11 June 1997
The SACP shares with its alliance partners a deep concern for the future of peace in the whole of our country, not least in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. The pursuit of peace may well require imaginative ideas, and it certainly calls for a spirit of reconciliation from all sides. We are however, not persuaded by the recent proposals made, in good faith, by the ANC KZN provincial structures.
The idea of a special ANC/IFP amnesty for KZN suffers from many serious flaws. It fails to locate the conflict in KZN within a wider national context. It makes the conflict between the ANC and IFP a special category. Other provinces and other political parties will naturally wonder why they should be excluded from special provisions including the camera hearings, and changed amnesty cut-off dates.
From the side of the ANC-led alliance we have bcked the TRC process, which is now beginning to bear real fruit, both in terms of reconciliation and, critically, in revealing truth. T o suggest a parallel process at this juncture runs a danger of undermining all that hasso far been achieved on this front.
As for the vague offer of a "very senior national position" to IFP leader, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, we are mystified. We were under the impression the Buthelezi currenlty occupied a very senior national position.
If the leader of the IFP is left with the idea of that misbehaviour and threats will be rewarded with even greater promitions, heavens knows where this will end.
We are also suprised that offfers of this kind, which are national in character and which are national in character and which long term implications, are made in public before the matter has been discussed by the National Executive committee of the ANC itself, not to mention its alliance partners.
Peace cannot be consolidated by way of short-cuts, nor by undermining the democratic dispenstation we are hoping to build. We are sure that our comrades in the ANC KZN Provincial Executive Committee are sincere in their proposal. However, the broader implications of what they are suggesting have not been thought through adequately.
Issued by: SACP HQ