HARARE: The South African government has said it is now “prepared to negotiate with the African National Congress (ANC) but is not prepared to hand over power”.
In its first reaction to the statements made by nationalist leader Nelson Mandela since his release on Sunday, minister of constitutional development Gerrit Viljoen, however, reiterated that the ruling national party was unlikely to be in control in 10 years’ time, but that it would probably still have meaningful role.
The government would run the administration until a new constitution was presented to Parliament, he said and added that he considered the general elections in 1989 as the last in which the black majority would not take part.
At the latest by the end of its present five-year term, Viljoen said, the current tricameral parliament should be in a position to legislate a new constitution.
He claimed that white attitudes had changed dramatically over the past 27 years-the period Mandela was in jail.
The minister, who has had several meetings with Mandela during his imprisonment said “an essential aspect of the government policy was to eliminate race as a factor defining groups where discrimination was concerned.”
But race, he said, was a “‘reality” in South Africa and should be “accommodated without discrimination.” His ruling national party, he added, had clearly committed’ itself to abandoning “any relic of white domination.
Article extracted from this publication >> February 23, 1990
