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Recorded and transcribed by GCIS

Question: Question about the recent ANC policy conference and forthcoming national conference

President Thabo Mbeki: As we prepared for the recent policy conference of the ANC, it seemed that there wasn't anything in the policies that have evolved since 1994 that required radical alteration. Of course much of this has now translated into law. But there was nothing really that required fundamental alteration.

The biggest challenge is the issue of implementation, of ensuring, for instance, that there is adequate capacity within government structures to address those policy issues and therefore, necessarily, having to look at the state of political leadership in government, whether it's municipal councillors or premiers and their executives, president and ministers, and all that. Is the political leadership adequate in terms of having implemented the policies adequately?

Of course, you have got to look at the public service at all of these levels. But also we have to look at the African National Congress, because these political representatives are ANC. Is the ANC putting in these positions of responsibility people who have got capacity to discharge this sort of responsibility and, having put them there, are the ANC structures assisting in the process of ensuring that these policies get implemented?

So these are the focal matters that the National Conference must address. The challenge of implementation of these policies is really critical, to ensure that they produce the results that were intended. This must be the focus of the conference.

Question: The Youth League has said that there are positions within the national leadership that should not be contested - what's your view of that?

President Thabo Mbeki: After they had said that publicly, I asked them about it and the point they were making, they said, was that we needed to avoid a situation where the conference gets diverted from a serious discussion of the matters that I'm mentioning - that conference should not be diverted into a place for leadership wrangles and leadership squabbles. So they thought they should declare their own position on this matter as quickly as possible. People, in their view, should not be wasting time now, instead of thinking about these critical central challenges, by saying who is going to be taking which position and so on. From their own experience within the organisation, they were not saying change should not be brought about, but they are very keen that we shouldn't allow a diversion away from a focus on these things to some futile leadership wrangle, with conference just becoming a focus for that and not doing what it's supposed to do.

But all positions in the ANC are open. This is indeed a once in five years congress, which has a constitutional duty to elect a leadership. There is no provision in the constitution that some positions are not contested. Branches are quite free to propose whoever they want to be candidates.

But the feeling I get in the organisation, and you could see it at this recent policy conference, is that the branches are very focused on the issues of what do we do to accelerate the process of the birth of a new South Africa.

This is the central challenge and we need to look at everything that has to do with that. Talking about the national leadership's situation may be different, as against other levels - provincial, regional, all that - but at the national level I haven't had any sense that people have defined it that at the forthcoming congress the main point of focus must be change of leadership, but rather that it really has to assist in ensuring that we are correctly oriented and that indeed, as the delegates leave the congress, they must be empowered to be able to play the role that they should play to move forward this process of the building of a new South Africa.

Question: President, at the policy conference you raised the matter, quite strongly, of the enemies of the state.

President Thabo Mbeki: I never used such a phrase.

Question: Who would you define as ultra left? Do you refer to them as being part of the movement?

President Thabo Mbeki: I would start with the question - what is ultra-left? One should look at the positions of the ultra-left, globally - not just in South Africa. They define themselves variously, in all that I've read, as anarchists, socialists, fourth international and so on, and they have a common platform which is: let us unite to defeat globalisation and let us unite to defeat neo-liberalism, which is a manifestation of that globalisation process.

These are the basic positions and in that context, then, there would be the particular matters - for instance neo-liberalism would refer to issues of privatisation of state assets, how you handle public finances with regard to issues like budget deficits. It is actually a global platform. It is not peculiarly South African.

What you then get is an interpretation of ANC and government policies which defines them within that context, so when we say "restructuring of state assets" that is read as "privatisation", as implementation of this neo-liberal agenda, accommodation with globalisation.

So the demand then becomes - change government policies on a whole variety of matters so as to be consistent with an anti-neo-liberalism position, an anti-globalisation position. That is what we are discussing.

You then get all sorts of stories, which are factually incorrect. You have now had two general strikes, last year and this year, at the centre of which was this demand that the Government must abandon its privatisation policy. They were based on very false information about what's happening.

Take the small airline Sun Air, which vanished. Sun Air was not of any strategic importance in terms of what we have to do with air transport. Then there was Aventura holiday resorts. Apart from those I can't think of anything that has been privatised.

We took an equity partner for Telkom, a state corporation, because we thought it was necessary to inject some substantial capital into that company to meet an objective we had set, which is to expand telephony to make sure that we are able to reach areas that had not been reached before - urban and rural black areas, essentially - but also schools and hospitals and places like that. We needed injection of new capital, new technology, and a managerial response to a rapidly changing sector of the economy. It is interesting, with respect to Telkom, that in meeting their commitments, in certain areas they over-met their commitments. So you put a telephone in somebody's house and then you put a telephone at the street corner and after two to three months they find they cannot actually afford the telephone in the house, but they have an alternative, because of the telephone nearby. So you had to disconnect a number of telephones with a link to Telkom, because people had overestimated their budget capacity to own.

Also, we wanted to create a space to bring in modern information and communication technology into the schools - the Internet, and all of that - and very good progress has been made. But Telkom remains a state corporation. Even so, the matter is raised about "privatisation" of Telkom. No such thing has happened.

We did the same thing with South African Airways, and said we needed a strategic equity partner, and that was SwissAir, which then collapsed. SAA remained a state corporation.

But the state does not have the volume of resources to enable us to do many of these things.

Or take the Airports Company - the same thing happened. We got Aeroporti di Roma to take 50% of the Airports Company, to bring in the resources, the management, and so on, because air traffic in and out of South Africa has is growing very rapidly, and has been doing so for a number of years.

But the matter is then presented as government privatising consistent with this neo-liberal agenda, and therefore let's have a general strike to stop this! It is not based on any fact, it is based on an ideological conviction.

Eskom, another case, was in a very peculiar position in that it wasn't owned by anybody. It was structured during the apartheid years in such a way that, frankly, I do not know who owned Eskom. So we said we needed to clarify this thing. Eskom is a state corporation and this matter must be clear; it has certain obligations - tax, dividend, and so on. The unions opposed legislation to regularize the legal position of Eskom. They opposed it on the basis that this was a prelude to privatisation of Eskom. It had nothing to do with the privatisation of Eskom. Indeed, the general view in the country, both in government and among business, is that cheap energy is critical to the success of other elements of the South African economy. You want growth and development, so if you made that energy expensive, you would defeat these other objectives.

So there is absolutely no decision of any kind in government, that Eskom should be privatised. But what we are saying also, with regard to Eskom, is that there are certain interventions by the private sector which can be made in the electricity field to increase capacity, to increase investment in electricity, to make more energy available at the cheapest rate, but there is no suggestion of any kind of privatisation of Eskom. Even the private sector say it would be incorrect to have a situation where you privatised Eskom, as a result of which energy prices would go up because whoever would now own it is just interested in making profit. You would destroy other objectives; but yet people will then go on a general strike - not because of the facts of the situation, but because of the pursuit of a particular ideological perspective.

Question: Who are these people?

President Thabo Mbeki: You find them in some of the leadership of Cosatu making these sorts of noises. I am sure there would probably be some in the ANC, too. It is not Cosatu itself, I'm quite convinced.

The process of acquiring a strategic equity partner for SAA was discussed and agreed with all the unions that are concerned with South African Airways. With Telkom, the same. In discussions about restructuring of Transnet, agreement has been reached with the unions in this area. In all of these instances, there has been agreement. With Aventura, not only was agreement reached, but a Cosatu company took a big share portfolio in Aventura and one of the problems was that they could not raise the money to pay.

In all of these instances, we had discussions with the unions in these sectors in the context of the National Framework Agreement. But then somebody says: Let's go and strike against these processes which have been agreed to with the affiliated unions. I'm saying it is in pursuit of an ideological position, it is not in pursuit of correcting something that has gone factually wrong, because nothing has gone factually wrong yet. So I'm saying that you find these people in Cosatu; but it is not Cosatu as such. You would have to say it's Cosatu if their affiliated unions went against these specific things, which they have to negotiate with the government, and they haven't. We sit and we discuss, we agree and so we can then proceed, but then the intervention is made elsewhere. They are in Cosatu, I'm sure that they are in the ANC, I'm sure that they are in the Communist Party.

Question: What, then, does this mean for the ANC, seeing that the area where this kind of ideological warfare is being waged against it is within its own alliance partners; what does that mean for the alliance?

President Thabo Mbeki: What has to happen is that we need better engagement with everybody concerned and I would say, myself, that that also includes engagements with the affiliates, for instance, of Cosatu, not just with Cosatu, the federation, but also with their affiliates.

Let us discuss all these things, let us get all the facts together, including whatever people might want to say about the negative or positive impact of what has been done up to now. I think that process of engagement - honest, open, frank - will do something to educate all of us about the reality of South Africa, not about the consistency of particular ideological positions but what about actually is happening in South Africa.

So that is what needs to happen, that we really go in very seriously for this engagement. You will find that in many instances when people talk about privatisation in South Africa, they are actually talking about experience in the United Kingdom, transposing here what happened in the United Kingdom when Mrs. Thatcher was Prime Minister. But nothing that happened in the United Kingdom has happened here. This is reading South Africa through particular lenses. I think an engagement to confront the truth about these matters would help a great deal.

Question: Is there space within the ANC for this sort of debate? What should be the outcome, considering that this debate has been going on for years? There has been this exchange of crossfire, some of it has become even personal. What would be the best outcome for the ANC and the country in dealing with this ideological matter?

President Thabo Mbeki: Part of our problem here is that we continue to be isolated from the rest of the world. This debate about these matters is not new in global politics. It has been there all the time. I do not imagine that in this country you would have a situation where you do not have this particular ideological and political tendency all the time - it's been there in the rest of the world for many decades.

In the ANC, the first documents discussing this issue were agreed at the 1991 conference in Durban after which they were published. Those decisions of the '91 conference were discussed in the context of the RDP, and our positions were confirmed. So the positions in the ANC have been established now for over a decade. With regard to the continuation of the debate, the fourth international was formed probably around 1920, and came out of struggles within the Soviet Union between Lenin and Trotsky. Lenin belonged to the third international, Trotsky to the fourth international.

That shows how old these particular ideological positions are. That they surface in South Africa in the particular form they do, is an entirely historical matter. So I do not think that that particular tendency is going to disappear. It is free to exist. It's free to advance its positions. That's fine, and, as I say, it has existed globally for a very long time. I do not think it will have any material impact here, because you saw the response of the workers, both this year and last year, to the general strikes.

We have been saying to COSATU that it is not possible, it is not politically possible in this country, to mobilize workers to act against this government which they elected - to act against the ANC. Politically it can't be done, they will not respond like that. This tells you that the ideas haven't sunk that deep for them to become a material factor in changing the real attitude among the ordinary people in this country, and I don't believe that they will sink that deep in order to change the attitude. But the tendency will continue to exist as it has existed in other countries for many decades.

Question: It is the ultra-left who says it is committed to socialism and you say that the ANC is committed to national democratic revolution. If somebody was to ask what the national democratic revolution is supposed to achieve as opposed to socialism, what is it?

President Thabo Mbeki: I would say a very, very central matter with regard to that is the building of a non-racial society. We've then got to break that down to say what it means, and the ANC would say one of the things it means is that you've got to do something about this economy, which is owned and managed by the white sector of our population, as part of our racial heritage.

So what we have got to do is make sure that we de-racialise the ownership patterns in the economy, we've got to de-racialise the management patterns of the economy, you've got to de-racialise the skills patterns of the economy and so on. So we must make interventions that will produce those sort of results. The mining charter, that we will be discussing and finalising this week, government and the mining companies, addresses all of those issues. Now somebody who takes a socialist platform will then say: no, no, no, no, that's not the task; let us nationalize the mines and turn them into public property.

The ANC has a broad national liberation aim; it has never had as one of its tasks the destruction of capitalism and the building of socialism. So we see the task of building a non-racial society as very central among the tasks of the national democratic revolution; to build a non-racial society with regard to the economy. One of the tasks of the ANC must surely be that you open the doors of ownership to the black people. Socialist views say we remove ownership from everybody, whether black or white, but that has never been a historical responsibility of the ANC. It is not now; it's never been the responsibility.

To demand that the ANC must carry out a socialist programme is wrong and the ANC will resist that. So you can talk about a non-racial society, and non-racism with regard to all sorts of things. Certain patterns in the urban areas of the country generally are very difficult to handle. Our people still live in their racial compartments, except for Editors of the Sunday Times [laughter]; but you've got to change those racial patterns to create a truly South African society.

Question: Some of the stories we've been hearing of late deal with the fact of poverty, especially the question of long term programmes that need to be engaged in, but is there a short-term intervention that government is planning?

President Thabo Mbeki: Yes, we are very concerned about this particular matter and, indeed, we are discussing it currently. Part of the shock, as it were, has been contributed by the sudden rise in food prices and this problem has brought to the fore the challenge of poverty. We are looking at what interventions should be made urgently to address the matter of food prices and I'm quite sure we will take some decisions now to act on those.

I am told, in addition to short term ones, there are medium and longer-term measures to address the challenge. But we need some urgent interventions now to address that question.

School feeding schemes are a point of entry, since we know that there are millions of children who come out of poor homes. For so many hours they will be at school - are they getting good, nutritious food? At least you know that they eat for instance, one meal a day that is guaranteed. The school feeding scheme hasn't worked well in some parts of the country. So we are looking to revamp it altogether; for instance, to shift it from health to education. I think those people [in Education] are better able to manage it and then to make all the necessary interventions to ensure that the food does reach the children, and that we take it, in terms of years, beyond where it is now - primary school and so on.

So there will be various interventions of this kind, which we will want to make urgent. We want to make sure that this matter of food and nutrition is addressed urgently.

The reason the issue has been raised of a comprehensive social security system is, again, to look at this question of poverty: How do we redesign this social security system so that it does have an impact on this question? Some of the suggestions that you've seen to do with raising the age of children who are entitled to a child support grant, have to do with this. The improvement of the efficiency of the functioning of the government nationally, with regard to distribution of social pensions relates, again, to this particular matter. So yes, indeed, a lot of vigorous work needs to be done to ensure that you have these relatively short term solutions to address this. The main interventions in this category, as I was saying, have to do with food and access to social pensions.

Question: What about subsidising the price of food, to lower it?

President Thabo Mbeki: We are reluctant to go the way of subsidies. Part of the problem with subsidies is that, in many instances, it becomes very difficult to effect an exit. You might meet a situation where you lower prices by the route of subsidies, and then the prices come down; and to remove the subsidies becomes difficult. So you face a permanent situation where the owners of productive resources are protected and it is the state that is doing the protecting. It is true that they pass on some of the benefit to the buyers of bread. But here you have people who are guaranteed that they are going to be getting a certain sum of money. Even if, say, I make a loss, government will subsidise me.

So we are reluctant to go the way of subsidies, but there must be some other interventions, which for instance would result in the lowering of the price of bread but without our being tied to a system of subsidising the producers. In the interests of passing on cheaper, lower prices to the consumers, we will come up with some specific measures that will do that without necessarily going the route of subsidies so that mealie meal and bread are available cheaper to the consumer.

Question: President, the Growth and Development summit is scheduled for early next year. What would be government's main position, going into that Summit?

President Thabo Mbeki: Let me come back to the earlier point we discussed about privatisation. One of the things that I think the country needs to understand is that, in this economy as in the overwhelming majority of economies elsewhere in the world, capital, the bulk of capital , is in private hands, not in state hands.

So a critical matter with regard to that Growth and Development Summit is, how do we mobilize this capital, which is in private hands, to achieve that growth and development?

From the point of view of the government, we want to work together with the private sector and the unions, we want to say: What happens to these large volumes of capital that are in private hands - how do we mobilize them to impact on development? What do we do about the pension funds which belong to the unions? We have these billions and billions of rands, with are boards of trustees which, according to the law, include trade union representatives. But you don't see any movement from these trustees who control these billions of savings. Where shall these billions be invested other than speculating on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange?

By the time we get to the summit, there has to be some clarity about the commitment from the private sector, including the institutions through which these funds will be mobilised to impact on development? That's very central, very critical to any growth and development strategy.

We also have to be clear about the question of the sectors. When you say you want to encourage investment in the economy, you cannot leave that as a general statement. You have got to say which sectors of the economy, and, therefore, be very clear about what the conditions are within that sector. Are you choosing the sectors that have got growth potential? Are you choosing sectors that are attractive, economically, to go into and what does the government have to do to make those sectors economically attractive?

Apart from the sectors issue, it has got to do with issues of geographic location. The Limpopo Province has great potential to develop food processing. Why does the Limpopo Province send raw agricultural produce to other provinces in the country to be processed? Why is this not done in the Limpopo Province?

We are saying, okay, here is a sector then we say, location-wise, we think it is important to focus on an area like this, which is a large food producer. What you then have to do is to say: But, does the infrastructure exist which would enable this manufacturer then to locate wherever in the Limpopo Province? The Government must come to the meeting to say we believe a growing industry is important. We believe the Limpopo Province is important and, therefore, we must make a commitment to ensure that the roads are there, that the water is there, that the electricity is there, because there is no point saying people should locate in the Limpopo Province when that infrastructure does not exist. So that is where we are coming from.

There are government interventions, like the public works program, but we have got to understand that 90% of the capital in this country which we need for development is not in government hands. If we say we are going to depend on government to do this, government must do this, government must do that, we won't overcome the problems that we have. Government must do what it has to do, with the public works programme also.

But, crucially, the matter is to be as clever as the Chinese. The reason China sustains growth rates of 8% to 10% every year and has done so for the last 15 years, has been on the basis of attracting private capital from outside of China. They understood this matter very well and said: Let us have an open door policy. As China, we do not have the capital required to make an impact on the lives of the people. That is not sufficient. We are a socialist country, so industries are state owned; but we don't have the volumes of capital. So they said: Please, world, come. I wouldn't be surprised if, by now, China attracts half the foreign direct investment that goes to the developing world.

Question: If you look at pension funds, the chase after higher returns becomes almost like the new norm. Has that kind of debate happened?

President Thabo Mbeki: It has. We have raised this question with all three federations. We've raised it with Fedusa, we've raised it with Nactu, and we've raised it with Cosatu, who are actually in control of very large savings in this country.

The way that they are used is precisely the way that you indicated. The fund managers would say the best thing to do is to get very high returns so the pensions are okay, but that does not necessarily mean development.

I have discussed this thing with some of the US pension funds, and asked them: How do you handle this matter in the United States? We are working with them now, and some very interesting experience is coming out of the United States, where they say: We actually invest in poor areas like Harlem in New York; we take a conscious decision that many of the contributors to our pension funds live and work in Harlem and, yet, none of this money is coming into Harlem. And they (the US pension funds) have explained how they do it. They invest in Harlem in a commercially responsible way without abandoning their fiduciary responsibilities - this produces development in Harlem, and does not create problems for the pension fund. It can be done, but it requires a conscious intervention.

That is part of what we have raised with the trade union federations, to say they really, seriously, have to look at this. You find, even now in many instances, with some of the pension funds, that the unions have not supplied the requisite number of trustees that are required by law. So they're not taking this responsibility seriously to be decision makers over billions and billions of Rands. It is part of national savings is required for this growth and development. It needs a change of mind and that has to be part of this discussion, as we prepare for the Growth and Development Summit.

Question: Maybe we can move on to the matter of Zimbabwe. The President has spoken about this, but there seems to be a general misunderstanding in this country about what our policy and our position actually are over Zimbabwe. Do you think you need to speak publicly on this matter, do you need to address it?

President Thabo Mbeki: I don't believe that there is misunderstanding at all about our position with regard to Zimbabwe. Basically, what some people want us to do is to walk into Zimbabwe and overthrow the government. I don't think it is a misunderstanding.

When we met in the Commonwealth, I said to my colleagues there - the Prime Minister of Australia, our Chair, and the President of Nigeria, just before we went to Abuja - that the commercial farmers in Zimbabwe had approached our High Commissioner in Harare and said: Please, can you get this message to President Mbeki? We see in the media that he is going there for this meeting. Please say to the President that it will not help us, it will not help Zimbabwe, to impose sanctions against Zimbabwe. These were the commercial farmers. They said: It won't help us, please don't do it. So I reported accordingly, and I said, well, this is what the Commercial Farmers' Union is saying. They are not saying the problem, the land question in Zimbabwe, has been resolved. When they saw our High Commissioner, they asked him to tell the President: These are the problems that we are experiencing with regard to this thing and needs to be addressed. So when they say: Please don't make our situation more complicated by imposing sanctions, they are not saying the problem is solved.

And when people say: Do something, we say to them: Do what? And nobody gives an answer, because they know that when they say: Do something, what they mean is march across the Limpopo and overthrow the government of President Mugabe, which we are not going to do.

So, our position remains the same - we still have to address the land question in Zimbabwe so that it is resolved. We have said, again, that there has been a long-standing agreement between the British and the Zimbabweans in the first instance, because that is where the land question comes from. It does not come from us, and we never took land from the Zimbabweans and gave it to whites. There was never an obligation on the part of the South African government to supply money to pay compensation, and so on. This was a matter between the colonizing power and their colony. They handled it in a particular way ... whoever was right or wrong in this particular instance, we've got this problem.

In 1998 I spoke to President Mugabe and to the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and said to both of them: This land question in Zimbabwe is going to explode unless you people handle it properly. You have got to handle it in such a way that, indeed, the Zimbabwe government is able to address this land question, because it must be addressed. You can't allow a continuation of this colonial legacy, but it has to be addressed in a manner that doesn't create other problems. And we did, indeed, agree with the British Prime Minister that that must happen. We agreed with President Mugabe that that was going to happen. As a consequence they then held an international conference in Zimbabwe in 1998 to address the land question and everybody was there and they reached an agreement. That was because of an intervention we made in '98, concerned that the matter had to be handled in the correct way.

We have never changed our position since. The matter must be handled in a particular way.

In the end, both the British and the Zimbabweans agreed to the suggestion of the Secretary-General of the United Nations that this matter should be handed over to the United Nations Development Programme - so we said, fine, and, indeed, that's where the matter is. And, so, we have been insisting ever since: Let us act on the basis of this agreement. Let the UN, do this work that it was supposed to do in Zimbabwe - produce a programme to deal with the land question and all of us will support that. We discussed the same question two weeks ago at the General Assembly in New York that the UN must go and do its work.

This is what was agreed. So we are keen that that should happen. It is not a South African responsibility. The land question in Zimbabwe has never been a South African responsibility.

Question: But it has implications for us.

President Thabo Mbeki: Sure.

Question: Is it therefore not possible to speak in a much more direct way to the nation so that they can understand?

President Thabo Mbeki: I am saying I'm sure the nation understands. We have said the matter of the land question in Zimbabwe must be handled in the context of the law, it must be handled without any conflict, it must address the interests of both black and white in Zimbabwe and so on. It must address land redistribution, but in a particular way. We have said that.

Question: In terms of the law?

President Thabo Mbeki: Sure. That is the next step. Then you are going to say: Well, if it is not being done in the way that you say it should be done, what then? So I say we shall continue to engage everybody in this dispute, including commercial farmers, which is why they came to our High Commissioner - to see what can be done and must be resolved. And to the extent that there is international intervention, the matter is agreed internationally - how to handle it. So, if that does not happen, beyond the interventions that we make, no one must walk in and overthrow the government.

It's clear, very clear:

One of the things that happened in Zimbabwe over whatever period is that you have a society that is very deeply polarised. Very, very deeply polarised. It would not matter in Zimbabwe who was the government tomorrow. They would inherit a polarized society and you cannot, in our view, deal with the situation in Zimbabwe without doing something to bring the Zimbabweans together, to act together, to address these common challenges, whether they are political challenges, economic challenges or the land question or whatever.

In order to facilitate that, we say: Let us go to Zimbabwe and talk to Zanu PF and talk to the MDC and say: Look, this is our reading of the situation and we think you should come to an agreement about how to sort out Zimbabwe's problems. Agreed? Yes, agreed. Next, they say: But we can't handle this ... if you put us in a room, Zanu PF and the MDC, and leave us there, nothing will come out of it, because such is the level of polarisation that we are unable to talk to each other. Can you please supply us with facilitators.

We say: Okay. So we supply facilitators - South Africa and Nigeria. The agenda is worked out. Okay, when do we meet next? So everything started. Then the MDC decides to go to court about one of the matters that is on the agenda - they decide: No, this matter should not be resolved here in these negotiations; it must be decided by the judges. Perfectly correct, perfectly legally correct for them to do that - it is their right and we defended it. And, talking to Zanu PF we say: They are correct; they have got a legal right to do that; and Zanu PF says: Well, in which case, because this is a central matter, the legitimacy of the government, since they have decided the matter must be resolved in the courts, let us then adjourn our talks until the courts decide the matter. That is also a rational position on the part of Zanu PF: How we are we going to sit there and discuss this matter when the matter is being heard in the courts, because even as we are talking to the MDC about this issue as it appears on the agenda, they are going to say: No, no, no, there are some things we can't say, because we are only going to present them in the court.

Question: Do you consider that that there is actually hope and a light at the end of the tunnel that this situation can actually be resolved?

President Thabo Mbeki: That's what we would want. President Mugabe, when we were meeting now in Rwanda at the SADC summit, said why doesn't the SADC task force on Zimbabwe come back to Zimbabwe - it has not been there for many months. He said why doesn't the SADC task force come back to Zimbabwe to look at the situation in the entirety of these questions that we looked at last time we were there.

We looked at the land question, we looked at some legislation that was contentious, we looked at the politics of Zimbabwe before the presidential elections, including these issues of conflict and so on, we looked at economic questions, at the economy of Zimbabwe, looked at this matter of a process of national reconciliation - so President Mugabe said why doesn't the SADC task force come back to Zimbabwe to look at anything and everything it wants to look at so that it can determine for itself what sort of intervention it should make.

Question: Was it agreed upon?

President Thabo Mbeki: It was agreed. I spoke to the President of Angola who is our current Chair of SADC and I said I think we need to take up this matter. I think that the SADC team needs to go back there and do what President Mugabe said they should do so that it makes a contribution to this, because we are very keen.

SADC has taken a decision, but SADC raised questions about specific legislation in Zimbabwe. We raised it at the formal SADC summit in Malawi and said this is the position - these laws need to be looked at, pending the presidential elections; we don't think they should be brought into force and, indeed, the ones that were mentioned, were not brought into force. There were matters - some of them in terms of our own situation in the reports that were made by our observers to the presidential elections - raised various things. Those are matters that we want to put on the agenda, to persuade the Zimbabweans to deal with these questions, because they are the only people who can deal with that. There's a law that needs to be changed, it won't be changed in the South African parliament, it must be changed in the Zimbabwean parliament. So we have got to persuade the Zimbabweans to do that and we have no way of forcing them to do that.

Part of the reason why President Mugabe said it was necessary that this team should go was that it is necessary that the region should have its own independent reading of what is happening in Zimbabwe; so that it makes its own determination and does not depend merely on what he says at the SADC summit about Zimbabwe - he says, no, let the team come and make its own independent reading, because then it can have its own suggestions as to how it should proceed.

Question: How does the whole situation impact on your ability to organize resources around NEPAD.

President Thabo Mbeki: It hasn't impacted on that NEPAD process in any practical way. People raise it, but, you know, there are many problems in the world, which is part of what complicates an approach to this matter.

Take, for instance, the question of Pakistan. The Pakistan military coup took place and the Commonwealth then decided then to suspend Pakistan from the councils of the Commonwealth.

Something happened in Zimbabwe, whichever way people put it, but the Commonwealth observer's team had a very interesting formulation - they said the outcome of the presidential election was not fully representative of the will of the people of Zimbabwe. They did not say it was unrepresentative; they said it was not fully representative because they think that some people did not get on to the voters' role and, maybe, you should have extended the time on the voting day by a few hours, or something.

But the decision of the Commonwealth about Zimbabwe is exactly the same - suspend Zimbabwe from the councils of the Commonwealth. That's the decision. And you may ask the question, but why is nobody saying anything whatsoever about Pakistan? But Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe every day. Is a military coup less of an offence or is a military coup in Pakistan okay?

Or you get this terrible, terrible situation where nobody talks about it. We talk to the Palestinians every day, we talk to the Israelis, too, and they are deeply troubled about this thing. Was it not only yesterday when 11 people, something like that, were killed in Gaza. It is a daily thing. Nobody raises anything about this.

So, I'm saying, it is suggested that the worst crisis point in the world is Zimbabwe. It does not help us to solve the problem of Zimbabwe, because you can see that there is a particular agenda that drives that particular perception about Zimbabwe. The notion that South Africa can dictate policy to the Zimbabweans, I think people must stop cherishing that. The notion that South Africa can walk across the Limpopo and remove that government - do what President Bush calls regime change in Zimbabwe - this is not going to happen. The best we can do is to engage everybody in Zimbabwe and, indeed, that is why the commercial farmers came to see the South African High Commissioner - because they understand that we've been engaging everybody there, including themselves, to say: Look, we are trying to assist the Zimbabweans to find a solution to this problem.

But I am saying that it does not help to try to pretend that this is the most grievous problem in the world and to forget all else. It suggests that we are being dragooned to fulfil and implement other people's agendas which have nothing to do with the future of Zimbabwe but rather have something to do with whatever visions those people have.

Question: About the judgment of the Constitutional Court on floor crossing

President Thabo Mbeki: We shall respect the judgment of the Constitutional Court on this matter, but I think that the national parliament will then have to take some steps regarding this question at provincial and national levels, because if it doesn't happen, you are distorting the process of the political evolution of this country. We have had sufficient experience since 1994.

The positions that we took in '94 and '99 were informed by an understanding of South Africa that was pre-'94. The country has evolved: (People say) I understand things better. I would now like to form my own party. I am sitting in parliament, but I would really like to form my own party, which should reflect a sentiment and a constituency that has developed in the country over the last eight years, and the law says: No, you can't. That can't be correct. Or people: Look, I went to the Democratic Party, believing that the National Party had sold us out by going into the government of national unity, gone into bed with terrorists, because that's how we understood this ANC then. I've now understood that they are not terrorists and I do not like this DP. Really, I'd like to go back to the National Party. I am a member of parliament and the law says you can't.

It cannot be correct that the law can block the process of the political evolution of the country. So I think parliament will have to address the matter that the constitutional court raised, because they said the law is constitutional, there's nothing wrong with the law. They said the only problem is that the constitution included a phrase about 'within a reasonable period of time' and now they say: Well, for us, five years after the constitution came into force, which was in 1997, five years is not a reasonable period of time; it's too much time; if it was '99, that would have been a reasonable period of time. That is how they decided the matter.

So the legislature must redress that definition by the constitutional court of what constitutes a reasonable period of time. I do not know how they do it, but I think they should do it, because I really do think that it would be incorrect for the evolution of the country, it would be incorrect to have a legal system that freezes people at a particular moment.

Question: Once the second phase is done, there are implications which have a much more serious bearing. What is your own thinking in terms of the impact on your relationship with the IFP?

President Thabo Mbeki: In terms of the relationship with the IFP, it shouldn't have. From my point of view, it should not have an impact whatsoever, because when we decided in '99 that we would request various members of the IFP to serve in the national cabinet , there was no legal or constitutional compulsion to do it; but we thought it will be important, because we thought that they would have a positive contribution to make with regard to the building of this new South Africa and I certainly haven't changed my position with regard to that.

Whatever happens in the [KwaZulu Natal] province with regard to this question, my mind would not be changed by that. I still believe that they have a contribution to make to the building of the new South Africa. I don't know what they would think, but certainly, that's the position from which we would proceed with regard both to the national and the provincial governments. So we clearly would have to be very careful to ensure that whatever happens in the politics of the province doesn't result in the re-emergence of political violence. And I am quite sure that we would want to discuss, very closely and very intensively, that question with the IFP and act on it.

We would have to make sure that it doesn't, whatever happens, result in resumption of that kind of conflict. From my point of view, given the stage where we are, the idea is the same question that was raised with regard to Zimbabwe.

Bringing in as many people as possible with different political views, and so on, to address this common challenge of changing this society -remains a task. Let us try and bring in as many people as possible to address this thing. A little way down the road we might say: We have become as normal as the British or the Americans, if they are normal. But I think we need as united a nation as possible with regard to issues of racism, the question of poverty, the question of building a common sense of South Africanness, black and white South Africans.

We should not gloss over things and think that everything is okay now, that we are a rainbow nation when down below, there's all manner of tensions.

Let us grapple with all of these things together. I tend to think more in that direction rather than an exclusive one.

With all the strength that the ANC has, I don't think it would be correct for the ANC to say: We are so strong we can go it alone.

Source: Government Communications (GCIS)