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 It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.
Motion by the South African Government
In discussions with the PAC, the following have emerged:
-. The PAC decides on whether APLA engages in armed action. According to the PAC APLA has freedom of operational activity.
-. The PAC is committed to armed action as an instrument to pursue their political objectives.
-. In the process the PAC specifically sanctions the killing of policemen, of white people living on farms and of white civilians engaged in peaceful social affairs. In the execution of this policy the killing is not done in situations where one armed force engages another in battle, but where policemen (and their families) are assassinated, where trained armed men steal up on white families living in isolation and kill them in cold blood, and where trained armed men indiscriminately kill unarmed civilians meeting socially.
-. Despite extensive discussions on this issue, the PAC refuses to end or suspend or place a moratorium on these actions.
2. These atrocities and the PAC's refusal to stop them, bring the following to the fore:
-. People are killed in cold blood, causing suffering and grief.
-. Such actions alienate citizens from the peaceful negotiating process.
-. These killings and accompanying pronouncements create anger in the victim communities and are bound to lead to violent reaction with all the potential for massive disaster that that entails.
-. These killings are not ordinary criminal actions in which there is some or other overt linkage between the perpetrator and the victim. It is therefore very difficult for law enforcement agencies to apprehend the perpetrators or to protect potential victims. The potential of unlawful retaliation' from the victim communities is therefore enhanced.
-. The democratic negotiating process does not provide for undemocratic methods. Of all the parties participating in this process, it is only the PAC who adhere to a policy of violent political action. This endangers the whole process, not only by what they say and do, but also by the potential reactions.
3. During the discussions between the Government and the PAC to resolve the matter, the Government failed to persuade the PAC to either stop or suspend their policy of violence. Different avenues were explored, but all failed. The PAC proposes negotiating the cessation of hostilities at a neutral venue (outside the country). The Government is not engaged in hostilities against the PAC and has offered to say so again. Against that the PAC could then also say that it suspends hostilities and we could go on to discuss ways and means of ensuring that no violent hostile acts occur. This proposal was rejected by the PAC. It then argued that MK, the KwaZulu Police, the armed forces of Transkei and other such formations should also become involved in the negotiation of a cessation of hostilities. As far as we are aware, none of these formations operate under a policy of violent actions against civilians or political opponents.
4. We, the South African Government, cannot enter into agreements with the PAC while it adheres to its policy of political violence.
5. Against this background, all participants in this process are called upon to assist in the resolution of this threat to the democratic negotiating process by supporting the following resolution:
. "RECOGNISING that a democratic negotiating process cannot accommodate the use of violence to further political aims;
. AWARE of the dangers for our society inherent in a policy of violent political actions against opponents and civilians;
. ACKNOWLEDGING that no party committed to political violence should be allowed to participate in democratic elections or in negotiations on preparations for such elections; and
. NOTING the fact that the PAC adheres to a policy of political violence,
WE, THE NEGOTIATING COUNCIL hereby call upon the PAC to join the other parties in the Council in the peaceful democratic negotiation of our country's future by immediately abandoning or suspending its policy of political violence."