When the Economic Freedom Fighters, led by Commander in Chief Julius Malema, disrupted the 2020 State of the Nation Address, they inadvertently exposed deception in the narrative that legitimizes Parliament. The EFF eventually walked out after their call for the removal of White Apartheid President FW de Klerk, failed to garner support from other political parties. Nothing in the public domain, since 13 February 2020, adequately demonstrates whether the EFF were driven by politics or principle. This short essay departs from the record of SONA 2020 and journeys through questionable aspects of the official explanation about how our Constitutional Democracy comes into existence.
In considering other truths that ground the deliberations of this essay, it is important to note first, that the Speaker of the National Assembly, Ms Thandi Modise (ANC) rose to the defense of FW de Klerk. Equally important is the support she received from ANC leaders in Parliament on the day. The FW de Klerk Foundation issued a press statement reiterating de Klerk’s position within 24 hours of the State of the Nation Address.
It is only after the EFF protest stirred public memory of apartheid atrocities, that ANC leaders realised where public anger would impact most. They implored de Klerk to consider the voter fall-out they may have to face. The retraction that followed, with an apology, saw FW de Klerk finally acknowledge United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1761. The retraction statement read in part:
“It includes ‘the crime of apartheid’ as a crime against humanity and defines it as “inhumane acts …committed in the context of an institutional regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.
Considered with related notes in the history of South Africa, this essay examines Parliaments consensus against the efforts of the Economic Freedom Fighters.
UNCHALLENGED DOCUMENTED HISTORY
Honest historians reason “apartheid” within a continuum of European aggression that began with the colonisation of Afrika in the 17th Century through to Europe’s Conference that was held in Berlin in 1884. The United States joined European nations in an unholy alliance that ruptured everything Afrikans understand as humane. They resolved to thieve both the land and personality of Afrikans. For Afrika, the most barbaric crimes against humanity can be found in documented evidence against the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom. The lineage of FW de Klerk, like Hendrik Verwoerd, can be traced back to Jan van Riebeeck who headed the first three conquering ships, Dromedaris, Rejiger and De Goede Hoop. They landed at the Cape from the Netherlands on 06 April 1652.
When the history of European cruelty is assessed by Afrikans, it becomes easy to understand why FW de Klerk, and his broader Dutch Settler Community, take exception to the UN resolution against apartheid. Understandably, they cannot comprehend why they were singled out. Afrika’s archive is replete with evidence of unspeakable, inhumane atrocities, throughout the continent. APARTHEID, in implementation, was precisely the resolution of the Berlin Conference of 1884. The United Nations, had it chosen honesty, ought to have resolved that “COLONISATION was a crime against humanity.”
PRISONER NELSON MANDELA and PRESIDENT FW de KLERK
FW de Klerk sat unmoved at SONA 2020 as truths about the violent White racist community were televised to the world. It never occurred to de Klerk, that, leaving of his own volition, may have salvaged what remnant of humanity he had left to justify his presence in Parliament. FW de Klerk and the ANC were aware of EFF plans before SONA. It is precisely this accord between the two, traced back to its origins, that exposes the fault lines in a Parliament that is explained as a legitimate progression of a negotiated settlement.
This essay draws from the fact that most historians set the date of the development of an accord between political prisoner Nelson Mandela and the apartheid regime, at or about 1985. Mandela and de Klerk though jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, on both their versions, cannot lay claim to have acted honestly nor magnanimously On both versions, their accord originates in secret discussions which, initiated by the apartheid regime, immediately casts a dark shadow of exclusion, that, with the passing of time and exposés reveals decades of fraudulent misrepresentation. Typically, less than a month before SONA 2020, Ms Barbara Hogan, a Senior White ANC Operative, added more to reveal the extent to which the ANC was infiltrated by the apartheid regime. Hogan was testifying at the inquiry into the 1982 death in detention of Neil Aggett. It is Hogan’s second admission, examined with Roelf Meyer’s earlier statement, that helps us understand the questionable relationship between the ANC and the apartheid regime. Hogan explained that, in 1977, the Black Consciousness Movement and its leaders such as Steve Biko were “the most visible and active opposition to the apartheid government.” It was Hogan who described the BCM as “the pre-eminent Black political movement of that era”.
The build-up to the first “democratic” election began in 1990 when print, radio and television, was fully controlled by White media owners and the apartheid regime. The deification of Nelson Mandela and promotion of the ANC as the foremost Black liberation movement was their agenda. Roelf Meyer, chief negotiator on behalf of the regime, is a liar who needs to legitimize the process that bought about our “constitutional democracy”
“Every level-headed South African knew that essentially the settlement will come from the government and the ANC. The one had the power and the other one had the majority support. We maintained a very close link with our principles. I reported to FW de Klerk and Cyril Ramaphosa reported to Mandela, but very much on the same basis, very close line, very hands on.”
Considered against Meyer’s dishonesty, that proposition, presented to Mandela alone, to this day marketed as a magnanimous political gesture, simply does not wash. Nothing explains why the apartheid regime could not have put that self-same proposal to all political prisoners in one sitting. Every political prisoner was incarcerated on Robben Island, because of one common revolutionary objective: ‘to bring an end to apartheid’. Nobody understood that better than Mandela. The regime, on their own version, approached prisoner Mandela, with a view to ‘bringing an end to apartheid’. Mandela was aware of all manner of divide and rule apartheid schemes. Nothing explains why prisoner Mandela did not immediately reject as inappropriate, an exclusionist approach that came from the regime. FW de Klerk sat unmoved in his seat and the ANC did not support the EFF because of an accord that originates in clandestine meetings, dating back thirty-five years.
CHRIS HANI: THE POINT OF NO RETURN
Janusz Walus and Clive Derby-Lewis admitted to conspiracy that led to the assassination of Chris Hani on 10th April 1993. At the time of his assassination Hani was the revered General Secretary of the South African Communist Party and his respected legacy as Chief of Staff for Umkhonto we Sizwe, though neglected since his assassination, is nevertheless adequately documented. By most credible accounts, Chris Hani was the natural successor to Nelson Mandela, within the arrangement that is marketed as a “negotiated settlement”.
Clive Derby-Lewis, an archetypical descendant of the collective European mind that gathered at the Berlin Conference, remained firm in his beliefs until the day he died. Within the matrix of depravity and half-truths he brings to his last recorded interview, there is one aspect of his version that is proven by events over the past twenty six years, and especially, by the spectacle that played out at the State of the Nation Address. His contention that de Klerk’s National Party, surreptitiously engineered a power sharing deal with the African National Congress, cannot be faulted.
The apartheid regime freed prisoner Mandela on 07 December 1988. Charged with the responsibility to bring other ANC leaders on board, he was provided a comfortable home on the grounds of Victor Verster Prison, to receive and consult with whomsoever he pleased. Unless and until we interpret these shady events for what they really were, we will remain diverted by Janusz Walus and Clive Derby-Lewis. We will never see, as clearly as Chris Hani did, that, those clandestine meetings had brought us to the point of no return.
WHAT KILLED CHRIS HANI?
At the time Chris Hani demanded that FW de Klerk be held accountable, he was head of the SACP and MK Chief of Staff. It is in this context that the ANC position at SONA 2020, raises suspicions. In proper construction, Chris Hani preceded the EFF, ANC and every other political party represented in Parliament since 27 April 1994. The decision to continue “negotiations” with the apartheid regime, after Hani’s assassination, cannot be rationalized on the grounds we heard at his funeral and certainly not on revolutionary principles. This purportedly Democratic State does not come into being because of the revolutionary contribution of Chris Hani. It owes its existence to evidence of the machinations that Chris Hani had warned us about. A Parliament that speaks after the voice of Chris Hani has so been silenced, may one day have to account for crimes against humanity.
There exists amongst human beings, because they are human, a solidarity through which each shares responsibility for every injustice and every wrong committed in the world and especially for crimes that are committed in his presence or of which he cannot be ignorant. If I do not do whatever I can to prevent them, I am an accomplice in them. If I have not risked my life in order to prevent the murder of other men, if I have stood silent, I feel guilty in a sense that cannot in any adequate fashion be understood juridically or politically or morally. That I am still alive after such things have been done weighs on me as a guilt that cannot be expiated. Somewhere in the heart of human relations, an absolute command imposes itself: in case of criminal attack or of living conditions that threaten physical being, accept life for all together or not at all. Karl Theodore Jaspers (1883 – 1969)
Mike Stainbank. Founder: The Apartheid Museum