Ethno-Net Database: RSA

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The Freedom Front Plus (FF+), renowned for advocating a volkstaat, surprised the political community yesterday by announcing that it had struck a deal with the largely coloured Cape People's Congress (CPC) for the April 14 poll.
The FF+ reached an agreement with the CPC , which would see its members being encouraged to vote for the FF+ in the election. In return, the CPC will receive technical and logistical assistance.
Both parties felt that by joining forces they could prevent the African National Congress (ANC) from winning a majority vote.
The CPC will stand only in the provincial elections in Western Cape and Northern Cape.
Currently the CPC has a presence in the Theewaterskloof local authority in Western Cape, where they maintain the balance of power in the council. However, they have failed to attract votes in the rest of the province.
FF+ leader Pieter Mulder and CPC leader Dennis Marinus said in a statement that "everything should be put into motion to prevent the ANC from gaining a two-third majority in the 2004 elections".
The parties agreed that it should try to keep the ANC/New National Party alliance in Western Cape "out of government".
They said their agreement was based on the promotion of Christian values; the protection and promotion of Afrikaans as an indigenous language; the reinstitution of the death penalty ; termination of affirmative action; and the empowerment of their different communities.
Marinus supported calls from the FF+'s call for a volkstaat because the county was "under threat from crime and corruption". He suggested that the migration of black people to Western Cape was politically motivated to strengthen the ANC.
Marinus lashed out at the ANC, saying the "expectations of the brown people have not been met and they had been disillusioned and treated like foreigners in their own country".

While party leaders in KwaZulu-Natal step up the rhetoric and war-talk ahead of the elections, communities on the ground are increasingly refusing to be used as cannon-fodder in political “turf” wars.
Eight people have been killed in clashes between the Inkatha Freedom Party and the African National Congress in KwaZulu-Natal in the past month, sparking fears of renewed violence in the province where political rivalry between the two parties left about 20 000 dead in the decade ending in 1996.
On Tuesday hundreds of South African National Defence Force members were deployed in provincial hot spots — Ulundi, Nongoma, Mahlabathini, Estcourt, Tongaat and Greytown — in an effort to prevent violence.
But this attempt to keep the peace has not been helped by the rhetoric and finger-pointing of the supposedly senior political leaders of the province.
ANC safety and security spokesperson in KwaZulu-Natal Bheki Cele said: “The trend seems to be that wherever there are political blockages and incidents of violence, it is the IFP who [incite] the ANC. Sometimes it is difficult to respect the Amakhosi [traditional leaders] because, to me, they often behave like nothing more than IFP activists.”
The province’s IFP spokesperson Blessed Gwala shot back: “The most recent acts of violence have been caused by the ANC, who are attempting to discredit the IFP in the eyes of the public. All I can say is that the relationship between the ANC and the IFP is at the lowest it has been since 1999. If you come to the legislature in Pietermaritzburg, you will see that there is no peace in this province.”
And Alfred Mbontshane, IFP representative in the provincial legislature, said: “That greatest man, Mao Zedong, said that whenever you send your soldiers to war, you don’t send them with the aim of losing. That is all we are telling our people, we just hope that the ANC is going to accept that victory because that victory is assured.”
But on the ground across the province, local communities appear to be tired of the sometimes deadly politicking and the lack of delivery of better living standards by the IFP-dominated provincial and the ANC-controlled national governments.
Ulundi, an IFP stronghold, has been marked with a red flag by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) as a potential site of violence. But people in this hilly village couldn’t be more averse, even angered, by talk of violence ahead of the election. “I am just waiting for the voting day, I don’t want to hear anything about violence any more because we are the poorest church [mice] here,” said Mamkhize Buthelezi, an Ulundi resident.
Gerty Magwza, an IFP councillor in Ulundi, said that provincial politics has become a game of smoke and mirrors: “Whenever people talk aboutKwaZulu-Natal they talk about us as if we are violent people. By creating these perceptions, they are really the violators. Whether we are ANC or IFP supporters, we ... all live in shacks, we all suffer from HIV/Aids and we all suffer from shortages of water and electricity.”
People have shown a “paradigm shift from the violence 10 years ago to wanting a dignified and peaceful election this year”, said Mzwakhe Sithebe, an ANC councillor in the Umzinyathi district in the northern part of the province. But he added that he was worried that “IFP warlords” might try and stamp their authority on the region ahead of the elections.
Kiru Naidoo, a political scientist at the Durban Institute of Technology, said there has been an “unfortunate tendency” by the media and politicians to “ascribe random acts of tension to political issues when, in fact, these could have been caused by a family or clan feud. The manner in which these issues have come into the political domain has heightened the political temperature.”
The ANC and the IFP are in a neck-and-neck tussle for control of the province. Although they are both represented in the IFP-dominated provincial government, relations between the two have deteriorated since the ANC became the largest party in the provincial legislature — through defections from other parties represented in the house — technically giving it the right to more seats in the provincial cabinet.
The IFP responded to this by entering into a coalition with the Democratic Alliance, the official opposition in the National Assembly. In the province both the IFP and the ANC have made it clear they want to win the KwaZulu-Natal vote in the coming elections.
A December 2003 poll by the Human Sciences Research Council predicted that the ANC would take 46,6% of the province’s vote, the IFP 33,9% and the DA 6,6%. However, the IFP traditionally under-polls in pre-election voter-support surveys.
IEC electoral officer for the province Mawethu Mosery said the outcome of the election will depend largely on voter turnout and, more specifically, on rural versus urban turnout. He says that rural constituencies are largely IFP and urban constituencies are ANC. About four million people have registered in the province. Of these about 2,1-million are urban and 1,9-million are rural, according to Mosery.
Naidoo believes that a hung legislature is likely, with a coalition of one of the big parties and some of the smaller parties ruling the province. However, he does not rule out the ANC and the IFP continuing to work together in the province. “Even if the IFP were in full control of this legislature, being in the national Cabinet is what gives it visibility on the national and international stage,” he explains. To try and secure seats in the Cabinet, the IFP might make a deal to work with ANC in the province, even if it wins the KwaZulu-Natal election.
For now, however, the internecine politicking in the halls of power should be of greater concern than the rumblings of political violence on the ground. The people of KwaZulu-Natal appear not as easily stirred to violence as they were 10 years ago.

The Democratic Alliance will lay a charge of incitement to violence against the African National Congress, South African Communist Party and Congress of South African Trade Unions in the Limpopo province.
DA spokesperson Sandra Botha said on Wednesday her party would lay charges after the three organisations brandished placards proclaiming: "Enough is enough -- Kill the farmer, kill the boer", "Tired with boers", "Fed up with killer boers" and "Castrate boers".
The placards were reportedly displayed during a court appearance of four men accused of feeding former colleague Nelson Shisane to lions in Limpopo earlier in February.
Four men -- Mark Scott-Crossley, Simon Mathebula, Richard Mathebula and Robert Mnisi -- appeared in court on a charge of murder and grievous bodily harm.
But charges against Mnisi were dropped after he agreed to become a witness for the prosecution.
Botha said: "Instead of urging all South Africans to unite in voicing their abhorrence of this incident, the ANC and its alliance partners have sought to sow racial divisions and enforce racial stereotypes."
She said the parties were spreading misinformation.
"Firstly, there are three people accused of Shisane's murder, only one of whom is white. There does not appear to be any racial motive in the alleged murder. Secondly, Mark Scott-Crossley is not a farmer. He runs a business from a smallholding."
Botha said the incident was not a true reflection of farmers, Afrikaners, whites, or any other grouping the tripartite alliance chose to target.
"If the ANC and its alliance partners insist on jumping to conclusions about racist motives and putting entire communities in the dock along with the accused, we will never heal the racial divisions of the past."
Last year, the South African Human Rights Commission declared the slogan "Kill the boer, kill the farmer" to be hate speech.

President Thabo Mbeki's "refusal" to debate with Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon on television is a sign of growing presidential arrogance, disregard for the democratic process, and disrespect for the people, the DA said on Monday.
DA chief election campaign spokesperson Douglas Gibson said Mbeki is also taking advantage of the calendar to elude tough questions.
The current parliamentary session ends on February 27 and Mbeki will not be attending Parliament for the purpose of presidential question time, and will not be available to answer questions or for debate before the election.
"In a modern democracy this is an unacceptably long period," Gibson said in a statement, dismissing African National Congress spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama's assertion that Mbeki is "too busy" to debate with Leon and has "better things to do" as nonsensical.
Before the 1994 election former president Nelson Mandela found the time to debate with then president FW de Klerk on television. During the 1996 election in the United States former president Bill Clinton debated with his Republican rival, Bob Dole, he said.
Last year Nigerian President Olusegun Abasanjo was prepared to debate with his main challenger in the Nigerian presidential elections.
All these leaders were able to find the time to debate their rivals because they recognised the centrality of such a contest to the electoral process.
"It is only Thabo Mbeki who does not have the time, or the courage, to engage in public debate. By running away from a debate with Tony Leon, Mbeki is running away from the voters of South Africa.
"It is time he stopped, stood his ground, and defended his record as president and the policies his government has implemented," Gibson said.

The New National Party fully supports the government's targets for a controlled land reform process and warned other parties not to sow seeds of fear about the issue in the minds of South Africans.
This emerged when party leader Premier Marthinus van Schalkwyk addressed the NNP Land Reform Conference in Gauteng.
"The NNP supports the 30% national target for land reform and believes that it must take place with a market-based approach, in other words, on the principle of a willing-buyer and a willing-seller. The rule of law must always be upheld," Van Schalkwyk said.
He urged the government to move ahead with the process by making large tracts of land available to the previously disadvantaged.
"The government and NNP target of obtaining 30% of commercial farmland in South Africa and then distributing it to emerging farmers within 15 years, calls for innovative programmes if it is to be successful without undermining property rights, the rule of law, and investor confidence."
Protect property
He said the NNP's approach to land reform was a "responsible" one aimed at protecting private property, expanding property ownership and making maximum use of opportunities for the development of agriculture.
He called on existing farmers to co-operate in the process of transforming the sector.
"Transformation and empowerment are required throughout the agricultural sector -- from export to finance and from agricultural research to developmental opportunities.
New black farmers must not only be provided with land, but they must also receive training and assistance so that they can develop a viable farm."
He said the issue of land reform caused anxiety and mistrust among many and that this was made worse by the situation in Zimbabwe. Therefore, he said it was inappropriate to use the issue to score political points.
"Land reform has been in the headlines recently as a result of the situation in Zimbabwe, and has further been manipulated by the propagandists when they use land to play their usual Zimbabwe or "swart gevaar" fear tactics.
"To use the issue of land reform to create fear in the hearts and minds of the people is opportunistic in the extreme.
He said stakeholders could avoid a Zimbabwe scenario in South Africa, by following an inclusive approach and by ensuring co-operation between black, white, coloured and Indian people.

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