Listening to the silent majority

[p. 148]

[107]

Reading the names of the members of the National Forum of Black Leaders (nfbl), I wondered whether the classic mistake that characterised all government efforts to get reform off the ground was not being repeated; namely, that the authorities once more heavily leaned on the trusted old guard of black moderates instead of building as broad as possible a base for future negotiation teams of black leaders.

For instance, two organisations which would normally have enthusiastically joined, msa with leader Tom Boya, and fida with leader John Gogotya, declined to join in. Boya listed a range of pre-conditions. All political prisoners and detainees had to be released first. Outlawed organisations had to be unbanned first. The State of Emergency had to be lifted first. And all discriminatory laws had to be scrapped first. Tom Boya was upping the ante, exactly as he had informed me earlier he would do.

fida issued on May 8, 1989 a similar critical statement saying the organisation was not prepared to join the nfbl ‘since it is undemocratically constituted’. John Gogotya assured me, when I discussed this development with him, that the way the Executive Committee and corresponding members of the regions had been selected was reminiscent of the old power game and was in no way acceptable to fida.

I wondered how Mr FW de Klerk, the new Nationalist Party leader, would look upon the latest Heunis initiative and interpret the refusals of some important black organisations to even come near the nfbl. I knew that when the tpa and especially John Mavuso - now again one of the stars in the National Forum - had deliberately refused to lend further support to the beleaguered Mayor Samuel Kolisang and his vrrp in Lekoa, that this energetic black leader had asked for a meeting with Mr FW de Klerk in Vereeniging and was given an audience on May 28, 1989. At 8.30 am, Kolisang took a full delegation of ten blacks to the office of the new np leader. The talks lasted two hours. The reactions from the black participants to this exchange of ideas ranged from enthusiastic to jubilant. They found Mr de Klerk to be a man fully prepared to listen to what the black community wanted him to know. They were also amazed at the interest and detailed questions Mr de Klerk asked in order to familiarise himself with the situation in Lekoa. The roles of the

[p. 149]

tpa in this matter, and that of John Mavuso in particular, were amply discussed.

Therefore, as an observer of these events, I was not surprised shortly afterwards to see Mr Chris Heunis withdraw from these matters altogether. I knew more developments could be expected, especially when one takes into account the sheer lawlessness that developed in Lekoa with the Transvaal authorities failing to back up those who were desperately trying to uphold the law. After all, Mr FW de Klerk himself is an experienced lawyer.