South African Institute of Race Relations

When former state president FW de Klerk in February 1990 unbanned the African National Congress (ANC) and its allies, he believed he was laying the foundation for a process of ‘good faith’ negotiations in which all parties would be committed to peace, mutual compromise for the common good, and respect for agreements reached. But, the ANC never had any intention of regarding negotiations in the same way. Instead it saw constitutional talks as nothing more than an additional ‘terrain of struggle’: an adjunct to the people’s war it had been implementing since the Sebokeng unrest in September 1984. The ANC’s strategy was a variant on the Trojan Horse one, for it used its professed commitment to peace to secure the legal return of its armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, thus bypassing the difficulties it had always faced in infiltrating its insurgents illegally. It then refused to disarm or demobilise Umkhonto, instead using its combatants to step up the people’s war in all its aspects. The ANC’s persistence with its people’s war in the early 1990s – at a time when De Klerk had already thrown open the door to a non-racial South Africa and repealed all major apartheid laws – cost a further 15 000 lives, three times the number killed in the first five years of the people’s war. Almost all those killed were neither policemen, soldiers, nor insurgents, but rather ordinary civilians, most of them black. In this address, delivered in Johannesburg on 10th November 2009, Anthea Jeffery summarises some of the key points from her book People’s War: New Light on the Struggle for South Africa, recently published by Jonathan Ball.
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Whereas prosperous white South Africans are often denigrated by the Government and the African National Congress (ANC), the new black elite are often portrayed as an example of progress in our society. That has been a peculiar distinction for the Government and the ANC to maintain. There is now some evidence to suggest that attitudes in the ruling alliance may be shifting.
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While the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement has been well received by the financial and business press it does harbour a risk of South Africa confronting a debt-trap scenario at some point in the next decade. Considering the risks and the difficulty of predicting the country’s future GDP growth trajectory, history might find that the government erred in its fiscal response to the economic downturn.
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Last Friday Professor Jonathan Jansen was inaugurated as the rector and vice chancellor of the University of the Free State. Professor Jansen was also recently appointed as the president of the South African Institute of Race Relations. At his inauguration Professor Jansen made a speech about the future of the University of the Free State. The university is an extraordinary case in that it is a public institution that has come to represent ideals at odds with the equality, human dignity, and equal opportunity central to South Africa becoming an equal and prosperous society. It requires dramatic intervention in order to align it with those ideals. Professor Jansen has provided the university with a roadmap to meet those ideals. The path that he has charted for the University of the Free State also contains many the elements necessary for the success of our country. These range from the importance of leadership to the vexed issue of transformation. Inherent in the professor’s address was the message that human endeavor and hard work was necessary to overcome adversity.
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For fifteen years South Africans have been able to freely elect their government. But many communities, such as that in Sakhile outside Standerton, behave as if the ANC is an illegitimate regime. These communities are increasingly resorting to violence to get the Government’s attention. In most cases they turn to violence despite the legitimate democratic channels that are open to them to address their grievances. The government and the ANC are therefore quite correct not to tolerate such lawlessness and to deploy the security forces to crack down hard on any community that threatens violence against the State.
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The Institute presents the final chapter of the latest South Africa Survey Online. The Politics & Government chapter in the South Africa Survey 2008/09 provides an overall breakdown of electoral trends since 1994, along with international governance comparisons.
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The Institute presents the eighth of the nine chapters that comprise the latest South Africa Survey Online. The Crime & Security chapter in the South Africa Survey 2008/09 gives a detailed overview of Crime, the Justice system, and overall security in South Africa.
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When former state president FW de Klerk in February 1990 unbanned the African National Congress (ANC) and its allies, he believed he was laying the foundation for a process of ‘good faith’ negotiations in which all parties would be committed to peace, mutual compromise for the common good, and respect for agreements reached. But, the ANC never had any intention of regarding negotiations in the same way. Instead it saw constitutional talks as nothing more than an additional ‘terrain of struggle’: an adjunct to the people’s war it had been implementing since the Sebokeng unrest in September 1984. The ANC’s strategy was a variant on the Trojan Horse one, for it used its professed commitment to peace to secure the legal return of its armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, thus bypassing the difficulties it had always faced in infiltrating its insurgents illegally. It then refused to disarm or demobilise Umkhonto, instead using its combatants to step up the people’s war in all its aspects. The ANC’s persistence with its people’s war in the early 1990s – at a time when De Klerk had already thrown open the door to a non-racial South Africa and repealed all major apartheid laws – cost a further 15 000 lives, three times the number killed in the first five years of the people’s war. Almost all those killed were neither policemen, soldiers, nor insurgents, but rather ordinary civilians, most of them black. In this address, delivered in Johannesburg on 10th November 2009, Anthea Jeffery summarises some of the key points from her book People’s War: New Light on the Struggle for South Africa, recently published by Jonathan Ball.
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The Institute presents the seventh of the nine chapters that comprise the latest South Africa Survey Online. The Living Conditions & Communications chapter in the South Africa Survey 2008/09 gives a detailed overview of living conditions in South Africa, along with a breakdown of communications infrastructure.
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In this issue of Fast Facts the Institute argues that the ‘deployment’ system that the ANC employs is undermining local government. There is also an article pointing out that the young politicians affiliated with the ANC still seem to think that incitement to murder is a valid political tool. The ANC itself has yet to teach them otherwise. A risk analysis assesses the progress so far in improving race relations but suggests that failure to fix the failing state will damage race relations. The Institute also provides statistics that demonstrate how the recession has affected the fiscus and GDP per head. Finally, a section on international comparisons contains a comprehensive comparative statistical breakdown of South Africa’s performance against a selection of countries on a range of indicators. As always, five pages of Fast Stats provide a quick and easy reference to a range of regular indicators and forecasts.
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