Summit, mediators lift hopes for peace in S. Africa
Summit, mediators lift hopes for peace in S. Africa
JOHANNESBURG (Reuter): Hopes for peace in South Africa were bolstered yesterday by news of the imminent arrival of international statesmen on a mediation mission.
There was also more positive news on a planned peace meeting bringing together top political leaders to ensure South Africa's first all-race elections take place unhindered on April 26-28.
A senior African National Congress official said former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger and Britain's ex-foreign secretary Lord Carrington, were due to arrive later this week. Carrington helped negotiate Rhodesia's transition to independent Zimbabwe.
The official, who did not wish to identified, said talks between the ANC and the Zulu-dominated Inkatha Freedom Party, which is boycotting the elections, would take place over the next few days to prepare the ground for the mediators' arrival.
"My understanding is that Kissinger and Carrington...will arrive this week," said the ANC official, adding that the mediators' recommendations would not be binding.
"They will be here to mediate, not to arbitrate," he said.
President F.W. de Klerk last week declared a state of emergency in volatile Natal province and Inkatha's KwaZulu heartland after 300 people were killed in political unrest between Inkatha and ANC supporters during March.
At least 54 people have been killed in the region since the emergency declaration, eight in a massacre of women and children in Port Shepstone.
Inkatha leader Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi is insisting on constitutional guarantees for greater regional autonomy in a post-apartheid South Africa.
Officials of the party, which is demanding a postponement of the elections, are convinced the mediators will come down strongly in favor of their concept of federalism and that if the mediators were to do that Inkatha would join the mainstream transition to majority rule.
Compromise
A senior government source said de Klerk was likely to present Buthelezi, who is KwaZulu's chief minister, with a compromise aimed at bringing him into the elections when they, ANC leader Nelson Mandela and Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini meet together for the first time on Friday.
The source, asked if the agenda could include a postponement of regional but not national voting in Buthelezi's KwaZulu-Natal, replied: "All possibilities will be considered."
The ANC has ruled out any delay in the elections ending more than three centuries of white domination in South Africa.
ANC spokesman Carl Niehaus reiterated yesterday that there was no question of a postponement.
"There is no question of this...regional and national elections will take place as planned," he said.
In the elections, voters will be able to cast two ballots -- one for the national legislature and one for regional assemblies.
Sources close to negotiations between the government, the ANC and Inkatha have said previously any delay in regional voting, if agreed at the peace summit, would have to be very short.
Niehaus said he hoped that even at this late hour it might be possible for Inkatha to take part in the election "perhaps under the banner of another party".
Right-wing Gen. Constand Viljoen has suggested that Inkatha could take part in the polls in his Freedom Front party, which is campaigning for a white homeland in post-apartheid South Africa.