This comparative analysis of peace processes in Northern Ireland, South Africa, Israel/Palestine, Sri Lanka and the Basque Country aims to identify the ingredients for containing public violence and for establishing civil order. The study monitors events relevant to violence and its containment along six tracks: violence and security matters (henceforth track 1), negotiated political settlements, as reflected in constitutional rules and political institutions (track 2), external influences and economic factors (tracks 3 and 4 respectively), popular responses (track 5) and symbolic politics (track 6). This book concentrates on the South African case and offers a state-centred perspective on the peace process. The process is conceptualised as one involving four components. The first one involves the process of (re)asserting practices for the conduct of and control over public violence according to rules set by states. These range from finding workable definitions of who qualifies as a political prisoner through to disarming civilian populations. This component also includes the formal peacemaking process, one of finding a settlement, according to the conventions and rules of bargaining and negotiation. Where the conventional rules are either obsolete or inappropriate, a successful peace process requires that new, innovative rules be set in place. The second component in the process of making peace is strengthening the primary unit for the conduct of politics, the state. The presupposition is that the prospect of peaceful, democratic politics is enhanced when the unit within which such behaviour is enacted is strong, resilient and durable. A strong, autonomous state is a more viable vehicle for securing peace and containing public violence than a weak, corrupt, inept, balkanised, bankrupt, partisan state. The third component can (but need not) involve the creation of new units for the conduct of politics. This may be part of the settlement process, or may evolve later. Either way, it can be considered

Preface xiii

as analytically distinct from the other components. These new units augment that of the primary unit, the state, in which democratic rules and practices are embedded. New units may be smaller in jurisdiction than the state and serve as sub-units of the state. Or they may be larger in jurisdiction, extending beyond the territorial reach of the state. In a successful peace process these units complement the democratic unit of the state by being able to address problems which the state, by virtue of its size, is unable to deal with effectively. The fourth component involves the social–psychological dimension of the peace process. One social–psychological trigger, or mechanism of conflict is centred on the basic need people have to make positive evaluations of themselves. Dignity and honour, status, recognition, and competitive success are the ingredients of such positive self-assessments. The pursuit of these scarce but valued commodities can drive people to acts of violence, and eventually to nurture a culture of violence as a way of life. Successful peace processes need to come to terms with this aspect of conflict operative at both the individual and collective level, and build measures for dealing with it into the structural architecture of rules and institutions which comprise the first three aspects of the process. These components are derived from a particular perspective on the nature of the conflict to be settled. In Chapter 1 both the conceptual framework outlining a state-centred view on conflict, and the requirements of an correspondingly appropriate peace process, is outlined. The basic presupposition which guides this chapter is that a proper grasp of what is needed to make peace can only be derived from an adequate understanding of the dynamics of the process of conflict prior to the peace process. The text is divided into two broad sections. The first, Part I, presents a narrative overview of the peace process. The two closely interlinked processes of violence and peace making are described, with the emphasis on violence in Chapter 2, and a description of the negotiations in Chapter 3. In Chapter 2 the overview includes a section on post-settlement violence, which forms a substantial part of the material to be analysed in the next section. In Part II both the processes of violence and of peacemaking are analysed. In Chapter 4 the extent to which this domestic, undeclared war was conducted according to the rules of war recognised by states is examined. The

xiv Preface

emergence of a culture of violence, and its persistence into postsettlement South Africa is also explored. In Chapter 5 the success as well as weaknesses of the peace negotiations are considered, again with a view to finding reasons for the persistence of violence during the peace talks, and for its continuation, although in another form, after the political settlement. In Chapters 6 and 7 the various factors relevant to the emergence from violence are taken up: the role of negotiated institutions, whether of temporary nature or not; the impact of economic and external factors, popular responses and symbolic factors. In the last chapter an overall assessment is offered by way of responses to the following questions: • Has the peace process in South Africa generated useful new rules for making peace? • Has the state been strengthened, or has it weakened? • Has the process yielded effective new units of peace and democracy, either larger and/or smaller? • Has the process been able to initiate or facilitate the establishment of new identities, symbols and rituals which can serve as inspiration to those in search of dignity and/or honour? PIERRE DU TOIT

Acknowledgements This study is a product of the research project ‘Coming out of Violence: the Problems of Building Peace’ managed by INCORE, and sponsored by UNESCO’s Culture of Peace programme. Both this sponsorship and the management task are gratefully acknowledged. The managers, John Darby and Roger Mac Ginty, performed their task not only with effortless amiable efficiency but also succeeded in introducing all of us to the gentler aspects of the culture of Ireland. What better than a taste of bitters to sharpen the capacity for comparative insights! The project also took us to the Basque Country (as guests of co-researcher Ludger Mees), where we benefited from the hospitality of practitioners and analysts alike. To all of these mentioned above, as well as co-researchers Tamar Hermann, David Newman and Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, an appreciation for extending collegiality across cultures and blending it into friendship. Special thanks are due to Alison Howson at Palgrave, and Keith Povey, Editorial Services Consultant, for converting the manuscript into book form. Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright-holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity. PIERRE DU TOIT

xv


1 The Peace Process and the State

Introduction This chapter provides an outline of the conceptual framework that is used to describe South Africa’s attempts to deal with violence. The general focus is on the theme of violence during and after a largely successful democratic transition. The matter of specific interest is the very marked levels of post-settlement violence which have characterised this transition. The general conceptual vantage point from which to assess this violence, and which has been adopted to evaluate attempts to deal with this policy problem, is a state-centred one. Public violence is therefore considered as part of the broader dynamics of state–society engagement and interaction. The conceptual framework allows exploration of this interaction at two levels. At the macro-level the specific focus is a consideration of the role of rules set by states for control over and conduct of public violence and in the making of peace, and the institutions states build in trying to cope with public violence. This macro-level structural perspective is complemented at the micro-level with a social–psychological perspective on the forces that ‘trigger’ individuals into violent confrontations with one another and, in the public domain, against the rules and institutions of the state. The South African transition was a distinctively multi-faceted process. It entailed, firstly, the termination of a violent political conflict, and the implementation of a peace agreement between former belligerents. Secondly, this peace agreement ended white minority rule through an authoritarian regime, and inaugurated a 1

2 South Africa’s Brittle Peace

democratic one in its place. Thirdly, the transition also entailed the fundamental reorganisation of the state, away from being an institution geared to serve the interests of the white minority at the expense of black South Africans. In its place was established a state in which constitutional supremacy was a fundamental building block, in which the principles of a rechtsstaat was entrenched, and in which the foundations of a non-racial constitutional order was established. The consolidation of every one of these aspects to the transition is closely linked to the further evolution of the South African state. Containing public violence is one of the foremost obligations of any modern state. Consolidating the norms, practices and principles of democratic rule is also a matter of state, as democratic regimes are part of the institutional framework of a state. And finally, retaining the non-partisan, non-racial, ethnically neutral character of public bureaucracies is integral to the evolution of the state itself. Hence the use of a state-centred conceptual framework in this study.

The problem We are often informed that the modern era with its dominant political institution of national states is drawing to a close. A diminished position is foreseen for the state, whether eclipsed by other rival institutions, or as a lesser unit among a number of contending units of power. The implications for both democratic politics and civil peace are clear: states have served as the prime units of democracy in the modern era, and their demise threatens the stability of older consolidated democratic regimes as well as newly established ones emerging from the Third Wave of democratisation, such as South Africa. States, especially democratic ones, have also served as units of security, providing standing bureaucracies (police and military forces) specifically charged with protecting citizens against acts of violence from within their borders and from outside. This predicted weakening of states holds particular policy implications for divided societies. Holding these societies together as political units is a first-order problem. Securing democratic stability once fragmentation has been averted is the next formidable challenge. Both these problems are likely to be exacerbated when the basic

The Peace Process and the State 3

institutional unit, the state, is weakened. These problems are even more acute in states which have entered a process of democratic transition after sustained periods of authoritarian rule, as is the case of South Africa. The perceived process of state decline therefore presents huge challenges to statecraft in such societies, and may well require institutional innovation beyond the conventional boundaries of building states and democratic regimes. Two sets of arguments predict the decline of states. The most insistent and persistent endorsement of this prediction comes from the ranks of those, driven by the ideology of globalisation, who argue that economic forces are relentlessly eroding the position of states. Operating in tandem with these forces are the agents of globalisation who are deliberately trying to induce this outcome. Whether these global forces will, in fact, produce the said outcome is a moot point, and one not to be pursued here. 1 The aim of this chapter is to focus on the second set of arguments predicting state decline. This view identifies security-related factors in the projected changing status and position of national states.2

Conflict and the state States as units of security and democracy National states emerged as the dominant political units in Europe, not by way of amicable social contracts between consenting individuals, but through a ruthless process of elimination, conducted by means of war. Of the 500 or so independent political units in the Europe of 1500, only 25 remained by 1900, all of them national states.3 State leaders eliminated rival contenders such as princes, bishops, dukes, brigands and other notables and magnates through the superior capacity for social control and resource mobilisation which state organisation made possible. A well documented feature of state building in Europe was the gradual development of a state capacity for extracting resources from, and regulating the social relationships of a resident population within a fixed territory, and redistributing these resources in pursuit of specific policy objectives, mostly in preparation for, or in the conduct of war. States could thus penetrate society through special purpose organisations in the form of bureaucracies which were both distinctive and autonomous from other social units.4


The gradual development of these regulative, distributive, extractive, penetrative and even symbolic capacities was crucial to the evolution of the essential reason of state, those objectives which states pursue in order to secure their continued existence as states. The pursuit of hegemony is fundamental to this logic of state action, as it entails the claim to supreme authority over territory and people, expressed in the principle of sovereignty, and executed through the monopoly on force and the prescriptions of law. Police forces and related personnel secure hegemony at the level of compliance, and an ‘ideology of domination’ can supplement direct coercive ascendancy. The objective of autonomy from outside forces, in the form of internationally recognised independence, and domestically in the form of insulation from public demands, complements hegemony as it contributes to the distinctive character of the state. The objective of security, again as protection against both hostile forces from outside, and domestically as the only agent of protection within the territorial domain, is also closely linked to that of legitimacy. States have to justify their existence as hegemonic organisations, and they do so through various means, one of which is to offer physical safety to the resident populace. Attractive regime rules, especially those of democracy, contribute to legitimacy. The final two imperatives, those of revenue (primarily taxes), and accumulation (a sound and growing economic tax base) relate directly to the resources available for states to mobilise in the pursuit of other objectives subsumed under the logic that governs state action.5 The important point here is to note that these imperatives were secured in a particular sequence. Only by the end of the eighteenth century were states in Europe able to achieve an effective monopoly on force, at the expense of the subject populations. 6 This was followed in the nineteenth century by the marked democratisation of the European state, in part as a response to pressure from subject populations for more rights,7 and in part as an incentive offered by state leaders to increase the legitimacy of the states’ demands for ever higher taxes and military conscription. 8 Crucial to the expansion of the legitimacy of the democratised state was its claim to provide public goods to its citizens in return for compliance with its tax requirements. From the outset the first and foremost public good which the state could offer derived from its monopoly on force. It could provide protection in the form of physical safety to


its citizens in return for compliance, or it could withhold protection, or even use its coercive monopoly against its citizens should they withhold voluntary compliance. This monopoly is obviously open to abuse. When the threats were real and credible, state claims were authentic, but as Tilly argues, states could also simulate, stimulate, fabricate or otherwise contrive real or imaginary threats with which to influence their citizens. And, ‘… [s]omeone who produces both the danger and, at a price, the shield against it is a racketeer’, so ‘… [t]o the extent that the threats against which a given government protects its citizens are imaginary or are consequences of its own activities, the government has organised a protection racket’. 9 All of this hinged on the credibility of the state’s claim to a monopoly on violence: ‘A tendency to monopolise the means of violence makes a government’s claim to provide protection, in either the comforting or the ominous sense of the word, more credible and more difficult to resist.’10 This initial link between security and democracy within the institution of the state was consolidated through a number of other factors. First, the coercive monopoly of the state allowed it to protect democratic regimes against hostile and violent anti-democratic forces, both from inside its territorial domain and from outside it. Secondly, the distinctive bureaucracies of the state proved to be able to distribute other public goods as well, and equitably so. Thirdly, the territorial state provided an answer to the question ‘what comprises the unit of democracy?’ Democratic theory presupposes a proper unit.11 Sovereign states, territorially defined and with a monopoly on force, allowed no alternatives. State leaders could therefore declare the population of the territory as the democratic unit, irrespective of any other cultural, economic, historical or demographic considerations. The Jacobins in France, for example, could therefore proceed to make citizens out of a population of the state, of whom, at the time of the French Revolution, only about one half spoke French, and only about 12 per cent spoke it competently.12 Fourthly, states provided some measure of success in containing the forces of capitalism. The dynamics of cumulative inequality inherent in free enterprise and the neglect of the public good have, in some cases been countervailed by the redistributive capacities of states. By defining and legally and coercively enforcing the distinction between the private and public domain (the ‘commons’), and


protecting the commons, through mutual coercion, against free individuals intent on exploiting it, states have contributed to achieving the democratic norm of equity. 13 Finally, the establishment of a system of states created a mutual recognition society which stabilised relations between its members through a set of rules, codified in international law and diplomatic conventions, regulating the conduct of war and of peace. It also set conditions for the recognition of new members, contributed to establishing new states on a global basis, each a potential unit of security and of democracy. The predicted eclipse of states, as argued from the perspective of the dynamics of the political economy of globalisation is, as Peter Evans has shown, neither a persuasive argument, nor a foregone conclusion.14 Far more compelling is the argument posed from the perspective of security. Martin van Creveld presents this thesis forcefully: The most important single demand that any political community must meet is the demand for protection. A community which cannot safeguard the lives of its members, subjects, citizens, comrades, brothers, or whatever they are called is unlikely either to command their loyalty or to survive for very long. … The rise of the modern state is explicable largely in terms of its military effectiveness vis-à-vis other warmaking organisations. If, as seems to be the case, that state cannot defend itself effectively against internal or external low-intensity conflict, then clearly it does not have a future in front of it.15 Van Creveld traces this decline in the ability of states to provide the most basic of public goods, physical safety, to their loss of the monopoly on coercive means and to their resultant loss of the monopoly on war. The monopoly on warmaking was lost, first and foremost, through the actions of the states at the centre of the global system of states. ‘War made the state, and the state made war’. 16 That is, until about 1939. The Second World War, according to Van Creveld, counts as the single most decisive event in the breakdown of the state-imposed set of rules of war, rules instrumental to the maintenance of their monopoly on war and monopoly on coercive means.


These rules serve both to maintain the essential character of war and the particular character of state-driven conduct of war. The ultimate purpose of the rules of a war is to protect the armed forces who conduct such acts of organised violence and to protect the societies within which these forces are embedded. War, by definition, involves the killing of people, and Van Creveld states it categorically, that ‘… [a]lways and everywhere, only that kind of killing that is carried out by certain authorised persons, under certain specified circumstances, and in accordance with certain prescribed rules, is saved from blame and regarded as a praiseworthy act’. 17 The most crucial line to be drawn by such rules is between killing as an act of war and as an act of murder. Where this distinction is not upheld, war cannot be seen to be different from indiscriminate violence, a condition under which societies are bound to disintegrate. The rules of war thus serve to provide criteria for recognising the difference between an army and a mob, to guide an army into understanding whom they are allowed to attack and kill, for what purpose, under what circumstance and by what means. Rules also serve to tell losers from winners and to define what constitutes victory. Finally, and of profound importance, by setting rules for killing, it becomes possible for those who have killed to cope with their deeds, to live with them and to come to terms with themselves. The rules of war offer redemption for what people have done to one another.18 In the modern era of state ascendancy, more or less from 1648 to 1939, states succeeded in establishing a set of rules centred on the distinction between the state (represented by government), army (consisting of soldiers) and people (civilians). These rules held, among others, that: • War is conducted exclusively by states. It consists of organised violence conducted by armies on behalf of governments who represent the state, is pursued for the interest of the state, and against another state. • Soldiers are authorised to kill in times of war, and when they do so, it is considered an act of war. • Civilians are distinguished from soldiers. Civilians are noncombatants and are not authorised to engage in war. • Civilians therefore have to be unarmed or disarmed.


• Civilians are therefore also not legitimate targets of war for contending armies. • Crime is distinguished from war. Prisoners of war are therefore held under different conditions than those of criminals.19 During the Second World War the major combatants broke their own rules of war, comprehensively and irreparably so. The conduct of the ‘Total War’ on an industrial scale blurred the lines between state, army and people. Army and state were merged in the ‘war cabinets’, armies and peoples were merged through mass conscription. The distinction between civilians and soldiers, and between combatants and non-combatants was eroded through the use of entire urban civilian populations as targets (London, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki)20 and by the revolt of civilians against occupation (the resistance in France, Italy, Yugoslavia).21 This set the example for the immediate post-World War Two wars of liberation in the colonies of the major states. Low Intensity Conflict, from Indochina and Algeria through to its global application, built on this fundamental normative breakdown in the conduct of war. • National liberation movements, representing neither states nor governments, but claiming to represent ‘peoples’, took on armies of states in organised violent conflicts both across and within the borders of states, thus challenging the monopoly on war claimed by the state. • They drew on personnel not formally designated as soldiers, such as students, women and children. • They therefore operate from the strategic view that war is not the business of soldiers only: people have the right to revolt and when they do, the distinction between combatant and noncombatant falls away. • This requires the deliberate (re)arming of civilian populations; • which makes society a legitimate target; and • brings in the use of non-military methods of combat: physical violence is complemented by acts of civil disobedience with the intention of disrupting civilian life: strikes, blockades, tax revolts, school boycotts, consumer boycotts, hunger strikes, etc.


• Finally, military projects are at times financed through criminal methods, thus merging crime and war.22 The strategic centrepiece of this approach to war, according to George J. Andreopoulos, is the concept of the ‘civilian soldier’. 23 By insisting on this dual identity, guerilla forces made the distinction between combatant and non-combatant untenable in principle, with important strategic ramifications for anti-guerrilla forces. The foremost was that the deliberate immersion of fighting forces within and among civilian populations almost invariably drew antiguerrilla forces into expanding their definition of the ‘enemy’ to women, children and the elderly, and to treating them accordingly, thus breaking another fundamental rule of war, to the tactical and propaganda advantage of the guerrillas. Andreopoulos also shows with specific reference to the Algerian War (1954–62), that the deliberate use of terror against civilians became standard practice for both sets of belligerents, in their attempt to gain tactical advantage over one another.24 Either way, the use of indiscriminate violence against civilians becomes a hallmark of the breakdown of the rules of war. The spread of Low Intensity Conflict received its impetus not only from the self-inflicted breakdown in the rules of war of the state system, but also from two other sources. One is found in modern technology, which undermines the state’s monopoly on coercive means. To attack and disrupt social systems both high and low technology are appropriate, but high military technology becomes increasingly obsolete. Aircraft carriers, fighter planes and warships are hardly useful, but petrol bombs and the ubiquitous pipe bomb, primed with commercial fertiliser and petrol, can create massive social dislocation. Add to that the potential of boobytrapped microchips and computer viruses as future instruments of conflict.25 All of these are essential ingredients of modern industrial society, which cannot be taken away from civilians. Technology alone therefore deprives all states from one of the cornerstones of their monopoly on war and security: the unarmed civilian population. The other factor behind the proliferation of Low Intensity Conflict is found in the nature of the international state system and the calibre of state-building on the periphery of this system, which makes some states more vulnerable than others. The vehicle for the


globalisation of the European state system was the colonies of the European powers. For various reasons these colonies were not invested with the resources necessary for effective state-building. Very few of the necessary and sufficient conditions for the construction of strong states have been present in the post-World War Two era of decolonisation.26 The general result has been that at independence these new units formed largely weak states with a low capacity for providing security and hence served as fragile units of democracy. Nonetheless, as members of a mutual recognition society, these units were acknowledged as juridical entities by the international system of states, despite their obvious incapacity. 27 These weak states, epitomised in the African cases of Somalia, Liberia, Sierra Leone and the former Zaire, have been acutely vulnerable to attacks by insurgent warlords using the tactics of Low Intensity Conflict. South Africa’s era of violent revolt against apartheid, with the attendant counter-measures by the state, will be analysed with reference to the rules of war. To what extent did both sets of adversaries uphold these rules, or either deliberately or inadvertently break them? The distinction between soldiers and civilians is of particular importance, and the question of civilian casualties in this conflict, with the problems it posed for the peace process will be examined. This conflict also had ramifications for the strength of the state. The South African state was the primary patron and institutional host of the peace process, and the role of weakened state institutions, especially those who are required to contain public violence, will be examined. Security problems and the security dilemma The crucial link between security and democracy lies in the ability of the state to provide security to all its citizens on an equitable basis. In a democratic state the coercive monopoly of the state is used to provide protection to all citizens as a basic right. This is achieved when the public and private domains can be legally demarcated and the public domain becomes the terrain for the provision of collective goods such as welfare and social, political and economic rights. Security, in the form of physical safety against threats of violence, is provided for every citisen against every other one, against the arbitrary actions of the state, and against threaten-


ing actions from beyond the borders of the state. This protection can be provided by the agencies of the state itself (police and military forces) or can be privatised. Privatised security is tolerable in democratic states up to a point. As long as private agencies are authorised and licensed by the state, and act under the general auspices of the laws of the state, they may be permitted. However, security cannot be privatised entirely, as it then extends only to those clients who can pay for it. 28 Democratic states are compelled to provide protection to all citizens, and equitably so. This can only be done if the personnel of the state augment the security provided by the private sector. The measure of the failure of the state to provide such protection becomes evident when the security dilemma arises within the state. This condition emerges when intermingled or adjacent groups of people start to sense that, as the result of rising civil strife, usually on a communal basis, they have to take care of their own security. This condition can arise through a number of circumstances, one of which is a substantial weakening of the state. A security threat becomes a dilemma, according to Posen, when ‘… what one does to enhance one’s own security causes reactions that, in the end, can make one less secure’.29 It will be argued that the policies of apartheid, whatever their origin, had the effect of creating a security dilemma. White South Africans constructed the apartheid state in order, among others, to deal with what they perceived as threats to their safety. The overall effect of a state based on racial discrimination and systematic exploitation of the majority of the population, however, was to make white South Africans even less secure. When groups perceive the state not to be capable of providing security, or not willing to do so, and they then act on their own volition, security again becomes privatised or communalised in a sense, but unilaterally so. Such security, however, further undermines the basis for democracy through the spiral of destabilising countermeasures it elicits. These countermeasures are likely to emerge when the offensive and defensive actions of groups responding to their own insecurity cannot be distinguished by other, proximate groups, and when offensive countermeasures, especially by the second-order category of insecure actors, appear to be more effective.30 This creates the incentive to seek security through preemptive actions. The destabilising spiral of events triggered by the


security dilemma can, as Kaufmann has shown, lead to the collapse or disintegration of the state once a crucial threshold of escalation has been passed. This two-step perceptual threshold entails, firstly, the recognition that ‘… once violence (or abuse of state power by one group that controls it) reaches the point that ethnic communities cannot rely on the state to protect them, [then] each community must mobilise to take responsibility for its own security’. 31 The second step in the Kaufmann threshold is crossed ‘… [o]nce a majority of either group comes to believe that the killing of noncombatants of their own group is not considered a crime by the other’.32 Future war The dynamics of state disintegration and of subsequent efforts to create new institutions in the former Yugoslavia epitomise the process predicted by Van Creveld. This process, aptly described in the title of his book, The Transformation of War, involves the fundamental breakdown in the conduct of war along state-led rules. Low Intensity Conflict is then both a result of state decay and a cause of further decay, and, according to Van Creveld, points to the nature of future warfare.33 According to him, future wars are less likely to be fought by national states, which is the direct result of the loss of their monopoly on violence. The most likely replacement will be ethnic groups, who explicitly identify themselves on the basis of religion and/or other cultural markers. The old rules of war and peace, established and upheld by states, are likely to become eroded further: prisoners of war will be treated like criminals; civilians will become indistinguishable from soldiers; symbolic objects such as churches, art and cultural monuments are likely to become significant targets, despite being considered ‘strategically’ useless; the distinction between the public/private domain will blur further; restraint on the use of certain weapons will weaken; and the war/crime distinction will also be diluted. He does predict the emergence of new rules, which will serve the very same functions of the old ones: to distinguish war from murder, to separate the guilty from the innocent, to differentiate acts of war from atrocities, and to demarcate the just from the unjust. Future war is less likely to be fought in the pursuit of interest, and more likely to be conducted in the pursuit of the causes of justice


and religion. In the era of state supremacy the objectives associated with justice and religion came to be decoded to those of ‘state interests’. Van Creveld predicts a reversal of thinking, where interests are likely to be recoded to values, and redefined in terms of principles of justice and religion. He argues, with a memorable turn of phrase, that ‘(i)f modern strategic thought views rationality in terms of reducing justice and religion to the underlying interests, then the same intellectual meat grinder is capable of reducing interest to underlying religious or legal principles’.34 Finally, and most provocatively but least plausibly, he argues that the reason people are prepared to go so far as to engage in war (i.e. enter into violent confrontations) in the pursuit of their causes is not bound to change. War, in the future, as in the past, as the most dangerous form of confrontation, the most highly charged with risk and uncertainty, the most deliberate exposure to the prospect of death, remains therefore also the most stirring form of contestation. In future, he claims, men will continue to seek out this form of danger, uncertainty, risk and threat for the sheer exhilaration of it. Van Creveld offers a structural theory of conflict and his predictions which focus on structural changes to the nature of conflict can be taken as persuasive. His predictions about the emergence of new units of conflict (and potentially, of conflict resolution) to either supplement or supplant the conventional national state can be joined to the more general debate on the future institutional evolution of structures beyond the state. At the macro-level, therefore, his theory offers a useful platform for the exploration of structures (i.e. new rules and institutions) relevant to matters of violence, the security dilemma, democratisation and of peacemaking. However, van Creveld’s structural theory fares badly at the micro-level. What it does not present is an explanation of the mechanism of conflict. He argues that in essence war is a social activity, embedded in society and reflective of the characteristics of society. And while he can persuasively describe the transformation of this social activity, he is unable to tell us why the predicted changes will occur in the way he forecasts. This is because he has no theory explaining social behaviour in general, and violent social behaviour in particular. To be more specific, he predicts that ethnic groups are likely to provide the social units from which new configurations are to be


formed as challengers to the conventional state. He is unable to tell us why these kinds of identity groups are the likely candidates and not others. Furthermore, he argues that ethnic groups are bound to rally to a cause (defined in terms of conceptions of justice or religion), but fails to explain why these groups will decide that such causes are more compelling than matters of interest. He notes that symbols will become salient objects of conflict, and that symbolic sites will emerge as prime targets, but cannot explain why. Finally, and most crucially, he argues that the elements of danger, risk of death and uncertainty are the crucial attractions of war, but he is unable to provide a persuasive explanation as to what it is about these dangers that are so compellingly attractive as to move ethnic groups to go to war for their cause. These questions can be answered by drawing on Donald Horowitz’s theory of ethnic group entitlement. The core proposition in this theory is that ‘(t)he need to feel worthy is a fundamental human requirement’.35 Such a positive evaluation of the self is found in a sense of dignity, status, esteem and even honour. This drive assumes a collective character when people gain such positive evaluation by identifying with, or belonging to groups that can be regarded as worthy. The status of such groups, however, is not acquired through their intrinsic qualities or by the subjective assessment of their own members. Group status is shaped by the process of comparison and competition. Those groups who emerge as winners instead of losers, whatever the competitive yardstick, and those who can demonstrate a competitive advantage, which is publicly recognised and acknowledged by others, become viable vehicles in the pursuit of a collective sense of worthiness. Ethnic groups, so often quite central to personal identity, are collective units readily available for this purpose. The public recognition of worthiness is often sought by engaging competitors in the public arena. States are pre-eminent public institutions, highly visible and potentially powerful. Hostile states are therefore huge threats to ethnic status which threatened groups either try to neutralise by escaping from their influence or try to capture on the group’s own terms. When the latter is achieved, ethnic ‘ownership of the country’ yields immediate tangible rewards in the contest for relative group worth. Within the system of states the country represents a site of power which is internationally


recognised, and capturing this site affirms the competitive success of the group. Such ‘ownership’ can be publicly affirmed by investing the symbolic aspects of state identity with an ethnic content. Horowitz can therefore provide plausible explanations to fill to the gaps in Van Creveld’s theory of conflict. Why are ethnic groups likely to emerge as units of conflict? With their highly emotional investment in matters of personal identity, they are eminently suitable social units to serve as vehicles for the drive to gain positive evaluation. Why are they likely to take up causes linked to justice and religion? A cause, especially a holy or just cause, represents an honourable objective, the pursuit of which reflects well on the group. To have the merits of the cause recognised by other public actors amounts to public affirmation of the merit of the group. Symbols are important in this regard because they embody, reflect, display and exhibit the cause, the identity of the group, the worthiness of both, and the measure of competitive success achieved by the group. Finally, why are ethnic groups prepared to go to war in pursuit of their cause? Apart from the instrumental gains in achieving the objectives of their cause, there is another level of gratification: to go to war for a cause is to expose yourself to the ultimate form of danger, risk and uncertainty, which is the most irrefutable way of publicly demonstrating the worthiness of your cause. A cause worth dying for must surely have merit. And it is also the most incontestable way of publicly demonstrating your own calibre: if you are prepared to pay this price for your cause, then your commitment, dedication and preparedness to make the potentially ultimate sacrifice reflects positively on your own personal qualities. The mechanism or trigger for public violence, then, may be found not just in the motivation for material reward, (such as with armed robbery, for example), but also in a deeper psychology where the non-material rewards of status, of public recognition, of being labelled a winner instead of a loser, and of success instead of failure are sought after. Public violence in South Africa is a very specific focus of this book, and data will be presented on actual incidents of such violence. But at a more fundamental level, this study also has to address the culture of violence in which such behaviour is embedded, and to consider ways in which such a culture may be dismantled.


The policies of apartheid stood at the centre of South Africa’s domestic conflict for many decades. The racial element of this discriminatory system made the link with identity politics explicit. The exact extent to which the dynamics of the conflict accurately represented ethnic formations in society remains disputed, mostly because race and class came to be so strongly intertwined. Whites were affluent, blacks poor. What is not disputed is that those defined by racial criteria as not white, suffered both material and non-material deprivation. An important theme of this book is that the conflict over apartheid was not only about the elimination of poverty and the achievement of the tangible rewards of modern society by the hitherto poor black South Africans. The conflict was also about the retrieval of intangible goods. The non-material deprivation which resulted from the public humiliation created by apartheid should also be taken into account. The link between South Africa’s culture of violence and the individual and collective drive for status, dignity and especially, for honour will be taken up as a specific theme.

The peace process and the state Component I: (re-)establishing old rules of peace and finding new rules Integral to a process of bringing peace to a Low Intensity Conflict is (re)establishing previously existing rules or finding new, more appropriate, or more feasible rules for the control of public violence. One option is to try to re-assert the trinitarian rules of the modern era of state supremacy. Peacemaking then becomes part of state-building, and negotiation for peace becomes part of the process of (re-)asserting state hegemony. This entails the dissolution of contests over peoplehood (that is, the proper unit for democracy), statehood and the appropriate constitutional rules of democracy.36 Once these have been settled, the following steps (not necessarily in this sequence) in the peacemaking process are needed: • Hostilities are ended with officially declared ceasefires. This is followed by the identification, exchange and release of political


• •

•

•

•

•

•

prisoners (as opposed to criminals) on the basis of an agreed upon working definition distinguishing combatants from noncombatants. Rival armed forces must be amalgamated or integrated into a single unit. This unit must serve as the official armed forces of the newly agreed upon, or reconstituted, state and concomitantly, other private armies must be outlawed and disbanded/decommissioned. Civilian populations must again be disarmed through the disclosure and destruction of arms caches and the licensing of privately held arms. (The ingredients used for low-technology bombs, such as petrol and agricultural fertiliser, can hardly be denied modern civilian populations, which makes complete disarmament virtually impossible.) With a monopoly on coercive force more or less secured, the overall capacity of the state to provide for the physical protection of all citizens to equal effect must be strengthened. The capacity and impartiality of the police force and courts is of paramount importance in this regard. This entails that the coercive forces of the state must eliminate and outbid rival forces offering protection. The elimination of rival and parallel institutions such as ‘kangaroo courts’, or ‘people’s courts’, criminal protection rackets, warlords and strongmen who run private tax regimes and of private armed units such as assassins who are available to be contracted to apply coercion in any private or public dispute is required. A negotiated settlement where the constitutional framework of a regime acceptable to all the major antagonists is needed. This process has to conform to the essential ingredients of bargaining and negotiation as a peacemaking process, and not merely as façade behind which the conflict continues to be pursued. Only then can the status of citizenship (denoting membership of the state) be re-established as the salient and most valuable identity in the political arena. To achieve this, the legal jurisdiction of the state has to penetrate all sectors of the society and economy. Private enterprise needs to run within the domain of the law, authorised, regulated and protected by the laws of the state, instead of running parallel to the formal economy beyond the


regulating capacity of the state. Likewise civil society must be able to flourish in an autonomous domain, the boundaries of which are drawn by constitutional rules, social norms and traditions.37 The South African transition has been interpreted as a contest for hegemony.38 Hegemonic contenders, each with its own definition of democracy, with its own conception of the democratic unit/ community (‘the people’), with its own ideas on the nature of the post-apartheid state, confronted one another, first in a violent Low Intensity Conflict, then across the negotiating table. The National Party with its white support base entered the negotiations with an approach to democracy based on the concept of procedural justice, and intent on establishing a power-sharing variation of liberal democracy. The African National Congress (ANC) by contrast, based their view of democracy on the concept of distributive justice, and insisted on establishing majoritarian democracy. For the National Party ‘the people’ consisted of a plurality of different communities, defined by race and culture, each entitled to the protection of their identities, hence their preference for the power-sharing formula. For the African Nationalists ‘the people’ represented the single South African nation, which could be comfortably represented in a majoritarian democracy. Finally, for the National Party and the stakeholders they represented, the post-apartheid state had to be a haven for all minorities, while the ANC sought an interventionist state, able to deliver distributive justice by facilitating interventionist policies of economic redress.39 In this book the question will be considered as to whether the contest for hegemony had been resolved in the negotiations, whether the state has regained its monopoly on force, whether the capacity for the protection of all citizens has been built, and whether rival coercive forces have been dealt with. Component II: rebuilding the existing unit – levelling the playing field Should the breakup of the state into two or more smaller sovereign units during the process of transition be prevented, then the peace process can be enhanced by strengthening this single institutional site of democracy. A crucial ingredient of the peace process is that the institutions required to implement peace agreements, such as


the army, police and the criminal justice system be politically neutral. Neutrality means that these institutions operate in such a way that no one set of denizens of the state gain preferential treatment over others from these institutions. This is the yardstick of citizenship of equal value, by which it is understood that citizens of the democratic state must have equal opportunity to gain access to public goods. The provision of public goods must meet the criteria of non-excludability (there should not be criteria that allow some citizens access to these goods, but prohibit others) and of jointness of supply (use of such goods by some citizens must not preclude others from using them as well).40 Public goods range from tangible commodities such as schools, welfare and economic infrastructure to symbolic goods such as national anthems, flags and coats of arms. In many parts of Africa the first-order problem is whether states are able to deliver public goods at all. With a weak industrial tax base, low levels of institutionalisation, and with many rival political loyalties to compete with, states are in constant competition with other organisations.41 The relative strength of the state is vital for democracy, as democratic institutions and practices are embedded in the wider institutional network of the state. Strong states, according to Migdal, are able to impose their own rules of social control onto society at the expense of rival organisations such as warlords, drug barons, multinational corporations, churches or ethnically-based interest groups who wish to exercise their own rules of social control. 42 In strong states one set of laws (those of the state) is supreme, a single jurisdiction is exercised over the national territory and population, and a single political status, that of citizenship, applies to all. State strength is exhibited in high levels of compliance, participation and legitimacy. Should the strong state be host to a democratic regime, it is able not only to deliver public goods but also to deliver them equitably. For these very reasons strong state institutions are vitally important for implementing peace agreements. The test for state strength is found in its interaction with society. Strong societies are characterised by social organisations capable of exercising social control over their members. Churches, kinship organisations, clans and families are typical examples. In pyramidal strong societies such diverse organisations tend to have compatible rules of social control – those of the church dovetail with those of


the family, the trade union and so on. Where this is the case, and where strong states are able to insert the rules of the state at the apex of this pyramid, then the laws of the state become complementary to the norms of society. Strong societies with incompatible rules of social control, however, provide formidable challenges to states. In such societies, typically comprised of a number of hostile, antagonistic ethnic groups, social norms tend to diverge and are difficult to merge. Cultural values tend to clash, and the collective esteem and worth of one culture tends to be asserted by denigrating those of the other cultures. 43 In these societies social control tends to extend along the lines of group identity and solidarity: these are multiple sectors of authority, with a weblike instead of a pyramidal framework. States attain dominance over these webs with difficulty, as each web vies with the state and with other webs for the loyalty, allegiance and compliance of citizens. Weak states fail in this attempt and tend to exhibit fragmented social control, unable to contain competing organisations also intent on exercising rule. Loyalty to the ‘community’, the group, the clan, or the cultural entity tends to be more compelling than loyalty to the state. These webs of identity, loyalty and obligations provide the social bases for strongmen and warlords, who present such severe problems to the leaders of weak states. Weak states typically exhibit high crime rates, civil disobedience, protection rackets and in extreme cases are host to private armies that control their own bases, which are ‘no-go’ areas to the personnel of the state and in which these opponents set up rival ‘state’ structures such as informal courts. Weak states also tend to be troubled by tax revolts, an informal economy operating parallel to the formal state-sanctioned one, and extensive smuggling networks which breach the borders regularly and evade formal state controls over goods and people. Finally, in weak states officials of the state themselves fail to comply with the laws of the state and engage in corruption. In extreme cases of state decay they engage in ‘dirty tricks’ such as death squads in order to eliminate opponents, and balkanise the state through intra-organisational rivalries and factions.44 The South African state was substantially weakened by the escalating reciprocal processes of revolt and repression during the 1980s and early 1990s. Corruption by state officials, dirty tricks by agents of the state who engaged in clandestine acts of murder, the rise of an informal economy beyond


the reach of state control, orchestrated tax boycotts in the black townships and school boycotts were all indicators of weakening authority of the apartheid state. This weakening of state authority posed problems for both the peace process and the democratic transition. For a start, a democratic state must be responsive to specific demands from citizens. It can, for example, respond to the needs of the poor and disadvantaged communities. But this must be done on a fair, non-discriminatory basis. Jointness of supply must prevail, that is, public goods such as police protection must be available to all citizens, not only to some. Non-excludability must apply, that is, measures to help the poor must be available to all poor citizens, not only to specific categories or communities. In divided societies where partisanship tends to be ascriptively shaped, and where adversaries tend to coalesce in relatively stable communities, the challenge to democracy is for the state to deliver public goods (such as public service appointments and state contracts) to all citizens without discrimination, irrespective of ascriptive identity, communal affiliation or partisan loyalty. Where this fails to materialise, the partisan ethnic state emerges as an instrument of one community and delivers public goods to that community at the expense of others, as was the practice for many decades in Northern Ireland.45 Corruption exacerbates such inequities and therefore undermines democracy directly. The apartheid state grossly violated these criteria, with hugely inequitable delivery of public goods, and it epitomised a partisan ethnic state.46 Democratic regimes are unable to flourish in weak partisan states. Not only is state strength therefore important for democratic stability, but its autonomy is vital to the containment of corruption. A strong autonomous state able to deliver public goods both competently and equitably, and therefore to provide citizenship of equal value, is a necessary yet still insufficient condition for democratic viability and for the containment of corruption. South Africa emerged into the ranks of democracies with a history of communal conflict, with deep social divisions, with political loyalties firmly and deeply entrenched against the state, and with a history of partisan state actions. It can be argued that the need for an autonomous state as the institutional entity for containing the impetus to corruption found in these communal loyalties and


obligations is evident. The need was required most urgently in the initial negotiated transition away from apartheid. The peace process had to be managed by a neutral agent who would not favour any party. South Africans created their own such authority, a domestic neutral umpire, so to speak. In the metaphor of the time, such neutrality served to ‘level the playing field’. Whether such even-handedness was in fact achieved, will be one of the themes taken up in this book. A neutral, non-partisan and autonomous state is equally important if the democratic peace is to be consolidated. Both the 1993 and 1996 constitutions will be examined for mechanisms to secure the autonomy of the state. The post-apartheid performance of state officials with regard to matters of corruption, and other gauges of state strength/weakness will also be scrutinised. Component III: building new units of security and democracy Where the state is considered a viable but still inadequate site for democracy, additional or alternative units come into consideration. Conceptualising the evolution of institutional forms beyond the conventional territorially defined, territorially fixed and mutually exclusive state has produced a number of vague notions, such as the ‘virtual state’, the ‘defective state’ and the ‘region state’. Some of the more prominent institutional changes have been the emergence of smaller units which result from the fragmentation of states along the lines of ethnic solidarities. Both Posen and Kaufmann have argued forcefully that the inability of the state of Yugoslavia to solve the multiple security dilemmas that emerged after 1990 within the state eventually led to its demise and breakup into smaller units. These small mini-states of Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia are now being built into new units of security, and also as units of democracy. However, security need not be pursued only by ever smaller political units. The security dilemma can also be addressed by constructing larger units. Where the security dilemma emerges between sovereign states in the international arena, the argument has been advanced that security can be gained through larger institutional configurations such as security regimes.47 Leaving aside the specific character of these international regimes, the general point can be made that states whose citizens are threatened by forces, including non-state actors, from outside their borders may resort to establishing larger units of authority in order to regain security.


The response to security problems appears to be that of both a fragmentation into units smaller than the territorial state, and a coalescence into larger units. The link between size, and the nature of jurisdictions, on the one hand, and the requirements of security and democracy, on the other, therefore needs to be conceptualised in more detail. Such greater conceptual depth can be found in the work of Robert A. Dahl and Edward R. Tufte. In their book Size and Democracy they raise the issue of trade-offs between two aspects of democracy which appear to be inversely related to the size of the democratic unit. Democratic theory, according to them, sets two criteria for the ideal political unit. The first is citizen effectiveness: ‘… citizens acting responsibly and competently fully control the decisions of the polity’. The second is system capacity: ‘… the polity has the capacity to respond fully to the collective preferences of its citizens’.48 In the ideal Greek city-state these criteria were met through direct democracy (for citizen effectiveness) and an autonomous, self-sufficient and small city-state (for system capacity). Democratic practice changed when the much larger national state became the unit of democracy, resulting in a reduction in the extent to which both criteria could be met simultaneously. Large powerful states could, as sovereign units, at least initially claim to be autonomous, but these entities required indirect forms of participation from citizens numbering millions, thus compromising citizen effectiveness. Continued evolution of the global economy, in particular, right into the present era of globalisation has further undercut the autonomy, and thus system capacity, of even these very large units of democracy. The overall thrust of the analysis by Dahl and Tufte is that while small homogeneous units may be most appropriate for meeting the requirements of citizen effectiveness, there is no optimal size unit for achieving system capacity.49 They argue that different problems (relating to capacity) can be dealt with effectively by different size units. One category of problems may require larger units ‘… [if], because of its boundaries, a political system lacks authority to secure compliance from certain actors whose behaviour results in significant costs (or loss of potential benefits) to the members of the system, then the boundaries of the political system are smaller than the boundaries of the political problem’. 50 The repertoire of examples is familiar: air and water pollution, nuclear proliferation,


contagious diseases, monetary stability, exploitation of the resource commons such as oceans and continental shelves. The following strategic responses are available to units whose boundaries are too small to deal effectively with a given problem. One is to adjust unilaterally by not taking any action, but just bearing the costs of the behaviour from beyond the boundaries of the system. The second is for the system to engage with the relevant other units in a process of mutual accommodation, reached through a process of negotiation. The third strategic option is to cooperate with adjacent units in order to establish new larger units, specifically designed to address the particular problem at hand and entrusted with a corresponding mandate and jurisdiction. These enlarged institutions may range from expanded unitary states to federations and confederations, (and, we may add, international regimes). At the other end of the spectrum are the instances where boundaries of units may be too large. ‘If the application of uniform rules throughout a political system with given boundaries imposes costs (or loss of benefits) on some actors that could be avoided (with no significant cost to others) by nonuniform rules, then the boundaries of the political system are larger than the boundaries of the political problem’.51 The strategic options open to such units appear now in a reverse sequence to those of too small units. The first option is, once again, for the unit to adjust unilaterally, to bear and absorb the costs of such deleterious behaviour. The second is to seek mutual adjustment, through a negotiated settlement. The third is to create new, smaller decentralised sub-units, small enough to include only the disadvantaged people within their jurisdiction. The various constitutional formulae of decentralised unitary states, federations and confederations feature again. The final option is to establish completely new, smaller sovereign territorial states, whose members come exclusively from the ranks of the disaffected. Clearly, given the range of problems facing many contemporary states, the pressure is created to construct both larger and smaller units. Even a single-problem issue such as security can generate pressure towards both smaller (ethnic mini-states) and larger (security regimes/ communities) units. Dahl and Tufte conclude with the proposition that democratic theory should abandon the search for an optimal size unit. Instead, it should take as given that a multiplicity of units should serve to


enhance system capacity, and that the task should be one to find the optimal number of units appropriate to democracy in any particular setting. In a remarkably prescient conclusion, they present a view on the future configuration of democracy highly appropriate to an international context characterised by both state decline and an increasingly globalised economy: Rather than conceiving of democracy as located in a particular kind of inclusive, sovereign unit, we must learn to conceive of democracy spreading through a set of interrelated political systems, sometimes though not always arranged like Chinese boxes, the smaller nesting in the larger. The central theoretical problem is no longer to find suitable rules, like the majority principle, to apply within a sovereign unit, but to find suitable rules to apply among a variety of units, none of which is sovereign.52 Every one of the variables noted above are relevant to the South African transition. Smaller units, in the form of 9 provinces, are an integral aspect of the new democratic constitution. A larger unit in the form of the Southern African Development Community has also been reconstituted, and has very rapidly evolved into a regional body dealing with security issues. The democratic quality of this larger unit of security is open to question, and will be scrutinised in a later chapter of this book. Component IV: the micro-level: symbolic politics How do societies cope with the perennial losers in their own ranks? To be politically powerless and/or economically deprived is painful not only because of its detrimental impact on the ability to take care of material and social needs. Horowitz’s theory suggests an additional dimension of deprivation. To be poor is stressful not only due to material deprivation, but also because of the indignity and humiliation. Poverty can be experienced as a highly visible indication of being a loser, being backward, unable to compete and therefore inferior. Unless some very specific alternative sources of gratification are found, the poor and powerless find it very difficult to make a positive evaluation of themselves. This applies even more so when these people share an ascriptive identity based on race or


religion, because then the poverty/powerlessness can so easily be explained by these given attributes instead of by outside forces. Historically one of the more successful ways of dealing with this issue in the modern societies of Western Europe has been the institution of the welfare state. The losers in the capitalist economy, with their potential for violent responses to their predicament, have been pacified with a state-led material support system. Ernst Gellner cynically puts it this way: ‘Industrial society’s … favoured mode of social control is universal Danegeld, buying off social aggression with material enhancement.’ Progress, as measured in economic growth and rising per capita incomes, provides the expanding tax base for a state capacity for redistribution. This strategy is not without its flaws: ‘… its greatest weakness is its inability to survive any temporary reduction of the social bribery fund, and to weather the loss of legitimacy which befalls it if the cornucopia becomes temporarily jammed and the flow falters’.53 In the absence of material wealth individual and collective aggression, driven by the need to assert the worthiness of the self, has to be tempered by other goods. One such set of goods lies in the gratification provided by political affirmation. Ownership of a state, reflected in its symbols and formal rituals, as Horowitz has argued, can serve equally well, in the absence of, or even at the expense of, economic prosperity.54 But ethnic ownership of the state in a multiethnic society just serves to exacerbate matters when the symbols of the state display the cultural attributes of one group only, when the language of that group becomes the sole language of the state, etc. An ethnically neutral state, autonomous from each of the contesting groups (as argued above) seems to be required. But neutral may also mean bland, boring, insipid and uninspiring. The symbolic presence of the autonomous state holds the danger of being without symbolic meaning to anybody, and therefore unable to offer emotional gratification for the poor and deprived of each and every sector of society. The appropriate symbolic content to which people across an ethnic divide can relate remains rare and elusive. This requirement is nonetheless essential to a successful peace process, especially where the antagonists are defined in ethnic terms, have strong sources of communal support, and have engaged one another in conflict that stretches over generations. Clearly a peace process will need an extended repertoire of symbols if it is to


be successfully consolidated. This study will consider the symbolic politics of the South African transition and also of the years leading to the second election of 1999. The adequacy of symbolic politics in dealing with the culture of violence in South Africa will also be examined.


Part I The Development of the South African Peace Process


2

The Violent Transition

Introduction: the conflict and the metaconflict This chapter provides a description of the conflict in South Africa. The major adversaries, their strategic and tactical approaches, the violent confrontations, and the resulting casualties, especially in the era from 1984 to 1994 will be presented. This is not an uncomplicated matter. In analysing the conflict inside South Africa, one has to recognise the metaconflict, that is, the conflict over the nature of the conflict.1 How are the belligerents to be defined, by race, class, nationalism, ethnicity, religion, region or any combination of these? What have they been contesting: the distribution of the material benefits of the wealth produced by industrial capitalism, the cultural values ensconced in religion or language, political power, the racial identities acquired at birth, or a combination of these? As the conflict escalated into higher levels of violence during the 1980s, the metaconflict acquired a new focus: who was attacking whom, with what, for what purpose and to what effect? Additionally, the moral dimension of the metaconflict assumed a more urgent and strident edge: who instigated violent confrontations, who gave the orders to attack, who was pursuing a just cause, who was to blame for the violence, and who should be held accountable? This metaconflict has both an empirical and a normative dimension, and the two are closely linked. The normative dimension is about right and wrong, just and unjust causes, morally superior and morally bankrupt positions. The empirical dimension, which political actors use to sustain and defend their normative positions, not 31

32 Development of South African Peace Process

only deals with contending theoretical perspectives and analytical categories. It also entails a dispute over measurement: how many people died in specific atrocities, who were civilians and who qualified as combatants, who were the victims, and who the perpetrators? Different research bodies produced divergent statistics and interpretations, some more amenable to the agendas of specific political actors than others.2 A late entrant into the metaconflict was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Established in 1995 as an official Commission of Inquiry into public violence from 1960 to 1994, the TRC was mandated, amongst other things, to analyse and describe the ‘causes, nature and extent’ of gross human rights violations which resulted from the use of violence, to make recommendations about the prevention of future violations of this kind, to recommend actions aimed at the restoration of the dignity of victims and for reparation for such victims, and to recommend the granting of amnesty to perpetrators of violence. The TRC produced a unique data base. During the course of its proceedings it received 21 298 statements from individuals who came forward of their own volition. These submissions, augmented by various printed records, formed the basis of the information used to reach an eventual understanding of the ‘truth’. The Commission acknowledged four kinds of truth: factual or forensic truth, that is, empirically verifiable events and actions; personal and narrative truth, comprising subjective accounts and recollections of any individual about an event ‘... as he or she sees it’; social truth, which refers to the ‘motives and perspectives’ of the various participants; and restorative truth, the public acknowledgement of the events relevant to the depositions of individual contributors.3 In arriving at their findings the Commission attempted to corroborate the narrative truths of the 21 000 submissions with empirically verifiable records so as to establish whether allegations made in them, (some going back 20 or even 30 years) were, ‘on a balance of probability, true’. Given that many of the submissions referred to two or more victims, the eventual task of corroboration added up to more than 50 000 cases. By their own admission, this proved to be an unattainable task, especially given their second major objective, the moral and healing process of reconciliation. Therefore, the Commission did not cross-examine witnesses, unless, in their view,

The Violent Transition 33

they saw glaring inconsistencies in their oral testimony. 4 The outcome then was usually an amicable interchange between Commissioners and deponents, which may have furthered the process of healing, but was not necessarily conducive to establishing factual truth. The overall result was that the danger of narrative truth and social truth seeping into factual truth without corroboration became greatly enhanced.5 Other major methodological weaknesses in establishing the ‘truth’, (which in turn should provide the platform for reconciliation) have been revealed. In a devastating critique of the workings of the TRC, researcher Anthea Jeffery has found that: • The database, consisting of submissions by individuals in many cases (17 500 instances) contains the testimony of individuals who reported on the experiences of other people, that is hearsay, instead of personal experiences or direct observations. These were subjected to a ‘low level’ of corroboration, at times even falling short of establishing the identity of alleged perpetrators, yet the TRC still used these data in making findings of accountability. • Conclusions about culpability were reached while the proceedings of the Amnesty Committee were still in progress. With statements relevant to 92 per cent of amnesty applications still outstanding the TRC nonetheless made findings on accountability for human rights violations. • The TRC investigated in some detail the deaths of 9980 people, when according to one research body the number of fatalities from September 1984 to May 1994 added up to 20 500. (See Table 2.1) Of these 9980 deaths investigated, the TRC reached findings on 8500 of them, leaving about 60 per cent (12 000) of the deaths yet to be explained. • Selective emphasis abounds. Jeffery accused the TRC of not being evenhanded in its probes, and of favouring the ANC in its selectivity. The State Security Council, for example, is examined closely for its role in steering the ‘total strategy’, but the role of the African National Congress’s (ANC) Politico-Military Council in directing the ‘People’s War’ is scrutinised far less energetically. Similarly, some massacres are greatly emphasised, others ignored. The Trust Feed massacre, for example, where a police officer was found to have collaborated with the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP)


Table 2.1 Political violence fatalities in KwaZulu-Natal and South Africa as a whole, 1984–1998 Year

KwaZulu-Natal only

The whole of South Africa

1984* 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 Sub-total

9 117 101 451 912 1279 2869

149 879 1298 661 1149 1403 5539

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 Sub-total

1811 1057 1427 1489 1464 10 117

3699 2706 3347 3794 2476 21 561

1995 1996 1997 1998 Total

684 347 226 n.a. 11 374

1044 683 470 353 24 111

* This figure is taken from September to December 1984. Source: Adapted from Elizabeth Sidiropoulos et al., South Africa Survey, 1997/98, Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1998, pp. 51, 52; and South African Institute of Race Relations, Fast Facts, no. 2/97, February 1997, p. 3.

in killing 11 people, is amply documented, but the Kwashange massacre, where a police officer worked with the United Democratic Front (UDF) to kill 13 people, is not mentioned. The UDF was found to be accountable for the worst excesses of the strategy of ‘ungovernability’, but the fact that the UDF disbanded in August 1991, while atrocities such as necklace murders continued into 1994, was not taken into account. • Finally, Jeffery found that the TRC did not uphold some crucial established legal principles, such as audi alteram partem – ‘hear the other side’. It also disregarded earlier judicial findings and made its own findings, which differed from earlier judicial rulings, without producing new evidence to support these new conclusions.6


The TRC did not rise above the metaconflict in South African politics. It was clearly mandated to attempt this, but it ended up producing yet another interpretive perspective on the conflict which now competes alongside the others. No reconciliation of perspectives was achieved. The aim of this study is not so much as to evaluate the metatheoretical merits of the TRC’s findings, or to repeat its task of finding the ‘factual truth’, but to consider to what extent their work has contributed on a symbolic level to the process of peace building. This theme will be taken up in Chapter 7. This does not mean that the findings of the TRC will be discarded. On the contrary, these findings remain important for two reasons. First, even given its weak empirical authority, its findings do present a modest contribution to the factual knowledge on the subject of political violence, especially those relevant to the rules of war, and when read with other findings, helps to enlarge our overall understanding of events. Secondly, the findings of the TRC remain important, and will be taken note of if only by virtue of the fact that they were produced by a body whose workings are central to the peace process itself, and whose mandate in the broadest terms was to promote the peace process. What is important, is what their findings reveal about the nature of the conflict to them, and how they used these findings to try to influence the peace process.

Apartheid and the security dilemma For the most part of this century South Africa’s politics has been dominated by the issue of apartheid. Because of its racially defined institutional separation between communities, dictated by the white rulers of the country and applied in a discriminatory way, apartheid was widely recognised as morally offensive. It also invited conflict, as its legitimacy was challenged from the outset by black South Africans, without their having democratic channels of protest available to express their discontent. Escalating levels of revolt and repression were widely predicted7 and eventually ensued. Apartheid itself can be understood in terms of the concept of a security dilemma outlined in the previous chapter. The origins of this system of domination can be traced back to the start of the colonial era, but for the purposes of this chapter, the Anglo-Boer War of a


century ago (1899–1902) can be taken as a pivotal event. This war, fought between British imperial forces and the settler Afrikaner republics ended in defeat for the republicans. The manner of their eventual defeat was crucial to the politics of this century. The British forces gained the final upper hand in the war by countering the guerilla tactics of the republicans with what would be described in today’s terms as ethnic cleansing. The rural Afrikaner civilian population (mostly women and children) were forcibly removed from their farms and detained in what were known as ‘concentration camps’, where seven out of every 20 children died from epidemic diseases. The remaining empty farmsteads (about 30 000) and villages (about 20) were burnt down in a scorched earth policy.8 This devastating destruction had a profound impact on the subsequent generations of Afrikaner nationalists. Humiliated, subjugated and dislocated, these nationalists experienced a pervasive sense of insecurity, threat and anxiety, and were determined if not obsessed with regaining political security. This became possible with the 1910 Act of Union, which reserved the franchise for whites only. Political power was captured by the Afrikaner nationalists with the National Party’s (NP) election victory in 1948, thus securing their political future from the receding white English presence. The more formidable rising threat, that of African nationalists, representing the disenfranchised black South Africans and led by the African National Congress, was dealt with by developing the system of apartheid, an elaboration of the model proposed by Lord Milner’s South African Native Affairs Commission in 1903. Security through apartheid represented the security dilemma writ large. Whites sought safety through a discriminatory system which denied security to the majority of black South Africans. The more elaborate and comprehensive the system, the greater the threat it provided to black South Africans, and the more reason it gave to the African nationalists to rebel against it, which in turn made the security it could provide to white South Africans ever more tenuous and flimsy. The first pillar on which this discriminatory system rested was the constitutional denial of voting rights to black South Africans, entrenched in the founding Act of Union of 1910, when the four British colonies were consolidated. The second pillar was the legally required registration of racial identity into the four categories of


white, African, Indian and Coloured. From this followed the practical politics of racial discrimination. White parliaments enacted law upon law to effect racial segregation of the country, and to regulate the movement of people. This was followed by differential delivery of public goods. Invariably policies favoured whites over the others. The Group Areas Act, for example, which sought to segregate cities, was applied in such a way that between 1950 and the mid 1980s about 80 000 Coloured and 38 000 Indian families were forcibly relocated, as opposed to 2000 white families. 9 The infamous pass laws were applied exclusively to Africans, inhibiting their movement from rural areas into the cities, and resettling those already there back into the rural regions from where they migrated. Between 1950 and 1990 up to 1.4 million Africans were resettled in this way.10 It has been calculated that the total number of people removed from their homes against their will between 1960 and 1983 stood at 3.5 million.11 Official economic discrimination reserved the most highly paid jobs for whites with the result that by 1970 whites (then about 20 per cent of the population) received more than 70 per cent of the country’s total personal income. 12 Public spending also benefited white South Africans. Education is a case in point. In 1975 the per capita white/black spending ratio on pupils stood at 15:1 in favour of whites.13 And finally, these discriminatory measures were implemented with some vigour. It has been calculated that more than 26 million Africans were prosecuted under the various laws restraining their free movement in the country between 1916 and 1982.14 The above data describes the tangible aspects of discrimination and dislocation which followed from apartheid policies. Less visible, but equally, if not more painful, were the elements of humiliation built into this system of discrimination. One of the pillars of this system was the requirement that every person be classified into one of the four racial categories. The logical extension of this stipulation was that marriages across the colour line had to be prohibited. This had to be enforced. To enforce the Immorality Act and Mixed Marriages Act required of state officials to open to public scrutiny some of the most intimate social relationships, and to forcibly break up families. Public humiliation and shaming often followed on convictions, with the criminalizing of relationships based entirely on affection. The actual function of these laws were not really to


control social behaviour, as by the 1940s, just prior to the enactment of these laws, fewer than 100 such marriages were concluded annually.15 Their real function were to stigmatise those South Africans who were not classified white as being socially inferior. In the long term this was a policy which was unsustainable and against Afrikaners’ own best interests. The rapidly increasing black population made the administrative costs of implementing this policy increasingly expensive, requiring ever more money and personnel. The resentment amongst black South Africans grew, and the resolve among white South Africans to maintain the system declined. P. W. Botha, South Africa’s prime minister from 1978, had to confront this dilemma and find a way out. The state responded with coercive repression and with negotiations, in that order.

Low Intensity Conflict Doctrine and strategy The opposing forces in the violent confrontation inside South Africa, especially from 1960 onwards, were both driven by a distinct and well-articulated doctrine, strategy and ideological rationale. The incumbents of the state, the National Party, positioned themselves in terms of the doctrine of a perceived ‘total onslaught’ which they had to confront, and did so with a ‘total strategy’ as guiding principle. The African National Congress and its allies developed the doctrine of the armed struggle, and later of ‘People’s War’, with the concomitant strategy of ‘ungovernability’ as their core strategic guideline. The total onslaught doctrine was cemented in the Cold War notion of East/West confrontation, and the need for the containment of the forces of the Soviet Union. In 1970 the then Minister of Defence in the NP government, P.W. Botha, started advocating the view that the Soviets were pursuing a global strategy of expanding Communism, which included an indirect component, entailing the use of surrogate forces in areas outside the direct sphere of Western influence. Africa was seen as one such part of the ‘soft underbelly’, and the African National Congress and its ally, the South African Communist Party, as the Soviet surrogates. Their campaign against the Western-allied South African government was, according to Botha, an essential part of the global Cold War.16 This global


onslaught, ultimately sponsored by the Soviets, was seen to be multi-dimensional, ranging from the use of coercive force through to persuasive and enticing propaganda tactics. The entire South African society was seen to be at risk: the political/diplomatic base of the state, the economic base of society, the social/psychological base of the population and the security base of the state were seen as the multiple targets of this onslaught.17 This required a defensive response that matched the contours of the offensive initiative: ‘A total national strategy is, therefore not confined to a particular sphere, but is applicable at all levels and to all functions of the state structure. The main elements which influence this, namely, the political, economic, psychological, technological and military means are, in the strategic sense, dynamic and interacting’. 18 All four bases of power cited above would be integrated into the total strategy. The state had at its disposal a wide range of security legislation with which to implement this strategy. Starting with the first of the often amended Riotous Assemblies Acts of 1914, the restriction of the liberties of people to hold public gatherings were gradually extended. A centrepiece of this type of legislation was the Suppression of Communism Act of 1950 which extensively broadened the scope for state actions against internal opposition. The Unlawful Organisations Act of 1960 made provision for the state to ban organisations and to detain people, which was promptly used against the ANC and Pan Africanist Congress, while the General Law Amendment Acts of 1962 and 1963 provided for the declaration of a state of emergency and the detention of leaders.19 These and other laws were put into effect with the deployment of the total strategy. Two successive states of emergency were declared in 1985 and 1986, under which many security regulations came into effect. It has been estimated that up to 32 000 people were detained under these regulations between June 1985 and September 1988, and 32 organisations were served with banning orders in the same period. Some of those who were detained, did not survive. Between 1963 and 1988, 68 of them died while in detention, with Steve Biko, leader of the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa, as the most famous one.20 The strategic thinking of the ANC and its allies developed rapidly after the banning orders of 1960. Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the ANC, announced its armed struggle on 16 December 1961. At the Morogoro conference in 1969 the aim of


this military campaign was clearly spelt out as being the ‘conquest of power’, through what was foreseen as a programme of classic guerilla warfare.21 In the 1980s the strategic repertoire was broadened beyond the range of military actions only, as summarised in the Four Pillars of the struggle: armed actions, mass mobilisation, underground organisation and the international isolation of the country. This train of thinking was extended further in 1985 at the Kabwe conference with the acceptance of the doctrine of a ‘People’s War’. Central to this concept was the idea that the liberation army should be merged with the civilian population. This civilian population, in turn, should then also engage actively in both military and political forms of struggle. 22 A general insurrection was seen as the eventual objective of this strategy. A key ingredient of this strategic approach was that of making the country ‘ungovernable’, which in a narrow definition was focused on destroying the ‘... apartheid state machinery’.23 Midway between these two positions, in terms of doctrine and strategy, is the space taken up by Inkatha. Established in 1975 under the leadership of chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who was also the chief minister of the KwaZulu homeland, the Inkatha strategy was built on exploiting the advantages of incumbency. Situated on the apartheid grid as the ruling party of the KwaZulu ‘homeland’, Inkatha had access to political, bureaucratic and financial and physical resources not available to the banned ANC alliance. Using its legally protected powerbase, it deliberately thwarted the objectives of the NP government. Inkatha refused to accept ‘independence’ for KwaZulu, but sought to build an organisation with too large a presence to be either banned or disregarded, and campaigned for the abolition of apartheid from within the system. At the same time, Inkatha refused to accept the notion of armed confrontation with the government, and also refused to accept the leadership claims of the ANC in the anti-apartheid ranks. Non-violent strategies, such as the use of the black economic power base and increasing the cost and difficulty of the implementation of apartheid policies, served as general strategic guidelines.24 A feature of the anti-apartheid political landscape has been the dominance of the ANC over its competitors within the black population. A number of reasons can be offered for this. First, as the oldest anti-apartheid movement (established in 1912) it held a


status not matched by any newcomer. Secondly, from the outset, the ANC drew high calibre people into its leadership ranks, with Mandela as the outstanding figure. Thirdly, it projected itself on a national basis, thus targeting the entire black population of the country as its recruiting ground. Fourthly, it avoided taking a too narrow principled stance on matters of ideology. Its major policy document for many years, the Freedom Charter, adopted in 1955, was ambiguous enough to satisfy Marxist and non-Marxist, liberal and African Nationalist alike. Finally, its most important competitor of the 1980s, Inkatha, from the very outset positioned itself as an organisation with a Zulu support base, and the KwaZulu homeland as a regional stronghold. When the IFP tried to establish itself as a national presence in the 1990s, they did so by mobilising migrant Zulu speakers in the industrial areas of the Johannesburg metropolis. This lead to intensely violent confrontations with the ANC, from which the latter emerged with their support base intact. A final striking feature of the strategic approach of each of these three major adversaries was their normative justification for the use of coercive means. They all claimed to act in self-defence. The ANC alliance were defending themselves against the apartheid state, which was engaged in a war of counter-revolution and destabilisation through the security forces and its surrogate, Inkatha.25 Inkatha was defending itself against the ANC and its surrogate, the United Democratic Front (UDF) which saw Inkatha as a prime rival to their leadership role within the anti-apartheid formations and an obstruction to their deployment of the strategy of ungovernability. 26 The NP, as government, were defending the state and the maintenance of law and order. As political party the NP was defending the right of Afrikaners to self-determination ‘... within a territorially partitioned South Africa’.27 Within the context of a spiralling conflict, where violence was met with violence, every one of these claims held elements of validity. The only real question is who started it all. The short answer is that the predecessors of the NP, incumbents of state power from 1910, initiated the spiral in their attempt to deal with perceived threats to their own security. The results The compound effect of the implementation of these strategic doctrines was a conflict in which the distinctions between state, society,


army and social movement became increasingly indistinct. The end result is that most of the fatalities were civilians, and many of the acts of violence were atrocities involving the gross violation of human rights. The overall statistics of deaths in political violence, as compiled by the South African Institute of Race Relations, are summarised in the accompanying Table 2.1 and Figure 2.1. Who were the prime actors in this violent confrontation? The TRC came to the following conclusion: the Commission is of the view that gross violations of human rights were perpetrated or facilitated by all the major roleplayers ... These include: A. The state and its security, intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, the SAP, the SADF and the NIS. B. Groups and institutions which, to a greater or lesser extent, were affiliated or allied to the state in an official capacity. These include homeland governments and their security forces as well as groups and institutions informally allied to the state or receiv-

Figure 2.1

Political violence fatalities, 1984–98

4000 3500 3000 2500 No. 2000 of deaths 1500 1000 500 0

84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98

KwaZulu–Natal

South Africa

Source: Adapted from Elizabeth Sidiropoulos et al., South Africa Survey, 1997/98; Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1998, pp. 51, 52; and South African Institute of Race Relations, Fast Facts, no. 2/97, February 1997, p. 3.


ing financial or logistical assistance from the state in order to oppose and/or withstand the liberation movements and their internal allies. Groups falling into this category include the IFP and conservative surrogate organisations and groupings like the witdoeke, AmaAfrika and the Eagles. C. White rightwing organisations which, while actively opposing the state, actively and violently took action to preserve the status quo in the 1990s. These include the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB), the Afrikaner Volksfront and the Boere Bevrydingsbeweging. D. Liberation movements and organisations which sought to bring about change through armed struggle and which operated outside South Africa and by covert and underground means inside the country. E. Organisations which sought to bring about change by nonviolent means prior to and post-1990, including the United Democratic Front; and F. Non-state paramilitary formations such as the ANC’s selfdefence units and the IFP’s self-protection units (SPUs).28 The TRC found evidence of and made findings on a wide range of such atrocities. Some of them can be listed briefly in order to outline the intensity of the conflict, the extent to which the social fabric of society, family and community were assaulted, and the scale and dispersion of the violence. This outline also indicates the immensity of the challenge posed to the peace process initiated by Mandela and De Klerk. The TRC found that the state committed ‘judicial killings’ by the sentencing to death and execution of people who were convicted of political offences.29 The various agencies of the state were also responsible for a wide range of extra-judicial killings. These included the assassination of activists, ambushes of military personnel or those linked to military units of the liberation movements who were entering the country, ... ‘entrapment killings’ where security force personnel of the state often supplied booby-trapped weapons to activists who then died in subsequent action, and the killing of detainees either in the process of being arrested or while they were instructed to point out arms caches. 30 Specific agencies held accountable for these extra-judicial killings included the State


President and cabinet ministers in charge of security portfolios, the Commissioner of Police, the head of the Security Branch of the Police, and the chiefs of the following units within the security establishment: the Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB); the Chief of Staff Intelligence (CSI); Section C-10 (the infamous Vlakplaas unit) and the National Intelligence Service (NIS). To this one has to add to the account of the state the widespread use of torture of detainees and unnatural deaths in custody. 31 Many civilian deaths caused by the state were the result of the use of lethal force in crowd control measures, with Sharpeville as the quintessential example.32 In the Natal province and the KwaZulu homeland the contest for political ascendancy was intensely violent. The Commission found evidence and made findings on heavy covert state involvement in that arena of violence. The SAP, and the Special Branch in particular, engaged in torture and assault of detainees from the early 1960s onwards.33 As the conflict escalated in the early 1980s, public order policing also became more brutal and the use of ‘special constables’, that is, hurriedly recruited and trained individuals, who consequently lacked the necessary discipline and self-restraint, led to violence and deaths in the course of public order policing, for which the SAP was found to be accountable.34 Covert actions followed. The Trust Feed massacre of 1988 resulted in the deaths of 11 civilians. Officers of the SAP, special constables and members of Inkatha were found by the Commission to be accountable for this atrocity.35 Both the SAP and SADF were found to have been involved in the training (Operation Marion) and subsequent deployment of Inkatha civilians as paramilitary units (such as the ‘Esikhawini hit squad’).36 Finally, Inkatha members and supporters were held accountable for fatalities which resulted from crowd violence.37 The Commission found that civilians died as the result of military actions by MK, the armed wing of the ANC, when these operations were initiated by units who were acting at their own discretion, beyond the supervision from higher level command structures. These civilian deaths resulted from either deliberately planned military activities, unplanned operations, the use of landmines, which do not discriminate at all as to victims, and the deliberate killing of individuals targeted (rightly or wrongly) as ‘defectors’ or ‘informers’.38 A special category of affiliation with the state was assigned to Inkatha, with its leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi being variously


described as a ‘sell-out’ and ‘puppet of Pretoria’. According to the Commisssion this led to Inkatha gaining the general status of a ‘legitimate target’, and as part of ‘the enemy’. The end result of such violent targeting was the killing of 67 Inkatha office-bearers between 1985 and 1994, for which the ANC, UDF and MK were held accountable.39 The overall finding of the TRC in this regard was that MK killed more civilians than members of the security forces of the state against which they were conducting their military campaign.40 The PAC was found to have conducted deliberate campaigns against civilians, both black and white, during the early 1960s and again in the early 1990s. During the 1960s civilians targeted included dissident members in their own ranks, traditional leaders in the ‘homelands’ and white civilians in non-combat situations. In the 1990s white farmers were singled out for attack.41 The aspect of the conflict with the most direct impact on the social fabric of mostly black communities was that in which the warlords, the police forces of the homelands (especially the KwaZulu Police, KZP) and the various informal paramilitaries of the liberation movement affiliated to, or associated with the United Democratic Front (UDF) engaged one another. The UDF operated as a loose federation of organisations (at its largest, about 700), coordinated by a small leadership, with regional and local branches, but without centralised control.42 This structure made it almost impossible for the state to capture, neutralise, eliminate or contain its decision-making capacity. Conversely, it made it equally difficult for leaders at the apex to control, command, discipline and steer their own member organisations. This applied especially to holding the line with respect to the official UDF policy of non-violence. Paramilitary organisation in the ranks of the UDF, especially in the province of Natal, came to centre on the ‘comrades’ movement. According to some analysts, the emergence of these units was not just the result of social breakdown and normlessness within the destabilised black communities. They were the outcome of a socially cohesive and highly militarised youth culture. 43 Wherever these units emerged they organised themselves in ‘defensive’ formations, each intent on holding a specific geographic area against all comers, usually either Inkatha, the KZP or the SAP, but also authorities within their own communities such as parents and elders, and other youth-based rivals. With only a broad, vague notion of who the


enemy was, and of how the struggle had to be conducted filtering into this militant youth culture, such territorial contestation and control could, and did, escalate into gruesome confrontations and acts of violence.44 The TRC found the UDF to be accountable for many such actions, such as violent enforcement of school, worker and consumer boycotts, violent campaigns against black local authorities and municipal police officers, and through crowd violence during mass protest marches.45 One of the more horrific methods of killing which was deployed was that of necklacing. This involved the burning alive of a victim by means of motor car tyre, soaked in petrol, which was draped around the neck of the individual. In the most extreme cases, the victim was required to drink petrol beforehand, and then given a petrol soaked cigarette to light. These burnings were often conducted in full view of the surrounding community (and the media). The TRC finding of UDF accountability for necklacing is one which is made within a hugely contested terrain. Firstly, parties dispute the number of such victims, and secondly they disagree on who authorised and who executed these actions. Most analyses concur that more than 500 people died in this way between 1986 and 1994. The NP accused the ANC of being the instigator, but they denied this and retorted that state agents, conducting ‘false flag’ tactics, were implicated in such atrocities. 46 The TRC found some evidence to support this.47 The purpose of this study is not to try to settle the dispute, but to make the point that these actions of extreme violence were committed within communities, by people from the ranks of these communities and/or agents from the state operative within these communities without any apparent authorisation from anybody in the ranks of the political leadership. This reveals in its most stark form the two outstanding features of the conflict prior to 1994: para-military and military units who operated largely on their own, and who did so without making a clear distinction as to soldiers and civilians, army and society, state and society. This allowed them to view society itself as the war zone.

Post-settlement violence The success of the negotiated transition lies in the extent to which it has removed the overt political element from the causes of public


violence. After the 1994 elections political violence decreased dramatically, but this still did not inaugurate a violence-free South Africa. Criminal violence, for one, did not dissipate with the establishment of the new democracy. In 1995 alone 220 990 cases of assault were reported, 26 637 people were murdered (more than the number of political fatalities for the entire decade of 1984–1994), and 47 506 cases of rape and 120 952 cases of robbery were reported. 48 Restated in a slightly different way, every day in 1995 saw 52 people murdered, a rape committed every 30 minutes, an armed robbery every 11 minutes, and a car stolen every 9 minutes. 49 In comparative perspective, the murder rate in South Africa stood at a ratio of 65 for every 100 000 of the population, compared to less than 10 per 100 000 for Canada, the USA and Sweden. South Africa was also far worse off than neighbouring Botswana (about 16 per 100 000) but at least better off than Swaziland (almost 80 per 100 000).50 The new government has had great difficulty in containing and reducing these levels of violent crime. Comparing the data from 1994 and 1997,51 it was found that the murder rate dropped by 20 per cent, and robbery with aggravating circumstances by 26 per cent, but rape increased by 23 per cent, indecent assault by 26 per cent and common robbery by 50 per cent.52 The rate of convictions for serious crime has also declined. In 1995/96 the conviction rate for murder was 32 per cent down on the rate for 1991/92, that of car hijacking was down by 19 per cent, and for rape down 16 per cent. Some of the acts of violence reflected in the above data took place within particular communal settings. They were communally based in the sense that the agents of violence were organisations rather than individuals, that were located in particular regions or urban areas and that found support from particular sections of the populace. The most high-profile of these communal agents of violence has been the vigilante organisation People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD), based in Cape Town in the area known as the Cape Flats. They initially drew widespread endorsement for their antidrug campaign, with their core support coming from the Muslim community. PAGAD emerged in 1996 with the public execution (in full view of the media) of Rashaad Staggie, co-leader of the Hard Livings gang. Their initial strategy was one of public protest, staging more than 100 marches to the homes of alleged drug dealers, which they later combined with drive-by shootings, and petrol bomb and


hand-grenade attacks against these dealers. By 1997 their campaign shifted increasingly towards violent methods, with 71 recorded attacks, and only 41 marches. By 1998 the police were describing them as an anti-state ‘urban terrorist’ group. 53 In 1999 urban violence assumed a different format, with a series of pipebomb explosions for which nobody claimed responsibility, but given their highly selective targeting, such as the Planet Hollywood restaurant in Cape Town which followed shortly after the bombing of the US Embassies in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam in August 1998, some political intent can be assumed. Violence generated by urban criminal gangs also escalated after 1994. Criminal street gangs are integral to the urban social structure of the poorest sections of Cape Town’s black population. Their emergence can be traced to the forced removal of the many working class families from District Six in Cape Town to the Cape Flats under the Group Areas Act during the 1950s and 1960s. This lead to the breakdown of extended families and with it the social control over the urban youth. Gangs filled this social space. 54 These gangs did not disperse or decline with the end of apartheid, and may have expanded into new social space. According to one police report there were about 137 gangs operating in the Western Cape region by 1996, with a combined membership ranging from 30 000 to 50 000. About 100 of these gangs were found in the Cape Flats, the most prominent being the Hard Livings, the Americans, the Mongrels, the 27s, the 28s and the Vietnam Rats.55 Communal conflict also re-emerged in the rural areas. One conflict of almost byzantine complexity is the communal violence experienced in the Tsolo and Qumbu districts of the Eastern Cape Province. Police statistics for this rural area record 905 murders from 1994 to June 1996, and 314 cases of attempted murder were reported to the authorities.56 The initial precipitant for the conflict was stocktheft, which then rapidly escalated into more violent cycles of reprisals, retaliation, and vengeance in which vigilante organisations, members of the Eastern Cape provincial government and even the police were implicated. According to an official investigation, by 1997 entire villages had resorted to lawless actions of self-protection on their own, having completely abandoned hope of any authority being able to secure their safety.57 Communal conflict also resurfaced in the Richmond area of KwaZulu–Natal. The quintessential strongman, Sifiso Nkabinde, was


accused in a confidential report by the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) of establishing a private army in the Richmond area, of setting up hit-squad activities and of engaging in gunrunning. He was expelled from the ANC during mid-1997, arrested after a series of violent clashes in the area, and charged with the murder of 18 persons. 58 In early 1998 he was acquitted on all charges and released. The case of the state was dismissed by the presiding judge who described state witnesses as ‘liars’, and cited police irregularity and improper conduct in their handling of the case. 59 Nkabinde returned to Richmond and joined the United Democratic Movement. Violence also returned. By the end of August 1998 23 more people were killed in three separate massacres. In January 1999 he was gunned down by assassins in the main street of Richmond. In swift retaliation 11 members of the ANC were killed two days later during a prayer vigil. The white farming community became another very specific target of violent attacks. In 1995 there were 551 reported attacks on farms and smallholdings, resulting in the death of 121 persons. In 1996 468 attacks lead to the death of another 109 farmers. In 1997 these attacks declined somewhat to 347, in which 85 farmers lost their lives.60 The public debate is on whether these killings are politically motivated or yet another dimension of violent crime. The matter remains unresolved. Finally, yet another distinctive category of public violence that bears on cultural values central to community life is that associated with witchcraft. This tends to be concentrated in the Northern Province of the country, and from the early 1990s there has been a steady rise in the number of reported incidents. These incidents range from so-called muti murders, where the aim is to obtain bodily parts for use in potions which are then assumed to acquire magical properties, through to witch-purging, in the form of expulsion, destruction of property and also murder, and labeling of people as witches. From 1990 to April 1995 445 such cases were reported to the authorities. In 1996 this figure rose dramatically to 1182 reported cases, and then again decreased in the first half of 1997 to 321 cases. The number of deaths which resulted from these events is not easily ascertained, but the official estimate for the year April 1994 to April 1995 stands at 228, declining to 24, 17 and 11 in the following years.61 The element of continuity between the violence of society under apartheid and the violence of post-apartheid society is significant.


This indicates that the end of apartheid did not eliminate all factors which sustain violent behaviour in society. One such factor which survived the democratic transition is the culture of violence. There are two significant features to the overall picture of postsettlement public violence outlined above which are relevant to the peace process in South Africa. The first is the precarious position of the police. On the one hand, there are many reports of police involvement in crime. Corruption appears to be an escalating problem. In 1993 32 police officers were investigated under charges of corruption. By 1996 the number had risen to the annual figure of 1067.62 In 1995 there were 833 complaints of assault laid against the police, resulting in 241 convictions. In the Gauteng province alone, the two years leading up to September 1996 saw the investigation of 8300 criminal cases in which members of the police were implicated.63 One report has it that, pro rata, members of the police are more likely to be charged with murder (122 for every 100 000 members of the police) than members of the general public (61 for every 100 000)!64 These data serve as indicators of state weakness, with state officials unable to stick to their own rules. On the other hand, the police force is weakened even further by virtue of being victims of violent crime themselves. In 1997 alone 237 police officers lost their lives, more than half of them being killed while not on duty. This converts to a casualty ratio of 183 deaths per 100 000 police members. In comparison, in 1997 the ratio of police casualties in the USA was just over 20 deaths per 100 000.65 The second feature is the extent to which civilians have been armed. A UN report calculated that civilian-owned arms in South Africa stands at a ratio of 84 per 1000, which converts to an estimate of one out of every five households owning a firearm. Official sources also conceded that almost 20 000 convicted criminals were legal owners of firearms. 66 The extent to which society is saturated with illegal firearms is by definition not easy to calculate accurately, but police estimated that there were about 4 million illegal weapons in the country by the end of 1997.67 Some indication of the kind of military hardware in civilian hands is provided by statistics of such arms confiscated by the police. In 1996 the police confiscated 18 154 unlicensed firearms, an increase of 12.7 per cent on the previous year. This included 1169 AK-47 assault rifles and 599 shotguns.68 During 1995 508 explosive devices were seized, which


included hand-grenades, mortars, limpet mines and RPG-7 projectiles.69 These weapons have been used with lethal effect. In 1996 28 people were killed on average every day by firearms, with 41 per cent of all murders reported in the same year being committed using a firearm.70 An armed civilian population, ready, willing and able to use these weapons, is indicative of the state’s inability to effectively exercise its monopoly on force. This, in addition to the fact that the primary law enforcement agency of the state is to some extent unable to uphold the laws it is required to enforce, provides early indications of state weakness. State weakness is one crucially important factor in accounting for South Africa’s problems of post-settlement violence.


3 Negotiating Amidst Violence

Introduction South Africa’s democratic transition is notable for two reasons. The first is that it was successful in negotiating a constitutional settlement, which, in turn, was effectively implemented. The second is that these negotiations were conducted amidst rising levels of public violence. Violent conflict and peacemaking went hand in hand. The aim of this chapter is to analyse the latter feature. A descriptive overview of the most important events in the process of negotiations will be presented. While sticking to a chronologically sensitive narrative, the process of the negotiations is described in terms of the basic distinction between pre-negotiations and substantive negotiations.

Pre-negotiations Talks about talks The most concerted and sustained revolt against the apartheid system started in September 1984. P.W. Botha responded by activating the counterrevolutionary National Security Management System, in tandem with two national states of emergency, declared in 1985 and 1986. Throughout the 1980s he maintained a consistent view on negotiating for peace: violence as a means of pursuing political objectives had to be abandoned before negotiations could take place. The ANC, committed to a revolutionary project in 1969 at the Morogoro conference, and to a ‘people’s war’ at the Kabwe 53


conference in 1985, responded to the emerging issue of negotiations, violence and preconditions with the Harare declaration in late 1989. Five preconditions for negotiation were set: • the unconditional release of all political prisoners; • the lifting of all bans on restricted organisations (which included the ANC, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC); • the removal of all troops from the black townships (there to maintain order under the emergency regulations); • an end to the state of emergency, along with a repeal of legislation limiting free political activity; and • an immediate end to the execution of people convicted for murder, but who did so as a political act.1 With this the formal opening positions were declared. But behind the scenes much activity central to the peace process was taking place. These secret pre-negotiations are described in a number of publications, with the study by Kruger, who identifies three distinct strands to this process, as the most authoritative.2 The first strand can be called the Mandela Initiative. The first contact between the NP government and the ANC was via Nelson Mandela. During the course of the 1980s Mandela had written numerous letters to the government on the theme of the commencement of talks between the two parties. No response was forthcoming, but when Mandela was hospitalised in late 1985, the ice was broken by Kobie Coetsee, then Minister of Justice, under whose portfolio Mandela stood. Coetsee visited Mandela in hospital, which served as a excellent venue for pre-negotiations. First, the hospital served as symbolically ‘neutral ground’, not being home ground for any of the contenders. Secondly, both individuals could step out of their adverserial roles (prisoner and Minister responsible for prisons) for the duration of the meeting. Mandela became, first, and foremost, a patient and Coetsee became a visitor. Thirdly, a bona fide humanitarian motive of compassion for the sick allowed both individuals to engage with little fear of losing face. At the same time, a message of huge political significance could be conveyed to Mandela: that the government was willing to reciprocate his initiatives in exploring the prospect of a negotiated settlement further.

Negotiating Amidst Violence 55

Shortly thereafter Mandela was moved to Pollsmoor prison and then to Victor Verster, where he was given increasing opportunities to become attuned to civilian life. Meetings with Mandela became more structured, and Coetsee established an exploratory Committee, stacked with notable members of the National Intelligence Service (NIS). Their brief was to assess Mandela as a potential negotiator, to probe for his bottom line, to search for some middle ground, and to find the range of his bargaining positions. No doubt Mandela was sizing them up as well. Close to 44 such meetings were held, all of them of an exploratory nature.3 This initiative culminated with a meeting between Mandela and P.W. Botha on 5 July 1989. Prior to this meeting Mandela had sent a detailed memorandum to Botha, with the proposal that negotiations between the government and the ANC be initiated should the government drop three of its demands: • that the ANC reject violence; • that the ANC break all links with the SACP; • and that the ANC abandon the concept of majority rule. In return, he argued that the fears of white South Africans were valid, but could be reconciled with his notion of majority rule. Botha and Mandela did not discuss the contents of this proposal, but the meeting served to thaw the polarized relations between the major antagonists further. A few weeks later F.W. De Klerk replaced Botha as the State President and the Committee meetings with Mandela were concluded. The findings of the Committee was: ‘. . . that Mandela was a man of integrity, and a man with which the government could deal, keeping in mind that he was immovable on some issues. This served an important role later in convincing the government to engage Mandela in talks, without having to worry that he would continuously shift between positions.’4 The bridge built between Mandela and the NP government was a necessary but still insufficient avenue towards formal negotiations. The ANC was still a banned organisation, and in exile had set up headquarters in Lusaka, under the leadership of Oliver Tambo. Where they stood with regard to the issue of negotiations, violence and other preconditions such as the release of political prisoners was unclear. And where they stood was not necessarily where Mandela


stood. A second strand in the pre-negotiation process between the NP government and the ANC in exile was therefore required. Intermediaries from both sides built this bridge. The year 1985 was a benchmark year for polarisation and confrontation. The ANC committed itself to the ‘people’s war’, and declared itself available to ‘negotiate’ about ‘the modalities of the transfer of power’. P.W. Botha, in turn, declared the first state of emergency of the 1980s. Publicly neither could dare to talk to the other. Yet both sensed the need to find out more about the other and to get behind the façade of the demonised caricatures they held of each other. To do so openly held huge risks to both, in the form of a potential backlash from their respective grassroots support base, and/or loss of face by appearing to signal weakness to the opponent. A third party was needed. These intermediaries consisted of elites from the Afrikaner establishment and from within the exiled ranks of the ANC. The catalyst was provided by Michael Young, a British industrialist. Leading figures in the two camps were Willie Esterhuyse and exiles Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. They all acted under an identical brief: not to serve as spies and not as formal representatives, but as openly declared (to one another and to their principals) couriers of information, points of view, opinions, perceptions and hopes relating to a negotiated settlement and a new South Africa.5 The National Intelligence Service (NIS) of the South African state was again heavily involved. Their task was to find and feed new information about the ANC to government, countering the ‘total onslaught’ stereotypes which their bureaucratic rival, Military Intelligence, was generating. Such new data were essential to the breakthrough in relations which successful pre-negotiation is all about. Eight meetings were held between October 1987 and 1990. The agendas reflected the exploratory engagements typical of such events. Preconditions for formal talks, the role of violence, the matter of political prisoners and the contending scenarios of what a South Africa after apartheid should look like served as the initial, vague topics of discussion. By the sixth meeting, however, issues narrowed down considerably to matters of preconditions for formal talks (the release of prisoners, especially Mandela), the process of such talks (should international intermediaries be involved or not,


etc.), and constitutional positions (majority rule, power-sharing, etc.). These meetings, as Kruger points out, served as dress rehearsals for future negotiations. They provided both parties with the opportunity to establish contact without any responsibility for maintaining it. And it gave them the opportunity to explore the landscape of negotiation, to find the middle ground, to search for one another’s fallback position and to establish each other’s personal credentials. The final essential ingredient necessary for formal talks was for the respective support groups to be taken along with the process. This was achieved, inadvertently, through the civil society initiative, the third strand in the pre-negotiations. A wide range of interest groups, all intent on breaking a perceived deadlock between the ANC and the NP government, set out for meetings with ANC members at various venues outside the country. Approximately 75 such meetings occurred between 1985 and 1990, with the 1987 Dakar meeting held under the auspices of the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa (IDASA) the most highly publicised. Oblivious of the contact which had been established with Mandela in 1985 already, Alex Boraine explained the Dakar ‘mission/pilgrimage’ in late 1987 as follows: ‘. . . [t]o emphasize the need for urgent genuine negotiations and to highlight the futility of ignoring the ANC as a political entity, we planned the Dakar conference. It was a serious attempt to address the stalemate which exists in our country’.6 This is not to say that these initiatives were without value. Both Niel Barnard, then chief of the NIS, and Aziz Pahad of the ANC conceded that these public meetings served to influence public opinion at large and to introduce a new dimension to political debate in the country.7 Talks about substantive talks In September 1989 F.W. de Klerk succeeded P.W. Botha as State President. He took immediate steps towards creating visible (as opposed to secret) momentum to the peace process. On 13 September he allowed the first legal march by the ANC in Cape Town. With this he in effect, if not yet in law, unbanned the ANC. 8 And in October he unconditionally released Walter Sisulu and other political prisoners who were serving similar terms to Mandela, allowing mass welcoming rallies to be held for them in Soweto.9


This was followed by his landmark speech at the opening of parliament on 2 February 1990. The ANC, PAC, SACP and related organisations were unbanned and political activity normalised. The state of emergency was lifted, except for the province of Natal, and restrictions on individuals abolished. Nine days later Mandela was released. Immediate talks on constitutional matters, however, could not get under way as the main issues raised but not settled in the pre-negotiations still had to be dealt with. These were the matter of the release of political prisoners and related issues such as indemnity and amnesty for returning exiles. The other matter was that of violence. The NP government still sought an undertaking from the ANC that it would step away from the armed struggle before constitutional negotiations could take place. Similarly, the ANC insisted that repression through the coercive forces of the state be stopped. Each still felt threatened by the other. Four different agreements tried to come to grips with these issues.10 The first, a bilateral agreement between the ANC and NP Government, went under the title of the Groote Schuur Minute. Concluded in May 1990, the agreement bound both parties to establish a Working Group on Political Offences, which had to produce a definition of what constituted ‘political offences’ and hence ‘political prisoners’. Other security-related commitments by the government were to provide immunity to returning ANC leaders, so that they could become part of the negotiating process, a speeding up of the normalisation of political activity through the review of security legislation, and to ‘work towards’ the lifting of the state of emergency in the Natal province. The Pretoria Minute of August 1990 sought to build on this and contained the following undertakings. The ANC suspended ‘armed action’, without renouncing it; the government undertook to release all political prisoners by 30 April 1991; and both parties committed themselves to creating structures for dealing with violent conflict at all levels of society. The final report of the Working Group with its definition of ‘political offences’ and ‘political prisoner’ was also accepted. The strategic thinking behind the ANC decision to suspend but not to terminate their armed struggle can be gauged from the movement’s statement after the signing of the Pretoria Minute. A spokesperson declared that: ‘The armed struggle can only be abandoned altogether (as distinct from its suspension in a ceasefire)


when a new constitution has been democratically adopted. Then the free, united and democratic nation shall build a national army, representative of all people, and accountable both to society and to the government of the day’. 11 The process of transition, in their view, had to move to the point where it became irreversible before they would completely step away from the armed option. Until then, the armed struggle would remain as a fallback position should negotiations fail. The decisive catalyst in moving the ANC to this position of suspending the armed struggle was the uncovering of Operation Vula. This project, authorised by Oliver Tambo in the late 1980s and led by Mac Maharaj, was part of the revolutionary programme of establishing and strengthening ANC underground structures inside the country. Maharaj and his colleagues were arrested in July 1990 and the plot was revealed to Mandela, who had been kept in the dark. Joe Slovo defended the plotters by maintaining that the project was mothballed, and De Klerk’s accusation of bad faith by the ANC alliance thus unfounded. Mandela recalls that to regain the initiative and to reestablish good faith he then supported a proposal by Slovo that the armed struggle be suspended, but not renounced.12 The third agreement in this series, the D.F. Malan Accord of 12 February 1991 contained stipulations specific to these two parties as well as more general security-related obligations applicable to all political actors. The specific matters included a detailed definition of the nature of the ‘armed action’, which the ANC had committed itself to refraining from. Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the military force of the ANC, would not engage in: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi)

attacks by means of armaments, firearms, explosive or incendiary devices; infiltration of men and material; creation of underground structures; statements inciting violence; threats of armed action; and training inside South Africa.13

The agreement also elaborated on the implied meaning of what a ‘suspension’ of armed action entailed: ‘[w]ith reference to the word “suspending” ... the working group reiterated ... that suspension


occurred as a step in the process of finding peaceful solutions, with the presumption that the process would lead to the situation where there would be no return to armed action’. 14 Actual events away from the negotiating table seemed to show a move in exactly the opposite direction, with 1990, 1991, 1992 and 1993 becoming the most violent years in the entire transition. Another event, not unlike Operation Vula, then emerged as a factor inhibiting the momentum of positive thinking the negotiators tried to generate. In July 1991 press reports revealed that the government was providing clandestine logistical assistance (mostly financial) to the IFP, a revelation which came to be known as Inkathagate. The ANC immediately accused the NP government of bad faith, and De Klerk defended himself in a manner similar to the way Mandela dealt with criticism of Operation Vula. He claimed ignorance and accused rogue units within the state bureaucracies of continuing with their clandestine actions in an unauthorised way.15 His concessions, as part of a process of damage control, was to remove the Ministers of Police and of Defence from their positions in a major cabinet reshuffle, and to institute administrative control procedures to close down these and any other such operations. The final security-related agreement was the multi-lateral National Peace Accord, signed on 14 September 1991 by 29 parties, with the PAC and AZAPO (Azanian People’s Organisation) as notable nonsignatories. This was the most comprehensive non-aggression pact of the peace process and contained a wide-ranging set of prohibitions. These include: 1. a comprehensive code of conduct for political parties and movements; 2. a specific code of conduct for the security forces of the state, and its opponents, which included: • detailed rules prescribing police action, • prohibitions on covert operations by any organization, • constraints on the public display of dangerous weapons, • rules regulating the setting up of self-protection units; 3. a standing Commission of Inquiry into public violence (later to become known as the Goldstone Commission); 4. a National Peace Secretariat and Regional Dispute Resolution Committees; 5. a National Peace Committee.


In formal terms the National Peace Accord took the process of confidence building, of setting up rules for dealing with security problems and dilemmas, and of building mutual security as far as it could be taken on paper. Actual incidents of violence escalated during 1990 and 1991, with the result that formal constitutional negotiations started within a context of rising instability.

Substantive negotiations The 19 delegates to the Congress for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) assembled for the first time on 20 and 21 December 1991 at the World Trade Centre in Kempton Park. About the only thing they got right the first time round was the choice of venue. Situated close to Johannesburg’s international airport, the Centre was easily accessible to everybody. But this nondescript, ugly, semi-industrial area was also of no historical significance to any party and held no special emotional or symbolic meaning to anyone. This made it the perfectly neutral negotiating arena, as nobody could, or wanted to, claim home-ground advantage. These delegates represented a wide variety of constituencies. There was a delegation from the government, as well as separate one from the National Party. Four other parties represented in the tri-cameral parliament attended. These were the Democratic Party from the chamber elected by white voters, the Labour Party, from the chamber elected by Coloured voters, and the National People’s Party and Solidarity who represented Indian parliamentary voters. The ANC and the SACP sent separate delegations, along with an Indian Congress, representative of Indians who boycotted the tri-cameral parliament. These three represented the extra-constitutional participants. The IFP sent a delegation to represent their party, but pointed out that they could not speak for the Zulu nation. This could only be done by King Goodwill Zwelethini, who in their view, had been snubbed by not being invited. The remaining delegates were from the eight ‘homelands’ governments, who sent either governmental delegations or delegates from the ruling parties. Notable absentees were from the extreme flanks on both the left and right of the spectrum. From the white rightwing the major dissenters were the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) (Afrikaner


Resistance Movement), the Conservative Party (CP) and the Herstigte Nasionale Party (HNP) (Reestablished National Party). On the black left were the Azanian People’s Organisation (AZAPO), the Black Consciousness Movement of Azania (BCMA) and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). Although the IFP sent a delegation, their leader, Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi did not attend. The reason being that he was said to be ‘honour bound’ to stand by his king who had been excluded from deliberations.16 From these flanks came expressions of acute distrust against the forthcoming negotiations. The white Conservative Party warned of an incremental transfer of power away to the ANC/SACP/COSATU alliance. This was predicted to be in the form of ‘... a takeover by stealth, a surreptitious giveaway, an iniquitous betrayal of a trusting electorate, a surrender without a fight, a collapse of will’. From the other side of the spectrum the PAC saw a different kind of betrayal. They accused the ANC of ‘... being in cahoots with the regime’, and to have made a secret deal ‘ … to rule this country in alliance with the NP by decree for many years to come’. Earlier that year the IFPowned newspaper Ilanga had accused the government as the primary agent of betrayal, saying that there was ‘… more and more suspicion among Zulu people that [the government] has done a secret deal with the ANC behind the backs of the IFP and the Zulu people’.17 Despite all these allegations about secret deals little was agreed upon at the first two-day gathering of CODESA. Of the 19 delegates 17 did manage to endorse a declaration of intent committing signatories to work towards an undivided South Africa in which constitutional supremacy would apply, where safeguards in the form of a justiciable bill of rights would operate, with an independent judiciary, separation of powers, equality before the law and an electoral system of proportional representation. It was also agreed to set up five working groups, to deal with particular matters. Working group 1 was assigned to deal with the question of establishing a climate for free political participation, and with the role to be played by the international community. Working group 2 had to deal with constitutional principles, working group 3 with transitional arrangements, working group 4 with the political future of the homelands and the last group would establish time frames for the negotiations process. What was not adequately sorted out in the lengthy pre-negotiations, was the exact, or even approximate, framework and mecha-


nism of transition. F.W. de Klerk’s National Party wanted CODESA to negotiate a transitional constitution, which then would have to be submitted to a referendum in which the white votes had to be counted separately. Once cleared by this white veto, elections for a transitional parliament could be held, which would then negotiate the final constitution. Not only a white veto, but also a lengthy interim rule by the transitional government would, in their view, ensure that the NP retained effective control over the transition process. The ANC, by contrast, were intent on a procedure that would allow them to bring their electoral dominance into play as soon as possible, allowing them to gain control over the process. They were not at all amenable to a white veto. 18 Negotiating about constitutional details in the absence of a mutually recognised contract zone, or middle ground, was bound to end in deadlock. The issue of the white veto also pointed to a further, more profound perceptual difference. That was the intangible matter of their power relationship. Both the NP and the ANC saw themselves as the ascendant power in the negotiating process. Each thought it would be able to clinch a deal on its own terms. Neither considered the other to be an equal. Friedman sums up these clashing expectations well: when the ANC leadership emerged from prison and exile the divide between it and the NP remained as wide as ever, but both sides assumed that they could quickly make the other cross it on their terms. Their constituencies believed this too: many in the ‘establishment’ camp assumed that the ANC had come back to join the existing order; many in the ‘liberation’ fold believed that the exiles and prisoners had returned to take the NP’s surrender.19 This fundamental difference came to a head in working group 2. The group had agreed that an interim parliament, with both a national assembly and a senate, should rule during the transition and that this parliament would have to adopt the final constitution. What they could not agree on was the proportion of votes in the national assembly which would be required for adoption. The NP (representing minority interests) wanted a majority of 75 per cent, but the ANC were only prepared to go as high as a two-thirds majority. Some compromise was reached, but agreement still eluded the


parties on the issue of a deadlock-breaking mechanism where the ANC insisted on a national referendum with a two-thirds majority as a last resort mechanism with which to adopt the final constitution.20 On 25 May 1992 the Working Committee of CODESA met to break the deadlock. They failed. Then Mandela and De Klerk met to try to do so and also failed. Deadlock degenerated into renewed confrontation. On 16 June the ANC and SACP with their new alliance partner, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), started their campaign of ‘mass action’ to pressurise the government into breaking the deadlock through unilateral concessions. The next day scores of residents from an IFP-alligned men’s hostel in the township of Boipatong on the East Rand went on a violent rampage. Forty-nine local residents were killed, and many more injured. Blaming De Klerk for not providing protection to civilians against vigilante attacks, the ANC held him responsible for the tragedy and withdrew from the negotiations process.21 The programme of mass action continued. The exact strategic objective of this programme remains unclarified, but it is clear that it was a matter of intense debate within the ranks of the alliance. Some saw it as an insurrectionary strategy, others as a negotiating tactic away from the table. (More about this debate, and how it bears on the matter of good faith, in Chapter 5.) Either way, it was a high-risk ploy, involving mass demonstrations primarily targeted at the various ‘homeland’ capitals. Each mass rally generated highly tense confrontations between crowds of civilians and various security forces, and each one generated some measure of violence. Escalating tension rapidly polarised the political climate. The ANC had set a long list of preconditions for the resumption of talks. The government refused to move. Amidst rising social costs of deadlock, the parties had to revert to pre-negotiations. Behind the scenes the ANC and NP government resumed contact through the ‘channel’, comprising of Cyril Ramaphosa and Roelf Meyer respectively. Between June and September 1992 they met more than 40 times in an attempt to restart formal negotiations. 22 The final impetus towards resumption of formal talks came from the march on Bisho, the capital of the Ciskei homeland, on 7 September. The marchers broke ranks and, lead by Ronnie Kasrils, tried to occupy the government buildings in the town. Ciskei soldiers opened fire, killing 29 marchers. This was a decisive turning point. All-round international


and domestic condemnation of both the ANC and NP government put immense pressure on them to get back to the table. The backroom negotiations managed by Ramaphosa and Meyer proved fruitful, and yielded another bilateral agreement, the Record of Understanding, signed on 26 September 1992. This agreement set the basis for the resumption of talks, but on terms most favourable to the ANC. The white veto was eliminated, with the final constitution to be written by an elected assembly, which had to follow some broad guidelines set in Kempton Park. All remaining prisoners were to be released immediately, volatile hostels were to be fenced off and the carrying of dangerous weapons outlawed. The right to peaceful mass action by all parties was endorsed.23 Formal negotiations were resumed on 1 April 1993. A number of significant changes to the initial CODESA assembly were apparent. For a start, the talks became more inclusive. A number of new participants from the left and rightwing joined the negotiations. From the left the PAC was the most important newcomer, and from the right the Afrikaner Volksunie (AVU), the Conservative Party (CP) and the KwaZulu Administration joined. Delegations from African traditional leaders resident in the Cape, Orange Free State and Transvaal provinces also attended. Furthermore, the talks were now operating under the ‘sufficient consensus’ rule, which meant that motions were carried as long as they were endorsed by the NP and ANC. This was not uncontroversial, and when the election date of 27 April 1994 was set through sufficient consensus the white and black rightwing parties, namely the CP, IFP, and the homeland government delegations from KwaZulu, Ciskei and Bophuthatswana walked out. The white rightwing then repositioned themselves into the Afrikaner Volksfront and joined the IFP and the three homeland administrations in the Freedom Alliance. The rightwing breakaway did not stall the talks however. This time settlement was reached. On 24 September parliament adopted legislation for the establishment of the Transitional Executive Council, a body charged with administering the transitional elections in a neutral, non-partisan way. On 18 November 1993 the Negotiating Council of the Multiparty Negotiating Process adopted an interim constitution, with the PAC and the AVU as notable parties who registered a no vote. This was ratified by Parliament on 22 December 1993. Through concerted brinkmanship by the IFP,


and other members of the Freedom Alliance, the constitution was amended twice (in their favour) before it came into operation with the first democratic elections of 27 April 1994.

1994 elections and the new parliament The elections were a unique, torrid and deeply flawed series of events. The administration of the election was handled by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), a body operating under the auspices of the Transitional Executive Council (TEC), a domestic ‘neutral umpire’, whose task was to ensure that the election contest was held on a ‘level playing field’. The IEC was tested to its limits and beyond. The IFP, through its strategy of brinkmanship, entered the election race a week before polling day, after the ballots had been printed. Innovative thinking and crisis management combined to overcome this problem. Less successful attempts were made to ensure the integrity of the election itself. With no voter registration and no voter’s rolls, the use of invisible ink as a marker to prevent people from voting twice or more proved ineffective. The contest was marked by the rarity of open free electioneering. Many areas in the country were appropriated by individual parties, which effectively prevented opponents from campaigning there. The IEC recorded the existence of 165 such ‘no-go’ areas, of which 62 were considered hard no-go areas, where rivals were completely denied entry.24 Not surprisingly, 3594 complaints were lodged by parties against one another, many of them alleging acts of violence or intimidation. Yet the voters seemed capable of rising above all of this on the polling days. Very few incidents of disruption and violence occurred at the polling sites, and most voters displayed immense patience at the inept logistics of the IEC, with 35 per cent of polling stations being underequipped on the polling days. The administrative breakdown also extended to the IEC being unable to secure the integrity of ballot boxes (some arrived at the counting stations filled with grass, others, when opened, were found to have had the ballots neatly stacked in rows inside), and an inability to count the votes accurately.25 However, when they arrived at a result, all parties acquiesced and agreed not to sustain their complaints against one another. The result yielded the minimum rewards every one of the


major parties wanted from the election. The ANC with 62.7 per cent of the vote got its outright majority, but to the relief of the rest, still short of the two-thirds which would have given it control of the Constituent Assembly that had to draw up the next, ‘final’ constitution. The NP captured the Western Cape province, got the secondmost votes overall, and secured a deputy-presidency for F.W. de Klerk. The IFP, along with the NP, entered the Government of National Unity, and captured its heartland of KwaZulu-Natal. On 10 May 1994 Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa’s first democratically elected President.


Part II An Analysis of the South African Peace Process


4 Violence and the Rules of War

Introduction The conflict inside South Africa from 1960 through to 1994, and especially from 1984 onwards, can be described as an undeclared internal war. The important question is to what extent this conflict conformed to the defining characteristics of Low Intensity Conflict. The key analytical measure is the extent to which the conflicting parties held to the established rules of war, or deviated from them. The extent to which such deviations occurred, and their impact on the peace process and on South Africa’s culture of violence will be described briefly, using the criteria outlined in Chapter 1.

The structure of the conflict The undeclared war The announcement of the armed struggle by the ANC in December 1961 can be interpreted as a formal declaration of war, and is done so by the TRC.1 The South African government did not respond with an acknowledgement in recognition of the formal declaration of hostilities, appropriate to the conduct of relations between internationally recognised states. This internal war was from the outset conducted between one state and a movement with an armed wing that claimed to represent a people within that very same state. This signifies a core characteristic of contemporary Low Intensity Conflict: a state with an army confronting an army without a state, but with a social movement. 71

72 Analysis of South African Peace Process

At the heart of the dispute was the issue of security. This is the core of the substance from which a social contract between state and citizen is built. When it fails to provide security, and is seen to fail, the state’s legitimacy cracks at this core. The social contract of the South African state, from 1910 was profoundly flawed as black citizens were deprived of the franchise, making the care of their security needs entirely contingent upon the good intentions of others. This tenuous thread between black citizens and the state was to be broken by the scheme of grand apartheid. The 1959 Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act stipulated that each ‘independent homeland’ would take over the citizenship of specific ethnic categories of black South Africans, who would then concomitantly lose their South African citizenship. The decisive watershed, in both symbolic and real terms, was the Sharpeville massacre of 21 March 1960, where the police panicked and opened fire on a hostile crowd, killing 69 people and wounding 180. Seegers points to the true significance of this event: The tradition of non-violence was in shreds. The legal contract was suspended unilaterally with the Promotion of Bantu Self Government Act of 1959. Now the social contract was gone too. The shooting indicated that the disenfranchised no longer lived under the paternalistic racial umbrella. Racial Utopia meant they could be shot just as soldiers killed enemies during war.2 In effect, then, Sharpeville was experienced as the functional equivalent of a declaration of war. The just war The ANC viewed its war as one fought for a just cause, with its members acting as a liberation movement in pursuit of human rights in terms of the doctrine of self-determination. To them the justness of this cause was spelt out by the Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1970.3 Their justification for pursuing this cause through violent means was that they decided to resort to organised violence only after the apartheid regime had closed the remaining channels of legal non-violent resistance. 4 Intriguingly, the obvious remaining option, that of non-legal non-

Violence and the Rules of War 73

violent resistance (i.e. civil disobedience) appears not to have been considered again after its early limited application with the Defiance Campaign of the 1950s. This option did eventually became part of the ‘four pillars’ of the struggle, finding expression in mass mobilisation and mass action campaigns. Civilians as combatants Both the doctrines of ‘total onslaught’ and ‘people’s war’ not only allowed for the blurring of the distinction between combatant and non-combatant, between soldier and civilian, but virtually required it. The definition of the ‘people’s war’, referred to earlier in the text, makes the fusion of the roles of soldier and civilian explicit. The planned immersion of soldiers within civilian structures, the joint actions taken by civilian and military units, and the eventual blurring of civilian and military actions were deliberately calculated. The forming of ‘people’s defence militia’, whose members were civilians but would ‘link up’ with MK soldiers in a very loose organisational and command structure, was also planned. Eventually, organised groups such as the self-defence units (SDUs) became both civilian and military in organisational character, task-orientation and selfdefinition. The 1986 slogan ‘every patriot a combatant, every combatant a patriot’, conveyed this organisational imperative well, 5 with the overall result that the popular culture of revolt, especially as it found expression in the so-called ‘comrades’ movement, became heavily militarised.6 The ‘total strategy’ required to confront the total onslaught also sought to merge and coordinate the various power bases of the state. The militarisation of society by the state was the result of this multisector process of mobilisation. White civilian society was drawn closer to the military primarily through compulsory conscription for white males which started in 1968. Initially conscripts served for 12 months, but by 1983 this was extended to 24 months with additional shorter call-ups being allowed for.7 After serving these initial stretches, conscripts were assigned to regional commands, where they remained on standby as a ‘civil militia’ for emergency call-ups for the next ten years. Concerted attempts were also made to imbue a military ethos into the educational and cultural domains of white civil life.8 A final category of influential individuals who became major role players in the conflict consisted of political actors who became


known as ‘warlords’. A number of politically powerful individuals, especially in the rural areas of KwaZulu and Natal, became strongly implicated in acts of violence. Some of them were formally aligned to Inkatha, but all of them built powerbases around their personal authority and/or firepower.9 None of them claimed any formal military status, but many of them were accused of commanding private paramilitary units. These warlords also fell into the ill-defined category of ‘military civilians’.

Civilians as targets The question of whether civilians should be considered as fair, legitimate targets of military actions was bound to surface, given the narrowing of the boundaries between combatants and non-combatants. At the time that the National Consultative Conference of the ANC, held in Kabwe, Zambia in 1985 committed the ANC to the ‘people’s war’, it also resolved that they would cease to let their armed actions be swayed entirely by the risk of civilian deaths. 10 A lot of thought went into this matter and discussion documents relevant to the debate that culminated in this resolution contained a number of suggestions for the widening of the conflict into white civilian life: ‘We should liquidate and harass the enemy manpower, puppets and traitors including the rural bourgeoisie (white farmers … )’; and proposed that they should ‘ … attack the enemy where he list [sic] expect us, e.g. in the drinking places like pubs, at the stadiums … ’.11 Looking back, the ANC clarified this position by stating that random attacks on civilians were never allowed, and that purely civilian targets were to be avoided, but did acknowledge that errors of judgement did occur in the field. In their view, however, certain civilians such as farmers in the border areas and off-duty military personnel were, within this context, valid targets. 12 This made the distinction between civilians and soldiers paper thin, and it was one which was prone to break down in practice under conditions of stress, ideological demonisation, civil turmoil, and the strategic context in which informers, agents, turned soldiers, undercover operators and the like made use of false identities and deliberate deception through ‘false flag’ operations. The security forces of the state gradually went down the slippery slope from confronting military opponents towards the targeting of


civilians. This process resulted from the way the security establishment conceptualised the requirements of an effective counterinsurgency strategy. Dealing with the threat posed by insurgents who crossed the borders in the 1960s was initially the task of the South African Police (SAP). They also had to safeguard Namibia (South West Africa), the disputed UN mandate territory, from similar actions by the military forces of the South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO). By the early 1970s it was decided that the SAP were not up to the task, having neither the coercive hardware nor the strategic vision to be effective. The Namibian experience in particular proved a sobering one, and security policymakers had by mid-1973 handed over all counter-insurgency operations to the South African Defence Force (SADF). By 1979 they also took control of these functions inside South Africa. The strategic thinking inside the SADF, especially the ideas originating from the Department of Military Intelligence, was from the outset inclined to be sympathetic to methods associated with covert actions. Their basic point of departure, according to Seegers, was that ‘ … [l]ike had to be fought with like’. 13 This covert approach was apparently condoned and institutionalised after a series of policy-making meetings held in Simonstown in late 1979.14 The policymaking backbone of the security structure to counter the armed struggle and people’s war was to be the National Security Management System (NSMS). Its less formal covert units included the Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB) and the various units of the Police Special Branch and military Special Operations. These split off into yet smaller operatives, ranging from hit squads, vigilantes and warlords to individual assassins. Their actions ranged from damage and destruction of property through to abductions, harassment, assassinations, burglary and death threats. 15 Control over these units, like the control of the ANC over the SDUs, was tenuous at most, and the strategic doctrine and rationale which served as the overall guiding worldview of these operatives gave them huge leeway to feel justified in using coercion as they saw fit. Operating outside the rules of war and deliberately targeting civilians easily became accepted practice. Military actions with symbolic meaning A number of military actions were initiated on historically significant dates. The ANC’s announcement of their armed struggle


in 1961 was made on 16 December. This was a public holiday, the Day of the Covenant, commemorating a pivotal event in the colonisation of the southern African interior by white people. The ANC also timed some of its attacks to fall on specific dates. The 14 June 1986 attack on Magoo’s Bar, was timed to coincide with, and to commemorate, the 14 June 1985 cross-border raid by the SADF on Gaborone, Botswana, in which 12 people, five of whom were ANC members, were killed.16 Similarly, the SADF launched another attack on what they claimed to be ANC bases in Lusaka, Harare and Gaborone on the morning of 19 May 1986, the day the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group was to meet with the Cabinet to discuss the setting up of constitutional negotiations. The targets held little military significance, but the attack was intended to demonstrate the state’s military strength and to symbolise the resolve of the P.W. Botha government not to be dictated to by outsiders.17 Merging the army and the state The National Security Management System (NSMS), the agency for co-ordinating and implementing security policy, served to bridge the gap between overt security units such as the police and military, and civilian units of local, regional and national government. At national level the cabinet co-ordinated with the State Security Council (SSC); at regional level Joint Management Centres matched their civilian equivalent, and at municipal level Local Management Centres were established. 18 The significance of these multi-layered levels of co-ordination for the civilian agencies of the state is that they became embroiled in the repressive coercive actions of the security agencies. This resulted from their serving as a source of information about conditions relevant to security matters within their geographical jurisdiction, which were then used later in security operations.19 In this way purely civil governing bodies became enmeshed with the security agencies of the state and drawn into the conduct of the internal war. Society as contested terrain There was no conventional war zone, clearly demarcated in geographical terms and socially removed from those not authorised to engage in the conflict. Instead, the conflict was conducted inside


the country, and within society, and the contest was as much about the way society was and should be structured. The ANC depicted their experience of apartheid with the apt concept of ‘bureaucratic terrorism’. This involved in essence, that the state used the power at its disposal against people who were already economically deprived, socially discriminated against, and politically weak. Relevant actions included the forced removal and resettlement of people from urban areas to the black ‘homelands’, with the attendant dislocation and breakup of families; racial separation of cities and towns through the forced segregation of residential areas, arrests for, and criminalizing of contraventions under the pass laws; and the loss of citizenship for Africans who were designated unilaterally as ‘homeland citizens’.20 The colossal social dislocation and human deprivation caused by such social engineering is on record.21 Yet the deliberate targeting of society as a whole came to be replicated in the ANC’s own strategy of ‘ungovernability’, which promised to match the contours of the policies they were opposing, becoming in effect, like an inverse mirror image. Industrial action through labour strikes and mass stayaways, consumer boycotts, road traffic blockades, disruption and boycotts of schools, tax revolts, and campaigns against black representatives of the state were all envisaged. 22 To make the country ungovernable through massive social dislocation unavoidably entailed the visiting of social deprivation on society (albeit the white component included this time round) not so dissimilar from that which the bureaucratic terror of apartheid selectively imposed on the black component of society. The predicted impact on society as a whole was one of destabilisation, mounting insecurity in every sense of the word and severe decay in the social fabric of society, and especially the fabric of family and community, its core building blocks. Merging of crime and war The final distinctive feature of Low Intensity Conflict found in the South African conflict before 1990 was the merging of acts of crime with acts of war. One would not expect evidence of such behaviour to be easily available, even if such actions were common practice. The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) was the only party to admit to such actions to the TRC. In their submission they explained the


need for armed robberies due to the lack of an internal logistical base similar to that of the ANC. In an attempt to signify the political motive, as opposed to a purely commercial motive for these actions, their ‘robbery unit’ was later renamed the ‘repossession unit’! These were high-risk ventures and the PAC admitted to losing more men in robberies than in purely military confrontations!23

Violence beyond the table The breakthrough to negotiations steered by Mandela and De Klerk did not lead to a concomitant drop in violence. The opposite occurred. Those intent on escalating violence did so, with dramatic effect. Why? Political actors deliberately planning to subvert the negotiations could utilise violence to try to reverse the process by repolarising society. Others who wanted to secure a better deal for themselves in the negotiation process could use violence to prevent their own marginalisation, or to weaken their opponents, also with a view to improving their own position.24 Either way, the very best efforts of Buthelezi, De Klerk and Mandela could not prevent those actors with the intent and the coercive means from increasing the levels of violence. Clearly, as Sisk has noted: ‘ … the underlying forces behind the violence were mostly beyond their control’.25 And why was this so? This study offers the following two-fold proposition. First, violence escalated because the structure of the conflict (with the profound and pervasive breakdown in the rules of war) resulted in the emergence of coercive units who operated virtually autonomously from political and even military leadership. Rather, they were guided, steered or even inspired by vague strategic doctrines which left them free to select and engage with adversaries as they saw fit. Secondly, at the onset of negotiations these coercive units gained more freedom to act, not less. This was a function of the negotiations process where the lack of explicit commitment to good faith, in the widest sense of the word, perpetuated and even exacerbated the problems of political and military control (more on this in the next chapter). The difference between conditions of war and peace became more vague, not less so, and the distinction between combatant and non-combatant more ambiguous and between enemy and ally more uncertain. These autonomous coercive units could


then continue to interpret their strategic context as one conducive to, and compatible with, covert violent actions. Granted that good faith was fundamental to the initiatives of the two Nobel Peace Prize winners, and possibly to some of their peers, they alone could not reverse this momentum, which was located within particular structural conditions, and driven by the already established culture of violence. The negotiations were not conducted on a level playing field. It sloped in favour of the proverbial loose canons, both on the ship of state, and on the ship of the liberation movements. Violence intensified from 1990 onwards and civilians featured ever more prominently as victims. A few examples can illustrate the social dislocation which ensued. In Natal the ‘Seven-Day War’ lasting from 25–31 March 1990 left about 200 people dead and resulted in more than 20 000 fleeing their homes.26 The conflict involved mass impis (traditional Zulu war formations) attacking African residential communities on the outskirts of Pietermaritzburg. The TRC found that UDF and ANC supporters were responsible for instigating the conflict and that the impi’s were acting under the instructions of IFP warlord David Ntombela, with the SAP and KZP providing logistical support. Another conflict area experiencing almost continual upheaval was the Richmond district. The key player here was Sifiso Nkabinde, leader of the largest ANC self-defence unit (SDU) in the Natal province. He appears to have been a ‘strongman’ in Migdal’s sense of the word: entering into politically expedient arrangements with only one single objective, to advance his own personal powerbase.27 The TRC found that he was originally recruited by the SAP to infiltrate the ANC. Under the ANC flag he then set up an SDU in Richmond, which proceeded to campaign violently against all comers – the IFP, rival SDUs, members of the SAP, and other members of the ANC who were seen as a threat to Nkabinde’s leadership position.28 The IFP responded to the post-1990 conflict by calling for the establishment of their own self-protection units (SPUs). These were to operate under the terms set by the National Peace Accord. Initiated in late 1993, the TRC found them to have been paramilitary units which could have been used to derail the 1994 elections, if need be, by violent means.29 Civil violence in the Transvaal centred on the industrial core of Johannesburg, the socalled PWV-region, also escalated after 1990 into the so-called ‘Reef Township War’. 30


The massacre of civilians was a particular feature of this war. Eleven major such tragedies occurred between 1990 and 1993, in which the lowest number of civilian casualties was 13, and the highest 45.31 The problem of SDUs operating without political or military control became acute. In evidence before the TRC, the ANC admitted to not having control over these paramilitary units, yet actively providing arms to them.32 These units, supposedly under the control of ‘community structures’, rapidly evolved into autonomous coercive bodies, whose agendas came to be determined by individual leaders. The result, in the East Rand in particular, was not only of SDUs attacking IFP targets such as hostels, but also engaging in violent rivalries with one another.33 A final gruesome new dimension to the conflict was that of train violence. Commuters on the Johannesburg–Soweto line were attacked at random, often resulting in fatalities. The TRC records that between 1990 and 1993 more than 500 people lost their lives in such attacks. The apparent motive was to spread panic and general terror. The Commission found that the IFP, SADF and SAP were to be held responsible for these killings. The Commission found that throughout this period agents of the state remained active in covert operations, whether through assassinations (by means of parcel bombs), the provision of weapons to the IFP, train violence, or the infiltrating of SDUs. 34 Arguably the most infamous of these units was the police unit known as C-10, stationed at Vlakplaas, and for the most part of the 1980s and 1990s under the command of Colonel Eugene de Kock. De Kock became something of prototypical figure, representative of the malcontents and the disaffected who were drawn to this line of work. 35 In 1997 he was convicted on 80 charges, ranging from murder to culpable homicide and fraud, and sentenced to a total of 216 years in prison. These various agencies, which came to be collectively known as the ‘third force’, were either operating on their own, much like the SDUs, with but a vague notion of who the enemy was and what methods were appropriate for dealing with them, or they were directed to do so from the very highest level, that is, by F.W. De Klerk. The TRC pursued the matter with some vigour, but stopped just short from finding De Klerk directly responsible for ordering such covert actions. They concluded that these operatives acted without being centrally directed.36


• Intentional acts of violence were explained away by referring to the institutional momentum which carried individuals along; • or by institutional breakdown, which left a communication gap between leaders and followers. This left leaders in the dark as to exactly what followers were up to. • Admissions were made as to human errors of judgement, which came to be enacted as the policies of institutions; and • as to the inability of institutions to hold members to official rules and policies resulting in policy initiatives producing unforeseen consequences. The Commission ended up accepting the validity of all these claims and concluded that all the parties failed in one way or the other in securing restraint from their members, and in maintaining organisational discipline in the ranks of their own members, followers and supporters.37

The culture of violence ‘Take blood if you give blood’. 38 This, the golden rule of the 28’s gang was their response to the killing of one of their leaders, reputedly by their turf rivals on the Cape Flats, the Sexy Boys, in the latter part of 1998. It also captures the essence of a culture of violence: ‘ … responding to violence with violence’.39 A culture of violence takes root when such a response becomes accepted practice and part of normal life. The reasons why violence can become encultured are many. The outline presented in the first chapter of this book suggests that, apart from direct material benefits that may accrue, the rewards for violence may be found in the status, recognition, deference, glamour and even affection that it may elicit within a particular social setting. In other social environments violent actions may be considered deviant or perverted behaviour, to be met with social rejection, but within a culture of violence such a response produces the intangible rewards of being seen as someone of standing, and having a reputation for bravery and daring. The origins of the culture of violence in South Africa can, in the first place, be traced back to the brutalising effects of the apartheid system. The experience of being on the losing side of both industrial capitalism and of state-sponsored racial discrimination, left black


South Africans with an intense experience of deprivation, both relative to their visibly more affluent white counterparts and in terms of absolute poverty and destitution. This deprivation was also accompanied by the social dislocation inherent to apartheid-style population relocations. Even under conditions of political quiescence of the 1950s the response to structural violence of apartheid-style social engineering was the establishment of the social units of intracommunal violence – criminal gangs. The rising spiral of state suppression and organised resistance, and the Low Intensity Conflict of the 1980s took this process of social dislocation yet another step further.40 The damage to the social fabric of families and communities, resulting from both poverty and political turmoil, made growing up a brutal experience for many black South Africans. There was also a social–psychological dimension to the deprivation caused by both apartheid and by the struggle. In the case of apartheid, the policies of discrimination, in their planning and execution, presupposed the inferiority of black South Africans. In a very large measure these policies institutionalised the degrading of their humanity.41 Divisions within the ranks of those who revolted against apartheid also had an edge of humiliation and insult to them. There is some evidence that the friction between Inkatha and the ANC alliance revolved around matters of status. According to Jeffery: ‘Inkatha supporters were denigrated as backward tribalists, unable to adjust to the demands of a changing world. They were also dubbed “othelewini” – a pejorative term intended to equate Inkatha supporters with “the punitive regiment whose job was to throw traitors off cliffs” under Shaka’s rule.’ 42 The most extreme expression of disrespect, contempt, loathing and even hatred was found in the necklace killings. According to one researcher ‘… [o]ne of the motivations behind this method of killing is the link to traditional religious beliefs whereby it is believed that if you burn a person you destroy the spirit or soul. This in turn means that the link to the ancestors is destroyed for the surviving family. This represents the ultimate insult since the surviving family members are unable to ask their ancestors’ spirits to intercede with God to ensure that the family receives protection from all evil or harm …’.43 This accounts for the otherwise bizarre behaviour of bodies being dug up after burial and then being necklaced – the intent is to damage and stigmatise the surviving family.


Apartheid was the major source of deprivation that nurtured the culture of violence. Experiences during the anti-apartheid resistance deepened the sense of deprivation for some. But this violent resistance also provided one of the most important outlets for those who experienced such multi-dimensional deprivation. Throughout the literature the conviction is expressed (but not explained) that the armed struggle served to inspire, motivate and spur the antiapartheid movers more than any other form of resistance.44 The idea is expressed repeatedly that in taking up arms some form of psychological gratification was found which otherwise would have eluded the participants. Our interpretation of the added attraction of taking up arms against apartheid, even just as ‘armed propaganda’, is that the gratification lies therein that the participants retrieved a huge amount of esteem lost through the humiliation experienced under apartheid. They took up arms for a cause, universally recognised as a worthy one, and in doing so demonstrated their own worth. For this very same reason it made sense that the ANC sought a court order to block the release of the report of the TRC. The report found that in pursuing this morally exemplary cause, the ANC used methods and means which grossly violated human rights. Such a finding has to be particularly stressful to those who invested so much of their personal dignity in this conflict. To be sure, one must not overstate the matter. The exhiliration of the armed struggle did not always take hold of everybody, everywhere. The ANC, by its own admission, had to deal with problems of mutiny in its own military camps, and found that it had to do so by torture and executions. 45 But the problem of fighting a war without the stirring encouragement of a just cause was probably far more acute on the other side. The true vulnerability of the NP government on this count was exposed, not in the townships of South Africa, but inside Angola. South Africa’s occupation of Namibia, and its counterinsurgency war against the South West African Peoples’ Organisation (SWAPO), drew it into a regional war on the Angolan border. By the late 1980s the major players were South Africa, acting in support of UNITA, and Cuba, doing the same for the ruling MPLA government of Angola. This war was escalating into a series of conventional confrontations, with the risk of a high loss of life. The South African forces consisted of a large component of white conscripts and white civil society was increasingly questioning whether


losing conscripts’ lives in remote parts of southern Angola was an appropriate price to pay. Did white South Africa have a cause worth dying for? Clearly not, according to the politicians. Military strategy had to be adapted accordingly. Preventing loss of white conscripts’ lives became an overriding tactical consideration, and heavily influenced the withdrawal at Cuito Cuanavale, which became one of the turning points in this war. By the end of 1989, just before the onset of negotiations, the moral emptiness of the SADF’s cause had been exposed by the Angolan war: ‘ … [d]ying for the sake of minority rule seemed the last thing white men would be allowed to do’.46

5 Why the Negotiations Succeeded

Introduction South Africa’s peacemakers succeeded where many others failed. Considered for many years to be a least likely case for successful peacemaking, failure was predicted with regularity, even as the peace talks got underway. Identifying factors which were conducive to success had become important to the vocation of peacemaking and for the management of peace process in other conflict arenas. To retain perspective it has to be recognised that this success story is not without blemish. A consideration of the flaws in the South African peace process also needs to be made from which valuable insights can be gleaned. Negotiations that fail become an extension of the conflict which they tried to resolve. Explaining this failure is the task of conflict theory. Explaining successful negotiations is the task of the theory of conflict resolution.1 The following reasons (in no particular sequence of importance) for the success of South Africa’s negotiated transition can be advanced, with reference to relevant theoretical underpinnings.

Factors conducive to success Mutual dependence Interdependence is a defining characteristic of negotiations, a necessary condition for successful negotiations and the basis for the power relationship within a negotiating context. The fact that each party owns or controls valued and scarce resources which are sought 85


by the other party lays the basis for competition and conflict, but can also provide the basis for a mutually profitable exchange of these resources. Such an exchange is, in short, a bargaining process. Dependence is a function of the scarcity of the sought-after resources (i.e. whether they can be acquired from somewhere else) and the urgency with which these are sought by the other party. High levels of mutual dependence occur when parties are virtually indispensable to one another, where each controls goods vital to the wellbeing of the other.2 The extreme condition of high mutual dependence is one of symbiosis. This dependence is also the basis of their power over one another. The greater the dependence of one on the other, the greater the (potential) power of the latter. Two highly mutually dependent adversaries are therefore in a power relationship where each can do great damage to the other: each can withhold scarce, important and greatly needed resources from the other. A condition of mutual vulnerability ensues. This condition is, however, also one conducive to the clinching of mutually profitable agreements: each one, being indispensable to the other, can provide the sought-after resources to the opponent, in return for which it can receive those commodities essential to its own welfare.3 The South African context and the power relationship between the major antagonists have often been interpreted (implicitly, at least) in a way largely compatible with this analytical perspective. Various analysts have depicted the power relationship as one of ‘mutual weakness’,4 of ‘mutual hostageship’,5 where they can inflict on one another ‘mutually assured destruction’, 6 with the only choice being to negotiate, failing which ‘ … could have left them fighting over a devastated South Africa’.7 The context of mutual vulnerability in South Africa is largely a function of the socio-economic structure of the country, as shaped by the forces of both industrial capitalism and apartheid. Given that all South Africans want to live in a prosperous and stable society, these two formative forces have left different communities in control of widely disparate resources essential to both stability and prosperity. By the end of the apartheid era whites controlled and owned most of the land (about 80 percent) and production. For example, 12 000 white farmers were producing 75 per cent of the country’s food. Similarly, most of the expertise (management, tech-

Why the Negotiations Succeeded 87

nology, etc.) needed to run the modern sector of the economy was located, overwhelmingly, within the white sector. Yet despite the inequities of apartheid, black South Africans had by the mid-1980s established themselves firmly, and indispensably, in this modern sector. This was largely as consumers, where their collective buying power made them the largest category in almost every sector of the market.8 The power struggle of the 1980s had also revealed some of the mutual damage that could be done through coercive exploitation of such dependence relationships. International economic sanctions deprived the modern sector of investment capital and also diminished the number of jobs for (mostly) black workers. The tactical brilliance of the strategy of ‘ungovernability’ was to deny to the apartheid regime the single most needed commodity: voluntary compliance. But this came at a price. Those youngsters, for example, who conducted the school boycotts of the 1980s campaigning under the slogan of ‘liberation before education’, did succeed in turning the apartheid education system upside down, but ended up with very little if any education for themselves. They became the socalled ‘lost generation’, unemployed and unemployable. The dynamics of self-inflicted damage also operated on the other side. Counter-revolutionary, total strategy tactics of destabilisation and dirty tricks by the agents of the apartheid regime became a roundabout way of destabilising their own environment. The destructive power of mutual dependence may be present, but it has to be recognised for what it is, and acted upon to have a preventive impact. This was not lost on the leaders. Both Mandela and De Klerk appeared to be aware of this potentially destructive power relationship and were intent on negating its predicted and anticipated consequences. In his famous letter, written in 1988 to P. W. Botha, Mandela put it that his initiatives were motivated by the spectre of the country sliding into a catastrophic civil war, where two utterly polarised hostile forces, one black, one white would engage one another in an immensely destructive confrontation. He perceived, at the time of his writing, that the tensions inherent to such a polarisation were already building up in the country, indicating that ever more violent confrontations were close at hand.9 In his opening address to parliament when he unbanned the ANC, De Klerk also used the need to avoid mutual destruction as a


starting point for initiating drastic change. He put the rationale for his dramatic initiatives thus: [t]he alternative is growing violence, tension and conflict. That is unacceptable and in nobody’s interest. The wellbeing of all in this country is linked inextricably to the ability of the leaders to come to terms with one another on a new dispensation. No one can escape this simple truth.10 The power equation The condition of mutual hostageship which prevailed by the mid1970s in South Africa had some additional dimensions with implications for the power relationship between the major antagonists. It was a rapidly shifting power relationship. The growing industrial economy which made the different peoples ever more interdependent and intermingled was also driven by a demographic factor. Black population growth had by the early 1960s already far outstripped the projections of the planners of so-called grand apartheid (that is, the idea of homelands as eventual independent sovereign states) of the 1950s. The required control over the movement of people to the urban industrial centres of the economy just could not be contained, let alone be reversed. The grand scheme of apartheid was overwhelmed by sheer numbers and by the 1980s the project was facing system overload and institutional collapse. Macro-scale social engineering was facing impending failure as the state ran out of personnel, resources and resolve. Virtually every aspect of legally prescribed racial segregation was imploding, through the sheer force of numbers, which apartheid bureaucracies increasingly failed to contain. This was, as John KaneBerman metaphorically put it, a profoundly important, yet silent revolution, consisting of ordinary people who simply ignored these legal restrictions and moved into the cities in their desperate attempts at sheer survival.11 The power implications were twofold. Firstly, the need for an armed campaign to get rid of apartheid could be increasingly questioned. The institutional breakdown of apartheid undercut the rationale for the armed struggle and made it superfluous, if not redundant. Conditions became ever more favourable for effective non-legal, non-violent resistance in the form of civil disobedience.


Secondly, the ruling NP found themselves in a continually weakening position. For them the imperative was to negotiate earlier rather than later. This pressure was further aggravated by the fact that the NP and its white support base, unlike the opposing communities in Northern Ireland, for example, had no sovereign patron (such as Britain and the Republic of Ireland) to fall back on in the event of yet another impasse.12 The win-win result The notion of both parties to the negotiations being able to walk away as winners is derived from the distinction between integrative and distributive bargaining. In the case of the latter, one party emerges better off than the other by virtue of having drawn concessions from the opponent in the division of limited resources. What the one then gets is at the expense of the other. Integrative bargaining occurs when the settlement yields an outcome of mutual benefit, in the sense that it represents the best possible result for both parties. This requires parties to perceive the issue that brought them to the table as one of mutual goal setting and joint problemsolving, rather than a conflict over who should prevail.13 Additional assumptions underpinning this approach are that every party has a legitimate right to pursue its interests, that mutual trust is a given, that concessions be reciprocated, and that rapid movement towards resolution is favoured over stalling tactics.14 The perception of the South African negotiations becoming such a process and ending up with such an outcome was crucial to initiating and sustaining the negotiations. Who was to win what? For the ANC the clear goal was one of majority rule, preferably unlimited. Mandela repeatedly gave reassurances that white fears had to be reconciled with this concept, but he did not mean that such reconciliation amounted to deviation from their goal. Majority rule was the ANC’s opening line, and very close to being their bottom line as well. And in the end they got it, albeit by stealth. Far more complex was the process by which the NP, and by extension white South Africa, had to figure out how they could end up as joint winners from a process of democratization. The process started, arguably, within the Afrikaner Broederbond, a secret Afrikaner think-tank, which had been close to Afrikaner leadership throughout its existence. In 1986, under the chairmanship of


Professor Pieter De Lange, it released a document addressing the issue of Afrikaner political survival. In essence the argument presented in the document recognised and addressed the security dilemma of apartheid. The conclusion was that the logic of apartheid had to be inverted: durable security had to be found in a new constitution which had the endorsement of the majority of South Africans. This entailed the taking of the huge risk of accepting minority status, which was justified in the following terms: A test which we should set for the acceptability of a system must always be: what will be in our interests in the event that we end up in the opposition seat? Furthermore, we must also realise that, humanly speaking there are simply no guarantees. The greatest risk that we are taking today is not taking any risks. The will to survive as Afrikaners and our faith and energy will serve as our greatest guarantee.15 De Klerk took the risk and set out to secure the best ‘winning outcome’ he could. What the NP thought it could get at the table waxed and waned as their own position of power improved at first and then deteriorated. According to Waldmeir, in 1989, after allowing the initial ANC march for which about 30 000 people turned up (and not the 500 000 he had feared would turn up for an illegal march on Parliament if this one was not legalised), De Klerk thought that he would be able to manage and control not only all future marches, but the entire process of transition as well.16 Early in 1992, after getting massive endorsement for negotiated change from the white electorate in a referendum,17 he was confident of securing a constitutionally guaranteed power-sharing executive, and even possibly of beating the ANC in an election with the IFP as an alliance partner.18 But as the process evolved, the ANC grew in strength, coherence and tactical guile, while the NP lost its way. The showdown was the 1992 mass action campaign, which ended with the Record of Understanding in which the NP acceded to the central demands of the ANC. In the view of Giliomee the NP lost this contest because De Klerk, as an individual, lacked the required ‘toughness’ to confront the ANC, and because the NP as a party lacked both the ‘intellectual capacity and political self-confidence’ to hold their line.19 The line, so obvious on the basis of comparative evidence, is that unrestrained majority rule is incompatible with


democracy and is almost nowhere applied within the ranks of consolidated democracies.20 By the end of 1993 the NP had to negotiate for ‘sunset clauses’ in the transitional constitution, and had to concede on the majoritarian character of both the 1993 constitution, and eventually, the even more explicitly majoritarian constitution of 1996. On another level the argument for the negotiations as a process with a win–win outcome is more plausible. It was seen to, and did, provide both sets of adversaries with some very valuable emotional rewards. For the Afrikaner nationalists, apartheid was a sub-theme in their nationalist project of capturing the state 21 and, in Horowitz’s terminology, claiming ownership of the country. Such ethnic ownership can usually be expected to deliver the sought-after goods of a public demonstration of the worth, calibre and status of the owners. And, in the mutual recognition society of the international system of states, such accreditation is usually forthcoming. But in the case of the apartheid state things worked out differently. For the Afrikaner owners of the apartheid state respect and status were denied. Instead, they became international pariahs, outcasts, who were hated, vilified, despised and ended up as ‘ … the object of universal moral disgust’.22 The then head of the South African Secret Service, described this experience: ‘The entire world turned their backs on us; my children were growing up knowing the world hated them, that they were welcome nowhere. The entire nation was being stigmatized’.23 The country was banned from the Olympic Games, barred from the United Nations General Assembly, and ousted from many other venues of international recognition and prestige. This psychological deprivation provided a powerful stimulus towards negotiating a new political order. The negotiation of a new order was in part about the retrieval of moral dignity for the Afrikaners, about finding ‘a just way of co-existence’. 24 And it was the strategic genius of Thabo Mbeki to realise that only the ANC had the capacity to restore this to them.25 For black South Africans the emotional rewards of liberation were patently obvious. The deeper psychological dimension of apartheid was about humiliation, and about the systematic denial of their humanity. The dismantling of this political and legal order was in every sense intensely gratifying to those who were the losers under the apartheid system.


The mutually hurting stalemate A crucial condition necessary for entering into negotiations, and for persisting in the search for an amicable resolution, is the perception among conflicting parties that they are in a stalemated conflict, that this stalemate is a costly, damaging condition, and that there is a negotiated way out of such an impasse. The perception of a deadlock must be mutual and the existence of the ‘double veto’ must be recognised: this entails that each party has the ability to block the other from winning unilaterally, that each party controls or owns some but not all of the ingredients for a negotiated solution, and therefore that the cooperation of both parties is necessary for the peaceful settlement of the dispute.26 Towards the latter half of the 1980s a military stalemate was developing in South Africa and the perception of a mutually hurting stalemate gradually took hold in the minds of the leading stakeholders. The military stalemate resulted from, on the one hand, the ability of the state to contain the armed insurrectionary plan of the ANC and, on the other, its inability to displace the armed presence of the ANC inside the country. The ANC could, and did, succeed in executing armed actions (sabotage, bombs, landmines, hand grenade attacks, etc.) inside the country, but they could not succeed in establishing ‘liberated zones’. The security forces of the state could contain the forces of MK in a military sense through detentions, bannings, arrests and deaths in armed confrontations, but it could not eliminate them as a political presence within South Africa. Neither could prevail on its own terms. This stalemate was an increasing mutually hurting condition. The number of MK casualties in battle rose, as did the number of SADF and SAP members who died in combat. The number of people held in detention under the two states of emergency escalated enormously. The socio-economic ramifications of this military confrontation, in the form of declining local and international investor confidence, a sliding currency value, domestic labour turbulence and decreasing economic activity contributed to the overall costs of the stalemate. Breaking a mutually hurting stalemate can be a delicate affair, especially if the impasse is protracted and the hurting is intense. Making the first move towards negotiation runs the risk of invoking


what can be called the Tragic Theory of Bargaining. As Zartman and Berman explain: The paradox of this situation is that, to the party which has not [yet] decided to negotiate, the decision of the other party is a prima facie reason for the first to continue to refuse because it makes it appear that the other party is yielding. If the first party can only hold out a little longer, the other might give in completely.27 This presents us with a plausible proposition as to why pre-negotiations were undertaken in such secrecy, continued for such a long time, dealt so gingerly with the crucial issue of violence and apparently never dealt with the issue of good faith. These flaws in the prenegotiation process not only led to a breakdown in constitutional negotiations in mid-1992, but may also have affected the capacity of the new order to deal with post-settlement violence. This proposition will be taken up later in the chapter. The perception of the stalemate emerged in the ranks of both sets of leaders as the effect of the state of emergency set in. By 1987 the ANC in exile realised that its capacity to overthrow the state by means of insurrection was broken. 28 Mandela, in Pollsmoor prison at the time, made the same assessment. In his biography he recalls that he realised at that time that the prospects of a military victory for the liberation movements was exceedingly remote, if not impossible. Many lives would be lost in pursuit of this unattainable goal, without any realistic chance of success. It was time for talk’. 29 The state of emergency also showed to the security establishment in the state that their coercive instruments had been taken to the limit and that beyond that limit the ANC was damaged, but still intact.30 The final decisive ingredient in the perception of a mutually hurting stalemate is that the parties should sense that there is a way out. This escape route from confrontation became available with the dramatic changes in the international context. In 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the bi-polar Cold War structure which had impacted on the Southern African conflict so strongly fell away. This affected the strategic calculations of both the NP and the ANC dramatically. F.W. De Klerk found in the crumbling of the USSR, the


ANC’s largest logistical sponsor and the source of much of its ideological inspiration, a huge boost of confidence. The collapse of communism and the implosion of material support for the armed struggle nurtured the belief that the ANC could become reasonable negotiating partners. It also strengthened his conviction that the NP would be negotiating from a position of strength and that the ANC without its Soviet backers could be contained within a process of transition in which the existing state would set the parameters of dealmaking.31 The end of the Cold War also brought another shift in external pressures into the South African context, providing a final nudge to the stalemated enemies. With the Western powers clearly in the ascendancy, the ANC had to realign itself to the new international order. This meant that they had to make themselves acceptable to these powers, which in turn required them to embrace negotiations and to distance themselves from their insurrectionary project. At the same time, the West, and the USA in particular, freed from Cold War constraints, could put the South African government under renewed pressure. This they did with a virtual ultimatum in October 1989 to release political prisoners, unban the ANC and lift the state of emergency.32 Innovative negotiating rules The sometimes tortuous negotiations retained momentum at crucial times through the use of some innovative procedures in the negotiating process. Every one served to circumvent impending deadlock and/or to maintain movement in the process of constructing the settlement. The first innovation was the use of bosberade (‘bush summits’). These were informal talks which ran parallel to formal negotiations. A uniquely South African touch was added to these events by holding them at exclusive game lodges in the wildlife environment of the African bushveld. These locations were undisclosed, removed from the surveillance of the press and other audiences, remote, with an ‘island’ sense of seclusion, and provided a break from the usual pressures negotiators experienced. These summits were usually bilateral, but there were also important intra-party bosberade, where parties had to cement their own ranks in the taking and retaking of positions as the process moved forward.


The first important meeting of this kind was an intra-party meeting held by the NP in December 1989, about six weeks before F.W. De Klerk’s historic address to parliament. At the meeting, held at the D’Nyala ranch close to the Limpopo river, the NP agreed to back De Klerk on the releasing of Mandela and unbanning the ANC, PAC, and related organisations. The matter of the unbanning of the SACP raised intense differences of opinion however. Without any decisions of strategy being reached at the meeting, the general support of the cabinet for De Klerk’s 2 February speech was gained.33 Looking back, one can gain a sense of the crucial role of this first bosberaad by considering what would conceivably have happened if the SACP had not been unbanned simultaneously with its alliance partner, the ANC. The initiative of 2 February 1990 would simply not have been the historic breakthrough that it was, but instead may have delivered a set of half-measures which could have aggravated the conflict even more. The breakdown of negotiations following the Boipatong massacre in June 1992 lead to the series of informal talks between the ANC and NP, conducted by Cyril Ramaphosa and Roelf Meyer respectively. This provided the basis for some crucial bilateral bosberade between the two parties. Following the Record of Understanding, these two parties had to take the initiative in getting multi-party talks restarted. This could only be done with a very clear understanding between these two actors as to the basis of their own relationship, and what they wanted to get out of another round of constitutional negotiations. The Record of Understanding provided only a rudimentary framework. Important details had to be filled in. This was achieved at two pivotal meetings, one in December 1992, the other on 20 January 1993. Both the constitutional mould of the new democracy and the process of transition (in essence, a democratisation ‘pact’) were finalised at these meetings.34 The other negotiating parties ended up helping to fill in the details in the subsequent talks. At the conclusion of the multi-party talks on 16 November 1993 another secret summit between De Klerk and Mandela endorsed the details of the pact, as negotiated by the multi-party process. The next day the interim constitution was adopted by the negotiators. The remarkable sway the NP and ANC ended up having over the second round of multi-party constitutional talks was a function, in


part, of the sufficient consensus rule. This innovative decision-making rule held that the proposals put forward by the NP and/or ANC would be carried even against dissent by a number of smaller parties: ‘Disagreement would be recorded; dissenters could remain in the process, await its outcome, and then decide whether to support it’.35 This rule presupposed what it in fact enforced: trust and a common commitment to a solution, especially from the more numerous smaller parties, who were required to put settlement first, even if their own concerns were not met. The steamroller effect of this rule was to deliver a settlement very close to what the ANC and NP wanted, but some costs accrued. The IFP rejected this collaboration between the other two members of the Big Three as malicious subversion of the peace process and subsequently, along with a number of smaller right-wing parties, withdrew from the formal talks. They returned to the process as the rightwing Freedom Alliance (FA) some time after the interim constitution had been written into law. This time brinkmanship prevailed over sufficient consensus. These parties succeeded in wringing two significant constitutional amendments from the new establishment, but put the entire transition at risk in the process. The IFP, in particular, took brinkmanship to the very edge, joining the election only a week before the first polling day. The channel, consisting of Roelf Meyer and Cyril Ramaphosa, carried the peace process through the breakdown in the talks which followed the Boipatong massacre. When formal multi-party talks were resumed in 1993, this deadlock-breaking mechanism was deliberately institutionalised. A planning committee was established with the specific task of maintaining the momentum of the negotiations. They always met behind closed doors and no minutes were taken of their meetings. A sub-committee of the planning committee was established, consisting of three members, one each from the ANC, the NP and the IFP. After the IFP withdrew, the remaining two individuals, Fanie van der Merwe and Mac Maharaj, continued in their positions to the end. They met every day to review the proceedings, to consider problems which emerged during the day, to anticipate future hitches and to create new initiatives with which the negotiators could start the next day. The skills of these two individuals became renowned, and it became more or less accepted procedure to ‘channel’ controversial matters to them.36


In the later stages of the negotiations the momentum increased considerably, as the pressure of deadlines (especially that of the 1994 election) began to bear on the negotiators. One way of dealing with some of the delicate issues which emerged late in the talks was to transfer these to the workload of the yet-to-be-elected interim Government of National Unity. This deliberate ambiguity on matters such as the exact composition of the public service, the detailed mechanisms for the implementation of affirmative action policies and the measures for the integration of the armed forces allowed every party to remain optimistic about its eventual outcome and to persist in nurturing a win–win perception of the process.37 A striking example of such ambiguity is found in the section of the 1993 constitution that deals with national unity and reconciliation. The question of amnesty, crucial to the peace process, is dealt with in the following way. The general provision reads that: ‘ … in order to advance such reconciliation and reconstruction, amnesty shall be granted in respect of acts, omissions, and offences associated with political objectives and committed in the course of the conflicts of the past’. So far so good. But then the criteria for dealing with the amnesty process are defined in the following way: ‘These can now be addressed on the basis that there is a need for understanding but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation, a need for ubuntu but not for victimisation’38 (emphasis added). The concept of ‘ubuntu’ refers to a supposedly traditional African humanism, which has an exceedingly vague and highly contested meaning, with virtually no status in democratic constitutionalism, and is therefore ambiguous in the extreme.39 Leadership Both new leaders and long-established ones contributed to the successful settlement in South Africa. F.W. De Klerk succeeded P.W. Botha in late 1989. This brought a new generation of leadership to the NP and one with a distinctly different sense of history. Unlike Botha, De Klerk’s parents never had direct experience of the British concentration camps during the Anglo-Boer War. The bitterness of the humiliation that accompanied that experience stayed with Botha throughout his career and probably shaped the expression of anxiety, aggression and distrust so typical of his political style. De Klerk carried no such scars. 40 Constand Viljoen, a former military


general and Head of the SADF, became the real leader of the white right-wing in 1993 with the death of Andries Treurnicht, then leader of the Conservative Party. Mandela became formal leader of the ANC after the death of Oliver Tambo. The personal traits of every individual leader vary widely and are not the subject of this study. Profiles of Mandela, De Klerk, Ramaphosa, Meyer, Viljoen, Thabo Mbeki and Buthelezi are found in a number of studies and can be gleaned from the autobiographical publications of the two Nobel Peace Prize winners.41 What is relevant here is that, despite their different personalities, they appeared to share one vital attribute. This was the capacity to induce the self-negating prediction. 42 The self-negating prediction entails an appreciation of the destructive conflict potential of South Africa, inherent in high levels of mutual dependence, and the motivation to cooperate with one another in order to avert such conflict. It was required of leaders to recognise a mutually hurting stalemate for what it is, and to gauge and calculate the very real prospect of huge damage which could follow from stubbornly holding onto their respective positions in this stalemate. This they did. And this recognition provided the incentive to act preemptively in order to avert the envisaged self-destruction. As Friedman noted: ‘However bitter conflict became, however unbridgeable the divide between negotiating parties seemed to be, somehow the abyss always seemed to hold less appeal than the option of shifting ground.’43 Political culture If we know why the leaders led, what made the followers go along? This applies especially to the white Afrikaners who had been the prime beneficiaries of the apartheid system, who stood to lose the most under a democratic regime and whose leaders ended up conceding the most at the negotiating table. Afrikaner political culture has consistently shown that the rank and file defer to their leaders and entrust them with their political future. By way of an example, consider the highly reputed set of public opinion surveys conducted between 1974 and 1977 by the Bergstraesser Institute. In 1977, after a year of political turmoil, 61 per cent of NP supporters expressed confidence in the party’s leaders, even if they did not clearly comprehend the leaders’ actions, or approve of them. Respondents in the survey were confronted with the following scenario:


Imagine the following situation. The Prime Minister announces that in view of the serious situation it is necessary to make drastic changes in South Africa in the interests of the White nation. These changes will demand great sacrifice and concessions from the white community. Which of the following statements do you agree with? – I will support the Prime Minister unconditionally. – I will support the Prime Minister only if I agree with his proposals. – I will oppose any drastic change in our policies. In the June 1976 survey 46.8 per cent of the NP supporters expressed unconditional support for the Prime Minister. The consistency of this support was verified with the June 1977 survey which again shows a 45.2 per cent level of unconditional support for the party leadership.44 The study concluded that the NP leadership had at their disposal a stable basis of trust which provided huge political capital for the NP leadership and allowed them an exceptional amount of leeway in taking bold initiatives, which they could do with little risk of losing their own support base. Thirteen years later F. W. De Klerk delved into this capital and took these initiatives in the form of a high-risk gamble. The 1992 whites-only referendum, which delivered a 68.6 per cent ‘yes’ vote showed that he and his party still held the trust of the white voters. Giliomee contends that this stable basis of trust and deference explains why the NP and De Klerk in particular, were not challenged from within when it became clear during the course of 1993 that a majoritarian constitution with very few constitutional devices for the protection of minorities was in the making. When the 1994 election results were converted into parliamentary seats, and the reality of a one-party dominant regime in which whites in general and Afrikaners in particular were effectively powerless set in, the constitutional powersharing win–win outcome evaporated. Still no revolt ensued. Afrikaners acquiesced. Giliomee concludes that a combination of leadership and political culture explains this response: ‘What makes De Klerk different … is that he … has managed to retain a considerable degree of respect and following despite failing in his high-risk gamble. It says much for De Klerk, but even more about the Afrikaner people – their pragmatism, their fatalism and perhaps also


their resilience’.45 Whether a new security threat and even a new security dilemma will emerge for them in post-settlement South Africa, and how they respond to this, remains to be seen. The level playing field One of the persistent obstacles in the way of a settlement was the dispute between the ANC and NP over the agency which was to administer the transition. It had been agreed with Mandela in the secret pre-negotiations that an outside third party would not be called in to fulfil that role. But the ANC perceptively noted that the state machinery would give the NP a clear advantage and insisted that the present government ‘ … cannot continue to play both referee and player in the negotiating process’. 46 To rectify this imbalance required, to extend the metaphor, that the playing field be levelled. This was attempted in an imaginative way. Agreement was reached in late 1992 on the establishment of a Transitional Executive Council (TEC), which would serve as a multiparty referee of the transition, and of the election in particular, thus removing NP control of the process. Formally, the Transitional Executive Council Act of 1993 provided for a Council plus seven sub-councils to act as a neutral body. The objectives of the TEC were stated quite explicitly, inter alia, as serving to ‘ … ensure that no Government or administration exercises any of its powers in such a way as to advantage or prejudice any political party’ (section 39(a)(v)). Multi-party control was to be achieved by having every party to the Negotiating Council (the revised and revived CODESA) represented on the Council, as well as on every sub-council, and by requiring a 75 per cent vote on the Council (section 25(2)). The TEC was charged specifically to oversee the 1994 inaugural election, to be run by another body, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC). Appointed by the then State President on the advice of the TEC, the IEC was to replace the Department of Home Affairs, which had run all previous parliamentary elections and which the ANC had rejected outright as being a partisan body. The task was to produce a competent, impartial administration of the election. The negotiated election In this the TEC and IEC duly failed. Too little time was available to build a new autonomous bureaucracy, too few resources were allo-


cated and the task was far too daunting. The IEC was unable to stem acts of intimidation and failed to prevent the establishment of ‘nogo’ areas. It lost control over the counting process, especially with regard to the integrity of the ballot boxes, and when the eventual result was announced, it seemed very likely that its validity would be challenged. The opposite happened. No party objected. The parties had negotiated, yet again, to compromise by agreeing to withdraw their complaints against one another.47 The real choice, as so many times before, was not between this election and a better one. The choice was between this, flawed, second-best election and a contested result with potentially disasterous social upheaval. The parties again settled for the former.

Flaws in the negotiating process Was this a negotiated transition, or a revolutionary transition, or both? According to Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley, two North American academics, it was a process of ‘negotiating the revolution’.48 This catchy expression of a ‘negotiated revolution’ has been taken over by journalists Waldmeir and Sparks in their depiction of the transition. By journalistic criteria it is probably excusable, but as an analytic concept it obscures some of the most fundamentally contrasting approaches to negotiating a peace process. Good faith or goodwill? Good faith is a concept that is rooted in a particular cultural approach to negotiations. This concept applies to both the negotiations process and to its outcomes. Within the so-called low-context cultures of Europe and North America, a process of negotiating in good faith has the following requirements. The good faith principle consists, primarily, of the procedural rule that offers once made cannot be withdrawn, and agreements once reached, have to be implemented.49 This in turn requires the acceptance of a whole set of assumptions about the nature of the process. First, the agreement amounts to a contract, which is mutually binding on all signatories, is irrevocable unless and until all parties agree to revising it, and is captured in a written document which stipulates every detail of what was agreed upon. Secondly, the contract is entered into freely, without compulsion or coercion. Thirdly, and following from the


above, voluntary commitment results from mutual benefit to all signatories. This mutually beneficial settlement, in turn, is reached through a process of compromise and mutual concessions, on the basis of reciprocity, which produces a convergence of positions. 50 This convergence is achieved when all negotiators commit themselves to a process where the mixed-motive character of negotiations is explicitly recognised, and where the need to establish common ground (the contract zone) is seen to be essential to eventual success. Such an understanding of what negotiations mean is essential to the depiction of the process as that of joint problem solving, and one which can be utilised as a conflict-resolving mechanism within a peace process. A conflict that is settled through an agreement which is negotiated in good faith cannot therefore at the same time be a revolutionary one. By contrast, in so-called high-context cultures the process of negotiation is not seen as a specific event with a discrete character and finite, clearly demarcated boundaries. Negotiations are seen to be part of a longer, continuous process of events and interactions which form part of the overall long-term relationship between the negotiating parties. A negotiated agreement within this perspective is no great turning point, no definitive, set, codification of the relationship. At worst such an event is merely an episode in the ongoing relationship, at best a benchmark. The agreement does certainly not hold the status of an irrevocable contract, but is always subject to re-negotiation, to reinterpretation, and is as fluid as the ongoing relationship is indeterminate. In this view, the working relationship can and should be held together, not by good faith, legal documents and litigation, but by goodwill, and by flexible negotiated arrangements that accurately reflect the flux in the ongoing interaction between adversaries. 51 From this perspective, the goodwill necessary for sustaining the process of negotiating for peace has to derive from joint recognition of the justness of the cause of one party over the other, and from their joint, but not identical, contributions to right some large historical wrongs. Good faith, as it applies to negotiated outcomes, in a low-context culture therefore has its focus on the binding status of the negotiated contract. The agreement represents a fixed point of reference, cementing the relationship between the parties, and is both stable and static until it is revisited by both parties, by mutual agreement.


The negotiated agreement is both a legal contract, and a social contract. For high-context cultures the outcome is but an episode within the larger ongoing process, negotiated at a specific time to capture the status of the relationship at that time, but is always, inevitably subject to obsolescence as the relationship evolves in new circumstances where different power relationships emerge, new issues arise and status positions change.52 Whether parties aim to negotiate in good faith, or on the basis of goodwill is not a reflection of their integrity, honesty or any other personal qualities, but is, according to Raymond Cohen, rooted in cultural differences. What is important for the process of peacemaking, however, is that the strategic and tactical doctrine which follows from each approach may generate grave problems when negotiators from opposing sides meet. It is of the utmost importance that a clear and explicit understanding be established among negotiators as to which approach is to guide their deliberations. In the absence of such an understanding the following problems may emerge. First, disagreements may arise as to the importance of procedures. The standard conventions of negotiations such as mutual concessions, reciprocity, compromise and the search for a middle ground is, for one, the essence of the process, which needs to be upheld. For the other, these are mere conventions, trivial mannerisms, to be used in whatever way in order to serve the larger cause. Secondly, tactics that are deployed beyond the table, whether through violence, political mobilisation or spoiling, should, from the lowcontext perspective, be seen as discreet from negotiations, and qualitatively distinct from the process of joint problem solving. Negotiations are then an alternative to such actions. From the highcontext perspective, such actions could legitimately complement negotiations, and form part of the overall thrust of pursuing the larger cause. Thirdly, the outcome in the form of a negotiated settlement is, for low-context negotiators, a contractually binding agreement, with an element of fixity. High-context negotiators are likely to sense a settlement as the achievement of something different. A new power relationship has been established, and the negotiated agreement represents just another platform for further contestation, and for the remoulding of the adversarial relationship. Fourthly, low-context negotiators insist on an equality between negotiators.


High-context negotiators are loathe to concede on this point completely, insisting on the recognition of their own moral superiority, which derives from the justness of their cause. Taken together, in the absence of a clear agreement about the nature of the negotiations process, low-context negotiators who are confronted by opponents informed by a high-context perspective can end up accusing their opponents of bad faith, of using the conventions of negotiation as a ruse, as an act of deception, and of using negotiations as the pursuit of war by other means. Their highcontext opponents can respond with accusations about moral insensitivity, of failure to recognise the historical wrongs committed by one side over the other, and therefore a callous disregard for the moral superiority derived from the justness of their own cause. Even the limited data at our disposal suggest that the parties to South Africa’s settlement had sharply divergent views as to the outcomes of the negotiated settlement. Both the PAC and the ANC, in submissions to the TRC, stated clearly that they saw the entire transition as one which started as part of the anti-colonial struggles of all the other former African colonies and that the various steps in this process all have to be considered as part of the much larger process of liberation.53 For the NP the outcome was always cast as one within the domain of democratisation and the creation of a rechtsstaat, the epitome of a constitutional contract. The various agreements, such as the 1993 and 1996 constitutions, are from the perspective of the liberationists thus mere landmarks on a far longer road and the significance of each is measured against the progress made with this much larger project. The 1994 elections, for example, were therefore to be judged by those who subscribe to the low-context culture, by the extent to which the negotiated electoral procedures were upheld or not. For those within a high-context culture, these elections were significant for the fact that they were liberation elections, irrespective of whether they were played strictly by the rules or not.54 Whether the parties to South Africa’s settlement ever negotiated with a shared understanding of whether the process was to be glued together by the procedures of good faith or the goodwill derived from the just cause of the one negotiating party remains unclear. This is a crucial, but vastly under-researched aspect of the peace process. Given the scarcity of published material, it is not clear


whether the DP, NP or IFP negotiators talked this matter through within their own ranks at all and explicitly took positions on this matter. Nor is it clear that the major parties with coercive means at their disposal engaged one another in any explicit discussion on the requirements of good faith. The ANC alliance, in contrast, did engage in an in-depth debate in their own ranks, on the strategic and tactical implications of negotiations, some of which appeared in print. This allows us some insight into how their negotiating positions bear on the two positions outlined above. Between 1985 and 1990 the ANC and its main alliance partner the SACP gradually positioned themselves with respect to the prospect of negotiations. The 1985 Kabwe declaration committed them to the concept of a ‘people’s war’ as the way to an insurrectionary ‘seizure of power’. As the concept of ‘negotiations’ entered into the political debate in the late 1980s, the alliance embraced this approach as an additional dimension to their strategic repertoire. For the SACP, in particular, negotiations were not seen as an alternative to armed confrontation, but as a strategy to complement the armed struggle. In this way negotiations became the ‘fifth pillar’ of the struggle, alongside the armed struggle, the international isolation of the apartheid regime, the mobilisation of mass opposition within the country and the building of underground structures. No incompatibility between negotiations and violence was foreseen.55 Mandela’s own views on the nature of negotiations were formed, to some extent, in isolation from the exiled ANC. His approach appears somewhat different from those of the organisation and one gets the sense that he held his line consistently after 1990. He recounts in his memoirs that in 1985 he refused a conditional offer of release by P. W. Botha, but at the same time put it on record that negotiation, in contrast to war, was the key to solving the conflict in the country.56 This made his position distinctive from that of the exiled ANC, compatible with the norms of good faith, and puts negotiations within the repertoire of actions conducive to a peace process. This interpretation is buttressed by his views expressed in his letter to Botha, where he notes the need to reconcile positions about majority rule and minority fears; 57 his insistence that the political function of the armed struggle was to get the NP government to the table; his keen awareness of the mutually hurting stalemate (noted earlier in the chapter); and his conviction that there


was a middle ground to be found between black and white aspirations.58 Inside the ANC views on strategy and tactics came to fluctuate and vary markedly. A major strategic shift was made in 1988 with the article by Alex Mashinini, titled ‘People’s War and Negotiations – Are They Fire and Water?’ He advanced the thesis that the military victory through armed insurrection had been foreclosed by local and international events. The stalemate of the late 1980s ruled out absolute victory. He argued instead that negotiations should be pursued as a tactical way of achieving the same objectives. Each negotiated agreement, however small or insignificant, should be used as a platform to advance further towards the eventual goal of total victory. In effect, he argued for a strategic approach akin to the Gramscian concept of a ‘war of position’.59 The intellectual debate more or less stalled at that point, as it was overtaken by events. The ANC was unbanned, the initial agreements on political prisoners and on the suspension of the armed struggle were clinched, CODESA was launched and floundered, and in mid1992 the ANC alliance launched its mass action campaign. This campaign, as it escalated to the point of the Bisho massacre, was arguably the series of events which came the closest to breaking down the peace process completely. Different views were held as to the role of this campaign in the transition, the strategic objectives these events were to achieve and the link between mass action and negotiations. One of the leaders in this campaign, and the leader on the ground at the fateful Bisho march, Ronnie Kasrils, vehemently opposed the ‘war of position’ approach to negotiations and strongly endorsed the notion of negotiations as the ‘fifth pillar of the struggle’. Lamenting the ANC alliance’s apparent inability to wrest control of the transition process from De Klerk during 1990, and conceding to a suspension of the armed struggle, without gaining something else in return, he put the case for mass action as one which had to complement negotiations. For him, the negotiators could only convert gains actually made elsewhere, away from the table.60 The mass action campaign did not deliver the insurrectionary victory Kasrils yearned for, nor did it leave the powerbase of the ruling NP government intact. The ANC alliance gained decisively from it, as is reflected in the Record of Understanding. But it came


at a price, measured in public violence and economic decay, and for most political leaders it ended as a sobering experience. The mutually hurting stalemate had set in again. By mid-1992 the strategic debate within the ANC alliance opened up again. Two distinct schools of thought emerged. The first was led by Joe Slovo, who was supported by Jeremy Cronin and Raymond Suttner. Slovo persuasively restated the ‘war of position’ approach. Accepting the condition of a balance of forces and a hurting stalemate, he reiterated the view that negotiations should be seen as a step-by-step strategy for the achievement of complete victory.61 The strategic key to this approach is that each negotiated agreement creates institutional space for the alliance within which to gain further concessions. Every new negotiated agreement should then be used to pursue the overall objective of victory on their own terms. Slovo was explicit that good faith, mutual trust or ‘some special chemistry between leaders’ be immaterial to the outcome of such a process. Factors of power alone would shape the outcome. Crucial to the Slovo approach was the need to make compromises and concessions. These, Slovo emphasised, were to be of a tactical nature only and should not act as permanent obstacles on the road to complete victory. To this effect, he proposed the so-called ‘sunset clauses’ to the interim constitution: compulsory executive power-sharing for five years only, exclusive powers to the provinces, a general amnesty for those who engaged in acts of violence and the honouring of existing employment contracts for public officials, with the provision of attractive retirement or severance packages for them. In every instance, he argued, these compromises would not only facilitate the reaching of agreement on the interim constitution, but incumbency of these new constitutional structures by the ANC would place them in a stronger position to shape further outcomes, such as the final constitution and the precise terms of amnesty to their own liking. The second school of thought was presented by Pallo Jordan, with support from Blade Nzimande and Harry Gwala. Jordan extended the view of ‘negotiations as a site of struggle’ and as the ‘fifth pillar of the struggle’ to its extreme conclusion. Far less influenced by the perception of an enduring stalemate, he entertained the view of a conflict between opponents holding incompatible and hence irreconcilable positions. In this conflict, he argued, negotiations can,


and should lead to the demise of one party as a political force. Given the incompatibility of positions, he argued, it would be futile to search for common ground, and to find win-win outcomes. 62 In the end Slovo’s view prevailed within the ranks of the ANC alliance, as can be seen from a document stating the National Executive Committee (NEC) position. 63 On the ground, the Slovo approach was put into effect and the sunset clauses did in fact contribute to the successful constitutional settlement reached the following year. The truly significant point about the debate, however, and the one most relevant to our topic of the negotiated transition as a peace process, is that neither school of thought can be placed within the framework of a low-context approach to good faith negotiations. For Jordan negotiations were about the pursuit of war by other, additional means, which is utterly incompatible with the concept of good faith. Negotiations form part of the repertoire of conflict, not of conflict resolution. For Slovo the war of position approach is also about outright victory, pursued incrementally. The formal procedures and conventions of the negotiations process are deployed, but not in pursuit of the middle ground. The war of position approach to negotiations is averse to the notion of a negotiated settlement as a contract and even more hostile to the notion of a negotiated settlement as a social contract, defined as ‘ … a democratic polity that institutionalizes the principle of intergroup bargaining and cooperation’.64 It is important to note that Jordan justified his extreme position on the claim that F.W. De Klerk was engaging the ANC and its allies in the formal procedures of negotiation, while at the same time using the coercive agencies of the state to continue a counterinsurgency war against these negotiators. 65 In short, his claim was that De Klerk was engaged in fundamentally bad faith negotiations, where negotiations became a façade behind which a campaign of violent destabilisation was conducted. We have very little published data with which to assess the NP’s strategic thinking. F.W. De Klerk’s autobiography provides one of the very few first-hand accounts of insider thinking on this matter. For the rest we have to infer strategic intent from actions and such indicators provide strong endorsement for some of Jordan’s claims. (This much is evident from the previous chapters.) For the purpose of the discussion of this chapter, we have to rely on De Klerk’s autobiography.


In his memoirs De Klerk does introduce the concept of ‘meaningful negotiations’. What makes this different from meaningless negotiations remains unclear, however, as he defines the above concept only in terms of negotiating positions taken up by the NP. 66 Some clarification as to matters of process (i.e. tactics) is made when he presents negotiations and violence as mutually exclusive categories, and, with respect to outcomes, when he expressed the need for CODESA to find a win–win resolution to conflicting demands.67 However, throughout the text he expresses grave reservations about the good faith of some of the members of the security forces he commanded. He recounts that in early March 1990, shortly after the unbanning of the ANC alliance, he held two separate meetings with the police and defence force leadership. They were informed that, in effect, a de facto ceasefire was now in effect. He recalls that on both occasions the atmosphere was tense and he sensed deeprooted disquiet, resentment and even opposition among some senior officers, confirmed by the leaking of the proceedings of the meeting to the press, a blatant breach of confidentiality. 68 He then describes how the violence, in the form of massacres of black civilians, whether by unknown or unidentified gunmen, or by armed groups marching from hostels, the murder of individuals, especially on commuter trains, and assassinations, gradually escalated. Persistent allegations from the ANC that the security forces were involved in these actions and, eventually, that he himself was also involved, either by authorising such clandestine actions, or by failing to prevent such actions had to be confronted. His own interpretation is that these actions were the work of proverbial ‘loose canons’ on the ship of state, operating outside formal control and without authorisation from himself and the cabinet.69 His remedies were, first, to appoint a Commission of Inquiry into such ‘third force’ activity which, with hindsight, failed to get to the bottom of the matter. He also announced measures to stop clandestine funding for the IFP, which he notes state officials were very slack in implementing. Eventually, he reverted to a cabinet reshuffle, removing both the Minister of Defence and of Police. It is revealing that he comments that the new Minister of Defence, appointed from the ranks of civilians, was not ‘ … brought into the loop of the inner workings of the SADF’, and he speculates that all civilian ministers (in contrast to the long-serving General Magnus Malan) were shut out from the corporate culture of the security


forces. To deal with this obstacle, and as a last resort, he appointed an insider to investigate clandestine actions by agencies of the Defence Force. This investigation by General Pierre Steyn started to uncover the real state of events and in a verbal report to De Klerk the picture emerged of illegal, unauthorised actions of both a criminal and political nature being undertaken by various SADF units. The Goldstone Commission and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission were later to confirm these findings. De Klerk’s own assessment of the overall picture is one which asserts the finding of bad faith in the ranks of both the ANC alliance and the corporate structures of the security forces. They mirrored one another in intent and action: The security forces … probably believed that civilian politicians were naïve about the true nature and intentions of the ANC/SACP alliance and that, under these circumstances it would be irresponsible to dismantle all their covert anti-ANC capabilities – just as the initiators of Operation Vula within the ANC had decided to maintain their covert anti-government capabilities as an insurance policy in the event of the failure of negotiations. And as the initiators of Operation Vula had launched and run their initiative without apparently informing Nelson Mandela, the initiators of the security forces covert projects against the ANC probably decided that the less the civilian political leadership knew of such activities, the easier it would be for them to pursue the negotiation path without being contaminated by the realities of the continuing underground struggle.70 It is notable from the above quote that De Klerk absolves the top leadership of the ANC from bad faith negotiations. He claims the same for himself and his cabinet. To the very last he denies categorically that he initiated, authorised or approved such clandestine acts of violence, and also denies even knowing about them, until revealed by the various investigations and Commissions of Inquiry.71 And, looking back on his career, he rues the fact that he had not installed a new generation of leaders in the police and military the very moment he took office in 1989.72 Why would some sectors within both the ANC alliance and the SADF and SAP feel a need for such ‘insurance policies’? For the ANC


alliance this need was rooted in their self-perception as a liberation movement, which in turn shaped their strategic doctrine: if the fifth pillar of the struggle failed to deliver the goods, then they would have to revert to the other four pillars of the struggle, which include the one of armed confrontation. Seegers offers an intriguing hypothesis about the need the security agencies of the state felt for the armed option as an insurance policy. She finds it in the experience of Namibia’s independence. The police and army had fought a counter-insurgency war against the South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) for more than a decade, mostly on the border with Angola. This war was concluded with a negotiated peace settlement, which entailed, amongst other things, that all South African forces be withdrawn from Namibia on 1 April 1989, and that SWAPO fighters would be restricted to their bases inside Angola. The peaceful process of electioneering would then commence. On that day, however, the military wing of SWAPO launched an invasion by 1600 crack troops in complete violation of the peace agreement. The domestic forces of the territory, along with elements of the South African Air Force, were reactivated and effectively stopped the invasion, killing about 300 invaders, with the loss of 26 of their own. For the military, according to Seegers, this invasion served as a telling demonstration that revolutionaries could not be trusted with democratic processes, that military men had to think of and plan for worst-case scenarios where spoilers intervened with force, and that the commencement of formal negotiations need not, and maybe should not, rule out the exercise of military options as well. 73 This immense sense of mistrust was carried over to the South African situation. In the words of General Jannie Geldenhuys, the then Chief of the SADF: ‘ … when the revolutionary war comes to an end, the revolutionary politics continue’.74 Given the paucity of published data, we cannot analyse the thoughts and intentions of the major protagonists to the negotiations to any firm conclusion. This limited survey does, however, allow us to raise the proposition that both the ANC alliance and the NP government engaged one another as fractured formations, lacking internal coherence as to the fundamental purpose of the negotiations process. Different components within each formation had widely divergent strategic and tactical objectives in mind, some compatible with the requirements of good faith, others not.


Summary: the negotiated transition as a peace process Peacemaking in South Africa was complicated from the start by the fact that the conflict amounted to an undeclared war, which made it difficult to reach a formally declared ceasefire. Negotiating for new rules, procedures and institutions for the control of public violence started correctly with the issues of political prisoners and armed hostilities, but were not settled before other issues were taken up. The successful conclusion of constitutional negotiations were largely the result of decisive leadership by a few individuals, who, negotiating in good faith, in recognition of the destructive potential of high levels of mutual dependence and a keen sensitivity to the social costs of the mutually hurting stalemate, persisted in the pursuit of a settlement. The positive momentum they generated was facilitated by the favourable post-Cold War international context and by their own innovative negotiating procedures. The overall weakness of South Africa’s negotiated settlement may then be found in the pre-negotiations process. The parties, because of their wariness of each other, skirted around the issue of violence and good faith. The Tragic Theory of Bargaining came into effect. Too distant from one another in both physical location and culture, too removed from the life experiences of one another, polarised by a conflict which stretched over decades and generations, the antagonists were unable to get down to confronting the heart of the matter. Sure enough, individuals on all sides of the dispute, and especially within the ranks of the leadership, did get close enough to one another to establish working relationships from the basis of which they were able to clinch a constitutional settlement. This arguably represents the limits of the art of the possible and, given the odds against any settlement, this can be registered as a remarkable achievement. The flaws, however, lie in the fact that the above factors made the negotiators so guarded in their approach to one another that they were, at the moment of truth, unable to call a spade a spade. They did not get to the bottom of the hardest questions. What does negotiations mean? Is it war by other means? Is it, and should it be, a substitute for violence, or a complement to violence? Is it about victory, or compromise? Is about a settlement in the form of legal contract, and/or a social


contract? Unasked, and therefore unanswered, these questions left all the major forces inside the country with some loose ends. Loose ends as to the commitments they were making across the table, and loose ends within their own ranks as to the strategic intent and discipline of their own actions. This crucial ambiguity gave the loose canons within the ranks of those parties with a coercive capacity enough leeway to proceed on their own way. The result was a very violent transition: more than 12,324 people died in the five years from 1990 to 1994. And the aftermath was an ever more deeply ingrained culture of violence, which, lacking further political impetus, fed into a number of different expressions of postsettlement public violence. The negotiated settlement and the new democratic constitution gave all South Africans a new arena within which to try to erase the deprivation of the past. On paper, at least, human dignity was recognised as the most fundamental of rights. It was also identified as a principle of public policy by President Mandela in his opening address to the first democratic parliament: ‘Our definition of freedom of the individual must be instructed by the fundamental objective to restore the human dignity of each and every South African’.75 On the streets, however, the democratic transition had less of an immediate impact. The new democracy was inaugurated in a society damaged by both apartheid and by the conflict in which the major adversaries all saw society itself as the contested terrain. The violent transition weakened both the state, the framework within which the new democratic institutions were embedded, and the society. Agencies crucial to the containment of public violence were badly damaged, as will be shown in Chapter 6. The police in particular had lost the capacity for law enforcement, and the societal units such as the family and community lost both cohesion and their capacity for social control. For some of those immersed in the culture of violence, and who sought political violence as a vehicle for not only pursuing a just and worthy cause, but also for regaining their own sense of worth, the very success of the transition created new problems. For many of them conditions of poverty they had endured remained acute and as degrading as before. The inspirational quality of the political cause, largely achieved, had dissipated. The way of life and the habits of a culture of violence remained. The


only remaining social organisations attuned to this culture were the criminal gangs, who rapidly expanded into the social and psychological space left by the new democracy. Post-apartheid South Africa provided fertile ground for criminal violence and a daunting challenge for the new democratic government.

6 The Role of Negotiated Institutions, the Economy and External Factors

Introduction To sustain peace, like democracy, requires eternal vigilance. Peace agreements have to be consolidated. In the next two chapters a range of factors relating to the process of coming out of violence will be considered. In this chapter three interrelated sets of factors will be considered. The first is the state institutions directly assigned to contain public violence that were the product of the negotiated settlement. The state-centred perspective used in this study suggests that such institutions should be both strong and autonomous if they are to be effective in the longer term. The second is the national economy of the country. This is of special importance in the South African case as much of the conflict over apartheid was related to the absolute material deprivation suffered by blacks, and because a ‘peace dividend’ was widely forecast for the postapartheid, post-settlement economy. The third interrelated set of factors are those which impact onto state and society from beyond its borders. Those of immediate importance are external economic factors, and the international illegal trade in military hardware. Each will be considered in turn.

Negotiated institutions South Africa’s negotiated settlement patently failed to establish a set of law enforcement institutions able to meet the challenge which emerged after the democratic transition. The Nedcor study on crime 115


came to the conclusion that, on the basis of the data for 1995, ‘ … of every 1000 crimes committed in South Africa, only 450 were reported, 230 were solved and 100 were brought to trial. Of those prosecuted, only 77 were convicted, of whom 33 were imprisoned but only eight served sentences of two years or longer. Of the eight imprisoned, only one would be rehabilitated.’ 1 Why such a dismal performance? First, with the erosion of the distinction between soldier and civilian, combatant and non-combatant, and army and society, the structure of the conflict, as outlined in Chapter 4, contributed greatly to the arming of the civilian population. ‘Civic militia’, militarized youth, civilian commandos, a conscripted state army, and various para-military and covert units all became carriers of weapons and of political doctrines legitimating their deployment. Furthermore, the liberation movements declared their target as the apartheid regime. But after almost five decades of National Party rule, the party, regime and state had effectively merged into a single unit in the view of many. Attacking the regime and the ruling party then also affected the state. With the demise of the apartheid regime and the ascendancy of the ANC as the new ruling party, the analytical and practical distinction between state and regime re-emerged. The new democratic regime, with a new incumbent ruling party, inherited a state weakened by the Low Intensity Conflict of the preceding decades. Secondly, the process of negotiation itself, as outlined in Chapter 5, did little to create strong transitional institutions. With no outside third parties to host the negotiations and to manage the transition, the negotiators had to rely on the institutions of the weakened South African state to act as patron and/or to create new institutions from scratch. Given the questionable amount of good faith in the negotiations, interim agreements and institutions failed to come to grips with the twin problems of the armed civilian population and the weakening of the law enforcement agencies of the state. Consider, for example, the National Peace Accord of September 1991, intended to deal with these very issues. The Accord established a set of rules applicable to the use of dangerous weapons and the deployment of para-military groups, and set out a code of conduct for political parties and movements. These rules proved to

Negotiated Institutions, the Economy and External Actors 117

be very weak. Briefly, the Accord did not even demand that arms caches be revealed and handed over to the state, but only required that firearms should not be carried and/or displayed in public gatherings (section 3.6). Nor did the Accord insist that para-military units be disbanded, but only stipulated that such units be renamed ‘self-protection units’. The relevant clause read that: ‘ … all individuals [have] the right to protect themselves and their property, and to establish voluntary associations or self-protection units in any neighbourhood to prevent crime and to prevent any invasion of the lawful rights of such communities. This shall include the right to bear licensed arms and to use them in legitimate and lawful selfdefence’ (section 3.7.1). Nor was the state compelled to disband its agencies engaged in covert operations. The only relevant requirement was that: ‘The government shall not allow any operation by the security forces with the intention to undermine, promote or influence any political party or political organisation at the expense of another by means of any acts, or by means of disinformation’ (section 3.5.2). The Accord also stopped short of committing the ANC to revealing and handing over their arms caches or to move from a suspension of violence to a renunciation of violence. To what extent this Accord effectively contributed to containing public violence during the transition, if at all, and inhibited the continuing violence after the transition, is very difficult to assess. It can be argued that had more stringent measures been settled on, the availability of military hardware and the operations of the organisational units intent on deploying them would have been substantially curtailed. The counter-argument is that the Accord, weak as it was, represented the art of the possible at the time, and any attempt at more stringent measures would have led to a breakdown in the peace process, with no Accord being settled on at all. The 1993 interim constitution, seen to be the most tangible product of the settlement, is an admirable example of liberal constitutionalism, but also contains some glaring weaknesses with respect to measures for security and safety. Section 25 in the chapter on fundamental rights contains extensive rights awarded to detained, arrested and accused persons. (This is perfectly understandable, given the history of the conflict. A number of the negotiators, with Mandela as the outstanding example, had spent decades in prison, with virtually no constitutional protection from abuse and with


very little recourse to the courts for remedial action.) One crucial clause in the list of rights granted to arrested persons addresses the conditions of bail and release. Section 25 (2)(d) reads that every arrested suspect, having been brought to court and charged accordingly, is ‘… to be released from detention with or without bail unless the interests of justice require otherwise’. This put the onus on the state to give reasons for not releasing suspects and compels the state to do so if plausible reasons are not found. The record shows that some criminals exploited this constitutional provision to further their careers in crime. In 1995, the year after the constitution came into force, 6217 arrested suspects were found to be out on bail for previously charged offences. 2 This loophole was effectively closed in 1996, when the laws on bail were amended, as well as by the 1996 constitution, which reversed the onus of argumentation and placed the burden of proof on the defendant. The police service did make a concerted effort in response to the rise in criminal violence. In May 1996 the National Crime Prevention Strategy was launched, with its most visible objective a campaign to arrest 10 000 of the country’s most wanted criminals. A month after the launch of the project it was announced that more than 7000 of them had in fact been taken into custody. On closer examination, it was found, however, that 2099 (29.5 per cent) of them had again been released on bail! 3 Other aspects of the National Crime Prevention Strategy included new legislation prohibiting the carrying of firearms in public, extending government control over public gatherings and demonstrations, upgrading of infrastructure and equipment, a witness protection programme, and steps to contain the spread of gangs within the prison system. This effort by the police has been hampered by a lack of resources and low levels of education and training. A quarter of the force have been found to be functionally illiterate, having difficulty in taking down a written statement from a victim of crime. About one out of every three police officers did not have a valid driver’s licence, thus being unable to drive to a crime scene. 4 This state of affairs was exacerbated by the moratorium on the recruitment of new personnel which had been introduced in 1994. This moratorium was lifted only in May 1997.5 Indicators of resulting poor police performance are many. During the first half of 1997 the absenteeism rate of the crime prevention


unit on the turbulent Cape Flats ranged from 47 to 77 per cent! At national level, during a twelve month period stretching over 1996 and 1997, there were 62 work stoppages in the SAPS. Jailbreaks increased every consecutive year from 1988 to 1996, declining only in 1997. On average two people died in custody every day, and in 1997 there were more than 50 complaints of police torture. 6 This profound incapacity of the police force has resulted in them having to rely on the defence force on a more or less permanent basis, yet another indicator of state weakness. During 1997 more than 6000 troops were deployed on a daily basis throughout the country to help combat crime, mostly in the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng. Border controls were also staffed by the army, with assistance from the air force.7 Unlike the police, who during the transition did not have to come to terms with a rival, parallel and contending police force within the ranks of ‘the other side’, the defence force had to deal with an extensive programme of integrating the forces of the apartheid state with the military units of the liberation forces. This programme is crucial to the containment of post-settlement violence and some measure of success has been achieved to date. The process of integration of these forces had by May 1997 swelled the ranks of the defence force to just over 100 000 members, with the absorption of, among others, 18 300 former MK army members and 5700 APLA members into the force. About 11 500 members from the former homeland armies had also joined by late 1996. 8 This overall force size was considered to be too large, and the target was to reduce it again by about 30 000 members by 2000.9 The integration of para-military forces has not proceeded at the same pace. A start at drawing members of the self-protection units of the IFP into the defence force was made only by June 1996, and funds were made available for the recruitment of only 2200 individuals from their ranks. 10 This integration process was crucial to the containment of post-settlement public violence. The incorporation of the ANC-aligned self-defence units (SDUs) into state structures has been fraught with problems. According to one research report, some of the SDUs on the East Rand slid into criminal activity almost immediately after the transition in April 1994. Others declared themselves available for integration into state structures, and specifically into the police, as opposed to the defence force.


(Members of these SDUs repeatedly defined themselves as community protectors, not as soldiers.) Three options were made available. These were to join the Community Policing Liaison Forums, or to join the formal police service, or to be taken up in the police reserve. The last option proved unpopular because it allowed only for voluntary but unpaid service. The first two required them to enter the hierarchy of discipline of the state and relinquish control over their arms. Time and again these efforts broke down when these units reasserted their autonomy from the state, from the community and from rival units, and reverted to being a law unto themselves.11 The ANC has claimed that members of the security services of the former government have engaged in violent crime after 1994, while the NP has responded with the assertion that former MK members were the ones engaged in armed robbery. Circumstantial evidence, in the form of arrested suspects with either MK or SADF backgrounds, tends to support both claims.12 A claim with far more serious implications is that some former MK members have been operating in violent crime under the direction of ANC politicians.13 Should this be confirmed, then the level of state weakness in responding to crime is, to some extent, one of collusion with criminal forces.14 To date this has not been substantiated in any way, but the Minister of Safety and Security has gone so far as to state in Parliament in 1998 that ‘ … we are clearly dealing with highly organised syndicates, of which some of the members have military backgrounds, either as former members of the liberation armies or as former and even serving members of the statutory armed formations’.15 The general observation can be made that some former members of MK and SADF and their respective para-military allies, the selfdefence units and the Civil Co-operation Bureau, have not been adequately drawn into the discipline of the state and society in the post-settlement era. Given their skills in weaponry, given the easy availability of weapons, and given the social context of poverty and unemployment, these individuals have had strong incentives to continue a career in public violence, this time for personal gain instead of a cause larger than themselves. The general insight to be gained from the South African case is that the terms of the constitutional settlement, as well as the process of transition, must aim to


disarm para-military units (by enforcing the disclosure of arms caches, closing conduits for arms smuggling, etc.) and aim to enlist as many of their personnel into the security forces of the state. To the extent that this has not been achieved, the South African state has been weakened, and the post-apartheid democratic regime and society have to confront armed civilians with criminal agendas.

The economy ‘A Better Life For All’. With this campaign slogan the ANC won the 1994 election with a huge margin, and did so again in 1999. If one considers the shape of the economy in 1994, this promise must unquestionably have had a compelling attraction to most of the newly enfranchised voters. In the early 1990s poverty was widespread. In terms of the Human Development Index, a composite measure of life expectancy, per capita income and level of education, South Africa ranked 90th out of 175 countries in 1994. This placed the country well above neighbouring Namibia and Zimbabwe, marginally above Botswana, and well below Turkey, Brazil and the Russian Federation.16 Inequality, largely coinciding with race, was still a hallmark of the way this poverty was distributed. In 1993, for example, 34.5 per cent of the African population were in the lowest income categories, 3.7 per cent of the Asian population, 17 per cent of the Coloureds and 1.5 per cent of the whites. By contrast, only 0.3 per cent of the African population were within the top bracket of household income, as opposed to 4 per cent of the Asians, 1.6 per cent of the Coloureds and 22 per cent of the white population.17 Numerous other indicators revealed the same picture. In early 1994 there were about 1.6 million informal shack dwellings, with more than 90 per cent of them being occupied by African families. In the same year still 26.5 per cent of all households were not yet linked to the electricity supply grid, and between 10 and 12 million people, mostly African and mostly rural, relied entirely on wood as their source of energy. Nearly 21 million people lacked basic sanitation. Access to piped water also varied strongly according to race. At the time of the democratic transition, 17.5 million South Africans did not have adequate piped drinking water. According to the report


56.7 per cent of the African population fell into this category, 4.6 per cent of Coloureds, and 0.1 per cent of whites. The survey found all Asians to have enjoyed access to piped water. The overall qualitative difference between the kind of education received by the various race groups can be gauged from the calculations by one research body which found that one out of every 312 African children who enrolled for Grade 1 in 1980 would have passed matric in 1991 with university entrance in both mathematics and science. The comparable ratios for Coloureds was one in 46, for Asians one in 6.2, and for whites one in 5.18 The data on unemployment are arguably of the most relevance to this study with its focus on public violence. An official report on unemployment in South Africa put the rate of unemployment in 1994, using the strict definition, at 20 per cent, or 1 988 000 people. Using an expanded definition, the rate stood at 31.5 per cent, representing 3 672 000 people.19 Again the racial distribution was heavily skewed with the larger percentage of the unemployed being found in the ranks of the African population group, followed by the minorities: Coloureds, Asians and whites, in that order. The peace dividend Creating a better life for all after apartheid presented an honourable, commendable but also formidably daunting challenge, but with the baseline of poverty being so low in some instances, the opportunities to make meaningful improvements in people’s daily lives were many. The expectations of being able to do so were high, both within the ranks of the new incumbents and the new electorate. The yearning for, and prospects of, the ‘peace dividend’ and its beneficial impact were expressed in many different ways. Some of the most confident assertions about the economic good life after apartheid came from the ranks of those who contributed to economic hardship under apartheid: the pro-sanctions lobby. They vehemently defended themselves against the accusation that their actions were but intensifying the unemployment already evident in South Africa by the 1980s. Alec Erwin, then COSATU trade unionist, writing in 1989, put it this way: The base line is that the regime is an obstacle to change and must go. Achieving this requires a combination of forces, and sanc-


tions are one of those, even if they are unlikely to be decisive in themselves. Although they threaten certain hardships, shopsteward leadership perceives that unemployment and poverty will not be eliminated unless there is a restructuring of the economy. This can only be achieved by removing the regime. In this sense sanctions are seen as a solution to the unemployment problem rather than the cause of it.20 To what extent has this expectation been fulfilled? The short answer is that the regime has been democratised, Erwin has moved on to become the Minister of Trade and Industry, the economy has been restructured in many different ways, mostly to comply with the requirements of globalisation, and unemployment has increased. The longer answer reveals a more complex result. For a start, in a number of ways the ANC-led Government of National Unity has succeeded in alleviating absolute deprivation. • In cases of need, free health-care for children under six and for pregnant mothers, with postnatal care should complications arise in the first 42 days after delivery, was implemented in June 1994. This contributed to the forecast that the country’s rate of infant mortality is expected to decline by about 20 per cent in the ten years from 1996 to 2006.21 • The racial distribution of income also showed marked changes. Comparative figures for 1996 and 1997, for example, showed that a smaller percentage of African households were in the lower income categories, while more Coloured, Asian and white families were dropping out of the higher income categories. To be fair, this narrowing of the income gap was part of a process already evident in the early 1990s. According to one research report, the average annual household income in the 12 main urban areas changed dramatically between 1990 and 1995. African households on average registered a 140 per cent increase in income, coloureds 68.4 per cent, Asians 93.3 per cent, while those of white households declined by 3.4 per cent. • This welcome entry of newcomers to the middle and upper classes has, however, not been accompanied by an overall increase in living standards. Between 1980 and 1990 real personal disposable income per head dropped by 7.1 per cent, and


declined even further by another 2.6 per cent between 1990 and 1996.22 • At the same time the income inequalities within the ranks of the African population widened. In 1990 34 per cent of African households found themselves in the bottom quintile, and 2 per cent in the top quintile. In 1995 those in the bottom quintile had increased to 38 per cent, and in the top had risen to 6 per cent.23 This new ‘black economic empowerment’ has been most visible in the advance of black-owned companies on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. By 1997 blacks controlled 9 per cent of the market capitalisation on the Stock Exchange, compared to nothing in 1991.24 • The provision of services has also improved. By December 1997 250 000 houses had been built, 1.4 million households had received electricity connections, and 1020 water projects were underway, which, on completion, would provide some 8.9 million people with access to a water supply.25 In other fields of service delivery the results have been mixed. Health and education are two such examples. Between April 1995 and October 1997 more than 560 clinics were built, and/or upgraded. The most ominous development on the health front, however, was the data showing that some 2.5 million South Africans were HIV positive by the end of 1996, and that the HIV infection rates of women attending antenatal clinics had risen by 110 per cent from 1994 to 1997. Various projections on the impact of this impending epidemic have been made. The Department of Health predicted that by 2005 close to 6 million South Africans would be HIV positive, and 1 million children would have been orphaned due to AIDS.26 According to another report the epidemic would peak between 2005 and 2010, reducing the average life expectancy from about 62 to 40 years.27 The general trend of getting more children into school, and through school, has continued. The overall rising trends between 1979 and 1997 are for the number of children writing the matric exams (up by 552 per cent), passing this exam (up by 253 per cent), and the number of candidates gaining university entrance (up by 112 per cent). This positive trend has dipped over 1994–97 with a drop of 9 per cent in the pass rate, and a drop of 22 per cent in the


university exemption rate. Furthermore, the quality of schooling still remains very unequal in a number of ways. A 1995 survey found that 12 per cent of schools still had no sanitation facilities, 24 per cent had no water within walking distance from the school, 59 per cent had no electricity, and that half of all primary schools had no library facilities.28 The most pressing concern, however, has been the problem of unemployment, arguably the most tangible indicator of an economic peace dividend. Official figures released in 1998 showed that about 500 000 jobs were lost between 1994 and 1997. The official unemployment rate (that is, according to the strict definition cited earlier) rose from 20.0 per cent in 1994 to 22.9 percent in 1997. The incidence of unemployment varies significantly according to race, gender, age and urban/rural differences. Just over 29 per cent of the African economically active population were unemployed, in contrast to the 16 per cent among Coloureds, 10.2 per cent among Asians, and 4.4 per cent among the white sectors. Women within the economically active population are worse off than men (28 per cent as against 19 per cent unemployment). The differences across age categories were large. Only 10 per cent of the economically active in the oldest age group (46–65 years) were unemployed, rising to 19 per cent of those in the middle group (31–45 years), and up to 35 per cent of those in the youngest group ranging from 15–30 years. Rural areas were also more prone to unemployment than urban areas (27 per cent as opposed to 22 per cent). The extreme contrasts, therefore, were between white men and African women: one in every 30 white men was unemployed, while one in every three African women suffered this deprivation. The correlation between unemployment, age and levels of education proved interesting. A curvilinear pattern emerged amongst the youth. Those in the 15–30 year age group with no education had a lower unemployment rate (34.6 per cent) than those with some schooling but who had dropped out before completing matric (38.8 per cent) but it was still higher than the rate for those who did successfully complete their schooling (29.3 per cent).29 The link between poverty/unemployment and violence, it has been argued, can in some instances be drawn directly. As was shown above, the economic peace dividend, to the extent that it materialised, was disproportionally favourable to the urban, middle-aged,


salaried and capital-owning Africans. Rural residents, youth and women were less fortunate. The data on job losses confirm the deepening plight of the rural Africans. A long-term trend has been for white farmers to decrease the size of their residential labour force. Between 1980 and 1994 the net loss of jobs in the agricultural sector added up to almost 150 000.30 After 1994 this trend accelerated dramatically. This is confirmed by official data, which show that formal employment in the agricultural sector plummeted from 1 421 000 in 1994 to less than half that figure (637 000) in 1997. 31 According to the South African Agricultural Union, this was the direct result of legislation passed by parliament, especially the Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Act of 1996. This Act provides for permanence of tenure for labourers who had been residing on farms for a specified number of years. Even should their employment be terminated, farmers could not evict these persons, or their immediate and/or extended families from the farm. According to the Union, this stipulation was seen by the farmers as a threat to their security, as it would lead to permanent occupation of their farms by (disgruntled?) former employees, over whom the farmer, as but a former employer, would have little jurisdiction. They therefore acted preemptively and fired as many workers as possible before the Act took effect, opting for mechanisation instead. This may have created a security dilemma. In trying to enhance their security, the white farmers may have made it worse. Their actions have certainly deepened the absolute deprivation of the rural poor. Their actions, after 1994, may also have deepened the sense of dismay and disillusionment among the newly enfranchised, who found themselves with no peace dividend, but instead with more hardship after democratisation than before. For such individuals democratisation would most certainly not have been a liberating experience, and not one conducive to the tapering off of social aggression. On the contrary, such an experience may have intensified the drive to public violence. A feature of the farm killings has been that all the victims were white and almost all of the perpetrators black, young, and unemployed. More than one report notes that these killings involved acts of extreme violence, completely out of proportion to the ostensible objectives of robbery. According to journalist Jonny Steinberg this is not just ordinary crime, but rather crime


which serves as a public statement of anger and resentment which has its roots in the denial of dignity, in the attempt to regain such dignity, and in the disillusionment of finding that the promised liberation failed to deliver either material or symbolic goods able to satisfy this need. He puts it this way: It is surely neither irresponsible nor flamboyantly speculative to suggest that we are dealing here with the muddled, spontaneously invoked residues of a recent ideology: that a vivid political narrative is being enacted in these killings … The difference between then and now is that in the 1980s the self-expression of the young was channeled and disciplined by a nationwide political movement and a coherent ideology. The ferocity of ideas and deeds made some sense, because they appeared to be animated by a tangible vision of a just society. Today, the political vision and the organised movements are waning, but the social traumas that gave birth to them remain. Those who led and inspired the young then are now managing an austere government programme of fiscal restraint … Perhaps what we are witnessing now is a form of political expression as frenzied and heady as that of its predecessor in the 1980s, but a politics that has lost all soul and meaning.32 Only further rigorous micro-level empirical research will be able to refute or confirm this proposition. But as it stands, this interpretation is congruent with the approach taken in this study: that mere materialist interpretations of the roots of public violence are inadequate, that the social–psychological dimension needs to be considered as well, and that the roots of such violent actions need to be traced to the structure of the overt political conflict preceding the inauguration of democracy and the nature of the transition from that conflict. Other public responses to economic stagnation and an evaporating peace dividend will be discussed in the next chapter, where the relationship between violence, economic deprivation and the search for social–psychological rewards will be taken up again. Economic policy The purely economic dimension of this part of the problem in the peace process has been one of jobless growth. This phenomenon,


which is not unique to South Africa by any means, holds potentially grave implications for the containment of public violence in industrial democracies. Historically, Western European democracies have succeeded in consolidating domestic civil order with what the late Ernst Gellner has called danegeld, the social bribery fund. The social aggression generated among the populace who were required to comply with the lifestyle regimes dictated by the production methods of industrial technology, and the other impositions of the modern state (especially related to taxation and military service), were almost literally bought off by the state through the provision of material benefits in the form of public goods. These appeared either in the form of direct goods and services funded by the state, or through the management of the economy in such a way that benefits such as growth with ever higher levels of employment and income were widely dispersed. The welfare state became one of the most comprehensive embodiments of this largely successful strategy. Should the general pattern of economic development in the 21st century become one of jobless growth, then this most basic of strategies for maintaining peace will be severely constrained. In South Africa’s case the growth in both total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and GDP per capita has been very erratic, especially after 1984, when conflict intensified. From 1984 to 1989 both the total and per capita growth veered from positive to negative in consecutive years. During the transition years (1990–94) overall growth was negative for every year except 1993, and per capita growth followed the same pattern for four straight years, becoming only marginally positive in 1994 at 0.6 per cent. Positive overall growth returned in 1994 and remained so through to 1997. GDP per capita also crept back, but never rose above the 1.2 per cent annual growth rate. One analysis of these growth rates over the period from 1960 onwards summarised the overall trend as being one where ‘South Africans were some 23 per cent richer per head in 1996 than they were in 1960, but 16 per cent poorer than in 1981’. 33 And it is during the latter period of growth (from 1981 onwards) that the economy lost about 500 000 jobs, as outlined above. Meeting the demands for economic growth in post-settlement South Africa has thus far been attempted by two different policy packages. The first, launched in 1994, was titled the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). The programme spelt out in


some detail what it aimed to achieve by way of meeting the basic needs of the poorest of South Africans. Specific targets were set for a five-year public expenditure programme which aimed to deliver, amongst other things: • more than 300 000 housing units every year by the end of the programme’s five-year term, adding up to the building of more than one million units over five years; • clean running water to 12 million people, and sanitation to all urban households then still without water; • access to electricity for an additional 2.5 million households, which would include all schools and clinics; • sufficient food to the needy, to ensure that within three years of the inauguration of the programme ‘ … every person in South Africa can get their basic nutritional requirement each day’; • free health care for all children under 6 years of age, and also for all homeless children; by the end of the five-year term, free care for 90 per cent of childbirth cases; and free immunisation for 90 per cent of children within three years; • retraining for all existing health workers and the training of an additional 3000 health workers needed to run state health facilities; • a 10-year compulsory education cycle for all children (without setting a target date within the five-year range of the programme); • overall management of the economy in such a way that it leads to the creation of 300 000–500 000 non-agricultural jobs within the five-year period.34 As was shown above, some of these objectives have been met fully, others only partially, and the crucial one of creating jobs has failed dismally. The RDP document was explicit about the financing of this ambitious programme: ‘The democratic government cannot fund the RDP without support from the private sector.’ 35 It is instructive to consider the government/private sector investment relationship envisioned in the RDP document. The programme repeatedly states the need for government to encourage greater private sector investment and expresses the belief that such investment could be


achieved within the perimeters of a policy framework which is ‘ … neither a commandist central planning system nor an unfettered free market system’.36 The document then proceeds to enumerate the fetters which are considered necessary. These include the need to review the processes of commercialisation and privatisation of parastatals; the retention of the option of extending the public sector through nationalisation of certain sectors, and the extension of Reserve Bank capacities for combating (illegal) capital flight. In addition, some direct proposals about how to compel the channeling of private investment were offered: that the government should ‘require’ selective lending by financial institutions to black-owned enterprises, to be supported through selective allocation of government tenders to black-owned businesses; a prohibition on the placing of blanket bans on mortgage bonds to communities (socalled ‘redlining’); and where the private sector did not voluntarily take up ‘socially desirable investments’, the ‘ … democratic government should consider some form of legislative compulsion such as prescribed assets’.37 Equally important when considering the shaping of a context within which to lure private sector investment is the repertoire of tactics which the RDP recommends to be allowed to organised labour and to management. The RDP document proposed that constitutional entrenchment be provided for the right to organise and join trade unions, to strike and to picket, and to the right to information. The constitution should also not forbid the making of closed shop agreements by trade unions, but the right of management to lock out should also not be entrenched in the constitution.38 This policy was superseded by the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) policy framework, released in June 1996. Advertised as a policy intended to be compatible with the goals of the RDP, it nonetheless contained some sharp differences of emphasis with the RDP document. More attuned to the problem of scarcity, the GEAR approach took as fact that substantial growth was needed before redistribution could be meaningful. Such growth was to be achieved through a neo-liberal strategy of fiscal and monetary restraint, trade liberalisation and export lead expansion. Greater economic activity would be generated by more direct local as well as foreign investment. The overall goals of the GEAR policy was to


reach a growth rate of 6 per cent in GDP by 2000, with an annual creation of 400 000 new jobs.

External factors Investment and exports One of the critical growth factors in the GEAR model is that of greater direct foreign investment. Another one is increased exports, both of which in turn are a function of international competitiveness. South Africa’s prospects in this regard need to be assessed against the background of the country’s position within the global economy. The country’s industrial economy has been very open to the global economy from the outset, with the discovery of diamonds (in 1866) and gold (in 1886). Mines were built with foreign capital, and gold and diamonds were exported to global markets. From 1911 till 1984 imports rarely dropped below 22 per cent of GDP and exports ranged from 20 to 36 per cent of GDP. 39 Constant positive inflows of capital were maintained throughout until 1984, when, with the onset of political turmoil, flows became consistently negative. Both the apartheid system and the revolt against the state impacted on the economy. The most direct economic resistance was in the form of international economic sanctions, aiming to restrict both exports from and investment in the country. Two kinds of strategies were pursued by the pro-sanctions lobby. The first was that sanctions should be used so as to send a message to the government to enter into negotiations with the then still banned liberation movements. Their intended aim was not so much to punish as to threaten punishment. The second approach advocated by Mark Orkin, was to punish and damage the economy, thus getting the same result. According to this view, expressed in the late 1980s, ‘ … they are only starting to come to their senses now that they are being brought to their knees’.40 The actual impact of international economic sanctions on the transition in general, and its contribution to the perception of the mutually hurting stalemate in particular, is difficult to unravel from other contributing factors. The analysis by Bell has found the direct economic impact of sanctions to have been substantially less than


that claimed by the pro-sanctions lobby. 41 The economy did come under severe strain during the 1980s, largely as the result of domestic turmoil, to which sanctions could have contributed only marginally. The Orkin thesis cannot be supported. Bell argues persuasively that the impact of sanctions as a threat, within a wider set of changing contextual factors, entered into the strategic calculations of F.W. De Klerk when he took the initiative in 1990. The contextual change was the collapse of the USSR and the Eastern European Communist bloc. This lead to the demise of the Soviet presence in Southern Africa, and with it the superpower rivalry in the region. De Klerk then lost a decisive bargaining chip his predecessors used against the Western sanctioneers: the counter-threat that the end of apartheid would deliver the country into a hostile sphere of influence. As the only remaining superpower, the USA could, and did, exert much more pressure through the threat of ever more severe sanctions. Regaining whatever ground was lost with respect to export markets and foreign investment had to result from competitive success in the global market. As far as international trade is concerned, both exports and imports have risen sharply after 1990, and a net capital inflow was recorded for every year from 1994 to 1997, in contrast to the capital outflows for every year from 1985 to 1993.42 These are encouraging trends, but have to be weighed up against the sobering data on South Africa’s comparative international competitiveness. In 1993 the country was ranked 43rd out of 53 countries measured by the World Economic Forum. 43 This poor ranking was due, in part, to a longstanding decline in productivity, which had set in by the early 1970s already. 44 In the 1999 ranking South Africa slid further back to 47th out of 59 countries, ranked below Turkey, Indonesia, China and Thailand.45 Such rankings have implications for South Africa’s capacity to draw foreign investment, as competition for venture capital amongst the so-called emerging markets is not only intense, but is also being conducted on a playing field which is not very level. Capital flows to the most friendly locations. How investor friendly have the post-apartheid state and economy been? The dismantling of trade barriers, phasing out of state subsidies, and reduction of tariffs and import quotas have all been in step with the neo-liberal


requirements of the ideology of globalisation.46 A number of other, less favourable, conditions may have had a countervailing effect: • The first is the strength of the trade union movement. Data from the International Labour Organisation shows that, in contrast to worldwide trends, trade union membership in South Africa has grown dramatically. Between 1985 and 1995 overall membership increased by 127 per cent, while in the same period trade union membership worldwide dropped by almost half.47 • The labour market has become less flexible. Legislation prescribing basic conditions of employment, and setting out racial requirements for the composition of corporate labour forces (the Employment Equity Act) restricts mobility in the market with respect to hiring, remuneration and terms of contracting. • Affirmative action by the state has increasingly taken on an overtly racial content, with racial quotas being employed to a greater extent. The general stipulation in section 195 of the 1996 constitution, which reads that the entire domain of the public administration ‘ … must be broadly representative of the South African people’, has been interpreted by the government to mean, firstly, a racial element of representativity, and forms the basis for meticulously calculated racial engineering. It has been made known, for example, that the new, smaller defence force of 70 000 members is planned to consist of 45 729 Africans, 17 217 whites, 7225 coloureds, and 530 Asians!48 Other major concerns to potential investors such as violent crime and corruption have already been discussed. These concerns may not only influence the decision to invest, but also the type of investment that is made. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, investment by US companies, for instance, has trebled since the 1980s, but has been so capital intensive that the size of their workforce has barely changed.49 More investment, and more labour intensive investment will have to be found if the peace process is to be consolidated, and the capacity to succeed in this has a great bearing on South Africa’s competitiveness within the global economy.


The illegal regional small arms trade Other external factors also have a bearing on the consolidation of the peace process. South Africa is part of a region of conflict, and regional security problems impact directly on those inside South Africa. The security problems of the region have also emerged from a context shaped by the wars of liberation from colonial rule, followed by civil wars, with both sets of conflicts being heavily shaped by the then prevailing bi-polar superpower rivalry of the Cold War. The ending of the Cold War removed the structural impetus for these wars, gave greater momentum to the process of globalisation, and shaped a regional context characterised by a largely unregulated market for small arms, with high levels of both demand and supply, and low levels of control. The end result is a region awash in small arms, which easily fall into the hands of non-state actors in democratic South Africa, compounding the problems of post-settlement violence. Each of these features will be described briefly. The wars of liberation from colonial rule which led to the independence of Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Angola were all protracted conflicts, some stretching over decades. All of them can be characterised as Low Intensity Conflicts, in which the rules of war were not rigorously upheld. The deliberate arming of civilian populations is a crucial case in point. In Mozambique, for example, FRELIMO distributed weapons to civilians as a matter of policy in order to boost their capacity for self-defence, and also to make the ideological point that theirs was a ‘popular war’. In a similar fashion the Portugese authorities made weapons available to the settlers in order to enhance their capacity for self-defence.50 In Angola the dispersal of weapons into civilian hands, without concomitant political control, also occurred.51 The overall result was that at independence the newly constituted states had weak claims to a monopoly on the means of coercion, and low capacities for providing state-sponsored security to civilians, should they have chosen to do so. The civil wars which followed, briefly in the Matabeleland province in Zimbabwe, much longer in Mozambique, and throughout the 1990s in Angola, utilised this early dispersal of weapons into society and also ended up further exacerbating this situation. Up to 1990 these conflicts were part of the larger global superpower rivalry where the two blocks confronted one another in areas of contested influence


through the use of ‘proxy armies’ and client states. This loose configuration of alliances did provide some semblance of structure and control over the deployment of weapons in the Southern African region. The ending of the Cold War, however, brought a virtual collapse of control in both the supply and demand side of the global arms market, thus creating conditions further conducive to the dispersal of weapons into the region. Historically, supply-side control was maintained through the international system of states. Starting in 1933 when Belgium imposed on its arms industry the requirement of a state-issued export license, which came to be combined with the requirement that the purchaser produce an ‘end-user certificate’ (binding the buyer not to transfer the goods to third parties), the supply to the black market could be contained. The discipline that the superpowers could exert on their proxies also appeared to provide an effective control measure. During the 1970s and 1980s this set of controls started to disintegrate as the result of three factors. First, the major producers maintained production at wartime levels, far exceeding the requirements of domestic forces or that of Cold War allies. Purely economic motives entered into the equation. The need for commercial sales came to be driven by the profit motives of the producers, and the employment needs and the demand for foreign exchange of national economies in host countries. Under such pressure the integrity of end-user certificates rapidly eroded, and the certificates themselves became instruments of self-enrichment in the hands of corrupt officials. Secondly, the durability of modern armaments make for their constant re-cycling, once they have entered the black market. Given the huge stocks created by the suppliers, mere re-cycling rather than new production is able to meet much of the demand. Thirdly, suppliers are no longer restricted to the ranks of countries that were the original producers of weaponry. Some of the users, especially non-state actors, such as crime syndicates and insurgency movements, have also become suppliers in their own right, recycling their own stocks into the market.52 The ending of the Cold War, with the winding down of long-standing conflicts, provided a huge supply-side glut, a downward spiral in prices, and a concerted search for new buyers. Southern Africa in general, and post-settlement South Africa in particular, has not been insulated from this process.


On the demand side control rested in the ability of the purchaser to pay. In the past commercially unviable arms transactions were concluded as long as payment took the form of political action against the adversaries of the supplier state. As the arms trade became increasingly commercialised, the importance of financial forms of payment increased. From the 1970s onward insurgent movements steadily increased their capacity to generate financial resources with which to pay for arms. Their fundraising repertoires steadily expanded from sporadic criminal activities such as bank robberies and ransom kidnappings to the control of no-go areas where a ‘rival state’ could extort so-called ‘revolutionary taxation’ from the domestic population. The final stage, epitomised by Sierra Leone and Angola in the 1990s, was for the insurgent group to capture a particular economic enclave, such as UNITA’s control of the diamond-mining areas of Angola, and to use these resources to finance their war projects.53 This context is one hardly conducive to states making good their claims to a monopoly on the means of coercion. The end of the Cold War not only more or less terminated the superpower backing of states fighting armed insurgents in Southern African states such as Angola and Mozambique, but these states also had to confront renewed pressures for democratisation, and had to deal with the forces of globalisation. Inherent in both processes are some forces which contribute to the weakening of states which, if not adequately dealt with, can endanger the consolidation of new democracies. Globalisation can be broadly described as the emergence of information, financial and communications systems which traverse across state borders with impunity, and which facilitate the free movement of ideas, information and commodities across these borders. Globalisation is measured in escalating air traffic, migration, international trade, global financial infrastructure linkages, and a global exchange mechanism free from state control and linked to computer-based information and communication systems. Every one of these phenomena is conducive to greater economic activity and hence to capitalist corporate endeavour. Each of these also favours the emergence of Transnational Criminal Organisations (TCOs). And every one inhibits the ability of states to exercise control over them. The reason is that states are ‘sovereign-bound actors’, with jurisdiction that is territorially defined, while corpora-


tions and TCOs as ‘sovereign-free actors’ are far more agile in relocating their activities away from hostile state jurisdictions.54 This structural liability of states becomes even more pronounced when states democratise. This process, by definition, entails the fundamental restructuring of systems of social control. The outgoing authoritarian regime with its lack of legitimacy, compliance and voluntary participation, is replaced by democratic regime rules, which even with initially high levels of legitimacy need time to establish new structures of participation (such as parliaments and elections) and of compliance, (such as reconstructed criminal justice systems, police forces, and armed forces). These conditions make states exceptionally vulnerable to rival formations, especially those intent on challenging state authority and who conduct business on the basis of flouting the laws of the state and the state system such as the TCOs. The outcome of democratic transition is the emergence of both a new democratic regime and a pervasive set of criminal organisations, well demonstrated in the case of the former Soviet Union. States can respond in various ways to TCOs and their activities. Strong states can engage in confrontation, through domestic law enforcement and co-operation with other states. Weaker states, without such capabilities, are prone to respond with reluctant acquiescence or even tacit connivance. The first entails merely resigning itself to its inability to confront the TCOs, while the latter amounts to an attempt to disguise its weakness. Even weaker states are likely to succumb to active encouragement where state officials become direct beneficiaries of criminal activities, and hence take steps to protect these officials. The last response, that of collusion, epitomises the weak state. A fully symbiotic relationship between state structures and criminal structures develops, as the result of criminals effectively co-opting the personnel of the state and of officials deliberately choosing to serve themselves rather than the state. The Bolivian ‘narcocracy’ of the early 1980s is held as the classic example. TCOs use states in various ways. Home states are safe havens from which to operate within a region or globally. Host states offer profitable markets. Transhipment states serve as conduits for the movement of commodities and service states are those whose banking sector allows for protecting their financial assets.55 The overall impact of criminal activities of such an order is to threaten the integrity of state institutions, and with this, the ability


of these institutions to host democratic regimes. States lose the ability to provide security for citizens, who in turn become the easy targets of criminal projects – trade in drugs, arms and sex, extortion, illegal migration, all of which violate the essential dignity of the humans who are targeted. The compound effect of these global contextual changes in the Southern African region has been a flooding of arms into the region, a ‘free market’ in small arms, unregulated at either the supply or the demand side, weak states unable to assert a monopoly on coercive means, and who struggle to contain gangs and syndicates conducting the illegal arms trade. Estimates of the number of AK-47s circulating in Mozambique vary from 1.5 million to 6 million.56 No official register of weapons exists and ownership is dispersed among demobilised former combatants, civilians and criminals. The ending of the civil war between the state and the RENAMO forces under the UN-supervised UNOMOZ programme has been widely criticized for its failure to provide for effective disarmament and secret arms caches continue to supply the domestic and regional market. 57 The penetration of the South African black market is made easier by virtue of the almost complete absence of border controls on the Mozambiquean side. No reliable data on the number of light and heavy weapons in use in Angola are available. At the time of writing in late 1999 the civil war between the state and UNITA was in full progress. Some indication of the level of saturation of weaponry into the civilian population is that with the collapse of the peace process in 1992, the ruling MPLA government freely distributed 700 000 weapons in the capital city of Luanda. Angola has a specialised border police force, but because of the civil war it can gain access to only 20 per cent of these borders, mostly on the coastline. The remaining 80 per cent has no police presence at all, providing an open conduit for moving weapons elsewhere into the region.58 Swaziland is a major route for the traffic of weapons from Mozambique to South Africa. The country has formal control over gun ownership through a licensing system, but, through lack of capacity, has had little success in controlling the flow of illegal weapons through the country or in finding hidden arms caches. 59 Botswana has a very strict weapon-control policy, with no licences


being issued for personal handguns, and only 400 for hunting rifles and shotguns issued every year. Its capacity for border controls, however, is extremely insufficient, and it remains the prime transit route for weapons from Angola into South Africa.60 Namibia, immediately adjoining Angola, has a very high level of legally licensed civilian firearm holders, second only to South Africa in the region. It shares a 1500 kilometre border with Angola and has thus far been unable to exercise effective control over much of this area, and no control over the stretch west of Ruacana to the coast.61 In South Africa armed civilians can also be classified into two large groups. Those legally owning licensed arms numbered more than 4 million in 1995 (see also the discussion at the end of Chapter 2). This pool of arms, plus those held by the police and military forces, seep into the illegal arms trade by way of being stolen or lost. In 1995, for example, civilians reported the loss of 17 617 stolen private firearms. In the same year the police ‘lost’ 7261 firearms, while a 1995 stocktaking of the armory of the former Transkei defence force revealed that 38 per cent of their weapons (2120) could not be located. In total 187 587 legally owned firearms were reported as lost or stolen in the 3 years from April 1993 to April 1996. The other source of illegal weapons originates from the region, mostly Mozambique and Angola. Weak border controls, yet another indicator of state weakness, are one reason why the police estimate that they only recover about 10 per cent of the weaponry entering the country illegally. One example illustrates the point. The eastern border between South Africa and Mozambique is guarded by electrified razor fencing for a distance of more than 62 kilometres. It looks impressive, but functions badly. It takes a smuggler or illegal immigrant only between 30 and 90 seconds to crawl through underneath the fence.62 Weak states fail to occupy the political space they claim for themselves. Criminal gangs and syndicates with local, regional or transcontinental networks invariably fill this space. A 1997 report by the South African police indicated that they were aware of 192 organised crime syndicates; the country played host to 150 of these who were operating within the sub-Saharan region and another 32 operating internationally.63 Many of these syndicates were engaged in arms smuggling, providing the supply side of the market. On the demand side have been criminals, vigilantes, self-defence units, as


well as various categories of civilians who experience a threat to their security.64 Closing down this market is essential to the consolidation of the peace process in South Africa.

7 Popular Responses and Symbolic Politics

Introduction Public violence is, by definition, conducted within the public sphere. So are policies which attempt to contain such violence. People not directly engaged in these acts of violence, or in the process of making peace are, by virtue of its impact on the public domain, sometimes directly affected by both these processes. In our study we track the impact of these processes in the public arena along two dimensions. Popular responses which emerge from or are related to public violence represent the fifth track along which the peace process is analysed. These responses are grouped into two broad categories: first, responses which are reflected in attitudes and opinions, which together represent public opinion, and secondly, public responses by way of organised action. The symbolic dimension of politics, especially as it relates to the peace process, is the sixth track along which the enactment and containment of public violence is analysed.

Popular responses Public opinion Four sets of attitudes are important to the study of the peace process in South Africa. The first three have a bearing on the substantive issues central to the conflict over apartheid. These have been labeled in short as matters of ‘race’ (that is, identity), ‘class’ (economic 141


matters) and ‘power’ (relating to democracy). The fourth set of attitudes is those which relate to the state, the agency which claims to be able to protect citizens from post-settlement violence. The overall picture that emerges is that South Africans have managed to defuse some of the conflict issues, while others remain, and some new ones have emerged. Identity The conflict over apartheid was in some measure about legally imposed racial identities which formed the basis for formal discrimination. During the apartheid years much energy was spent in probing for the ‘true’ identities of the various South African sociocultural formations which had been suppressed by this legally imposed grid. With the repeal of the Population Registration Act of 1950 the legal categories of ‘African’, ‘Asian’, ‘Coloured’ and ‘White’ fell away. The social diversity within the population remained – eleven national languages, of which only three (Zulu, Xhosa and Afrikaans) were spoken by more than 10 per cent of the population as a first language; people of African, Asian and European descent; and a largely Christian citizenry, but with pockets of Muslim and Hindu adherents. The intriguing question after 1994 was whether culture and race would fade away as salient markers of identity. In the euphoric atmosphere of the immediate post-election days of 1994 this expectation was expressed in the concept of the so-called ‘rainbow nation’. Nation-wide opinion surveys revealed a different picture. Two national surveys close to the election (the first taken in February/March 1994, and the next one taken exactly one year later) picked up a trend among respondents of all races to base their self-identification increasingly on language. 1 Another survey, conducted in late 1996, and devoted entirely to the topic of social identity, confirmed the importance of race and culture as criteria of social identification. The survey found the preferred markers of selfidentification to be predominantly racial (that is, labels such ‘Black’, ‘Asian’, ‘Coloured’, ‘White’, and ‘African’) and cultural (Afrikaner, Zulu, Xhosa, etc.). Only 17.3 per cent of the respondents identified themselves, first and foremost, as ‘South African’. 2 To what extent this implies that the existence of South Africa as a single political community is questioned is still unclear. 3 Nonetheless, self-

Popular Responses and Symbolic Politics 143

identification within the ranks of the racial components of these respondents shows interesting variations. Only 13.5 per cent of the Black/African respondents saw themselves as South Africans first, most of them preferring racial or cultural markers. Coloureds (31.6 per cent) and whites (26.3 per cent) were more attracted to the inclusive South African identity, while Asian respondents preferred religion (42.9 per cent) as their first criterion for self-identification.4 Another gauge of identity is to be found in measures of social distance. Respondents in this survey were asked to rank people with whom they have most in common, as well as those they have least in common with. (The list of groups presented to them were compiled from the results of an identical open-ended question in an earlier pilot survey.) The results are reproduced in Tables 7.1 and 7.2.

Table 7.1 Respondents from specific race groups’ indications of who they have the most in common with Blacks Most in Common with: 1. African people 2. Zulus 3. Xhosas 4. People from own language 5. Religious/traditional belief

Whites % 34.4 15.0 11.1 7.0 5.0

Most in Common with: % 1. White Afrikaans people 28.8 2. White people 21.5 3. White English people 18.2 4. Religious/traditional belief 8.3 5. People from own language 5.9

Coloureds

Indians*

Most in Common with: % 1. Coloured people 62.7 2. Religious/traditional belief 10.0 3. People from own language 5.6 4. Community where you live 4.9 5. Workers 4.3 N = 3496

Most in Common with: % 1. Indian people 69.0 2. Religious/traditional belief 10.3 3. Community where you live 6.4 4. Housewives 3.3 5. African people 2.9

*

The category of ‘Indian’ and ‘Asian’ have been used interchangeably in both South African law and common everyday speech. In this survey the category of ‘Indian’, was used, but is congruent with the usage of ‘Asian’ in the rest of this text. Source: Hennie Kotzé, ‘Culture, Ethnicity and Religion: South African Perceptions of Social Identity’, Johannesburg: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Occasional Papers, April 1997, p. 12.


Table 7.2 Respondents from specific race groups’ indications of who they have the least in common with Blacks Least in Common with: 1. White Afrikaans speakers 2. Immigrants from Africa 3. White people 4. Zulus 5. Indian people

Whites % 17.9 10.0 10.0 8.2 7.5

Coloureds Least in Common with: 1. Zulus 2. Immigrants from Africa 3. African people 4. White people 5. Xhosas N = 3496

Least in Common with: 1. Members of trade unions 2. Immigrants from Africa 3. African people 4. Zulus 5. Xhosas

% 24.8 22.1 16.1 7.9 7.7

Indians* % 29.0 12.2 11.1 10.1 6.8

Least in Common with: 1. Xhosas 2. Immigrants from Africa 3. African people 4. Members of trade unions 5. White people

% 18.6 15.3 15.0 10.2 10

*

The category of ‘Indian’ and ‘Asian’ have been used interchangeably in both South African law and common everyday speech. In this survey the category of ‘Indian’, was used, but is congruent with the usage of ‘Asian’ in the rest of this text. Source: Hennie Kotzé, ‘Culture, Ethnicity and Religion: South African Perceptions of Social Identity’, Johannesburg: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Occasional Papers, April 1997, p. 12.

The results show striking confirmation of the importance of race and culture as markers for social identity. Without exception people from particular race groups select others with similar racial features as being closest to themselves. After race, language and religion emerge as criteria for selection. The social distance criteria differ somewhat. Race is not so visibly pre-eminent, but cultural criteria, intertwined with race (White Afrikaans speakers, Zulus, Xhosas) appear salient. The author of this report also points out that the fact that white respondents indicate that ‘members of trade unions’ are the group they have least in common with suggests that these are seen not primarily as a class formation, but as a particular category of black people.5 Lastly, Tables 7.1 and 7.2 show a consistent social distance between South Africans of all races and ‘immigrants from Africa’. This animosity, even hostility, with its potential for producing a new avenue of conflict will be taken up later in this chapter.


Social distance is closely related to tolerance. South Africans have for a long time shown themselves to be prone to intolerance, sometime at very high levels. A survey undertaken in early 1990 at the onset of the transition reveals very high levels of intolerance as far as political contestation goes. Both black and white South Africans indicated consistent reluctance to allow members of political outgroups to engage in open political campaigning in public areas deemed to be their ‘home turf’.6 This is entirely consistent with the patterns of communal violence which erupted during the transition, especially in urban areas where political rivals tried to stake claims in hitherto ‘enemy terrain’. Conflicts on the East Rand, in areas such as Katlehong, Vosloorus, and Tembisa mostly between the IFP and ANC come to mind. This set of attitudes is also consistent with the behaviour of political parties that contested the election, where the process of campaigning was shaped by the more than 160 ‘nogo areas’, where various parties staked their home ground, to the exclusion of others. After the inauguration of the democratic regime overt political violence dropped off dramatically, and endorsement of democratic norms increased markedly. A few elements of this kind of intolerance still linger, however, as is shown by a 1999 survey which put the following statement to respondents: ‘If a community supports one political party, other parties should not be allowed to campaign in that area’. Thirty per cent of the respondents agreed with the statement, against 58 per cent who registered disagreement. The same survey reveals that substantial progress has been achieved in consolidating other aspects of the procedural requirements of democracy, which serves as one of the success stories of the first term of the democratic government. Seventy-five per cent of the respondents agreed that a strong opposition was essential to good government, almost 91 per cent concurred with the proposition that ‘the right to vote for the party I choose is the essence of democracy’, and 91 per cent agreed that voting has to be a private matter, done in secret.7 Intolerance has a bearing on group solidarity. A 1996 study confirmed the proposition that people who hold stronger group identities were more likely to show hostility towards selected outgroups, more likely to feel threatened by who they consider to be their political enemies, and more likely to be intolerant towards


them.8 However, not all forms of intolerance are directed towards overt political groups or to outsiders defined by race and/or culture. One survey (conducted in November 1996) put the following grizzly statement to respondents: ‘Although evil is everywhere, it can take possession of some people, and the community must get rid of such people, even if it means that they have to be killed.’ High levels of support for this proposition were found among all the religious denominations in the country. The highest endorsement came from Islamic adherents (52.1 per cent either ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’), followed by members of the Catholic Church (44.3 per cent) and the Traditional African Churches (46.7 per cent). 9 These attitudes are congruent with some of the acts of violence over the same decade, specifically the phenomenon of witchburning in the Northern Province, and the violent campaigns against alleged drug dealers in the Western Cape by the Muslim-supported vigilante group PAGAD (both of which were discussed in Chapter 2). Hostility towards foreigners deserves special mention. The extent to which South Africans of all races view immigrants from Africa as outsiders was mentioned in the text above. A number of surveys have also shown that South Africans consistently hold the view that authorities should act more strictly against illegal immigrants. Majority support is found for this view across all race groups, from the ranks of all political party supporters, and among both the elite and in the ranks of the general public. 10 Some specific policy measures which found widespread support were that citizens of neighbouring states that cross the borders illegally in search of work should be repatriated (72 per cent support from the general public, 81.2 per cent support from elites); and that the SANDF should patrol the borders to control the influx of illegal immigrants (84.2 per cent endorsement from the respondents surveyed among the general public, and 78.9 per cent support from respondents in an elite survey).11 Both surveys were conducted in 1997. This general animosity towards foreigners has already resulted in a number of violent confrontations at community level,12 but has yet to surface as a national issue of post-settlement violence. Democracy Acceptance of democracy, in principle, over some alternative forms of rule, has slowly taken root in post-settlement South Africa. The


South African component of the 1995/96 World Values Survey presented respondents with propositions as to possible ways of running the country. The results are reproduced in Table 7.3. A notable aspect of the responses is the high number of ‘don’t know’ answers. Of the various alternatives to democracy, only military rule is rejected outright by a large majority. And even in this case about one in every five respondents (21.2 per cent) still considered it either a ‘fairly good’ or ‘very good’ idea. Acceptance and rejection of rule by experts is evenly distributed, while a clear majority (57.3 per cent) rejects the idea of rule by strong leader, again with a sizeable number (30 per cent) who find it attractive. 13 The overall response pattern is one of tentative endorsement of the principle of democratic rule,14 which was to be expected, as at that time South Africans had very little experience on which to assess democratic regimes. This support for democracy from black South Africans was furthermore found in a 1997 survey by the Institute for a Democratic South Africa (IDASA) to be closely tied to an expectation of policy performance. They tend to see the narrowing of the gap between rich and poor as equal or even more important than the procedural aspects of regular elections, party competition, free speech and minority rights. An expectation of ‘equality of result’ tends to be the Table 7.3

Democracy and its alternatives (%)

1. Having a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections 2. Having experts, not government, make decisions according to what they think is best for the country 3. Having the army rule 4. Having a democratic political system

Very good

Fairly Fairly good bad

Very Don’t bad know

14.2

15.8

15.7

41.4 12.9

13.2

27.3

20.3

22.0 17.2

7.9 46.4

13.3 31.4

18.7 4.7

46.4 13.7 3.1 14.5 Total N: 2935

Source: Hennie Kotz´e and Pierre du Toit, ‘Public Opinion on Security and Democracy in South Africa after Transition: the 1995/96 World Values Survey’, Strategic Review for Southern Africa, vol. 19, no. 2, November 1997, p. 64.


basis of their endorsement of the new regime. By contrast, whites tend to stress the need for ‘equality of opportunity’, a highly procedural yardstick.15 Socio-economic performance A 1999 survey (called the Reality Check Survey) shows that this expectation of government to deliver economic goods still persists. This survey classified respondents into broad categories of so-called ‘optimists’ and ‘pessimists’, and ‘winners’ and ‘losers’. The racial breakdown of these categories showed that the most affluent sectors of society had more pessimists, who were more likely to see themselves as losers. Almost half (48 per cent) of the African respondents were optimists, in stark contrast to 7 per cent of the Asian respondents, 23 per cent of Coloureds, and 4 per cent of whites. And while 27 per cent of the African respondents considered themselves to be winners, only 3 per cent of Asians, 11 per cent of Coloureds and 1 per cent of whites thought the same way. 16 All-round optimism persists, despite the fact that most respondents feel disappointed with the government’s performance over its first term of office. Clear majorities of respondents think that things will get better in the fields of education, health care, race relations, the economy and ‘quality of life’. The exception is that of crime, where 42 per cent think things will get worse.17 This pattern of attitudes and perceptions is highly significant in at least three respects. First, it shows that people of different race groups hold vastly different expectations of what a democratic future has on offer for them, although they are all included as citizens in a constitution which ostensibly grants everyone identical rights, irrespective of race. Secondly, it underscores the importance of a peace dividend, in the form of sustained economic growth, for the consolidation of the peace process. Thirdly, the survey highlights the extent to which the Asian and white minorities, and to a slightly lesser extent, the Coloureds, feel themselves marginalised from society, a frame of mind which, if not attended to, may worsen into a sense of alienation. The state, violence and security Post-settlement violence has impacted directly and dramatically on public perceptions. In 1994, at the inauguration of the new consti-


tution, the public were clearly expecting a democratic peace to ensue. The public propensity towards protest action against the state had declined dramatically. This applied especially to violent protest activities. General confidence in the new institutions had risen greatly within every one of the race groups in 1995, with the exception of whites, whose confidence had peaked in 1990. 18 Another survey also showed that trust in the then Government of National Unity in particular had risen dramatically from 1994 to 1995, again with the exception of whites.19 There was also early confidence in a number of state agencies, especially those authorised to deal with public violence. The 1995–6 World Values Survey included an item requesting respondents to express their confidence in 16 public institutions. The rank order (in terms of the response category ‘a great deal’) shows that four state institutions were rated in the top eight. These were the police (second behind the churches), the ‘government in Pretoria’, (4th), Parliament (5th) and the legal system (7th). Only the armed forces (11th) were represented in the bottom eight. By 1999 much of this confidence had been shattered. The Reality Check Survey found that, while public confidence in churches remained unaffected, those in other institutions had changed greatly. More than three in five (64 per cent) of respondents in the survey still expressed confidence in the churches, followed by Parliament (56 per cent) and the media (54 per cent). The civil service, defence force and police, however, retained the confidence of only one third of the respondents.20 On specific issues, public confidence also slumped. With respect to crime there is a rising perception that the government has little or even no control over crime, coupled to a very strong disapproval of the way the government is handling crime. In a 1997 survey up to 90 per cent of white respondents registered such disapproval, closely followed by Asians (almost 90 per cent), coloureds (more than 60 per cent) and Africans (more than 50 per cent). 21 Another survey, conducted in 1998 in the city of Pretoria only, found that the majority of respondents across all race groups did not believe government statistics about changing crime levels to be accurate, indicative of a widespread scepticism about government capacities.22 Scepticism extended to the more general matter of corruption as well. The IDASA surveys found that as early as 1995 already almost


one-quarter of all respondents believed that the new government was equally corrupt as the old one, with another 41 per cent believing the new one to be more corrupt.23 Against this background, the ability of the state to deliver to its citizens that fundamental public good, physical safety, is increasingly being questioned. Survey data by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) shows some dramatic changes about feelings of safety in post-settlement South Africa. In 1994 73 per cent of respondents indicated that they felt safe, as opposed to 16 per cent who felt unsafe. In 1995 a gradual erosion started, with those who felt safe down to 50 per cent, and those who felt unsafe up to 33 per cent. This trend continued through into 1996 (52 per cent safe, 34 per cent unsafe) and 1997 (47 per cent safe and 42 per cent unsafe). Significant differences were found within race groups, but with an apparent trend of convergence. From September 1994 (the date the first survey was conducted) to February 1998 the proportion of whites who felt unsafe rose from 30 per cent to 82 per cent, declining to 56 per cent in November 1998, while for black respondents it rose from 11 per cent in early 1994 to 43 per cent in November 1998.24 The overall picture revealed by the survey data cited thus far is of a public experiencing a rapid change in their socio-political environment in which they experience an increasing sense of threat to both their economic security and their physical safety. This is sharply reflected in their overall priorities, again drawn from the World Values Survey of 1995/96. Respondents were asked to rank a given set of ‘aims for the country’ as either first, second or third most desirable. Table 7.4 presents the rank order of ‘most desirable’ priorities. A striking feature of the ranking is the low priority given to matters bearing on the procedural aspects of democracy. These enter at numbers 12, 16 and 17 in the list of eighteen items. The public had higher priorities to that of fine-tuning their democratic quality of life. The top eight items in the rankings reflect these priorities, every one of which relates to either physical or economic security. An inability to provide for the physical safety of citizens, and to be seen to fail in doing so, is yet another critical indicator of state weakness. When the state cannot deliver on this most basic of public goods, as Van Creveld has noted, then citizens will eventually search for security elsewhere, beyond the weak state, among


Table 7.4

Overall priorities – most desirable %

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

Making sure all people are fully employed Maintaining a high rate of economic growth Providing shelter for all people Fighting crime Making sure that everyone can go to school Maintaining law and order Providing land for all people Providing clean water for all people Providing everyone with enough food to eat Fighting rising prices Making sure that everyone is adequately clothed Giving people more say in their work and community Maintaining a strong defence force Making society friendlier and less impersonal Keeping cities and countryside beautiful Giving people more say in government Protecting freedom of speech Creating a society where ideas count more than money

27.8 13.9 12.0 8.7 7.8 7.2 4.3 3.2 3.1 2.9 2.2 1.7 1.3 1.2 1.0 0.8 0.7 0.3 Total N: 2935

Source: Hennie Kotz´e and Pierre du Toit, ‘Public Opinion on Security and Democracy in South Africa after Transition: the 1995/96 World Values Survey’, Strategic Review for Southern Africa, vol. 19, no. 2, November 1997, p. 67.

rivals to the state. Given the above set of attitudes, it is not surprising that the South African public became attracted to vigilante groups. The most recent survey at hand at the time of writing (1999) again confirmed general dissatisfaction with the police and also found that nearly 50 per cent of South African adults supported the idea of local vigilante groups, although 16 per cent of them did so ‘reluctantly’.25 Some of them have already acted on these dispositions. Public actions in response to post-settlement violence will be considered next. Public action The privatisation of security Self-defence, as a direct response to threats of violence, can take two distinct forms. One, in the form of vigilante acts, is a direct, informal and often illegal communal defence mechanism. This emerges in response to violence, but, as has been argued above, when the


response is to meet violence with violence, then such forms of selfdefence become part of the problem which they set out to remedy. This has largely been the case with People against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD), which has been in operation in the Cape Town area since 1996. The privatisation of the security industry should be seen as in direct contrast to vigilante organisations who ‘take the law into their own hands’. A clear analytical distinction needs to be drawn between two forms of the privatisation of security. The first form is undertaken by organisations authorized, sanctioned and legally empowered by the state. These organisations, private companies who work for profit and are registered tax payers, operate parallel with and complementary to the state, and in effect can serve as an extension of the domain and jurisdiction of the state. For this form of privatisation to succeed, a strong state is a requisite, and if it works well, the further enhancement of state strength can follow as a consequence. By contrast, organisations that are unauthorised, and who operate beyond the legal sanction of the state tend to run parallel with but in opposition to the state. Such rival organisations, usually depicted as protection rackets, vigilantes and private armies, are likely to challenge the jurisdiction of the state and to limit the de facto domain within which this authority is exercised. State weakness allows for the emergence of this second form of privatised security, and once it flourishes, such organized activity contributes to further weakening of the state. Needless to say, the consolidation of the peace process in South Africa, especially with regard to the matter of post-settlement violence, could benefit only from the first form of privatisation. While these two forms of private security may be analytically distinct, in practice the one form may evolve, or degenerate, into the other. This needs to be taken into account when considering the South African private security industry. The private security industry has grown consistently since the 1970s, in tandem with the rising revolt against apartheid and the corresponding weakening of the state. The monetary value of the industry rose from R141 million in 1978 to R8.8 billion in 1998. The institutional proliferation of the industry can be gauged from the fact that the number of registered businesses rose from 2600 in 1994 to 5586 in 1998, and the number of registered training centres for personnel increased from 17 in 1993 to 492 in 1998.26


According to one source the industry employed a total of 470 000 persons in 1998, making it one of the largest sectoral employers in South Africa. There are approximately two private security personnel for every member of the South African Police Service (SAPS), and about four for every one uniformed police officer doing visible police work.27 In some aspects this industry’s capacities also overshadow those of the state. The private security industry as a whole has 80 000 vehicles available for use, in contrast to the 37 000 fleet of the SAPS, of which 3000 will in any case be broken down and unavailable on any given day.28 Co-operation between the state and the private security industry has been described as ‘generally good’, but there is no formal overarching structure within which they work together. Private policing also varies in its application. In the Cape Town suburb of Observatory, for example, residents have formed a non-profit company, Obswatch. The company employs a number of security guards who patrol the area on bicycles, carrying concealed firearms and handcuffs. While these guards do not have full powers of arrest, they are allowed to make citizen’s arrests. Funding is generated from about 1000 residences and businesses, which pay a fee ranging from R50 to R100 per month. The results have been impressive. Within one year (February 1997 to February 1998) housebreaking dropped by 88 per cent in the area, robbery by 67 per cent and theft by 57 per cent. By contrast, the private security provided for the company managing the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront entertainment and shopping centre is a vastly bigger project. This centre, which drew 20 million visitors in 1997, is secured through a staff of 200 people, who expend an annual budget of just short of R7 million per year. Fifty security guards are on patrol at any time of the day in an area of about four square kilometres. 29 Crime levels were held very low until the dramatic bombing of the Planet Hollywood restaurant in August 1998. This pipebomb attack, for which no one has yet claimed responsibility, followed closely on the attacks on the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam and, in the public mind at least, it was seen to be connected with the latter. Concerns have been raised about the role of private security companies in actions which are a threat to the state. In 1997, for example, the then Deputy President, Thabo Mbeki expressed the belief that some elements in this industry were involved in criminal


and political destabilisation. 30 These and other allegations remain untested and unproven thus far, but concerns about the adequacy of the legal controls over this industry persist. The primary legal controls at the time of writing are found in the Security Officers Act of 1987, as amended in 1997, and the Criminal Procedure Act of 1977. This act enables the establishment of the Security Officers’ Board, and requires all contract security officers to register with the Board. The Board is required to maintain this register, to exercise the criteria for disqualification from registration, to withdraw registration where necessary, to regulate training, and to evaluate and accredit training institutions. The Criminal Procedure Act permits security officers to exercise the powers of arrest in a limited number of instances such as suspected theft, robbery, rape and murder, with the use of ‘necessary force’ if required. The security industry has requested the government to expand its powers of arrest by granting its personnel the status of ‘peace officers’, who may arrest persons engaged in any offence in his/her presence. This has thus far not been granted.31 Further limitations on the expansion of the industry are of a technical nature. Private security vehicles are prohibited from using radios which can be tuned to the frequencies used by police radio vehicles. Co-operation in rapid response situations is therefore severely constrained. A lethal limitation applies to armoured vehicles. Cash-transit vehicles have become a common target for heavily armed gangs, who often operate in broad daylight. In 1997 alone there were more than 400 such hold-ups in which R150 million were stolen. These hold-ups are conducted at gun-point, and invariably end in full-scale shoot-outs, usually with deadly results. In 1997 alone 60 security guards from private companies died in these confrontations. The security vehicles are ‘reinforced’, but they are still no match for the armour-piercing bullets of an AK-47. Despite representations by the industry, current government restrictions prohibiting military-type armour-plating remain in force.32 Further expansion of this industry, as a complement to the forces of the state, is being promoted. Outsourcing some police functions so that more police personnel can be released for active crime prevention is being suggested as one avenue. These functions apply especially to aspects of the criminal justice system in which police


members are currently engaged, such as court orderly duties, the transportation of prisoners, and the serving of summonses. Other duties amenable to outsourcing are general administrative functions, the guarding of premises, training, and the provision of security at private functions.33 Future development of the private security industry, and its relationship with the state, must be considered in a comparative and regional African context. Of crucial importance to the consolidation of the peace process is the question whether South Africa is likely to follow the path of other weakened African states, where the ‘logic of warlord politics’ was set in motion, which resulted in the further weakening of state institutions, the ascendancy of private security enterprises with military capacities, and the eventual privatisation of both the state and of war. This question will be taken up in the last chapter.

Symbolic politics A symbol represents some other concept. An event, process, person, idea or category can be evoked as a concept in two distinct ways. Referential symbols are compact, condensed ways of referring to the objective aspects or elements in the particular event, process, idea or person that is represented in the concept. The more evocative symbols, however, are condensation symbols that draw out certain emotions (thoughts, feelings, intentions) associated with the said person, event, process or category embodied in the concept.34 Very often symbols carry both sets of meaning, usually with disproportionate weight. In contemporary South Africa Robben Island is a referential symbol, indicative of the place where Nelson Mandela spent most his years in jail, but its evocative power lies in the fact that it also serves as a condensation symbol which draws out the emotions of the respondent who has to make vicarious sense of the experience of 27 years of imprisonment. The fact that the prison was on an island is far more than a geographical feature, as it also conveys the condition of isolation, loneliness and deprivation associated with imprisonment. Symbols contain elements of both ritual and of myth. Rituals are repetitive performances, conducted according to a specific set of


rules and are characterised by their social nature (that is, they remind participants and observers alike of communal ties and experiences), by their emotive content (they play on participants’ affective images of themselves and others) and they convey meaning on more than one level.35 A myth, according to Peter Berger is any set of ideas that serves to invest ‘transcendent meaning’ into the ordinary lives of people. This meaning transcends the grind of everyday life with its routine and habitual experiences. These myths can motivate and inspire people, especially when the ideas contained in the myth allow them to visualise new and better future conditions. Finally, myth can serve as a mobilising agent, galvanising people into collective action aimed to realise these visions. 36 Ideas which are considered to contain an element of falsification, fabrication, untruth, deception or fanciful wishful thinking (often in the form of fables or imaginary historical events) are often described as myths. However, Berger emphasises another element to mythological sets of ideas. To him the element of misrepresentation in contemporary popular social mythology lies not so much in wilful distortion, but is found in the promise of redemption it offers, without being able to guarantee its being achieved. Whether these promises can be made real is often largely contingent on factors beyond the control of both the mythmakers and the consumers of these myths. What in myth is often expressed as a statement of certainty is actually an expression of hope. This holds especially for the twentieth-century myth of growth and the myth of revolution. Both promise redemptive deliverance from poverty and subjugation to the poor and the oppressed in the Third World respectively. Both inspire, motivate and galvanize adherents to act in pursuit of the rewards of wealth and freedom. The more desperate their life circumstances are, the more people become attracted to messianic myths, and the more compellingly attractive becomes the promise of redemptive transformation. But while myths can promise, they cannot guarantee success. And when hope is shattered and aspirations are thwarted, optimism can turn to frustrated rage.37 What kind of symbolic material is required to cement a peace process, whether of referential and/or condensation-type properties, and consisting of myth and/or ritual? The state-centred perspective outlined in Chapter 1 suggested that states have historically exercised a limited repertoire in this regard. They have sought to main-


tain domestic peace through two methods, the first being increased spending on social welfare, sustained by a growing economy. This appears at first sight to be a completely material, non-symbolic strategy. The second stratagem has been to generate legitimacy through the affective sentiment towards the symbolic trappings of the state. Both of these are vulnerable to erosion, however. To sustain growth over decades and generations, at a level which the welfare state requires, is a tall order, especially for states at the periphery or semiperiphery of the global economy. Similarly, symbols of the state may not be equally appealing to everybody. When a particular community or ethnic group appropriates the state for itself, and displays this ownership with culturally distinct symbols of state, other communities are more than likely to find this offensive. Ethnically neutral yet symbolically inspiring symbols are hard to find. How can this limited repertoire be extended? A number of suggestions can be made. First, under the circumstances where the domestic economy just does not allow the implementation of a welfare state, or where a faltering economy makes the provision of welfare an intermittent, unpredictable affair, social peace can still be bought by substituting the benefits of actual growth with the anticipated benefits promised by the myth of growth. This mythology, according to Berger, has proved to be a powerful sedative to the poor, making them amenable to current deprivation and tolerant to the fact that gratification of material needs have to be deferred. Secondly, not every cultural artifact is the exclusive property of any one set of people alone. Even in deeply polarised societies some symbols can be shared, in the sense that they can draw similar emotions from different communities, with equal claims to ownership by all denizens of the country. And even then these symbols need not be bland and uninspiring, but may evoke a positive sense of accomplishment or inspiration. Thirdly, the meager symbolic components of the contemporary republican state can be supplemented in innovative ways by emphasising some of the essential qualities inherent to a successful peace process. The culmination of a peace process which successfully resolved an intra-state conflict invariably carries with it the sense of a historical breakthrough, especially when the preceding conflict has persisted over decades. Capturing this sense of historical significance has, according to Horowitz, been achieved in Malaysia, where the


Malaysian coalition, which took power in 1957 following widespread communal violence, carried with it ‘ … a mystique … ’ which embodies an ‘ … enduring memory of a watershed achievement’.38 Furthermore, peace processes are in essence a series of events where a process of violence is at first stemmed, then halted, and eventually turned around. Symbols that can convey the image of such a movement are invaluable to the consolidation of a peace process. Relevant here are what Rubenstein calls the rites of reversal: ‘These are ritualised activities that induce ideological shifts so that the impossible or unthought of becomes possible and acceptable’.39 In the specific context of peacekeeping operations actions which require ideological shifts and to which such symbolic practices can be applied include the temporary release of sovereignty over a national military force, when command and control functions are taken over by the officers of a peacekeeping force; the sharing of information by troops from potentially hostile countries, and the renunciation of the use of force by military units. In the rest of this chapter some of the symbolic aspects of the South African peace process will be analysed. One issue to be addressed is whether the transitional symbols of the reconstituted state have succeeded in acquiring a new, neutral yet inspiring content to replace the partisan symbols of the apartheid state. The workings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission will be explored to ascertain the extent to which this contributed to the symbolic politics of reversal, and the concept of the African Renaissance will be examined for its mythological content. Finally, at the micro level, the question of what is required at symbolic level to induce the politics of reversal to a culture of violence will be taken up. Transitional symbols What the peace process in South Africa achieved was to turn around an escalating contest for hegemony. The peace process, in clinching a settlement in the form of a democratic constitutional order, brought to an end a conflict over who constitutes ‘the people’ to be governed democratically, the nature of the political unit (the state) in which this democracy is to be embedded, and the constitutional rules which will provide the framework for the democratic regime.


The symbolic representation of this peace agreement has been expressed in a number of ways. A new national flag, exhibiting a wide array of colours, was unveiled at the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as the new President. A new national anthem, comprising an amalgamation of the previous anthem Die Stem van Suid-Afrika (The Voice of South Africa) and Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika, with verses in three languages (Afrikaans, English and Zulu), was also introduced. Both these symbols reflect the merging of elements of culture and history from disparate communities, and as such represent the politics of compromise. The 1993 constitution also contained some symbolic elements relevant to language and culture. The recognition of 11 national languages, for example, can never attain real practical significance, but must be understood for its symbolic significance, conveying the idea that the era of ethnic dominance is over, and that cultural diversity will be both recognised and protected. The transitional ceremonies (Mandela’s inauguration and the opening of the first democratic parliament), ephemeral as they were, were also choreographed to convey the fact that they represented unique, historically significant events that emerged from a process of negotiated dealmaking. Triumphalism was conspicuous by its absence. The process of replacing partisan symbols with neutral ones was applied widely, with some success at avoiding vapid replacements. In 1993 a new set of banknotes was introduced. Out went the face of Jan van Riebeeck, the Dutch founder of the trading post in 1652, which eventually became the Cape Colony, and generally considered as the founder of white settlement in South Africa. In came the Big Five of the African Bushveld: Lion, Leopard, Elephant, Rhino and Buffalo, truly indigenous, politically neutral and inspiring symbols of strength and beauty. Place names are also being changed, with varied ingenuity. The names of the major airports, hitherto all named after prominent white political leaders, were renamed according to the city where they were located. Jan Smuts became the Johannesburg International Airport, D. F. Malan became Cape Town International Airport, and so on. More original was the finding of neutral, yet appealing and indigenous names in the extinct language of the San (Bushmen) peoples, the autochthonous inhabitants of Southern


Africa. In this way the Paul Sauer dam was renamed the Kouga dam, and the H. F. Verwoerd dam was renamed the Gariep dam. Some renaming provided vignettes of changing power relations in a century of South African history. The town of Verwoerdburg was renamed Centurion in 1995. This utterly neutral name replaced the highly contentious one which commemorated the architect of Grand Apartheid, understandably unpalatable to the new ruling African nationalists. The name of Verwoerdburg itself had been adopted in the 1970s as a renaming of Lyttelton, which commemorated Alfred Lyttelton, British Secretary for the Colonies from 1903 to 1905, a reminder not appreciated by the then ruling Afrikaner nationalists. Public holidays are referential symbols, commemorating an exact date, but also serve as condensation symbols by recalling an event or turning point which holds particular meaning for some people. A new set of public holidays was phased in after 1994, with some of the older ones being discarded and others renamed. Out went 6 April, Settlers Day, celebrating Van Riebeeck’s 1652 establishment of the Dutch Colony in Table Bay. In came 16 June, as Youth Day, in remembrance of the 16 June Soweto Revolt in 1976, lead by the school children of the Soweto township. A date laden with meaning, 16 December, is retained as a public holiday, but with a new name. Under the previous regime it was known as the Day of the Covenant, recalling the decisive Battle of Blood River in 1838, where the Afrikaner forces defeated Dingane’s Zulu army. Prior to this battle the religious leader of the Afrikaners pledged to God that, should victory be attained, the day would be commemorated annually henceforth.40 And on that date in 1961 the ANC announced the start of the armed struggle. Now 16 December has become the Day of Reconciliation, intended to serve as reminder to all of an end to interracial conflict and war. Many of these symbols have recurrent use in a set manner and/or context, such as flag, anthem and public holidays, and as such attain a ritual character. They have in most cases also served as rites of reversal in the sense that they indicate a movement away from a partisan, culturally exclusive state towards a more culturally neutral and generally inclusive state character. These symbolic changes have served to legitimise the democratic transition, and as such are integral to the peace process and contributed to its success. Whether these symbols will continue to serve to consolidate the peace


process or whether they are going to be eroded from within by a new contest for hegemony remains to be seen. As the Reality Check Survey of 1999, cited earlier in this chapter, has shown, there are at the time of writing already signs of alienation emerging from the ranks of especially the Asian and white cultural minorities. A new push for hegemony from the ranks of the current rulers can aggravate this condition, and corrode instead of consolidate the peace process. More about this prospect in the last chapter. Truth and reconciliation ‘[T]here can be no healing without truth’. 41 This conviction, expressed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Chairperson of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), is central to the way the Commission approached the objective of facilitating the process of building national unity and reconciliation. The essential nature of the process of reconciliation was described by the TRC in a mixture of medical and quasi-religious metaphors. The medical metaphor, according to the Archbishop, found expression in the image of old wounds that had to be dressed, instead of being allowed to ‘fester’. The process of healing would entail that such wounds be opened, cleansed and then treated with ‘balm’.42 The religious metaphor was explicitly used by the Archbishop after a visit to Rwanda, where he spelt out his advice to the contending parties there, with reference to the South African experience. He linked the processes of confession, forgiveness and reconciliation into one another, emphasising that these were not concepts just applicable to the realm of religion, and spiritual affairs, but that they were equally relevant to the domain of practical politics. 43 In practical terms the religious sequence of confession, followed by repentance, followed by forgiveness, was replicated in the TRC process, which envisaged a causal sequence of disclosure, followed by the granting of amnesty, from which would follow reconciliation. The causal link between truth (disclosure in its fourfold forms of ‘truth’, as reported in Chapter 2) and reconciliation can be explicated further by highlighting some of the components of the overall process, a number of which are relevant to the symbolic politics of reversal. • ‘Factual truth’, that is empirical evidence, arrived at through a process of corroboration, and checks for validity and reliability,


•

•

•

•

•

contributes to reconciliation by reducing the number of lies and misrepresentations about the past.44 ‘Narrative truth’, (subjective experiences, ‘ … as he or she sees it’) would contribute to reconciliation by making the TRC available to the previously silenced or voiceless victims, who can put on record their perceptions and experiences. This public acknowledgement of ‘their side of the story’ is an admission that the victims are ‘worthy of attention’, which contributes to reconciliation by restoring some dignity to the victims. In this way narrative truth blends into ‘healing truth’.45 Public disclosure of gross human rights violations results in public shaming of the perpetrators.46 This contains an important element of the symbolic politics of reversal. Having former holders of power in the apartheid state appear on a public platform and demonstrate to everybody, under the instructions of their former victims, how they tortured detainees is a fundamental reversal of roles. When this event is repeated again, with another perpetrator, and again, and again, the process acquires a ritualised character. Forgiveness is defined by the TRC as contingent on remembering, and not on forgetting: but it had to be a process of dispassionate remembering, without reviving the bitterness and resentment associated with past experiences.48 Forgiveness is but a step to reconciliation, and not identical with it. According to the TRC, the rebuilding of relationships (of mutual respect, tolerance, respect for human rights) and the redistribution of resources are also essential to the process. The latter entails material reconstruction, dealing with big socioeconomic inequalities, and requires restitution to victims as well as macro-level social engineering in the form of ‘structural and institutional transformation’. 49 Here again is an important element in the politics of reversal, both substantive and symbolic. The role reversal is one where victims, losers, the exploited under the system of capitalism and apartheid, now are entitled to become the beneficiaries of the economic and political system. Finally, the TRC held the view that, ultimately, reconciliation can be achieved only through a wide-ranging admission of collective guilt by certain categories of South Africans. These include ‘… all those who supported the system of apartheid (or simply


allowed it to continue to function)’, and ‘ … every member of society’ served by the Security Forces of the state, and ‘ … those who had benefited … ’ from apartheid’s differential allocation of resources and opportunities, and those who lived with ‘ … the unquestioning obeying of commands (simply doing one’s job)’. This amounts to virtually every law-abiding denizen of the country in the pre-1990 era. The Commission admitted that this call went beyond their legal mandate, and amounted to their making a moral judgement on the nature of the conflict before considering any evidence led before them. The Commission felt this moral judgement was justified by, in turn, accepting the validity of the claim that apartheid constituted a crime against humanity.50 What has been achieved by the Commission thus far, and how much more can be expected? Measured against their own criteria, the following assessment can be made. First, by their own efforts in accumulating thousands of depositions, and drawing on other sources, the TRC did indeed succeed in constructing a unique data base, some of it original ‘factual truth’. There are now fewer lies, deceptions and half-truths in circulation. For this the TRC deserves credit. We do know more about the conduct of the ANC against its own members in the Quatro camps and we do know more about the operations of the CCB death squads. But the factual truths that have been uncovered, as Anthea Jeffery has shown with such devastating clarity, have been produced in a selective, partial and methodologically suspect manner.51 We still do not know, for example, the full extent of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s involvement in the gross violation of human rights; we still know almost nothing about P.W. Botha’s involvement in such matters, nor do we have the full picture on the line of command between MK and the SDUs. Secondly, the TRC did facilitate individual experiences relevant to the larger process of reconciliation as they defined it. In the last chapter of the last volume of their report they do produce evidence from various participants in the proceedings of the Commission that show instances where the dignity of victims had been restored, where officials of the former regime had been humbled, where forgiveness had been granted, apologies extended, and cases where perpetrators and victims had been brought face to face.


Another yardstick by which to assess the TRC is their impact on public perceptions. No full nationally representative survey of public views about the findings of the TRC are available as yet, but some aspects of their proceedings can already be probed. One fundamentally important question is whether the South African public shared the Commission’s thinking about the process of reconciliation. Two aspects of their definition are relevant. The first is the quasi-religious notion of disclosure and with it, acceptance of responsibility for human rights violations, as the basis for amnesty and thus reconciliation. Most South Africans appear to think otherwise. A national panel survey conducted in 1996 and 1997 found that South Africans of all race groups were more inclined to feel that those responsible for human rights abuses should receive punishment, rather than granted amnesty and/or forgiveness.52 Survey data can also shed some light on the public reception of the TRC view that reconciliation has to have an element of material redistribution. The Reality Check Survey cited earlier in this chapter conducted a number of in-depth interviews to augment their structured questionnaires. On the subject of reconciliation as redistribution one African respondent put it this way: ‘We will only have reconciliation when black people have the same as whites’. 53 Whites, and to some extent coloureds and Asians, are not keen to promote this cause through subsidised welfare schemes, which come directly or indirectly from their own pockets. As an example, the Reality Check Survey found that only 14 per cent of their white respondents would endorse the proposal that ‘wealthy suburbs should subsidize services for poorer areas’, in contrast to 55 per cent of the African respondents who thought this to be a good idea. Similarly, the proposal that ‘businesses should pay more taxes to help the poor’ was supported by 62 per cent of the African respondents, and only 14 per cent of the whites. 54 Clearly little consensus on the mechanism for redistribution has been created. Finally, what is the overall significance of the TRC in symbolic terms? The declaration of apartheid as a crime against humanity (in the terminology of the TRC, a ‘social truth’) places the politics of reversal embodied in the TRC on a qualitatively different level to those of the transitional symbols discussed above. In doing so the Commission, by its own admission took a moral instead of legal position.55 It accepted the claim of the liberation movements that


they were waging a just war against the apartheid state.56 This is a two-fold claim, the first being about the justness of the cause (that is, the value of the principles which they were fighting for, weighed up against those their opponents stood for), and the second is whether the decision to exercise the military option is a valid case of a matter of last resort. Assessment of the first claim requires a comparative evaluation of the contending positions against a particular set of moral criteria. Assessing the second claim requires empirical assessment of the actual strengths and weaknesses of the apartheid state at any given time, and of the various strategic options and tactical choices available to the anti-apartheid forces at that time. Lengthy arguments can be brought to bear on each of these claims. What the Commission did with respect to the first claim was simply to present the odious and objectionable principles the apartheid system was based on, with the evaluation of them by various domestic and international agencies, and to make their judgement on this basis only.57 No comparative assessment was pursued, and what the liberation movements stood for at various times is glaringly absent from the report. As to the second claim, about the armed struggle having been taken up as a last resort when all else had failed, no analysis of the various belligerents’ strategic options was made at all. The crucially important question as to whether an armed offensive against the apartheid state was necessary in the late 1970s and 1980s, given the then already mortal signs of institutional overload and collapse (see Chapter 5), was not even raised. The Commission was only prepared to concede that the matter will remain a topic of continuous debate. 58 This is not to say that the TRC necessarily erred in finding apartheid a crime against humanity. What is entirely lacking, however, is a competent, measured, persuasive and above all authoritative argument about the matter that leads to such a finding. The TRC was mandated to examine the causes of the gross violations of human rights which they found evidence of. Having defined apartheid as a systemic crime against humanity, they had to identify the cause of such inhumanity. This, they concluded, again a priori, was racism.59 The next question then surely had to be on the causes of such racism, but it was not taken up. The Commission did examine various causes, motives and perspectives of perpetrators of


human rights violations. They found that human rights violations were caused by a number of social circumstances, including the apartheid context, the Cold War context, the anti-communist ideology, organisational culture within various units with coercive capacities (such as norms of secrecy and silence), language and ideology, and the specific social circumstances which increased the propensity of individuals to temporarily shed their personal identities and to immerse themselves in a more anonymous social identity, which then acted as a collective unit. Within these units people were less restrained by an individual sense of responsibility and became more prone to commit acts of extreme violence. Crowd violence, especially in the form of necklace murders, were explained in this way, as were some forms of police torture.60 But these social explanations were only considered as they applied to the matter of justness in war, and not to the matter of justness of war. Finding the social origins of racism, considered the prime causal factor in explaining the inhumane apartheid system, was never attempted. With this finding the TRC awarded the liberation movements a major symbolic victory: they could claim the moral high ground in the internal conflict and this position could be used to advance further claims. How does this finding, reached in this way, affect reconciliation? First, it bolsters the claim for collective guilt against the previous beneficiaries of the apartheid era. Secondly, it strengthens the demands for collective socio-economic redistribution, reparation and restitution from those who have (or who previously had) to those who have not (or who previously did not have). Thirdly, both of the above foster a culture of entitlement. Massive social engineering advanced on such a moral basis holds two potentially grave implications. First, there are no in-built constraints to the ambitions of social engineering zealots: when is collective guilt annulled, and how long must redistributive policies remain in force? In the absence of internal limiting criteria, such policies run the danger of sliding down the slippery slope from starting as reconciliation and ending up as retribution. Secondly, such a moral basis can strengthen the conviction of some that reconciliation is to be achieved only through redistribution. Should this be the case, then the whole process of reconciliation becomes contingent upon the economic peace dividend, which, in turn, is contingent upon South Africa’s performance within the highly com-


petitive global economy, an arena in which forces beyond the control of all South Africans hold sway. The politicians had the last say. F.W. De Klerk was successful in his High Court action to have findings about his alleged transgressions deleted from the report. Buthelezi announced his intention to take the Commission to court. The ANC was not satisfied with the finding that it was just in going to war, but unjust in its actions in war. To the ANC this finding criminalised its liberation struggle. It unsuccessfully sought a High Court ruling to block the release of the entire report. Nelson Mandela famously opposed his own party’s stand and came out in support of the Commission’s findings. The controversy persists. The African Renaissance The greatest inhumanity of the apartheid system, according to the TRC, was its capacity to humiliate black South Africans, to undercut their self-confidence, to deny the self-esteem and dignity of its million of victims, resulting in their acquiring a public status deemed as less than fully human. 61 Opinion survey data provide ample confirmation of this proposition. 62 Yet despite this systemic experience of degradation, most black South Africans in 1999 expressed optimism about the future, as the Reality Check Survey cited earlier in this chapter shows. And this optimism holds in spite of the fact that most South Africans agree that the government did not live up to its promises in its first term of office. This optimism is precious political capital and can be a vital ingredient in cementing the peace process. How can such capital be invested? The concept of the African Renaissance, especially in its symbolic role, is most relevant in this regard. This concept has been introduced into South African public discourse by Thabo Mbeki and has been forcefully promoted by him since 1996. Very briefly, the basic ingredients of the concept consists of the following. As to the concept itself, Mbeki holds that ‘ … as all of us know, the word “renaissance” means rebirth, renewal, springing up anew. Therefore, when we speak of an African renaissance, we speak of the rebirth and renewal of our continent.’63 The credibility of this vision of a renewal of the African continent rests on four conditions. The first is the inspiration provided by the historical record of African achievements in the fields of culture, science and arts,


which it is claimed, at various historical epochs equalled those of other continents. The second condition lies in the potential of Africa’s peoples, especially their capacity to liberate themselves from oppression. The third condition is found in the values of democracy and good governance, said to be an inherent component of African culture. The final factor conducive to ‘rebirth’ is the power of information and modern technologies, which are becoming more and more accessible through the process of globalisation.64 In more specific terms, ‘[t]he new African world which the African Renaissance seeks to build is one of democracy, peace and stability, sustainable development and a better life for the people, nonracialism and nonsexism, equality among the nations, and a just and democratic system of international governance’.65 The components of this rebirth include an emphasis on the discovery and rediscovery of the past achievements of African cultures, a renewed pride in African identity, a reassertion of the esteem and equality of African peoples among the other peoples of the world and, above all, a recovery of dignity from a history of oppression and exploitation. By 1998 Mbeki was sensing this rebirth in the various attempts at establishing democratic regimes in the place of previous dictatorships, in the introduction of viable macro-economic policies attractive to foreign capital, and in the repositioning of African countries to reap the benefits of globalisation. Above all, Mbeki stresses that this renaissance has to be undertaken by Africans themselves, and that this should be seen as project of continued and genuine liberation. His conviction that the objectives of the renaissance will be achieved is also drawn from this fact, namely that Africans have already liberated themselves from slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism to the position they find themselves in today. The liberation of South Africa is seen as a decisive and inspiring benchmark in this process. This conception of continental renewal is significant in two ways. First, it amounts to a call for Africa to modernise without having to Westernize. This is apparent from the emphasis on both African cultures and on the perceived benefits of globalisation, especially in the form of access to technology and communication networks. The primacy of the African cultural component to this push for modernisation and development becomes even more apparent in the way some of Mbeki’s colleagues have elaborated the concept of the African Renaissance.66


Secondly, the concept holds a potentially profound mythological and symbolic content. It is of singular importance to note the conviction with which Mbeki declares the prospect of a successful renaissance: Africa reaffirms that she is continuing her rise from the ashes. Whatever the setbacks of the moment, nothing can stop us now! Whatever the difficulties, Africa shall be at peace! However improbable it may sound to the sceptics, Africa will prosper! Whoever we may be, whatever our immediate interest, however much we carry baggage from our past, however much we have been caught by the fashion of cynicism and loss of faith in the capacity of the people, let us err today and say – nothing can stop us now!67 This confident assertion of success need not necessarily be seen as willful deception. But such optimism, when it is expressed as a certainty, against staggering odds, and without any persuasive guarantees, really amounts to an expression of hope born from inner conviction, and as such contains an element of myth. To be sure, Mbeki is aware of these obstacles and is not averse to listing them: HIV/AIDS, internal war stretching from Angola to the Sudan, the saturation of the continent by the global producers and suppliers of small arms, democratic decay and corruption, warlord politics, and so on, but none of these affects his optimistic forecast of assured success. The importance of this myth lies in its offer of redemptive deliverance. It is a symbol of hope. To those who suffered under apartheid, and who now after apartheid still experience poverty, deprivation and humiliation, it offers an escape. It is not an escape in the form of immediate material gratification in the form of jobs and houses. For a great many, this will have to be deferred. But the concept of the African Renaissance does allow its adherents to gain immediate symbolic gratification. By reminding them that there is much to be proud of in the past achievements of African culture, they can regain their dignity, and by clearly defining the goal of an Africa that is equal in all respects to the peoples of other continents the myth provides a focus for their optimism. This inspiring goal also provides political leadership with an instrument of mobilisation


with which to address some of the more debilitating legacies of the strategy of ungovernability, such as the enduring culture of nonpayment for public services. Leaders are also provided with a yardstick of excellence, with which, if not to inspire, then at least to discipline citizens into higher levels of achievement, such as establishing a culture of learning within the educational system. Should the concept be deployed in this way, then it could become a vital symbolic component of the consolidation of the peace process, a contribution Thabo Mbeki has to be applauded for. There is, one must add, the rival, Machiavellian interpretation. This holds that the concept of the African Renaissance is a cynical piece of mythmaking, with deliberate and calculated deception designed to soothe the poor, while allowing the new African elite to enrich themselves economically and entrench themselves politically. According to this view the concept serves the interests of this new elite in an instrumental way by presenting the rationale for the Africanisation of the public service and the justification for the administrative ethnic cleansing of all non-African minorities from the state bureaucracies. Which one is the more persuasive? Much depends on one’s interpretation of the ruling ANC’s expressed objective of establishing hegemony, a question that will be taken up in the last chapter. Micro level: the culture of violence Arguably the weakest component of the symbolic aspect to the South African peace process has been the creation of new symbols with which to induce a politics of reversal away from the culture of violence. Re-establishing an effective criminal justice system is part of the solution, as are long-term economic growth strategies. But there is more to it. Research has shown that the culture of violence is at its most virulent among young, urban, black males who are socially marginalised. They tend to form criminal gangs that pursue both the tangible material rewards of violent crime, in the form of money and commercial goods, and also the intangible rewards of identity, status, power, social standing and prestige within their immediate communities.68 The conduct of criminal violence as a desperate survival strategy amidst conditions of widespread poverty is easily understood. Why criminal violence would also be seen as a source of these intangible goods is less obvious. According to Pinnock, the key to understand-


ing this culture of violence is found in the fact that it is overwhelmingly a phenomenon among male youths within communities deeply damaged by the social dislocation of apartheid and rapid industrial modernisation. In these communities the established cultural mechanisms through which young males are socialised into adulthood have broken down irreparably. In particular, rites of passage, the ritual ceremonies of separation and of eventual reincorporation into society as adults have been lost. According to this view, a vacuum is left – a vacuum where the male youth yearn for the functional equivalent of traditional rites of initiation. The essence of these traditional rites was for the youngsters to engage in some test of their mettle, either through hardship, or facing danger, or confronting some challenging obstacle, and overcoming these within the company of their peers. In successfully traversing this passage, the youth emerge as adults, and achieve the single most important intangible goal: the respect of adults.69 According to Pinnock gangs fill this social vacuum. They consist of young men on the verge of maturity but who live in a culture which does not provide them with any ritual channels for achieving social recognition of adulthood. 70 They then create for themselves what is lacking from society. In the absence of adult respect, they seek the admiration of their peers. This is pursued, firstly, through elaborate ritual symbols of identity (linked to dress, language, territorial control, etc.). In the absence of a socially sanctioned physically challenging test of manhood, they create their own. These involve a specific set of excessive behaviours, each with an escalating level of violence. In the Cape Flats, this process starts with face mutilations, followed by gang fights, where respect is shown for what are seen to be acts of daring and the confronting of danger. The decisive threshold into acceptance into the inner circle, of gaining unquestioned peer group admiration, is crossed with the first kill. To kill somebody, anybody, but preferably a member of a rival gang is the final rite of passage into ‘warrior’ status in this culture of violence.71 There is a particular quality to the respect earned in this way. In their own perverted way, these gangsters are in search of something closer to honour than to dignity. Honour, as Peter Berger has shown, is analytically distinct from dignity in the sense that the former is intricately linked to institutional role, while the latter is explicitly de-linked from institutional role definitions. Social hier-


archy is closely associated with honour, which expresses social status and solidarity among social equals, and draws a line of demarcation against social inferiors. Honour is derived from specific social activities, prescribed actions (institutional roles) and is reflected in particular artifacts, which become symbols of honour. In a world of honour you are what you enact; the true self is found in the correct execution of prescribed role requirements. Social standing is reflected, displayed in the trappings of the role: whether these be formal titles, elaborate dress, social reputation, specific exclusive privileges or corresponding obligations. The face mutilations of the gangster are a badge of honour, and a symbol of status. Honour has to be earned and is reserved for those who qualify by virtue of specific achievements, and it is therefore acquired by a select few. Dignity, by contrast, is available to all and everyone can claim it. Within the contemporary doctrine of human rights it relates to the intrinsically valued humanity of all people, independent of and divested from social roles or norms. Dignity is intrinsic to humanity; it is a universal quality and you are entitled to it not because of who you are, what you are, or what you have achieved, but despite each and every role position you may occupy or not occupy. Dignity can be claimed by all, across all social, racial or status cleavages, and is independent of standing in society. Arrested persons, detained and convicted persons, serial killers, gangsters and rapists are all entitled to have their essentially valuable humanity recognised, and to use this to claim other human rights – such as the freedom from torture, the right to life, and so on.72 The culture of violence inhabited by South African gangsters is one where respect is achieved, not handed out to all. They go to great lengths to make themselves socially distinctive and exclusive, and their requirements for status are met through prescribed role enactments – ending with ritualised killing. In the warped, distorted world of ritualised violence they create for themselves, the youth express a need for honour, for identity, and for recognition which is not addressed by the doctrine of human rights in which the right to human dignity is paramount. As it stands, the drug syndicates and crime bosses offer more compelling symbols and rituals to these youths than the country’s democratic constitution does. Pinnock argues persuasively that a new approach to criminal justice which recognises these needs among the youth at risk is required to get to


the heart of the matter. A new symbolic politics of ritual and rites of passage is needed to reverse the culture of violence.

Conclusion South Africa’s post-settlement violence was not anticipated by those expecting a democratic peace. The potential for such violence, it has been argued here, was already shaped by the structure of the political conflict of the decades preceding the democratic transition. Militarised societal formations, armed civilians, civic militias and, above all, a state unable to hold its own personnel to the rules of war all contributed to undermining the vital distinction between those who can and should engage in public violence and those who should refrain from it. The result was not only widespread civil violence, but also the consolidation of a culture of violence. The negotiated transition did not deal effectively with this issue, allowing the culture of violence to become ever more firmly established. A weakened post-settlement state with inadequate institutions, especially relating to the criminal justice system, provided political space for such violence to flourish. Continued, and even deepening, economic deprivation sustained the attraction of the culture and practice of violence, while the ready availability of small arms provided the means. The overall result of the culture of violence is to transform the attitudes of people immersed in this culture: a collective indifference to firearms and the death they can cause, and the acceptance of the norm that ‘ … [a]rms have become instruments of production, and crime and violence … normal means of livelihood and profit’.73 How has the public, the prime target of violent crime, responded? Popular responses as measured in public opinion show that there is a dangerous decline in confidence that the state will be able to provide the security that citizens demand. Other ways of looking after themselves, whether through privatised security or communal actions by vigilantes, are gaining public attention and at times, support. Uncontrolled vigilante activity, however, can exacerbate the problems of post-settlement violence, and uncontrolled privatisation of security runs the risk of becoming a threat to the state itself. The nature of the policy response by the state to these chal-


lenges through domestic institutional reform, legislation and regional policy initiatives will be taken up in the last chapter.

8 The Brittle Peace

Introduction What makes some peace processes more durable than others? Two considerations are relevant in taking up this question. The first is the observation that the greatest change in the development of the South African state during the course of the 20th century occurred between 1986 and 1994 when its monopoly on force was broken.1 In this period the state itself underwent a fundamental reconstruction and was reconstituted in 1994 along dramatically different lines than before. The partisan apartheid state was completely dismantled, and its structures and policies serving the interests of whites were curtailed. During this interregnum the two concurrent processes of escalating internal conflict and of peacemaking ran their course, both of them being influential in shaping the reconstituted state. The second consideration is the general finding, on the basis of evidence drawn from a comparative study of 26 peace agreements in the post-Second World War era, that the stable, enduring settlements are those that are extensively institutionalized. 2 More specifically, institutions (defined as ‘ … rules of competition [that] proscribe certain behaviours and require others’ 3) that ameliorate the security threats perceived by all belligerents are the important ones. Three sets of institutions matter. First, those that prevent any one of the adversaries from taking control of the coercive forces of the state, thus allying all-round fears that the newly constituted monopoly on force will not be used against any one particular group after the peace has been made. Rules applicable to the compo175


sition of the armed forces, intelligence agencies and police come to mind. Secondly, rules regarding access to political power are important to deal with fears by some that electoral incumbency by the new rulers, especially those from the ranks of their former enemies, should not entail a monopoly on power to be used against electoral losers. Thirdly, institutions are required to reassure those not in power that ruling groups will not use the economic resources of the state against them. Taken together, these two findings allow us to suggest that the crumbling of the institutions of the apartheid state (Kane-Berman’s silent revolution, cited in Chapter 5) not only allowed for the intensification of the revolt against the state but also eventually for its amicable resolution, and that the consolidation of this peace process will require a concerted effort at re-institutionalisation, that is, state-building. What insights about de-institutionalisation and reinstitutionalisation can be gained from the South African peace process? The following overview is presented within the framework of the four questions outlined at the end of the preface to this book.

New rules for making peace? The formal process of negotiating for a new constitution yielded some innovations worth recommending as well as some kinds of crisis management to be wary of. Finding an adequate yardstick for making these assessments is not easy. The first consideration is that the formal negotiations were successful. An agreement was reached, a settlement in the form of a written constitution was clinched. Every determining factor, however flawed, can thus be said to have made some contribution to a project which was, overall, successful. Secondly, this success, measured in comparative African terms, especially against the formal peace negotiations in Angola and Rwanda also conducted in the early 1990s, and which ended in catastrophic ruin and in genocide, respectively, is remarkable. Thirdly, negotiations are par excellence about the art of the possible, and half measures that may appear inadequate to us when looking back, may at the time have been the best that could be achieved, considering the circumstances then prevailing. One must therefore continually put the question: is the cup half full or half empty? In peacemaking, half full is often what really counts.

The Brittle Peace 177

The innovative negotiating rules, established by the negotiators themselves, without any direct facilitation by third parties, must be singled out. Bosberade (bush summits), sufficient consensus, the ‘Meyer Ramaphosa’ channel and even some elements of deliberate ambiguity contributed decisively to the successful outcome. The negotiated election was a form of crisis management one would not want to recommend without reservation, although it was a positive factor in the South African case. The crisis in this case was brought about by the failure of interim institutions, especially the Independent Electoral Commission. The insight to be taken from this is that institutions can be broken down far easier than built up. If new institutions are to be established with which to level the playing field (itself an important requirement for peacemaking), then negotiators should take note that large amounts of time and resources will have to be invested in establishing these bodies. The interim peace pacts, or non-aggression pacts (the Groote Schuur Minute, the National Peace Accord, etc.), were all flawed contributions. Each addressed crucial issues such as the definition of political prisoners and bureaucratic procedures for their identification and release, but each fell short of actually preventing the escalation of public violence. Is the cup half full or half empty? The same assessment can be made of the process of pre-negotiations. Protracted, secret and tortuous, these were successful enough to initiate the initial, historic breakthroughs, but were not thorough enough to prevent a breakdown in talks in mid-1992, or to establish with any clarity the procedural requirements of good faith. The overall weakness of the negotiated peace process was that neither of the major antagonists was able to stem the violent actions of the loose canons within their own ranks. These malcontents were able to pursue their violent agendas because of a critical lack of institutional cohesion within the ranks of some of the major negotiators.

A stronger or weaker state? The South African state hosted the peace process, and the reconstituted state serves as the framework within which this peace agreement will have to be consolidated. What is the structural condition of this framework? State strength consists of three components: compliance with the laws of the state, voluntary participation by


citizens within the institutions of the state and legitimacy. For a number of decades the apartheid state showed considerable strength, but this was eventually undermined by its lack of legitimacy, which in turn eroded both the capacity of the state to contain extra-institutional participation and to assert compliance. The reconstituted post-apartheid state started with ample amounts of the crucial ingredient of legitimacy, an ideal platform for acquiring the other components of state strength. As was shown in the preceding chapters, the overall results thus far have been disappointing. South Africa spent much of the first term of office of the new democratic government in what has been accurately described as ‘charismatic bewilderment’. 4 Mandela, who could, and did outmatch everybody in every facet of the politics of transition, whether as mass mobiliser, as astute user of symbolic moments, as a symbol himself, as dignified peacemaker, as hardline negotiator who held the bottom line where necessary, and as loyal compatriot to his followers, had no equal in this era. However, he was less commanding in the more mundane politics of policymaking and public administration that followed. In many ways, he could not provide the kind of leadership needed to raise the capacity of the state to extract (taxes), to regulate (criminal behaviour), to re-appropriate resources (by way of helping the poor through creating jobs), and to penetrate society (by extending the reach of the law in the sense that laws enacted came to be enforced). The most comprehensive overview of the policy record of the new government to date has shown some glaring failures in the processes of policy formulation, policy adoption and policy implementation. These can be briefly summarised. Firstly, policy advocacy has been mistaken for policy analysis, with the result that policy makers have tended to believe their own propaganda and taken this as the factual basis for making choices, instead of undertaking systematic analysis. Secondly, systematic policy analyses, especially of the choices available, and the costs entailed by every one, have rarely been undertaken. Matters of principle appeared to be the preferred guidelines. Thirdly, a lack of appreciation for the established system of government also undermined policy effectiveness. The tendency was to consider every institution that originated from the previous regime illegitimate, corrupt, racist and ineffective.


What was not adequately appreciated, was that the South African transition was not a revolutionary one, with many aspects of legal and constitutional continuity remaining. Fourthly, while policy formulation and implementation was weak, policy adoption flourished. Through its dominance of parliament by the ruling party more than 300 pieces of legislation were adopted in the first 5 years of democratic rule. This momentum stalled when it came to policy implementation, with the result that many pieces of legislation, especially those relevant to crime, remain unenforced. Finally, according to this research report, a governing assumption that good intentions will deliver good results appears to have held sway. 5 Many of these shortcomings can be attributed to sheer inexperience, while others clearly derive from and reflect a particular world view. Hegemony The Mbeki term promises better policy implementation. The challenge facing Mbeki’s government is twofold: to overcome the legacies of apartheid and to overcome the legacies of the strategy of ungovernability. These two intertwined legacies combine to shape the obstacles to the consolidation of the peace process in South Africa. Relative inequality and absolute poverty, combined with a way of life in which the state and its laws are held in low regard at best, or are seen as an obstacle to circumvent, or at worst as a commodity to plunder, present a challenge to good governance, to democratic stability and to enduring peace. One part of Mbeki’s response to date has been to set the agenda by introducing the concept of the African Renaissance, which, as was discussed earlier, shows some intriguing promise as a symbolic concept. Another response, less closely tied to the person of Mbeki, and far more ominous, has been the declared project of hegemony. A document entitled ‘The State, Property Relations and Social Transformation: a Discussion Paper Towards the Alliance Summit was posted on the ANC’s internet website in late 1998, without citing the authors, and cunningly classified as a ‘discussion paper’.6 Written from within the ranks of the ANC alliance, and addressed to them, it proposes strategies for the continued pursuit of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR). In the paper the ANC alliance is addressed as the National Liberation Movement (NLM).


The paper proposes, among other things, that the state be deployed as an instrument of the alliance (NLM), but not as a neutral, benign, impartial executive instrument to serve all citizens equally well. Their project instead is totalitarian in its ambitions. ‘Transformation of the state entails, first and foremost, extending the power of the NLM over all levers of power: the army, the police, the bureaucracy, intelligence structures, the judiciary, parastatals, and agencies such as regulatory bodies, the public broadcaster, the central bank and so on’. This alone is bound to aggravate the fears of those who seek mutual security in the institutionalisation of peace agreements. Furthermore, the personnel who occupy this newly partisan state must not only reflect the demographic (that is, racial) composition of the country; they also ‘ … should owe allegiance to the new order’. Only then is the capacity of the state adequate ‘to exercise hegemony of ideas’, by which is understood that ‘… its ideas are the “dominant ideas” within society as a whole’. This project undermines the security of every group party to the peace process, as it calls for the state to use its resources against them in every one of the three fields of institutionalised peace, cited at the start of this chapter. Can such party hegemony be achieved and what will it look like? It has been achieved in the Southern African context and it is not a pretty sight.7 Contemporary Zimbabwe is probably the furthest down this road with Namibia close on its heels. The overall pattern of Zimbabwean politics over the last two decades is a depressing one. First, the internally autonomous powerbase of the major parliamentary opposition to the ruling ZANU party was smashed through a series of military campaigns in Matabeleland in 1983 and 1985, with loss of civilian life and gross violations of human rights. Then the Lancaster House peace agreement, as written into the 1980 constitution was dismantled, and quite easily so, given ZANU’s electoral dominance. This was followed by a protracted attempt by the state to gain control of the modern wealth-generating sector of the economy. All the previous objectives were reached with ease but at a cost to human lives and human rights. But the latter has proved unattainable. The ZANU elite has been enriched, but the economy itself and its capacity to generate wealth has suffered, and at the time of writing the country as a whole is facing national bancruptcy. The greatest losers in this hegemonic project have been the


poor, who face greater unemployment, deeper poverty and greater inequality. There is little doubt that hegemonic party rule in an African state can be achieved, and less doubt that the price to be paid is in legitimacy and a collapse in voluntary participation, leaving enforced compliance as the remaining hold of the state over society. This need not be in the form of a one-party state, but may be achieved through a process of sustained electoral dominance which gradually turns liberal democracy into electoral democracy and eventually into pseudodemocracy, where elections continue to take place, but become an empty ritual as the results are foregone conclusions.8 ANC hegemony over South Africa, achieved in the way prescribed by the authors cited above, is bound to weaken this state further. Hegemony achieved within a state that is weak, bankrupt and corrupt is a meagre prize. It represents a soft target to political actors such as private security firms, vigilantes, international criminal cartels, global corporations and warlords, in any combination, who operate as insurgent forces, are geared to engage in Low Intensity Conflict, and intent on deploying a strategy of ungovernability. Weak African states have fared badly against such opponents, with grave implications for the consolidation of peace processes. The logic of warlord politics Many African states came to independence through Low Intensity Conflicts waged by liberation movements against colonial powers. Having taken power in this way, the new state incumbents were left highly exposed and vulnerable to challengers from within bent on using these very same strategies against them. Initially these state leaders held out with the help of other Third World states, from former colonial powers, and from the two post-war superpowers. With such outside help these states, in some cases, could hold onto their juridical status. The Cold War and its superpower rivalry did exacerbate some internal conflicts, but overall, it was seen as a stabilising factor in maintaining statehood through the respective support the superpowers gave to their selected surrogates and allies in Africa. The authoritative view is that the end of the Cold War did not so much bring about the crises of African statehood, which in some cases became increasingly obvious after 1989 onwards. The


end of the Cold War rather brought to an end a conception of the African state which had already failed in practice.9 African states became ever more vulnerable to insurgency movements, operating within the strategic framework of Low Intensity Conflict. The success of these movements became the conclusive evidence of the decline of many and demise of some African states such as Sierra Leone, Somalia, Liberia, Angola and the former Zaire as units of security, not even to mention as units of democracy. These insurgent movements not only rivaled juridical states as units of coercion, but also emerged as competing centres of security and at times as competing security rackets. Very few of them held a credible promise of becoming sites of democracy. Where these ‘warlord insurgents’ have succeed in capturing the political centre, as they did in Liberia and Sierra Leone, they have not attempted to reconstruct and re-build the state. Instead, as Reno has shown, their response has been to establish a ‘shadow state’.10 These leaders face an extraordinary security threat. They are confronted with a lack of superpower support for their incumbency and with stringent conditionality for other aid and loans, which constrains their access to outside resources. Their domestic threats are from strongmen within their domain, able to mobilise deprived, humiliated and exploited civilians and arm them with anything from petrol bombs to military hardware from the unregulated international arms trade. The strategy open to these strongmen is the very same that brought the insurgent warlords to power: Low Intensity Conflict. These new incumbents have responded by circumventing the reconstruction of the territorially defined, bureaucratically organised state. Instead, they have sought security in the following way. Creditor demands and conditionality requirements for smaller, more efficient bureaucracies were met by virtually closing these down. This not only ostensibly fits the demands for ‘leaner’, ‘non-rentseeking’ bureaucracies set by donors, but also provides one of the building blocks of their security arrangement: it denies an institutional base to rival strongmen and eliminates an expensive trapping of statehood. The state leaders then proceed to privatise some state agencies such as revenue collection, enter into commercial contracts with foreign firms to exploit valuable economic enclaves (such as diamonds and hardwood timber) and hire mercenary forces to secure this enterprise.


The end result is a jurisdiction that does not bother with international boundaries or international treaty obligations. The shadow state is least of all geared to delivering security or any other public goods to the civilian population. On the contrary, by abandoning the resurrection of the territorial bureaucratic state, the public domain cannot be defined, and security is privatised and redefined as a zero-sum good to be gained at the cost of society. Furthermore, the means for delivering any public, collective goods is stripped down and virtually dismantled. Security thus defined ‘ … makes it even less likely that rulers in a weak state will invest resources in building strong bureaucracies serving popular needs in exchange for popular support’.11 On the contrary, the logic of security contained in these arrangements is to intensify exploitation of the resident population and to remove any and every base of authority available to them. The end result is a parody of the European state model and a unit of security utterly inhospitable to the consolidation of peace agreements. Can South Africa go this way? Not likely. For a start, there are no clearly demarcated regional pockets of exportable base commodities to be captured, such as oil fields or diamond mines. South Africa’s wealth is generated by a complex multi-sector economy dispersed over all regions, without any pocket to be captured and isolated. In addition, these are no clear societal lines of cleavage which are salient and could (re-)emerge as lines of fracture between armed formations. Private security groups do not have any military capacities, and neither gangs nor vigilantes control anything remotely resembling no-go areas for the state. There is just no evidence in the current or incipient power grid to suggest that at the macro-level any movement towards warlord politics which can balkanize the state is in the offing. A future South Africa, further weakened by the politics of hegemonic control, is more likely to end in ungovernability by crumbling than by fracturing. Consider again the implications of just one of the many factors conducive to public violence mentioned in this text, the projected impact of AIDS. An official report has it that by 2005 a million children under fifteen will have lost their mother due to AIDS, that by 2010 this figure would rise to two million, and that there are already about 200 000 AIDS orphans in KwaZulu-Natal alone.12 Given the social circumstances these orphaned, or semiorphaned children are growing up in, their drift to violent crime as a


means of desperate survival appears inexorable and an almost foregone conclusion. Their impact alone on the governability of the country is going to be huge, with every one a potential recruit into the following of literally hundreds of gangs, criminal syndicates and local strongmen, each with a distinctive identity, its own weaponry and agenda for violence.

New units of security in Southern Africa? The regional and international factors affecting South Africa’s process of coming out of violence will also have to be harnessed by thorough institution-building. Some headway has been made in this regard. The importance of a peace dividend for the consolidation of peace has been repeatedly stated in this text. Ultimately, this dividend will accrue only if the South African economy can perform with success in the competitive arena of the global economy. A major milestone towards institutionalising South Africa’s re-integration into these markets was achieved in 1999 with the signing of a wide ranging trade agreement between the European Union and South Africa. The deal is expected to bolster South Africa’s GDP by 1 per cent per year over the next five years, to facilitate the entry of 95 per cent of South Africa’s exports into EU markets, while also 86 per cent of EU exports to South Africa would be removed over a 12-year period.13 The problem of armed criminal violence in post-settlement South Africa also has a distinct regional and international dimension, as the proliferation of small arms and their infiltration into South African criminal networks is closely tied to the global market in arms and to regional political conflicts. 14 This security problem deepened in the late 1990s when the conflict in the Great Lakes region erupted and steadily spread. At the time of writing close to 12 countries were entangled in this conflict, which also became linked with the Angolan war, creating a war zone that stretches from northern Namibia to the southern Sudan.15 One response to this security problem by states in the Southern African region has been to enlarge the political unit of decisionmaking. The emerging security regime of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), formally established in 1992, explicitly identifies the objectives of aiming to ‘ … promote and


defend peace and security’. According to Solomon and Cilliers the pursuit of these objectives spurred the Community to establish the separate Organ for Politics, Defence and Security in June 1996. 16 Another body, the Inter-State Defence and Security Committee (ISDSC) can be considered the most important substructure of the SADC organ, and the one most directly engaged in dealing with the security issue of transborder violent crime. One of the ISDSC subcommittees, that on Public Security, oversaw the establishment of the Southern African Regional Police Chiefs Co-operation Organisation (SARPCCO). SARPCCO is tasked with cross-border crime control, which would include matters such as illegal trafficking in small arms, an issue at the centre of armed violence. The track record of SADC as a security regime has thus far been less than impressive. In October 1998 South Africa, with the assistance of a small contingent of forces from Botswana, invaded neighbouring Lesotho in order to re-establish civil order in the wake of a constitutional crisis over the validity of their national elections. The invaders claimed to be acting legally within the framework of the SADC structures, but this has been hotly disputed. The process was repeated when Zimbabwe and Namibia decided to send forces to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and claimed to be doing so within the ambit of SADC.17 Nonetheless, the institutions of SADC are rapidly evolving and still hold potential for development into an effective and rigorous security regime.18 While the institutional infrastructure for greater system capability in dealing with the regional security problem is being built, Dahl and Tufte’s warning about a corresponding decline in citizen control should be heeded. An analysis of this emerging security regime shows aspects of the overall SADC infrastructure which are open to greater democratic content: • The entire issue of representation needs to be developed further. SADC and the Organ are chaired by heads of state, most of whom are elected. The ISDSC is comprised of ministers, mostly recruited from directly elected legislatures. SARPCCO, however, consists of the members of the police forces of the member countries, all of whom are appointed officials. The way in which these individuals act as representatives can vary widely. Can they, or should they act as authorised proxies, holding the equivalent of power of


attorney over their respective citizens or should they act as delegates, being the mere messengers conveying opinions from citizens into these forums; or should they serve as mirrors, reflecting the demographics of their countries; or as symbolic representatives; or finally, as plenipotentiaries, acting as trustees or curators of the interests of citizens, but doing so on their own initiative, without referring back to citizens for approval or endorsement?19 • Closely tied to this is the role of public opinion. Solomon and Cilliers comment that further evolution of the Treaty towards a mutual defence pact raises the stakes very high. They note that ‘… the implications of a defence pact, built on the premise of shared commitment, are far-reaching and complex’.20 This potentially entails the long-term military deployment of substantial numbers of citizens’ and tax-payers’ resources outside the country. Should the public have a say in such decisions? If not, why not? If so, how? • Co-operation within SARPCCO is based on a number of principles, one of which is said to be the ‘observance of human rights’.21 Human rights are, however, not mentioned in the Multi-Lateral Agreement in Respect of Co-Operation and Mutual Assistance in the Field of Crime Combating which was negotiated within SARPCCO and ratified in 1997. Should this principle be taken further, then both the extension of democracy and the practice of crime prevention will be served if the member countries develop and standardise their human rights doctrines. This applies especially to the rights of arrested, detained and accused persons (such as those described in section 35 of South Africa’s 1996 constitution), the rights of freedom and security of the person (section 12), the right to privacy (section 14) and just administrative action (section 15). • Finally, the evolution of norms relevant to a shared perception of legitimate behaviour between member states is essential if the security regime is to develop into a security community. 22 Solomon and Cilliers propose the norm that repressive, nondemocratic governments and non-state actors intent on violence and terror be considered non-legitimate actors for the transfer of military equipment.23 This proposal is not only highly appropriate to the issue at hand, but also serves to re-build the statesponsored rules of war and peace.


A more tangible measure of success has been in the field of bilateral co-operation between South Africa and Mozambique. Between 1994 and 1998 a joint project (Operation Rachel) aimed at clearing the arms caches inside Mozambique was launched. Four such operations were executed, and a total of 11898 firearms, more than 6000 landmines and more than 3 million rounds of ammunition were retrieved and destroyed. Continued success appears to depend on the buying power of the officials from Operation Rachel. They will have to outbid the arms traffickers if people are to disclose more arms caches.24

New identities and symbols? Reconciliation and the retrieval of dignity through the processes of the TRC remains problematic. With no emergent consensus in the ranks of the public, the divisive effect of the TRC within the public domain remains. At the time of writing the Amnesty Committee of the TRC had not yet completed its work, but even at this stage it is confronted with certain immovable obstacles in its way. The largest seems to be the amnesty application of 37 high-ranking members of the ANC, who include current President Thabo Mbeki. They submitted their application as a collective one, for unspecified violations for which they may be have been responsible. Initially amnesty was granted to them by the Committee, but this was withdrawn by the TRC after a court ruling against them, because they are by law certified to grant amnesty only to individual cases. One conceivable outcome to this impasse is to grant a blanket amnesty, which would solve the policy problem, but irretrievably destroy even the modest contribution of the TRC process. The overall lesson to be learnt from the South African experience is that a Truth Commission such as this one is extremely difficult to insulate from the ongoing political process within society. To be able to function effectively such a process has, from its very inception, to be made autonomous from such forces, something the South African TRC did not have. Politicians will invariably try to gain advantage from such a process, especially when its deliberations produce information which leaves some political actors vulnerable. The African Renaissance was highlighted as concept with substantial symbolic potential. It can serve to mobilise, inspire and provide


direction to those South Africans who remain optimistic about their future, despite prevailing adversity. However, if this concept comes to be subsumed within a project by the ANC alliance to gain hegemony, and if this concept becomes one of the instruments in pursuing the hegemony of ideas, then its inclusive character crumbles and the Machiavellian interpretation of the significance of this concept becomes more and more persuasive. At the micro-level the roots of the culture of violence can be found, in part, in a twisted pursuit of honour. Honour is sought in the enactment of violent roles and rituals. Countering this requires state and society to offer more compelling role alternatives, equally daunting, but non-violent and socially constructive. Finding these has eluded policymakers thus far, a problem not at all unique to South African society. Furthermore, Peter Berger has made the general point that a return to honour is a return to institutions, with highly prescribed role requirements. In earlier centuries honour was often achieved at the expense of someone else’s dignity, but the challenge for the builders of these new institutions must be to both construct new codes of honour and to retain the advances made by the doctrine of human rights.25

The brittle peace When a vitreous piece of clay breaks, it fractures into large blocks, each retaining some resemblance to some part of the shape of the original whole, leaving jagged edges on the fault lines of breakage, along which it can be reassembled. But when a brittle piece breaks it shatters into a myriad of small pieces and crumbles into rubble, the result of breakage along countless small, indistinct lines of weakness, with no single piece showing any resemblance to the original unit and as such it is virtually impossible to reconstruct. Something similar can occur when a brittle peace breaks down. The brittleness of the South African peace is found in the fact that it was constructed by peacemakers who perceived and grasped the implications of relations of mutual dependence and mutual hostageship between belligerents who are intermingled within a single complex economy and geographical domain. The peace was made and is cemented by the recognition of these factors by astute leaders, who knew that they were constructing a fragile product, to be handled


with care. Such leaders know furthermore that the margin of error between handling and manhandling such a product is desperately narrow, and that the peace has to be constantly nurtured. Southern Africa has catastrophic examples of countries where peace agreements have been destroyed. Policies aimed at establishing the hegemony of ideas of a particular party, and of restructuring (‘transforming’) the state to become a partisan executive instrument of that party, are high-risk projects in the extreme, and they amount to juggling the peace product in the air. If it shatters, both the institutions of state and society are bound to crumble, fracturing into a multitude of indistinct groupings, and not along any clear lines of social cleavage. Amidst such fragmentation, criminal gangs and syndicates and local warlords will most likely be the remaining centres of power, operating under overall conditions of ungovernability. Prudent leaders will recognise this prospect and are bound to proceed circumspectly and with great care in consolidating the peace.


Appendix: Chronology, 1985–94 1985

November

Kobie Coetsee meets with Nelson Mandela in hospital.

1986

February

Eminent Persons Group (EPG) meets with Mandela in prison. Raids launched by P.W. Botha in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana. EPG mission cancelled. Mandela granted regular daytrips.

May June December 1987

February October

1988

February May August December

1989

April June July August September

October December

Arrangement begin for meeting between ANC and intermediaries. ANC announces its preconditions for negotiations. Committee to meet Mandela is set up and discussions take place on its composition. First meeting between NIS intermediaries and the ANC. Second meeting between intermediaries and ANC. First meeting of full committee of the NIS with Mandela. Third meeting between intermediaries and ANC. Mandela transferred from Pollsmoor to Victor Verster prison near Paarl; meetings arranged for him with prominent persons/organisations. Fourth meeting between intermediaries and ANC Fifth meeting between intermediaries and ANC. Meeting between Esterhuyse and Mbeki to set up direct NIS–ANC contact. Meeting between Mandela and Botha at Tuynhuys. ANC issues Harare Declaration. PW Botha resigns as State President. De Klerk sworn in as State President. First direct meeting between NIS and ANC. Sixth meeting between intermediaries and ANC. Release of high profile ANC prisoners. Decision taken by cabinet to unban ANC and other organisations. First meeting between Mandela and De Klerk.

191

192 Appendix: Chronology, 1985–94

1990

February

March May June August 1991

February July September

December

1992

February March May June

July August September November

1993

February

March April July

Unbanning of the ANC and other organisations. Release of Nelson Mandela from prison. Seventh meeting between intermediaries and ANC. Second and third meetings between NIS and ANC to prepare for first official meeting between the government and the ANC. Preparations for Groote Schuur Minute. The Groote Schuur Minute. Final meeting between intermediaries and ANC. The Pretoria Minute. DF Malan Accord. 48th Annual ANC Conference. Inkathagate. National Peace Accord. ANC–business leader meeting which leads to National Economic Forum (NEF). The start of Codesa I. Signs of a rift between De Klerk and Mandela. Working Groups start with substantive bargaining. All-white referendum and increase in government perception of bargaining power. The start of Codesa 2. Boipatong and the ANC’s suspension of negotiations. Start of behind-the-scenes meetings between Meyer and Ramaphosa which would become known as the Channel. Correspondence between De Klerk and Mandela on the question of deadlock and a return to negotiations. Government attempts to draw dissident parties into the talks. ANC march on Bisho. Signing of the Record of Understanding. The ANC adoption of Sunset Clauses. Timetable for the transition proposed by the government. Final agreement is reached between the government and the ANC on the nature of the transition as a process in two phases. A series of preparatory meetings are held for a multiparty negotiating forum. The start of the Multiparty Negotiating Process (MPNP) and the end of prenegotiation. IFP withdraws from MPNP.

Appendix: Chronology, 1985–94 193

September

October November December 1994

February

Parliament adopts legislation for transitional structures: Transitional Executive Council TEC) and Independent Electoral Commission (IEC). De Klerk and Mandela awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. MPNP accept the Interim Constitution. Parliament adopts the Interim Constitution.

Amendments to the Constitution to give more powers to provinces. April Further amendments to the constitution and recognition of the special position of the Zulu Monarchy. 26–29 April Inaugural elections. May Inauguration of Nelson Mandela as President.

Notes Preface 1. Robert Mattes, book review of The Bold Experiment: South Africa’s New Democracy by Hermann Giliomee and Lawrence Schlemmer with Sarita Hauptfleisch (eds), Politikon, vol. 22, no. 1, June 1995, p. 101.

Chapter 1 1. Peter Evans, ‘The Eclipse of the State? Reflections on Stateness in an Era of Globalization’, World Politics, vol. 50, October 1997, pp. 62–87. 2. Throughout the text ‘security’ and ‘democracy’ will be treated as two distinct concepts, referring to separate phenomena, and the interrelationship between them will be explored. An expanded definition of security which comes close to merging the concept of democracy with a broader concept of security runs the risks inherent in the practice of concept stretching. The position taken here is to acknowledge the link between security (understood to refer to the narrow concern with physical safety) and democracy, development, environmental equilibrium, economic prosperity, social well-being, and so on. This point is not disputed. On the contrary, it is vigorously argued in this book that there is a vital link between democracy and physical safety, and therefore between democratisation and peacemaking. However, in order to examine this link, the different phenomena are described in terms of separate, distinct concepts. This serves the interests of conceptual clarity and of analytical precision. See David Collier and James E. Mahon Jr, ‘Conceptual “Stretching” Revisited: Adapting Categories in Comparative Analysis’, American Political Science Review, vol. 87, no. 4, December 1993, pp. 845–55. 3. Charles Tilly, ‘Reflections on the History of European State-Making’, in Charles Tilly, (ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975, p. 15. 4. Samuel E. Finer, ‘State- and Nation-Building in Europe: The Role of the Military’, in Charles Tilly, ibid., pp. 85–163; S. E. Finer, The History of Government From the Earliest Times, volume 3, Empires, Monarchies, and the Modern State, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997; Joel S. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States, State–Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988; Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1990, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990.

194

Notes 195

5. Crawford Young, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994, pp. 35–40. 6. Samuel E. Finer, ‘State-building, State Boundaries and Border Control’, Social Science Information, vol. 13, no. 4/5, 1974, pp. 19–126, at 83–88; Michael Mann, ‘Nation-States in Europe and Other Continents: Diversifying, Developing, Not Dying’, Daedalus, vol. 122, no. 3, 1988, pp. 116, 117. 7. Charles Tilly, ‘Reflections on the History of European State-Making’, p. 38. 8. Gabriel Ardant, ‘Financial Policy and Economic Infrastructure of Modern States and Nations’, in Tilly (ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe, pp. 164–242. 9. Charles Tilly, ‘War Making and State Making as Organised Crime’, in Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol (eds) Bringing the State Back In, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 170, 171, 172. 10. Ibid., p. 172. 11. Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and its Critics, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989, pp. 207–9. 12. K. J. Holsti, ‘War, Peace, and the State of the State’, International Political Science Review, vol. 16, no. 4, 1995, p. 325. 13. Garrett Hardin, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science, vol. 162, December 1968, pp. 1243–1248. 14. Evans, ‘The Eclipse of the State?’. 15. Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War: the Most Radical Reinterpretation of Armed Conflict Since Clausewitz. © 1991 by Martin van Creveld. Reprinted with permission of the Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, 1991, p. 198. 16. Tilly, ‘Reflections on the History of European State-Making’, p. 42. 17. Van Creveld, The Transformation of War, p. 90. 18. Ibid., p. 87–94. 19. The evolution of these rules can be traced in Geoffrey Best, Humanity in Warfare – The Modern History of the International Law of Armed Conflicts, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980, and Michael Howard, George J. Andreopolous and Mark R. Shulman (eds), The Laws of War – Constraints on Warfare in the Western World, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994. For the codification of these rules into international law, especially the various Hague Conventions, the successive Geneva Conventions and Protocols and related United Nations Conventions, see Adam Roberts and Richard Guelff (eds), Documents on the Laws of War, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982. 20. Paul Kennedy and George J. Andreopoulos, ‘The Laws of War: Some Concluding Reflections’, in Howard, Andreopoulos and Shulman (eds), The Laws of War, p. 217. 21. The impossibility of sustaining ‘Total War’, that is, warfare which makes unrestrained use of all society’s resources, is persuasively argued

196 Notes

22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27.

28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38. 39.

40.

41.

42. 43.

by John Keegan, A History of Warfare, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997, esp. pp. 3–60. Van Creveld, The Transformation of War, pp. 57–62. George J. Andreopoulos, ‘The Age of National Liberation Movements’, in Howard, Andreopoulos and Shulman (eds), The Laws of War, p. 195. Ibid., p. 195. Walter Laqueur, ‘Postmodern Terrorism’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 75, no. 5, September/October 1996, pp. 24–36. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States, pp. 269–277. Robert H. Jackson and Carl G. Rosberg, ‘Why Africa’s Weak States Persist: The Empirical and Juridical in Statehood’, World Politics, vol. 35, October 1982, pp. 1–24. Mark Shaw, ‘Crime in Transition’, in Mark Shaw, Lala Caherer, Duxita Mistry, Sarah Opler and Lukas Huntingh, Policing the Transformation – Further Issues in South Africa’s Crime Debate, ISS Monograph Series, no. 12, Halfway House: Institute for Security Studies, April 1997, p. 21. Barry R. Posen, ‘The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict’, Survival, vol. 35, no.1, Spring 1993, p. 28. Ibid., p. 28. Chaim Kaufmann, ‘Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars’, International Security, vol. 20, no. 4, Spring 1996, pp. 147, 159. Ibid., p. 159. Van Creveld, The Transformation of War, pp. 192–227. Ibid., p. 155. Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985, p. 185. Pierre du Toit, State Building and Democracy in Southern Africa – Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa, Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1995, pp. 263, 271. Edward Shils, ‘The Virtue of Civil Society’, Government and Opposition, vol. 26, no. 1, Winter 1991, p. 4. Du Toit, State Building and Democracy in Southern Africa, ch. 6, pp. 181–203. Jan Gagiano, ‘The Contenders’, in Pierre du Toit and Willie Esterhuyse (eds), The Myth Makers – the Elusive Bargain for South Africa’s Future, Halfway House: Southern, 1990, pp. 10–35. Alvin Rabushka and Kenneth A. Shepsle, Politics in Plural Societies – a Theory of Democratic Instability, Columbus, OH: Charles E. Merrill, 1972, pp. 84, 85. C. Clapham, Africa and the International State System. the Politics of State Survival, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 208–266. W. Reno, ‘War, Markets and the Reconfiguration of West Africa’s Weak States’, Comparative Politics, vol. 29, no. 4, 1997, pp. 493–510. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States, pp. 4, 5, 30–3. Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, pp. 141–228.

Notes 197

44. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States, pp. 223–6. 45. John Darby, Scorpions in a Bottle. Conflicting Cultures in Northern Ireland, London: Minority Rights Publications, 1997, pp. 28, 29. 46. Hermann Giliomee and Lawrence Schlemmer, From Apartheid to NationBuilding, Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1989. 47. Robert Jervis, ‘Cooperation under the Security Dilemma’, World Politics, vol. 30, no. 2, January 1978, pp. 167–214. 48. Robert A. Dahl and Edward R. Tufte, Size and Democracy, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1973, p. 20. 49. Ibid., p. 109. 50. Ibid., p. 129. 51. Ibid., pp. 133, 134. 52. Ibid., p. 135. 53. Ernst Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983, p. 22. 54. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, pp. 131–4.

Chapter 2 1. Donald L. Horowitz, A Democratic South Africa? Constitutional Engineering in a Divided Society, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991, pp. 1–41. 2. Anthea J. Jeffery, ‘Spotlight on Disinformation about Violence in South Africa’, South African Institute of Race Relations Spotlight, no. 8/92, October 1992, pp. 1–57. 3. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report, volume 1, Cape Town: Juta, 1998, pp. 110–114. 4. Ibid., pp. 142–4. 5. An example of TRC findings on a specific event which are highly contestable are those which bear on the Boipatong massacre. See Rian Malan, ‘A Question of Spin’, in Frontiers of Freedom, no. 20, second quarter, 1999, pp. 26–35. 6. Anthea Jeffery, The Truth about the Truth Commission, Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1999. 7. An early example of such a prediction is found in Pierre van den Berghe, South Africa – a Study in Conflict, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1965. 8. T. R. H. Davenport, South Africa – a Modern History, Johannesburg: Macmillan, 3rd edn, 1987, pp. 214–17. Leonard Thompson, ‘The Compromise of Union’, in Monica Wilson and Leonard Thompson (eds), The Oxford History of South Africa, vol. II, South Africa, 1870–1966, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975, p. 328; S. B. Spies, Methods of Barbarism?, Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 1977. 9. Francis Wilson & Mamphela Ramphele, Uprooting Poverty – the South African Challenge, Cape Town: David Philip, 1989, pp. 216, 217.

198 Notes

10. Hermann Giliomee and Lawrence Schlemmer, From Apartheid to NationBuilding, Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 101. See also Gerry Mare, African Population Relocation in South Africa, Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1980. 11. Laurine Platzky and Cherryl Walker, The Surplus People – Forced Removals in South Africa, Johannesburg: Ravan, 1985. 12. Merle Lipton, Capitalism and Apartheid, South Africa 1910–1986, Cape Town: David Philip, 1986, p. 408. 13. G. Trotter, ‘Education and the Economy’, in N. Nattrass and E. Ardington (eds), The Political Economy of South Africa, Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 248. 14. Michael Savage, ‘The Imposition of Pass Laws on the African Population in South Africa 1916–1984’, African Affairs, vol. 85, no. 339, 1986, pp. 181–205. 15. Giliomee and Schlemmer, From Apartheid to Nation-building, pp. 82–6. 16. James Selfe, The Total Onslaught and the Total Strategy – Adaptations to the Security Intelligence Decision-making Structures under P.W. Botha’s administration, unpublished MA dissertation, University of Cape Town, 1987, pp. 44, 45, 52. 17. Magnus Malan, ‘Die Aanslag teen Suid-Afrika’, Strategic Review for Southern Africa, November 1980, pp. 3–16. Other analyses of the total onslaught strategy can be found in Chris Alden, Apartheid’s Last Stand – The Rise and Fall of the South African Security State, London: Macmillan, 1996, especially ch. 2, and Kenneth W. Grundy, The Militarization of South African Politics, London: I. B. Taurus, 1986. 18. Republic of South Africa, White Paper on Defence 1977, p. 5. 19. Muriel Horrell, Laws Affecting Race Relations in South Africa – 1948–1976, Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1978, pp. 412–79. 20. Carole Cooper, Jennifer Schindler, Colleen McCaul, Robin Hamilton, Mary Beale, Alison Clemans, Lou-Marié Kruger, Isabelle Delvare and John Gary Moon-Samy, Race Relations Survey 1988/89, Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1989, pp. 546, 552, 554. 21. African National Congress, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, August 1996, pp. 46–9. 22. African National Congress, The Place of the Armed Struggle, discussion document D1/1, 1985, Kabwe Papers, Mayibuye Centre, University of the Western Cape, p. 1. 23. African National Congress, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, p. 51. 24. Anthea J. Jeffery, The Natal Story: Sixteen Years of Conflict, Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1997, pp. 21–37. 25. African National Congress, Statement to the Truth Commission, pp. 16, 37, 46. 26. Jeffery, The Natal Story, pp. 194–200. 27. National Party, Submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 21 August 1996, pp. 10, 12. 28. Truth Commission Report, vol. 5, pp. 209–210.

Notes 199

29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

43.

44. 45. 46.

47. 48.

49. 50.

51.

Truth Commission Report, vol. 2, pp. 169–174. Ibid, pp. 288, 289. Ibid, p. 220. Ibid, p. 182. Truth Commission Report, vol. 3, pp. 167–186. Ibid, pp. 194–196. Ibid, pp. 200–2. See also Deneys Coombe, ‘ “Of Murder and Deceit”: the Trust Feed Killings’, in Anthony Minnaar (ed.), Patterns of Violence – Case Studies of Conflict in Natal, Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council, 1992, pp. 227–42; and Mary de Haas, ‘The Ghosts of Trust Feed’, Indicator SA, vol. 9, no. 3, 1992, pp. 65–68. Truth Commission Report, vol. 3, pp. 221–3. Ibid, pp. 233, 235, 238. Truth Commission Report, vol. 2, pp. 327–37. Ibid, pp. 339–45. Truth Commission Report, vol. 5, p. 240. Ibid, pp. 367–73. Tom Lodge, Bill Nasson, Steven Mufson, Khehla Shubane, Nokwanda Sithole, All, Here and Now: Black Politics in South Africa in the 1980s, Cape Town: David Philip, 1991, p. 52. Ari Sitas, The Making of the ‘Comrades Movement’ in Natal, 1985–91, Journal of Southern African Studies, vol. 18, no. 3, September 1992, pp. 629–41; David Hemson, ‘ “For Sure You are Going to Die!”. Political Participation and the Comrade Movement in Inanada, KwaZulu-Natal’, Social Dynamics, vol. 22, no. 2, 1996, pp. 74–104. Gavin Woods, ‘Rebels with a Cause – the Discontent of Black Youth’, Indicator SA, vol. 7, no. 1, Summer 1989, pp. 63–5. Truth Commission Report, vol. 2, pp. 377–87. African National Congress, Statement to the Truth Commission, pp. 62, 63, 76–8; African National Congress, Further Submissions and Response by the African National Congress to Questions raised by the Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, 12 May 1997; pp. 10, 11; National Party, Submission to the Truth Commission, pp, 13, 18; Truth Commission Report, vol. 2, pp. 387–91. See also Anthony Minnaar, ‘ “Desperate Justice”: Necklacing, Vigilantism & People’s Courts’, paper read at the Biennial Conference of the Political Studies Association of South Africa, Stellenbosch, 27–29 September 1995. Truth Commission Report, vol. 3, pp. 667–9. Elizabeth Sidiropoulos, Anthea Jeffery, Herma Forgey, Cheryl Chipps, Terence Corrigan, Thabo Mophuthing, André Helman, Tamara Dimant, South Africa Survey 1997/98, Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1998, p. 29. South African Institute of Race Relations, Fast Facts, no. 1/97, January 1997, p.9. Antoinette Louw and Mark Shaw, ‘Dubious Distinctions? Comparing Crime Across Countries’, Nedcor/ISS Crime Index, vol. 2, no. 3, May–June 1998, p. 7. In both cases the figures are for the first six months of every year.

200 Notes

52. South African Institute of Race Relations, Fast Facts, no. 11/97, November 1997, p. 4. 53. Sidiropoulos et al., South Africa Survey 1997/98, pp. 57, 58. 54. Don Pinnock, The Botherhoods: Street Gangs and State Control in Cape Town, Cape Town: David Philip, 1984. 55. Sidiropoulos et al., South Africa Survey 1996/97, Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1997, p. 73. 56. Anthony Minnaar, ‘Violence in Tsolo and Qumbu (Transkei) (1993–1997): Lawlessness, Criminality, Economic Survival and Incipient Democracy at Work’, Paper presented at the Biennial Conference of the South African Political Studies Association, Mmabatho, 8–10 October 1997, p. 2. 57. Ibid., p. 10. 58. Sidiropoulos et al., South Africa Survey 1996/97, p. 73. 59. Ingrid Oellermann, ‘Shock, Fear follow Nkabinde Verdict’, Cape Times, 1 May, 1998. 60. Sidiropoulos et al., South Africa Survey 1997/98, p. 32; Nedcor ISS Crime Index, no. 1, 1977, p. D1. 61. Anthony Minnaar, ‘Witchpurging in the Northern Province of South Africa: a Victim Profile and an Assessment of Initiatives to Deal with Witchcraft’, Paper presented at the 9th International World Symposium on Victimology, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 24–29 August 1997, pp. 6, 7. 62. Martin Schönteich, Unshackling the Crime Fighters. Increasing Private Sector Involvement in South Africa’s Criminal Justice System, Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1999, p. 47. 63. Nedcor ISS Crime Index, no. 1, 1997, p. D2; Sidiropoulos et al., South Africa Survey 1996/97, p. 96. 64. Schönteich, Unshackling the Crime Fighters, p. 41. 65. Nedcor ISS Crime Index, vol. 2, no. 4, 1998, p. 5. 66. Nedcor ISS Crime Index, vol. 1, no. 1, 1997, p. D37. 67. Sidiropoulos et al., South Africa Survey 1997/98, p. 41. 68. Ibid., p. 40. 69. Sidiropoulos et al., South Africa Survey, 1996/97, pp. 74, 75. 70. Sidiropoulos et al., South Africa Survey 1997/98, p. 33. See also Ettienne Hennop, ‘Firearms and Violent Crime in South Africa’, Nedcor/ISS Crime Index, vol. 3, no. 1, January–February 1999, pp. 17–19.

Chapter 3 1. Botha W. Kruger, Prenegotiation in South Africa (1985–1993): a Phaseological Analysis of the Transitional Negotiations, unpublished MA dissertation, University of Stellenbosch, March 1998, p. 69.

Notes 201

2. See note 1. Other, more journalistic accounts are found in Allister Sparks, Tomorrow is Another Country – The Inside Story of South Africa’s Negotiated Revolution, Sandton: Struik, 1994; and Patti Waldmeir, Anatomy of a Miracle – The End of Apartheid and the Birth of the New South Africa, London: Viking, 1997. 3. Kruger, Prenegotiation in South Africa (1985–1993), p. 92. 4. Ibid., p. 94. 5. Ibid., pp. 96–8. A number of other initiatives were undertaken to this effect. Some were launched via Switzerland, others through the Netherlands. The decisive, successful one, however, was the Londonbased project lead by Young. 6. Kruger, Prenegotiation in South Africa, p. 113. 7. Ibid., pp. 113–115. 8. Waldmeir, Anatomy of a Miracle, p. 138. 9. Carole Cooper, et al., Race Relations Survey 1989/90, Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1990, p. 557; Johannes Mutshutshu Rantete, The African National Congress and the Negotiated Settlement in South Africa, Pretoria: J. L. van Schaik, 1998, p. 154. 10. These agreements are summarised in Timothy D. Sisk, Democratization in South Africa – the Elusive Social Contract, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995, pp. 88–126. The documents are reproduced in Carole Cooper et al., Race Relations Survey 1991/92, Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1992. 11. Cooper et al., Race Relations Survey 1991/92, p. 17. 12. Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, Randburg: Macdonald Purnell, 1994, pp. 577, 578. 13. Cooper, et al., Race Relations Survey 1991/92, p. 516. 14. Ibid., p. 516. 15. F.W. De Klerk, The Last Trek: a New Beginning, London: Macmillan, 1998, p. 209. 16. Carole Cooper, et al., Race Relations Survey 1992/93, Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1993, pp. 473–97. 17. Cooper et al., Race Relations Survey 1991/92, pp. lii, liii. 18. Kruger, Prenegotiation in South Africa, pp. 155, 156. 19. Steven Friedman (ed.), The Long Journey – South Africa’s Quest for a Negotiated Settlement, Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1993, p. 174. 20. Cooper et al., Race Relations Survey 1992/93, pp. 503, 504. 21. Sisk, Democratization in South Africa, pp. 213–15. 22. Kruger, Prenegotiation in South Africa, p. 168. 23. Rantete, The African National Congress and the Negotiated Settlement in South Africa, pp. 197–8. 24. Steven Friedman and Louise Stack, ‘The Magic Moment – the 1994 election’, in Steven Friedman and Doreen Atkinson (eds), South African Review 7: The Small Miracle – South Africa’s Negotiated Settlement, Johannesburg: Ravan, 1994, p. 310. 25. Ibid., p. 320.

202 Notes

Chapter 4 1. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report, volume 2, Cape Town: Juta, 1998, p. 46. 2. Annette Seegers, The Military in the Making of Modern South Africa, London: I. B. Taurus, 1996, p. 119. 3. African National Congress, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, August 1996, pp. 23–5. 4. Ibid., p. 16. 5. Ibid., pp. 49–55, 64–65. 6. David Hemson, ‘ “For Sure You are Going to Die!”: Political Participation and the Comrade Movement in Inanda, KwaZulu-Natal’, Social Dynamics, vol. 22, no. 2, 1996, pp. 74–104. 7. Truth Commission Report, vol. 4, p. 246. 8. Jacklyn Cock and Laurie Nathan (eds), War and Society: the Militarization of South Africa, Cape Town: David Philip, 1989. 9. A. de V. Minnaar, ‘Mafia Warlords or Political Entrepreneurs? Warlordism in Natal’, unpublished paper, Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council, December 1991. See also Anthea Jeffery, The Natal Story – Sixteen years of Conflict, Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1997, pp. 105–113; Truth Commission Report, vol. 2, pp. 306–308; Pierre du Toit and Jannie Gagiano, ‘Strongmen on the Cape Flats’, Africa Insight, vol. 23, no. 2, 1993, pp. 102–111. 10. African National Congress, National Consultative Conference of the African National Congress – Main Decisions and Recommendations, Zambia, 16–23 June 1985, Mayibuye Centre, University of the Western Cape, p. 5. 11. African National Congress, Commission on Armed Struggle, discussion document D1/ll(a), 1985, Kabwe Papers, Mayibuye Centre, University of the Western Cape, pp. 3,4. 12. African National Congress, Statement to the Truth Commission, pp. 9, 10, 56, 58–62. 13. Seegers, The Military in the Making of Modern South Africa, p. 142. 14. Ibid., p. 163. 15. Ibid., pp. 183, 184. 16. African National Congress, Statement to the Truth Commission, p. 10. 17. J. Barber and J. Barratt, South Africa’s Foreign Policy: the Search for Status and Security 1945–1988, Bergvlei: Southern, 1990, pp. 331–3. 18. Deon Geldenhyus and Hennie Kotzé, ‘Aspects of Political Decisionmaking in South Africa’, Politikon, vol. 10, no. 1, June 1983, pp. 33–45; James Selfe, ‘South Africa’s National Management System’, in Cock and Nathan, War and Society, pp. 149–58; Annette Seegers, ‘Extending the Security Network to the Local Level: a Clarification and Some Further Comments’, Politeia, vol. 7, no. 2, 1988, pp. 50–67. 19. Seegers, The Military in the Making of Modern South Africa, p. 167. 20. African National Congress, Statement to the Truth Commission, p. 28.

Notes 203

21. Francis Wilson and Mamphela Ramphele, Uprooting Poverty – The South African Challenge, Cape Town: David Philip, 1989; Anthony Lemon (ed.), Homes Apart – South Africa’s Segregated Cities, Cape Town: David Philip, 1991; Michael Savage, ‘The Imposition of Pass Laws on the African Population in South Africa 1916–1984’, African Affairs, vol. 85, no. 339, 1986, pp. 181–205; Laurine Platzky and Cherryl Walker, The Surplus People – Forced Removals in South Africa, Johannesburg: Ravan, 1985. 22. African National Congress, Statement to the Truth Commission, p. 52. 23. Truth Commission Report, vol. 2, pp. 209, 210. 24. Timothy D. Sisk, ‘The Violence-Negotiation Nexus: South Africa in Transition and the Politics of Uncertainty’, Negotiation Journal, January 1993, pp. 77–94. 25. Ibid., p. 88. 26. John Aithchison, ‘Natal’s Wastelands – the Unofficial War Goes On’, Indicator SA, vol. 7, no. 1, Summer 1989, pp. 58–61; Mathew Kentridge, An Unofficial War – Inside the Conflict in Pietermaritzburg, Cape Town: David Philip, 1990; Jeffery, The Natal Story, pp. 218–22, 318–323; Wyndham Hartley, ‘The Maritzburg Feuds’, Indicator SA, vol. 5, no. 2, Summer 1988, pp. 13–15; Stavros Stavrou and Lwazi Shongwe ‘Violence on the Periphery, Part Two: The Greater Edendale Complex’, Indicator SA, vol. 7, no. 1, Summer 1989, pp. 53–7; Truth Commission Report, vol. 3, pp. 259–67. 27. Joel S. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States – State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988, pp. 247–55. 28. Truth Commission Report, vol. 3, pp. 298–303. See also Haydn Osborn, ‘The Richmond War – a Struggle for Supremacy’, Indicator SA, vol. 9, no. 1, Summer 1991, pp. 46–9. 29. Jeffery, The Natal Story, pp. 390, 471, Truth Commission Report, vol. 3, pp. 306, 307. 30. Anthony Minnaar, ‘East Rand Townships under Siege’, Indicator SA, vol. 10, no. 4, Spring 1993, pp. 67–70; Anthony Minnaar, ‘Hostels on the Reef – The Goldstone Report, Indicator SA, vol. 10, no. 2, Autumn 1993, pp. 63–71; Jeremy Seekings, ‘Hostel Hostilities – Township Wars on the Reef’, Indicator SA, vol. 8, no. 3, Winter 1991, pp. 11–15; Ari Sitas, ‘The New Tribalism: Hostels and Violence’, Journal of Southern African Studies, vol. 22, no. 2, June 1996, pp. 235–48. 31. Truth Commission Report, vol. 3, pp. 675–676. 32. Truth Commission Report, vol. 2, pp. 681–84. 33. Truth Commission Report, vol. 3, pp. 691–99; Anthony Minnaar, ‘SelfDefence Units Revisited: Community Threat or Protectors of the People?’, paper presented at the Biennial Conference of the South African Political Studies Association, Stellenbosch, 27–9 September 1995.

204 Notes

34. Truth Commission Report, vol. 2, pp. 599–708. See also Anthony Minnaar, et al. (eds), The Hidden Hand – Covert Operations in South Africa, Pretoria: HSRC Publishers, 1994. 35. Readers with a strong constitution can gain some insight into the minds of these men by consulting Jacques Pauw’s Into the Heart of Darkness – Confessions of Apartheid’s Assassins, Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1997. The equivalent book about the killers on the other side remains to be written. 36. Truth Commission Report, vol. 2, pp. 692–710. 37. Truth Commission Report, vol. 5, pp. 261–70. 38. Cape Times, 15 October 1998, p. 3. 39. Shula Marks and Neil Andersson, ‘The Epidemiology and Culture of Violence’, in N. Chabani and André du Toit (eds), Political Violence and the Struggle in South Africa, London: Macmillan, 1990, p. 62. 40. Sandra Burmann and Pamela Reynolds (eds), Growing up in a Divided Society, Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 1986; Lorraine E. Glanz and Andrew D. Spiegel (eds), Violence and Family Life in Contemporary South Africa: Research and Policy Issues, Pretoria: HSRC Publishers, 1996. 41. Marks and Andersson, ‘The Epidemiology and Culture of Violence’, pp. 50, 51. 42. Jeffery, The Natal Story, p. 199. 43. Anthony Minnaar, ‘“Desperate Justice”: Necklacing, Vigilantism and People’s Courts’, paper presented at the Biennial Conference of the South African Political Studies Association, Stellenbosch, 27–29 September 1995, p. 2; Truth Commission Report, vol. 2, p. 388. 44. Examples of leading figures who conveyed this idea include the following: Joe Slovo and Parks Mankahlana, quoted in Patti Waldmeir, Anatomy of a Miracle, London: Viking, 1997, pp. 47, 48; Oliver Tambo, quoted in Johannes Rantete, The African National Congress and the Negotiated Settlement in South Africa, Pretoria: J. L. van Schaik, 1998, p. 122; Nelson Mandela, in Long Walk to Freedom, Randburg: Macdonald Purnell, 1994, p. 578. 45. Truth Commission Report, vol. 2, pp. 347–66. 46. Seegers, The Military in the Making of Modern South Africa, p. 261.

Chapter 5 1. I. William Zartman, ‘A Skeptic’s View’, in Guy Oliver Faure and Jeffrey Z. Rubin, (eds), Culture and Negotiation, Newbury Park: Sage, 1993, p. 17. 2. S. B. Bacharach and E. J. Lawler, Bargaining: Power, Tactics and Outcomes, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1981, pp. 39, 63. 3. E. J. Lawler, and S. B. Bacharach, ‘Power Dependence in Collective Bargaining’, Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations, vol. 3, 1986, pp. 204–7.

Notes 205

4. Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley, The Opening of the Apartheid Mind – Options for the New South Africa, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993, p. 51. 5. Pierre du Toit, State Building and Democracy in Southern Africa – Botswana, Zimbabawe and South Africa, Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1995, p. 239. 6. Patti Waldmeir, Anatomy of a Miracle – The End of Apartheid and the Birth of the New South Africa, London: Viking, 1997, p. 3. 7. Ralph Lawrence, ‘Introduction – From Soweto to Codesa’, in Steven Friedman and Doreen Atkinson, (eds) South African Review 7: the Small Miracle – South Africa’s Negotiated Settlement, Johannesburg: Ravan, 1994, p. 8. 8. John Kane-Berman, South Africa’s Silent Revolution, Halfway House & Johannesburg: Southern & South African Institute of Race Relations, 1990, pp. 9–11; Brian Huntley, Roy Siegfried and Clem Sunter, South African Environments into the 21st Century, Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 1989, p. 57. 9. Reproduced in the Weekly Mail, 26 Jan–1 Feb. 1990, p. 2. 10. Debates of Parliament (Hansard), Second Session – Ninth Parliament, Friday 2 February 1990, column 2. 11. John Kane-Berman, South Africa’s Silent Revolution, pp. 19–42. 12. John McGarry, ‘Political Settlements in Northern Ireland and South Africa’, Political Studies, vol. XLVI, 1998, pp. 853–70; Hermann Giliomee, ‘The Elusive Search for Peace’, in Hermann Giliomee and Jannie Gagiano (eds), The Elusive Search for Peace – South Africa, Israel and Northern Ireland, Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 299–317, at pp. 302–6. 13. Philip I. Morgan, ‘Resolving Conflict through “Win-Win” Negotiation’, in Roy J. Lewicki, David M. Saunders and John W. Minton, Negotiation – Readings, Exercises, and cases, Burr Ridge, ILL: Irwin, 2nd edn 1993, pp. 125–9. 14. Raymond Cohen, Negotiating Across Cultures – International Communication in an Interdependent World, Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, revised edition 1997, p. 133. 15. Quoted in Hermann Giliomee, ‘Broedertwis: Intra-Afrikaner Conflicts in the Transition from Apartheid’, African Affairs, vol. 91, no. 364, 1992, p. 360. 16. Waldmeir, Anatomy of a Miracle, pp. 138, 139. 17. Roddy Fox, ‘A Piece of the Jigsaw: the 1992 White Referendum and South Africa’s Post-Apartheid Political Geography’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, vol. 10, no. 2, 1992, pp. 84–96. 18. Waldmeir, Anatomy of a Miracle, p. 150. 19. Hermann Giliomee, ‘Surrender Without Defeat: Afrikaners and the South African “Miracle” ’, South African Institute of Race Relations Spotlight, October 1997, no 2/97, pp. 8, 24. 20. Arend Lijphart, ‘Majority Rule in Theory and Practice: the Tenacity of a Flawed Paradigm’, International Social Science Journal, no. 129, August

206 Notes

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35.

36. 37. 38. 39.

40.

1991, pp. 483–493. The authoritative view of Vernon Bogdanor is even more emphatic: ‘I am not aware of any divided society that has been able to achieve stability without power-sharing’, in ‘Forms of Autonomy and the Protection of Minorities’, Daedalus, vol. 126, no. 2, Spring 1977, p. 66. Giliomee, ‘Broedertwis: Intra-Afrikaner Conflicts in the Transition from Apartheid’, p. 347. Waldmeir, Anatomy of a Miracle, p. 134. Ibid., p. 50. Copyright © Patti Waldmeir, 1997. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books. Giliomee, ‘Surrender Without Defeat’, pp. 23, 24. Waldmeir, Anatomy of a Miracle, p. 68. I. William Zartman and Maureen Berman, The Practical Negotiator, New Haven: Yale, 1982, pp. 57, 74–7. Ibid., p. 69. Copyright © by Yale University Press. Used with permission. Rantete, The African National Congress and the Negotiated Transition, p. 127. Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, Randburg: Macdonald Purnell, 1994, p. 513. Kruger, Prenegotiation in South Africa, pp. 72–4. Hermann Giliomee, ‘The last trek? Afrikaners in the Transition to Democracy’, South Africa International, January 1992, pp. 111–20. Trevor Bell, ‘The impact of sanctions on South Africa’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, vol. 12, no. 1, 1993, p. 18. F.W. De Klerk, The Last Trek, a New Beginning, London: Macmillan, 1998, pp. 161, 162. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, p. 598; Timothy D. Sisk, Democratization in South Africa – the elusive social contract, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995, pp. 223, 224. Doreen Atkinson, ‘Brokering a Miracle? the Multiparty Negotiating Forum’, in Friedman and Atkinson, (eds), South African Review 7: the Small Miracle, p. 22. Ibid., p. 24. Steven Friedman, ‘Afterword. The Brief Miracle?’, in Friedman and Atkinson (eds), South African Review 7: the Small Miracle, pp. 333, 334. Republic of South Africa, Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Act 200 of 1993. An example of an attempt to invest this concept with substantive meaning is found in the article by Yvonne Mokgoro, “Ubuntu” and the Law in South Africa, in Occasional papers: The African Renaissance, Johannesburg: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, May 1998, pp. 49–53. Mokgoro, a Judge of South Africa’s Constitutional Court, is unconvincing in her attempt, for a start, because she assembles under this label certain values which can, under specific circumstances, directly undercut one another. The value of compassion, for example, can at times require one to contain oneself in upholding the value of honesty. Truth can hurt. Waldmeir, Anatomy of a Miracle, p. 110.

Notes 207

41. Profiles of every one of these leaders can be found in Waldmeir’s Anatomy of a Miracle. See also Hennie Kotzé and Deon Geldenhuys, ‘Damascus Road’, Leadership, vol. 9, July 1990, pp. 12–28; Tom Lodge, ‘Thabo Mbeki and Cyril Ramaphosa – Crown Princes to Nelson Mandela’s Throne’, World Policy Journal, vol. 10, no. 3, 1993, pp. 65–71. Many books have been written about Mandela, but one may as well go to his 1994 autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. De Klerk’s 1998 autobiography The Last Trek: a New Beginning, is also useful. 42. Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977, p. 100. 43. Friedman, ‘Afterword. The Brief Miracle?’, p. 330. 44. Theodor Hanf Heribert Weiland, and Gerda Vierdag, South Africa: Prospects for Peaceful Change, Cape Town: David Philip, 1981, pp. 401–5. 45. Giliomee, ‘Surrender Without Defeat’, p. 25. 46. Cooper, et al., Race Relations Survey 1991/92, p. 16. 47. Roger Southall, ‘The South African Elections of 1994: the Remaking of a Dominant-Party State’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 32, no. 4, 1994, p. 642. 48. Adam and Moodley, The Opening of the Apartheid Mind, p. 215. 49. Bacharach and Lawler, Bargaining – Power, Tactics and Outcomes, p. 9. 50. P. H. Gulliver, Disputes and Negotiations – A Cross-Cultural Perspective, New York: Academic Press, 1979, pp. 102–4; Cohen, Negotiating Across Cultures, pp. 199–202. 51. Ibid., pp. 199–202. 52. Ibid., pp. 36–8, 189–92. 53. Truth Commission Report, vol. 5, pp. 279, 280. 54. Two perceptive analysts who saw that many African voters imputed precisely this meaning to the elections were Eghosa E. Oseghae, ‘The Missing (African) Link in the Comparative Analysis of South Africa’s Transition’, African Sociological Review, vol. 1, no. 2, 1997, pp. 1–21; and Roger Southall, ‘South Africa’s 1994 election in an African perspective’, Africa Insight, vol. 24, no. 2, 1994, pp. 86–98. 55. The Path to Power, Programme of the South African Communist Party adopted at the 7th Congress, 1989, African Communist, no. 118, 3rd quarter 1989, p. 124. See also David Niddrie, ‘Negotiations . . . another site of struggle’, Work in Progress, vol. 60, August/September 1989, pp. 6–9; Sisa Majola, ‘The Two Stages of our Revolution’, African Communist, no. 110, 3rd quarter 1987, pp. 39–51. 56. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, p. 509. 57. Ibid., p. 536. 58. Ibid., pp. 513, 558, 578, 559. 59. Alex Mashinini, ‘People’s War and Negotiations – Are They Fire and Water?’, Sechaba, vol. 22, no. 8, 1988, p. 27. Mashinini was supported by Brenda Stalker, ‘The Crisis in our Country – A Realistic Political Solution’, Sechaba, vol. 22, no. 5, May 1988, pp. 19–26, but strongly attacked by Neil Zumana, ‘Discussion Article: Revolution or Negotiations?’, Sechaba, vol. 23, no. 4, April 1988, pp. 26–30.

208 Notes

60. Ronnie Kasrils, ‘Voice from the Underground: Mass Struggle Is the Key’, Work in Progress, vol. 72, January/February 1991, p. 13. 61. Joe Slovo, ‘Negotiations: What Room for Compromise?’, African Communist, 3rd quarter, 1992, p. 37; Jeremy Cronin, ‘The Boat, the Tap and the Leipzig way’, African Communist, 3rd quarter, 1992, pp. 41–54; Jeremy Cronin, ‘Dreaming of the Final Showdown: a Reply to Jordan & Nzimande’, African Communist, 4th quarter 1992, pp. 38–44; Raymond Suttner, ‘Ensuring Stable Transition to Democratic Power’, African Communist, 4th quarter, 1992, pp. 29–37. 62. Pallo Jordan, ‘Strategic Debate in the ANC: A Response to Joe Slovo’, African Communist, 4th quarter, 1992, pp. 7–15, 10, 11. See also Blade Nzimande, ‘Let Us Take the People with Us: A Reply to Joe Slovo’, African Communist, 4th quarter, 1992, pp. 16–28; Harry Gwala, ‘Negotiations as presented by Joe Slovo’, African Communist, 4th quarter, 1992, pp. 24–28. 63. African National Congress, NEC paper, ‘Negotiations: a Strategic perspective’, African Communist, 4th quarter, 1992, pp. 48–53. 64. Sisk, Democratization in South Africa, p. 54. 65. Jordan, ‘Strategic Debate in the ANC: a Response to Joe Slovo’, p. 14. 66. De Klerk, The Last Trek: a New Beginning, pp. 109,163. 67. Ibid., pp. 180, 222. 68. Ibid., pp. 152, 153. 69. Ibid., pp. 199, 200–4, 209, 211. 70. Ibid., pp. 264, 265. 71. Ibid., p. 384. 72. Ibid., p. 387. 73. Seegers, The Military in the Making of Modern South Africa, pp. 263, 264. 74. Jannie Geldenhuys, A General’s Story – From an Era of War and Peace, Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1995, p. 297. 75. Nelson Mandela, State of the Nation Address, Houses of Parliament, Cape Town, 24 May 1994.

Chapter 6 1. Sidiropoulos et al., South Africa Survey, 1996/97, Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1997, p. 58. 2. Ibid., p. 111. 3. Ibid., pp. 80, 81. 4. Martin Schönteich, Unshackling the Crime Fighters: Increasing Private Sector Involvement in South Africa’s Criminal Justice System, Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1999, p. 35. 5. Sidiropoulos et al., South Africa Survey 1996/97, pp. 93–97. 6. Lala Camerer and Mark Shaw, ‘Fundamentals First’, Nedcor/ISS Crime Index, vol. 2, no. 1, January – February 1998, pp. 17–21; Schönteich, Unshackling the Crime Fighters, pp. 41, 46, 86. 7. Ibid, p. 79. 8. Sidiropoulos et al., South Africa Survey 1996/97, pp. 108–10.

Notes 209

9. Sidiropoulos et al., South Africa Survey 1997/98, Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1998, pp. 78,79. 10. Sidiropoulos et al., South Africa Survey, 1996/97, p. 109. 11. Anthony Minnaar, ‘Self-Defence Units (SDUs): Post-April 1994 – What Role for Community Policing?’, paper read at the colloquium of the South African Political Studies Association, Rustenburg, 10–11 October 1996. 12. ‘Barnard “swindled R1,4 m” ’, Cape Times, 13 February 1998. 13. Cheryl Goodenough, ‘Mystery that Surrounds the Armed Robberies’, KwaZulu-Natal Briefing, no. 10, February 1998, pp. 2–6. 14. Phil Williams, ‘Transnational Organised Crime and National and International Security: a Global Assessment’, in Virginia Gamba, (ed.), Society Under Siege – Crime, Violence and Illegal Weapons, Halfway House: Institute of Security Studies, 1997, p. 24. 15. Republic of South Africa, Interpellations: Questions and Replies of the National Assembly, Second Session, Second Parliament, Cape Town: Government Printer, 18 February 1998, p. 14. 16. Sidiropoulos et al., South Africa Survey 1997/98, p. 103. 17. Sidiropoulos, et al., Race Relations Survey 1994/95, Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1995, p. 493. 18. Ibid., pp. 228, 507, 508, 569, 570, 575, 576. 19. The strict definition used by Statistics South Africa in their interviews holds that the unemployed are those who: a) did not work during the seven days prior to the interview; b) want to work and are available to start work within a week of the interview: and c) have taken active steps to look for work or to start some form of self-employment in the four weeks prior to the interview. The expanded definition includes criteria (a) and (b) but not (c). See Statistics South Africa, Unemployment and Employment in South Africa, Pretoria: Statistics South Africa, 1998, p. 1, 3. 20. Alec Irwin, ‘Why COSATU Has Supported Sanctions’, in Mark Orkin (ed.) Sanctions Against Apartheid, Cape Town: David Philip, 1989, pp. 52–56. 21. Sidiropoulos et al., South Africa Survey, 1997/98, p. 185. 22. Sidiropoulos et al., South Africa Survey 1996/97, p. 661. 23. Sidiropoulos, et al., South Africa Survey 1997/98, pp. 275–281. 24. The Economist, 15 March 1997, pp. 68, 69. 25. Sidiropoulos et al., South Africa Survey 1997/98, p. 308. 26. Martin Schönteich, ‘Age and Aids: South Africa’s Crime Time Bomb?’, African Security Review, vol. 8, no. 4, 1999, p. 40. 27. Ibid., pp. 183, 191. 28. Ibid., pp. 116, 151. 29. Statistics South Africa, Unemployment and Employment in South Africa, pp. 23–8. 30. Sidiropoulos et al., South Africa Survey 1997/98, pp. 236, 237. 31. Unemployment and Employment in South Africa, p. 32. 32. Jonny Steinberg, ‘More to Farm Killings than Govt Thinks’, Business Day, 19 August, 1998, p. 15. 33. Sidiropoulos et al., South Africa Survey, 1996/97, p. 654.

210 Notes

34. African National Congress, The Reconstruction and Development Programm – a Policy Framework, Johannesburg: Umanyano Publications, 1994, pp. 22, 28, 29, 33, 41, 46, 50, 57, 64, 87. 35. Ibid., p. 146. 36. Ibid., p. 78. 37. Ibid., pp. 80, 91–4, 112, 146. 38. Ibid., p. 113. 39. Jill Nattrass, The South African Economy – Its Growth and Change, Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 270. 40. Mark Orkin, ‘Introduction: the Case for Sanctions Against Apartheid’, in Mark Orkin (ed.), Sanctions Against Apartheid, Cape Town: David Philip, 1989, 22. 41. Bell, T, ‘The Impact of Sanctions on South Africa’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, vol. 12, no. 1, 1993, pp. 1–28. 42. Sidiropoulos et al., South Africa Survey 1997/98, p. 411. 43. Ibid., pp. 428, 429. 44. Patrick J. McGowan, ‘The “New” South Africa: Ascent or Descent in the World System?’, South African Journal of International Affairs, vol. 1, no. 1, 1993, pp. 35–61. 45. Business Day, 14 July 1999. 46. On the ideological dimension of globalization, see Peter Evans, ‘The Eclipse of the State? Reflections on Stateness in an era of Globalization’, World Politics, vol. 50, October 1997, pp. 62–87. 47. Sidiropoulos et al., South Africa Survey 1997/98, p. 2. 48. Ibid., pp. 78, 79. 49. Ibid., p. 422. 50. Martinho Chachiua, ‘The Status of Arms Flows in Mozambique’, in Tandeka Nkiwane, Martinho Chachiua and Sarah Meek, (eds), Weapons Flows in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Swaziland, Halfway House: Institute for Security Studies, ISS Monograph Series no. 34, January 1999, pp. 15, 16. 51. Patrick Chabal, ‘The Curse of War in Angola and Mozambique – Lusophone African Decolonization in Historical Perspective’, Africa Insight, vol. 26, no. 1, 1996, p. 8. 52. R. T. Naylor, ‘The Rise of the Modern Arms Black Market and the Fall of Supply-Side Control’, in Virginia Gamba (ed.), Society Under Siege – Crime, Violence and Illegal Weapons, Halfway House: Institute for Security Studies, 1997, pp. 47–56. 53. Ibid., pp. 57–70. 54. Phil Williams, ‘Transnational Organised Crime in International Security: a Global Assessment’, in Virginia Gamba (ed.), Society Under Siege – Crime, Violence and Illegal Weapons, pp. 13–19. 55. Ibid., pp. 23–7. 56. Chachiua, ‘The Status of Arms Flows in Mozambique’, p. 21; Glenn Oosthuyzen ‘Shooting the Golden Goose – Small-Arms Proliferation in Southern Africa’, in Robert I. Rotberg and Greg Mills (eds), War and Peace in Southern Africa – Crime, Drugs, Armies and Trade, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1998, p. 65.

Notes 211

57. J. Potgieter, ‘The Price of War and Peace: a Critical Assessment of the Disarmament Component of United Nations Operations in Southern Africa’, in Gamba (ed.), Society under Siege, pp. 129–68. 58. Oosthuyzen, ‘Shooting the Golden Goose’, pp. 67,74. 59. Ibid., pp. 67, 68, 75. 60. Ibid., pp. 68, 69, 75. 61. Ibid., pp. 69, 70, 75, 76. 62. Ibid., pp. 71–3, 77, 78. 63. Sidiropoulos et al., South Africa Survey 1997/98, p. 38. 64. Jacklyn Cock, ‘The Link Between Security and Development: the Problem of Light Weapons Proliferation in Southern Africa’, African Security Review, vol. 5, no. 5, 1996, pp. 4–22; Jacklyn Cock, ‘The Legacy of War: the Proliferation of Light Weapons in Southern Africa’, in Rotberg and Mills (eds), War and Peace in Southern Africa, pp. 89–121.

Chapter 7 1. Johan Olivier and Rose Ngwane, ‘Marching to a Different Tune’, Crime and Conflict, no.4, Summer 1995, pp. 10, 11. 2. Hennie Kotzé, ‘Culture, Ethnicity and Religion: South African Perceptions of Social Identity’, Johannesburg: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Occasional Papers, April 1997, p. 8. 3. Another survey, which found a similarly low level of spontaneous identification with the inclusive identity of ‘South African’, also reported that a huge majority of respondents (more than 90 per cent) nonetheless indicated that they were either ‘proud’ or ‘very proud’ to be called South African, indicative, to the authors, of a widespread agreement on the legitimacy and appropriateness of the political unit. See Robert Mattes and Hermann Thiel, ‘Consolidation and Public Opinion in South Africa’, Journal of Democracy, vol. 9, no. 1, January 1998, pp. 97, 98. 4. Kotzé, ‘Culture, Ethnicity and Religion’, p. 8. 5. Ibid., p. 12. 6. Amanda Gouws, ‘Political Tolerance and Civil Society: the Case of South Africa’, Politikon, vol. 20, no. 1, June 1993, p. 24. 7. Karen Macgregor, ‘“Sunny with some Stormclouds” – The Reality Check Survey’, Indicator SA, vol. 16, no. 2, 1999, p. 22. 8. James L. Gibson and Amanda Gouws, ‘Political Intolerance and Ethnicity – Investigating Social Identity’, Indicator SA, vol. 15, no. 3, Spring 1998, pp. 15–20. 9. Kotzé, ‘Culture, Ethnicity and Religion’, p. 14. 10. Anthony Minnaar, Sam Pretorius and Marie Wentzel, ‘Who Goes There? Illegals in South Africa’, Indicator SA, vol. 12, no. 3, Winter 1995, pp. 35, 37; Hennie Kotzé and Lloyd Hill, ‘Emergent Migration Policy in a Democratic South Africa’, International Migration, vol. 35, no.1, 1997, p. 33.

212 Notes

11. Lloyd B. Hill, International Migration and the Democratic Receiving State – South African Immigration Policy in the Post-1994 Period, unpublished MA dissertation , University of Stellenbosch, December 1998, pp. 138, 139. 12. Minnaar, et al., ‘Who Goes There?’, pp. 34, 35. 13. Hennie Kotzé and Pierre du Toit, ‘Public Opinion on Security and Democracy in South Africa after Transition: the 1995/96 World Values Survey’, Strategic Review for Southern Africa, vol. 19, no. 2, November 1997, p. 64. 14. Another survey, also conducted in 1995 by the Institute for a Democratic South Africa (IDASA), produced very similar findings. See Mattes and Thiel, ‘Consolidation and Public Opinion in South Africa’, p. 100. 15. Ibid., p. 103. 16. Macgregor, ‘The Reality Check Survey’, p. 25. 17. Ibid., p. 27. 18. Hennie Kotzé, ‘Changing Attitudes towards Political Protest and the State in South Africa, 1981–1995: a Longitudinal Analysis’, Strategic Review for Southern Africa, vol. 20, no. 2, 1998, pp. 76–101. 19. Olivier and Ngwane, ‘Marching to a Different Tune’, p. 11. 20. Macgregor, ‘The Reality Check Survey’, p. 22. 21. Gideon Pimstone, ‘Public Perceptions, Underreporting and Selffulfilling Prophecies’, Nedcor ISS Crime Index, vol. 2, no. 1, 1998, p. 13. 22. Mark Shaw, ‘Of Crime and Country: Reported Crime Trends in South Africa (1980 to 1997) and Future Scenarios’, Nedcor ISS Crime Index, vol. 2, no. 3, 1998, p. 1. 23. Mattes and Thiel, ‘Consolidation and Public Opinion in South Africa’, p. 106. 24. Martin Schönteich, Unshackling the Crime Fighters. Increasing Private Sector Involvement in South Africa’s Criminal Justice System, Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1999, p. 15; Rod Alence and Gideon Pimstone, ‘Crime and the 1999 Election – Perceptions of Voters’, Nedcor ISS Crime Index, vol. 3, no. 1, 1999, pp. 1–4; Rod Alence, ‘The Democratic Transition and Crime in South Africa: the Record of the 1990s, Nedcor ISS Crime Index, vol. 3, no. 2, 1999, pp. 16–20. 25. Jethro Goko, ‘Two Out of Three Have No Faith in Police, Says Survey’, Business Day, 15 November, 1999, p. 6. 26. Schönteich, Unshackling the Crime Fighters, pp. 21–23. 27. Jenny Irish, Policing for Profit: the Future of South Africa’s Private Security Industry, Halfway House: Institute for Security Studies, ISS Monograph Series, no. 39, August 1999, p. 4. 28. Schönteich, Unshackling the Crime Fighters, p. 25. 29. Ibid., pp. 29,30. 30. Irish, Policing for Profit, p. 26. 31. Schönteich, Unshackling the Crime Fighters, pp. 32–36. 32. Ibid., pp. 38, 39.

Notes 213

33. Martin Schönteich, ‘Fighting crime with Private Muscle: the Private Sector and Crime Prevention’, African Security Review, vol. 8, no. 5, 1999, pp. 68, 69. 34. Murray Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics, Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1967, p. 6. 35. Robert Rubinstein, ‘Cultural Aspects of Peacekeeping: Notes on the Substance of Symbols’, Millennium – Journal of International Studies, vol. 22, no. 3, Winter 1993, p. 551. 36. Peter L. Berger, Pyramids of Sacrifice – Political Ethics and Social Change, New York: Basic Books, 1974, p. 17. 37. Ibid., pp. 18–20. 38. Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985, p. 405. 39. Rubenstein, ‘Cultural Aspects of Peacekeeping’, p. 551. 40. T.R.H. Davenport, South Africa, a Modern History, Johannesburg: Macmillan, 3rd edn, 1987, p. 78. 41. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report, volume 1, Cape Town: Juta, 1998, p. 4. 42. Truth Commission Report, vol. 1, p. 7. 43. Truth Commission Report, vol. 5, p. 351. 44. Truth Commission Report, vol. 1, p. 111 45. Ibid., pp. 112–114. 46. Ibid., p. 9. 48. Truth Commission Report, vol. 1, p. 116. 49. Ibid., pp. 110, 117. 50. Ibid., pp. 66–70; 131–34. 51. Anthea Jeffery, The Truth About the Truth Commission, Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1999. 52. James A. Gibson and Amanda Gouws, ‘Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Attributions of Blame and the Struggle over Apartheid’, American Political Science Review, vol. 93, no. 3, September 1999, pp. 501–17. 53. ‘Reality Check’, special report in the Cape Times, 22 April 1999, p. 11. 54. Macgregor, ‘The Reality Check Survey’, p. 27. 55. Truth Commission Report, vol. 1, p. 132. 56. Truth Commission Report, vol. 5, p. 210. 57. Truth Commission Report, vol. 1, pp. 94–102. 58. Ibid., p. 68. 59. Truth Commission Report, vol. 5, pp. 222, 223, 283. 60. Ibid., pp. 271–301. 61. Truth Commission Report, vol. 1, pp. 62, 132. 62. Lawrence Schlemmer and Ian Hirschfield (eds.) Founding Democracy and the New South African Voter, Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council, 1994, p. 60. 63. Quoted in Business Day, 13, October 1999, p. 14. 64. Thabo Mbeki, Africa – the Time Has Come, Cape Town: Tafelberg & Mafube, 1998, p. 193. See also Thabo Mbeki, Mangosuthu Buthelezi,

214 Notes

65.

66.

67. 68.

69. 70. 71. 72.

73.

Sean Michael Cleary, Frances A. Kornegay, Chris Landsberg and Yvonne Mokgoro, ‘The African Renaissance’, Johannesburg: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Occasional Papers, May 1998, pp. 1–53. Terrence Corrigan, Mbeki: His Time Has Come – An introduction to South Africa’s New President, Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1999, p. 45. See the collection of essays assembled in Malegapuru William Makgoba (ed.), African Renaissance – The New Struggle, Sandton/Cape Town: Mafube/Tafelberg, 1999. Mbeki, Africa – the Time Has Come, p. 36. Two recent micro-level studies are by Joan Wardrop, ‘Soweto, Syndicates, and “Doing Business” ’, in Robert I. Rotberg and Greg Mills (eds), War & Peace in Southern Africa – Crime, Drugs, Armies, Trade, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1998, pp. 45–63; and Lauren Segal, Joy Pelo and Pule Rampa,‘“ Asicamtheni Magents – Let’s Talk, Magents” – Youth Attitudes Towards Crime’, Crime & Conflict, no. 15, Autumn 1999, pp. 23–7. See also the literature survey by Gary Kynoch, ‘From the Ninevites to the Hard Livings Gang: Township Gangsters and Urban Violence in Twentieth-century South Africa’, African Studies, vol. 58, no. 1, 1999, pp. 55–85. Don Pinnock with Dudu Douglas-Hamilton, Gangs, Rituals and Rites of Passage, Cape Town: African Sun Press, 1997, pp. 1–27. Ibid., p. 29. Ibid., pp. 28–54. Peter L. Berger, ‘On the Obsolescence of the Concept of Honour’, in Peter L. Berger, Brigitte Berger and Hansfried Kellner, The Homeless Mind – Modernization and Consciousness, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973, pp. 78–89. Chachiua, ‘The Status of Arms Flows in Mozambique’, p. 35.

Chapter 8 1. Annette Seegers, The Military in the Making of Modern South Africa, London: I.B. Taurus, 1996, p. 291 2. Caroline A. Hartzell, ‘Explaining the Stability of Negotiated Settlements to Intrastate Wars’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 43, no. 1, February 1999, pp. 3–22. 3. Ibid., p. 6. 4. This concept is attributed to Frederick van Zyl Slabbert by R.W. Johnson in his review of Anthony Sampson’s book Mandela: the Authorised Biography. See the London Review of Books, 19 August 1999, pp. 27, 28. 5. CDE Research, Policymaking in a New Democracy – South Africa’s challenges for the 21st century. Johannesburg: The Centre For Development Enterprise, August 1999, p. 20. 6. Anonymous, ‘The State, Property Relations and Social transformation: a Discussion Paper Towards the Alliance Summit’, www.anc.org.za/ancindex.html. 13 October 1998.

Notes 215

7. Pierre du Toit, ‘Bridge or Bridgehead? Comparing the Party Systems of Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi’, in Hermann Giliomee and Charles Simkins (eds), The Awkward Embrace, One-party Domination and Democracy, Amsterdam: Harwood, 1999, pp. 193–217. 8. Larry Diamond, ‘Is the Third Wave Over?’, Journal of Democracy, vol. 7, no. 3, July 1996, pp. 21–5. 9. Christopher Clapham, Africa and the International System – The Politics of State Survival, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 159. 10. William Reno, Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995; William Reno, ‘War, Markets, and the Reconfiguration of West Africa’s Weak States’, Comparative Politics, vol. 29, no. 4, July 1997, pp. 493–510; William Reno, ‘African Weak States and Commercial Alliances’, African Affairs, vol. 96, 1997, pp. 165–185. See also Richard Cornwell, ‘Africa Watch Sierra Leone: RUF Diamonds?’, African Security Review, vol. 7, no. 4, 1998, pp. 73–81. 11. Reno ‘African Weak States and Commercial Alliances’, pp. 166,167. 12. Martin Schönteich ‘Age and Aids: South Africa’s Crime Time Bomb’, African Security Review, vol. 8, no. 4, 1999, p. 40. 13. Herma Forgey, Anthea Jeffery, Elizabeth Sidirotpoulos, Cheryl Smith, Terence Corrigan, Thabo Mophu Thing, Andrea Helman, Jean Redpath, Tamara Dimant and Ellen Potter, South Africa Survey 1999/2000, Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 2000, p. 517. 14. Virginia Gamba (ed.), Towards Collaborative Peace Series: Volume I: Society under Siege – Crime, Violence and Illegal Weapons, Halfway House: Institute for Security Studies, 1997. 15. Willie Breytenbach, Dalitso Chilemba, Thomas A. Brown and Charlotte Plantive, ‘Conflicts in the Congo: From Kivu to Kabila’, African Security Review, Vol. 8, no. 5, 1999, pp. 33–42. 16. Hussein Solomon and Jakkie Cilliers, ‘The Southern African Development Community and Small Arms Proliferation’, in Virginia Gamba (ed.), Towards Collaborative Peace Series; Vol. II: Society Under Siege – Licit Responses to Illicit Arms, Halfway House: Institute for Security Studies, 1998, pp. 75–92. 17. For a review of the controversy see Mark Malan, ‘Can They Do That? SADC, the DRC and Lesotho’, Indicator SA, vol. 15, no. 4, 1999, pp. 90–5. 18. For an overview of the latest developments in this field see Jakkie Cilliers, Building Security in Southern Africa – an update on the evolving architecture, Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, ISS Monograph series no. 43, November 1999. 19. These and other theories of representation are considered by S. E. Finer, The History of Government from the Earliest Times, Vol. II: The Intermediate Ages, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 1032–36. 20. Solomon and Cilliers, ‘The Southern African Development Community and Small Arms Proliferation’, p. 85. 21. Ibid., p. 87. 22. Nicholas J. Wheeler and Ken Booth, ‘The Security Dilemma’, in John Baylis and N.J. Rengger (eds), Dilemmas of World Politics, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992, pp. 51–7.

216 Notes

23. Solomon and Cilliers, ‘The Southern African Development Community’, p. 89. 24. Martinho Chachiua, ‘Records of Weapons Collection and Destruction in Southern Africa: the Mozambican Experience’, African Security Review, vol. 8, no. 4, 1999, pp. 62–74. 25. Peter L. Berger, ‘On the Obsolecence of the Concept of Honour’, in Peter L. Berger, Brigitte Berger and Hansfried Kellner, The Homeless Mind – Modernization and Consciousness, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973, p. 89.

Index accumulation and the state, 4 Act of Union, 36 African National Congress (ANC), 18, 33 African Renaissance, 158, 167, 168, 169, 170 Afrikaner Broederbond, 89 Afrikaner Volksunie (AVU), 65 Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB), 43, 61 agents of globalisation, 3 agents of the state, 20, 46, 47, 74, 80, 87 AIDS, 124, 183 Algerian War, 9 Anglo–Boer War, 35, 97 Angola, 83, 111, 134, 136, 138, 139, 169, 176, 182 apartheid, xi, 10, 11, 16, 18, 21, 22, 35, 36, 37, 40, 41, 48, 49, 50, 53, 56, 72, 77, 81, 82, 83, 86, 87, 88, 90, 91, 98, 105, 113, 114, 115, 116, 119, 121, 122, 131, 132, 141, 142, 152, 158, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 169, 171, 175, 176, 178, 179 armed civilians, 121, 139, 173 armed robbery, 15, 47, 120 arms caches, 17, 43, 117, 121, 138, 187 assault, 44, 47, 50 autonomy of the state, 4, 21, 22, 23, 26 Azanian People’s Organisation (AZAPO), 60, 62 Barnard, N., 57 Berger, P., 156, 157, 171, 188 Biko, S., 39 Bisho, 64, 106

Black Consciousness Movement of Azania (BCMA), 62 Boipatong, 64, 95, 96 Bophuthatswana, 65 Boraine, A., 57 bosberade, 94, 95 Botha P. W., 38, 53, 55, 56, 57, 76, 87, 97, 105, 163 Botswana, 47, 76, 121, 138, 185 boycotts, 8, 21, 46, 77, 87 Buthelezi, M., 40, 44, 62, 78, 98, 167 Cape Flats, 47, 48, 81, 119, 171 Ciskei, 64, 65 citizen effectiveness, 23 citizenship, 17, 19, 21, 72, 77 Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB), 44, 75, 163 civil society initiative, 57 civilian soldier, 9 coercion and the state, 6, 17, 75, 134, 136, 182 Coetsee, K., 54, 55 Cold War, 38, 93, 94, 112, 134, 135, 136, 166, 181, 182 Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group, 76 communal security, 11, 21, 151, 173 communal violence, 47, 48, 145, 158 conclusions of the TRC, 34, 181 Congress for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA), 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 100, 106, 109 Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), 62, 64, 122 Conservative Party (CP), 62, 65, 98 consolidation of the peace process, xi, 2, 134, 136, 140, 148, 152, 155, 158, 170, 173, 176, 179, 181, 183, 184

217

218 Index

corruption, 20, 21, 22, 50, 133, 149, 169 crime against humanity, 163, 164, 165 Criminal Procedure Act, 154 culture of violence, xiii, xiv, 15, 16, 27, 50, 71, 79, 81, 83, 113, 158, 170, 171, 172, 173, 188 D. F. Malan Accord, 59 Dahl, R. A., 23, 24, 185 Dakar, 57 Day of the Covenant, 76, 160 Day of Reconciliation, 160 De Klerk F. W., 55, 80, 93, 95, 97, 99, 108, 167 De Kock, E., 80 Defiance Campaign, 73 definition of democracy, 18 deliberate ambiguity, 97, 177 democracy, xiv, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 25, 47, 91, 95, 113, 114, 115, 127, 142, 145, 146, 147, 150, 158, 168, 181, 182, 186 democratic transition, xi, 1, 2, 3, 18, 21, 22, 25, 27, 46, 50, 53, 59, 60, 63, 85, 90, 94, 95, 96, 100, 101, 104, 106, 108, 112, 113, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121, 127, 128, 131, 137, 145, 160, 173, 178, 179 economic sanctions, 87, 131 education, 37 elections, xi, 47, 63, 65, 66, 79, 100, 104, 137, 147, 181, 185 Employment Equity Act, 133 Erwin, A., 122, 123 Esterhuyse, W., 56 ethnic groups, 12, 13, 14, 15, 20 ethnic state, 21 ethnicity, xi, 31 European Union (EU), 184 Evans, P., 6 extra-judicial killings, 43

factual truth, 33, 35, 163 forgiveness, 161, 164 Freedom Alliance (FA), 65, 66, 96 French Revolution, 5 Friedman, S., 63, 98 future war, 12 gangs, 48, 82, 114, 118, 138, 139, 154, 170, 171, 172, 183, 184, 189 Gellner, E., 26 Giliomee, H., 90, 99 globalisation, 3, 6, 10, 23, 123, 133, 134, 136, 168 good faith, 59, 64, 78, 93, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 111, 112, 116, 177 Government of National Unity (GNU), 67, 97, 123, 149 Groote Schuur Minute, 58, 177 Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 128, 131, 184 Group Areas Act, 37, 48 Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR), 130, 131 hegemony, 4, 16, 18, 158, 161, 170, 179, 180, 181, 188, 189 Herstigte Nasionale Party (HMP), 62 HIV/AIDS, 169 honour, xiii, xiv, 16, 62, 171, 172, 188 Horowitz, D. L., 14, 15, 25, 26, 91, 157 humiliation, 16, 25, 37, 82, 83, 91, 97, 169 identity, 9, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 25, 33, 36, 141, 142, 143, 144, 166, 168, 170, 171, 172, 184 ideology, xi, 3, 4, 41, 127, 133, 166 Immorality Act, 37 Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), 66, 100, 101, 177 informal economy, 20 Inkathagate, 60

Index 219

Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), 33, 41, 43, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67, 79, 80, 90, 96, 105, 109, 119, 145 Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa (IDASA), 57, 147, 149 intermediaries, 56 Jeffery, A., 33, 34, 82, 163 judicial killings, 43 Kabwe conference, 40 Kane-Berman, J., 88, 176 Kasrils, R., 64, 106 Kaufmann, C., 12, 22 Kempton Park, 61, 65 Kruger, B., 54, 57 KwaZulu, 34, 40, 41, 44, 45, 48, 65, 67, 74, 119, 183 KwaZulu Police (KZP), 45, 79 Labour Party, 61 legitimacy, 4, 19, 26, 35, 72, 137, 157, 178, 181 Lesotho, 185 Lord Milner, 36 Low Intensity Conflict, 8, 9, 10, 12, 16, 18, 71, 77, 82, 116, 181, 182 Madikizela-Mandela, Winnie, 163 majority rule, 89, 90, 105 Malan Accord, 57 Malaysia, 157 Mandela, N., 41, 43, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 64, 67, 78, 87, 89, 93, 95, 98, 100, 105, 110, 113, 117, 155, 159, 167, 178 massacres, 33, 49, 109 Mbeki, T., 56, 91, 98, 153, 167, 168, 169, 170, 179, 187 metaconflict, 31, 32, 35 Meyer, R., 64, 65, 95, 96, 98 Migdal, J. L., 19, 79 military actions, 40, 44, 73, 74, 75 Military Intelligence, 56, 75

Mixed Marriages Act, 37 monopoly on force, 4, 5, 18, 51, 175 Morogoro conference, 39 Mozambique, 134, 136, 138, 139, 187 Multiparty Negotiating Process, 65 murder, 7, 12, 20, 47, 48, 49, 50, 54, 80, 109, 154 mutually hurting stalemate, 92, 93, 98, 105, 107, 112, 131 myth, 155, 156, 157, 169, 170 Namibia, 75, 83, 111, 121, 134, 139, 180, 184, 185 Natal, 44, 45, 58, 74, 79 National Crime Prevention Strategy, 118 National Democratic Revolution (NDR), 179 National Intelligence Service (NIS), 42, 44, 55, 56, 57 National Liberation Movement (NLM), 179 National Party (NP), 18, 36, 38, 40, 41, 46, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 83, 89, 90, 91, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 104, 105, 106, 108, 109, 111, 116, 120 National Peace Accord, 60, 61, 79, 116, 177 National Security Management System (NSMS), 53, 75, 76 necklace murders, 34, 46, 166 negotiations, ix, xiii, xiv, 18, 38, 53, 54, 55, 57, 58, 59, 61, 62, 64, 65, 76, 78, 79, 84, 85, 89, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 116, 131, 176, 177 neutral state, 2, 19, 22, 26, 54, 61, 65, 66, 100, 157, 158, 159, 160, 180 Nkabinde, S., 48, 49, 79 Northern Ireland, x, xii, 21, 89 Ntombela, D., 79

220 Index

Operation Rachel, 187 Operation Vula, 60, 110 Orkin, M., 131, 132 Pahad, E., 57 Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), 39, 45, 54, 58, 60, 62, 65, 77, 78, 95, 104 partisan state, xii, 2, 21, 22, 65, 100, 158, 159, 160, 175, 180, 189 pass laws, 37, 77 peace dividend, 115, 122, 125, 126, 127, 148, 166, 184 peace process, ix, x, xi, xii, xiii, xiv, 10, 16, 18, 21, 22, 26, 35, 43, 50, 54, 57, 60, 71, 85, 96, 97, 101, 102, 104, 105, 106, 108, 112, 117, 127, 133, 134, 138, 140, 141, 148, 152, 155, 156, 157, 158, 160, 161, 166, 170, 176, 177, 179, 180 People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD), 47, 146, 152 People’s War, 33, 40, 106 physical safety, 4, 6, 10, 150 Pinnock, D., 170, 171 political prisoners, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 94, 106, 112, 177 politics of reversal, 158, 162, 164, 170 Pollsmoor prison, 55, 93 Posen, B., 11, 22 post-settlement violence, xi, xiii, 1, 51, 93, 119, 134, 142, 146, 151, 152, 173, 174 pre-negotiations, 53 Pretoria Minute, 58 prisoners of war, 12 public goods, 4, 5, 6, 19, 21, 37, 128, 150, 183 public opinion surveys, 98 public spending, 37 Qumbu, 48 Ramaphosa, C., 64, 65, 95, 96, 98 rape, 47, 154

rate of convictions, 47 Reality Check Survey, 148, 149, 161, 164, 167 reason of state, 4 Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), 128, 129, 130 Record of Understanding, 65, 90, 95, 106 Reno, W., 182 Richmond, 48, 49, 79 ritual, 155, 156, 160, 171, 172, 181 Robben Island, 155 rules of war, xiii, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 35, 71, 75, 78, 134, 173, 186 Rwanda, 161, 176 Second World War, 6, 8 security, ix, x, xii, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 22, 23, 24, 25, 35, 36, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 58, 59, 60, 61, 64, 72, 74, 75, 76, 90, 92, 93, 100, 109, 110, 111, 117, 120, 121, 126, 134, 138, 140, 148, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 173, 174, 175, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186 security dilemma, 10, 11, 12, 13, 22, 35, 36, 90, 100, 126 security industry, 152, 153, 154 Security Officers Act, 154 security regimes, 22, 24, 184 Seegers, A., 72, 75, 111 self-defence units (SDUs), 43, 73, 75, 79, 80, 119, 120, 139, 163 self-protection units (SPUs), 43, 60, 79, 117, 119 Sharpeville, 44, 72 silent revolution, 88, 176 Sisk, T., 78 Sisulu, W., 57 size and democracy, xiii, 23, 24, 119, 126, 133 Slovo, J., 59, 107, 108 small arms trade, 134 social distance, 143, 144

Index 221

South African Communist Party (SACP), 38, 54, 55, 58, 61, 62, 64, 95, 105, 110 South African Defence Force (SADF), 42, 44, 75, 76, 80, 84, 92, 98, 109, 110, 111, 120 South African Institute of Race Relations, 34, 42 South African National Defence Force (SANDF), 49, 146 South African Police (SAP), 42, 44, 45, 75, 79, 80, 92, 110, 153 South African Police Service (SAPS), 119, 153 South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO), 75, 83, 111 Southern African Development Community (SADC), 25, 184, 185 Soweto, 57, 80, 160 stability, 2, 21, 24, 86, 168, 179 Staggie, R., 47 state, xii, xiii, xiv, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50, 51, 54, 56, 58, 60, 71, 72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 82, 88, 91, 92, 93, 94, 100, 108, 109, 110, 111, 113, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 128, 129, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 142, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 160, 162, 163, 165, 170, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 185, 186, 188, 189 state building, 3 State Security Council (SSC), 33, 76 statistics of violence, 32, 34, 42, 48, 50 Steinberg, J., 126 strong societies, 19 strong states, 10, 19, 20

strongmen, 17, 20, 182, 184 sufficient consensus, 65, 96, 177 Swaziland, 47, 138 symbolic politics, xii, 25, 27, 158, 162, 173 symbols, xii, xiv, 26, 155, 157, 158, 159, 160, 165, 169, 170, 171, 172, 187 system capacity, 23, 25 system of states, 6, 10, 14, 91, 135 Tambo, O., 55, 59, 98 tax revolts, 8, 20, 77 taxes, 4, 164, 178 technology of war, 9, 17, 128, 168 Third Wave, 2 Tilly, C., 5 tolerance, 145, 162 total onslaught, 38, 56, 73 total strategy, 33, 38, 39, 73, 87 Total War, 8 Tragic Theory of Bargaining, 93, 112 Transitional Executive Council (TEC), 65, 66, 100 Trust Feed, 33, 44 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), 32, 33, 34, 35, 42, 43, 45, 46, 71, 77, 79, 80, 83, 104, 110, 158, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 187 Tsolo, 48 Tufte, E. R., 23, 24, 185 Tutu, D., 161 Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), 39, 44, 45, 59, 73, 92, 119, 120, 163 unemployment, 120, 122, 123, 125, 181 ungovernability, 34, 38, 41, 77, 87, 170, 179, 181, 183, 189 United Democratic Front (UDF), 34, 41, 43, 45, 46, 79 Van Creveld, M., 6, 7, 12, 13, 15, 150 Victor Verster prison, 55 Viljoen, C., 97, 98

222 Index

violence, x, xi, xii, xiii, xiv, 1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 31, 32, 34, 35, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 64, 66, 72, 74, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 88, 93, 103, 105, 107, 109, 110, 112, 113, 114, 115, 117, 118, 119, 120, 122, 125, 126, 127, 128, 141, 145, 146, 148, 149, 151, 152, 158, 166, 170, 171, 172, 173, 177, 183, 184, 185, 186 Vlakplaas, 44, 80 Waldmeir, P., 90, 101

warlords, 10, 17, 19, 20, 45, 74, 75, 181, 182, 189 weak states, 10, 20, 138 white farmers, 45, 74, 86, 126 win–win result, 89 witchcraft, 49 World Values Survey, 147, 149, 150, 151 Young, M., 56 Yugoslavia, 8, 12, 22 Zimbabwe, 121, 134, 180, 185 Zuma, J., 56 Zwelethini, G., 61

South Africa's Brittle Peace: The Problem of Post-Settlement Violence (Ethnic and Intercommunity Conflict)

Contested Cities in the Modern World (Ethnic and Intercommunity Conflict)

Education in Divided Societies (Ethnic and Intercommunity Conflict)

Peace, Conflict, and Violence. Peace Psychology for the 21st Century

The Myth of “ethnic conflict”: politics, economics, and “cultural” violence

Contemporary Peace Making: Conflict, Violence and Peace Processes

Contemporary Peace Making: Conflict, Violence and Peace Processes

Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict

Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, and Conflict, Three-Volume Set

The Irish Parading Tradition: Following the Drum (Ethnic and Intercommunity Conflict Series)

Order, Conflict, and Violence

Democracy and Ethnic Conflict: Advancing Peace in Deeply Divided Societies

Conflict and Peace Building in Divided Societies: Responses to ethnic violence

The Irish Parading Tradition: Following the Drum (Ethnic and Intercommunity Conflict Series)

The Irish Parading Tradition: Following the Drum (Ethnic and Intercommunity Conflict Series)

Ethnic Groups in Conflict

The Role of Memory in Ethnic Conflict

The Role of Memory in Ethnic Conflict

The Role of Memory in Ethnic Conflict

Addressing Ethnic Conflict through Peace Education: International Perspectives

Addressing Ethnic Conflict through Peace Education: International Perspectives

Peace and Conflict in Africa

In Search of Solutions: The Problem of Religion and Conflict (Religion and Violence)

Conflict Transformation and Social Change in Uganda: Remembering after Violence (Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies)

Violence Denied: Violence, Non-Violence and the Rationalization of Violence in South Asian Cultural History

Conflict Transformation and Social Change in Uganda: Remembering after Violence (Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies)

Sites of Violence: Gender and Conflict Zones

Religion and Conflict in South and South-East Asia: Disrupting Violence (Asian Security Studies)

Brittle Innings

International Ethnic Networks and Intra-Ethnic Conflict: Koreans in China

Ethnic Conflict: A Global Perspective

South Africa's Brittle Peace: The Problem of Post-Settlement Violence (Ethnic and Intercommunity Conflict)

Contested Cities in the Modern World (Ethnic and Intercommunity Conflict)

Education in Divided Societies (Ethnic and Intercommunity Conflict)

Peace, Conflict, and Violence. Peace Psychology for the 21st Century

The Myth of “ethnic conflict”: politics, economics, and “cultural” violence

Contemporary Peace Making: Conflict, Violence and Peace Processes

Contemporary Peace Making: Conflict, Violence and Peace Processes

Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict

Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, and Conflict, Three-Volume Set

The Irish Parading Tradition: Following the Drum (Ethnic and Intercommunity Conflict Series)

Order, Conflict, and Violence

Democracy and Ethnic Conflict: Advancing Peace in Deeply Divided Societies

Conflict and Peace Building in Divided Societies: Responses to ethnic violence

The Irish Parading Tradition: Following the Drum (Ethnic and Intercommunity Conflict Series)

The Irish Parading Tradition: Following the Drum (Ethnic and Intercommunity Conflict Series)

Ethnic Groups in Conflict

The Role of Memory in Ethnic Conflict

The Role of Memory in Ethnic Conflict

The Role of Memory in Ethnic Conflict

Addressing Ethnic Conflict through Peace Education: International Perspectives

Addressing Ethnic Conflict through Peace Education: International Perspectives

Peace and Conflict in Africa

In Search of Solutions: The Problem of Religion and Conflict (Religion and Violence)

Conflict Transformation and Social Change in Uganda: Remembering after Violence (Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies)

Violence Denied: Violence, Non-Violence and the Rationalization of Violence in South Asian Cultural History

Conflict Transformation and Social Change in Uganda: Remembering after Violence (Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies)

Sites of Violence: Gender and Conflict Zones

Religion and Conflict in South and South-East Asia: Disrupting Violence (Asian Security Studies)

Brittle Innings

International Ethnic Networks and Intra-Ethnic Conflict: Koreans in China

Ethnic Conflict: A Global Perspective

Recommend Documents