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 It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.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 1999: Viljoen, Gerrit
Click here for more information on the Interviewee
POM. I am talking with Dr Gerrit Viljoen in the house he has just sold after living here for how many years?
GV. Eight years.
POM. OK, that's at least not a lifetime. I'll begin by a quotation from President de Klerk and he says.
. "By the beginning of 1990" (this is before Mandela was released), "Dr Viljoen could report that a great deal of groundwork had already been done" (that's on the development of constitutional proposals). "Certain principles, guidelines and negotiating strategies had already been cleared by the bosberaad that we had held in December 1989. We were ready to start work as soon as Nelson Mandela was released. The ANC, however, was not. Our package on 2 February caught them completely off guard and they had to play 'catch up' while they rushed to get their negotiating team and strategy into place."
. I've a couple of questions on that. A number of people who were on De Klerk's negotiating team, and it would have been your negotiating team including Dr Barnard who have said to me that De Klerk was a brilliant tactician but that he had a poor sense of strategy. My question would be, (i) when he refers to the strategies you had prepared, what were those strategies? (ii) Would you agree or disagree with Barnard's assessment of Mr De Klerk as being a terrific tactician but a poor strategist? And (iii) had then President De Klerk worked out that I will release President Mandela on 2 February, it will be a surprise to everyone, even members of my own party, and this is my plan, it will proceed from A to B to C to D. When we get into negotiations we will aspire to get D, then we will negotiate between D and F but F is our bottom line and we will reach maybe some comprise around the E point but we have bottom lines beyond which we will not go and we have a clear sense of what we want to get out of the negotiations themselves.
GV. I think one will have to admit that the tactics were a bit, (my mind is not clear enough to deal with these things). It is true that the strategic side was under-emphasised and under-estimated for its importance in the run-up and perhaps more attention was given to tactics than to strategy. There must be some bottom line but we were very careful not to state the bottom line because the moment you state the bottom line then your whole negotiation process becomes But I think if one looks back we should have done more about clarifying in our own minds where the bottom line was and beyond which we would not go. That was not sufficiently clear and I think that became clear in the negotiations and the ANC saw that they were stronger on the strategic level and we were rather weak on that level because we emphasised too much the tactics.
POM. Again, this is a book that was written by Van Zyl Slabbert and Heribert Adam called Comrades In Arms and they say: -
. "Mandela never wavered for one moment in what he wanted, a simply majority democracy. For that he would compromise an economic policy, the civil service and transitional arrangements. His negotiating team were never in doubt as to what they wanted to do. They may have sometimes doubted whether they would achieve it but never what they had to achieve. De Klerk on the other hand had lost it early on. It became increasingly difficult to understand what De Klerk thought he could pull off. Right to the end he refused to recognise the inevitability of majority rule and yet his Chief Negotiator, Roelf Meyer, (and here they're quoting from Patti Waldmeir) 'Once morality and ambition had led him on the road to majority rule, pursued it with a vigour and commitment not shared by anybody else in the National Party.' To a large extent the key negotiators, SS van der Merwe and Leon Wessels did the same. What Waldmeir clearly shows was how De Klerk's chief negotiators were really part of Mandela's team in facilitating the transition to majority rule. In the end it was a pushover. Through it all De Klerk was convinced he could unleash and manage a process with which he refused to come to terms."
. Do you think in retrospect that that's an accurate summation?
GV. In retrospect yes but for me to give a clear answer to those questions which are very fundamental questions, those you mentioned. I'm saying that I think we under-estimated strategy and we over-estimated tactics.
POM. The DF Malan Accord, the Pretoria Minute was about amnesty and according to, again, the people that I've talked to, in fact a blanket amnesty was drawn up at that meeting. It was again Fanie van der Merwe, Mac Maharaj, Joe Slovo and Thabo Mbeki who drafted it and that Kobie Coetsee tore it up and wouldn't have it and insisted that there be this process of people having to apply for amnesty and list the offences for which they were applying and that became the Indemnity Act of 1990. Was that at that point a major mistake on the NP's side that has come back to haunt them, in a way, since the issue is still unresolved?
GV. The question of amnesty was not well handled and I don't think that Kobie Coetsee made the right choices. My mind is not clear about events. My memory fails me and I find it very difficult to answer.
POM. That's OK. If you do just say so.
GV. I'm afraid I'm not of any use to you. You must please not blame me.
POM. No.
GV. I said I would be available but I'm not sure to what extent in the present situation I can be of much use.
POM. The other would be on the DF Malan Agreement. That was about the handing over of arms.
GV. You see I think the conflict that arose in CODESA, in the meeting of CODESA where De Klerk criticised Mandela for not keeping his agreements on the question of that, Mandela exploded virtually against De Klerk. We didn't work out clearly enough exactly how should we react if Mandela and the ANC, as they did, refused to carry out what they had undertaken to do.
POM. Does that kind of raise the question that once you began the process it had a certain inevitability as to how it would unfold?
GV. That's true.
POM. That the NP's options, the government's options would continue to narrow as time went on?
GV. I think we were not clear enough in our own mind, we didn't work out clearly enough exactly what we must do to avoid that they can get away with this not carrying out their agreements.
POM. So when they halted or broke off negotiations after Boipatong and took to rolling mass action there was no response, counteraction the government could come up with in the sense that the only way we can stop rolling mass action is to get back to the negotiating table?
GV. We had to pay a big price to get these people back to the negotiating table because for the outside world whose assessment of the whole situation was then carrying great weight and in the eyes of the outside world the credibility of the NP government in the whole set up depended upon its ability to keep negotiations going, to get the people around the negotiating table.
POM. What I will do, of course, is I'll send you on a copy of the transcript of the interview. You should have a copy of every interview we did and I will have them all sent to you.
GV. Even now to reassess these things, I'm not really fit to do it. I know what sort of standards of reaction you need. I'm not able to deliver it.
POM. You're still being helpful because you're pointing me in directions that I must further investigate. Do you understand? It's not that you have a perfectly analytical response to the question, it's that you can say yes and I say well that's worth pursuing. Do you know what I mean?
GV. Oh yes, I think this point that you've made here about the weakness of strategy and the over-emphasis of tactics, the neglect of what should be done in terms of what we have to do to react when they start putting pressure on the bottom line, these are real problems, real things, particularly in retrospect.
POM. I want to go back to that meeting, President De Klerk's speech at the opening plenary of CODESA 1 and then Mandela's very angry response to it.
GV. Let me just say that one thing that I clearly remember is that we had a strong feeling that the harshness of Mandela's response was due to the fact that our problems with the conduct of the ANC at that stage on which we had a very intensive discussion the evening before, we had a strong feeling that the negotiations were conducted with Mbeki on the other side and that Mbeki didn't fully convey to Mandela how strongly we felt about it and Coetsee didn't put enough emphasis on how seriously we were taking this. I think that there was a lot of misunderstanding due to lack of insufficient clarity on exactly how strong the NP felt about this matter.
POM. Yes, you anticipated my question. You're getting better. I was going to say that the evening before the opening of CODESA
GV. We had the impression, we made it very clear that we're going to put a strong view before the conference and that Mandela must realise that if they take the view that they were taking at that stage in the telephonic conversations between him and his advisors and De Klerk and his advisors that was not sufficient to clarify it to Mandela and that the sharpness of his response would have been different if there had been a direct discussion between the two of them.
POM. Between the two of them. And that's the way it probably should have been handled because what President De Klerk says in his autobiography, he says that on the evening beforehand there was a meeting of the policy group (I assume you were a member of that) and there was debate as to whether or not the NP should participate in the opening of CODESA at all given the ANC's lack of response to its obligations both under the Pretoria and the DF Malan Agreements but that after debate it was decided that the party should participate but that in his opening statement Mr De Klerk should make a very strong criticism of the failure of the ANC to live up to its obligations.
GV. And that was a surprise to Mandela.
POM. And then that that meeting instructed Kobie Coetsee to convey that message to Mandela and that he left the room, was able to contact Mbeki, informed Mbeki, came back and said he had talked to Mbeki and then the speech was prepared which begs the question of (i) did he convey sufficiently strong told him what De Klerk was going to say and Kobie came back and according to De Klerk's account said Mbeki understood the problem and they would be prepared for it so it wouldn't come as a surprise. Now obviously it did come as a surprise. I suppose what I want to clarify is that meeting that took place the evening before, that Mr De Klerk's account of it is correct, that there was this debate, that there was this decision to send a message to Mandela to inform him what De Klerk would say. Whether or not that happened is obviously moot.
. This is a question that came into my mind later, that was televised, the opening of CODESA, what effect do you think it had on those white South Africans who were watching, to see a black man get up there and excoriate 'their' President?
GV. That wasn't, of course, unusual because we had been used to excoriating reactions in public on what the government said or did on the part of Buthelezi. Buthelezi wasn't a soft-spoken, friendly chap. Buthelezi could be very sharp and very critical and very negative in reactions to matters raised by the government. So the fact that a black man in a leadership position expressed himself so strongly as Mandela did wasn't new, wasn't unheard of but of course Mandela was obviously in a much stronger position and the effect of the fact that Mandela said this was different from the effect of previously Buthelezi who had made similar strong statements on his side.
POM. Do you think it gave whites an idea that they were dealing with a really formidable personality?
GV. I don't think there was doubt in the minds of any serious participants in this thing that Mandela was anything but a very formidable participant, a very formidable opponent.
POM. But in the eyes of the average South African who would still be forming their image of Mandela?
GV. I think the average South African would feel that this is a crucial matter and if the government doesn't succeed in getting rectified the things that were wrong according to what De Klerk said in his speech then there must be some counteraction on the part of the government, some strategic counteraction. That was, I think, lacking in the planning at that stage.
POM. Another question which might be easier to deal with but something I'm trying to clarify in my mind and this probably deals more with the years of the total onslaught and certainly the area of the cold war. To what degree were average white South Africans fearful of communism, of there being an attempt to overthrow the state and establish a communist regime?
GV. I think the average South African assessment of the danger of communism depended very much upon the global international background and support base which the communists enjoyed. That was why the South Africans were so willing to accept what was really not its war but an outside war, civil war, in Angola and in Mozambique because in both these cases there was a very strong support base provided and supported internationally. The assessment of the danger of communism depended very much on its international situation and that was why the South Africans in general were so ready and willing to accept the new situation after the collapse of communism, after the breaking down of the wall.
POM. But they would then be prepared to accept it - ?
GV. The South Africans reaction would have been different if there hadn't been this international collapse of communism.
POM. In the eyes of the average white South African would the ANC be associated with nationalisation, socialisation, installation of a communist type regime in SA?
GV. Not only that, the real fear was the fact that this communist regime would not depend upon its own strength, on its own persuasive influence on the minds of South African citizens, but would depend upon strong external powers which gave it an importance and a threat character well beyond what it would have been if communism still had its support base from outside. The whole thing would not have worked and De Klerk would not have been able to go beyond what PW Botha had been doing if it hadn't been for international events, what many South Africans, many Afrikaners especially, saw as the hand of God in removing the threat and the danger posed by communism together with the ANC in South Africa. The nationalist aspect of the ANC wasn't, I think, so much a threat in the minds of the South Africans as was the alliance with the communists so prominent and with the international support bases for the communists.
POM. So that if the ANC had been a nationalist movement that was pro-capitalism or pro-free market or whatever, the white South Africans would have had a lot easier time dealing with the prospect of change than seeing it in terms of being part of or a spearhead for international communism. That's one of the things I'm exploring, namely, what are people's fears?
GV. People's fear was not so much ANC as a nationalist movement. The Afrikaner mind was very much in an uneasy position about the ANC with regard to its nationalist position, it's political rights for the black man in SA but the thing that they feared was that this movement of the ANC was really in the clutches of the communists and the communists are dangerous not because they're together with the ANC, together with the majority of black people, but because they had an international support base, very strong international support base. When that support base collapsed the degree to which SA, the degree to which the NP was willing to go along in the negotiating process increased very considerably.
POM. Even today I am surprised by how many South Africans still talk about there being communists in government.
GV. That is to a certain extent a legacy of the past but it is also the degree to which ANC leaders who are also active and prominent communists have been given senior posts in the government. I think that is what worries South Africans.
POM. But it's kind of a legacy of the past to the degree that some of these people who either were in the Communist Party, or even still are in the Communist Party, are more of a pro-market force than people who were outspoken pro-market force. Somebody yesterday gave me a good analogy and that was how the ANC still won't accept that the old regime, the Nats, whatever you want to call them at this point, really haven't changed. They're still deep down pro-apartheid.
GV. I don't think that communism has much of a chance of becoming a more prominent aspect. . . . . . . . ?
POM. The analogy I was going to give you is that ANC people will say the old guard will never change, they're just still pro-apartheid and people in the old regime say, I've changed, I'm different, but the ANC won't accept it. On the other hand they say they talk to an ANC person who used to be a communist and is now a capitalist and they will say, you used to be a communist and now you're a capitalist, and the person will say, well I've changed. So they apply two different standards, that they won't accept change: can't you see that I've changed? There's that kind of an imbalance in the way people treat each other.
. That brings me to the IFP, Buthelezi and Mandela and the war in KwaZulu-Natal. When Mandela was released one of his first telephone calls was in fact to Buthelezi thanking him for his support when he was in prison, that he wouldn't negotiate with the government until he was released and the exiles returned and the organisation unbanned and he asked to go and see Buthelezi and the King, King Zwelithini, and they said that's fine. Then Mandela went to Lusaka and for the first time he met with the National Executive of the NEC and they vetoed down the idea so he didn't go. Then in February the following year there was a meeting between some members of the NEC Executive and the IFP Executive in Durban and they determined that it would be a good thing if Mandela and Buthelezi were to appear at joint rallies. Then Harry Gwala stepped in and said, "No way, over our dead bodies", or whatever the phrase was, "We'll cut his throat if he does that." At the first joint meeting Mandela never showed up, in Pietermaritzburg I think it was, and that further soured the relationships between Buthelezi and Mandela or the ANC and the IFP. Do you think (i) that if at the very beginning Mandela had gone and seen Buthelezi with whom he had always enjoyed a pretty close relationship and there had been a rapprochement between the two and they both agreed that the IFP and the ANC as the two major black nationalist organisations should approach negotiations as a unit, they would be much stronger operating as a unit?
GV. In other words it becomes a further expansion of the alliance.
POM. That's right, yes. And that they would go around together to each community in KZN where there was trouble and say our war is over, our new war is a non-violent war, we're going to fight with the government at the negotiating table and we're going in there all together. Do you think that had Mandela made that trip and that had Buthelezi and Mandela gone around KZN making this kind of appeal to the people that it would have had an impact, that it would have brought the violence way down?
GV. I think it would have had a very considerable impact but at the same time there should be no doubt about the intense hatred there, the intense emotionalism which characterised the ANC leadership's attitude towards the IFP and towards Buthelezi. In those days I remember two present prominent figures in the mining fraternity who were at that stage up and coming younger men, visited me one afternoon to convey to me the shock which they had experienced after a very relaxed and pleasant discussion in Lusaka with ANC leaders and with Mbeki in particular. The whole atmosphere, they said, suddenly changed when they raised the matter of Buthelezi and the ANC. They said that the emotionalism with which Mbeki reacted was completely out of shape compared to the rest of the conversation. So there was a deeply emotionally embedded antipathy or hostility from the ANC leadership towards Buthelezi and the IFP and I think Mandela didn't have a sufficient understanding of that intensity as a result of his isolation in jail.
POM. In my ten years here one of the things that I have seen as being almost unexamined is the war in KZN and the Truth & Reconciliation Commission barely deals with the matter at all. It turns it into you had the ANC and you had the IFP and the IFP got aid from the state or from the security forces and that was it, but it doesn't get to just what you're talking about, that deep animosity which existed between the supporters of the ANC and the IFP and that while the state may have aided Buthelezi they certainly weren't responsible for the deaths of 10,000 people over a ten year period, that it was in fact, the ANC hate to use the phrase, black on black violence. It was a reality and to deny it is to deny something that was historically true.
GV. Statements made by ANC leaders, Tambo and others, over Radio Freedom were very explicit in the way in which they encouraged violence, killing opponents and as it were trampling on the head of the snake with the heel of your boot. These are all terms that were used by the ANC spokesmen in raising emotion against Buthelezi and the IFP. People tend to forget that.
POM. It's convenient to forget it in the new order of things. People have mentioned that you had done a study while you were chairman of the Broederbond as to whether the Afrikaner could survive under black rule. Do you recall that?
GV. Yes.
POM. And that your conclusion was that, yes, he could. What do you recall, if you can, were the assumptions you made that yes indeed he could survive under black rule?
GV. Well the assumptions were that the ANC leadership and the black leadership were not apparently on the path of destroying Afrikaners but that they were insisting on getting rights that they are entitled to and that therefore the Afrikaner in giving up exclusive power is only giving blacks what is their due.
POM. But they weren't in a sense a threat to the - ?
GV. There was a sense of threat but it was a case of weighing up against other different alternatives. Alternatives to granting power to the blacks was something in which there would be continued conflict and the international situation would become increasingly aggressive against SA and this was a worse scenario that could not be supported.
POM. After Mandela was released was De Klerk looking for a quick settlement and a quick election or did he want to draw it out over the five years?
GV. I think De Klerk wanted a quick as possible solution because the further you move the less uncertain the different factors would become and therefore it was important that the situation should lead to the earliest possible results. There was no I don't think there was in De Klerk's mind any feeling that we should drag our feet and spread out the negotiations over a long period. He wanted the neatest, earliest possible arrangement that could be got.
POM. During that period up to CODESA and even during the CODESA process in talks with the ANC how much time and energy, as it were, was devoted to economic matters, determining their attitudes towards issues like nationalisation, private property?
GV. Private property especially was very strongly emphasised on the side of the government. Nationalisation perhaps to a lesser extent but certainly property ownership, private property and
POM. Nationalisation?
GV. Nationalisation yes. I think the important thing was really private property.
POM. And they gave assurances that - ?
GV. Well they didn't give assurances but I think the atmosphere and the discussions were such that there was a feeling in the negotiating process to achieve an acceptable result in that field.
POM. The constitution in fact does guarantee the rights of private property so that was a big plus in the corner of the NP.
GV. The other one was to keep an orderly form of government in control of the situation. That was why such a strong emphasis was laid on reasonable conditions of service for public servants and reasonable structure of security forces.
POM. These are things you may not remember but in response to a question I had asked you, "When was your first meeting with the ANC?" and you said, "Well I personally took part in direct discussions with the ANC only really in 1989 when PW Botha met Mandela." Now the ANC was then banned and in Lusaka, so what were you doing with ANC members who were here?
GV. At that stage we had contact with Mandela on the government side, not the ANC.
POM. OK. So your contacts at that point were with Mandela. So you saw Mandela before he saw P W?
GV. I was present at his first meeting with Mandela.
POM. You were? You were in the room?
GV. I was.
POM. How was that meeting?
GV. It was very good, a very positive meeting. One had the feeling, as I think De Klerk said at the time, that we can do business.
POM. Or Botha said?
GV. Botha didn't say that but I think that was the general atmosphere that this man has very strong views which we can hardly go along with, but his willingness to negotiate and his sense of avoiding bloodshed and violence and death and of preventing SA from becoming a rubble heap or a wasteland, I think there was a strong feeling that we are very close to each other on those points.
POM. So who else was present at that meeting? I know Niel Barnard was, yourself.
GV. Kobie Coetsee was there.
POM. Kobie Coetsee was present.
GV. Of course Mandela was then a prisoner, Coetsee was Minister of Prisons.
POM. Again, trying to get some historical perspective, do you think that had communism collapsed in 1987 rather than in 1989 that PW Botha would at that point have gone ahead, released Mandela and begun negotiations with - ?
GV. I think that likelihood was there. I wouldn't say for certain, you would have to fill out more details about the context in which such negotiations could take place.
POM. You say here, again an interesting statement, let me just read it for you so you get the context. I'm talking about CODESA and that the NP wanted to press ahead, you say: -
. "I think the importance of ensuring the credibility of the whole exercise in the eyes of the international community was a strong factor."
. Then I say: "But would there be any suggestion that he, De Klerk, wanted to be seen as a peace maker and that in the final consideration of arriving at a deal to be seen as a peace maker became more important to him than holding out for some of the things he talked about?"
. And you say: "I wonder whether that would be a correct assessment. He was, I think, perhaps over-confident in the matter of the degree to which we could make progress in further negotiations specifically with Mandela. I don't think De Klerk perhaps sufficiently recognised the way in which Mandela revealed his strong emotions, which we talked about, in that address when he replied at CODESA. The two occasions when this happened, when he raised, replied to concern expressed by De Klerk that the ANC is not carrying out what it had undertaken with regard to violence, security and the armed struggle (this is the phrase I wanted to ask you about). I think the cards which Mandela showed that he had in his hand were not sufficiently recognised."
. What do you recall, the cards that were in Mandela's hands that were not recognised by the government or the NP?
GV. I'm not sure what I meant there.
POM. Would it have been the cards of mass action?
GV. Yes, that action.
POM. When Mandela could stop negotiations, leave them, take an action, then go back in, stop them, go back out, then come back in, whereas the government was in a much more difficult position. So decommissioning never really took place, it just didn't happen. You refer also to, you said: -
. "As regards the question of political power sharing I think a stronger stand would have been taken on these two issues even at the point, although it's very easy to speak in retrospect now, but even at the point of letting the whole thing be suspended for a couple of months. But then there was the instability and tension growing up among the elements of the security forces and among the civil servants. This was also a very big concern. If the matter had been allowed to drag on for much longer it would have adversely affected the attitude of the security forces and of the civil servants."
. Can you recall what you meant by saying that it would have adversely affected the attitude of the security forces?
GV. Their willingness to accept a non-violent, peaceful situation, their fear of possible mass action, violence and the safety of their personal positions, their conditions of service, as it were, jobs, salary and appointments.
POM. So you're saying that the longer the process dragged on the more insecure civil servants became but the more the security forces saw rolling mass action or whatever, the more they were moving in the direction of crack down on them? Bump let this go on indefinitely?
GV. Yes, there would be stronger pressure from elements within the security forces for cracking down on them.
POM. Believe it or not you are being helpful. Was it understood that in the election in 1989 that that would be you had referred to one of the things that the NP shouldn't have accepted so willingly or not thought through, was the setting of deadlines and targets to be met all the time and then it had to be a push to meet so there had to be a compromise to meet the target. Was there any in-built target or cut off point set by the fact that there would have to be elections in 1995 and that the matter had to be settled by that point?
GV. There was a very strong feeling about that.
POM. So in a way there was an in-built final target. In your opinion the NP should have played would it have helped them to play up to the limit of that target when then they would have had to accept compromises they wouldn't like because another white election would simply set the country God knows where, than to make them earlier and get a better a deal than they would later?
GV. Yes.
POM. So the earlier, I'm kind of talking to myself and you can tell me whether you think it's a right or wrong way of thinking, that from the beginning the earlier the NP could reach a settlement the better because it was in a stronger position to extract more compromises. As time went on the balance of who was in the stronger and weaker position began to change and the government with time became the weaker and therefore was in less of a position to extract compromises and that the more time that elapsed the weaker it became and the less compromises it could extract. So it was in the interests of the NP to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible while they were still relatively strong and it was in the interests of the ANC to drag it out as long as possible so that the government would be in a weaker and weaker position.
GV. And the assessment of what the reaction of the outside world, the international community and the leading western states would be towards the situation. Their views and their pressures I think carried a lot of weight.
POM. One last thing I wanted to ask you about and that is you laid emphasis the last time that not enough emphasis had been given in the final agreement to what you would call cultural self determination. Do you think that situation has gotten worse in the last two years, that Afrikaans has become more marginalised or do you think President Mbeki has become more attuned and aware, that it's an issue that is - ?
GV. His rhetoric is quite in touch. I think the fact is that very little has improved. The fact that he had this open public meeting with the Broederbond in Pretoria had a tremendous positive effect on the white electorate, it was quite encouraging. Ministers in particular portfolios are really not showing any kind of reasonable sympathy with the cultures of minority groups.
POM. What ministers would you refer to?
GV. Well Education and also the whole question of
POM. In that context do you think the recent release of the statement by the 24 Afrikaans academics including Breyten Breytenbach ?
GV. The more liberal Afrikaners.
POM. Yes, calling for a charter of minority rights.
GV. That shows that the matter is felt to be quite serious.
POM. And will be dealt with more seriously by?
GV. By Mbeki. Yes I hope so. I certainly hope so.
POM. Do you have any fears of what the future holds for SA?
GV. There are certain fears that one entertains. First of all I would say that the question of strong populist cum communist elements in the ANC, the question of the language and culture, the question of job opportunities. Affirmative action is exacting a very high toll from people who are not black and the quality of life, the quality of government, the quality of organisation in SA is suffering badly because of this empowerment, excesses of empowerment, the exaggeration of empowerment.
POM. OK. I will leave it at that. You've helped me.
GV. I wish you all the best.