This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.
17 Jul 1992: Manuel, Trevor
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POM. Trevor could you just, as background, the last time we talked you were just on the verge of moving from Cape Town to Johannesburg to take over a major responsibility here in terms of portfolios which seemed to cover everything from technology to economic policy to public policy. Could you give a brief description of what the nature of that task has been, what the major questions that you have had to face are?
TM. I head up the Departments of Economics and Planning. It handles the broad ambit of economic affairs in the first instance which would include everything from macro economics through trade and industry, mining and energy. Then within the portfolios where we do land and agriculture, science and technology and environment, one of the major tasks that we've had to undertake was to get our policy guidelines adopted in the past year. When I arrived here there were in fact four separate departments which we brought together into a single department. Each of them had at that stage agreed on broad outlines for policy. We tested this in the field and on the strength of that refined the documents.
POM. When you say 'tested in the field', you took it out to ...?
TM. Wherever we spoke we used this and I think we became aware of what some of the weaknesses were.
POM. Would that be before business groups or what?
TM. All kinds of groups.
POM. Neighbourhood groups?
TM. Neighbourhood groups, business groups. We then redrafted and took these documents back to the membership in the branches. In some regions they chose to do it in the form of sub-regions so that in the Western Cape the 13 branches of Khayelitsha would get together to discuss the document. That then went to regional preparatory conferences in all 14 of our regions and eventually it culminated in the National Policy conference at the end of May which adopted the consolidated documents policy guidelines, a very broad document. It covers everything from constitutional issues through economic issues, local government, environment, land, agriculture, health, education, welfare all the way through to the police, the army and Intelligence Service in a democratic South Africa. So it really is quite a broad document of guidelines and this has provided the basis for ongoing work because it now is mandated position. All round it's been pretty well received. The chapter dealing with economic policy has been praised, for instance, by the incumbent Minister of Finance as a very pragmatic document. It has the support of the trade union movement and I think we are saying that it provides a very healthy basis for building consensus in South Africa. So that's been one major task that we've undertaken in the past year.
. Secondly, we've also established a macro economic research group operating as a consortium of universities, primarily universities that have been disadvantaged under the apartheid system. We have established an office for a macro economic research group outside of the ANC department but it's a responsibility that we share with COSATU for the ongoing work of MERG, as we call the macro economic research group. The objective of that is to look in greater detail at some of the policy issues like fiscal policy, for instance, which is a major study. And at the same time to provide training for young, budding economists and to build capacity in the various institutions. We are fortunate in that we are able to link with a number of internationally renowned economists. For instance Professor Lance Taylor based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has come in twice and he will be in next week again to undertake training in macro economic research. So that's a process now beginning to shape very well.
. Thirdly, within the department we do take responsibility for international links on economic matters. The ANC is a participant in the Southern African Development Co-ordinating Conference, SADEC, and so we participate in SADEC from our department, attend meetings at all levels from the summits through to working groups, through to annual conferences and so on. We also undertook a trip with members of the department to the World Bank and IMF to begin discussing future relations between the democratic South Africa and those institutions. We went to the United Nations Development programme, had meetings with the EEC to begin discussing future trade between the democratic South Africa and the EEC. And we are also identifying training opportunities for South Africans at a number of institutions abroad so that we can in fact begin to train the core of the civil service and we can in that way ensure that we can achieve a reasonably smooth transition.
. In addition, of course, we do a fair amount of speaking. Since the end of May when we adopted our policy guidelines I've probably done at least 15 presentations of the economic policy guidelines. It's part of the task that we set for ourselves to grow consensus. That broadly has been what these past 12 months have been about.
POM. Have you done work on a specific programme that would be designed to jump start the economy when, say, an ANC government comes to power?
TM. There is enormous debate about the long term effectiveness of jump starts or kick starts. Even within our department here there is general recognition about the fact that a programme of infrastructure and the basic needs approach, some would call it inward industrialisation, would have to play an important part, but there's not a view that that is the only route because you need to do that and simultaneously be gearing up to be able to compete in the global economy by exports. Whether or not housing can provide a kick start is in fact one of the studies being undertaken within the macro economic research group. We're laying the basis, or placing emphasis rather, on the need for sustainability and there is a very innate fear that a kick start may be not dissimilar to what we've seen in Latin America. We have rapid growth but it's coupled with hyper-inflation and so on. It makes for conditions of extreme unsustainability and things come out very badly. We're not sold in the idea either way at this point. We're saying that it needs to be supported by detailed and unimpeachable research.
POM. Let me rephrase the question a little differently: that given the demographics and that South Africa will need a 5.5% rate of growth on a yearly basis just to stay where it is, fact one. Fact two, the politics of the situation will require that a new government be able to show the vast majority of the disadvantaged and unempowered people that, yes, their government, freedom does make a difference in their lives. So you must produce enough to show to the visible eye that things are being done. How do you balance these at the same time with, I think most economists that I have read who comment on South Africa say that you need a massive amount of foreign investment just to be able to sustain a 5.5% economic growth, how do you pull these three strands together?
TM. I think in the first instance if we look at the South African budget, it's abundantly clear that there's gross inefficiency in public expenditure management in South Africa. We spend a lot more than Zimbabwe on health for instance, both in percentage terms and real terms. Our infant mortality rate remains higher, our life expectancy remains lower. That would be one indication of levels of inefficiency that obtain within that one component and so a major task that has to be undertaken very early would be the introduction of systems of efficiency, transparency and accountability for public expenditure management. Already things are looking quite bad. There's a budget deficit which stood at 5% last year when you had negative growth. It's likely to be even higher this year. So that will produce a major saving which could be used to redirect state expenditure towards the historically disempowered.
. Secondly, we are undertaking various studies with the World Bank to try and define what those low cost quick impact methods are of putting tangible change in the lives of the people and then it will be drawn from a list of water reticulation, sanitation, electrification, education. We also have to explore issues like public works programmes, not dissimilar to the New Deal but that becomes a second area where we begin to look.
. Thirdly, we need to attract foreign investment to South Africa and the indications are very strongly that foreign investors are keen on a climate of political stability and predictability and certainty in respect of economic policy formulation and implementation they want transparency, they want to know what's going to happen to their investments here. Will they be able to repatriate profits and all of that?
POM. Can I hold you there for a minute there, Trevor, and go back on an issue that is related to that and related to the last couple of months? To the outside eye you had the deadlock at CODESA, you had Mr Mandela and Mr de Klerk putting the best face on the thing that what had been achieved, the problems that remained were not insuperable and then in the space of less than a two month period you seemed to have a sea change in ANC strategy, the breaking up of negotiations, the implementation of a programme of mass mobilisation, insinuations that from now on even if negotiations did get back on track that mass mobilisation until an interim government came into place would continue. You seemed to have a resurgence of the power of "militants" within the movement, people taking a far more hard line point of view, moderate voices seemed to grow quieter and one was left wondering what the hell is going on? What went on in these couple of months that resulted in these things and is this any indicator of what could happen in the future with regard to policy making? You can articulate the best set of guidelines, yet who runs the show at what time?
TM. I think it's been over a slightly longer period. I've said before that the Harare Declaration in August 1989 was the ANC spelling out a negotiating path for South Africa. I've also said that when de Klerk responded on 2nd February 1990, when he made that very important speech, he was in fact responding to the Harare Declaration. Thereafter the Groote Schuur talks in May of 1990, the Pretoria Minute of 6th August 1990, that was largely initiated by the ANC but there was a coming together. If you focus on the January 8th speech of 1991 we set out broadly the need for what we called an All-Party Congress and an interim government. Further down the line, more particularly from August 1990, you saw a resurgence in violence, primarily hostel dwellers launching attacks on communities. With those circumstances and other agreements not being met by the regime in April of last year the ANC issued an ultimatum to the government. Some of those demands were met and talks resumed. De Klerk wants to play it his way. In May of last year he then convened a Peace Conference but nobody came to it. The ANC spoke to churches and business and on the strength of that the National Peace Convention was held on 14th September last year, signing the Peace Accord and attempts at putting structures in place on the ground floor to address the ongoing violence.
. On a slightly different tack, work got underway towards the convening of a conference of patriotic forces to lay the basis for the Patriotic Front. At that level the ANC and the PAC were joint conveners, AZAPO were brought in. Just prior to the conference AZAPO issued letters to organisations participating in various levels of government demanding that they didn't attend. AZAPO was then removed from the convening committee, the PF was set up as initiated by ANC and PAC. Further down the line tensions developed with the PAC. They pulled out and the remainder of what was constituted as that patriotic force or alignment of patriotic forces, all of the political formations there went into CODESA. So it was only the PAC that was outside of that.
. So you've got the third strand being woven into that, namely the All-Party Congress that we called for in our January 8th statement last year coming to fruition in the convening of CODESA. The preparatory meeting of the 19th November and CODESA 1 happening on 20th and 21st December of last year (1991). There was quite a showdown at CODESA 1 where as some people would say our President read the riot act to F W de Klerk. It was fairly tenuous. It got under way and working groups got going. So we have all three strands operating separately, sometimes being inter-twined.
. In many ways the work of the Peace Accord was undermined by ongoing violence, by the fact that the police were meant to investigate issues raised in the Peace Accord but often covered up for their colleagues. At another level you had de Klerk announcing the referendum on about 18th February this year. The white referendum happened on 17th March. Business was very directly involved. You had a resounding 68% yes vote. Immediately after the referendum we saw in the negotiations an arrogance coming from the National Party that had not been there prior to that. Days after the referendum Pik Botha said that the National Party secured a mandate for their position and if other people didn't like it they would reconvene the referendum. The state was set for a showdown within CODESA and things soured very, very badly from then.
. You then come to CODESA 2 and if one cuts through the muddle, what you have was substantial disagreement about a few issues. The first of those is whether you have a short or a long transition. De Klerk last year was talking of transition between 10 and 15 years. We believe that you must move smoothly to ensure that you can have that ... policy environment. The second issue was whether or not you have a white veto and whilst our initial position was a two thirds majority for adoption in the constitution, though accepting the previous constitutions in South Africa had been adopted with a simple majority, we moved with largesse to propose a two thirds majority. De Klerk wanted 75%. Within CODESA our delegation moved up to 70%, trying to seek a compromise or secure a compromise. The government and the National Party refused to accept 70% and so on those issues CODESA 2 bombed out.
. On the other hand violence in the country was ongoing. As early as April last year, in talks between ourselves and the government, agreement was reached on the fact that the hostels should be phased out but as an interim measure they should be fenced, access controlled to ensure that you didn't have the movement of heavily armed people into and out of the hostels. There was also the ongoing debate in the past 12 months over the issue of cultural weapons. Bear in mind that cultural weapons were banned and de Klerk in 1989 repealed the law which banned the carrying of these weapons, these including some weapons of death. And so in the course of the past 12 months this issue arose from time to time including Judges saying very clearly that cultural weapons should be banned. The Goldstone Commission made this point repeatedly and even to this day de Klerk is refusing to place a general ban on the carrying of these weapons.
. We had further issues. At the end of May the second interim report of the Goldstone Commission was released but prior to that the press statement by the Goldstone Commission, which bore no relevance to the contents of it, because the contents of the second interim report set out very clearly what the starting point is: the extent to which apartheid was entrenched, deprivation and so on was entrenched. It went on to comment on political rivalry and so on. The press statement only commented on political rivalry and absolved the government from all responsibility. There was a major contradiction on that issue. Notwithstanding that the second interim report was there, the government have just ignored the recommendations of the Goldstone Commission and in the meantime on the ground floor violence has been increasing. Attacks from hostel dwellers on residents, counter attacks. And the mood of growing militance setting in.
. At the time of the Alexandra massacre, I think it was in March of this year, you had these hostel workers, hostel dwellers who had evicted the residents of this Madala Hostel in Alex, launching an attack on the community and then a counter attack by the community. At that point Nelson Mandela, on a visit to Alexandra, said that we need international management and he would pursue that as a course. Subsequent to that you had hostel attacks in other parts, Meadowlands and Soweto and so on. All that coming to a head with Boipatong, a very clear example of the way in which the wishes of the people have been violated. I referred earlier to the agreement struck in April last year by the hostel. That hostel is owned by the Iron and Steel Corporation, ISCOR. It doesn't house ISCOR workers, it houses Inkatha vigilantes. A year ago the Weekly Mail had come across some communication from the Defence Force to these hostel workers inviting them to report for military training. Now that is in fact completely outside the ambit of the Defence Amendment Act because blacks are not called up for military duties. But it was probably an indication of the way in which things were happening and it just happened that this fell into the hands of The Weekly Mail.
. In the course of other investigations about the same period there were a number of instances which clearly showed the involvement of the security forces in the violence, including the fact that there were in the Vaal area, Boipatong, Sebokeng, Evaton, Sharpeville, secret bases from which police were launching attacks on people and all of this is well documented in The Weekly Mail. When The Weekly Mail were about to publish the second round of allegations of yet other bases they were stopped by a court interdict. Now this happens notwithstanding a commitment to South Africa and the world by de Klerk in terms of the Inkathagate scandal last year saying that all covert operations of the police would cease. Now nobody has been reassured that those bases have been closed down and what you have in respect of violence is just a litany of instances building up which show very direct involvement of the security forces in violence.
. I'm saying it comes to a head with Boipatong. In December last year the residents of the area had asked ISCOR to evict those residents and to demolish the hostel and on the night of the 17th June there is a warning to the police of an impending attack. They choose to ignore it. The police say that they went to Sebokeng, they didn't go near the hostel. The Defence Force were there. They say they saw about 200 armed men and did nothing about it. But you have in that period a very particular sequence. On the 14th June the police raid a train carrying Inkatha members, but they do so with media fanfare. All the press were invited to this, the raid is carried off, they confiscate two truck loads of weapons including AK47s and all manner of things. On the 15th June the weapons, and they say the non-lethal weapons, but the weapons (bear in mind that these weapons, the Goldstone Commission have asked that these weapons be banned. Judge Didcott in Natal had asked that the law prohibiting the carrying of these weapons be reintroduced), on 15th June these weapons are returned to the offices of the Inkatha Freedom Party. On 16th June when the country is involved in a stayaway, a very sensitive day politically on the South African calendar, de Klerk nails his colours to the mast by visiting Ulundi for a fairly extended meeting with Chief Minister Buthelezi. And on the 17th you then have the Boipatong massacre. It's quite a cynical chain. There is evidence then that the attack came from the hostel and for 24 hours the police do nothing about it and in the hue and cry that followed that they then sealed off the hostel and went in and first arrested five people and then pressure was increased and eventually a lot more people were arrested. Now it's so basic that if people have committed a crime the police must actually act to gather all the necessary evidence. I don't know too much about these things but one assumes that if I use a knife to stab you, that given enough time and enough know-how I can probably wash all the blood off that knife and leave no trace. This certainly rose in the context of Boipatong. But it also happens in the context where other things are beginning to fall into place.
. There has been a spate of massacres on trains, very few people charged. Those who were charged are then released or acquitted in the end because of insufficient information. The people caught with those weapons on the train on the 14th June, including AK47s, are released on R50-00 bail from that same KwaMadala Hostel. On 22nd August last year there was an attack on a vigil at a funeral in Sebokeng. I forget the number of people killed but there were lots of them. Seven of those hostel residents are charged and they are acquitted because, in the words of the Judge, "The police did virtually nothing to construct a case against those people". So these are the circumstances. People, especially in the PWV area, feel extremely exposed because you have a commitment to the establishment of self-defence units, but continuous raids from the police on the self-defence units where they confiscate weapons and charge people and so on and immediately after such a raid you would have an attack on that community.
POM. So what you're getting to is an upsurge of anger, increasing anger in your constituencies over the last year, an increasing feeling that they were not being protected by the ANC?
TM. By the ANC or even less so by the Peace Accord.
POM. By the Peace Accord?
TM. Because their weapons are confiscated. They are asked to observe the letter and spirit of the Peace Accord and then they are attacked.
POM. Was there an increasing feeling that the leadership was concerning itself with CODESA to the exclusion of just about everything else?
TM. A sense of that as well. In fact Nelson Mandela says when he went to Sebokeng about 21st June, people were singing a song which goes something to the effect that: You meekly negotiate with de Klerk while we are being slaughtered. You are a lamb. And en masse people were calling to be armed by the ANC. The reason the circumstances have led to the breakdown, the Peace Accord not working, not providing people with protection, increasing evidence of police involvement in the violence, if not direct involvement then at least acquiescence, the breakdown of negotiations about fundamentally a white veto, and a sense that de Klerk is just turning a blind eye to it.
. What also came into our hands at that point was a document apparently from the National Intelligence Service talking of strategy comprising two operations. One Operation Springbok to secure ongoing and additional support for the National Party in black areas which on its own is fine I suppose but it's coupled with Operation Thunderstorm which seeks to weaken the base of the ANC by inter alia violence against ... So we are of the view that it's not accidental or coincidental but in fact low intensity war. It has become an important leg in the strategy of de Klerk.
POM. Now do you think that these actions, or in some cases lack of actions, are carried out with his explicit knowledge of what's going on or is he hostage in some way to elements within his whole security apparatus that don't give him the freedom, the leeway to exert the degree of control that he would want to? Hold that there for a minute and I'll come back to it by restating the question in a different way. Just three comments at random from commentators : The Sowetan reporter said, "People are talking in the townships and they are saying that the ANC should get out of CODESA and mobilise its armed wing." You've got Philip van Niekerk in The Weekly Mail saying "The return to mass action is a return to the source of the ANC strength in the streets. It is an admission, the ANC activists say, that in putting its faith in CODESA the movement cut itself off from its power base while the government continued to hold on to power and to abuse it." And you have Ray Suttner saying, "In South Africa the language that matters is the language of power." Ronnie Kasrils is saying, "In the negotiating process we have tended to regard mass action as something to break deadlocks, something you turn on and off like a tap. The decision is that we now utilise mass action until we reach the stage where de Klerk is propelled out the exit gate." Are they accurate reflections of the mood on the street and the sentiments within the ANC itself?
TM. It certainly is reflective of views on the ground but I think you would have some mixed approach to the way in which the ANC sees this. Let's just come back to the question that you posed. The issue of the roles of the police and the army has become a very sensitive matter in South Africa. We have raised this issue from time to time. Things came to a head very seriously. Remember that the demands in April last year included the removal from office of the Minister of Law and Order. Now just prior to that we were told that within the Cabinet de Klerk felt so strongly about this that he threatened to take over that portfolio himself. He was held back and eventually removed Vlok from office. They removed Vlok from office under pressure and must have understood very clearly the degree of sensitivity about the police force. He replaced Vlok with a man, Hernus Kriel, who is far worse than Adriaan Vlok could ever be. It's a very cynical move. A move not dissimilar to the appointment of General Kat Liebenberg, formerly Commander of the Special Forces, special task force of the Defence Force, which had been used against the people of South Africa as head of the army. That's a de Klerk appointment. Hernus Kriel is a de Klerk appointment. Can he pretend not to know? In terms of the prerogatives of the President, in South Africa he is Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces and if that becomes a problem then as Commander in Chief he should enquire. Has he enquired? Has he acted in a manner that would diffuse the situation? I am of the view that the facts speak for themselves. The kind of cynicism that we have seen with the appointment of Hernus Kriel speaks volumes about the attitude of de Klerk.
. Now what we have said consistently is that in terms of criminal law, in South Africa at least, their acts of commission and acts of omission, nobody is suggesting that on the night of the 17th June de Klerk left KwaMadala Hostel with his face blackened and wearing a balaclava and hacked a man to death. That's not what we are saying. What we are saying is that he has failed to come to terms with sensitivity of the police force, the need to establish a police force that acts with an even hand to remove violence from society. He has sat back, he has fiddled while Rome burnt. And that is the charge against de Klerk in the present circumstances. I think it's that that reflects largely on the mood.
. But apart from the issues raised in respect of mass action I think it's important that people are involved in the process. The ANC has said consistently that we won't negotiate above the heads or behind the backs of the people. CODESA runs the risk of becoming negotiations above the heads of people. Broadly, therefore, it is important to give people a voice. We have said from time to time that while negotiators sit people must be pounding at the door ensuring that their voice is being heard. On a more sophisticated level that position is enshrined in our unshakeable conviction that you need an elected constitution making body which would give the people of South Africa a voice and a choice about who would represent them at the negotiating table. This stands juxtaposed against de Klerk's position that the parties represented at CODESA, untested, some of them clearly a creation of the media, some of them bullied into power in the Bantustans, that these representatives should be the drafters of a new constitution. And we're saying that it can't work. You're not going to develop a constitution that enjoys legitimacy and respect. You're going to see an extremely incapacitated situation, a government incapable of delivering, incapable of putting certainty in place, incapable of attracting investment to South Africa and therefore incapable of delivering and the spiral of violence is going to continue.
POM. I know you're running out of time so there are four questions I'd like to try and get in. One goes back to this shift in tactics and strategy that seems to be in place at this point in time. My question is: do "activists", those of a more militant orientation, for the moment have the voice in the councils of the Executive Committee?
TM. I don't think so.
POM. Is COSATU playing a greater role than it has heretofore played?
TM. No I think that is a figment, it's something that has come from the government, part of the strategy to sow divisions, saying, well the ANC leadership are moderates but these communists in the SACP and COSATU are actually akin to the tail wagging the dog and that this moderate ANC leadership must get out and come out. Now it ignores the reality of the situation. It ignores the fact that to a person the National Executive of the ANC is completely horrified by the ongoing violence that our people have to endure, that we can't see our way clear to negotiate with both hands tied. On 6th August 1990 we declared our good faith by suspending the armed struggle, a decision that was not evenly accepted within the organisation. We have not seen a matching good faith on the part of the regime and that is the problem. Bear in mind too that we opened the route for negotiations. We want to see negotiations but we can't be expected to negotiate in circumstances where the odds are weighed so heavily against us. It truly reflects, or the current position truly reflects a consensus position in the NEC. Within the course of the debate, of course, some people argued differently but it wasn't a substantial course. At the end we are all committed to exactly the same position. We are saying that the current mass action is important to bring people on board, it's important to break the deadlock and that our preferred route remains a negotiated settlement in South Africa. That is the official ANC viewpoint and that is the viewpoint that has the upper hand.
POM. The second is, you talked about the whites' only referendum. Two questions: what do you think whites thought they were voting for when they endorsed that referendum and what do you think blacks thought whites were voting for when whites endorsed that referendum?
TM. It was a mix. I've spoken to people in the business community, for instance, who funded the referendum and they are saying that they supported that because they want peace and democracy, they want negotiations under way. And I think that that would have reflected very widely. Many of these people assert that it wasn't a vote of confidence in de Klerk, it was a vote of confidence in the process of negotiations.
POM. Maybe I should have defined the question a little better. From the very beginning de Klerk has talked about this process as being one in which there will be the sharing of power with blacks and this will bring equality to all citizens and his entire campaign was conducted on a process he had embarked on that would result in the sharing of power and peace and democracy for everybody. Did white people understand that what they were voting for was the concept of the sharing of power as defined by de Klerk as distinct from a transfer of power to the majority?
TM. I think that it's extremely difficult to generalise. There were a number of issues brought to the fore. One of the constant themes in the campaign, and let's assume that the campaign did impact, was the cricket tour. A South African team was playing in Australia at that point in time. I think it was Ali Bacher or Geoff Dakin of the Cricket Board who said, "Should South Africa get into the final, if there's a no vote we will pack up and return to South Africa." It impacted on whites. This was their re-entry into the community of nations. The other theme was very strongly peace. There was one poster or newspaper ad that read, 'Women of South Africa on the 17th March vote for peace.' A very emotive picture of a mother and child. Other parties had come into play as well. The Democratic Party's posters read 'Vote Yes for Peace and Democracy'. The ANC got involved and called on people to vote yes. I'm not suggesting that that was significantly persuasive amongst the white community. The business community got involved and apart from funding the campaign there was a flurry of letters. I was speaking to a senior businessman last night who happens to have an enormous factory in a right wing dominated area at the moment and he says, unashamedly, "I told those workers if you vote no you can take your jacket and go." People were really threatened with Armageddon if the no vote won. And so in those circumstances I think it's very difficult to ask the average white what they were thinking when they went to that ballot box.
POM. How did de Klerk interpret his mandate?
TM. He interpreted his mandate very clearly as support for his position and I'm saying it was on the strength of that, that utterance by Pik Botha days after the referendum that the stage was set for a showdown. You know I've just written a piece, it was published in the Finance Week this week, addressing business on exactly the same issue.
POM. Do you have a copy of it?
TM. I can give you a copy, yes. Challenging them for their silence since the referendum because they know that they weren't supporting de Klerk as an individual, they were supporting the process and they're not getting any return on it. It's important to bring them into play again. It's also interesting, as we're sitting here there's a meeting between COSATU and the SACCOLA, South African Co-ordinating Committee on Labour Affairs, which is a body representing employer organisations. And if they can strike a deal today on that charter, business would throw in their weight with the mass movement and de Klerk will be standing in a very lonely position come 3rd August. This will compel him to shift. We are reminding that business community of their own responsibility and the circumstances. We are saying to them that we share common cause with them on short transition. They want to see an upturn in the economy and so do we. A long transition is going to do irreparable harm for a very fragile economy and it's up to them now to put their money where their mouth is.
POM. Trevor, thank you. I could go on for the rest of the morning but I won't push my luck! In due course I'll get a transcript to you.