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Big Business Steps Up Pressure for South Africa Talks

Mondlli Makhanya writes from Johannesburg
SOUTH Africa's main political parties are under increasing international pressure to reach a political settlement in the next few months. The country has again become the subject of renewed world Interest, with United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali taking a personal interest in the resumption of talks and the speedy resolution of the country's political crisis.
The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Is also eager for a quick settlement and has been pressurising the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) to Join the talks because member nations can no longer afford to support the movement militarily ' or materially. Africa is also keen to resume trade with the continent s most industrialised nation.
The PAC Is Insistent on boycotting negotiations unless they are conducted at a "neutral venue under a neutral chairman." Coinciding with a heated political climate following the anti-apartheid movement's "week of mass action," the intervention of the world finds the country's political
Nelson Mandela's ANC is on a high after Its successful protest campaign, which included a two-day general strike that shut down 80 per cent of the economy and nationwide protest marches which virtually brought city centres to a standstill.
The success of the protests has upset the balance of power which had swung in favour of President F W de Klerk after the March referendum in which whites voted overwhelmingly In favour of the President's reforms.
Since then things have changed drastically. The ruling National Party is now said to favour holding constituent assembly elections before December. This move is expected to be ratified by the second sit-
ting of parliament In October.
International Intervention may now speed the resumption of the democracy talks which collapsed after the June 17 massacre of 45 people at the Bolpatong township south of Johannesburg. When the ANC pulled out from the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa) in the wake of the massacre, the UN Security Council appointed a special envoy to investigate the violence and the political impasse.
The envoy, former United States Secretary for African Affairs Cyprus Vance, visited the country, met al) major political groupings and reported back to Boutros-Ghali who then recommended several steps towards speeding the transition to democracy.
Boutros-Ghali's recommendations centre around the strengthening of the Goldstone Commission, which was ap.-pointed by the government to investigate violence and has
been sitting for 10 months under the supervision of the country’s most eminent Judge. Richard Goldstone.
A group of 30 UN monitors were sent into South Africa to beef up the National Peace Accord agreed by over 1OO organisations In September last year as a formal structure to end the political violence which had claimed 4.000 lives tn four years.
Despite the fact that most major parties signed the Ac cord. 2,000 more people have died since September. Various parties openly flaunted in because there is no effective way of enforcing its guidelines. The UN monitors will therefore ensure that whoever breaches the Accord faces international censure.
Also among the recommendations are an "independent, eminent and impartial person" to be appointed to add "impetus and cohesion" to Codesa and that a deadlock-breaking mechanism be put in place at the talks.
The government and the ANC have their part to play. Government is urged to release remaining political prisoners and Implement the Goldstone Commission's recommendations on curbing violence as a means of creating a climate favourable to negotiations.
The Commission had recommended greater security around migrant hostels which have been a source of most of the violence and a ban on the carrying of dangerous weapons in public — both of which the government has been slow to
do.
Boutros-Ghali has also urged the ANC lo return lo negotiations.
These recommendations and other pressures from the International community will be taken seriously by the two parties since both are vying for the moral high round In the eyes of the world.
A key faction within the ANC is impatient to get back to negotiations. This group, led by ANC International affairs director Thabo Mbeki, is aware the government is in a weak position both Internationally and domestically and feels this Is the time for the ANC to extract concessions.
The ANC protests, it Is pointed out. have shown the ANC and its allies have the capacity to cripple the economy and the government now realises this. White business community sentiment has also swung against the government The main business organisations tried to avert the general strike by proposing a one-day shutdown of all businesses, but backed off when the government objected, lest it seem that big business was lining up with the forces ranged against the state.
But senior business leaders have told the government in private that they want the country to move quickly to an Interim government and a constituent assembly.
Businesses feel political uncertainty and Its accompanying high level of violence are destroying business confidence and delaying South Africa's full re-entry Into the international
business community.
It also established the ANC firmly as the main black liberation movement, as it carried out the protests In the face of stern opposition from the PAC and far left movements. The PAC had been claiming that the failure of Codesa vindicated its anti-negotiations stance and It was expecting a flood of disenchanted ANC militants to defect lo its camp.
For Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party the success of the protest was a massive blow. The general strike received very high levels of support In the kwaZulu hp me land, which the party sees as its stronghold and its main electoral base in the coming poll.
De Klerk’s government has also been plagued by scandals in the last few months. A senior Judge implicated one of the chief negotiators and one of De Klerk's closest confidantes, Minister of State Affairs Gerrit Viljoen, in a corruption racket involving millions of rand while he was still Minister of Development Aid.
Then the nation's top pathologist Jonathan Gluck-man disclosed that he had seen nearly 100 prisoners who had died from police assaults and labelled the police as "out of control." Gluckman said he had alerted senior government ministers and the State President about the assaults but nothing had been done.
Mos^ damaging of all are continuing revelations that government authorised the assassinations of left wing oppo-
nents during the 198Os. This has implicated the Minister of Correctional Services Adrian Vlok and head of Military Intelligence Christofel van del Westhuizcn in the deaths of anti-apartheid activists Matthew Gonlwe and four others whose bodies were found In charred cars on a motorway.
The police and the defence have been named in an investigation into the unsolved gunning down of anti-apartheid academic David Webster outside his Johannesburg home in 1989 and the security forces have recently been Involved in attempts to assassinate renegade policeman Dick Coetzee, who first revealed the existence of state death squads in 1989. The plot was failed by British police in London, where Coetzee has lived for three years.
So close to high echelons have these revelations come the government launched proposals for a blanket amnesty. The ANC denied government claims that it had agreed to the plan. The ANC believes the 300-400 political prisoners still In Jail should be freed under the existing amnesty and that security force members involved In violence should be prosecuted, not given amnesty, as the government wants.
The ANC and other parties have pushed hard for this every since talks began In 1990, but the government would dearly love to prosecute agents responsible for atrocities against civilians.
Faced with all this, the De Klerk regime has no choice but to compromise, and its opponents have vowed to maintain the pressure until there is concrete agreement on a new constitution.
— GEMINI NEWS
MONDU MAKHANYA is on the staff of the Johannesburg Weekly Mail.