Work in progress, No. 88

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Page 1 of 58 Alternative title Work In Progress Author/Creator Southern African Research Service (Johannnesburg) Contributor Vick, Chris Publisher Southern African Research Service (Johannnesburg) Date 1993-04-00 - 1993-05-00 Resource type Journals (Periodicals) Language Afrikaans, English Subject Coverage (spatial) South Africa Coverage (temporal) 1993 Source Digital Imaging South Africa (DISA) Rights By kind permission of Hein Marais, Julian May, and the Southern Africa Report. Format extent 56 page(s) (length/size)

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Page 3 of 58 nD o you want to be up-to-date with current developments in landand related issues? If you do, then you should be reading theLand UPDATELand UPDATE a monthly publication produced by the NationalLand Committee (NLC), carries news about rural communities,interviews with policy makers and views on future land anddevelopment policies.Past issues have focused on themes such as rural women, healthcare, labour tenants, land transfers and urban housing. LandUPDATE has also contributed to debates about post-apartheid landpolicy and the development needs of rural and landless people.So subscribe now! Contact us for a complimentary copy of LandUPDATE or for more information on subscription rates.Telephone: (011) 403-3803 Telefax: (011)3396315 PO Box 16858, Doomfontein, 2028, JohannesburgThe National LandCommittee is anindependentumbrella bodyconsisting of nineregionalorganisations.Affiliates are: theAssociation forRural Advancement(AFRA- Natal),Eastern Cape LandCommittee (ECLC),Farmw orkersResearch andResource Project(FRRP - Transvaal),Border RuralCommittee (BRC),Orange Free StateRural Committee(OFSRUC),Southern CapeLand Committee(SCLC), SurplusPeople Project (SPP- Western Cape),Transkei LandServiceOrganisation(TRALSO).Whew!To all the readers who sent in entries to our Laptop Computer Competition wesay: Thank you! You've sure kept us busy sorting through all your replies...The draw for the competition had not been held at the time of going to press.But don't despair - the winner's name will be published in the next edition ofWork In Progress, and the lucky reader will also be advised by post.In the meantime, have you seen our next competition?Details are on the back page ...WORK INPROGRESS

Page 4 of 58 This R3 500video cameracould be yours!Dear friendHaven't you always wanted your own video came;- your own simple, easy-to-use way ofrecording the times of your life? Well, Work In Progress has decided to make it easy for you:We're offering this state of the art Sony Video 8 Camcorder to a lucky reader who takes out asubscription to our magazine.Ally ou have to do is complete the subscription form inside this edition of Work In Progressandsend it to us, along with your subscription fee. Your name will then go into the lucky draw, tobe held on May 28th. The winner of the competition will be announced in WIP 90, which willbe published in mid-July.But don't leave it until the last minute - get your entry in as soon as possible!PS: If you already subscribe to Work In Progress, you can still stand in line to win the prize. Justintroduce us to a friend and get them to subscribe too. Tell the friend to include your: onthe subscription form, and both names will go into the draw. That way, you both have a chanceto win!

Page 5 of 58 Editorial commentGet outthe vote!Jft o we're finally going to be- able to vote. And although itmay take another year, it isimportant that those of uswho are committed to democracyprepare NOW for a decisive electionvictory.You might think it's a little pre-mature to be talking about electionswhen there are still so many issuesto resolve around the negotiatingtable.But we have two very valid reasons for focussing NOW on the elections that lieahead: Regardless of who wins, South Africa cannot afforda narrow election victory. A hung parliament would bedisastrous.If a new government is to address the expecta-tions of the people, it must have the mandate to moveswiftly and boldly. It must be able to act, secure in theknowledge that it has the support of a substantialmajority.That's why this edition of WIP looks critically atthe challenges facing the left - in particular, the ANC- as we move towards election day. Because webelieve it is vital that the pro-democracy movementidentifies the obstacles that lie ahead, so that victoryis not only certain - it is decisive. But perhaps the most importantaspect of the election is that ALLSouth Africans participate. It's notjust about who wins - it's about thefact that everyone who is eligible tovote, does so.And therein lies the challenge:To ensure that every adult SouthAfrican is able to get to the polls,feels safe enough to make theircross, and is secure about the out-come. This, really, is the essence ofa free and fair election.To ensure this happens, we need to throw oursupport behind attempts to mobilise those SouthAfricans who have never had a say in running theirown lives. The unorganised. People in rural areas. Peo-ple too scared to vote. People who have not only beendisenfranchised by apartheid, but also disorganisedand disempowered.If we wake up the day after a free and fair electionto hear we have won, we need to be able to say: Thisis the will of the people.And if we wake up to hear we have lost, we needto be able to say: This, too, is the will of the people.Because, for the first time in South African histo-ry, it will not be the most powerful who hold the reins.It will be the most popular.- Chris VickWork In ProgressNo 88 April/May 1993Published by the Southern African Research Service (SARS)PO Box 32716, Braamfontein 2017Head Office: 9th Floor, Auckland House, cnr Smit & Biccard Streets,Braamfontein, JohannesburgPhone: (011) 403-1912Fax: (011) 403-2534Cape Town Office: PO Box 13309, Mowbray 7705Phone & fax: (021) 448-37271993EDITOR: Chris VickASSISTANT EDITOR: Hein MaraisWRITER: Kerry CullinanEDITORIAL ASSISTANT: Francine JoselowskyPRODUCTION: Annette GriesselBUSINESS MANAGER: Hector MbauADMINISTRATOR: Sibongile ThombeniSALES & DISTRIBUTION: Kenosi SengatiSUBSCRIPTIONS: Lawrence WsamaiCOVER PHOTOGRAPH: Olivier SamsonREPRODUCTION: Wits UniversityPRINTING: Perskor

Page 6 of 58 WIP 88 ContentsBRIEFS 2WORLD BRIEFS 4PERSONALLY SPEAKING 6Baleka Kgositsile, ANC Women's LeagueCOVER STORY: The people go to the polls 8 Will the ANC win?The movement gets a chance to prove itssupport - Hein Marais Stick your neck outFrom Doctor Khumalo to James Motlatsi- we tell you who THEY think will win On the campaign trailMandela's drawing on Clinton's best-Andrew McDonald No dirty tricksHow to organise a good and clean election Pinning the tail on the donkeyif scientists can't get the weather right, canthey forecast how people will vote?- Hein Marais How strong is the IFP, really? Vote up!The sponsors of the anti-apartheid industrybring you ... the voter education industry Reconstruction accordThe unions and the Party aren't givingthe ANC a blank chequeRECONSTRUCT SUPPLEMENTFocus on development aidTHE PEOPLE GOTO THE POLLSX marks the spot - but when is thebig day? And has the ANC got whatit takes to win? WIP probes the pollsin a special 13-page focus- 8 to 20LABOUR 21Meet the most powerful trade unionist in theworld - Kerry Cull' an interviews Enzo FrisoGENDER 23Campus rape: A Catch 22 for womenstudents - Diana RussellDOSSIER 27The ANC and NP Bills of Rights in the dockDEBATE 28The civics: Ben Jacobs was right, but he waswrong too - Mzwanele MayekisoBEN JACOBS:A CIVIC RESPONSEMzwanele Mayekiso picks up on criticism ofSanco's centralised structure, arguing fora tight federation - 28INTERNATIONAL 30 El Salvador's peace process-getting high on the peace pipe thing Why Angola's pain is South Africa's painCULTURE 33The way of the white hand: White peopleteach black people not to paint white people- Ivor PowellLEFT ALIVE 36An integrated army: 3 000 MK soldiers meet850 000 SADF personnel- = Jeremy CroninPLUS: Face to face with an MK officer beingtrained in Uganda - Kerry CullinanLETTERS 39LEFT BEHIND 40CAMPUS RAPISTSWomen students tell of the horror, the fear, andthe scars they carry for the rest of their lives - 23MISTER BIGMeet Enzo Friso, the most powerful tradeunionist in the world and man who knowsmore about airports and conferencecentres than most people - 21

Page 7 of 58 LIONS OF THE DESERTProblem?Whatproblem?THERE IS NO POLlTlCAL REA-son why it should not havegone ahead - that's theofficial ANC line on thecontroversial visit by ANCYouth League (ANCYL)leaders to Israel at theheight of the deportationdebacle there.The ANC's AzizPahad, whose Departmentof International Affairsapproved the trip, isadamant they did the rightVoter Education MaterialMatla Trust is planning the production of a wide range ofvoter education material in preparation for South Africa'sfirst democratic election. This material will look at broadissues of democracy, as well as the nitty gritty of electionsand voting.Coeric Book (8 languages)BooAJ-lnserts (A3/ 4-page) What is Dmocracy?Videos: 111anguages) What is a Constitution?What is Democracy? What is an Election?How to vote How to voteRadio Prograttunes Audio C_Posters stickersT~ CapsMatla Trust also has a one-hour play on democracy andvoting, which can be performed for communities at almostany venue.If you are interested in our play or any of Me above material,please write to:Matla TrustMonde MditshwaDistribution ManagerMatla TrustP O Box 7748Johannesburg 2000JFax: (011) 8381910Phone: (011) 834 5301rbriefsthing. "We had no secondthoughts," he says. "Once itwas OK'd by the relevantpolitical organisations inthe area, we had no problemwith the tour."But it was the timingof the 12-day study missionby the ANCYL delegationthat puzzled activists in SAand the occupied territories,and drew some angry criti-cism.After being locked outon the sidelines of interna-tional concern, the Pales-tinian struggle had againmoved centre stage earlierthis year after Israel deport-ed 417 Palestinians tosouthern Lebanon. In lateJanuary the eight ANCYL2with severalIsraeligovernmentleaders,PalestiniannegotiatorFaysal .Husayni, aswell as Israeli andPalestinian students. TheYoung Lions ventured intothe Occupied Territories atthe tail-end of the trip,visiting Bir Zeit Universityand a refugee camp.Before leaving Israel,the youth caused a stir witha statement opposing offi-cial relations between theANC and Israel, and advis-ing against a visit there byANC President NelsonMandela.Among the reasonscited were the continuinghuman rights violations bythe Israeli government andits efforts "to subvert a gen-uine resolution of the ques-tion of nationhood for thePalestinian people".The controversy has abackground that goesbeyond the Palestinianissue.There are doubtfulmurmurings about theANC's commitment toextend - as opposed toreceive - solidarity in thiscurrent phase of new agepoliticking. Early in 1991,popular organisations inBrazil were reportedly dis-turbed by the cold-shoulderthey received during a top-level ANC visit.Lately, the Angolancrisis has drawn mainlysubdued declarations fromShell House.- Hein Maraismemberstoured Israelas guests ofthe SA Unionof JewishStudents(SAUJS). Aziz PahadThe ideafor the mission had origi-nated with the SAUJS lastJune. The ANCYL gave it alot of thought, saysANCYL spokespersonParks Mankahlana, but "inthe end we felt it would behelpful to go and see forourselves what was happen-ing in the Occupied Territo-ries." He says the trip hadbeen cleared months earlierwith Palestinian LiberationOrganisation (PLO) leadersin Tunis.Mankahlana acknowl-edges that individuals in theANC and the Youth Leaguedisapproved. One of themwas ANC national execu-tive member AhmedKathrada, who felt peevedenough to publicly criticisethe visit."There is no principledopposition to visits," helater told WIP, "but theexpulsion of the Palestini-ans made the timing mostunfortunate. If this hadcome to the ANC NEC,many people would haveopposed it and I certainlywould have been one."Pahad disagrees. "Idon't know why he'sunhappy. Nobody has putforward any substantialpolitical argument whichwe can debate and see if wemade an error, if it was anerror," he says.The delegation touredIsrael for 12 days. It metWORK IN PROGRESS

Page 8 of 58 briefsRECONSTRUCTIONDisaccordover newaccordCOSATU'S ATTEMPTS TOdevelop a ReconstructionAccord with its affiliatesand its allies (WIP81) havenot gone without protest.Some of the federa-tion's smaller affiliates haveexpressed concern at theway the accord is beingnegotiated. The Transport& General Workers'Union's education depart-ment, for example, has cir-culated a 12-page documentwhich questions both thecontent of the accord andthe process surrounding itsdevelopment.In hard-hitting lan-guage, the T&G documentwarns of the dangers of"holding hands with thebosses" and argues forgreater worker participationin drawing up an accord.It argues that an accordshould not be drawn up inconsultation with business."The ReconstructionAccord must be decidedupon by Cosatu, the ANCand other workers' demo-cratic forces," it says."Cosatu must campaign forthe ANC to agree to imple-ment this programme oncethey are in government."The document says theaccord must become "anemergency programme toend oppression andexploitation" and include: nationalisation withoutcompensation "of all publicassets privatised by the gov-ernment" an agreement that allgovernment ministers, offi-cials and MPs be paid thesame wage as skilled work-ers a total ban on retrench-ments the abolition of VAT a minimum wage for allworkers public works schemes and a relief programmefor workers in rural areas.The T&G documentcompares the `toenadering'between Cosatu's leader-ship and big business toagreements being negotiat-ed between the ANC andthe National Party."It seems the real aimof the accord is to bringworkers on board the multi-party bandwagon to the newSA. The aim is to get organ-ised labour behind the newdeal which the `bosberaad'has written and which willbe made official in anotherCodesa."The document is criti-cal of the stance adopted bythe Cosatu leadership,which it accuses of "sittingin committees with thebosses ... debating with thebosses, drinking with thebosses, eating with thebosses, talking with thebosses, planning with thebosses. When they appearon TV it is even difficult totell who is the boss and whois the worker because theyare all wearing suits andties."This confusion getsworse because, despite alltheir differences, the bossesand the worker leaders onTV end their discussion bysaying they are all in agree-ment on the main points." W/ See Page 20: No blankcheque for the ANCLAND CLAIMSGive mea homewhere therhino don'troamTHE ENDANGERED BLACKrhino now has a securerefuge in the AugrabiesNational Park on theOrange River, thanks toland made available by theSA Defence Force (SADF).But the people who 20years ago were forciblyremoved from that land -Riemvasmaak in the north-ern Cape - are still waitingto return.The Riemvasmaakcommunity, uprooted anddispersed in 1973-74, hasapplied to the government'sAdvisory Commission onLand Allocation (Acla) tohave their land returned.But it seems admirers of theblack rhino jumped thequeue.The pastoralist Riem-vasmakers were firstencountered in 1923 bywhite missionaries, but itwas the later attentions ofapartheid bureaucrats thatbrought disaster. The corn-3.unity's `cosmopolitan'character led to familymembers being classifiedinto different racial groups.By the mid 1960s, theapartheid authorities haddeclared the area a `blackspot'. The first group, clas-sified as Xhosa, wasremoved to Welcomewoodin the Ciskei in 1973, eventhough some of them spokeonly Afrikaans at that point.Next on the list were thoseclassified as Nama - aftertheir livestock was sold andtheir homes burnt, theywere dumped 1 300kmaway in Namibia.The last (coloured)group was herded to othernorthern Cape towns likeMarchand, where the sur-vivors recently elected aRiemvasmaak CoordinatingCommittee to start reclaim-ing their land. Through theirlawyer they have informedAcla that they intend to sub-mit a claim for the return tothe land.The Riemvasmaakcommunity say they do notoppose nature conservation.But they are disturbed thatthe government can allowthe SADF to allocate theirland to rhinos without evenconsulting them or waitingfor the outcome of theirAcla hearing.- Sue Powers, SPPAPRIL/MAY 1993

Page 9 of 58 MALAWIUnity isstrengthSHOCKED BY THE KENYANopposition's failure to dis-lodge strongman DanielArap Moi, three exiled Mal-awian opposition groupshave disbanded and formedthe United Front for Multi-party Democracy (UFMD)."The Kenyan situationhas taught us that divisioncan be very costly and dis-astrous," commented GrayKamyambeni, former chairof the Malawi FreedomMovement (Mafremo).Disunity in oppositionranks played a large role inMoi's election victory lateANGOLAFrom Russia- and SA -with love?WHO IS SUSTAINING THEarmed revolt launched byAngolan election losersUnita seven months ago?Reports that SA mer-cenaries are fighting for theAngolan Armed Forces(FAA) have diverted atten-tion from strong indicationsthat South African handshave once again bolsteredUnita leader Jonas Savim-bi's bid for power.The authoritative Lon-don newsletter Africa Con-fidential reports that "recentSADF-Units collaborationdates back to Savimbi'svisit to Pretoria on 17-18September". He met withForeign Minister Pik Bothalast year - a lesson learntby Mafremo, which hasjoined the Socialist Leagueof Malawi and the MalawiDemocratic Movement.Plans are afoot to merge thenew UFMD with the inter-nally-based United Demo-cratic Front (UDF).Malawi's opposition isnow pulling out all stops towin the referendum calledby `Life President' HastingsBanda, one of the mostenduring autocrats on theplanet. Squeezed by foreignpressure and emboldeneddomestic resistance, Bandalate last year unbannedopposition parties andannounced a March 15 ref-erendum.and PresidentFW de Klerk.Later, he heldtalks with Def-ence MinisterEugene Louw,Deputy Minis-ter WynandBreytenbachand SADFchief `Kat'Liebenberg.Beforeleaving thegovernmentguest house, E Jonas SavimbiSavimbi report-edly requested a meetingwith Gen. Jannie Gelden-huys, a former SADF chief."On Savimbi's returnto Angola, his electionspeeches became far morebelligerent and he ruled outthe possibility of defeat,"notes Africa Confidential."US intelligencesources inLuanda believeSavimbi chosethe militaryoption in mid-September lastyear. This rais-es the questionof how muchSADF logisti-calsupport andtactical advicehe was givenand throughwhat channelsit was media-ted."The South Africanoperation was sophisticatedenough to warrant theSADF's leasing of sixAntonovs (freight planes)from Russia for the durationof the election campaignand for some time after-wards, according to intelli-gence sources in Zimbabwe."It is quite clear to meand to everyone else thatpeople here do not want amultiparty system of gov-ernment. They want oneparty, the Malawi CongressParty (MCP)," Banda saidat the time.The unbanning sur-prised Malawians whorecalled Banda's earliervow that returning exileswould become "food for thecrocodiles". "I guess theNgwazi (Conqueror) willnow have to apply for foodrelief to feed hiscrocodiles," quipped oneexile after the about-face.Opposition groups arebattling to remove obstaclesaimed at denying them areferendum victory. Theyhave managed to get thereferendum postponed toJune 14, thanks to interventions by major aid donorsand the UN. But Banda stillinsists on using two ballotboxes in the referendum -one to hold `yes' votes andthe other for `no' votes.The opposition rejectsthis and want the ballot tobe secret.Recently, Banda toldMalawians that "when thetime for the referendumcomes, opposition partieswill learn a bitter lesson."Whether this was a boast ora threat is not yet clear. 'J- SARDC News/HeinMaraisThe Antonovs are under-stood to have made a seriesof flights to Jamba, Mavin-ga and other Unita centres."Meanwhile, DavidMartin of the Harare-basedSouthern African Researchand Documentation Centre(SARDC) reports that asenior US diplomat has ad-mitted privately in a brief-ing that Washington hasevidence that Unita is pur-chasing arms from Russia.Martin quotes anotherWestern diplomat as saying:"They are desperate forhard currency and havebecome the new interna-tional mercenaries."According to the US diplo-mat, Unita is paying for thearms with diamonds fromnorthern Angola that itlaunders through Zaire.- Africa Confidential/SARDC News4WORK IN PROGRESS

Page 10 of 58 ERITREAGoing it aloneYOU WOULDN'T KNOW ITfrom reading the SA press,but history is being made inEritrea. On April 23, Eritre-ans will vote in a referen-dum that will almostcertainly see this territory ofEthiopia become an inde-pendent country.It will be the first timesince the establishment ofthe Organisation of AfricanUnity (OAU) that the post-colonial boundaries ofAfrica are redrawn, makingconcrete on our continentthe powerful eruption ofnationalist forces that isgiving cartographers - andpoliticians - headaches theworld over.The Eritreans, wholive along the Red Sea coastof Ethiopia, have longmaintained a separate cul-tural identity from theT, gray-, Amhara andOromo peoples of Ethiopia.After a bloody battle foughtby troops of Ethiopianemperor Menelik II in1895, Italy colonised twoterritories in the Hom ofAfrica that Ethopia neverreally controlled. Eritreawas one of them.After the British Armyhelped liberate the areafrom Italian fascism duringWorld War Two, Eritreafound itself federated toEthiopia - a state of affairsthat angered Eritreannationalists enough to leadto the launching of anaimed struggle in 1961.An emphasis on self-reliance, strengthened bythe intermittent support of abriefsshifting gallery of sponsors,saw the Eritreans defeat thepowerful Ethiopian militaryon the battlefield in May1991. The Eritrean People'sLiberation Front (EPLF),leftish in political orienta-tion, formed the ProvisionalGovernment of Eritreawhich today runs the terri-tory as an independentcountry in all but name. TheEPLF is by far the strongestmilitary force in the Horn,and perhaps in the whole ofEast Africa. It is reportedthat Ethiopia `proper' func-tions administratively large-ly thanks to personnelseconded by the EPLF tothe Ethiopian People's Rev-olutionary DemocraticForce (EPRDF) whichdrove the regime ofMengistu Haile Mariamfrom power in 1991.So why hold a referen-dum when the outcomeseems certain? It follows ona "commitment made inEX-CZECHOSLOVAKIAScrapheapsof historyA TOWN IN THE FORMERCzechoslovakia, freshly lib-erated from the onerousyoke of communism, nowstands face to face with acapitalist system that wantsto relegate it to the scrap-heap of history - literally.A group of US compa-nies wants to raze the townof Chabarovice to get at 100million tons of coal just afew yards below the sur-face.But the townspeople51981, to have aninternationallyobserved referen-dum and to abideby the results,"says PaulosTesfagiorgis ofthe Centre forHuman Rights and Devel-opment in the Eritrean capi-tal of Ammara. "It is theexercise of a basic humanright, the right to determinethe political future of yourcountry."The vote, though, is aformality. After a long warthat galvanised Eritreannationalism in both socialand political terms, that isperhaps no surprise. Still,the EPLF is taking nochances. The referendumquestion has done awaywith the earlier options ofindependence, confedera-tion and incorporation, andposes a vote for indepen-dence or nothing.Relations with Ethio-don't like it. Mayor ZbynekHrom explains: "We'refrom old Europe. We don'tthink only about money, butalso about where We'refrom.,,However the villageisn't quite paradise. On oneside there's a chemicalwaste dump; on another liesan old strip mine now usedas a landfill; on a third liesan active coal pit.The consortium of alocal mining company andUS-based Atlantic Partners& Waste Managementwould move all the village'sresidents to newly-builtpia are likely to remainstrong, though on a moreequal footing than before -Eritrea, after all, separatesEthiopia from the sea.And relations with afuture ANC government? .The Eritrean struggle forindependence was vehe-mently opposed by theANC in exile, often withopen vilification. Thatseems to be changing."We always argued fora united country," says AzizPahad of the ANC'sDepartment of InternationalAffairs. "But if (indepen-dence) is the will of thepeople, then we acceptthis," he says.- Hein Maraishouses five to eight kilome-tres away, and has promisedto restore the land to ausable state when mining isfinished, perhaps in 25years.Sound too good to betrue? The villagers think so."What's the differencebetween a communist gov-ernment that wants to comein here and destroy thecountryside and a privatecompany?" asks Hrom."One's richer and iswilling to pay a lot ofmoney to be able to do it."- Dollars and SenseAPRIL/MAY 1993

Page 11 of 58 Page 12 of 58 personallyPHOTO: ELMOND JIYANE (DYNAMIC IMAGES)Your last thought before youfell asleep last night?I wish I could have more time with mychildren.Your biggest fear?What if something happens as mychildren grow up into adults and don'tturn out to be the kinds of adults onewould like all South African childrento be? Then I would wonder, was itworth it?If you could give FW de Klerksome advice, what would it be?That he should just be honest aboutthings. He would do a great deal ofgood by saying to his own constituen-cy that the ANC is right. It mightmake him unpopular with some peoplebut it would ease a lot of tension.Actually, it would be so nice for himto join the ANC...What do you do like to do Inyour free time?Read, listen to music, write.BalekaKgositsile6WORK IN PROGRESSWhat do you think will be themost difficult obstacle to over-come in the transition to a truedemocracy?Besides having to deal with the fearsof the white right, the next most diffi-cult obstacle will be the question ofnonsexism.Within all the political parties,there are still meetings with only oneor two women - and yet in the Code-sa declaration we say we've commit-ted ourselves to a nonsexist country.It's something we must keep bringingup consciously.Who would you most like tohave lunch with?I can't think of any one particular per-son, except maybe my president (Nel-son Mandela).Complete: I always wantedto...Have a lot of time, in a nice house towrite poetry, prose and just improvemy writing skills.Baleka Kgositsile, secretary-general of the ANC Women'sLeague since April 1991, wouldprobably classify herself as amother before a politicalactivist. Devoted motherof five, emersed in thestruggle since she wentinto exile in 1975, shesees her work as anavenue to secure astable future forthe children ofSouth Africa

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Page 14 of 58 9APRIL/MAY 1993Thepeoplego tothepollsMore than 21 million SouthAfricans will be eligible tovote in the first democraticelections. Who are they? Whoare they likelyto vote for?Work InProgress probesthe polls...

Page 15 of 58 electionsWill the ANC win?ATE LAST YEAR, AND WITHOUT Ahint of comedy, an NP cabinetinister sat trying to convince awincing interviewer that his partycould win the election. Numbers canbe magical things, and in his handsthey ran along these lines: The NPtakes 90% of the coloured and Indianvote, 85% of whites and 12% ofblacks ... and forms liberated SA'sfirst government. Was the minister ondrugs?"If you want your dreams tocome true, don't sleep," goes a saying.From whatever angle you scanthe run-up to elections, formidablehurdles still separate the ANC fromthe kind of election victory it needs todeliver on even a fraction of thepromises that have sustained its libera-tion struggle.Worse - a combination of sus-tained blunders, bad luck, foul playand poor preparation might still trip upthe ANC's bid for power. It's not as ifthe transition has been spared suchhitches. Clearly, now is a bad time fordozy reveries and delusions of certain-ty.N The numbers gameBut first we need to clarifythe numbers we're slicing.How many voters (18years and older) are there?Pollsters are adding apinch of salt to the 1991census figures, which alsodo not include the TVBCstates. Neil Higgs, aresearcher with ResearchSurveys says simply: "It'sfraught with hazard." Heclaims to have enhancedthe census figures withother survey data, and says there are21.6 million voters. The DevelopmentBank of SA (DBSA) last year adjustedHein Maraisthe 1985 census figures; it says thereare 21 million voters. Asked to choosebetween the two sets, Higgs Says: "Ijust don't know." So, let's stick to theDBSA figures ...Number of votersBlacks ("RSA") ...... 11.1 mllllonBlacks (TBVC)...... 3.3mllllonWhites ...... 3.9 millionColoureds ...... 2.0 millionAsians ...... 0.6 millionTOTAL ...... 21.0 millionNow imagine ... The ANC wakesup the day after the election with 39%of votes cast, just slightly ahead of theNP with 34%. Spirited flirtation andselling of souls ensues. The NP kissesand makes up with the IFP (6%) andtalks the white right (4%) into a coali-tion that holds 44% of the vote. ThePAC (5%) and Azapo (2%) decide toleave the ANC to stew in its own juice,and hang on to their swing votes in ahung parliament. SA becomes Italy. Anout-to-lunch scenario?Such an outcome presumes someserious disasters of the ANC's ownmaking, and a range of dirty tricks andWorst-case scenario ANC and NP voteAssuming the following voter turnout: whites (85%), coloureds(75%), Asians (65%), blacks (60%) ...ANC %votes castNP votesANC vote NP %60% 5.16 mil 6%0.5% 0.02 mil 85%15% 0.23 mil 80%15% 0.06 mil 80%39% 5.47.11 34%8.6 mil3.3 mil1.5 mil0.4 milTotal 14.1.11 The DP, IFP, right wing parties and a small percentage ofspoilt ballots account for the rest of white votes. The PAC,Azapo, IFP, homeland parties and 10% spoilt ballots account forthe balance of black votes.BlacksWhitesColouredsAsians0.52 mil2.80 mil1.20 mil0.32 mil4.84 mllstructural pitfalls that will require con-certed countermeasures.Because more than 70% of poten-tial voters have never cast a vote, pollsprovide us with a rare preview of voterinclinations. Though it is inadvisableto read poll findings too literally atthis stage (see Pinning the tail on thedonkey, page 16), it's when you jointhe dots and trace trends that theybecome eloquent.Research Surveys' Jan Hofmeyeris finding political affinities dividingradically along racial lines - espe-cially, but not only, between blacksand whites. "At the ordinary person'slevel, the basis for consensus has beeneroded in the last two years," he says.ANC support among blacks remainssteady at 70% and over, peaking ashigh as 85% among Xhosa-speakers,and lowest among Zulus.Among coloureds and Indians it'sstuck around 10%. Among whites ithas not crossed the 1 % mark.According to Markinor's ChristineWoessner, "in three years the ANCsimply has not won white friends."Whatever the contours of its sup-port base, the ANC isdoubtless the most popu-lar organisation in thecountry. But, as SteveFriedman of the Centrefor Policy Studies (CPS)reminds, "the ANC'sAchilles heel is that sup-port does not necessarilytranslate into votes."What fouls up thesimple conversion ofsympathies into votes is athrong of variables, someof them distressinglyhefty.The NP's biggestboon - and the ANC's nightmare -is a low turnout of black voters. It's onething asking people their opinion, it'sanother whether they'll turn up to vote.10WORK IN PROGRESS

Page 16 of 58 If the white parties hammer theirelection machines into shape, and theNP musters an 'Any thing-but-the-ANC' panic vote, voter turnout amongwhites might reach=. The samefeat is very unlikely among black vot-ers ,more than 3 million of whom livein the TBVC states. Even in the bestcircumstances, effective voter educa-tion, campaign logistics and transportto voting centres will amount to amajor challenge. In parts of SA,they're a nightmare of snags. Down on the farmThe rural vote might be central to aconvincing ANC victory; support inthe Ciskei and Transkei alone couldtop 85%. In other areas rural residentshave largely escaped the violence andthe tide of cynicism and exasperationit has brought. If ANC promises andesteem have lost some of their gleamin the urban townships, they still glis-ten in rural S A.The political sentiments of ruralblack voters remains one of our soci-ety's many secrets. They might beconservative in places, and locked intoserf-like dependence on white farmingcommunities. Yet those are the veryzones where apartheid is decidedlyund'ad. The question -for the PACas much as the ANC - is whetherthose voters can be reached, instructedin voting protocol and brought out tovote. If the turnout in rural SA is 15%under, say, a national average of 70%,as many as 800 000 votes (largelyANC and PAC) are lost. Guess whosmiles. Peril and doubtThe absence of free political activity isa major barrier. The ANC is de factooutlawed in Ciskei and Bophutha-tswana - just as it is in northernNatal and rural KwaZulu, a factunlikely to be corrected by a meredecree from Ulundi. In other parts ofNatal organised IFP campaign activityis unthinkable. In most black town-ships the chances are poor that we'llsee NP politicians going on the stump.Parts of townships - particularlysquatter areas - are carved up intofiefdoms of various sorts (by chiefs,squatter lords, civics, militant youth),making access for political campaignsa controversial and explosive matter.Kneejerk radicals might disagreethat this is a problem; after all, whyshould the enemy be allowed in toplunder and buy off black votes?They're wrong.One of the trends Hofmeyer spot-ted is a "growth of cynicism towardspoliticians and politics" - in blackcommunities especially "you find amix of anger and despair", he says.This blend of uncertainty andinsecurity surfaces in the alarmingnumber of voters who either refuse todisclose their voting intentions tointerviewers or shrug and choose the`don't know' box. Twenty five percentof urban blacks polled in ResearchSurveys' latest survey fell in this cate-gory, which swelled to 60% in theDurban area.Come election day, the insecuri-ties that thicken the township air willbe the liberation movement's biggestfoes. If campaigning - indeed, the actof voting - is allowed to becomeassociated with violence and intimida-tion, we might yet witness a tragictwist to the SA liberation struggle ...Faced with the prospect of agauntlet of violence to or from the vot-ing centre, and unconvinced that eachvote is necessary, meaningful andsecret, it is not improbable that a lot ofvoters might 'stay-away' on electionday. The Namibian experience: Even with all theSwapo didn't get that magical 67% The ironic 'stay-away'There undoubtedly will be a fierceswirl of rumours, arm-twisting andcompulsion preceding the election -much as anywhere else. It's whenthese aspects turn violent that thingsbecome sticky. Balaclava terror willcontinue and perhaps intensify as elec-tion day approaches. Like now, theorigins of the violence will be diverse,no matter how conspiratorial a mind-set we impose. But it takes a specialkind of giddiness to pretend that `thirdforce' type activities will not be partof the mix.It will also take more thanprayers and solemn pledges to keepthe monster at bay. The antidote willhave to include: beefed up National Peace Accordstructures and initiatives more international monitors behind-the-scenes communicationand dispute resolution channels thatstay open despite the campaign mud-slinging and grandstanding and the realisation that martial cam-paigning, intimidation and the notionthat muscle + rants = votes willkneecap the liberation movements, notthe NP.In this context statements likechecks and balances,

Page 17 of 58 that of Sanco's Dan Mofokeng, whenhe warns "white parties" against cam-paigning in black townships, are fool-ish and counterproductive. Turning upthe heat with threats and coercion willnot get the vote out.Every three black voters that donot vote mean three votes lost to theliberation movements (two of them theANC's). The advantage goes to theNP: the margin between it and theANC shrinks, and its footing in apower-sharing government becomesfirmer. Converts and doubters, unitelBecause the SA liberation struggletook as its central motive (and motif)the `right to vote', there's an assump-tion that it will be easy to rouse peopleto exercise that liberty. Think again.Because, strangely, a country that isvirtually on hold because of thebiggest political drama in its historyseems to be losing some of its faith inpolitics and the power of a vote."People have to be convincedthat this is their chance to bring aboutchange," says one ANC electionstategist. Researchers are busy dredg-ing for election issues likely to makeblack voters vote. For urban residentsthey are listing security, jobs, educa-tion, housing and health, in that order.In rural areas it shifts to jobs, food,water, education, health.But there's a snag: the ANC is ina bit of a Catch-22. It has to cool theinflamed expectations of supportersand calm the nerves of capital while atthe same time campaigning as the oneparty that will make a radical differ-ence. That's quite a juggling act. Chink in the armourPackaging the issues and nailingtogether campaign platforms is onething. But this is one election that ismore likely to be won or lost at thelevel of gut-feelings and memories."Don't underestimate the emotionalimpact of that moment in the ballotbooth,"" advises the CPS's LouiseStack. Is the vote seen as a nationalliberation election?" Hofmeyer ofResearch Surveys also stresses theemotional factor. "You can't shake offthe impact of history and tradition -and the ANC has a lot of both," hesays.With the major parties lookingtowards the advice of heavyweightUK and US election strategists (seepage 14), the campaigns will probablyfollow recent trends and orbit aroundnotions like stability, change, fear,trust and history. If the ANC tries tocounter attack by relying on ponder-ous policies and splitting hairs -instead of sticking to symbols, tradi-tion and broad stroking rhetoric - itcould trip itself up badly.History is the chink in the NP'sarmour. "Emotions are crucial andapartheid must be deployed as anemotional issue - the NP-apartheidconnection has to be stressed," is howan ANC strategist puts it. History ver-sus revivalism. Change versus more ofthe same. Let's make a dealThe planned Reconstruction Accord(See page 20) proposed by Cosatuholds good promise for the liberationmovements. Despite its flaws, it mightdo what the Patriotic Front failed at -to forge a unity of purpose and actionamong the oppressed. Its attraction forthe ANC lies in the fact that it couldsway non-ANC supporters into plant-ing their X next to Mandela's picture. Let's make outWill the ANC philander for the sakeof a few votes? There is a chance thatit will try to cobble together new(d)alliances in the hope that they willsway parts of the soft NP vote incoloured and Indian ranks. The dangeris that this might alienate some of itsown hard support.The SACP alliance, though,seems to pose less of a problem thannewspaper scribes would like tobelieve. Dominant wisdom in ANCranks is that abandoning the alliancewill traumatise hard support, but bringno guarantee of winning new follow-ers from elsewhere. Lately, SACPstalwarts have been proudly quoting arecent Markinor poll of urban blackswhich showed an extremely low rejec-tion rate of the SACP- 5% in fact. Who did you say you are?The ANC Youth League has beeninsisting that everyone over 16 get tovote (Joan of Arc's youth was oneexample it frequently invoked to illus-trate the virtues of teenagers). But theage requirement will be 18.Demographically, this hurts the libera-tion movements because the bulk ofthe black population is under 18.Agreement is not final, but it isvirtually certain that voters will needID documents to cast their ballots.Home Affairs claims to be issuing30 000 new ID documents a week. Butby the end of January approximatelytwo million potential black voters stilldid not have the documents - andthat's excluding the TB VC states.Unless things speed up markedly,Home Affairs will need 67 weeks tomake up that backlog. We can expecta flurry of concern about "deliberatedelays" in the issuing of ID docu- Popular opinion: The ANC's Achilles heel is that support does notnecessarily translate into votes12WORK IN PROGRESS

Page 18 of 58 ments, as well as confusion over whatdocumentation `citizens' of the TBVCstates will require.The alarm is warranted. But a go-slow in the issuing of voter identifica-tion is a pretty transparent sort ofelection fraud - and everyone will belooking out for it. Eventually a back-up form of identification will also getthe nod and ID-less voters will be ableto cast their ballots.It's more likely that a lack ofconfidence in the voting process itselfwill deter many voters or even influ-ence their vote. Genuine trust in thesecrecy of the ballot is perhaps thesurest armour against political thug-gery and the anticipated intimidationof domestic and farm labourers bytheir employers. Instilling that trustwill be a central task of voter educa-tion and a major duty of the media. Just sign here"The more complicated the ballotpaper," says Stack, "the more spoiltballot papers you'll have" - and thewider the NP smiles become. In theAngolan election (with its 4.5 millionregistered voters), there were half amillion spoilt ballots. Of those morethan half were left blank, so intimidat-ed and confused were voters.The ANC wants a black andwhite form to avoid the kaleidoscopicconfusions around party colours thatplagued the Namibian vote. The formwill sport the symbol of the party plusthe name and picture of its leader (ahint that both it and NP plan to 'per-sonalise; their parties around thecharisma of their respective leaders).The NP is pushing for a list of partiesbroken into two rows, with it and theANC at the top of each. The ANCrejects this, arguing for a single row,presumably in alphabetical order.(Presumably, too, the PAC is quietlykicking itself for not having nameditself the All-African Congress -AAC - back in 1959.) The rule ofthumb: the simpler the form, the morevotes count. It aln't over until ...All in all, clear heads and verve sepa-rate us from that worst-case scenario.If the Zimbabwean and Namibianelections teach us anything it's thatthe confidence of your supportersdoesn't necessarily translate into reali-ty. In Zimbabwe the `smart' moneywas on Joshua Nkomo's Zapu, but itgot side-swiped by Robert Mugabe'sZanu.In Namibia, it seemed as ifSwapo merely had to have its name onthe ballot form to win that magical67%; it got 10% less. In both settings,ethnic identification had a major handin upsetting the smoothed logic ofpundits.Whatever the Machiavellianschemes, crazy plots and desperateblunders that kicked in and held up thepast three years, we're now lockedinto a kind of structural brinkmanship.Our economy is on the verge ofbecoming terminally stunted. Thenation-building project seems inworse shape than it was three yearsago. Morbid symptoms are flyingthick and fast. We're approaching thepoint where all the king's horses andall the king's men couldn't stickthings back together again.There's no Marshall Planthat will underwrite our recon-struction, no likelihood of aneconomic boom that will propelus from the margins of the worldeconomy towards where the actionis, no "salvation from beyond".Turning our society around from theslow, messy slide it's on will requireresolve and the capacity to act. Ahung parliament will probably justpush SA over the brink.Likewise a Government ofNational Unity with the ANC andNP roughly balanced and tiedinto a five-year wedlock. "TheNP strategy is to make sure thatpower sharing is not simplybased on the logic of `You've gotthe numbers, but we've got the gunsand the civil service'," says CPS'sSteve Friedman. "They want to base iton the realities out there."If the NP gets within 10% of theANC, the balance of forces shifts radi-cally. "Then you can't just tell them totake it or leave it when they start fly-ing off the handle."There's enough at stake to makethis a pretty messy affair - before,during and after the vote. Complaintsand excuses are going to be no substi-tute for prevention and prowess.What SA cannot afford - andshould not allow - is the disaster ofthe liberation movements tripping overtheir own bootlaces. Sekunjalo!13APRIL/MAY 1993Stick yourneck outWith all these election predic-tions flying around, WIP con-ducted its own informal poll -asking a range of SouthAfricans to stick their necksout and predict the outcome ofthe first democratic election.THE PROFESSIONAL POLLSTERS Donald Simpson (Potch Universitypolitical analyst): ANC coalition: 50%plus; NP: 25%; PAC/AZAPO: maxi-mum 5%; CP: 7% (31% of the whitevote); IFP: 10% (more than 50% InNatal) Wim Booysen (describes himself as"the only true independent politicalpundANC: 55-61%; NP: 20-26%; IFP 7-11%;PAC and CP 13' eachThe higher the percentage poll thebetter for the ANC; the lower the per.centage the better for the NP Prof Tom Lodge, WitsUniversity Political StudiesDept: ANC coalition:653';NP: 20%; the rest: 15%THE POLITICOS Weizmann Hamilton,Marxist Workers' Tendency of the ANC: ANC:65%; NP: 30.1%; IFP: 4.9% Saleka Kgositsile, ANC Women'sLeague. "Mandela is more popularthan the ANC. But the ANC could winmore than 66% of the vote." Alan Hendrickse, Labour Party:ANC: 60%; NP: 30%; IFP: 10% James Motiatsi, NUM pres-ident: ANC: 60% plus; NP:27%; IFP: 15% maximum.THE NO-COMMENTS i Cunningham Ngcu- ; okana, Nactu: "It's a deli-cate topic - predicting a, - owinner could be seen as asupporting that party." John Bishop, broadcast journalist"it would show allegiance to a politi-cal party and damage my credibility asan unbiased reporter (sic)." Doctor Khumalo, Kaizer Chiefs soc-cer star: "The situation does not allowpeople to express their opinions open-ly ... someone might want to kill me ifI say who will win."THE LAST WORD Willem Kieynhans (Unisa)Shocked at the presumption that anelection would be held this year, hedeclared: "This country is In a mess. Idon't know if there will be an election- there Is so much confusion and somany stumbling blocks. We don't evenhave any proper political parties Inthis country. We still have to teachmillions of third world voters how todecode a ballot sheet. t would not riskmy reputation to make such a predic-tion."

Page 19 of 58 electionsOn the campaign trailZQZ0wZ0a The ANC campaign:A focus on the movement'sability to change societyThe ANC is tapping Bill Clinton's campaign advisors for ideas.The National Party's talking to Saatchi & Saatchi. So whatkind of election campaign will South Africans end up with?011 WEAPON HAS TWOedges: one is the spirit ofgradual reform, the otheris revolution".This, a statement often repeatedby supporters of the French socialistJaures, captures the current debateswithin the ANC and the moment manyof its cadres have long dreamt of -the eve of elections.For an organisation fac-ing its first elec-tion, the ANC hasalready shown ahigh degree of flexi-bility in meeting thedemands of modernelectioneering.It has tapped intothe recent British and USelection experiences andhad personal briefings withBritish consultants PhilipGould & Associates. Gould,advisor to the British LabourParty, also played a significantrole in Bill Clinton's successfulpresidential election campaignin the us.Gould's experiences in theBritish election - where theLabour Party lost to theConservatives - are useful for theANC, despite the vast differences inthe two scenarios.He told the movement's electionstrategists how the Conservatives hadhammered home one message in therun-up to the elections: that eventhough things were bad in Britain,they would get worse under a Labourgovernment.Gould referred to a "reservoir offear" created by the Conservatives. Inthe last week before the elections, thisreservoir was tapped - and a vicious,14WORK IN PROGRESSAndrew McDonaldscathing and often personal attack waslaunched against the Labour Party andits leadership.This served to reverse the tide ofsupport which Labour had beenrecording in all the polls - promptingpollsters to suggest that Labour hadlost purely because it was unable toassess the depth of fear for change.After the Conservative victory,virtually the entire Saatchi & Saatchicampaign - strategies, visuals and all- was shipped across the AtlanticOcean to help George Bush's flaggingfortuThnes.e central theme for the Repub-licans was precisely the same: noneed for change "`cos things are goingto get worse if you change them". Thistime the message didn't work - andBush has gone back to the bush.The election consultants' score:Gould & Associates 1, Saatchi &Saatchi 1.Into AfricaAnd so to South Africa. At themoment there's little doubt that withSaatchi & Saatchi backing them, theNational Party will be hoping to createa deep distrust of any opposition -especially the ANC.The NP seems to be sufferingfrom the delusions of power createdby the March 92 referendum, whichhas led it to think it can exist as aparty without a constituency to whomit must be accountable. The party alsotends to see the transition as a Nat-ledjourney with their opponents as juniorpartners.As one analyst puts it: "The Natshave replaced their policy - be it onnegotiations or the economy - with a

Page 20 of 58 series of faltering steps. This givesthem the space to even go back onagreements reached in the negotia-tions."So how is the NP likely to fightan election? Apart from the themesBush and Major relied on - fear ofchange - the NP will be relying on arange of electioneering strategies.But the major focus will be onwhat is called `The List'. Because theelections will be run on a proportionalrepresentative system, each party willdraw up a list of candidates. It will beable to send to parliament the top per-centage of its candidates in relation tothe percentage support it obtains.The NP sees the list as an excel-lent propaganda piece and has giventhe task of overseeing the process ofdrawing it up to its National Infor-mation and Management Committee(NIMC). The NP intends finalising itslist by May this year. NIMC chairDawie de Villiers has called for thelist to reflect people from all the vot-ing districts and especially to includewomen, blacks and people with spe-cial talents.And the ANC?The ANC will go into the electionleading an Electoral Front and hasadopted a complex democratic processof drawing up its `list'.In the meantime ANC strategistshave been emphasising that in anyelectioneering the C in ANC will haveto stand for `Competence and Confi-dence in bringing about Change'. Thismeans an emphasis on these qualities,rather than harping on apartheid's ~or-rors.The movement's strategists agreethat the ANC will not be able to dwellon the majority's struggle againstapartheid as the cornerstone of itscampaign - instead its ability tochange society will be of criticalimportance.The Chilean ref t faced a similardilemma two yeaago when it wasadvised that it could not win the refer-endum by campaigning on Pinochet'srecord of assassinations and missingpersons. Instead, economic modemi-sation was identified as the key issue.This means an emphasis on aprogramme of `structural reform' asopposed to liberal reform pro-grammes. The Reconstruction Accordproposed by Cosatu is being supportedas the basis on which such a structuralreform programme could be carriedout. It will also form a significant partof the ANC's election platform (seeseparate article on page 20).Conventional wisdom withinANC circles has it that big businesswill prefer a narrow ANC victorywhich would give the political processnew legitimacy, thus attracting newinvestment - but be unable to bringabout fundamental change.The election machineryThe key battle within the ANC hasbeen the development of electionsstructures. Whereas the Nats havebeen able to hand all electoralpreparatory tasks to the NIMC, theANC's Elections PlanningCommission continues to battle for theorganisation's resources and structuresto be placed under a single commandfor election purposes."The tension between being anational liberatory movement and apolitical party continues to bedevil theANC," said a senior member of theorganisation. At the centre of theANC's preparations is a highlydynamic group working under PopoMolefe and drawn almost exclusivelyfrom the ranks of the MDM.This group's perspectives ofshaping the organisation into a power-ful modem party machine is held backby many of the fiefdoms created inexile or more recently.Perhaps the organisation's majorweakness, even during its under-ground period, has been its inability todraw its different strengths into a sin-gle focus.In the past the ANC has hadproblems getting its military sectionsto work with its political sections.Now the problem is to get its differentdepartments working together.Contrast this with the NP, whoseexecutive director, Olaus van Zyl, isin charge of all activities which fallunder the NIMC. The NIMC has beenhanded the entire elections brief,including fund-raising and aspectsrelating to negotiations. a/ 'Trying to preventa dirty warEveryone seems to know atleast one election fraud story.Cemeteries being used to recruitvoters. Boxes stuffed with ballotforms. Or the Mexican villagewhere residents performed theircivic duties so well that over600 votes were cast - eventhough the total population wasjust 125.But the emergence of `newdemocracies' has seen electionfraud elevated to an art form -something South African politi-cal organisations will have tobear in mind in the comingmonths.Wits University researcherCraig Charney has identified thefollowing as key factors in theelection process: publicity and documentation multi-party control judicial reviewi international monitoring.Charney has a shopping listof election dangers and solu-tions. A key concern, he says, isthe voters roll, which can easilybe manipulated. If a rollbecomes a requirement in SouthAfrica's first democratic Iec-tion, he argues, then thereshould be numerous voter regis-trations bureaux - includingmobile ones. Also vital are clearprocedures for challenging unjus-tified inclusions or exclusions.To avoid intimidation hesuggests a strong publicity cam-paign around the fact that thevote is secret. Allowancesshould also be made for postpon-ing elections in areas whereintimidation/violence is severe.He makes several proposalson how to counter dirty tricks onelection day Itself. These rangefrom multi-party monitoring ofevery stage of the vote to mark-ing voters' hands with indelibleInk after voting.The vote-counting stage scritical, and Charney's sugges-tions here include publishing theresults of every polling station,not just the whole constituency.Discrepancies in counting shouldbe grounds for cancelling theresults if they could affect theoutcome.15APRIL/MAY 1993

Page 21 of 58 electionsPinning thetail on thedonkeyExperts can't get the weather right, so what chance do theyhave with election polls? HEIN MARAIS forecasts overcastconditions on election day ...OLLSTERS HAVE BECOME THEunsung seers of our age -announcing the discoveryamong voters of hidden anxieties,alarming trends, fear, loathing and(too often) sheer immovable apathy.But in a world where experts stillcan't accurately predict the weatherthree days in a row, just how reliableare opinion polls? And in a countrydizzy with rumours, do we need them?Opinion polling as we know itbegan in 1935 when former journalismlecturer George Gallup began a seriesof week-by-week national polls in theUS which continue to this day. "Factfinding in the realm of opinion," washow he described the enterprise.The nuts and bolts of polling hadbeen forged by a crisis in capitalism adecade earlier: in the 1920s producershad found themselves stuck withexcess productive capacities andshrinking markets. They needed touncover new markets and establishconsumer appeal in a hurry to stay inbusiness. Market research became allthe rage and provided the methodolo-gy that public opinion polls woulddraw on.Today, polls have become theweapon of choice for political parties- for if promises are made to be bro-ken, then opinions are made to bechanged. And polls straddle that pro-cess by crunching the numbers, mea-suring the opinions, and making"scientific" deductions that enablepoliticians to set about consolidatingor changing voters' opinions.Check my statsThey emerged in SA politics only inthe late 1980s but became a virtual fadafter February 1990, with a handful ofpolling firms (Human SciencesResearch Council, Markinor, ResearchSurveys) leading the way.Because polling is a business(almost R2 000-million worth in theUK last year), you would expect itspractitioners to puff their chests whenquizzed about accuracy. In the "engineroom" of Research Surveys in CapeTown you're ushered through rows ofwhirring computers, past mounds ofprintouts towards research consultantJan Hofmeyer who will eventually tellyou, with a beguiling smile: "No mat-ter what you do to avoid the hiccupsand snags, polls in SA cannot be asreliable as in a sophisticated Westerncountry."Days later, after reciting the pre-16WORK IN PROGRESScautions taken to ensure accuracy,another pollster leans forward, almostwhispering: "I'd be very wary of thosenumbers."The precautions seem formidable.Questions are designed and asked insequences aimed to gain the trust ofthe respondent (the basic principleshaving been perfected with sex sur-veys in the US). The sample - the1 000 or so people being interviewed- is assembled with statistical meth-ods to ensure it is representative.Interviewers are selected, trainedand deployed in ways least likely toalienate respondents. In some town-ships, official permission is soughtfrom civics. Pilot surveys are done todetect pitfalls beforehand. Control sur-veys are done afterwards to dou-blecheck data. And so on.Amusing rules of thumb emerge."You don't drive into a township in anice white car - unless you to want tobe mistaken for a state official," saysDe Wet Schutte, an HSRC pollster.Black communities are oftenblitzed: interviewers try to drop in, filltheir quota of interviews and leavebefore word gets around. In CapeTown, the HSRC says it finds conser-vative whites most responsive to well-

Page 22 of 58 X marks the spot: None really knows what's going to happen whenvoters get into the boothdressed coloured men: "They don'tbother giving him a hard time becausethey assu'me the `boss' sent him andhe doesnt really know what's goingon," explains Schutte. Another pollingfirm finds elderly black women themost effective interviewers in blackcommunities: "They override a wholebunch of suspicions and resistance inone go."The surprising thing about pollsis that they seldom go wrong becausetoo few people are interviewed. Asample of a few thousand can accu-rately reflect the opinions of a hundredmillion or more people. Yet you caninterview half the country's popula-tion and still end up with a disastrous-ly wrong poll!Counting beansThe secret to accuracy is what thebean counters call representativeness,which is determined by two major fac-tors: randomness and distributionwidth. Randomness means simply thateach person in the target communitymust have an equal chance of beinginterviewed; the interviewees (thesample group) must be chosen abso-lutely at random. Distribution width means that thesample group must reflect in correctproportion the various subgroups inthat community. (If women aged 18 to21 years constitute one third of peoplein the area being polled, they shouldbe one third of the sample group andso on.)In SA, that's the easy part ofpolling: getting the basic methodologyright. "There are other problems," cau-tions Louise Stack, a researcher withthe Centre for Policy Studies (CPS)."It's nothing deliberate, nothing con-spiratorial," she says, but a catalogueof hitches plague the pollster - and thepoll reader. "All the limitations," saysthe HSRC's Johann Mouton, "are somuch more pronounced in SA." Headvises that poll results be interpreted"cautiously - some more so than oth-ers, though".Markinor polls urban and ruralwhites (by telephone), only urbanblacks (face-to-face) and of them itreaches squatters but not hostels. It has17APRIL/MAY 1993not administered public opinion pollsto coloureds and Indians. ResearchSurveys' Omnicheck poll reflects theopinions of rural and urban dwellers,though rural areas are polled onlytwice a year.HRSC polls are "on the wholeconfined to SA outside the TVBCstates", says Mouton, which "makesthe forecast even more risky. Lately,HSRC has been polling in Venda andCiskei - but not Transkei andBophuthatswana, which knocks 2.6million voters out of the equation (1.6million of them Xhosas, among whomthe ANC polls about 80% supportelsewhere).Rural SA is another twilightzone. Mouton says HSRC polls are "toa large degree" representative of ruralareas. The problem, as a ResearchSurveys pollster points out, is that"there is rural and there is rural". TheHSRC follows the census definitionwhich means that Esikhawini town-ship outside Empangeni is regarded as"rural", just like a "deep rural" settle-ment in northern Natal.The bias against rural publicopinion polling is financial: it's simplytoo expensive.The irony is that the most com-prehensive rural polling - marketresearch, actually - is done by corpo-rations. A major soft drink manufac-turer or brewery knows what the brandsentiments of residents in Jane Furseor Nongoma or lpopeng are. But theiropinions about political mattersremain unexplored by pollsters.Nommer assebllefThen there is the telephone poll. Until18 months ago, the HSRC was stillpolling blacks in this way, whichmeant it was gauging the opinions of avery narrow segment of people.Nowadays it does face-to-face inter-views, making its last five surveys(according to Mouton) "as representa-tive as you can come".And, lest we forget, there are theidiosyncracies that make SA, well,SA. "How accurate can you get whenthis sort of thing happens?" asksHofmeyer, wistfully. "In a certainhomeland, police arrest your field-workers, accuse them of recruiting forthe ANC and toss them out. Or thecivic in a Vaal township stops you,takes you to an impromptu civic meet-ing where the questionnaire is scruti-

Page 23 of 58 Double jeopardy: Howpopular is the IFP, really?Levels of IFP support have been a bone of contention for years. Until late 1991pollsters were finding Mangosuthu Buthelezi's party unable to hoist its supportinto double figures. In 1992, however, the Human Sciences Research Council(HSRC) began detecting what appeared to be a significant swell of support forInkatha.In the October 1992 HSRC poll, IFP national support peaked at 11%, withblack support rising to 15%. Support n rural Natal went as high as "45-50%",HSRC general manager of information, Dr lohann Mouton, told WIP.What s bafflng is that HSRC polls are the only ones spotting this'groundswell'. Research Surveys, for example, finds IFP support "nationwide at 3%- it's never gone higher," according to research consultant Jan Hofmeyer. "Thehighest we've seen it go Is 15% in rural Natal."So what's going on? Some numbers sleuthing might help. The DevelopmentBank of SA (DBSA) pegs the total number of voters in SA (including the TVBCstates) at 21 million, 14.4 million of them black. (Research Survey's Neil Higgswarns that the 1991 census figures are "fraught with hazard"; they still find, forexample, less than 1 million residents n Soweto!) According to the DBSA, thereare 3.8 million Zulu voters and 3.5 million Xhosas. This leaves 7.1 million otherblack voters.The HSRC's October 1992 poll found 0.4% of potential Xhosa voters and anaverage 0.8% of other black voters (excluding Zulus) saying they would vote farthe IFP. Only 37% of Zulus chose the IF P. Using the DBSA voter figures, that trans.la tes into 1.4 million Zulus. Likewise, one gets 15 000 Xhosas and 60 000 otherblacks who might be regarded as likely IFP voters -- a total of 1.48 million or10.2l of the 14.4 million black voters. Yet the HSRC claims 15% of blackssupport the IFP - one third more than its figures seem to add up to.But here's the rub. The HSRC doesn't poll Bophuthatswana andthe Transke where there are about 2.6 million black voters, accord-I, to the DBSA - none of them Zulus. So, with almost 20% ofblack voters excluded from the HSRC calculations (among whomResearch Surveys finds IFP support averaging well under 1%), theIFP share of black support becomes ntlated.Research Surveys' Jan Hofmeyer argues that t' s "misleading"not to estimate political support in those territories. "There'senough indication of what you'll find if you went there, namely veryhigh ANC support."Likewise, the October poll found 11% national support for the IFP among vot-ers of all race groups - which translates into 2.3 million 'votes', using the DBSAfigures. The HSRC found 3.4% whites (133 000 'votes'), and less than 1%coloureds (generously 10 000) and Asians (5 000) supporting the party. Add tothose 148 000 'votes' the 1.48 million black 'votes' calculated above and the IFPscores 1.63 million 'votes', or 7.8% nationwide support. "To be honest," an HSRCsource told WIP, "when I look at the figures, the IFP comes out closer to 7%nationally." But even 7% s way more than the roughly 3% IFP support measured inother polls...Like many pollsters, political sociologist Mark Orkin s puuled by the levelsof I FP support cited by the HSRC. "Through 1991, the HSRC measured the samelevels of Buthelez and IFP support nationally as everyone else," he says. Whatintrigues Orkin is that the jump in HSRC-measured IFP support seemed to coincidewith researcher Lawrence Sehlemmer taking over as general maagar of the socialdynamics section at the Council. Sehlemmer was formerly secretary of theButhelezi Commission and director of the Inkatha Institute. "In February 1992,Sehlemmer said his 'fingertip feeling- his words - was that Inkatha would prob-ably command around 15% support nationally," Orkin recalls, Miraculously, eversince then the HSRC has found double figure support for the ,FP.'Orkin observes that the council is using generous estimates of how manyZulus live in rural Natal (the FP's biggest support base). The calculations andsample weighting of its February 1992 poll assumed that rural Zulus made up 17%of all black voters. Eight months later, HSRC computations were assuming thatrural Zulus constituted 23% of black voters. They had increased by 6% the onlysegment of voters among whom the IFP has appreciable support - which 'pushed'IFP support among blacks up by at (east 2%.A trend other pollsters are noticing is that the IFP is experiencing a con-r,sttuency shift. "The IFP has a lot more support among whites than among urbanblacks;" says Woessner, whose latest figures show 4% whites and 2.4% urbanblacks saying they'd vote IFP. Lately Hofmeyr has also found whites keener on theIFP than on the Democratic Party. "Whites want blacks in power that they thinkthey can trust - they think Buthelez and the IFP fit that bill," is how he reads thetrend. - Hein Morals (Despite several requests by phone and fax, Prof Sehlemmer did wt grant WIPan interview)18WORK IN PROGRESSnised and you're told: `OK, but we'lltell you who to interview.' Or - andthis happens often - fieldworkers areheld up at gunpoint and harassed,mostly by legal authorities of anarea."Any poll has a built-in mysterysection: respondents who refuse toanswer, or opt for the `don't know' or`uncertain' categories. UK pollstersgenerally find 3% of respondentsrefusing to disclose their voting inten-tions. Markinor is finding about 15%`don't knows' and 'refusals'.Likewise, the HSRC's recent polls.Lately, Research Surveys is finding adramatic increase - up from 13% toabout 25%.In Durban, 50% of black menand 60% of women declined to revealtheir political sympathies in aFebruary poll. "In SA, where politicalopinions can become a matter of lifeor death, these become very signifrcant ," Hofmeyer believes. Fearand intimidation seem to bewarping dramatically the politi-cal information reflected bypolls.Festooned with footnotesThe bottomline - as most pollstersannounce before you've even flippedopen your notepad - is that pollscome festooned with footnotes. In SA,they cannot pinpoint that so-and-sohas 40% support. In polling jargon:"We do not regard a single percentagepoint as having absolute value."What they can do is determinetrends, trace the ebb and flow of polit-ical sensibilities. "Within certainparameters you can make certaindeductions," says Louise Stack of theCentre for Policy Studies. But, asMouton cautions, "in the socio-politi-cal environment we live in, we mustbe even more cautious about how weinterpret them".Even where polls have becomeinstitutions, they remain dogged bycontroversy. The loudest critics tendto be politicians whom the polls showto be running behind. And sometimesthey're right. In. last year's Britishelections, all the major polls showedthe Labour Party ahead right up tovoting time. Of course, historyignored the polls and John Majorstayed in 10 Downing Street.So bruised was the collectivepride of British pollsters that they

Page 24 of 58 commissioned a special inquiry intowhy the numbers came out wrong by8.5%. Investigators rummagedthrough the data and emerged withexplanations for a 5% error. Some vot-ers had deregistered because of polltax (mostly Labour), others hadrefused to disclose their intention (andvoted Conservative), and othersswitched their vote in the final daysafter having had memories of the lastLabour government rekindled byConservative Party propaganda.In SA, the margin of error proba-bly will be much greater; already ithovers around 10%, compared to theinternationally accepted 3-5% bywhich polls under- or over-estimatesupport. This would compoundStack's fear that, in the run-up to elec-tions, polls could have very powerfuleffects, especially if they are reportedinaccurately."Polls tend to affect how youthink other people feel or might vote,and this can end up affecting howyou'll vote." This is known as the`bandwagon effect' - the idea thatsome people will switch their vote justto support a winner. But some i'spollsters dispute the thesis. "If therewere a `bandwagon effect'," says onecritic, "polls would always underpre-dict the margin of victory" - whichthey don't.The `band-wagon effect' andassumptions aboutthe immaturity ofthe electorate arewhy, in SA, opin-ion polls cannot bepublicised in thelast six weeksbefore a vote. It'sthen that the"politically imma-ture, the draadsit-ters are likely to beinfluenced", saysthe HSRC's DeWet Schutte. Stackagrees: "Right nowpeople need thetime to think for~themselves and I..decide what theywant to do." Onthe other hand, no-one pretends any-more that electionssomehow measure ..Ethe `virginal' political choices of citi-zens, untouched by the heaving come-ons of politicians and media. Electionshave become spectacular odes to theart of persuasion, and polls form anintegral part of the spectacle.Given the novelty and uneven-ness of opinion polling in SA - not tomention the complex realities pollsterstry to convert into data - one expectscontroversy. Still, as the HSRC'sSchutte reminds, polls are at themoment our "only indication of wherepolitical support lies".As we waddle towards our firstnon-racial democratic vote, politicianswill be scrutinising poll results -much as their forerunners inspectedthe lie of the bones or the entrails ofsmall farm animals for clues abouttheir futures.Already polls seem to haveundergirded the grandstanding ofButhelezi and his IFP (see box). Theyhave hushed the NP's bluster aboutwinning the vote. They might alsohave smoothed the ANC's electionstrategy with realism. What thatyields, come election day, we will see.For now though, South Africans atleast have a glimpse, smudgy as it is,of compatriots' political sensibilities.It certainly won't bring us closertogether. But it might give fair warn-ing of some surprises ahead. -19APRIL/MAY 1993Levelling thepollsters'playing fieldThere are lies, damned lies,statistics and opinion polls,Benjamin Disraeli might havesaid, had he lived into the elec-tronic age.Opinion polls come in allshapes and sizes. like mputa-tions, they can lead to foolishover- and underestimations. Ukestatistics, they can be deployedcreatively to encourage certainperceptions.Sure enough, by the late1960s political polling and Itsreporting in the US had attract-ed furious criticism. Pollstersanswered with a call for `minimaldisclosure' standards in newsreleases that publicise pollresults. These included: the identity of who sponsoredthe survey the exact questions asked a definition of the populationsampled the size of the sample what the margin of error Is whether Interviewing wasdone face-to-face, by tele-phone, etc when the Interviews wheredone in relation to relevantevents.In SA, where the politicalopinions of most citizens remainless than transparent (anduntested in the voting booth),political polls might take onexaggerated importance in themonths ahead.A recent poll indicated thatmore than 80% of white votersdidn't want an interim govern-ment. Blaring headlines and anx-lous comments followed. But,says CPS researcher laulseStack: "If you look at the ques-tion that was asked, you find thewording emotional and strong -In fact, you'd have to be crazy tohave answered `Yes'."Her advice is simple.Pollsters and reporters owe It tovoters to pass on polling infor-mation in as demystified andaccurate a form as possible.`Minimal disclosure' standardsmight be a good start.- Heirs Marals

Page 25 of 58 Vote up!Vote up!Voter education is a new`growth industry' in South Africa.At least 30 local organisationshave already launched voter edu-cation programmes, while a hostof international agencies arealso interested in Investing in`democracy'.But there is still much con-fusion- And until electoral proce-dures have been negotiated andan electoral act passed, basicquestions cannot be answered,such as: what kind of identity docu-ments people need to vote what ballot papers will looklike and what mark people will have tomake on ballot papers.Last year, the IndependentForum for Electoral Educatorswas set up to coordinate votereducation. According to MatlaTrust's Barry Gilder, all the majorplayers in voter education arepart of the forum. Theseinclude the Trust, theSA Council of Church-es, SA CatholicBishops' Con-ference, Idasa andthe Centre forDevelopmentStudies/ NationpiDemocratic Institute'sProject Vote.A fulltime administrator hasbeen appointed to coordinatethe forum, which meets approxi-mately every six weeks. Fourcommissions - dealing withtraining, media, election moni-toring and formulating submis-sions to an independentelectoral commission - meetmore regularly.Project Vote and MatiaTrust are the two biggest play-ers in the field at present.Project Vote has already used a$,-million grant from the USAgency for InternationalDevelopment (USAID) to developvoter education kits. Theseinclude mock ballot boxes, vot-ing booths and a training manu-al. The kit urges voter trainersto link voting to better educa-tion, jobs, housing and peace.Gilder says Matla Trustneeds R30-million to implementits 'education for democracy"programme, which includesteaching people what conceptslike accountability and democra-cy mean.- Kerry CullinanReconstruction pacts:no blank chequesfor the ANCACTS BETWEEN PARTIES WILLform a vital part of any electioncampaign - and for the ANC,support from the trade union move-ment is going to be vital.Cosatu's support for the ANCwill not, however, come in the form ofa blank cheque; the trade union fed-eration is pushing for a `recon-struction accord' which will tieany future government in tomaking far-reaching changesto the SA economy.Although the reconstruc-tion accord would form part ofthe ANC's manifesto, it is morethan just an `election deal' and has alife beyond the first democratic poll.Cosatu sees it as a frameworkwithin which organisations of the poorand working people will themselvesreconstruct the economy in the future.It describes the accord as an "instru-ment with which we intend to harnessand redirect resources to meet theneeds of broader society - while atthe same time empowering grassrootsorganisations to direct their future anddestiny".Cosatu's idea is that the recon-struction programme should be seen inthree parts: an election platform outlining thebroad areas around which the electioncampaign is based. It would be a briefdocument covering constitutional,social and economic areas. It wouldform the basis of an ANC electionplatform, and Cosatu's support for theANC in the election would be condi-tional on the ANC committing itself tothe programme. It would be a signeddocument, binding on all parties.20WORK IN PROGRESSelections a reconstruction accord - adetailed document covering the sameareas as the election platform -which will emerge after wide consul-tation and will probably only befinalised after the elections. a programme which outlines howand when those agreements in theaccord will be implemented; what rolethe civics, trade unions, youth etc willplay; what constraints a new demo-cratic state might face and how to dealwith these from the point of view ofworkers and the poor.The programme would be specif-ically directed at practical steps to`reconstruct the economy' and wouldembrace - as far as possible - awide layer of youth, civic, religious,small business, women and culturalorganisations. Already Cosatu has haddiscussions with the ANC, SACP,civics, students, youth and some reli-gious organisations on the accord.All these organisations accept theidea of the accord in principle - forexample, it will be central to theSACP's April ' strategising confer-ence". When the accord is eventuallysigned, it will not be a Cosatu docu-ment, or even an alliance document,but an accord of all organisations whosupport it.The ANC has a two-prongedapproach to the accord. It envisagestaking the first accord - signed withCosatu and other anti-apartheid organ-isations - and using it as a basis fornegotiating another accord withorganisations and interests (especiallybig business) outside the ranks of themass democratic movement. rJ- WIP correspondent

Page 26 of 58 Theworld'smostpowerfultradeunionistThe InternationalConfederation of FreeTrade Unions (ICFTU)recently sent itslargest delegation everto South Africa toinvestigate violence.KERRY CULLINANspoke to ICFTUgeneral secretaryENZO FRISOBeing face to face with the mostpowerful union leader in theworld is quite a daunting expe-rience. Yet Enzo Friso is not an intimi-dating man - disciplined is a betterdescription: "I don't smoke or drink. Iwatch what I eat, and I do exercisealmost every day."Friso is a "citizen of the world".Born 65 years ago in Padua, Italy, hehas not lived in his home country forover 20 years. "I was divorced inMexico, I remarried in Indonesia. Myson was born in London. My wife isLebanese and we speak to one anotherin French." Today Friso is based at theICFTU's headquarters in Brussels, buttravels widely. "But don't ask mewhat a country is like," he says rueful-ly. "What I can tell you about is air-ports, hotels and conference centres."Friso started off in the socialist-aligned Italian federation, the CGIL.In 1950, he became a founder memberof a breakaway federation, the socialdemocratic CISL. He first startedworking for the ICFTU in 1962, andhas risen steadily through the ranks.After being posted to various coun-tries, particularly those in LatinAmerica, Friso was appointed assis-tant secretary of the confederation in1984. Last year, he was elected gener-al secretary.While he respects the views ofSouth African trade unionists who aresceptical of the ICFTU, he is angeredby suggestions that the ICFTU is an"imperialist organisation"."I have spent 10 years in LatinAmerica fighting the worst, mostexploitative regimes. People must nottell me I am the general secretary of animperialist organisation!"The imperialist label comes fromthe fact that the anti-communistAmerican trade union federation, theAFL-CIO, is one of the ICFTU'sbiggest members. But Friso is quick topoint out that the AFL-CIO left theICFTU in 1969, saying the organisa-tion was "too left". It only rejoined in1982.21APRIL/MAY 1993"In terms of members, theNordic, German and British TradeUnion Council (TUC) combined out-number the AFL-CIO, so it is not cor-rect to say the AFL-CIO dominates theICFTU," says the confederation'sinformation officer, Luc Demaret.Fri.iso adds that perceptions aboutthe ICFTU are influenced by "whichside you were on" during the cold wardays when there were two powerfulworld confederations, the ICFTU andthe communist World Federation ofTrade Unions (WFTU). The SACongress of Trade Unions (Sactu) wasclose to the WFTU, and this has influ-enced many South Africa trade unions.Today the WFTU is a mere shell,with a handful of members from coun-tries such as Cuba, North Korea andRomania. In contrast, the ICFTU has164 affiliates from 117 countries, rep-resenting 113-million workers.The ICFTU is obviously keen towoo Cosatu into its ranks, as Cosatu isthe strongest union federation inAfrica. Cosatu will decide on ICFTUmembership at its next congress, but itappears many of its national officebearers are more amenable to theICFTU than before.North-South solidarityThe ICFTU has been severely affectedby the economic recession and has lostmany members through retrench-ments. In addition, "we are up againstmulti-nationals creating 'free zones'throughout the world. And by this theymean union-free zones. It is very diffi-cult to organise these workers, whoare so poor that they are [materially]better off now that they are beingexploited by foreigners," says Friso.A strong principle of ICFTU poli-cy is North-South solidarity. Last year,the confederation called for a "globalsolidarity pact"."This simply means if industri-alised countries want to tackle theproblem of unemployment in theirown country, they must also address itin developing countries," explains

Page 27 of 58 Friso. "But only God knows how diffi-cult it is to have a global approachwith the rise of Nazism, fascism,racism, nationalism."The legacy of Thatcherism hasmeant that the rich get richer and thepoor get poorer "both within andbetween countries". Conservativeshave also "exploited the collapse ofcommunism as a victory of the marketsystem". But the west is far fromhealthy."During the past five years,industrialised countries have lost $70-billion in exports per year at a cost of2 700-million jobs a year.Industrialised countries can increaseinternal demand for their products, butnot enough," says Friso."No government has a solution toits economic crisis [as it is a world cri-sis]. As a result, all ruling parties arelosing credibility as, no matter whattheir ideology, they cannot solve theireconomic problems in isolation."But politicians do not seem to beable to see this. "The quality of politi-cians is not the same as ten or 20 yearsago, when we had statesmen whocould tell people the truth without los-ing face. Today we have apparatchikswho are only concerned with winningthe next election."Friso believes the trade unionmovement is a vital part of any plan toimprove the economy: "I firmlybelieve that the sense of solidarityachieved by linking workers aroundthe world means that the trade unioncould become a mostimportant instrument ineconomic recovery."He points out that"never before have wereceived so many applica-tions for membership fromdeveloping countries".Last year, 40 federationapplied to join the confed-eration.But Friso is realisticabout the limitations oftrade unions in developingcountries, especially inAfrica, and warns againstthe really poor beingignored."Trade unionism inAfrica was exported fromFrance and Britain duringIn Africa, wageearners are aminority, and notnecessarily thepoorest. The realproletariat livesin the rural areascolonialism. In Britain, wage earnersare the majority of the population andhave an important political role toplay. In Africa, wage earners are aminority, and not necessarily the poor-est. The real proletariat lives in therural areas."African trade unionsWhile many African national centresare now part of the ICFTU, "in toomany countries, unions are still con-trolled by the uni-party system", saysFriso.Malawi is one example. SinceMalawian trade unionist ChakufwaChihana was sentenced to two years'hard labour late last year after beingconvicted of `sedition', the ICFTU hasmounted a campaign to stop aid to thecountry until it recognises human andtrade union rights."There are some difficulties onthis issue with the World Bank andIMF, but we have succeeding in per-suading the EEC in particular that it is Enzo Friso (centre) and other ICFTU delegates meetthe ANC's Nelson Mandelaa waste of money to assist countrieswhere there is no democracy or con-trol. Otherwise you are merely helpingthe family of the head of state withtaxpayers' money. Some of these so-called heads of states have moremoney in their bank accounts thantheir country's external debt. This wasthe case with Marcos in thePhilippines, and with Mobutu inZaire."The ICFTU has also been tryingto persuade the IMF to abandon itsStructural Adjustment Programmes(SAPs) in Africa, which countrieshave to undertake in order to qualifyfor loans."We are absolutely against theIMF's policies of structural adjustmentprogrammes as they do not take intoaccount the social dimension.[Democratising a society] has to beapproached very carefully. Democracyis not elections. Free elections are thestarting point. But the army and thebureacracy also have to be democra-tised."A little progress has been made inZambia. "We held a meeting on theSAP and invited the IMF and theWorld Bank. They started to under-stand our viewpoint. They agreed thattrade unions have the right to be con-sulted. This does not mean they willlisten, but for the first time there wasdialogue."Despite his cynicism about politi-cians, Friso is full of praise for ANCpresident Nelson Mandela. "I was veryimpressed. 1 have seldomseen someone so serene andrealistic in a difficult situa-tion. He also tries to under-stand the problems of thewhite minority. And he isable to control the youngpeople ... although I don'tknow for how long."Friso's last words areon South Africa: "I reallytrust human beings, evenhere. The majority ofwhites are ignorant. If theyvisited hostels, they wouldbe really ashamed to bewhite."South Africans havea great chance to solve theirproblems. They shouldn'tmiss it if they want to avoid22WORK IN PROGRESS

Page 28 of 58 genderCampus rape:Catch 22 for womenEnough is enough, say university students who fall victim to sexual harassmentand rape. And a combination of educational workshops and guerilla tactics is ensuringthey get their message across loud and clearThe harassment of female stu-dents is becoming a major issueon university campuses aroundthe country, with increasing numbersof students taking a stand - particu-larly against campus rapists."Sexual harassment and rapehave become more visible at our uni-versity," says Rhoda Kadalie, recent-ly-appointed gender co-ordinator atthe University of the Western Cape."But at the same time we are findingincreasing numbers of women are tak-ing action against the perpetrators.Yet, she adds, the more the per-petrators are confronted, the more theytry to intimidate the women."But women are refusing to beintimidated."Diana EH RussellOne example of this was a picket-ed organised at UWC last year after amale student - expelled from a resi-dence after being accused of attemptedrape - was spotted back at the resi-dence.The male student had a particu-larly violent record: he had tried torape a female student, then kicked herand beat her on the head with a metaldustbin lid. She was saved by otherstudents, but still had to be hospi-talised and treated for a broken ankle,among other things.The attack, and the female stu-dents' protests, led to even morewomen being threatened. "We arewatching each of you, especially at23APRIL/MAY 1993night," they were told. "If you keeptrying to get (the rapist) off the cam-pus, we'll get you!"Some male students even threat-ened to kill some of the women. Butthe women were undaunted. They pro-ceeded to testify against the perpetra-tor at his trial and continued todemand his removal from the campus.Change in attitudesThe change in women's attitudes,according to Kadalie, is due to trainingworkshops on sexual harassment andviolence against women organised byherself and other concerned womenand men on campus, as well as educa-tional programmes in the residencesand self-defence demonstrations for

Page 29 of 58 Lulu Diba's storyLulu Diba, a 31-year-old single mother of two, has arelatively well-paid job in one of the `homelands', whereshe also resides. This is her storywas raped in 1980 in my first year as a social work student at theUniversity of Zululand. A third year student started making advancestoward me soon after I arrived at the university. He said he wanted tohave an affair with me. I told him politely that I was new at the univer-sity and still exploring things. I said I didn't love him and that I had aboyfriend back home - which was true. Although I turned him down, Itook him to be my friend.Early in my first year the student association organised a Saturdaynight outing to the beach for the social work students. I don't usuallydrink much, but I became quite drunk with the mixture of beer and wineI drank on that occasion. I was talking with my girlfriend when thisthird year student called my name through the window, telling me hewould like to speak to me outside.Because I was drunk, it's hard to remember exactly what hap-pened after that - but I must have gone outside, where he raped me. Iremember fighting and screaming, and running away. The denim pants Iwas wearing were removed, so I was half naked when 1 ran away. Threefriends of his ran after me and one of them slapped me. After a whilemy girlfriend went outside to look for me. She saw the men runningafter me so she shouted and swore at them. They told her they weretrying to dress me.My girlfriend then helped me to get dressed, though we couldn'tfind my shoes. I was so exhausted when we got into the bus that Islept all the way back to school. Later, when 1 realised I had beenraped, I cried. Then I went to report what had happened to the warden,who encouraged me to report it to the police.Rude and carelessI was taken to the charge office on Monday to report the rape. Thepolice took a statement from me, then referred me to the district sur-geon. He was an Afrikaner who made matters worse by being very rudein the way he asked me questions when he examined me. He said hewas sick and tired of students being so careless. He said we asked tobe raped and that we were not supposed to walk alone at night. Healso caused me a lot of pain when he examined me. Because It wasalready two days after the rape, he could not find any semen or otherevidence, so he was annoyed that I had not come to him sooner.The police sergeant was even worse. He told me he would also liketo have "a taste". "I will come to your room," he said. "I will be gentlewith you". I cried because I was so surprised and upset by his sayingthese things. He was a black man of about my age, so I expected sym-pathy from him.On Tuesday the Student Association met to discuss what had hap-pened. The rapist was not there, but the other three guys who hadchased me were. Two of them were my classmates and the other wasIn his third year, as was the rapist. The three of them admitted thattheir friend had raped me, but they said they were Innocent and had notharmed me. They said they had just been trying to dress me, since Iwas half naked. They were asked why, in that case, one of them hadslapped me. The Student Association members were very angry withthe three men and wanted to beat them up. They told them that humanbeings - particularly people training to be social workers - are notsupposed to be involved in such behaviour, and that it is important tocare for fellow human beings.I told the warden I did not want to pursue matters with the policebecause 1 wanted to avoid the questioning in court as well as publicity24WORK IN PROGRESSwomen. These training sessions,women's greater activism, and public-ity about sexual assault at other cam-puses, have resulted in an increasinglyenlightened and supportive stancefrom the UWC administration.An action by women at UCT in1989 also resulted in the setting ofmechanisms to deal with sexualharassment on that campus. In theUCT case, some women (presumably)distributed an anonymous leaflet thatdeclared: "RAPISTS BEWARE!!!.....THE EYE OF CASTRATION ISWATCHING YOU." Their warningwas addressed to four alleged studentrapists whom they named, as well asto all the other rapists at UCT. Theleaflet writers also castigated theadministration for their "delaying tac-tics" in handling a reported rape. Itended with a picture of a pair of openscissors superimposed on a man'sgenitals.Results of actionAfter the furore had died down, thissimple but radical action led to anunprecedented period of discussion onthe campus about sexual harassment,as well as administration-sponsoredstudies of the problem, culminating inthe release of a Final Report on sexualharassment at UCT in October 1991,and new policies to handle cases ofsexual harassment on campus. Thisreport has, in turn, stimulated greaterawareness and reforms on some otherSouth African campuses. Morerecently, UCT's Deputy Vice-Chancellor Dr Mamphela Ramphelehas initiated numerous national work-shops on sexual harassment and vio-lence against women at universities.The story told on these pages byLulu Diba (not her real name) con-veys what it can be like for sexualassault survivors on campuses wherethere is still a punitive and victim-blaming approach to this problem [seeboxed story]. It also shows how suchsexist attitudes and treatment com-pounds the original trauma of the rapeitself. And, because Diba's experienceoccurred in 1980, her story revealshow long the effects of rape can per-sist-To report or not to report, that isthe question! As Diba's story shows,both reporting and not reporting can

Page 30 of 58 Education: UCT's Dr MamphelaRamphele has organisedworkshops on harassmentbe hazardous for survivors. Diba isone of the tiny minority of rape sur-vivors to report her experience to thepolice and to the university authori-ties. Her experience also sheds lighton why rape is so seldom reported.Although some people reacted toDiba's disclosure of rape in a support-ive way, most responded negatively- sometimes viciously so. Somebelittled the seriousness of the rape,most blamed her for it, and almost allthe authority figures who handled hercase let her down completely in oneway or another. She subsequentlybecame a publicly stigmatised figureon campus.Reporting is hazardousOn the other hand, for the majority ofrape survivors who do not report tothe police and/or to the universityauthorities, and who frequently tellno-one, the second trauma occurs as aresult of their festering secret. Afterbeing revictimised by people's reac-tions to her disclosure, Diba felt shehad to become secretive about theassault.The trauma of being raped by amember of one's own relativelyclosed community is often significant-ly greater than when rapes are perpe-trated by outsiders. Because of this,many survivors of acquaintance ordate rape at universities drop out, asDiba reported that other survivors haddone at the University of Zululand.For two years after the rape, Diba"had to see my rapist all the time,"which made me feel like crying. Shealso had to see his three collaborators,two of whom were in her class.about being raped. I feared that news of the rape would reach myfather's ears. My father is very strict and he would have been very hurtto know I had been raped.I asked the warden if the university's disciplinary committee couldhandle the matter, and he agreed to this.Each faculty at the university was represented on this committee.I was very honest and I admitted being drunk at the time. Althoughstudents are allowed to drink, these lecturers were very judgmentaltowards me. They considered me immoral for being drunk. Andbecause the rape happened when I was drunk, they said that 1 askedfor it. Their judgments made me feel that it was partly my fault.`That is the one...'Life on campus became very difficult. Students would point at me andwhisper to each other: "That is the one it happened to." This sort ofreaction made me cry. A friend of the rapist - one of the guys whohad chased me - used to mock me. He would say to the rapist loudlyas 1 passed by: "Here is your girlfriend. Man, you were so lucky to havefucked her. I also wanted to fuck her." And when I happened to meetthe three who chased me during a lecture or at the student centre,they would say, "Come here, you bitch!"My performance in school dropped during this time. But the stu-dent counsellor was very supportive of me. One of the women lecturerswas also very concerned. She said she appreciated that I did not dropout of the university as other students had in these circumstances.But I certainly did not find it easy to stay. Although the rapist admit-ted to the head of the social work department that he had raped me,he also said that i had enjoyed it. It was all very humiliating.Two months later, I received a letter from the DisciplinaryCommittee saying that because there was no eyewitness to the rape,they could do nothing about It.For the next two years, I had to see my rapist all the time. 1 pre-tended to ignore him but seeing him made me feel like crying. Beforethe rape I used to attend films and parties at the university, but Istopped doing these things. i did not feel easy with people any more.Still I managed to pass my exams at the end of the year.Eleven years later, the trauma is still with me. Not a single monthpasses without my thinking about It. It has made me very moody. I donot want to communicate with anyone. 1 feel such anger about whathappened.To this day, the rape is still my secret. Because I was blamed forit at the time, I always think people will be judgmental If i tell them.Our men want us to be pure, so I never tell any of my boyfriends i wasraped. The problem is not about my loosing my virginity. It is thatbeing raped leaves a stigma. People do not sympathise with you.Instead they say you wanted it. Any black man who knows that I havebeen raped would lose interest in me.Sometimes I say to my girlfriend, "I've got something 1 want toshare with you." She says, "What is it?" Then I tell her somethingelse. I haven't even told my sisters. After we lost our mother in 1979,I became a parent to them. They look up to me and see me as a moth-er who does no wrong. When one of my sisters went to study at anoth-er university, i told her to be careful and not to drink too much atparties. She wondered why I said these things, but I could not explainit to her.I first had sex when I was 20 years old, and I used to enjoy it. iwas not shy then, but now I am very shy. After the rape I lost interestin sex. My affairs last only three or four weeks. i am very protective ofmyself because 1 do not want to be hurt again, so I don't become veryInvolved In my relationships. I have good relationships with women andwith men who aren't my boyfriends. I am thinking of going to a sextherapist to help me with my problems.I feel very lonely. 1 spend most of my time with my two kids. i amvery suspicious of men when it comes to my six year-old daughter. I25APRIL/MAY 1993

Page 31 of 58 feel like crying because she hasbig legs like me, and the manwho raped me liked my big legs.He said I had a beautiful figure.She looks like me, which makesme very afraid for her.I know another woman whowas gang-raped by studJents atthe University of Zululand in1983. One of the rapists was herformer boyfriend. She hasscratches from the rape, butwhen she went to get treatmentshe toid the doctor they werecaused by an accident.When i was at the universi-ty, gang rapes were called "testmatches". Test matchesinvolved a girl's boyfriend Invit-', Ing her to visit him. When sheaccepted, he would put brakefluid in her drink which wouldknock her out. Then he and hisfriends would rape her. They didthis to girls for very petty rea-sons; for example, if a woman'sboyfriend thought she was toostubborn or felt she was too highfor him. This was a way of pun-Ishing her, of bringing her down.Men think It is all right forthem to rape women, and thatonly bad women are raped.Women are not supposed towalk alone at night, to be drunk,etc. If they do these things, theyare seen to be asking for rape.Rape makes the woman an out-cast. Such thinking shows thatour society is quite sick.PostscriptNine months after the interview,iba commented as follows:"Sometimes I'm angry aboutIt and sometimes I'm confused.There are times when i cry for noapparent reason. I think it wouldhave been less traumatic If I hadnot had to see the culprit everyday. And the remarks that weremade by his friends were veryhurtful and embarrassing. I wasalso greatly affected by the atti-tude of the head of the socialwork department and his staff,and by the letter i received fromthe disciplinary committee.Their message was clear: i hadasked for the rape. Because ihad to pass my studies, I triedto shove this problem away."I feel much better since Italked to you, but the scar istill with me." -In the rare event that male stu-dents are punished for raping femalestudents, some members of the univer-sity community take the side of therapists - blaming the survivors fortheir downfall. Rape survivors have tocope with the hostility that commonlyresults.When rapists are not punished,this is a public slap in the face for thesurvivors, adding public and privatehumiliation to their pain. When rapesurvivors are not believed, they arealso likely to be seen as trouble-mak-ers, man-haters, dangerous fabricatorswho deserve to be ostracised. Andwhen rape survivors are believed,many members of the university com-munity pity them, regarding them asdamaged goods, psychological basketcases, or women who hate men (a ter-rible sin in a patriarchy, no matter howmisogynist the men are).The men who run most universi-ties are often even more reluctant thanthe police to punish male members oftheir communities. In addition, univer-sity authorities - in an attempt tosuppress negative publicity - fre-quently discourage rape survivorsfrom reporting to the police. Uni-versities often end up reinforcing rapesurvivors' silence rather than imple-menting justice. University adminis-trators do not want their institution toearn a reputation as dangerous placesfor women students. This could havesevere economic repercussions as wellas undermining universities' intellec-tual reputations. Hence administratorsoften protect their universities' reputa-tions at the expense of sexual assaultsurvivors - particularly if they canfind some grounds to question theirvoracity by casting aspersions on theircharacters and behaviour.26WORK IN PROGRESSThis strategy minimises any dam-age to the university, as long as othermembers of the community do notmobilise too much support for the sur-vivors.Denigrating survivors also dis-courages others from reporting -another positive outcome from thepoint of view of administrators.In Diba's case, the DisciplinaryCommittee at the University ofZululand took two months to decideagainst supporting her rape charge forlack of an eyewitness to corroborate it.This ludicrous standard is alsoenshrined in South Africa rape law. Inany event, there actually were at leastthree eyewitnesses who admitted to anentire class that their friend had rapedDiba. Furthermore, according to Diba,the rapist admitted his crime.The pervasive problem of sexualassault on campuses is finally beinggiven some much-needed attention inSouth Africa. But not enough! Thestory of one survivor shows how thepattern of victim-blaming devastatesand continues to devastate those inneed of support following an attack.Diba's desire to tell her story after somany years reveals the desperationgenerated by her community's rejec-tion of her as the innocent target of asadistic crime. Through her communalsilencing she has been compelled tolive in a permanent state of anguish.Investigations need to be under-taken at all South African universities,the results made public, and methodsof dealing with rape and other formsof sexual violence must be greatlyimproved so that the interests of thesurvivors and potential survivors (ieall females at the institution), not therapists, are given the priority theydeserve. fns The menwho run mostuniversitiesare ofteneven morereluctantthan thepolice topunish malemembersof theircommunities

Page 32 of 58 A Bill of RightsHow does the National Party's Bill of Rights show up against the ANC's? With the help of theNational Association of Democratic Lawyers, WIP puts them both in the dock.The National Party saysDetention for up to 10 days under state ofemergency. Further detention to be authorisedby court order. Detainees have right to begiven reasons and to have access to doctor andlawyer.DetentionwithouttrialThe ANC saysNo detention without trial, banishment orhouse arrest. Detention only during state ofemergency - but detainee must have access tolawyers, name must be gazetted and detentionmust be reviewed after one month by reviewboard headed by supreme court judge.Retained as `acceptable form of punishment'but only for those over 18. Right to appeal.The death Abolished.penaltyEntitled to same rights as men. No law maydiscriminate against women or limit right toequality. Laws may be passed to bring aboutequality.No direct reference. However, reference toequality before the law regardless of sex, creedetc.Only during state of emergency, which can bedeclared if state security is threatened by inva-sion, war, insurrection or riotousness.Right to form, join and participate in tradeunions. Right to collective bargaining and tostrike. State =right to prohibit strikes inpublic sector and essential services.Freedom of speech, movement and associationguaranteed, but state has right to license news-papers and other forms of communication.Rights may be limited during emergency.All equal before the law. No-one can beprejudiced or favoured because of race, colour,language, sex, religion etc. Laws may bepassed to advance specific communities orindividuals.All have right to use language of their choiceand participate in whatever cultural life theychoose.Women'srightsGay rightsSuspensionof rightsWorkers'rightsFreedom ofassociationEqualitybefore thelawCulture andlanguage27APRIL/MAY1993Equality of men and women in all aspects oflife including employment, education and fam-ily. No discrimination on grounds of gender,single parenthood or legitimacy of birth.No direct mention of gays, but reference madeto prevention of harassment, discrimination oroppression on basis of `sexual orientation'.Only during state of emergency, which can beimposed for maximum of six months. Decisionto impose emergency supervised by nationalassembly, and extension of emergency must beapproved by assembly. Resolution needs two-thirds majority.Right to trade union activity. Employers legal-ly bound to provide clean and safe workplaceand provide equal pay for equal work. Equalaccess to employment, training and advance-ment.Right to freedom of association, religion,movement, conscience, freedom of assemblyand peaceful protest Full right to conscien-tious objection against military service.All equal before the law. All have right to fairtrial and free defence if unable to pay. Activesteps to ensure accused aware of charges andnot prejudiced through illiteracy or lack ofunderstanding.Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Pedi, Sotho,Swats, Tsonga, Tswana, Xhosa and Zulurecognised by state, which acts positively tofurther development. One or more languagemay be designated for official use.

Page 33 of 58 SF'_E'EdebateCivic activist 'Ben Jacobs'set the cat among thepigeons in WIP86 with hiscriticism of Sanco'scentralised structure.MZWANELE MAYEKISOresponds by arguing for adecentralised but stillrelatively tight approach tonational civicco-ordinationOrganising civics:We need a tight federationOW' ARE WE TO STRENGTHEN THEcivic movement when we arebattered by repression, intransigent local government structures,inappropriate development policiesand the prospect of our movementactually fading once democracy isestablished?The answer is to help balance theuneven development of the civicmovement by building a strong thoughflexible and accountable national body- the SA National Civic Organisation(Sanco).One of the most eloquent andthoughtful recent articles on thenational civic movement was"Heading for disaster?" in W P86, by`Ben Jacobs'. It is a pity he (she?)does not use a real name because theright to make controversial and criticalcommentary about Sanco is not ques-tioned.Sadly, Jacobs' piece bears anextremist title, but the article is well-formed bout internal dynamics andproblems in the civic movement. Asan insider in the formation of thenational civic body in late 1991 andearly 1992, I believe it is an article tobe taken with the utmost seriousness.Jacobs' critique of Sanco flowsfrom a central claim which I believealso to be true: our unitary structure ismuch less desirable than a federalstructure. Indeed I attended the Sancolaunch in Port Elizabeth in March,992 with a mandate from CivicAssociations of the Southern Trans-vaal (Cast) to support a federal struc-ture. Delegates debated this topicopenly - and in the end Cast was theonly affiliate to support the federalposition.Jacobs gives the reason most del-egates chose: "Sanco could not be afederal organisation if it supported aunitary state (the contrary example ofCosatu was ignored)".It is good to take Cosatu as anexample because it is based on rela-tively tight, not loose federalism.Moreover, shopfloor-grounded tradeunions have sectorally-specific inter-ests (eg the metalworkers deal witheach other in a single union), whereascivics have quite common interestacross South Africa.Jacobs makes too much of differ-ences between civics when so many28WORK IN PROGRESSbasic, lowest common-denominatorcampaigns have yet to be won. Therewas fear by some delegates - well-founded in many instances - that thepresent regime would use divisionsand unevenness within the civic move-ment to structure local government ordevelopment projects and policies in atop-down manner.This is also a danger with a uni-tary structure if the leadership isincompetent - the key is to keepcommunication, accountability and thelong-term interest of the entire civicconstituency at heart. But Jacobs iscorrect in demanding more recogni-tion of local autonomy. He/she argues:"The `c' in Sanco denotes the singular,giving rise to the absurd notion that acivic (which represents local interests)can be a single national body". Truethe name should have been SANational Civic Organisation.But the point is to go beyond adebate over simple unitary versus fed-eral autonomy, and try to define exact-ly how a tight federal structure, withbottom-up policies, would combinelocal autonomy with what is neededfrom the unitary vision: the ability to

Page 34 of 58 provide a national framework fromwhich all of us can identify the roadahead on various issues. A tight feder-al structure would permit this, and thestruggle for Sanco in the years aheadis to move in this direction.Several problems will be over-come if we take this route. For exam-ple, while it may be useful to have aSanco national office gainingresources from funders this should notprevent (and even compete with) localcivics raising their own funds. Thereare still funders who will not supportindividual local civics but will help thenational body. With time for good dis-cussions about funding - as well asevery other constitutional issue - theconfusions that emerge on autonomycan surely be resolved.Similarly, Sanco should not havenational membership cards - localcivics should have cards (and charge asmall fee to members) and should payan affiliation fee to their regionaloffices. The region should then con-tribute to the national office.Finally, for administrative andcommunication purposes thereremains a need for a strong nationalstructure. But the optimal approach istight federal, not tight unitary or loosefederal. This is clear if one considersthe vital need to structure campaignsand national political policies in theoptimal manner. Indeed regions andzones exist in large part to co-ordinateevents. Jacobs slates Sanco for ignor-ing regional diversity and neglecting"the fact that grassroots struggles areabout different issues in differentareas".This is too strong a generalisa-tion, and Jacobs backs it up only byciting Sanco's call for a national bondboycott. The boycott was a nationalSanco initiative undertaken last July.The campaign was initiated not by theexecutive, but by the General Council- representative of all 14 Sancoregions - and reaffirmed by the dis-cussion in the face of public opposi-tion even from ANC president NelsonMandela.Jacobs argues that "(the boycott)was appropriate in some of the mainmetropolitan areas" but not in otherswhere banks never made loans orwhere civics were negotiating withbanks for new loans. Jacobs ignoresthe fact that the boycott was aboutensuring national democracy (bypressing the banks to pressure the gov-ernment).As a national formation, Sancorepresents a diversity of regional inter-ests. Apartheid-capitalism has createdvastly uneven development betweentown and countryside, and Sanco mustbe sensitive to those differences. Butto conclude that a national bond boy-cott was inappropriate simply becauseof uneven development, is to implythat conditions everywhere must beequal if any national policy is toemerge. That will never happen.Aim to bargainInstead, a key objective of the bondboycott was to get banks to come tothe bargaining table - to at least openup the possibility of further loans, con-cessions and a uniform banking Codeof Conduct for both rural and urbanareas. Addressing uneven develop-ment was in fact a primary goal ofSanco's negotiating team.In sum, Jacobs has done a serviceby pointing out that our constitution isnot a good constitution. This is in partbecause at the launch there was notsufficient time to debate issues. Notmuch effort was put into arrangingconstitutional proposals to fit the con-ditions on the ground. In the end theconstitutional work was deferred untilthe next sitting of Sanco's memberdelegates, and at that stage all his/hercriticisms will be raised.Having said all this, however,there is no justification for the conclu-sion that Sanco may be "heading fordisaster". The rationale is contained inJacobs' concern: "With Sanco up andrunning, what is happening on theground? One hears local leaders say-ing things like, `We cannot do any-thing now. We are waiting for SancoNational to decide on the direction'- which never happened in pre-Sanco days. But by the same tokensome areas ignore Sanco and carry onas if nothing has changed".There are clearly flaws in theexisting system, but my own fear isthat Jacobs' proposal - an ideal-typeof "loose federations at regional andnational levels" - may weaken thecivic movement and lead to personalregional fiefdoms and baronies alongthe model of KwaNatal (Buthelezi'sloose federalism) or of the politicaltragedies unfolding within Russia andSomalia.Finally, Sanco must be a strongerorganisation, and that requires a strongorganisational structure. Reasons whySanco is presently weak include thefact that the leadership is overlappingwith other progressive forces; tensionsexist between some local civics andANC branches (and other politicalorganisations); and the capacity andresource problem.Sanco is still young, there areplenty of logistical problems, and thestructures are not as firmly interrelatedas they could be. As in the case of theyoung Cosatu, or the ANC afterunbanning, these are normal growingpains.In this case building the civicmovement through loose federalism isutopian. As a comrade within Sancostructures, Jacobs should bring theconcerns to his/her civic, his/herregional structure, and the national, inaddition to writing for Work InProgress. For it is problematic to onlycritique the civic movement on paperwithout going all-out to fix it from theinside. ?,.r7* Mayekiso is organiser-on-leavefrom Alexandra Civic Organisation.29APRIL/MAY 1993

Page 35 of 58 internationalGetting high onthe peace-pipe thingWhat happens when old foes get together? In El Salvador, guerillas andgenerals sit down together to work out their own peace agreements ...ERE ISOHSalvadoran peace process:guerilla leader Roberto Canasand defeNEnceRESULTministerOFReneTHEEmilio hovering near a tray of shrimpchilled by an eagle-shaped ice sculp-ture. More guerillas and military offi-cials mingle over caviar and smokedsalmon.The room is a Supreme Courtchamber used a year earlier for thetrial of nine soldiers on charges ofmurdering six Jesuit priests, theirhousekeeper and her daughter. Wherethe jury was closeted there is now atray filled with meatballs. A cheeseand pate board stands in the place ofthe defendants.Times have changed in ElSalvador.This reception marked the closeof a two-day conference in the capital,San Salvador, that gathered all thesides in the peace process - guerillas,peasant leaders, soldiers, governmentofficials, right-wing oligarchs - to talkabout how to live together in the mod-ern world. They heard from panels ofpoliticos from the Americas andEastern Europe, some of whom werehuman rights activists and many ofwhom used to shoot at each other.It was a bumper gathering of warcriminals, large and small.The conference was televised liveon Salvadoran TV and throughout theAmericas. More than 600 Salvadoranssat through panels by their compatriotsand such foreigners as PolishCommunist Party official, AleksanderTina RosenbergKwasniewski. Also present were: Colombian politician AntonioNavarro Wolff, a London School ofEconomics-trained leader of the M-19guerillas, who led his troops downfrom the mountains in 1990; theymelted their guns into a peace memo-rial. Wolff is now one of the mostpopular politicians in Colombia andcould become the next president. General Hector Gramajo, theGuatemalan defence minister whoboth committed some of the worsthuman rights abuses in Guatemala'shistory and saved the country from amilitary coup. He talked about newcentres for democratic education hesponsors in Guatemala.How times have changed General Fred Woerner, who hadbeen commander in chief of the USSouthern Command and spent yearsguiding the strategy of the Salvadoranmilitary in its anti-guerilla war, over-looking its brutality and corruption.Woerner was quick to admonish hisformer charges: "They are not gueril-las but Salvadorans," he said of theformer Faribundo Marti NationalLiberation Front (FMLN). "They havechanged, and it is up to the military todo the same."I had not been in El Salvadorsince 1989, when Salvadorans awokeat five o'clock to the sound of mortarfire. Even following the peace process30WORK IN PROGRESSin the news had not prepared me forhow much has changed. In his speechon the first morning of the conference,Joaquin Villalobos, the FMLN's topmilitary commander, said the guerillasneeded to ask the nation's pardon fortheir part in the conflict. He called fora new revolutionary model - onebased on a balance of power andnational consensus.Right-wing politicians also calledfor dialogue and respect for the law.Three years ago, use of these phraseswould have qualified the speaker for ahuman rights award. Today, they arepart of standard discourse. But I hadthe nagging feeling that theSalvadorans were once again puttingone over on the foreigners by apingtheir military officials who madelucrative careers out of telling gringoswhat they wanted to hear, mouthingphrases about human rights and heartsand minds to win US funding for thewar.The conference ended with aspeech by defence minister Ponce. Hetalked about living within democraticrules, about the need to submit mili-tary power to civilian control. "Weaccept it for national stability," hesaid. It was an astonishing speech -democratic, conciliatory, a ringingendorsement of the peace process.Ponce omitted only one small point:that the principal obstacle to theSalvadoran peace process is Poncehimself.The peace accords began with aceasefire early last year and the formal

Page 36 of 58 The enemy within: Woman shot by a government sniper during ademonstration in San Salvadorend to the war on 15 December. Aspart of the process, two commissionshave been working: A Truth Commission has collectedtestimony on murders and humanrights violations committed by bothsides during the 12-year war and willsoon publish its report, which is sup-posed to make public the names ofaccused perpetrators. The Ad Hoc Commission wrote areport that recommended purging 102army officers implicated in humanrights violations. Among those on thelist, which has not been officiallyreleased, are defence minister Ponceand his second in command, JuanOrlando Zepeda. Both are accused ofcomplicity in the Jesuit murders.Members of both commissionshave received numerous death threats,and a few have left the country; evenpresident Alfredo Christiani's life hasbeen threatened. In early January,bowing to pressure, Ch ristianiannounced that he would let the 15highest-ranking officials on the AdHoc Commission's list stay: Ponceand seven others would remain in theirjobs, possibly until the end ofChristiani's term, and another sevenwould go into golden exile in diplo-matic missions. Army officials andtheir defenders applauded the idea as away to "preserve stability and avoidacts of violence by the purged". Thisis the triumph of peace talk; threeyears ago this extortion would havebeen phrased slightly differently:"Push us and we'll kill you." But thenew world order has arrived in ElSalvador.Extraordinary allianceGuerilla leader Villalobos signed offon the deal; while publicly praising thepeace accords, he had quietlyapproved letting Ponce keep his job.In exchange he wanted the govern-ment to pick up the cost of bodyguardsand trucks for top FMLN comman-ders, and that mid-level fighters begiven good coffee-land and salt mines.A charitable explanation for thisextraordinary alliance is thatVillalobos realises that money ispower in El Salvador and wants toassure jobs for his troops - some ofwhom have done nothing but fightsince they were children. A more cyni-cal explanation is that he wants toestablish the left as a player and showAngola - fellownation and friendFANNIE PHAKOLA, a former ANCchief representative in Luanda nowworking for the movement'sDepartment of Political Education,argues for genuine solidarity withthe people of Angolat was just a few days after Angola's dec-laration of independence that the firstUmkhonto we Sime cadres touched downon Angolan soil.They arrived on the presidential plane,and Agostinho Neto welcomed themdeclaring that his country was 'the firmtrench of African revolution'.It was 1975. Our continent was ripewith change, but Angola was still taking ahuge risk in offering facilities to MK - noother country in Africa could openly acceptthe presence of our army.On top of this, the MPLA's positionwas far from secure. Unita, backed by theSADF, was threatening to topple the newgovernment and had advanced to a fewhundred kilometres from the capital.Looking back now, I don't think any ofus could have dreamed how much the peo-ple of Angola were going to contribute toour struggle in the years that followed.They sheltered us in their territory. Theygave us material and psychological sup-port. They stood firmly behind the ANC andthe South African people on regional, con-tinental and International Platforms.Together, we fought colonialism and racistoppression.Culto CuanavalePerhaps the greatest victory as a com-bined force was at Cuito Cuanavale.Namibians, Angolans and Cubans foughtalongside each other to rout the SADF - adefeat which was to mark a turning pointin the history of Angola, Namibia andSouth Africa.Even in defeat, the South African gov-ernment tried to turn Namibia's Indepen-dence Into a victory over MK, insistingthat our camps In Angola be closed. Butwe went along with the agreement - pre-venting the regime from stalling Indepen-dence, and allowing the Namibian peopleto take us all one step closer towards thetotal independence of Southern Africa.That was in 1959 - a year which the31APRIL/MAY 1993

Page 37 of 58 then-president of the ANC, OR Tambo,described as "a year of heroic dispersas".Addressing our troops at the formal MKwithdrawal from Angola, he pointed outthat the Cubans were dispersing to thewest, Swapo was dispersing to the southand MK was dispersing to the east.Now, in 1993, MK has itself been dis-persed to the south. We are home, mostof us, to enjoy the fruits of our struggle.And the prospects for a democratic trans-formation, given certain conditions, havenever been so visible.Remember our comradesBut while we prepare for that transforma-tion, we should not forget to cast oureyes to the north-west - towards Angola,towards our comrades there.We should not forget theircontribution in the past,nor should we blind our-selves to what is happen-ing In the present.Once again, AngolaIs at war because of rebelUnIta forces. And onceagain we hear allegationsthat the SADF is giving themsupport. It is because of this Fanniethat the Angolan people are Phakolastill suffering in their thou-sands. Despite having won that country'sfirst-ever democratic election, the MPLAIs in renewed confrontation.As Is often the case, the internation-al community is silent - despite the factthat the elections were free and fair. TheUnited States, in particular, still refusesto recognise the MPLA as the legitimategovernment.But what can we as South Africansdo?Well, the ANC has already resolved topledge and display its solidarity with thepeople of Angola. This is a profoundexpression of our appreciation for the sac-rifices Angola has made.And even though our own struggle forpeace and democracy is at a crucialstage, we cannot remain passiveobservers of the situation in Angola.The Angolan solidarity campaignneeds to be intensified. It needs tobecome part of all our lives, part of ourgeneral campaign for peace and democra-cy not just In South Africa but in thewhole continent.Because Southern Africa will know nopeace until the conflicts in Angola,Mozambique and South Africa areresolved.Aluta continualthat he is a man with whom the rightcan work. And since Vi llalobos hasreason to worry that the TruthCommission's report will implicatehim in several killings, he may be try-ing to make some new politicalfriends now.But his position has split theFMLN. Some of the movement'smass organisations have stopped pay-ing their dues. Other former guerillaleaders were horrified and took outfull-page advertisements in theSalvadoran press favouring total com-pliance with the peace accords -meaning they wanted Ponce out andVillalobos to shut up.SolidarityI moderated a panel with twoPoles. One had been the right-hand man of Lech Walesa dur-ing Poland's martial law period;the other had assisted GeneralWojciech Jaruzelski during the1989 round-table negotiations that ledto Poland's first free elections. WhenJaruzelski imposed martial law in1981, Zbigniew Bujak was a 27-year-old electrician at the Ursus TractorFactory and the leader of Solidarity'sWarsaw chapter. He was the topSolidarity leader to escape capture.For four and a half years he was themost wanted man in Poland, shiftingfrom safe houses in a series of disguis-es as he directed the loose confedera-tion that was the outlawed union.Aleksander Kwasniewski is thesame age, a playful and quick-wittedformer journalist who joined theCommunist Party in 1977 and servedas a minister during the 1980s. Heended the decade as one of the party'smost important negotiators at theround-table talks that eventually hand-ed the keys over to Solidarity, and henow chairs the party of formerCommunists.From their opposing camps thetwo men have come to agree onalmost everything. "Compromise isnot a sign of weakness; it is a sign ofstrength," Kwasniewski told the con-ference. "How did the Communistsmake the transition to democracy?"one Salvadoran asked him. "I 'm theleader of the biggest party in the par-liament," he replied. "Who says wedon't like democracy? I like democra-cy very much."One can get high on such talk,but there were occasional remindersthat the conference was, after all, onlytalk. One Salvadoran, exasperated athearing the phrase "no winners and nolosers" once too often, took the floor."This is not a football game that endedin a tie, gentlemen," he said. "We had80,000 deaths here."The sword and the crossIt was apparent that much has notchanged. An invitation to formerArgentine president Raul Alfonsin -who had staged historic trials of mili-tary officials for the crimes of the"dirty war" - was withdrawn whenPonce threatened to keep the armyaway. El Salvador's supreme courtpresident, Mauricio Gutierrez Castro,told the audience that Europeanhuman rights activists are motivatedpurely by guilt over colonialism andnot to be taken seriously. "It is verydamaging for a country that needsconfidence in its organisations to becriticised by someone who arriveshaving read four books on humanrights and the United Nations report,"he said to enthusiastic applause.On their last day in Salvador,Bujak and Kwasniewski hired a taxiand drove around the country for fourhours. In the late afternoon theyreturned - horrified at the woodenshacks, at the barefoot, dirty childrenand the women walking for miles withplastic jugs of water on their heads.That night we went to the houseof Pablo Tesak, a Slovak immigrantwho came to El Salvador in 1939 andbuilt a snack-foods empire. Tesak isone of the country's few industrialistswith a reputation for treating hisworkers well, but when we were driv-en to his house I was sandwichedbetween two armed guards, and hismansion in the hills overlooking thecapital is a fortress behind two highgates, guarded by more men withguns. Tesak was showing us his poolwhen the Poles motioned me aside."We take back what we said at theconference," Kwasniewski whispered."We are in favour of violent revolu-tion after all..."Reproduced with kind permissionof The Nation32WORK IN PROGRESS

Page 38 of 58 cultureThe way of the white handTHE VISUAL ARTS IN THIS 000N-try's townships are in a state ofdeep crisis that becomes all themore troubling the closer we come tothe naming day of the new SouthAfrica.But the crisis is not new. In thefirst part of this article, I argued it is infact something structurally present inthe history of both society and `black'Western style art in South Africa. Assuch, the fine arts are both a symptomand a locus of the power relationswhich have shaped the cultural andpolitical wasteland in which we areliving.The bottom line here is that blackart in South Africa has always pro-ceeded according to rules made up bywhites. It rests, in the first place, onthe destruction and denigration ofindigenous artistic traditions and, inthe second, on the co-option of artmakers to a Western sense of -mak-ing and content. Relatedly, but mostimportantly, it rests upon an accom-modation to an art market which is notonly made up almost exclusively ofwhites, but which also necessarilyreflects and imposes the values ofwhites on to the production of blackartists.In his introduction to theNeglected Tradition exhibition, held atthe Johannesburg Art Gallery in 1988,curator Steven Sack made the pointthat black artists in the early decadesof the century worked largely insidewhat was essentially a cash economy.Note how fraught the term `artist' is inthis context. We are discussing objectmakers who were working either inthe aftermath of the collapse ordestruction of tribally based artisticmethods, or working in part outside ofthose methods. We are talking aboutartists and an practices that emergedafter the artists were killed off - figu-ratively and literally.These artists were operating -The art of being black -part two. IVOR POWELLlooks at the way white artistshave influenced the wayblack artists work Noria Mabasa's The Policeman:Breaking down the apartheid ofSouth African art33APRIL/MAY 1993insofar as they worked for white mar-kets - within a situation governed bysupply and demand. They were pro-ducing works to meet the requirementsof a market which knew pretty muchwhat it was looking for. These werenot the kinds of buyers whoseapproach was conditioned and under-pinned by respect for either theintegrity of the object or the authentic-ity of the artist's expressiveness. Themystique of the artist's consciousnessheld little value.These buyers had the feel of thecurio market about them. Where theeternal white tourist in Africa (as oftenas not living `full-time' on the conti-nent) buys objects as tokens or evi-dence of travels or presence.Enough EuropeansSack cites the white collector CGDamant on the subject of his patron-age of sculptor Samuel Makoanyane:About this time he produced afew figures modelled from Europeans.... They excited some interest becausethe likenesses were very good, but Ifelt constrained to advise Samuelagainst this type of work, pointing outto him that, to really establish himself,he should produce models of his ownpeople, in their various daily occupa-tions .... I lectured him continually onthe desirability of the men and womenhe saw about him, in his village and inthe fields. 1 was certain there would bea constant and growing demand forthis and I was proved entirely right.Samuel saw the point and followed theadvice; he ceased to make any moreEuropeans and settled down to makingvarious types of Basuto, for which hebecame known far and wide.The quotation yields two impor-tant points. First the obvious one: thepresence of the white hand in the artis-tic practice of the black sculptor. Thesecond is a very pointed variation onthe first: Makoanyane was expected to

Page 39 of 58 work within clearly specified con-straints dictated - literally - by hismarket. As a black sculptor the`appropriate' range of subject matterfor his work was listed for him. Theburden of Damant's lecture was thatMakoanyane should produce "modelsof his own people in their variousdaily occupations" - for consumptionby "another people".Now, let us imagine a scenewhich has a mentor or patron of Antonvan Wouw advising his pro tegee,"Anton, stick to models giving like-nesses of your own people", becausethere would be a "constant and grow-ing demand" for work in this vein.Improbable, no?Had such an interventionoccurred, our well-meaning advisorwould not only have earned somebackchat, but he would have beenwrong. As a white artist in SA, VanWouw's position was fundamentallydifferent from Makoanyane's. As VanWouw's bank balance confirmed,there was a very lucrative market forwhite artists' renditions of black peo-ple. Irma Stern, Maggie Laubscherand a host of other white painters ofthe African amply demonstrate thatthe same rules simply did not apply towhite and black artists. Whites wereexpected to become masters and mis-tresses of the entire spectrum of sub-ject matter provided by the SAenvironment. Blacks, on the otherhand, were expected to function withina system that prefigured dramaticallythe notion of "own affairs" unpopu-larised by former president PW Bothaand his happily forgotten cronies.It is worth lingering at this point.As I write, I am sitting with two booksin front of me, both dealing specifical-ly with art made by black SouthAfricans.One is the Neglected Traditioncatalogue. The other is EJ de Jager'sImages of Man, which deals with theUniversity of Fort Hare's collection ofcontemporary black art.Paging through these books witha jaundiced eye, it is striking to notethe amazing scarcity of images ofwhites in these paintings by blackartists - at least until well into the1980s.In the Neglected Tradition cata-logue only two (three at a pinch) of themore than 200 images so much asinclude identifiable representations ofwhite people. The pattern is prettymuch the same in De Jager's book,though the sweep of my generalisationis, thankfully, checked by two salutaryqualifications.One is that during the 1980'ssomething did change in terms of thesubject matter executed by blackartists. Particularly with the emer-gence of the naive proto-tradition inthe work of artists like TommyMotswai, Noria Mabasa and DocPhutuma Seoka (and, one might note,with the beginnings of palpable libera-tion in this country, and the reactivestirrings of self-doubt among the whitepopulation at large), the apartheid ofSA art began to break down.The second qualification is a pos-itively joyful one. It is that Namibiangraphic artist John Muafangejo and, toa lesser extent, other of the Rorke's The Official34Drift artists never played by theunwritten rules. I will return toMuafangejo later. But it is worth not-ing now that his vision was alwaysconditioned by laws higher than thoseof the land. In defiance of all norms,his histories and his contemporaryscenes were remarkable, they wereroutinely exactly as racial or non-racial as the subject demanded.Uncomfortable historyI admit that it is a curious and uncom-fortablekind of art history I proposehere. Art history as an exercise in raceclassification; art history as a corpsecount. But there is a point to this.Allow me to hammer you overthe head with it: the realities inhabitedby South African blacks are condi-tioned by the presence of whites invirtually every respect. Whitesaccount for around 20% of the popula-tion. Nearly all blacks encounterwhites daily - most often as employ-ees. Whites occupy the pre-eminentpositions in nearly all fields of society.They buy up nearly all the marketedproduction of SA's artists, whetherblack or white.Yet they occupy less than onehalf percent of the broad canvas of anproduced by SA's black artists. Hardlya white is depicted anywhere. It's alltownships scenes and rural idylls andbig-eyed children and the funkierparaphernalia of township life. Andreligion, of course - lots and lots ofreligion.A little strange and unbalanced, isit not? Of course, this peculiar imbal-ance is explained by an art marketwhose buying end is almost exclusive-ly white.But there have been individualcollectors within the black communi-ty. Steven Sack, again in his excellentand provocative introduction to theNeglected Tradition, tries valiantly(though one suspects without muchconviction), to make something out ofthe case of John Koenakeefe Mohl,whose work is "to be found in numer-ous private collections in Soweto".One might also note that duringthe cultural Indian summer of the1940s - the era of Sophiatown andAlex - when a definitively urban,post-tribal township based culture wasmaturing, something akin to a `class'of black collectors did begin toWORK IN PROGRESS

Page 40 of 58 emerge. Actually, it was around thistime that artists like Gerard Se kotoand George Pemba were producingperhaps the most authentic work yet tohave emerged from the township tradi-tion. It was probably the only time todate when art was convincingly in stepwith the life of lived culture. Then, thedementias of Chairman Verwoerdcame down like a sledgehammer onthe collective head of the emergenttownship culture. From then on theonly significant collectors and com-missioners of colour were those thatVerwoerd had invented: the corruptregimes which he and his successorsinstalled in the various homelands.And the senses of identity which theysought to foster by commissioning andbuying art, were seldom in step withthose of the population at large.To this day, the situation hasbarely changed. I am aware of onlyone art gallery - outside of the com-munity centres - in the whole ofSoweto. Even it has a somewhat inse-cure existence and may, for all I know,have been cancelled due to lack ofinterest by the time this article goes toprint.No space on the wallCollagist Sam Nhlengetwa tells a storywhich may serve to cast the situationinto a sharper kind of relief.Nhlengetwa was already relativelysuccessful, having persevered his par-ents' initial resistance to him becom-ing an artist of some note. One day hepresented his mother with one of hisworks ... and she rejected the offering."You've got to understand twothings," Nhlengetwa observes wryly."One is that there is no space on thewalls in the average township housefor paintings. The other is that whatspace there is, is reserved for calen-dars and pictures of the Virgin Mary".In fact, Nhlengetwa is one of agrowing body of artists working with-in the townships to address the prob-lems I am referring to in more or lessconscious ways. He explains hischoice of the collage medium - hissource materials include news pho-tographs and pictures from old edi-tions of Drum magazine - by sayinghe wants to get away from styles andvisions of the townships "imposedfrom the outside". He wants to workwith the reality, or as close to the real-ity as he can get."My aim," he says. "Is to reclaimthe images of the townships for thepeople who live in the townships. Touse our own pictures of ourselves tomake art about ourselves." Nor doesthe re-imaging process stop there.Nhlengetwa is equally conscious ofthe essential symbiosis of artist andpatron. He actually travels from doorto door, not only persuading residentsto invest in his work, but also strivingto educate them about the potentialimportance of art in their lives and intheir community as a whole. Heclaims that with such an investment ofeffort, he is now approaching sales ofaround 40% `black' to 60% `white'.This ratio is more or less uniqueamong township artists.I mention the case of Nhlengetwato illustrate that things are beginningto change in the arenas of township35APRIL/MAY 1993art. Moves are afoot to reclaim theimage of townships and their inhabi-tants from the clammy grip ofapartheid and white money. And thereis a growing awareness of just howcomplex and how fraught the practicesof artmaking actually are.To return to the archaeology ofSA art: counter-examples like that ofNhlengetwa's practice or MatsemelaManaka's gallery not withstanding,the art market has traditionally beenoverpoweringly dominated by whites.The advice given by CG Damant toSamuel Makoanyane in the 1930s hasrung forth through the decades: "...that he should produce models of hisown people, in their various dailyoccupations ... the men and women hesaw around him, in his village and inthe fields. I was certain there would bea constant and growing demand forthis and I proved entirely right ..."The point to be reiterated here isthat township art did not grow out ofan indigenous expressive tradition. Itwas, as I argued in the first part of thisarticle (see W/P 87), essentially animportation. This can be read from thefact that the earliest known blackartists (in post-tribal tradition) workedin basically naturalistic styles - andnaturalism is definitely not part of theSouthern African indigenous heritage.This art was not simply borne of theexpressiveness of the artists: it wasshaped by the economy it had to slotinto. It was commodity production.Essentially, images of blacks tobe consumed by whites. Whites,whose relationship to the blacks whowere being imaged was predicated onthe relationship of conqueror and con-quered, master and slave. Whites whoas often as not pass a whole life with-out ever entering the townships pic-tured for them. Whose overarchingideological endeavour as a class wasto justify their ascendancy and natu-ralisethemselves - distinctively,mind you - in the subcontinent. Who,at every step, introduced the styles andsuggested the forms of art which theblack artists explored. Whose versionsand visions of Africa and Africans,artists were required to concretise andconfirm.The implications of this relation-ship serve as the launch pad for theconcluding part of this article, in thenext issue. lW

Page 41 of 58 GNURs or no GNURs?What we need is real power, not just constitutional power0Z0y0THE DEBATE OVER A MULTI-PARTYInterim Government of NationalUnity ,an IGNU, and a subse-quent Government of National Unityand Reconstruction (GNUR) is raginginside the ANC and beyond.Those opposed to the packagefeel it is a capitulation to the NationalParty's power-sharing proposals. NoGNURs is good GNURs, they say.On the other side, many of thosesupporting the package deny that it hasanything to do with `power sharing'.I don't particularly want to getinto this debate here. I would prefer tolook at the terms of the discussion,because it seems many of the propo- Put your head onnents and opponents of the packagehave tended to fall into the same set ofassumptions.In brief, there has been a tenden-cy to think of political power as beingmore or less equivalent to portfolios ina future cabinet.Of course, who occupies whatcabinet post is an extremely relevantmatter. Sharing out cabinet posts on aproportional basis among parties scor-ing over 5 percent will certainly be amajor concession from our side, evenif it is only for a limited duration.Nevertheless, I believe there aregood arguments for considering anIGNU and a GNUR. They can help toa block: Martial arts demonstrationat an MK camp in Tanzania36WORK IN PROGRESSstabilise the transitional process. Theconcession can help to speed up thenegotiations process and get us to thewatershed event of a one-person one-vote election. Despite certain 'power-sharing' features, IGNUs and GNURSwill also introduce important featuresof majority rule.Not all good newsBut there are also many potential pit-falls in this arrangement.Decision-making is going to bedifficult at best. The arrangementmight well help to sustain largely dis-credited and marginalised forces.Cabinet ministers who are hostile todemocratisation will be liable to dragtheir heels and generally use theirpositions to undermine progress.All of this is possible. We shouldbe honest about it, and we should cer-tainly not oversell in public the virtuesof this kind of transitional arrange-ment. It is a compromise (in my viewan intelligent and principled one) thatcan take us forward. But it is a com-promise, and we should have the hon-esty to say so.But let us suppose that the ANCwins 98 percent of the vote in theConstituent Assembly. Or let us sup-pose that we stick firm and actuallywin our demand for an immediatemajority rule dispensation.Let us suppose that one way oranother, in the transition phase itself,the ANC has a clean sweep of cabinetposts. Does that mean the ANC willhave a monopoly of political power,

Page 42 of 58 that `power will have been transferredto the people', or that we can talk, inthe fullest sense, of `majority rule'?Under a full, majority rule consti-tution (something for which we mustcontinue to struggle fiercely) a deci-sive election victory gives the majori-ty party the right to rule - but notnecessarily the power to do so.It is this crucial distinctionbetween constitutional right and actualphysical capacity that has tended toget lost in the debate around IGNUsand GNU s.What about the army?If the ANC has a clean sweep ofcabinet posts next year, we will quick-ly discover that we are still `sharing'power. For instance, we will find thatwe have inherited an SADF with acomplement of 800 000 soldiers, mostof them white males. (This is the fig-ure for the combined reserve, servingconscript and permanent SADFforces).What do we do with that reality?Well, there is plenty that can andmust be done. A profound phasedreconstruction of the army is neces-sary.But why are we not throwing atleast some of the collective passionwe have devoted to IGNUs andGNURs into thinking about this kindof question?When it comes to armed forces inour country, we are still stuck on theextraordinarily limited notion of 'inte-gration' (a suspect term, with a finecolonial heritage if ever there wereone!) Obviously integrating our fewthousand MK cadres and others into asingle, new and more representativearmy will need to be one dimension ofa multi-dimensioned strategy onarmed forces.But why are those who are pas-sionately outraged by the notion of anANC-majority transitional govern-ment - which includes other parties- not more outraged by the simplisticidea of `integration' of armed forces?`Integration', on its own, will producea terribly distorted and mostunfavourable power-sharing arrange-ment in the army.Real powerSo why the inconsistency? It=ofcourse, to do with a very narrowIassumption about power. It is animplicit assumption that real powerlies where the constitution defines it tobe. The summit is the president andcabinet. Win the presidency and thecabinet and everything else clicks intoplace, right? NO, WRONG!Power is like the capitalist's capi-tal (it very often is his capital). It canrapidly change its shape and location.One day it is a factory, the next dayshares on a stock-exchange, or moneyin a Swiss bank.This was the experience of thesocialist experiment in Chile in 1970-3. In a majority rule constitution witha directly elected president, thePopular Unityalliance (mainly com-munists and social-ists) won the 1970presidential election.The left candi-date (Salvador Allen-de) won 36,2 percentof the vote. The right-wing candidate won34,9 percent, and thecentrist ChristianDemocrat won 27,8percent.Under the major-ity rule dispensationAllende, albeit with amajority of less than40,000 votes and aminority in theNational Assembly,had the right to con-stitute his own Popular Unity cabinet.This he did.Nationalisation& agrarian reformThe Allende cabinet then pursued anextremely progressive set of policiesincluding the nationalisation of copperand other mining operations, majorautomobile, engineering, steel, textileand cement plants, shipyards andbanks. Agrarian reform saw more than3 000 estates expropriated in threeyears and handed over to peasants'committees or state farms.All of this was perfectly constitu-tional and absolutely admirable. But itwas way in advance of the effectivepower of the socialist government andthe popular forces supporting it.Although the government occu-Longingfor homeYes, there are still Umkhonto weSizwe cadres out there. MK officerFRANCE MOHLALA (below), on avisit home from his camp in Uganda,speaks to KERRY CULLINANabout army lifeance Mohiala has returned hometwice since the ANC was unbanned,and each time his home village ofMankweng nearPletersburg has held awelcome home rally forhim."I have to tell themthis actually Is a farewellrally, as I still can't comehome yet," says Mohlala.But the home thathe left four years ago forthe MK camps in UgandaIs never far from hismind. "You can't foolyourself and say: 'In sixmonths i will be home'.The best approach is toimagine that you will beaway for a very long time,and then time w111 notpass so slowly."Mohlala, who wasfirst president ofMankweng YouthCongress and a UDForganiser in the Northern Transvaal, leftthe country in March 1989 after spend-ing three years in detention. Although hehad always wanted to do military train-Ing, Mohiala was finally pushed to leavewhen, on the day of his release, he wascharged with assaulting a warder.The assault occurred after he hadheard that a fellow detainee, AlfMakaleng, had died. According toMohiala, Makaleng died becausewarders took 14 hours to take him tohospital after he had collapsed.Mohlala went straight to Uganda,were he did "the usual military training".He has also been sent on courses in reg-ular warfare. Today he holds the rank ofcaptain in MK: "Part of the transforma-tion of MK from a guerilla army Into aregular army has been the introduction ofrank," he explained.Is political training necessary?37APRIL/MAY 1993

Page 43 of 58 Another point of debate in MK's transformationwas whether cadres still needed political training. "Thefuture army must not be politically biased, but wedecided to intensify the political part of training inpreparation for Integration [with the SADF]. To us, MKcadres are politically conscious volunteers."Uganda is difficult for new recruits. "it is very hotand wet. I am not naturally very dark, but I have gonemore Ugandan in colour! A lot of cadres suffer frommalaria when they first arrive." In addition, there areshortages. "Let me just say that comrades do not hateenough of what they need, although in terms of food,things are not that bad."But there are also positive aspects. "We havequite a bit of time for leisure. There are lots of sportingand cultural events." But with relaxation comes somesadness. "When people are relaxing, they think a lotabout home. If anyone says they enjoyed being in exile,that person would be lying."The closest cadres get to home is the camp politi-cal discussions about developments in South Africa..We have had intense discussions about negotiations.People were worried when the armed struggle was sus-pended - a number of cadres felt the movement wascompromising too much."Consultation [about the suspension] was not donevery thoroughly. The decision was taken before it hadbeen seriously discussed. There was dissatisfaction,but ultimately cadres were convinced of the correct-ness of the decision, although the timing and processwere a problem."Another problem is the fact that troops have towait for two to three months before they are visited byANC leaders to be briefed about the situation.Mohlala hopes he and his comrades will be home Intime to vote, "but that depends on agreements reachedat the negotiating table".He did not seem aware that the ANC was opposedto postal votes, and said the election process and MK'srole in preparing for elections still had to be thoroughlydiscussed.Asked whether the MK cadres felt forgotten,Mohlala admitted that "that feeling was always there",and that people were "concerned about their fate, oncethey returned home".UNEMPLOYMENT AND CRIME"There is always the question of people coming home tounemployment and turning to crime... When we are toldof cadres being arrested for committing crimes, we seethis as inevitable if comrades don't get help - althoughpart of this is a campaign to discredit MK and the ANC."One thing that struck Mohlala on his brief visit toSA was the fact that many activists are disillusionedwith the ANC, and that key aspects of organisationwere sometimes in the lands of inexperienced people."Every cadre in exile wishes to be home to buildorganisation - especially when we read that It is weak.The question of people being ANC members and sittingdown is a mistake. Winning elections means that a veryserious struggle needs to be waged."Our approach as soldiers is that high morale is anecessary part of our life. One factor the enemy alwayschecks when planning an attack is morale. The will tobuild structures needs courage. The will to win is veryimportant. If you are disillusioned, the pace will be slower." 5'JT Talking 'bout a revolution: MK recruits at a camp inTanzania attend a class in communicationspied the constitutional summitof power, power is not aninstitution or a presidentialpalace. Power can relocate.The right-wing regrouped inother centres of power - inthe National Assembly, in thejudiciary, in the media, in theeconomy and critically, in thearmed forces. New, extra-con-stitutional power summitswere forged.In September 1973 theright-wing - with imperialistsupport - overthrew theAllende regime in a bloodycounter-revolution.This does not mean, assome have argued, that armedstruggle is the only path tosocialism. But it does meanthat you should never advance38tway beyond your realstrength. And it does meanthat power must be consoli-dated in depth and across abroad range of institutions.On the left in SouthAfrica, we have devoted toomuch time and passion in thelast few months to the issue oftransitional constitutionalarrangements, and too littletime to serious considerationof how we will begin toreconstruct - not just theconstitution or the economyand social services, but also,critically, the bureaucracy andthe armed forces.GNURs or no GNURs,they need to be not the onlynews.WORK IN PROGRESS

Page 44 of 58 Are we part ofthe same society?The liberal intervention by Louw andStadler (WIP 86) on the debates oncivil society, reminds me of the abusesand mistakes that we on the left makewhen dealing with theory and practice.Stadler's fundamental mistake is notto take into account that the state oper-ates within a particular global eco-nomic frame. The welfare state has tobe contextualised in a particular periodof capital accumulation and the arrivalto political power of a liberal hege-monic bloc. That correlation of forcesis no longer in existence. However,what Stadler could have argued is thatthe realisation of that type of politicalsystem will come out of many popularstruggles, in which the state and capi-tal in SA will recognise the need forsome type of welfare system.Civil society is for Louw thestage where everything should happen,without any policy of `dirigisme'. It isfine to think that market forces shoulddetermine all `action', but what is theprice to pay? His liberal thinking isgood enough to shape an economicstructure that relates to the state andindividuals in civil society, but it payslip service to the nature of people'sco-existence within those structures.A great deal of thinkers on theleft are engaging in the debate on civilsociety, as if civil society was a politi-cal party which you can manipulateand move in a specific direction.Reading the current debates on civilsociety in SA, you feel they are talk-ing about the party/state/civil societywhich takes over daily life.For me, it is difficult to conceivethe state in simplistic terms of civiland political society. Such categories,as defined and examined by the clas-sics (e.g. Marx and Gramsci) are polit-ical categories. And politics is part ofa praxis: a praxis of struggling forsocial justice and equality. In thissense, the frontier between civil soci-ety and political society is not only acreation of our imagination, but alsoshould not preclude us from doing theright thing: engaging in the politics ofcontestation whenever it happens,either in the realm of the state (i.e.political society) or of civil society,fighting to eliminate exploitation andoppression.In SA, the struggle for radicallydemocratising the state will continuetaking place in these two regions:political and civil society. On the onehand, we should struggle for establish-ing a new legal framework that recog-nises each individual as an equalbearer of rights and obligations. Onthe other hand, the conflicting natureof human co-existence never ends incivil society. People will fight to allowits different subjectivities to exist,from the gay question to the Zuluquestion. Ideologies will also have toengage in debates - liberals andsocialists. Social spaces will also clash- urban SA and rural SA.I am talking about a war of hege-monies, of redefining the social con-tract between the rulers and ruled. Forthose of us on the left this will includethe need to create alliances, in whichwe will continue pushing for a radicaldemocracy in the state. But, I amafraid to say, that agenda is never-end-ing.- Daniel Nina,Vista University,Port ElizabethThe 10%solutionI have just fin-ished readingMike Morris'spiece, `Who's In?Who's Out?' inWIP 87. I agreewith its thrustcompletely, andwould like to offeran illustrationfrom the sector ofSouth Africansociety with whichI am best acquaint-ed: university edu-cation.Despite the endless talk of 'trans-formation' and the return to high-pro-file, well-paid university positions of anumber of celebrated exiles, university The 10% solution: University education remainselitist and dedicated to keeping out talented blackmen and women39APRIL/MAY 1993education in SA remains exclusionary,elitist, and apparently dedicated tokeeping out talented black men andwomen rather than including them.The `university exemption' systemguarantees that only a handful of eachblack age group will even be eligiblefor university admission; and theimpossibility of transferring one'scredits from technikons or teachers'colleges to universities foreverexcludes those who have not donewell enough in their matric exams.Tertiary education is not the mostimportant sector of our society, by anymeans, but it is a sector in which adramatic opening of opportunities tothe disenfranchised majority could beachieved with relatively minor alter-ations in the existing rules.One final comment: Morris refersto the unequal society being born asthe "50% solution". In the light of theactual numbers, it might be moreaccurate to refer to it as the "10%solution".- Prof Robert Paul Wolff,University of Massachusetts,USA/University Scholarships for SAStudentsLetters under 300 wordsreceive priority. WIPreserves the right to edit 'letters.

Page 45 of 58 BOURGEOIS FOLLIESSay what you like about bourgeois democracy, but at leastit provides a good laugh now and again - which is morethan we can say about the dictatorship of the proletariat,isn't it?To wit: recently a Labour MP in the British Parliamentwas lamenting teachers' lack of imagination when confront-ed by a roomful of bored students. In my days, he lectured,I used to teach Latin and held kids' rapt attention by mak-ing that dead language live again. How? came the challengefrom the back benches.Before you could say a-one-two-three-four, the MPwas being called to order for belting out The Beatles'Yellow Submarine - in Latin. He made it to the third verse.BLISS?So far, ours might not have been the most triumphant of lib-eration struggles, but we've been damn good at acronyms ...Mosa, Wosa, Mawu, Fawu, Powa, Potwa - you create it,we name it.The power-sharing deal (or whatever it's called thisweek) has now plonked us down in the epoch of GNUS, orGovernments of National Unity. And it seems as if the firstone is going to be an Interim Government ofNational Unity and Reconstruction - or anIGNUR, for the slow-witted among us.Now it's bad enough that IGNUR is onlytwo typos away from being IGNORE. Butworse, if we assume the ANC is going to bepart of it, we could end up with IGNURANC.As in "IGNURANC is bliss"?t"SAYNoLET THEM EAT PORK!Sometimes one has to wonder about this lastSuperpower we earthlings are stuck with.You remember the TV news imagesof US troops storming onto a beach inSomalia late last year, rushing a shedand promptly arresting four Somali lay-abouts? Turned out they were actuallythe guards of the Pakistani commanderof United Nations forces!Then, in early March, the USmilitary decides to try some-thing different for achange, and drops foodinstead of highexplosives on aforeign country- in this caseBosnia, wherethousands of Muslims are freezing and starving to death.A week later thie US Defence Department admits thatat least one third of lthe food drop contained pork. "Wereckon if they don't want to eat it, they won't eat it," aspokesperson was later quoted.BRAAIVLEIS, SIUNSHINEAND INVENTORIESAt that big bush bilateral, government negotiators trottedout the usual complaints about MK, arms caches, etc. Thegist of it was: disband MK, provide us with a full list of allMK staff and equipment, and stop recruiting MK cadres.Perhaps distracted by the lush scenery and the promis-ing aromas wafting pup from the braai pit, the ANC negotia-tors at first were caught off guard. Until Cyril R waded in.OK, he smiled no problem. But then let's see theSADF provide a breakdown of personnel (including secretoperations staff, miltitary intelligence and other troopers ofthe twilight), plus a detailed inventory of equipment andarsenals, down to the last 7.62mm bullet. And, if you don'tmind, stop recruitinlg for the SADF.Some throats -ere cleared. And then, quicker than youcan yell "Kos is oppie tafel!", the assembled hagglers foundsometthing else to talk about. Let's see a fewmore of those, Cyril - we need them ...BLINDED BY THE LIGHTOne of the many nightmarish features of thewar in Bosnia is the systematic campaign ofmass :rape carried out against women.Accoffding to the European Community, asmany as 20 000 women have suffered thisfate alt the hands of soldiers - mainly thosebelonging to the Serb forces.Yhese atrocities have drawn verbal dis-approwal but generalised inaction on theinternational front. Apathy is bad enough.But in early March the Pope finallyspoke out. As reported by the BBC, he prefacedhis comments with appropriate protests against theoutrage -- then launched a volley of directivesand threatts at rape victims who might be consid-ering abortions.First we witness hatred of womenexpressed physically as mass rape.Then we hear the spiritual beacon ofmillions of people round off theviolence verbally by condemningthese women to be confronted forthe rest of their lives with a night-mare made flesh. Lord help40WORK IN PROGRESS

Page 46 of 58 Although banks and civics are talking, grassroot struggles against banks continue, So said Sanco presidentMoses Mayekiso at Reconstruct's first anniversary. Planact's Andrew Boraine andthe Perm's Denis Creighton (right) look onSanco monitors banksANC() IS APPLYING SYSTEMATIC PRESSURE ON BANKS TObecome more `user friendly'. And some Sanco affili-ates, like the Tembisa Civic Association, have begunto take action against `unfriendly' banks.Sanco's role as a watchdog of financial institutions hasdeveloped since it threatened a bond boycott in August lastyear. Since then, a number of meetings have been heldbetween Sanco leaders and bankers.At one such meeting Sanco president Moses Mayekisopointed out that, in 1992, "the banks used more than a bil-lion rands of largely pensioners' money to buy foreignbanks with branches in the Cayman Islands, Panama,Guernsey and the Isle of Man".But back home, said Mayekiso, ordinary people weregetting a raw deal: Banks were making huge profits by demanding high inter-est rates and service charges. Only 9% of informal businesses get credit from the banks. Banks were redlining certain residential areas, refusing togive housing loans in these areas. Banks financed shoddily built houses, for which townshipresidents were then expected to pay large amounts.In contrast, local banks were involved in propping upthe government, he added, pointing out that members of theCouncil of SA Banks (Cosab) hold government loans ofover R 13-billion.In a bid to address the problems Sanco and the Permreached an agreement on 7 February. This commits bothparties to actions such as initiating community develop-ment trusts, and education and training programmes. Inreturn, Sanco has agreed to try to instill in its members theethos of repaying loans and has exempted the Perm fromany bond boycott or mass action.An agreement with the Association of MortgageLenders (AML) is also on the cards. However, at the timeof going to press, a number of outstanding issues first hadto be addressed. These include redlining, procedures to dealwith arrears, the flight of capital from SA and banks'responsibility for defective homes.Z Banks clearly favour agreements as they want to drawSanco into the policing of bond repayments. But Mayekisohas made it clear to the AML that, "in exchange for our sig-nature endorsing our constituents' involvement in sorting_t repayment problems .... we need to know that othersues that deeply concern us will be addressed". Until theL has given Sanco a timetable for addressing theseissues, said Mayekiso, civics would be "unable to endorseany cooperation' .FOCUS ON FUNDING CONTRIBUTIONSReconstruct was initiat-Dancing Mozambique's Rooting ed by the Urban SectorNetwork to raise issuesrelated to urban devel-to donors' desert outtune? cathedrals corruption opment. Contributionsshould be sent to:2 1 6 10 Kerry CullinanPO Box 32716Braamfontein 2017

Page 47 of 58 Dancing to thedonors' tune?Foreign funding is a way of life in South Africa.KERRY CULLINAN examines some of the problems its raisesSTGSA attached. While many `strings'arLLe ideologicalFOREIGN ,AIDmostHASare eRINco-nomic. Some developed countries aresimply looking for new markets fortheir goods to ensure employment intheir own countries.The Canadian government agreedto fund a housing development in EastLondon last year, for example, provid-ed that Canadian firms were used toimplement the project. The Swedishgovernment is extending Namibia'srailway lines using Swedish technolo-gy and experts.An ANC government would beexpected to repay its `debts' by prefer-ential trade agreements with countriesthat supported the anti-apartheid strug-gle. European donors have alreadyindicated to the ANC that once sanc-tions are lifted, the movement mustbuy European equipment and vehicles- not Japanese.But not all `strings' are bad. Andthere is no denying that South Africaowes a lot to donors. John Campbell*,a South African consultant for theDutch donors Novib, says that "it iseasy to forget that without foreignfunding of the UDF etc, the currentpolitical developments may have beenimpossible".It is clear that reconstructing anew South Africa will be impossiblewithout international help. But SouthAfrican organisations must assess thestrings that are attached and the impactthese `strings' will have on the kind ofsociety we are trying to build.Empowering communitiesA key test is whether funds empoweror weaken countries. The WorldBank/IMF structural adjustment pro-grammes, for example, have weakenedmany countries. Canadian economicsprofessor, John Loxley, even describesstructural adjustment as "a new formof imperialism".South Africa has yet to deal withforeign aid on the scale of World Bankor IMF loans. But already there havebeen complaints.One example of a controversialintervention by a foreign funder was inthe health field last year. Mike Sinclairof the Kaiser Family Foundation -founded by Henry Kaiser, a former USState Department officer based in Pre-toria - threatened the Progressive Pri-mary Health Care Network with afunding cut if they joined the SAHealth and Social Services Organisa-tion. According to SAHSSO publicitysecretary, Dr Aslam Dasoo, "This putnumerous health care projects at risk.It derailed a major political initiative,and exposed the manipulative agendaof some foreign funders."Community based organisations(CBOs) have complained that donorsdirect funds through NGOs instead ofdirectly to CBOs. CBOs argue thatthis makes them dependent on NGOs,even though the NGOs raised themoney on their behalf.For Campbell, who has workedfor donors for many years, there aretwo possible ways around this prob-lem: "Firstly, funds could be chan-nelled through an independent trust,which has community leaders astrustees. A percentage of the moneycould then be set aside for the CBOsto buy services from the NGOS.""The second possibility," he says,"is to set up a tripartite contractualarrangement involving the donor,CBO and NGO. All parties wouldhave to agree to the project, and itwould be easy to see who breaks thecontract. This would pull CBOs inmuch more and allow them to be incontrol of the money."Campbell adds that "donors areacutely aware of the debate, as manyCBOS accuse them of underminingcommunity structures". But manyCBOs must also bear part of theblame, he says: "They often don'tapply directly to donors for funds andthey often don't deliver."Finn Pedersen, special projectofficer for a coalition of progressiveScandinavian donors called Interfund,does not believe funds should be givendirectly to CBOs."It would be a mistake to makecivics project implementers, for exam-ple," says Pedersen, a Dane, who hasworked in many parts of Africa."Civics have an important politicalrole to play as a catalyst for local gov-ernment, for example. They shouldconcentrate on that, rather than onfundraising."He believes that South Africanorganisations have a lot to learn fromthe mistakes made by developmentalNGOs in Central America. "Part ofwhat went wrong in Nicaragua wasthat civil society did not develop. A lotof grassroots organisations forgotabout their political role and becameabsorbed in project implementation.As a result, the progressive forceswere on the defensive.Financial controlOne of the reasons why more CBOsdo not get direct funding is their poortrack record of financial control. In the1980s, donor agencies were generallybarred from entering the country, sothey had no proper relationship withthe recipients of their funds.The state of emergency forcedmany activists into hiding. Organisa-tions were raided. Money and propertywent missing, and `the regime' wasalways blamed.But Campbell says "things aremuch tighter now". Audited state-

Page 48 of 58 Resident power: Civics should concentrate on local politics notfundraising, say fundersments from an internationally recog-nised firm are a must. Donors also tryto ensure that organisations have com-petent treasurers or qualified financialofficers. In cases where an organisa-tion has a viable project but is inexpe-rienced, donors may call in aconsultant to help set up a financialsystem.Interfund safeguards its funds byensuring that it has a contract with therecipient organisations, visiting pro-jects regularly and getting detailedreports. It generally co-funds projectswith other donors."There is a commitment fromdonors to ensure that financial systemswork," says Campbell. "But the rela-tionship is often more complicated.There is an ethos that organisationscan spend money as they like, and thatdonors should not interfere."For donor agencies, who have tobe accountable to their constituenciesback home, the easiest route is tochannel money through NGOs, whichemploy skilled staff who can draw upand motivate budgets and balancetheir books.While there are calls for organisa-tions to become self-sufficient, Camp-bell says many communityorganisations are simply not sustain-able. Some are performing functionsnormally undertaken by governmentsin developed countries, yet they haveno tax base from which to work.For Pedersen, self-sufficiency istoo narrowly defined: "It is not simplyabout earning your own money, butabout becoming better at fundraisingand public relations. For example,how often do you see Planact in thenewspapers? They need to improvetheir public relations, not only to pro-mote themselves but also to improvetheir fundraising drives."Funding `fashion'Some organisations argue that donorsundermine projects by continuallychanging their funding priorities.Funding `flavours of the month' atpresent are gender and the environ-ment, while funds for the print media,para-legal, human rights and politicalorganisations are drying up.Campbell acknowledges that thisis a problem. First dependency onfunds was established, then whenfunding priorities changed "theseorganisations had their future decidedfor them".The problem is broad, he adds:"Development agendas [in the south]are driven by northern donors, andsolving this is very difficult. In globalterms, the donors' priorities oftenmake sense. But scale and perspectiveare a problem. Try telling people inthe homelands about sustainable ruraldevelopment when their plots are toosmall to sustain anything."At the same time, if the southwants to determine its own agenda, ithas to become better organised andprepared to challenge the north, saysCampbell.Pedersen understands the fearthat South Africans may have of out-siders "interfering too much". Forhim, one way around this is for localprojects to have a much closer rela-tionship with donors."I think it is a mistake, for exam-ple, for Kagiso Trust to disengagewith northern fundraising NGOs andto deal directly with governments atthe European Commission (EC). Kag-iso Trust cannot deal directly with theEC without the assistance of popularforces in Europe such as Oxfam andnot be taken for a ride."Capacity buildingFor both Campbell and Pedersen, thereis an urgent need to improve localorganisations' capacity to plan andimplement development projects.Interfund has made training projectsone of its priorities, and is looking intoassisting to set up a network to trainpeople in basic organisational skills.Campbell points to disorganisa-tion within structures that needs to beironed out before progress is made:"There are abuses of time and vehiclesas well as a lack of proper job descrip-tions, assessments, employment con-tracts and affirmative action. Activistsare often employed by organisationsbecause of their struggle record andnot because of their skills."* Campbell speaks in his personalcapacity

Page 49 of 58 In demand: Over half of Kagiso Trust's funds go to education-related projects0Z0aZ0an3DNWhat is the scope of yourwork?KT works in the fields of education,youth, health, rural development,income generation, media and waterprovision. It bases its credibility onbeing accountable to communities andcommunity organisations. It is anentirely South African operation withSA staff and trustees.Last year, we transferred R297-million to over 300 projects. Our workis administered through five regionaloffices in Johannesburg, Cape Town,Durban, Port Elizabeth and KingWilliam's Town. We have a staff of69 people. The money comes over-whelmingly from the European Com-mission (EC) and to some extent fromother sources like the Japanese gov-ernment.How do you relate to otherdonor agencies?KT likes to see itself collaboratingwith other agencies to ensure a widerimpact on society. We are worriedabout the plethora of organisationscoming into the country and lookingfor their favourite project. This causesthe effect of a thousand pinpricks, butlittle overall impact.There needs to be far greater co-operation to develop a programmaticapproach. We need to draw in foreignagencies to synchronise development.We probably have more aid agen-cies per square inch in SA than otherAfrican countries have experienced inany part of their history. And manyKagisoreachesoutKagiso Trust is the country'sbiggest non-governmentalagency that dispensesforeign funding in the country.KERRY CULLINAN speaks toKT's deputy general secretaryHORST KLEINSCHMIDTabout its progress andproblemsmore are coming in.There are also over 14,000 NGOsin South Africa, which KT is commit-ted to nurturing .We are looking forward to a newgovernment with a philosophy andnational strategy for development, sothat we can engage with that govern-ment to achieve developmental objec-tives.How does an organisationqualify for funds?Firstly. we don't look for projects.Projects approach us. There is a wholebooklet of criteria that have to be com-plied with. The overwhelmingrequests are from projects in the broadfield of education. Over 50l0 of allfunds go to education relating projects,including bursarA fundamental objective is thatfunds should go to the most disadvan-taged people, namely rural people andwomen. There are not that many pro-jects from rural areas yet, whichshows our weakness and also theweaknesses of those areas.When looking at a project, wehave to ask not just how it delivers topeople on the ground, but also whatthe structure itself looks like. Manydelivery structures are dominated bywhites.If we are to address development,we have to ask who has power in thatorganisation, in other words who is onthe board? We also need to look at thetop staff. People often say: "Oh well,we now employ blacks", only to findit's the person who makes the tea andthe driver.How do you ensure that pro-jects control funds properly?One cannot compromise on account-ability, both to those who receive andto those who give the aid.When an application reaches us, afieldworker will assess the project interms of careful criteria, that have

Page 50 of 58 recently been upgraded.After the project officer is satis-fied with the project, it goes to aregional review. If it passes that, itcomes to national review panel, whichbuilds a case for presentation to a par-ticular donor. After that, it goes to thedonor.Once a project gets approval,only 60% of the funds is transferred.An acceptable narrative and financialreport is expected before another 30%of the money is released, and then10%. Any project that gets overR5,000 has to be audited every year.All applications must come fromgroups that have a committee.Cheques need to be co-signed by atleast two people. We sign a 13-pageagreement at the end with the project.This covers every aspect of financialcontrol.We have taken action againstprojects who violate this agreement.We have impounded property of pro-jects. We have threatened and takenlegal action.Is there any attempt tomove away from dependingon foreign funds to tappinglocal resources?What we try to do is to unlock localfunds for specific projects. In theNational Water and Sanitation Pro-gramme, for example, the IDT andDBSA put in money after we haddone so. This is being run by an inde-pendent board.Before there can be greater col-laboration with the DBSA, someimportant changes have to take placewithin that organisation. Some shiftsare taking place within the IDT. Wewill base our future collaboration withthe two bodies on how these changesmanifest themselves. We will also seewhat the new state says about theseorganisations. We hope in future tounlock funds from the corporate sec-tor, but have had very limited successso far.How do you try to encourageprojects to become moreself-sufficient?We must move away from puttingmoney into projects where no consid-eration is given to generating income,0 Horst Kleinschmidt: Afundamental objective isthat funds should go to themost disadvantagedpeople, namely rural peopleand women. But there arenot that many projectsfrom rural areas yet, whichshows our weakness andalso the weaknesses ofthose areaseven if it is very little. The true mean-ing of development must mean thatsomebody has learnt something so thatthey can become economically viable.We now expect 25% of the total costto come from the community. Labourcan be counted as part of this contri-bution.Some community leadersfeel that donors weakencommunity organisations bydirecting money through ser-vice organisations (SO), andnot directly to communities.How do you see this?This is a critical and sensitive debate,and the problem will grow as theseSOs become stronger. It is crucial tosee whether SOs can remain in dia-logue with urban and rural communi-ties, and whether communityorganisations can continue to asserttheir objectives.If you give money to an SO,how do you ensure that itservices a community?We deal with civic projects, for exam-ple, then SOs give value-added serviceto those projects. But many peoplefeel the SOs are determining needsand dominating community basedorganisations (CBOs). Many meetingstake place after communities are dis-satisfied with SOs' services.CBOs have mooted the idea thatSOs be given no money, but receivefunds from an independent trust wherecommunities have a say and can askan SO for particular training or ser-vices, which are `bought' from serviceorganisations. This would avoid SOsdominating.Has it been too easy forSouth African organisationsto get access to funds?Yes. There may have been good polit-ical reasons for this, but if we are seri-ous about what we are trying toachieve we must seriously move awayfrom this easy access.We will do ourselves an enor-mous favour if we become properlyaccountable and professional. I thinkwe must insist that more training isdone that is aimed at ensuring we dealhonourably, frugally and properlywith funds. There has been massivemisuse.KT has been controversial inthe past, with people claim-ing that it is ANC-aligned.How have you tried to getrid of this label?KT was born out of resistance politics,so it falls within a certain politicalambit. Now that we are becoming adevelopment agency, we have to dealwith that image. We believe the bestway to overcome it is not by piouspolicy statements, but through actionand by demonstrating that we willsupport any project that meets thechallenge of development.This is not to say we will betricked into supporting projects simplyto prove that we are not ANC-aligned.KT was able to start functioningas a sensible development organisa-tion after 1990. Before that, staff wereon the run, files were regularly stolenfrom the offices etc. One can levelmany criticisms at the way thingswere done then.

Page 51 of 58 In war-tornMozambique,some aidagencies havevirtuallyreplaced localgovernment.HEATHER HILLreportsO0AOOONf12OMozambique'scathedrals inthe desertT IS NOT EASY TO GET TO THE VILLAGEof Almada, but then not many peo-ple want to go there. This settlement on the western border ofMozambique is accessible only by arough dirt track that cuts through bushand maize fields. Almada's usual visi-tors, in any event, usually arrive inpowerful four-wheel drives - the sortof vehicle that, throughout this pover-ty-stricken country, heralds the ubiqui-tous aid agency.In this case, the benefactors areOxfam Canada, a branch of the vener-able UK-based organisation whosename is synonymous with ThirdWorld aid. Almada, 30km east of theMozambican border post ofMachipanda, had existed for hundredsof years before the 16-year civil warturned it into a virtual ghost town. In1990, when peace began creepingback into Mozambique, Oxfam Cana-da began an "integrated project" -incorporating health, education andagriculture - to re-establish it as asafe, productive, permanent settle-ment.Almada was rebuilt brick bybrick in the months leading to thesigning of the ceasefire agreement inRome last October. The residents,drawn by the relative safety emanatingfrom the Beira corridor "kin to thesouth, had no more than what theywore or could carry. Their government- bankrupt, disorganised and faraway in Maputo - was of little helpto them.Enter the aid agencies. Thanks tonon-governmental organisations(NGOs) like Oxfam Canada, Almadanow has a school, health clinic, staffhousing, working boreholes and adam. The NGOs, whose numberssoared from fewer than 10 in the early1980s to some 200 today, are flourish-ing in the fertile compost of poverty,illiteracy, displacement and war. Dur-ing the 1980s they evolved into a para-government as the official structuresgrew ever more ineffectual. Indeed,without the NGOs the plight ofMozambicans would resemble Soma-lia.The price you payBut there is a steep price to pay for theworld's alms, both economically andsocially. Mozambique has become themost aid-dependent country in Africa.According to the World Bank, donorfunds constituted a massive 65,7% ofMozambique's gross national product(GNP) in 1992.The hope is that, with the cease-fire, Mozambique will regain its pre-war status as one of the eight mostindustrialised countries on the conti-nent. But with last year's drought stillcreating massive food shortages, thefocus of donors is on supplying emer-gency food relief and basic provisionslike seeds and tools for returningrefugees. Long-term reconstruction is.still a blueprint in the hands of theUnited Nations (UN) and the Euro-pean Community.Dependency syndromeAlthough Mozambique characterisesthe worst case scenario of donordependency, the syndrome affects allsouthern African countries. Botswana,whose diamond mines make it the suc-cess story of post-independenceAfrica, is still the biggest per capitaaid recipient in the region (R320 perperson in 1990).Zimbabwe, one of the few sub-Saharan countries that has notincreased its dependency on aid, maysoon reverse that trend. Flooded with

Page 52 of 58 donations last year when the combinedeffects of structural adjustment,drought and government mismanage-ment produced an historic crisis, Zim-babwe continues to cry for more."Although widespread faminewas averted in 1992, the situation in1993 still requires substantial donorsupport," president Robert Mugabedisclosed in February. "Indeed theaggregate macro-economic outlook ofthe country is very fragile. The=for assistance in these circumstancesremains."A way of lifeDonor dependency appears to havetaken root across Africa. Donors andrecipients - from the World Bank tothe village NGO; from state presidentto local headman - are engaged in asort of chess game of give and takewhere it is mostly the recipients wholose.After three decades of trial anderror by the aid industry in this region,one of the biggest lessons learned isthat nothing is free; there is a price foreverything exacted somewhere downthe line. At the most basic level, thismeans food. NGOs learnt the hardway, after shattering fragile localeconomies by flooding the marketwith the very commodities farmerswere producing or inadvertently creat-ing a thriving black market in reliefgoods.The result was food-for-workprogrammes and constructive sales offood aid. In Almada, for example,food-for-work took the form of brick-making and construction. "They [vil-lagers] will work hard because theyknow this is the only way they will getfood," explains Armindo Guiliche,Oxfam's project co-ordinator. "If yougave them food all the time, theywouldn't work."Another major problem in the aiddispensary is the potential for theabuse of power. "The weight or influ-ence of several NGOs [in Mozam-bique] is so great in certain areas thatthey cause tense situations with localauthorities," says a 1991 report by theUN Development Programme."There are regions where separa-tion, lack of dialogue, lack of co-ordi-nation and lack of planning betweenthe international NGOs and the gov-ernment are extremely severe, thusproducing a negative impact on thepopulation."No controlBritish author Graham Hancock char-acterises the problem of out-of-controlaid projects as "cathedrals in thedesert". In his classic expose, "Lordsof Poverty" (1989), Hancock chroni-cles the "roads that end in rivers andAnd if theruling class ofpoor countrieslive like kings,the same can besaid, although toa lesser extent,of the lords ofpoverty - theaid workersthen continue blithely onward on theother side, silos without power sup-plies, highly sophisticated equipmentthat no one can use installed in remoteplaces, aquaculture projects producingfish at $4,000 (R12,000) per kilo forconsumption by African peasants whodo not even earn $400 (R 1,200) a year... such blunders are not quaint excep-tions to some benign and general ruleof development. On the contrary, theyare the rule."Greasing palmsThe third prong in the aid misadven-ture is corruption. A shocking amountof aid money disappears into politi-cians' and officials' pockets. But, asZausmer points out, "it takes two". Heis referring to the practice by someNGOs of short-circuiting the slowgovernment bureaucracy by offering acash pay-off to an official."A decision goes up and upbefore anything can happen. If you'rean NGO trying to get out 40,000tonnes of groundnuts, you may try andget them out however you can. But thecountry still has laws. Because there isa war doesn't mean there is no govern-ment or no laws," Zausmer says.And if the ruling class of poorcountries live like kings, the same can=tries although to a lesser extent, ofthe "lords of poverty" - the aid work-ers. Located on the high end ofAfrica's economic apartheid, theyenjoy a lifestyle out of reach to themin their home countries. With access toforeign currency and freed from mostimport duties, they can reap a smallfinancial windfall during their tour ofduty.One moral emerging from the aidfree-for-all in Mozambique is theimportance of policing the NGOs, afew of which are rather dubious. ErnstSchade, resident representative ofRedd Barna (Norway's Free the Chil-dren), said he came across "an NGO inInhambane that consisted of one manand five cattle"."The negative feeling aboutNGOS is because of those bad apples,"says Schade. "The government shouldscrutinise who's who and what's what.It should define what an NGO is." Heather Hill is a journalist basedin Zimbabwe.

Page 53 of 58 World Bank reportsignore complexitiesTHE WORLD BANK IS THE FOREIGNfunder whose development poli-cies carry the greatest weight -even if these policies are often cloud-ed in what former Bank chiefeconomist Stanley Fischer calls aBank/IMF "culture of secrecy" char-acterised by "few checks and bal-ances".Yet the Bank's five Urban Mis-sions to SA, under the direction ofSouth African Jeff Racki, have beensurprisingly forthcoming with data.Indeed, in addition to hangingout with establishment technocrats,Racki and his associate, Jun eidAhmed, have been anxious to interactwith suspicious civic leaders andtechnical experts. Prominent ANCurban experts have also accompaniedthe Bank missions in their travels. Ithas been possible to direct criticalquestions to the Bank, even ifanswers are not terribly satisfactoryShould South Africans dobusiness with the Bank, givenits poor track record, askPATRICK BOND andMARK SWILLING(Racki has so far declined the UrbanForum journal's invitation to reply toa detailed critique of his 1991reports).But the crucial question, afterfour lengthy Urban Sector AidesMemoire have been tabled, is whetherdoing business with the Bank makesany sense, given its abysmal trackrecord and its views of urban devel-opment.Consider two recent Bankreports. First, an October 1992"Wapenhans Task Force" internalreport on portfolio performance con-cluded that 37% of Bank projectswere completed "unsatisfactorily" in1991, and more than 40% of WaterSupply and Sanitation projects had"major problems". (An earlier sug-gestion that the Bank finance a R1-billion upgrade of theSo weto-Southern Johannesburgsewage system has been replaced by aDBSA funding process accountable tothe Central Wits Metropolitan Cham-ber.)Wapenhans also conceded a vari-ety of valid borrower complaints(mainly from Third World financeministries): "Bank staff know what they wantfrom the outset and aren't interestedin hearing what the country has tosay" "After all the documents have beensigned, the Bank can change philoso-phy again"; "The Bank overpowers borrowers,and the country negotiating teamoften doesn't have the strength toresist"; "The staff rigidly insists on as manyconditions as possible, some of whichreflect insensitivity about the politicalrealities in the borrower country."Ignoring political realitiesSecondly, and consistent with thecomplaints above, the most recentBank Urban Economic Mission (AideMemoire, 12 February 1993) hasparachuted into several hot localdebates with clean-looking analysis,seemingly unaware of the potentialpolitical implications. Examplesinclude the Regional Services Council(RSC) corporate tax, the urban landmarket, the need for a "compact city"and the inner-city crisis. The RSC corporate tax, says Bankfiscal expert Jim Hicks, has "ques-tionable" effects on efficiency, sus-tainability and equity (probably true).But the RSC budget has, in the WitsMetropolitan Chamber for instance,become the primary site of struggleover redistribution of wealth within aregion. Thus Bank advice to axe the

Page 54 of 58 tF ybU PooR 4AT~ONS WAN, MhQElA~WS, NERE'S WH7 WE WANT ,O SEE-(~QE~7EQ KAwt. 0, TRADE EQUI~IBRIUII~,APPRnPR1ATE CURRENCY A0.7USTIJ~W75._RSC fund would disempower civics. In Soweto, notes Bank economistKyu Sik Lee, land prices compare tothose of Sarid- and Randburg.Although this bizarre outcome resultspartially from "the crowding of theblack community into a limited area,the dynamics of the economic activi-ties in Soweto suggest that the pricesare now reflecting an economicdemand for land in the area and is notnecessarily a legacy of apartheid reg-ulations", says Lee.At the precise time Lee wrotethose words, SANCO was battling toforce the Association of MortgageLenders to address the township"negative equity" crisis (bond repay-ment obligations are higher than thehouse's market value). How a red-lined housing market rife with devel-oper fraud can accurately reflect the"economic demand for land" isbeyond comprehension. In his attemptto glorify the present Soweto econo-my, Lee ignores this dilemma. Lee praises Soweto because it main-tains some informal sector vitalityand offers hope for retrenched work-ers. He does not mention the blacksmall business crises (eg in the taxiindustry and Fabcos crises). And byignoring township income levels andcorporate retailing power (eg South-gate Mall), Lee offers only meagrereforms (eg "African style marketplaces") for township small business-es.Worse, he concludes that "lowincome housing development in the`available land' between the centralcity and townships should be avoid-ed". This undermines Civic Associa-tions of Johannesburg efforts to forcethe Johannesburg City Council toopen up buffer-strip land.Indeed, Lee suggests "densifica-tion should take place within theexisting townships" instead ofthrough a more compact city - aconclusion that can only rest onassumptions such as that Alexandraonly has 134,000 residents (a figureonly half that Racki inserted into hismid-1992 report). A final example shows the Bank'smethodological limits. Apartheid, notracial capitalism, still gets the blamefor SA's urban problems. Where mar-ket forces are the clear culprit - egJohannesburg inner-city decay result-ing from factors such as tenant over-crowding due to high rents, landlordrefusal to maintain buildings andbank redlining - the Bank has littleto say.To engage the structural causesof urban poverty (or even the simpleActstop demand that poor peoplehave a right to live in the inner-city)would mean identifying problems thatcannot be solved with market-orient-ed solutions.Underminingcommunity effortsThe danger in all this is that forth-coming billions of rands from theBank could wash away the efforts ofcommunities to construct their ownfutures in the most effective way.Racki's long overdue Bank UrbanInfrastructure Mission report willpoint to huge investment projects(such as site and service for shack set-tlements). But no public housinginvestment and no `social housing'demands by the state will be exam-ined, much less championed.There are a few rays of hope.The latest report regularly calls for amore equitable distribution of urbanresources. For example, the goal ofthe city must be to contribute "to thedevelopment of a labour-intensiveproduction structure".This Bank rhetoric sounds fine.But it must be considered alongsidethe agencies' export-oriented macro-economic vision, which nearly every-where splits the urban working-classinto a fraction of "insiders" served bythe market, and masses of peri-urban,slum-dwelling "outsiders".US AID consultant GeorgePeterson explained such a linkagebetween cities and macro-economicpolicy to a 1991 Johannesburg con-ference: "It aims to eliminate orreduce urban food subsidies and pricecontrols, abolish requirements thatpart of export food production bediverted into the domestic market,reduce the urban wage structure incases where government pays or man-dates above-market wage levels, andre-allocate government capital invest-ment away from subsidies for urbanindustrial production and public ser-vice provision.'This "agenda", as Peterson callsit, has been applied to 90% of poorAfrican countries consistent with"Structural Adjustment" measures.For South Africa it goes entirelyagainst the grain of the long-standingprogressive movement agenda.Thus for the World Bank, USAID, and various northern govern-ments there is a much greater needthan in any other country on earth toco-opt SA progressives (eg throughcapacity-building assistance not relat-ed to policy). If the city is the newunit of economic control, civics andtheir allies will continue to be givenspecial attention.That requires two sorts of reac-tions by progressive opponents: Renewed emphasis on internationalsolidarity aimed at learning lessons ofbattles against the Bank (along thelines of the Harare-based South-South-North Network, which USNorganisations and Sanco are nowbeing invited to join); New ventures into radical policyresearch allow us to contend with car-avans of Bank missions which havelittle sense of the complexities of cur-rent debates.

Page 55 of 58 Rootingout corruptionHERE HAVE BEEN FEW CASES INSouth Africa's history where anorganisation or a donor hascharged someone for misappropriatingfunds. Yet what kind of a new SouthAfrica can we expect if our futurebureaucrats are already schooled in theart of corruption?A partner in an auditing firmwhich checks the books of many pro-gressive organisations, says he has"seen more fraud in the last three years[since the ANC was unbanned] thanever before"."People are getting away withmore now. Somehow in the past,although there were many problems,there was a sense that this was the peo-ple's money;" he says. "Now there is asense that it is donors' money and if itgoes missing, no-one cares."PHOTO. ELMOND JIYANE (DYNAMIC IMAGESKERRY CULLINANAlthough auditors usually men-tion financial irregularities in theirreports to organisations, they oftenfind nothing gets done to sort theseout. And donors keep on pouring inmoney.Much of the money his firm seesgoing astray is either waste or "softcorruption", says the auditor. Exam-ples of this include: abuse of resources, especially tele-phones and vehicles; organisations of ex-activists whichdo very little; funds squandered on things such asresource centres, that are not used.Major corruptionHowever, from time to time the audi-tors uncover major corruption. A fewyears ago, a large client's employeewas found to be cashing the organisa-tion's cheques. She had opened anaccount with a similar name to theorganisation, stole its cheques andpopped them into her account. In thiscase, the organisation has laid a chargeagainst her. Administrators play a vitalrole in the running of anorganisation. But they aregenerally undervalued,underpaid and lack trainingRECONSTRUCT 10The auditor warned organisationsto be careful of cheque fraud like this,which he says is on the increase. Signsorganisations should look for arecheques that go missing in the post orblank cheques stolen from chequebooks."It seems to be relatively easy forpeople to get false ID books, openaccounts and deposit cheques intothese accounts. I recently dealt with acase where a person took thousands ofrands from an organisation by gettingan official to sign a few blankcheques," he says.Administration is vitalOne of the things that makes stealingmoney relatively easy in organisationsis the fact that people fail to takeadministration seriously.Organisations do not recognisethe value of good administrative skillsand don't pay enough to attract goodadministrators. Jobs are often given toactivists who don't have the necessaryskills."Then organisations spend thou-sands on auditing fees because theirbooks are such a mess, when theycould have put that money towardsemploying a skilled person," said theauditor.Organisations are in the processof setting up a training unit to try torectify the problems. Ideally, theywould like to train people who have"0me formal training which can beadapted to suit organisations.Controlling expenditure, budgets,,elf sufficiency and proper reportingare some aspects that this training will,over.Aside from training, other mea-sures to curb cash going missinginclude: keeping a remittance book, whereeverything from cheques to goodsthat come into an office, is entered; controlling petty cash; curtailing receipt books. 11111

Page 56 of 58 Victimsof fundingfashionAdvice offices face closure asfunders' priorities change, reportsREHANA ROSSOUWisc Conscription o rijht to offici31fo'Jisinvotmcnt inf11nlation reM31tTccsI., rccord or o dCCC55 to t`1C Cot"IOt0grdt'il Llnr'CSt las c`TRn;55C55 3 J$-NO INTERDICT L"',SIDE THE 11 The days of free advice are numberedDVICE OFFICES IN THE CAPEPeninsula have been hard-hit byfunders' change in focus todevelopment work - four have closedin the past year. And unless theremaining eight find funds, more willdisappear by the end of the year.The Advice Office Forum, anumbrella body which co-ordinated theactivities of Cape advice offices andtrained their staff, disbanded inDecember 1991 when its fundingended. The remaining eight offices arenow cooperating to find alternativefunding sources.The offices, based in residentialareas across the Peninsula, assist resi-dents with housing, employment andwelfare problems. But funders, whowant their money to empowermarginalised communities, are nolonger convinced that advice officesare a worthwhile investment. They arecritical of the lack of productivity inadvice offices and the impact theyhave on their communities' develop-ment."Advice offices are a millstonearound funders' necks," says fundingconsultant John Cam pbe11 bluntly."Traditionally, they have been crisiscentres, responding to day-to-dayissues in their communities. We havelong expected them to transform intocentres of development, but this is justnot happening."Kagiso Trust (KT) has imposed amoratorium on funding advice andcivic offices until a national investiga-tion has been completed. "In SouthAfrica, development is more than justdelivery of goods," says KT directorEric Molobi. "We are looking for achange in social relations, giving peo-ple access to mainstream society."The Social Change AssistanceTrust (Scat), which funded adviceoffices for almost a decade, told sixPeninsula offices last year that theywould no longer get support. Scatspokesperson Mpho Ndebele wouldnot comment as the decision was still"under discussion".Move to confront fundersOn average, advice offices need R30000 a year to cover rent, salaries andtelephone costs. The remaining adviceoffices have joined forces in theAdvice Office Collective (AOC) toconfront funders in an attempt to makethem change their minds.The offices complain they werenot given sufficient warning by fun-ders of the cuts and insist that theirwork is developmental. "The fundersare wrong when they say we are notdevelopmental," says a Cape Flatsadvice office worker, who assisted 143people in February alone."We have empowered people andtaught them to take control of theirlives. I no longer have to constantlycontact the rent office of the welfaredepartment for clients. We teach themto do it themselves."But in the past year, we receivedno assistance for special projects orstaff training. All the developmentwork we've undertaken we have paidfor ourselves."Bias against citiesAdvice offices are also fighting a per-ceived "rural bias". They believe fun-ders have cut off funds simply becausethe advice offices are urban-based.They say community problems theydeal with are probably harsher in ruralareas, but more widespread in cities.Fundraising in their own commu-nities has brought few returns, asoffices have only arranged minorevents like cake sales and dances.Asking clients for donations is also notfeasible, staff feel, as this wouldexclude the most disadvantaged.The AOC has asked for meetingswith funders to try to make themchange their minds. The offices areconvinced their survival is essential tohelp communities survive the transi-tion to a new SA."Even if the new SA comestomorrow, people will still have prob-lems with rent, work and social wel-fare. They don't know what theirrights are, and we must be there toassist them. Many people trust us morethan their political organisations tohelp effectively sort out their prob-lems."

Page 57 of 58 ART OF A VISITINGteam of slumdweller activistsfrom India, Jockin (heprefers not to use his sur-name), heads the threemillion member NationalSlum Dwellers Federation(NSDF).Late last year, hepaid his third visit tosquatter communities in r--- --SA, and it was clear that 0 Women ahe was not here to enter- re the leading force behind moves tobuild homes for slum dwellerstain locals with nice-w a r m - f e e l i n g sdevelopment fables. '"Before indepen-dence we had nothing," hesaid. "It was like here. Webelieved that if only wecould have democracy,dwellerswe'll have milk and honeyon the streets." But, hewarned, "the poor and HEIN MARAISwomen were the two maingroups who India failed The big challenge was at leadership level.after independence." to finance families' efforts Soon two banks wereInstead India's poor to build homes. Banks up and running: a housinghad found themselves were out of the question. bank where slum andsandwiched between statal And service organisa- pavement dwellers couldneglect and an avalanche tions? "Well," said get home loans, and anof non-governmental Jockin, "they don't mind "emergency" bank to helporganisations (NGOs) and paying 200,000 roupees people weather short-termvoluntary groups. Most for a car, but don't you crises.vulnerable were those ask them for a loan." Several settlementstrapped on the margins of The Mahila Manila jointly designed four com-society, such as the home- ("Women Together") pact model houses and anless and unemployment. group then devised a use, exhibit was presented toOne of the ground- friendly scheme with a the housing ministry.breaking moves to end minimum of administra- After much armtwisting,this dependency was tive hurdles. They con- officialdom gave the ini-launched in Bombay, a verted the savings culture tiative the nod. Slumcity where almost half the that existed in commnni- dwellers then built houses11 million residents live in ties into a local housing at half the cost estimatedsquatter settlements. Slum bank. Community mem- by government.dwellers answered a seriesof evictions by painstak- hers, led by women. The experienceingly locating 7,000 acres assumed responsibility for forged a dynamic relation-of vacant land. By occupy- the scheme. ship between Mahilaing patches of land, they Manila, the NSDF and anfigured out by a process of Women lead unorthodox NGO calledelimination which parts "Until then, women were Spa rc (Society for thewere not being used, dogs to us," Jockin admit- Promotion of Areawhether the owners were ted. "We call them out to Resource Centres). Ratheraround and why they a demonstration and they than position itself as thewere vacant. They then come with 200 children I provider of funds andapproached the authori- and then we send them expertise, Sparc hasties for approval to build home". Today the NSDF struck up an innovativebasic dwellings on the tries to maintain a 60% partnership with theland. women to 40% men ratio NSDF."With the govern-ment, we play a game,"explained Sparc. "Itthinks the NSDF is an agi-tationist front and they'drather talk to middle-classwomen like us. So theygive us money forresearch. We give the taskto the NSDF, which pro-duces good stuff and usesthe money to mobilise,then we translate theresearch into the usualjargon and feed it back tothe government."The Bombayscheme's success has ledthis trio to apply it acrossIndia. This was difficultbecause of numeroussocial divisions, with pave-ment dwellers at the bot-tom of the pile. Theantidote was to popularisethe term "slum dweller"as a catch-a11.Today, the NSDFoperates in 14 cities, withthree million members.Work hinges on identify-ing human resources in acommunity, then buildingand sharing them withother communitiesthrough exchanges -"People living and work-ing in another communi-ty", not sitting in seminarsand workshops, Jockinpoints out.The people decideTheir aim is to see eachslum community equippedwith a communal chest offinance, skills and experi-ence. The guiding mindsetis simply: "We don't mindtaking help from others,but we make the decisionsabout our lives."As Spares SheelaPatel puts it: "After yearsof deprivation and isola-tion, poor communitieshave learnt only to react... it is only after a greatdeal of exploration andsupport that they have

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