How the ANC were defeated during the time of negotiation.

Announcer: Professor Terreblanche who has spent many years researching and writing South African history about poverty and inequality in South Africa.

How the ANC were defeated during the time of negotiation.

Interviewer:

To quote something from your book… soemthing which he said; you say, that 11 February 1990, the day of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, he made the following statement;

“The white monopoly of political power must be ended, and we need a fundamental restructuring of our political and economic systems, to address the inequalities of apartheid, and create a genuine democratic South Africa”.

That of course didn’t take place in the last 20 years; and I want you to focus on one particular thing, when you answer this for me today.

In the book you contextualize the statement around the fact that he said this, but soon after that, he was having regular meetings with big capital, Harry Oppenheimer in particular; and you talk about an elite compromise that was reached.

I do want you to talk a little bit, for the benefit of our audience about the early nineties, and the secret meetings, and the deals that were struck back then, between the ANC and capital in South Africa, because I think that’s really very instructive for understanding where we are today, why things haven’t changed.

Professor Terreblanche:

The whole transition process was orchestrated by the mineral energy complex [MEC], and with Harry Oppenheimer, and the lesser extent Anton Rupert, they organized everything.

Early in the 1990s, there was regular lunches between Mr. Mandela and Harry Oppenheimer.

When I became aware of it I remember I was furious, for what must they have lunches; but these lunches developed into regular meetings at little Brenthurst, the estate of  Harry Oppenheimer.

When too many people attend that secret meetings, the meetings was shifted to the Development Bank, between Johannesburg and Pretoria; normally at night, it was easy to park the cars at the backside of the building and people on the N1 was not aware of that important meetings that was taking place there; and there the ANC was convinced to forget about their ideas of socialism and large-scale government intervention etc.

You see America was at in the beginning of the late nineties in a mood of triumphalism; their attitude was that the American model as one, that everyone must adapt to the American model.

So under the pressure of the South African business sector, with pressure from the Americans, that a white vested interest in South Africa, the ANC was to – to give in.

You see on the question why have they accepted the new liberal model of the Americans, that is definitely not the correct model for South Africa, is that the bargaining power of the business sector and the Americans; but the Americans was also in a position to make use of threatening the ANC, that if you are, in a diplomatic way, told the ANC see if you are not going to accept our proposals, we can destabilise South Africa.

There is a third possibility that no one can prove, and I can only speculate it the question is, how many money went under the table.

So there’s really 3 reasons; convincing the ANC with arguments, threatening them, and buying them out – or all three was at play at that time, because from from May 1992 the ANC published a document ready to govern; in that document it was clear, previously the ANC talked about growth through redistribution; in that document of 92 they talked about a redistribution through growth, and you know the Year policy was announced in 1996, the so-called trickle-down; if there is growth in the capitalist sector, then there will be a trickle down to the poor. It is not necessary to have a comprehensive redistributive measures, the typical American approach, that with growth there will be trickle down.

In November 1993 South Africa was governed by the Transitional Executive Committee, the TEC; there was eight National Party [Apartheid Regime] ministers and eight senior members of the ANC, and they had a meeting to ask the International Monetary Fund for a loan of eight hundred and fifty million dollars that we need for the transition; and IMF, of course everything was arranged, was prepared to give the loan, but they had a document, a statement on economic policy, and said yes we will give you the money if everyone, if all sixteen sign the document; and if one read that document statement on economic policy carefully, it is gear in embryo form, it is the new liberal policy, and so the ANC had no choice.

It was you know after in 1986 already, when Gorbachev and Reagan reached an agreement to see negotiated settlements for all the flash points in the world; after that Reagan informed the ANC that the Soviet Union can’t any longer support the ANC militarily and financially.

Now the ANC don’t want us to mention that, as they said Gorbachev only told them to to look for a diplomatic solution, instead of a military solution; but the truth is that Gorbachev had realized at that stage that the Soviet Union, after 20 years of Brezhnev, was in near bankrupt situation, and this is rather remarkable that the American government put quite a lot of pressure on the National Party [Apartheid Regime] from Washington, and that Gorbachev from Moscow was putting pressure on the ANC to seek a solution, but it was a solution in the end that the Americans want.