{"id":41632,"date":"2022-12-19T21:23:46","date_gmt":"2022-12-19T21:23:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/dear-comrade-president-book-highlights-tambos-role-in-preparing-sa-for-democracy"},"modified":"2022-12-19T21:23:46","modified_gmt":"2022-12-19T21:23:46","slug":"dear-comrade-president-book-highlights-tambos-role-in-preparing-sa-for-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/dear-comrade-president-book-highlights-tambos-role-in-preparing-sa-for-democracy","title":{"rendered":"‘Dear Comrade President’: Book highlights Tambo\u2019s role in preparing SA for democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – South-Africa. <\/strong><\/span>A new book by historian Andre Odendaal, focuses on a dimension ignored in previous histories and memoirs of this period: the ANC\u2019s constitution-framing process, which would help to shape the future democratic South Africa, writes Gavin Evans.<\/b><\/p>\n

More than three decades have passed since the apartheid government in South Africa unbanned the African National Congress (ANC), the country\u2019s leading liberation movement, and released its leader, Nelson Mandela, from prison. This launched four fraught years of negotiations and violence that led to South Africa\u2019s first-ever democratic elections.<\/p>\n

The book Dear Comrade President: Oliver Tambo and the Foundations of South Africa\u2019s Constitution, by South African historian Andre Odendaal, focuses on a dimension ignored in previous histories and memoirs of this period: the ANC\u2019s constitution-framing process, which would help to shape the future democratic South Africa.<\/p>\n

In the mid-1980s conditions for negotiations to end apartheid did not seem promising. President PW Botha\u2019s government had shifted control away from the white parliament towards the military. A wave of assassinations, proxy terror killings and regular raids on neighbouring states was launched.<\/p>\n

On the ANC side, most felt the route to power was armed revolution. Its main sources of support were the then Soviet Union, German Democratic Republic and Cuba. Much of its leadership was beholden to Marxism-Leninism.<\/p>\n

Odendaal quotes former South African Communist Party leader Joe Slovo saying (in 1994) that the political content of the ANC was \u201cmoulded\u201d in these three countries \u2013 content Slovo calls \u201cvery mechanical Stalinist concepts\u201d. Slovo adds:<\/p>\n

This 442-page book unpicks the process of adopting constitutional principles that included support for multiparty democracy and a bill of rights. This process was launched by the ANC leader Oliver Tambo in 1985. It involved a seven-person constitution committee which eventually came up with a document that proved hugely influential in negotiations with the apartheid government.<\/p>\n

The committee set up by Tambo drew up 14 drafts after many delays and much frustration. But it finally produced a document that was endorsed in 1988, and became the basis for the Organisation of African Unity and United Nations approach to South Africa.<\/p>\n

This document guided the ANC\u2019s stand in the negotiations under the umbrella of the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa). Odendaal writes:<\/p>\n

The most compelling bits of the book include profiles of the main players \u2013 Tambo and those on the committee, including Jack Simon, Kader Asmal, Zola Skweyiya, Albie Sachs and the man whose 1985 intervention set it in motion, Pallo Jordan.<\/p>\n

Jordan\u2019s paper , The New Face of Counter-Revolution, went against prevailing revolutionary wisdom. It argued that the ANC should take the initiative through backing multiparty democracy with a bill of rights guaranteeing individual freedom. It should also win the support of the black middle class.<\/p>\n

Some within the ANC had severe doubts, worried this was getting in the way of revolution.<\/p>\n

Odendaal counters the view that it was the collapse of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 \u2013 marking the unravelling of the Soviet Union, the main backer of the ANC\u2019s armed struggle \u2013 that nudged the ANC towards multiparty democracy. He shows it had already endorsed these principles more than three years earlier.<\/p>\n

The collapse of the Soviet Union had \u201clittle impact on the ANC\u2019s immediate thinking and strategy in relation to negotiations\u201d, Odendaal adds. (In my view, it certainly had a longer-term impact, helping open the way for one-time Marxists to become multi-millionaires.)<\/p>\n

Odendaal\u2019s account also challenges the claim by some analysts, including Niel Barnard, the former head of the apartheid government\u2019s National Intelligence Service, that the fall of communism allowed the government to negotiate. Odendaal acknowledges the collapse of the communist bloc made it easier for the government to unban the ANC. It also meant the government<\/p>\n

But the process leading to negotiations was already unstoppable by then. The secret \u201cConsgold talks\u201d, aimed at easing the way towards negotiations, started in 1986. They were between the ANC and Afrikaner academics led by the Stellenbosch University philosophy professor Willie Esterhuyse, and backed by the National Intelligence Service.<\/p>\n

Adding to the momentum were the talks Nelson Mandela held with apartheid justice minister Kobie Coetsee in 1986, and the government\u2019s invitation to Soviet leader Mikhael Gorbachev to engage in discussions.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s often forgotten that it was the hardliner PW Botha, who preceded FW de Klerk as president, who met with Mandela and released Walter Sisulu and other political prisoners on 15 October 1989. The Berlin Wall came down on 9 November 1989.<\/p>\n

Odendaal highlights the role played by the regular \u201csafaris\u201d that saw more than a thousand South African notables and activists meeting with the ANC between 1985 and 1990. This counters the view promoted by Barnard and Esterhuyse that these were irrelevant.<\/p>\n

Instead, he suggests, they helped set the climate for negotiations by softening white South African attitudes to the ANC and widening ANC perspectives on conditions within the country. He quotes Barnard\u2019s admission that these visits to the ANC in exile<\/p>\n

The book stresses that mass resistance and international sanctions pushed the apartheid government to the point where it had to negotiate. But its laser focus on the ANC\u2019s constitutional process means that sometimes detail gets in the way of perspective, leading to too much listing of names and not quite enough contextual information.<\/p>\n

For instance, Odendaal notes that the ANC was in \u201corganisational disarray\u201d by 1990. He also hints at the depth of the problems faced by the ANC\u2019s army, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), referring to a meeting between Tambo and MK\u2019s Ugandan camp commander Thenjiwe Mtintso, where she explains the dire conditions faced by recruits.<\/p>\n

More could be said here. MK was decimated through being pushed out of its \u201cforward areas\u201d (its southern African bases), deeply infiltrated by apartheid agents and overwhelmed by internal problems under its compromised leader Joe Modise. Its other strand, Operation Vula (which involved establishing command structures within the country), was more successful but arrived too late to make a substantial difference to the balance of power between the ANC and the apartheid government.<\/p>\n

These issues could have been explored in more depth even if it meant sacrificing some of the blow-by-blow detail.<\/p>\n

Dear Comrade President might be hard going for the casual reader, but it makes a valuable contribution to the South African \u201cstruggle\u201d library, revealing the importance of the constitutional process within the ANC for setting the trajectory of a democratic South Africa.<\/p>\n

For More News And Analysis About South-Africa<\/a> Follow Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – South-Africa. A new book by historian Andre Odendaal, focuses on a dimension ignored in previous histories and memoirs of this period: the ANC\u2019s constitution-framing process, which would help to shape the future democratic South Africa, writes Gavin Evans. More than three decades have passed since the apartheid government in South Africa unbanned the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":41631,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[274,315,290,4146,4145,1083,275],"class_list":["post-41632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-files","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-south-africa","tag-anc","tag-constitution","tag-exile","tag-oliver-tambo","tag-south-africa-2"],"yoast_head":"\n'Dear Comrade President': Book highlights Tambo\u2019s role in preparing SA for democracy - South Africa<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/dear-comrade-president-book-highlights-tambos-role-in-preparing-sa-for-democracy\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"'Dear Comrade President': Book highlights Tambo\u2019s role in preparing SA for democracy\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Africa-Press – South-Africa. 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