*This
transcript was typed from a transcription unit recording
and not copied from an original script. Because of the possibility
of mis-hearing, INCORE cannot vouch for it's complete accuracy.
Thank you very
much for your invitation to be here, and for this opportunity to
sit in your mix and share with you some of our experiences.
Of course,
unlike Northern Ireland, you can see we have overcome much of our
problems and we have certainly a platform for future generations
of South Africans to look forward to a situation where they can
say they have an relative peace, they have an institutional foundation
for their future, and all they have to worry about is how they build
on the foundations that Nelson Mandela and others built for them.
Interestingly, to pick up on Naomi Chazan's last point, in South
Africa today we have the emergence of a first generation of late
teens and early twenties who actually don't know what the anti-apartheid
struggle was about. They had actually never been participants in
that process because they were either to young or they never quite
remembered what happened. And so when we speak about the struggle,
and we speak about the environment in which we had to work and the
sacrifices which we had to make, it's nice news, but that is about
it. They can't relate to it, in a way which our generation can relate
to it. How much better would it be for Northern Ireland if that
generation could begin to develop here? You would begin to find
that the anxiety which we attach to our government, and political
discourse, is one that is for now and one that can be overcome.
So now I would
like to say a few words about the process here and because you are
so involved in it you might not realise how important your contributions
are to the conflict resolution processes elsewhere. You might not
beware that in my view, as someone involved in the political processes
in our country, in Northern Ireland you have come up with a fairly
unique constitutional formula and one that has not been exercised
anywhere else in the world, and one that I am confident will serve
as a precedent for many other parts of the world to resolve their
problems. You have devised and refined the process of putting the
Belfast Agreement together; a conception of the transitional process
which hasn't applied anywhere else.
In South Africa
we defined the transition process from 1992 to 1994 and then for
the next five years that we had to have the so-called 'interim constitution'
that we put together for that limited period. Your conception of
the transition process is very different and one that is fully rewarded
with negotiations and debate. You have actually left many questions
answered and many questions unanswered and because of our own situation
you could possibly leave some questions unanswered so that future
generations could cope with them. Of course that leaves you in a
process where you are uncertain. You have a current lack of clarity
of what would be the final stage. I believe, unlike the South African
situation and many others elsewhere in the world, you can't actually
speak of the future, in a constitutional sense. You can only speak
of a future vision in terms of a peaceful and reconciled society
which continues to search for new formulas to find different generations
of settlements, so to speak, building on the kind of foundations
that you have in the current agreement before you. You certainly
might want to ask how far have we gone? Have we set out a significant
enough platform for further developments in the peace process in
this part of the world? Have we significantly transcended the divides
amongst leaders, activists and amongst our public?
From afar,
it seems as if you have come along away in the last few years. It
seems that the validity of your leadership to talk to each other,
whatever strains there might be, whatever difficulties there might
be, whatever pretexts you might have to create so that talking might
actually happen, is a major breakthrough in the process of laying
a platform for further discussions in the future. The ability of
your public to say, and it seems that many are beginning to say,
that they want peace and they want the politicians to work hard
at it introduces a very important dynamic. In our country it was
the people who actually constantly kept up the pressure. Those that
suffered under apartheid said they did not want to suffer any more,
and those who didn't want to have a long winded anxiety of uncertainly
attached to whether and when the apartheid would actual go wanted
to force the politicians to come to some kind of understanding/answers.
It is important
in this context that the local business community and it's interesting
that Belfast has a delegation in the US at the moment seeking investment
and employment opportunities for your youth. Those are going to
become important players in bringing the politicians to some sense
of responsibility about the necessity to create a platform for the
future.
But we must
compliment your present generation of political leaders, because
they have seized the opportunity for peace, they have shown tremendous
flexibility in bringing the process where it is, up to this point
in time, and as I said earlier, that you are stuck with this unique
notion of the transition of the old Northern Ireland too the new
Northern Ireland.
But peace is
not easy and it cannot be sustained without winning the hearts and
minds of supporters and contenders for the offices that a politician
holds and with keeping the confidence of both sides together is
never a easy task and is never accomplished in one move. It's a
long and a tedious process of engagement, of debate, of discussion,
of frustration, of persuasion, of apparent consensus late one evening,
a breaking up at 4 in the morning and waking to find that you have
to go back to the table trying to make sense of it again. It's the
process and that view of this generation of negotiators have to
undertake this because if we don't then we leave nothing for future
generations.
And I also
want to tell you what is interesting as we have this seminar today;
Nelson Mandela is in London and is on his way to Dublin. Because
as the Speaker pointed out earlier on, he is the symbol of many
things that you in Northern Ireland can actually learn from. He
is symbol of determination, of extreme forms of wisdom, an insight
into human processes and a vision of a future society. After 27
years of imprisonment, his ability to understand that humanity cannot
only be fair if you yourself cannot be fair, and if you cannot reflect
that humanity in your day to day practices. And he has given a number
of demonstrations in South Africa to the world of what it means
to move in that particular direction and perhaps his most important
role was when he went to a small town in the northern part of the
country and had tea with Betsy Verwoerd, whose husband, Hendrick
Verwoerd, was responsible for creating the notion of apartheid,
designing and actually implementing it, particularly in our education
system. He brought together the wives of various apartheid Prime
Ministers, and had tea with them as a symbol of reconciliation.
Rugby in South
Africa is a white sport, it is an Afrikaner sport. On the occasion
of the world cup in 1995 Mandela wore a Springbok jersey for the
final match. He could well have being described as a traitor or
as one who betrayed the passion for which we opposed the white reform
in South Africa and yet he was prepared to make that move, under
the glare of the tens of thousands of people in that stadium. We
have to constantly ask how our leaders in fact ensure that we take
those sorts of opportunity, which might appear to be simple, might
appear to have no symbolic value but in fact it might have tremendous
push in processes of searching for peace in that particular country.
The second
issue that I want to talk about is this. You have achieved so much
yourselves, what can we from South Africa talk about as lessons
of political leadership? In the first incident the political leaders
in South Africa have many, many different varieties. I was just
describing Nelson Mandela, our current President. President Mbeki
has a different kind of charisma, a tremendous intellect and a tremendous
flexibility, and if there was a pragmatist he would be the ultimate
pragmatist in our situation. However we have others who died just
before we got our freedom - Chris Hani was the leader of the military
wing of the ANC, at that time, and up to 1993 before he was assassinated,
and not withstanding the fact that he came from a military background,
he was willing to participate and support in the peace process at
that time. In F.W. De Klerk, Roelf Meyer, and P.W. Botha, in the
National Party, you had a generation of leaders who began to see
that the road that they followed in the former apartheid, did not
have a participator future. They realised that they had to find
a new future.
And for a short
while, between 1990 - 1992, they thought that they could engage
in negotiations and yet not negotiate. They thought they could engage
the ANC but not engage for democracy. They thought they could engage
with the peace process and yet some how keep their options open.
In May 1992 that option of the option of balancing but balancing
the wrong way actually ended as an option. By September 1992 the
Report of Understanding was signed between De Klerk and Mandela,
which said the playing of games was now over. If we want to see
a new constitutional future for South Africa, then it is absolutely
right we start to discuss the real issues. And the real issues are,
in our context, how do we have democratic majority control? How
do we not deprive the black people of their God given right in the
first place, to have a democratic future in their own country? You
actually put the lesson at a different kind of political base, whose
base was a provincial one, whose alliance was on traditional leaders
within that particular area and had the wrong axes to grind in that
context. But after many peaks and drops in that process of talks,
today F.W. De Klerk is no longer in government of National Unity,
Chief Buthelezi is, and his partnership with the ANC and with it
all the strings that it still carries, still continues 6 years on
1994.
In the early
90's we had many homeland leaders. Each one was worried, and very
accurately pointed out the question, 'What's my political future?
Where is my standing going to be if I sign on the dotted line? Where
do I align myself?' And in the negotiation processes that we were
involved in between 1991, 1992 and 1993 many of these leaders you
could actually see moving between the two major parties. In 1992
most of these were with the National Party, by 1993 most of them
were with the African National Party. Because they realised that
was where the future was going and they have now found peace most
of them, with the ANC and have become members of the ANC.
Some, of course,
have wished to play no part in this process, but lets look at one
of those, one of those is Eugene Terrablanche. I am not sure if
you have heard of it here, a couple of weeks ago he entered a non
racial jail. His cell holds 38 people and is largely black and he
is going to spend a year there, for criminal offenses he has committed.
After two years propounding racists policies and philosophies, and
now deserting his people and spending this time in jail. That's
the future of one our political leaders!
In all these
years in South Africa, we have seen all kinds of motives for being
in political leadership. We have seen directive leadership, and
a high level of participatory practices and sensitivity. And that's
how I would categorise many of the leaders within the ANC and similar
organisations. You have the South African leadership, who were leaders
who believed they had a monopoly of wisdom and they have culture
within their organisations which says that leader's door shuts and
they're are many, in the debate, who thinks that the leader decides.
And the National Party certainty has that sort of leadership, and
it worked a lot of the time and it didn't work sometimes.
In addition,
I have in my notes here, the question of leadership, image and people.
There is no doubt that many leaders in the process does go back
to play an important role and increasingly we need to talk about
that in the politics domain. Political leader do not operate within
a vacuum, they operate within a context. And its important that
certain elements of that context are openly debated as well. Amongst
those would be, what governs the forces within that particular country?
In South Africa it was different, there it was quite clear that
the African minority was in the majority, that is, we talked about
them to see that they would remain benefices of what was a democratic
future. Whites were in a minority when there was no situation when
they would be able to become the majority. But at the same time
there was the fundamental principle that all South Africans are
South African. That they belong to South Africa and they have a
future in South Africa. But those numbers and that demographic configuration
does influence how we actually see things.
Secondly, notions
of power sharing, or dual power, or governments of National Unity,
can only be crafted on an understanding of what is this balance
of forces? But in South Africa, we demonstrated that in the majority
party within the ANC there was the capacity to understand that whilst
one carries the numeral superiority, in many other areas we didn't
enjoy that superiority.. For example in the economic plane, our
economy is largely controlled by the whites. In the military at
that time, a lot of the military power belonged to the State. The
police was controlled by the white minority at that particular point
in time. The Civil Service was 1.2 million people and was largely
white, and largely Afrikaner, and those realities had to be taken
into account when trying shape the future of South Africa.
What were the
issues which leaders had to bend minds around? What were the issues
that challenged whether political leadership was exercised in the
right kind of way? Were there creative options being developed and
sufficient pragmatism of which an ability to use would be exercised
from time to time? In the case of the majority party, the ANC as
early as 1990 - 1991, we had to answer questions from the business
sector 'Do sanctions still apply in South Africa?' Before the 1990's
sanctions played a very important role in advancing the anti apartheid
struggle. The second question at that time was 'When do you suspend
the Armed Struggle?' In respect of the first, it was a leadership
driven resolution. At a Congress of the ANC 1991, Mbeki, then a
senior member of the National Executive, stands up and pressured
thousands of delegates that the time has come for us to drop sanction
and to suspend them. Finally, after enough debate it was accepted.
With the suspension of the arms struggle on the 6th of August 1990,
with the second major round of talks begin, between the ANC and
the National Party government. The ANC voluntarily put on the table
a resolution, which said that 'we have now accepted to pro-actively
suspend armed action as the negotiation process advances'.
In 1992-1993,
the ANC had to battle around the concept of 'Interim Government'.
Now, in the late 1980's period when the negotiation process was
being fashioned, the ANC believed that you would have a government,
with some from the existing National Party government and some from
the outside, and that the Interim Government would create the conditions
for elections to actually take place, and then the Legislature and
the National Party Government would be suspended. By the time you
come to this, in 1993, what emerged? We emerged with a transitional
Executive Council; emerging from all the parties that were negotiating.
This had a checking and balancing power, and could veto certain
things that the government could have put through. The National
Party Government continued to remain in office. We set up a number
of independent institutions; an Electoral Commission, a Media commission
and several others, and put up a unilateral act, and those were
responsible for creating the conditions for the election themselves.
So we had moved, from an earlier notion of Interim Government to
a new notion of Interim Government.
In November
of 1993, as we were beginning to package the interim constitution
as the embodiment of the South African settlement, several issues
had to be resolved. The first was, do we give the five opposition
parties a role in the National Executive of the country? And so
emerged the concept of the Government of National Unity.
Secondly what
do you do about this balance of forces around the public services,
the police, the military and so on? Well, 'Sunset' Clauses were
introduced into the constitutions. In one set of instances, 36 died
last year, in terms of the fact that no public servant could be
fired from their resource.
The third was,
how could we craft the provincial-government system, so that it
does not fragment South Africa? The fourth was the local government
system, an issue on which the National Party was the most resistant
in terms of change. You might not be aware but although we have
democracy in South Africa, we still today carry a formula agreed
in the 1993 negotiations, where in any city 50 percent of the wards
are assigned to the white community and 50 percent of the wards
are assigned to the blacks. It is only when new elections take place,
sometime between November of this year and February of next year,
that we will have a totally democratic local government system.
In the 1996
negotiations for a new constitution, there was 'property clause'
the national anthem clause and the education clause and the position
of traditional leaders, but I do not have time to go into these
in detail. I will pick one of these; the ANC not withstanding its
majority status, had to reach compromise in order to enable the
negotiations, around the new constitution to be completed.
As leaders
challenging the chairperson and operating in a particular type of
conflict, we have to deal with particular set of historical contradictions.
They have to resolve particular political issues in a conflict in
which they find themselves either majority or minority. Whether
they can actually exercise their influence, or whether they can
actually persuade people to buy into their sense of vision and their
sense of strategy, or more importantly their sense of tactics, depends
on a large extent to the kind of political culture you have within.
In the ANC there was a long history of participation, of debate,
of discussion, of persuasion but in other political parties there
may not have been that. Equally you might have a culture where if
the leader speaks, then that become the policy of that organisation.
In answer to
the question is 'how do you exercise leadership'?, one can be mindful
of the kind of political culture that prevails in a particular society
and more importantly a particular political organisation. The type
of leadership is important. Nelson Mandela, for all his strength
of his character and strength of views, is very strong. He would
be adamant about point A. You could actually have a tough debate
with him, on a one to one level, or in a meeting like this. And
if he is finally gets persuaded by you, and he thinks that you have
a point he will change his mind and tell you he was wrong. Therefore,
he has the capacity of a leader who for 27 years showed that he
had to have a single-minded determination to survive, on the one
hand, and on the other he has the ability to be sensitive to his
constituency, to the memberships of his organisation and to people
outside. And also to receive ideas in a particular way and if need-be
to adapt these ideas to a new way of thinking.
I believe that
leadership does not operate outside of external influences. In South
Africa the bureaucracy played quite the hero in getting the negotiations
off the ground. The military/security establishment also played
the hero, enabling negations to take place. These should be brought
into the public debate as well in order for us to understand the
kind of role that they are likely to play or may want to play.
The South African
situation was that political leadership was demonstrated through
several types of decisive steps that leaders had to take. One of
the first was that South Africans decided that we wanted to solve
our problems ourselves. We did not want someone from the UN to come
in and negotiate for us or mediate our own situation. Therefore,
in our negotiating environment we had people like myself, who had
to chair sessions of 20 - 26 parties and listen to all their views.
Despite the fact that I came from the ANC, I had to have the capacity
to be objective and neutral in deciding where we would go or how
sufficient consensus needed to be declared.
Secondly we
designed an individual process; there is no model that I am aware
of. But at the same time, we were very aware in designing our constitution
that there was many models available to us in many parts of the
world. Lets look at all of them - Canada, United States, Nigeria,
India, Australia etc. We looked at all of them and chose what we
thought was appropriate to our own situation and we adapted the
models that were applicable for our own situation.
I think leaders
require the ability to be allowed to make mistakes and acknowledge
those mistakes. And how we create opportunities for them to do so,
is as important as their ability to concede that they have made
mistakes. Often, the way in which the media plays a role and with
the way that the political leaders play with the media, we end up
backing ourselves into a corner, and then we spend more time getting
out of that corner then ever solving the problem.
In your current
impasse, we might want to ask the question how do we get rid of
the corners, if that's possible, so that you can never paint yourself
into it. The importance of keeping lines of communication open amongst
the various protagonists is crucial. In May 1992, the talks collapsed
and we had to agree that the talk's negotiation process had ended.
But as a result of the majority of all sides, that we needed to
keep talking the umbilical cord remained between the ANC and the
National Party. As a result of that, talks between Roelf Meyer and
Cyril Ramaphosa took place and by September 1992 the Accord of Understanding
was signed and the process was back on track. You will have breakdowns;
the question is how will you keep lines of communication open?
I have many
other subjects, but I am afraid we do not have time to go into that.
I think there is also the difference between leadership and different
phases of the negation process. In the pre-settlement period there
is no doubt that leaders tend to be highly principled and fairly
rigid and dogmatic. They have a policy and they want to stick to
it, they will not denounce it. During the settlement period you
will see a new form of pragmatism arising, a new personal set of
relationships begin to emerge, a new understanding of the dynamics
on all sides, and an appreciation of what are the constraints each
of the sides has and what they have to work with. In the post-settlement
period, there are plans for the questions that Naomi asked. And
that is 'Where is my future? Where am I going to work? How am I
going support my family? Do I really want to be made a full-time
politician?'. Those questions can have a major impact on how a leader
behaves, from time to time.
Lastly of these
is, how do we carry supporters with us? There is always a leader
sacrifice in the relationship between the leaders, supporters and
member of an organisation. There are times when leaders are away
ahead, and there is times when members are away ahead. There is
also times when the leaders think they understand and do understand
the dynamics, but there are times when the public and the membership
understands better then the leader. What is quite critical is to
open room for debate and in ensuring that the leaders can in fact
pursue the supporters to move.
Clearly, what
is also important in many political parties is the level of competition
for the top position. Whether the competition is tough and while
many people believe that they should be in fact be the leaders in
that political party, any individual in that situation in a political
party has less space for maneuver. Those factors play a clear role
in determining what kinds of space the political leader has, in
meeting the other side's goals. What was quite crucial in our situation,
was the ability of the ANC leadership to be about 80% transparent
and to continuously communicate downwards, to keep people informed
of the debate and developments, to ensure that the whole concept
was publicly shared about how negotiations happened, what the nature
of compromises would be, and the necessity for compromises. Leaders
do not often want to say we have to compromise. Nelson Mandela would
go out publicly and say that we are only negotiating and meeting
with each other because we need each other to move from where we
are. And he would go out and say, 'don't expect us to solve all
of South Africa problems all at once. It will take time to solve
the housing and water problems'. conflict.
Equally, the
relationship between leaders and their followers can be fought with
all sorts of problems. I do not believe there is a single formula
which you can apply. One could say that for the unique organisational
cohesion, you need frankness, you need a sufficient level of preparation
for people to follow you when you start from nowhere and you have
not a plan. Don't expect them to be able to follow the snake like
maneuvers that you will have to undertake when you are in the middle
of the negotiation process.
The last
point I want to make in that context, is the importance of operational
trust. I believe South African leaders from all the different parties
were able after that 1992 period, to develop a level of trust where
they couldn't agree on the subsistence of the issues but they could
agree on the process. And sometimes when you cannot start agreeing
on the process this becomes a substitute for the fighting on the
substance itself. It is very important in order to move the process
forward that we try to establish an operational trust, when we say
'we will not attack each other publicly', well lets do it. But if
we say that we are going to attack each other publicly, then we
should give notice to the other side. That often happened in South
Africa. Mr. De Klerk would say to Mr. Mandela, 'I am going to attack
you in parliament tomorrow'. There was an awareness and necessity
in that environment to do so.
In conclusion
let me say that it is very interesting that in your situation what
you have is a settlement, or rather you are in agreement to settle
rather than settlement. Therefore, you have to begin to understand
that there is still a long road to travel. You have made tremendous
process and I can only appeal to you not to loss all the advances
that you have put together for yourselves just because there appears
to be a hiccup of one sort or another. And the second point is that
the future is in the future, in other words let us try to get things
right now. Let the future build its self as we begin to get the
fundamentals in place. The third is emphasis on the importance of
civil society organisations like INCORE and I am sure you have others
here. They play a vital role in enabling us to open our minds and
hearts to different ideals and to seeing things in a different way.
And they should increasingly become a powerful force in influencing
political leaders in terms of the direction they go. You still have
unfinished business, your community certainty wants peace, your
business sector wants growth and your youth want jobs. And I believe
that if your political leaders put their hearts and heads together
it is possible that the protagonists of conflict can become pragmatists
of solutions, but more importantly pragmatists of peace.
Thank You
Pravin Gordhan joined the South African
Revenue Service in March 1998 as Deputy Commissioner. He was appointed
as Commissioner in November 1999. Before his days as a tax and customs
administrator, he was elected as a member of Parliament of the Republic
of South Africa as a representative of the African National Congress
(ANC). As a member of Parliament, he was appointed as a Chairperson
of the Portfolio Committee on Constitutional Affairs. In his capacity
as Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Constitutional Affairs,
he had the onerous task of overseeing the implementation of the New
Constitution, the Local Government transition as well as the Provincial
System.
Prior to 1994, Pravin was an integral
part of South Africa's struggle for and transition to democracy
and played an important role in this negotiated process. He participated
in this negotiation process from the very beginning and was a delegate
to the multiparty negotiating structures. He held several key positions
in the multiparty negotiating structures e.g. Chairperson of the
Daily Management Committee and management Committee of CODESA (Conference
for a Democratic South Africa) (1992), co-chairperson of the Planning
Committee and Negotiating Council of the Multiparty Negotiating
Process (1993) and Co-chairperson of the Transitional Executive
Committee (1994).
He was also integrally involved in
the development of South Africa's new Constitution as well as in
drafting thereof as a member of the Constitutional Committee of
the Constitutional Assembly, and as chair of the subcommittee dealing
with provincial powers, the National Council of Provinces and Local
Government.
During 1997, he lead a team of political
representatives and experts in the formulation of the South African
governments new policy for local government.
Pravin was born and bred in Durban,
Kwa-Zulu Natal Province, and obtained a Bachelor of Pharmacy degree
from the University of Durban-Westville. During this time, Pravin
was already an active and important member of the anti-apartheid
movement, with involvement in community-based mass organisations,
a number of development bodies and political organisations.
From
Protagonist to Pragmatist
