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 It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.
01 Dec 1995: Sexwale, Tokyo
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POM. Mr Premier, let me start with maybe a difficult or challenging question. It was the late Chris Hani who first told me that I had to talk to you. If Chris were around today and he was looking at the scene of forced evictions in the informal housing sectors in Alexandra, nurses on the street being told they had to go back to their jobs or they were fired, municipal workers on the streets in a rage at being tear-gassed by police, the troops in the townships, roadblocks often between Jan Smuts Airport and Johannesburg where people are checked, the emphasis completely on the free market economy, the almost abolition from the language of the word 'nationalisation', what would he think?
TS. Having known Chris for quite a while as a good friend, as one of the most outstanding leaders the country has produced, I don't think I would be in a position to say I know him so much as to know his views today so many moons after his death. But then Chris was a pragmatist and his pragmatism was seen in the manner he as leader of a revolutionary army, the Chief of Staff of uMkhonto weSizwe, was able to understand that war was not an end in itself but rather as ... had said, the German strategist, a means to an end, and that is why he ended war because it was just a means. You don't end your aims, you end the means. And he came back in that spirit in South Africa. Chris put himself as a leader of the ANC, Secretary/General of the Communist Party as well as leader of the army as Chief of Staff fully one hundred percent, even more behind the negotiations that were taking place in South Africa at the time. I mention these things to indicate the level, or rather high level, of pragmatism that Chris was about.
. How would he therefore, a person who thinks in those lines, under those difficult circumstances, how would he therefore react today with nurses in the streets, with workers trashing? These are simple matters. Chris was dealing with the whole question of social transformation and was using the most extreme methods, war, guerrilla warfare, to address these things. Chris had seen many changes of which he was associated within Angola, in Mozambique, in Zimbabwe. We had seen advancements and reversals in all these areas and Chris had seen the collapse of what then was described as the socialist system in various other socialist countries. Chris therefore was a product of his own times, also the product of history and the future that he was trying to build was based on his times and the past and therefore that's how we shape his philosophies.
. Chris is one of those people who visited mainland China to understand the new reforms that were taking place in China, that were leading to what he was calling remarkably high growth rates. And Chris went to Cuba, you will remember, and was worried that Cuba may fall if they don't readjust. His views are very clear about that. But Chris was sent on a mission to France which was sanctioned by the leadership of the African National Congress to seek new friends. I accompanied him to India to seek new friends. This was shortly after my release from prison and after his return from exile. Chris is the one that was in charge of the whole process that was leading to integration and he understood that we were integrating with a force that was formidable, properly organised, far more superior, but the pragmatist in him understood all this. These are major things.
. So nurses in the streets would not have been a problem for Chris Hani. His problem would have been the state opening fire on those nurses and that has not happened, so it's a democracy. And that's exactly the nature of Chris, the mass action man, the masses man, more in track suits and less in pin-stripe suits. He wore pin-stripe suits of course. So nurses and mass action Chris would have understood but he would have told them not to use that weapon in a way that would undermine the achievements we have made in this country. It's very clear, but then he would have made sure that we know what we are doing. Don't open fire on ordinary people who are demonstrating in the streets, and we didn't.
. It's a remarkable achievement by this government that we have not killed anybody, no-one. And shortly before we took over people were dying, were dying as much as they died for the last 45 years of the worst form of 300 years of white rule in this country. Those years are known as apartheid years. Trashing of the streets by municipal workers, it happened in my own capital city, Johannesburg. Yes, it was a bad thing, it was a wrong thing, we told them, "It's your city, if you trash it you are going to clean it", and of course they have cleaned it. But you know what could have happened in the past? It would not have been litter in the streets, it would have been the bodies of workers. That's how far we've travelled. These are yardsticks in South Africa. Do we litter paper or do we litter with bodies? South Africa has known a litter of bodies. Sharpeville, Soweto, Boipatong, Sebokeng, you name all these areas, it's been areas associated with massacres because people have acted since the days of ... in 1913, our people have been killed one way. The children died in June 1976 and we have now a whole monument, a whole day set aside for those children. It's a miracle of our achievement, therefore, that we have come this far in South Africa where the nurses can stand up and say, "We don't want Mandela", but when they go for voting, as was demonstrated at local government level, they voted 100% Nelson Mandela but were conflicting on the particular wage negotiation. They were not conflicting about the ANC. That is why contrary to speculations about what could have happened to the ANC during a critical moment, we had to be tested during these local government elections, and we're getting more rates in terms of percentages than we got in the past election and we want to see what the voting looks like from those nurses, almost 100% vote for the African National Congress. Those are the tensions of society. Chris would have understood that, the positives and negatives, forwards and backwards and then you have got to encourage that democratic tension that should exist between the state and the people, as long as the state does not become an instrument of repression.
POM. An instrument of oppression. When you look at the local elections and in the months beforehand you had all this speculation about the lack of delivery of services by the ANC, talk about the gravy train, grumblings that the ANC was doing too much to appease white fears and not enough for the masses on the ground and the general feeling, at least as conveyed by the media and other instruments of observation, was that there was a lot of discontent out there. Yet, as you say, when it came to voting people voted in larger numbers than ever for the ANC. How do you interpret the results of the local elections in that sense?
TS. I think this was the most crucial test that any country could have faced. Few countries have had a situation where elections, both national, provincial together were staggered in relation to local government elections, to set up a brand new country, because that's what these elections were about. In April of 1994 we should have held all these elections at once but of course in terms of finances, in terms of time, in the place of logistics, administration, personnel or human resources, it was not going to be possible to hold local government elections at the same time as we did with the national and provincial elections. So there was a period of about a year and a half that was open between the two and it was during that period that the media in South Africa, predominantly pseudo-liberal media, I will call them that now because their liberalism has come very strongly under question, pseudo-liberal media, essentially white, bordering on racism, not racist but bordering on racist analysis, a media that we are not part of, it was allowed to go on here when we were not allowed to be there in South Africa. The real media was banned in South Africa in 1977, in October, that's when media was really reporting, those who were talking were primarily targeted into a silence. We were left with this kind of media that now had to reflect the situation between the two elections. I concluded by saying after the local government elections, with the type of stuff they were writing, with the shallowness of their analysis, talking about voter apathy, ANC will have to pay for its sins, gravy train, mention it, it was there as though we are not supposed to be getting salaries that we ourselves slashed down, and Chris would have said, "Cut more", and we cut to the bone, so much so that we even cut salaries of people who were supposedly representing us in Cape Town in parliament and they cannot now afford to represent us because it is too costly to be there. But nevertheless we did these things.
. I said to myself when the results of local government elections gave the ANC a resounding victory, which was called a landslide and whatever, where are these newspapers that were preaching a message of gloom and doom in certain respects? Where were these newspapers or the journalists behind them writing about South Africa between these two elections? And of course if they were writing about South Africa, then I say, were they South African? And the answer happened to be yes as well, and then I said, then what is the agenda? Because the media right now had to reel backwards to try to recover from the blow that emerged from the people. It's not every media. I'm just generalising. There are very good, excellent journalists here, the quality of Alistair Sparks, the quality of Percy Qoboza, we still have those people who are struggling, who have now to come to the ascendancy, it's their own thing, the state has got nothing to do with it. It's their own thing, they must come to ascendancy and write about and analyse their own country, and not to be writing as though you are talking from somewhere in Timbuktu and what you write does not really reflect the true nature of your country. It becomes questionable. But then it's their own sins. They must look into that and find out because, of course, the punishment in South Africa on such media is no longer locking up of journalists, detaining them, breaking their fingers, locking them up. The Bill of Rights is there and is brought by us. It's part of the constitution where we are firm on it. The punishment is that your readers will desert you and a number of these media, newspapers in particular, television; television itself has lost a million viewers in South Africa because of the shallowness of their delivery. Some of the newspapers have had to come, and it's a lot of form that is taking place in South Africa, they are changing there, the form, the colouring and so on, they don't realise it's the content that is worrying people, so they are trying advertising and of course colouring. But some of the people, the Weekly Mail, the News, that's why we had a new group, the Independent Group of Newspapers in South Africa that realised that, hey wait a minute, let's start looking at our country in a much more, let's take the moral high ground. But the punishment here it's merely the market. The market will deal with you if you don't report accurately about your country and people think that you are too shallow, they desert you.
. But in essence insofar as the people are concerned let me tell you what the result is, my interpretation thereof. On the question of the media one says, and I've engaged them, to say that you will have to begin to write about South Africa and it will have to be South Africans to reflect your own country and you will have to have one agenda, a South African agenda. Lampoon us, cartoon us, caricature us, go for us, toe to toe, engage us, but at the end of the day the task of journalism is to provide leadership in the area where you are, to the nation. That's at the end of the day, you provide leadership in the area where you are and of course we keep government on its toes. We don't like a sheepish media because as an intellectual myself I want to be engaged and I engage them everywhere, in boardrooms of companies, in the streets and squatter camps, I engage them. That's the beauty of what we have today and it's a good argument.
. But I will tell you the resounding landslide victory that the ANC got, it taught all of us, especially those who were preaching gloom and doom, that don't take the people for granted. People are not donkeys, people are not so pliable, people are not deceived by theories that are hashed and cooked somewhere in dark corners and then you write them in the newspaper, I think, that if you said voter apathy you are translating or interpreting the situation. People have got their own thinking. Secondly, that people had decided, no let's give this government a chance after all it's about 18 months. And people were not demanding that we should solve all their things within 18 months. This election showed us that.
. Thirdly, that people trusted us when we said, look, we may not have enough and also we need you to set up this new structure which is a critical level for delivery because one central government formulates policy. Provincial government essentially facilitates the implementation of that policy and of course you at local government should implement that policy. We didn't have that structure. People believed us. People believed us when we said there is not sufficient money, that the family silver was plundered. They know that, they didn't expect suddenly Mandela to have all answers in relation to the budget and resources. But I think it also says that we are able to convey ourselves nevertheless to the people in terms of our communications strategy for them to know the problems. But it also says that a people that suffered for 300 years didn't expect this government to solve their problems within 18 months, so they have given us a lifeline, a long line. But it tells the world something about us. You see we are still freedom fighters, we are not your career politicians, we have still not reached that stage, perhaps those who will come after us of course must make a career out of this. It was not a career, it was a mission, it was a deliberate ambition for your people to be free. It was not a career. Freedom was not a career. Now that we have freedom of course others can make a career about politics. This was freedom, it's not a career. It's life and death. So we come from that tradition and people understand us that we are there all the time like the Chris Hani way, more track suits and less pin-stripe suits. We engage business but we are more with the people. Talk for yourself, engage the people and that's how we're able to get this kind of a result.
POM. You've talked an awful lot about crime and very passionately about crime and in fact two days ago you made a statement which said, "To those criminals who blame apartheid I have a message, you blame apartheid, I blame you." And The Star had a legend which said, "Sexwale warns criminals not to use apartheid as a scapegoat". Is that an accurate reflection, is their headline an accurate reflection of your views? To what extent is there a relationship between crime and apartheid and to what extent is there not? To what extent can apartheid or the legacy of apartheid be used as an excuse for everything and at what time must the people themselves start taking responsibility for their own lives and their own communities?
TS. We have interviewed quite a number of people. I've had meetings, I've had the opportunity to speak to people who have done something wrong or who know others who have done something wrong in terms of crime in society, thieving, rapes, murder, hijacking of motor cars and so on, and of course I am privileged to be reading from the mass media about court cases and so on, and you discuss with other people and get views about what's happening in this crime. There are people who when now the crunch arrives at their door would hide behind platitudes like, well I was forced into this because I never got education, I ended up doing this because there were no jobs, apartheid was doing all sorts of things, and many other ways of trying to explain away their wrong and evil-doing. So that headline captures exactly what my message was to those type of people. If you blame apartheid well and good for you, but we blame you now. So the message is actually correct.
POM. President Mandela talked about how the deployment of police hadn't really changed even in the last 18 months, there were still about 80% of the police deployed in white areas and about 20% in township areas. What's the deployment of police in Gauteng?
TS. Well essentially when we came into government, 19 months ago, that's what we found in terms of the law enforcement agencies of this country. The police were deployed amongst whites in the suburbs, in the cities because that was their first line of defence. Remember the war of apartheid which was described as a threat to world peace by the Security Council and most of the General Assembly of the United Nations, was the war that was arranged between the city and the township, the suburbs and the squatter settlements. Every city or town of South Africa, and all cities are white, that's how they were started, has adjacent to it a black township but not adjacent in close proximity, but just for them to be there because they must be coming as sojourners to come and work, temporary sojourners. So there are huge tracts of land between townships and the city and that has been the essence of apartheid. The deployment of law enforcement agencies was done to protect cities, suburbs and so on, so that's where they were. It is true. And in the townships they were merely there to police these people so that from time to time they are not disturbed to come to work, but that's not where the direction of fighting crime was concentrated in terms of that deployment.
. That's the situation, the reality we were confronted with 19 months ago and it was therefore our task to begin to say we are going to re-prioritise, we are re-strategising, we are going to re-deploy and we have started doing that. Let me give you examples. The resources, for instance, more police stations have now to be built and we are building each new police station in the black areas, because the white areas do have police stations. We are building them in black areas, so that's the first thing. Secondly, deploy all those people who have been sitting in offices, because even in these white police stations people are just sitting in offices. They get there the whole day they are just sitting in an office. It's person power that was not adequately utilised. Deploy them where police can be on the beat. That's what we are doing. So we have moved out quite a number of people from the so-called administrative positions to real police work in the streets. Thirdly, it has been vehicles. In one police station in Sandton we found that there were 20 policemen and 19 vehicles and in another police station in Soweto, deep Soweto, you find one police station with about 34 policemen, one vehicle. In Mabubane, and I just visited Mabubane the other day, private investigators, detectives, eight of them are sharing an office less than 15 metres square. Eight. And that's an office of one person. That's what they are sharing. How do you conduct investigations in that type of thing?
. So are we surprised why crime is soaring? But then even at that it's not just a question of re-deployment, we had to clean up the police force of criminals and look what we found yesterday. We arrested five top officers led by a Major, a unit that was in charge of - it's an anti car hijacking unit in charge of that area - we found them involved in car theft, car hijacking and all sorts of corruption. They were picked up yesterday, but of course the good thing is that they were picked up by the police. So there is cleaning up that is happening. So the redeployment is also associated with cleaning the police and making sure that this broom that we would like to use to sweep crime away itself is functioning. You are right, therefore, that we found that redeployment has got to be done. That's exactly what our Security Department is engaged in.
POM. To what extent would the police have been re-deployed in the last 18 months? Would it be fifty/fifty townships, white cities or would it still be closer to seventy/thirty white areas, black areas?
TS. It was easier for us to deploy first and I will mention quite a number of elements. First, the vehicles, we had to take vehicles away. It has not been easy to move people because to shift people it means that they must now go to be deployed in particular areas, find houses there. You know it shifts the whole family. It was just easy to take the vehicles. The first thing that had to go, take the vehicles, give them to police because the first thing that the police need is a vehicle to get to the scene of crime to go and investigate, to go for arrests and so on, so we had to shift those. Secondly, it was communication equipment, radios, and of course we gave them about 2000 cellular phones with the help of Vodacom, one of the companies here. We had to shift that equipment because it was making it difficult for those people who were on the beat on the ground to have communication, so move communication equipment. Thirdly, in certain areas which are within the immediate proximity of townships we moved the police, increased the mobile forces. I cannot give you percentages of seventy/thirty, that type of thing, but there has been a remarkable shift and the close-down of those so-called administrative sections of various police stations getting people on to the beat. So today, on Friday, we will be receiving from BMW, 100 vehicles that we have negotiated with BMW to be given to a new squad of police and this squad is composed of people who had to be taken out of the police stations. They had to be trained even how to drive these cars, we are giving them those cars today for highway patrol. It is a special unit just charged with hijacking. It's being announced today. So that squad consists of the people that we had to pull out of the police stations, you will see it in the newspapers tomorrow. That's what we have done, so I cannot give you percentages.
POM. Have you encountered resistance from white police officers on being moved closer to townships? Have their unions raised objections or is this a problem?
TS. Not at all. What has happened is that the real politically troublesome police have left the force. There has not been any resistance, at least known to me, but if it was there I don't know it, from people who have been shifted. They joined the force, they understood they are policemen and not clerical staff. Even policewomen are out there on the beat and I'm not talking about white police, they are not white police, these are black and white police in all police stations, so we had to shift them. There has not been any resistance and of course from yesterday we've even changed their ranks so all the military ranks were done away with yesterday, so you don't have your Majors, your Lieutenants, your Generals, you've got Commissioners, Superintendents, those type of things. So there has not been any marked resistance to these kind of changes.
POM. It's just more practical in terms of moving families and the logistical problems and things like that.
TS. Yes in certain situations.
POM. After 18 months in office, running probably the most sophisticated province in the country, on the one hand the one closest to the first world in terms of its standard of living and its amenities and also the one with huge pockets of enormous poverty and third or fourth world conditions, are you satisfied that you have under the interim constitution sufficient powers to deal with all the problems you face or would you like to see a new constitution emerge that would give more powers to the premiers?
TS. The current powers were a result of negotiations where we who were coming from the side of the ANC had just said, well, we should have South Africa in terms of the kind of structure that existed in the past with Pretoria as capital city and four provinces and so on. The compromise that we had to reach with the creation of nine provinces and the powers that were given in terms of the constitution, provincial powers, in that section of the constitution that is referred to as Schedule 6, those powers were powers as negotiated at the World Trade Centre. And a lot of I's and T's have not yet been dotted and crossed in relation to the Schedule 6 powers. There were give and take negotiating compromises. The demands that confront you now at the rock face of administering or governing a province require you perhaps to think of getting more powers. The powers that were there were a product of negotiations, nobody knew how things were going to turn out at the rock face.
. So I must make an example of the rock face because Gauteng is a province of mining and to say that at the rock face is only when you get there you find that I am going to need this instrument, this tool to cut this rock to position the loading of explosives in a particular way and so on, and that rock face will tell you the kind of tool, the kind of instrument it will require. That's where we are right now. Do we require new powers? Not really in so far as I am concerned but I think the manner of applying the current powers, they are enormous. I think there should be more flexibility in terms of the Treasury, in terms of the budget because really provincial powers with the kind of federal features that we have in South Africa, it's not a federal constitution but it has got very strong federal features. Those powers essentially, provincial powers, are powers to do with the budget, with the Treasury, with the fiscus. Without the fiscus you can't talk about any province, they become administrations instead of really governments, which is what they are right now. So I think in the application of the fiscus there should be a bit more flexibility. Provinces must get more leeway in raising funds either from taxes, from tariffs, from duties, I think there should be an opening up.
POM. What I was going to ask you, do you think since you get an allocation from the central government and since you are one of the more richer provinces and you are already running a deficit of I think R400 million this year ...
TS. Two billion.
POM. Two billion? One more press report gone down the drain.
TS. Well the deficit is that but I'm talking about the shortfall. I think we should make a difference between the shortfall. Already we're starting with a shortfall of two billion. We have reduced it to a deficit of R400 million. We have worked very hard. We started with two billion short, so the R400 million deficit is in fact a positive in relation to the two billion shortfall. We were not given that money.
POM. Yes, but since you can expect over time that your proportion of the federal revenues allocated to Gauteng will decrease in the interests of redistribution of income between the richer and poorer provinces how can you meet the increasing demand for services that will be on you as one of the fastest growing provinces, certainly with the fastest growing problems in the areas of housing and unemployment and violence? How can you meet those without sources of additional revenue, i.e. specifically do you need the ability to raise taxes?
TS. I have said that we have put across a table a view that says that provinces must have more functions, more powers under Section 6 of the constitutional powers for us to be able to raise additional revenue, and we are looking at various sources from licensing, gambling rights, additional taxes, levies on fuel, on liquor and tobacco, those type of things. It's open for us to look into those avenues. The question of PAYE, taxes as paid by everybody which is the total sum that goes through central government, we have said that we are not worried by the fact that central government takes the funds from all the provinces, essentially from Gauteng which produces 60% of the national fiscus and which contributes to 40% of the gross domestic product of this country.
. To give you another figure we account as Gauteng for 30% of all the total economic activity, the GDP of southern Africa, the second country to us in Gauteng, Botswana and Angola by far our contribution therefore, and I will show you later what it means. I've got a book here with reliable statistics compiled by the Standard Bank which is our banker. Our contribution to the GDP is very high and we say that there is no way that any province can go it alone in this country, only one province will survive and this is Gauteng. So we do accept that in terms of the national policy of saying let's have overall development, that's our policy as well, to develop the rest of the country. We accept that funds will have to be siphoned out of Gauteng. That's the responsibility we carry on behalf of everybody to the rest of South Africa. That is acceptable. Without that is genocide, I will be preaching genocide, so I shouldn't say I want Gauteng to develop and of course people are going to die of hunger, of thirst in other provinces. The point I'm making is that that is acceptable to us but then, the rider, a caution, that must be done in such a way that we do not, as you milk the cow, don't bleed it, right? So you milk Gauteng but don't bleed it. It's very easy to milk and to bleed so don't overdo it. Understand the nature, the character of this province and it's economic position in the rest of the zone, the southern African zone. Understand that and know that in order to take this country forward the growth rate of this province must continue to rise. We are leading the country by 1%. Ours is 4% growth rate in Gauteng. Understand that you don't destroy your first world in order to help your third world. There are many examples in the past that we are like a locomotive that pulls the rest of the coaches with us. Don't underplay the locomotive in order to bring the rest of the train with you, you strengthen in fact the locomotive to pull the rest of the train with you. However, do it in such a way - we want to feed everybody in the train but you don't take away the food and everything of the driver because you won't be able to survive and then of course the train won't move at all, it will crash, whatever is going to happen.
. So you don't bleed Gauteng although it's a cash cow, you can milk it. We have to find proportions to these things. It sounds very nice and philosophical but in terms of hard bargaining the figures' proportions have got to be found. National government treasury is, as the lawyer said, conscientious ad idem with us, we are of the same mind more or less but there is that so far constructive and hefty tension that exists because of course they are trying to fulfil national policy requirements within the framework of what we all understand and we also say we've got an obligation, but we happen to be their bankers.
POM. Just on the question of banking, has crime significantly affected the level of foreign investment or the interest of foreign investors in coming in particular to Gauteng?
TS. On the contrary because of the returning US investments, returnees, 92% of them have located in Gauteng from your major ones, your Pepsis, AT & T and so on, they are all here in Gauteng, and they have relocated like Pepsi, which is the largest current returnee US investor to South Africa, has relocated to the Katlorus area and that's really shrewd because I think they realised that the violence that was eating away the social fabric of our country from that area was paper violence, it was paper fight, it was not really your real volcanic fire, it was paper, it was surface and it will go and that violence has gone. We have got hiccups here and there but it's a swallow that doesn't make any summer any more in this province.
. Of course this is notwithstanding the fact that we are still haemorrhaging in Natal, we are bleeding there, and of course we have got to plug that hole. But you should understand how business operates. South Africa has been described worldwide as a miracle with what was achieved in 1994. Question: where is the miracle if Natal is still haemorrhaging? What is it that makes South Africa to still be regarded as a miracle and yet the haemorrhage in Natal has never abated? It is because the miracle happened here in Gauteng where the violence basically was, where the car bombs were exploding, where the right wing was doing all sorts of things, it was here where things were going wrong. We politically stabilised this province. We are dealing with crime now, normal crime, but in terms of political violence and political instability it has been a major achievement here.
. Investors essentially require that. Investors don't really think about crime. I'll tell you how they view crime because I interface with them as the local sheriff here. Investors want to be sure that there is no political crime, no political violence. Are you stable, do you have a democracy? Have you got a system that works, banks that work, import, export? Does it work? Even if your taxes are very high, but have you got professionalism, have you got lawyers, a legal system, a judicial system that is trustworthy? Have you got professionals auditing, banking, those type of things? Do you have those things in place? Then you say, yes, and they come towards you because your government is stable. But if they see crime, your ordinary personal crime, murder, robbery, they want to find whether you do have political will as government to deal with that or has crime overtaken you and they have found that there is political will.
. We have in that article which you referred to, which I think quoted me saying we must create and we are achieving to doing that very rapidly a national sense of revulsion. It's a total national body of South Africa, body politic, social body, everybody, are they for or against crime? And they find that in South Africa people don't like this. It's not Colombia here or some of those countries where people have given up, they can't fight this thing, it's the order of the day, it's a culture. It is not a culture here. Crime is news in South Africa. Where crime really has taken over societies it's not news, news is somebody who is not a criminal. Mr Clean he's news in some of the countries. Here the criminal is news so we have succeeded in having that national sense of revulsion, political will on the part of government to tackle crime. The rest is enforcement. Investors look at that.
. And therefore to answer your question more directly it has not dampened investors to come to Gauteng because of that. That is why I have said 92% of returning American investments are here, more so the largest one, Pepsi, is in Katlorus area and then you can talk about the others, they are here. But of course there will be people who are still holding back because they have still not understood this question of crime. It has not plagued Americans that much but let me tell you, crime has plagued the Japanese. It has plagued the Japanese. In the streets they are used to being pushed about walking, that type of thing, mugging, it's not news in America but it is news in Japan, so when they come here and they feel they could be mugged they have a problem; what will happen to my staff? I am going to put about a million dollars in South Africa and he is not there, the investor is not there, he is in Miami or Switzerland but he is worried about his staff. Not that the Americans are not worried, everybody is worried about them, but there is more understanding from the States of what we are doing than the fear that we found in Japan. I visited the Far East, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, mainland China and Hong Kong and I found that the enthusiasm to come to South Africa from the Asian Pacific countries was very strong and on the 5th of this month I will be announcing the results of how we are able within two weeks to bring R2,8 billion investments back to South Africa. But every investor talks about crime, but the Japanese and the Far East we found them to be much, much more sensitive. Everybody is sensitive but they are extremely sensitive about crime. It has not been a damper. It's a bad thing but it doesn't make us sit on our laurels, we still stand up to fight.
POM. Thank you for the time, I know how busy you are. Does your major source for funding additional services at the moment come from savings that you can make in the size of the public sector here?
TS. Yes, yes, and that's what we had yesterday during a retreat, a bosberaad of our Cabinet. We said we are going to shave off 3% from each of the votes, each of the budgets of various departments. All of them had to sacrifice 3% yesterday. That's one form of saving. Another one is of course that which comes from banks. And of course there is clear-cut strategy that is going to come on tobacco and liquor, on fuel which is going to bring quite a lot of revenue. So we can find a way. For instance we will be changing the registration numbers of Gauteng and allowing people to have their personalised plates, as it happens in some of the states, personal plate numbers and we are excited about that, which we will make money out of them if it's fun for them.
POM. So would you like the powers?
TS. It's those type of things.
POM. Would you like the power to impose a cigarette tax, liquor tax?
TS. Yes, we have said provinces must have those powers. It raises additional funding or revenue as I indicated.
POM. Three major areas I would like to talk about are the three major problems you inherited when you took over. One was housing, the enormous backlog in housing. Two is the incredibly high level of unemployment and three was the level of crime. Crime we've talked about. Unemployment seems systemic. Derek Keys, whom I've interviewed on many occasions says even with a rate of growth of 5% or so you're going to make very little dent into the core problem of unemployment. That hasn't changed very much. The housing situation has if anything, the backlog has got worse not better and I won't quote back at you the statement for which you're always quoted with regard to housing, but there has been something like only 1200 houses built in Gauteng in the last year. I think I saw in answer to a parliamentary question, 506 in Soweto, something like only R80 million out of a fund of R800 million had been spent on shelter or housing for the homeless. What's been, and I want you to tie this to this culture of non-payment whether it's for electricity or bonds on houses, what's been the huge obstacle in the way of making progress in the housing area?
TS. Let's start with the unemployment issue. I agree with Derek Keys that we need strategies that will make a real dent. I hope we understand one another with Derek Keys, he comes from the Malbak side, from giant corporations like Gencor and so on and these are people really who know nothing about strategies for development and employment as we see happening in the Asia Pacific countries. They were responsible for the past, by the way, so sometimes it's good to hear from them but sometimes it's a lot of clever talk. They are not freedom fighters. We are. So that is why I took a trip to all these countries that I mentioned, the real countries of high growth rates, the real high performance. And I realised that it's not the Gencor which Derek Keys was MD of that is going to lead the road, the way of development in this country. It's your small industries. I came back with that view from the Far East. I knew it was always there but I had to go as Premier to go and see that myself. It is not the Anglos, your Barlow Rands and others, they talk like that but they do nothing. It's just analysis.
. So practically what do I need? Employment is going to be brought substantially lower in this country if we follow that route and we are saying to them invest in ordinary people and unbundle these huge monsters that you are carrying, give them away. Take Anglo, why should they monopolise everything from gold mining to even the gear that is worn down there, the goggles, the boots. Give that kind of business to other people. The food and so on. Theirs is about gold mining so why worry about these other things. We are saying to companies, petrol companies, major ones, liquor companies, beer, huge ones like South African Breweries, your business is beer not trucking. Give trucking to other people. It's a very simple thing. We are saying to car companies here, components, let's see Toyota being surrounded by lots like it happens where it comes from, find lots of other small companies where people can find employment directly from these related, downstream industries. That's freedom fighting here.
. You must understand we have broken with the political past of the political masters of this country. The time has now come for us to break with the Derek Keys of the world. He is not the future, he's the past. What he says is good but it's descriptive. The freedom fighters are us. We must change the economy. We must say to investors, when you come to South Africa you will invest not with the past but with the future. So we are saying to the Asia Pacific countries give us your experience and we are saying employ more people, open up the small, micro, medium enterprises. This is a new language in South Africa. That's the language of freedom in so far as job creation is concerned, a better growth rate than the 3% which is the first time in any case that there's been positive growth rate over the last ten years. So this is Mandela's, the growth rate, this is not the growth rate of De Klerk or the other people. It's Mandela's growth rate. It's not to the extent that we would like and we want to push it to 6% but we will make a difference when we open up the small, micro and medium enterprises, not the giant corporations which is what South Africa is about. Who talks, we should listen to people who control the five main families who are handling 80% of the stock exchange.
. So you see it is a question of theory and practice, reality and honesty that must come into play here. If they say there can't be a dent, yes there won't be a dent because you control the stock exchange and everything. I was there two days ago with the Russian Vice Prime Minister, I was there with him at the stock market. And I said, "Here it is, 80% of this is owned by five families." So what do you expect? There can't be employment in the country because these people are just merely watching their shares and so on and keeping their major bank accounts far away from here.
POM. I know for example, just on that, that most companies this year if you pick up Business Day, every day are reporting record profits of 70%, 60%, 50%, but not creating any jobs.
TS. They are not creating employment.
POM. Are they giving it to their stock-holders?
TS. That's exactly what is happening. The shareholders are making money out of that type of creaming off of the profits and investing them in Lambourginis and Porsches and a lot of playground recreational activity instead of manufacturing. But we are saying to them, you see you need to free them in as much as you freed Mr de Klerk politically from the fear that he had that if we come in things will go wrong, our task is to free them, to say, look invest. But you know how we do it, we even are able to do it via the foreign investors. Those come in and they have confidence in us, they come for political reasons to South Africa. They to go to South Africa because there is political stability. That is a political reason and the democracy, I am protected there, my investment won't disappear and tomorrow my South African partner has run away like in Zaire when your partner disappears with all the money you go to courts and they say we don't talk with you, there are no working courts. Here they know people will be held accountable. It's a crime in South Africa, the judiciary works. So they come because essentially of us the political leadership, not to invest with us essentially because of the conditions and then climate or environment that we have created which is conducive to what they would like to do. But when they come here it is those people that listen to us when we say partner with a local.
. Our local giant corporations are the ones that are giving us problems in so far as investments are concerned with the future with ordinary people, black people in the field of ... We find more problems with the local people because they were always the apartheid people, these are the people who never, who were responsible for the chasm that exists between the city and the township, the suburb and the squatter settlements. They are part of those policies in the past and they were able to make billions of the assets that they have because of the policies of the past. We want a change from that. So they want us to be the new kids around the block and just maintain law and order. We say, no, we are freedom fighters and we are going to liberate the economy together with you without making you fail.
. So you think what would Chris have said about the market forces, he was a pragmatist and he saw why the Soviet Union collapsed, for the simple reason that it didn't take due regard of the fact that when your people are sitting in a soccer stadium you call them spectators so there is a collective, when your people are going to listen to music you call them an audience or whatever, so what do you call them when they go to buy and sell? They are a market so you don't refuse to recognise a market, a market exists, a market of ideas, a market of commodities, of goods, it's there, of services. So we recognise the market and we are saying to these people we would like to save you from your own cocoons you have locked yourself in because you have been able to make money in the manner that you did, you don't understand that there are better ways.
. But there are a lot of South African business persons, you must understand, that generalisation doesn't mean there are no visionaries, people who are part of the new battles that we have launched to resuscitate this country and to make it better. As a result of that the current growth rate of South Africa, by the way, is not even driven by government investment, it is driven by the private sector, by the private sector, local investors. Those are the people, the main engine of the current growth rate. It means we are being listened to but then we say diversify more ownership, make sure that you bring in other people. That way employment happens, because there are people, they are ingenious, in a squatter camp you see a spaza shop. People are ingenious, they sell oranges in the streets instead of being criminals. You can actually see here are people - the other day they were saying remove them from the streets. I said, oh no, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that because here are people who are prepared to kneel on pavements, do what has been done in Hong Kong in the open streets, here are people who are degrading themselves in order to grade themselves up. Here there is ingenuity, there is initiative, there is vision on the street pavements and there is no-one in some of the tall buildings behind them. That's where the new South Africa is going to be born from.
. But I say there are visionaries even in the stock exchange. They are there within the top structures of the captains of industry, people who understand that it's us together with them and not us versus them that is taking us forward. So a new partnership has been formed, NEDLAC, which is a structure that brings labour, government and business together, it is there and all of us are able to say how best should we go forward and we are responsible for this Mandela growth rate. However, I need to say that from government they still need to educate us about the regulations we must pass, the duties, the tariffs, import, export, exchange control regulations, specific legislation that we must pass and of course we also come in to intervene in the economy by utilising our key instrument of governance which is the budget. That's what we do. We are going to run out of time.
POM. OK. The housing question.
TS. Oh yes, on housing, that was the question of the growth rate and how we should impact it on unemployment and we feel that if we go that route we will be able to make a dent and we are not having people who are just saying give me a job in the street, you see that they are there. But housing is a number one question on the agenda of government because that's where our people were damaged the most. They were allowed to come to work in the cities but nobody gave them a place to stay. Mining houses created hostels for them and our people are living like hovel dwellers in those hostels. They have got no dignity, no respect for human beings. That's what those hostels are. But the rest of the people were not provided with housing. They work, a number of them, but there is no housing. So we said, let's come with strategies that could be able to take us forward to housing.
. Oh, we opened a can of worms. The business community, it was music, so here are the new kids around the block they have got a lot of money, the richy-riches, they've got a new budget so they want to put it in housing. And everything associated with housing went up, cement, metal, bricks, things started shooting up and they were ready to work with us in that way. That's treachery, unpatriotic, but of course that's how the market reacted. They didn't take a decision to be treacherous. It happens that way because they anticipated business from government.
. Secondly, we said let's have a good strong white paper from the side of government. I've been given money for housing. You know what? I didn't spend it. Yes, I didn't spend it. But I won elections even at that. I couldn't deliver the 150,000 houses which I thought we could deliver in a year. I've just come back from Malaysia. And they said, "Did they want to crucify you for 150,000 houses per year?" I said yes. But they said, "We do three times more than that and our population is smaller than yours." So what was wrong? And we went into the whole thing. It became very clear that banks, the financial institutions have vested interests in this area. It became very clear that also from government side there was a bit of confusion about the real policy to follow and people ended up wanting us to build little one-roomed houses in the veldt with a toilet. I said I am not going to be party to that and I went out and explained to the people that I am not given a chance to begin a programme that will address you. People understand what I am saying and they believe. All I have announced is that there is a plan, my plan has never been tested in this country, and we gave it of course to the previous Minister of Housing and said have a look at this. They said they would incorporate it but it has not been incorporated. Rather we went to Bloemfontein, Botshabelo, to sign a Housing Accord and everybody did that, but what's that Housing Accord? It's a piece of paper with empty promises, empty commitments on the part of the financial sector because they left there having agreed that you will give bonds, loans for people who are earning, in particular the poor income bracket. They agreed there for publicity purposes but no sooner had they returned to their institutions than they informed the tellers, don't do it. So you sign with Joe Slovo on the one hand and then you go and betray Slovo the other side by saying don't give Slovo's people those bonds. So I am stuck with this R800 million that I mentioned, yes I am stuck with it because I can't give this money, this R15,000 to each one of the people who are having ... I provide the subsidy, not the house.
. So we said to the people, you are employed, you go to the bank and find a bond, you come to me for a subsidy. Very good. That's the chain to go. You don't come straight to me for a subsidy because it will be R15,000 and you can't build a house for R15,000. It will be one room and one toilet in the veldt and I am not in the business of encouraging the creation of squatter camps because eventually that's what it's going to be. So I have to wait for people to come out of the banks. In other words my job is to wait outside a bank. I see people going in, they get their bond and they come to me, I give them R15,000 and they keep on going because they can build affordable housing, decent housing. The banks have red-lined the people. Yes they will give the loans but in certain areas. So there is a racist attitude here. In certain areas. Those areas are purely white areas. The traditional areas have been red-lined because they say, no maybe we will lose our money. We say, no it was the weapon that was used by people in the past, you don't have to go that far. In any case we will stand as guarantee. That's what we did. That's why it's called a mortgage indemnity scheme. We will guarantee that. But still with that guarantee the board members sit and say, well we don't know what is going to happen therefore there is no partnership. It's there on paper but in reality it is not there. So if I have not built those houses in Gauteng, yes I am holding the money.
. Now in other provinces in desperation they started saying to the people, you don't get bonds, OK take this R15,000 and people took the R15,000 and ran and what are you having? Those are not houses. It's little toilets, it's one room in the veldt. I could have done the same but, for God's sake, I've got decency. And my style of leadership here is the one that says I can go to the people without newspapers, I talk with them directly, I spend hours in squatter camps everywhere, I talk to people and they believe in what I say. I say here's the money but how can I - you engage them, that's how I did away with the total violence. There is no structure I cannot link up with in Gauteng. When I say that I mean it. From church to civic, political opposition parties, they are all here. We don't have this Inkatha thing, people running up and down. They are all here, we are running a parliament together. I have got all those structures, conflict resolution structures. They are all there. We interface and I explain to people and they said of course the Premier is right, how can you expect him to give this R15,000 direct to people. But other Premiers panicked and they gave the money and that gives a semblance of, oh there's a higher quantity of housing. It's not true, it's not true. Those are not houses. But of course in certain situations these are houses in the Bantustans which were built by previous regimes which are given to people, it is as though they are new houses. It's not like that. These were houses that were built. How could we have built houses already for people in the first three months of our government? Those were houses built by Venda, KwaZulu, those Bantustans which were there because they were trying to get civil servants to stay there. Those houses had to be given.
. So my business is not that of cutting ribbons, standing in front of houses which were delivered by private companies for their workers and they say cut the ribbon and give keys. I don't work like that. You see a freedom fighter is not that. I am not a phoney, a gimmick in front of the people. Tell them the truth but the way you tell it you must be very articulate in this business. You must know the people. Keep away from television and radio. I am with them and by word of mouth, that's why many companies have learnt the power of the grapevine, by word of mouth. I know how to communicate and I send people like marshals, perhaps the military background, send people and the thing is explained and again hold the province together like that. Explain to the people I do have the money, not the houses. Because if I have to use that money in the manner that everybody expects me to do I am going to build squatter settlements. I will not have impacted on job creation strategies, not have achieved any part of the vision of a growth strategy for this province, would not have created the necessary amount of employment to impact on the 37% unemployed people in this province. I have got that problem. But then there is a scheme, we sat down with national government and I said you and your white paper you are going to put us into trouble. The new minister has come and said look we have to revise this, find ways, yes, we have to play on with that white paper because it's there already. We have to readjust things to make sure that we can begin to re-prioritise, re-shift certain things. So the new minister is working very closely with the provinces in order to find the best way of making a breakthrough.
. I have got very terrible time constraints now.
POM. One last question, it's a political question.
TS. I should have said there's a strategy you will be hearing about, so this is how we would like to see it happening, and I said maybe whilst there is this delay, because politically and morally coming from an apartheid four-roomed house, I can't come and give one room to people. You must understand. And on top of that in terms of the social impact I cannot be able to defend this. But whilst there is this delay I am going to play it differently. So we will be building four, five storey, that's the tallest structure, high buildings, ultra-modern using these R15,000 but producing structures like I saw at university where every university student has had them. You have got your room, you have got that kind of a thing. We will do that to speed up this thing. We will do that. Get companies put them up, small companies and one big one which is having a management contract and put up these things. So they will be four, five storeys, no lifts but very wide passages, no lifts so as to cut electricity costs to those people, but very ultra-modern, it's not something of yesteryear, it's something futuristic, it's here. Those things look very well.
. So what am I doing? I am taking these little rooms I should have put in the veldt, putting them in a block, it's called a block. The people will still be living in one room like they have the corrugated one room in the squatter settlement but we go to a squatter camp, say Phola Park, we are clearing Phola Park with the help of the people. The people work on this project. So they have about 300 shelters there, so we are putting about 600 of these things. The people move in, they rent these things. So we are parking, this is a parking. Let them rent these things in the meantime. But I am not prepared, you know it's bad to see them standing one, one, but put them as a block it becomes like a residence of any university. It's a place which everybody remembers, you know the memories of the room that we had there are very good. But the advantage is that if I build them in one block the costs will not be R15,000 each, the costs are going to be far less, could be building them for about R9,000, so the family is actually going to move into two rooms. Two rooms and your bathroom and other things. That's the structure.
. It has been given to me but I had to go out to the private sector and say can you do this for me because I've got money and we can do that? So we will be running that project. It's the same thing that everybody expects me to do, but by putting one room, one room in the open veldt I am not prepared to do that. Put all the rooms together. So there are social problems around these things. There are welfare problems around these issues. For instance we have to have structures, our people love democracy, they love saying we are not consulted, this and this, all those problems. The bottom floors, the first two bottom floors will be given to the aged, pensioners and so on, because they can't go up, here there are no lifts so you walk up. The youngest couples will go up three, four, five, the oldest people come one, two so that they don't have to walk up. You can't see grannies walking up to the fifth floor unless they are visiting their own grandchildren in which case that's it. But it also contributes to health. Let people walk, let them walk, let them be healthy, that type of thing. But walking five floors, others walk three, others four, others five, that's it, that's the risk you have to take instead of you staying out there in the open corrugated iron cardboard shacks, disease, illnesses. This is the thing.
. So we put a clinic into that place, put a school nearby, fence this thing, let them have their gardens, and people love gardens. Let them do that and around this structure Phola Park changes it's face. That's what we would like to do with every squatter settlement but I am afraid if we don't have good job creation structures for the rest of the country and if we don't release land in the rest of the other provinces we're going to have a problem because I am absorbing too many people in Gauteng.
POM. The rate of growth of people in your province- ?
TS. Yes, I am losing no-one to other provinces. I am absorbing every excess. The other day there is a mine that closed in the Free State, they closed down a mine, 3,000 workers are laid off and I said, "My God they are coming." You must understand, so that we are saying let's release land and that's why this morning I was very happy to see the Minister of Agriculture or Land Affairs in Northern Transvaal, that was the first item on television, he's releasing land. Release land to people so people have got something to hang on to instead of going to Johannesburg, going to Gauteng, the province of gold, the province of so many promises but then it becomes the province of miseries. The last question.
POM. The last question is a political question and it's three or four part, I will try to combine them all quickly, is that the ANC released a discussion document some months ago, One Year of the Government of National Unity, in which it took some specific shots at the security forces and questioned loyalty of elements in the security forces. It took specific shots at the National Party and said it was still a party that wanted to destabilise the process of de-racialisation and was using strategies developed inside and outside the country in a new kind of total strategy. You and the Deputy President got into a nasty, a kind of pissing match, you were accusing him of virtually undermining the state, of being virtually a traitor.
TS. The other Deputy President? Oh.
POM. Yes the other one.
TS. I thought you meant the one who is - there are two you know. They have different problems.
POM. And then you had the President come out and say that the police and the army were to be congratulated for the job they were doing during the transition and then you had just Mr Mandela yesterday or two days ago come out and say that even though one weekend he called F W de Klerk a joke, then he made a statement saying the government of national unity is working very strongly together and I don't doubt his sincerity, his honesty or his integrity. How do all these things fit together? How on the one hand can he be traitor and on the other hand the President saying, "I work very closely with him and I don't doubt his honesty, integrity?"
TS. Yes, after calling him names himself. Both the President and I have been throwing a lot of, not mud, hot coals. He deserves that. We don't throw mud at people, we don't muddy them, but you tell them off. That happens in politics. Again the ritual standard saying this happened. Clinton under the budget was besieged and so on, he had to hit back. In South Africa it's not just normal democracy, it's all these things happening.
. Firstly, let me talk about security forces, the ANC document, and you put it very, very clearly. Underline the word that you used and I think you kept it very carefully. The security forces are loyal, very, very loyal. They delivered two critical elections, elections that are actually confirming to them that you are not in power security forces because this was a secure state, South Africa was that. This was action down, they could only govern via total strategy, total onslaught. The military was right at the forefront and the police. The more you hold democratic elections it means their power has been whittled, they are receding and they have accepted that holus-bolus. They have accepted the fact that you need political stability for the creation of a good climate for growth. They accept the fact that Mandela is the President and they accept the fact that the new South Africa is non-racial, we have to go for reconciliation. They have integrated forces and so on. And they accept that we arrest generals and they help us. It's them. We arrest all these people that used to cause problems. They are not arrested by a political party. They are not being arrested by me. Politicians don't make arrests, arrests are made by police. Investigations, even before you arrest, are being made by the army, by the police, by intelligence services. That's the kind of loyalty we are talking about.
. So you used the word 'elements'. Yes, elements are very disloyal and these are elements who are being given packages, put out and not being allowed to get to command structures because people know them and others who committed crimes are being arrested including their former minister, and he said there will be all sorts of problems. He thought that he is a Goliath, when he roars other people will follow from the security forces. He has lost touch with the security forces. These are security forces of a new South Africa. They don't even belong to Nelson Mandela. They are doing for the first time a good job, and these are people who are meeting with their counterparts in Sandhurst, in West Point and in various other parts of the world and they have always wanted to be like their counterparts, not be associated with politics, but to defend the whole total body of a social structure. They admired their friends who were fighting under orders in Vietnam but when you come back home you know who is in the barracks. They like that. They have more experience than many armies around the world, even more experience than the American army in fighting wrong wars and losing them. They lost wars in the Congo, they lost wars in Mozambique, everywhere where they were sent. Stop Samora Machel from coming in, they failed. Stop Mugabe, they failed. Every war they fought including Angola and Namibia, and they knew they were going to lose this one. This army is thoroughly, and the police, very educated because they said we were used everywhere and the politicians ended up clinking champagne glasses with the people we were told to fight against and in South Africa we won't make that mistake.
. They made contacts far earlier here because they knew what the politicians normally did in all the rest of the countries. They are very firm with what they are doing. They know very well we don't control them. They would have resented the kind of people, they would have resented control. So that it's a very loyal group of people who are helping us to deal with those who are disloyal. We are talking about elements therefore who are not to be trusted, who have got to be rooted out and where they have violated human rights they have got to be dealt with appropriately via the judiciary, no firing squads. That's the way it's happening.
. As for Deputy President de Klerk together with his party, he is a very courageous person for having done what he did but courage of 1990 is not the same courage of challenging a new South Africa. He did what had to be done otherwise he would have been the biggest fool. The other man in the Wilderness, in George, refused to do the simple act that was done by De Klerk. You know sometimes you become very great having just done a small thing. Most of the people who have been awarded, given honours and all sorts of glory in the world didn't do the biggest things; like a child is trapped in a house and everybody is standing and somebody dashes in and brings out the child, you become a hero or heroine throughout the world. But most of these heroes say, but what did I do to deserve all this attention? They say, you saved the baby. So it's not people who set thought-out strategies and like you are an Einstein. No, even Einstein, the theory of relativity, all those things it's trial and error. That's what learning and science and experience and culture of mankind is about. The Wright brothers, I am a pilot today, I don't think they understood what the laws of aerodynamics were about at the time. They didn't understand what they were doing in terms of altitude, all these instruments of control. What I am doing right now and I've just flown the Mig 29, the Soviet plane, and the South African plane, Cheetah D, I'm flying this afternoon incidentally, every Friday I do it, but I don't think the Wright brothers knew what they did, but they are heroes, if you understand that.
. Mr de Klerk had to do a very simple thing, just release Mandela. What's so great about that? Open the door, open the door and so let's not make it as though he did something, just open the door, let this man who has been stuck for 27 years. You couldn't do it for 27 years. Should have been clever, you are dumb to do it so late, but in any case he did the ultimate and just opened the door where the others were refusing. And of course when he opened the door he faced the consequences of the opening of the door. That's all, and he had to learn through that. I think there he had courage to open the door. It's not easy to open a door. He had courage. But courage and wisdom are two different things. We demand to see wisdom, in the new South Africa you build it. South Africa must compete amongst world nations, your Latin American growth countries, your Chiles, your Brazils, Mexico before the peso collapsed, the G7 countries. We must know what is loaded against us, the Asia Pacific countries, and of course there's a zone where we are operating. You unite that people, we must realise that we can't fight these battles of the economy around the world until you have the township and the city combined. You must play those rules. Don't try to keep Pretoria and Waterkloof around here away from Mamelodi and Attridgeville. We need wisdom now. There's no courage. We had courage, we need wisdom. He is lacking. There is a chain that is holding him on his foot. As a result the Nationalist Party is still not truly the kind of a party that can bring across that wisdom, but on the contrary you have elements within the Nationalist Party, people who are prepared not to be asked, they are Nationalist Party, but prepared to recognise the joint mission of the country. He is staggering in this. Now he is applying brakes.
. And if I say, since 1990, and many people forget this, when he had that courageous step, what else has he done? What do we remember him for? It is now five years so what has this man done for the last five years? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. What's remarkable? He must always rise to the occasion; nothing, zero. We remember him for that time. But he wants us to still hold him on to that, we remember what he did in 1990. Yes we remember it and he brings it to the fore and gave him a Nobel prize by default because some of us never agreed and the President said, "OK let it lie low", but I am still on record, I never agreed that somebody who was the architect and one of the leaders of fascism in our own country must end up with a Nobel prize, and I spoke openly, but it's all past so let sleeping dogs lie, but let them not come and bark later.
. The fact of the matter is that since 1990 it has been obstacles all along. The man allowed the train to come out, he opened the gate, but he has been trying to stop this train all along. So there is nothing remarkable that this man has done since then, nothing. It has been the best way of trying to block the train from moving on, but nevertheless that's a political analysis of who he is, he's a South African, he's one of us. Fortunately he has not done the foolish mistake of thinking that he can go back to the security forces and try to turn them against the country like Malan is making a fool of himself right now and nobody is following him. He's on trial today. We are trying him today. It is our little Nuremberg in a way. He should have just abided by what we wanted done in the Truth & Reconciliation Commission. But we are trying him. He wronged our people. He is part of murder until he is cleared by courts. That's it. He's tried for murder. But Mr de Klerk has not gone that far, but he is pandering to these people again. At his last conference of the Nationalist Party last week he had all these old jackals, the vampires, they were all there and you could see that he is still pandering to them. What hold do they have on him? One does not know. But all I am saying is that the excitement of his courage of 1990 should not be mistaken with the wisdom that is required for the years ahead.
POM. Thank you ever so much for the time.