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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 It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.

19 Aug 1997: Omar, Dullah

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POM. Minister, I had asked you the first question regarding the Truth & Reconciliation Commission, the trade-offs between justice, truth and reconciliation and whether or not the commission is achieving its desired objectives, whether or not the whole thing could have been handled in a better way, that if it had to be done again could it have been differently or in a better way to achieve these objectives, or of the objectives which is the more important to achieve?

DO. I do not think it could have been done in a better way. Certainly there are alternatives which could have been considered. One alternative would have been simply to make provision for general amnesty and forget about finding out what the truth was. The effect of that would have been that there is no truth and no justice and ultimately, in my view, the effect would also have been that there is no reconciliation even though the objective might have been to obtain reconciliation but reconciliation cannot be obtained that cheaply. Also I think that there is not and never was a conscious trading off between justice, reconciliation and truth. What we were looking at is a formula which will ensure that South Africa can move towards a democracy, become a democracy. There was a price to be paid for that, compromises, and those compromises obviously impacted upon justice, impacted upon the truth and impacted upon reconciliation. We think that we have struck a balance which has enabled us to catapult out of the apartheid order into a democracy and to begin to consolidate a democracy and we think that the compromises were worthwhile. General amnesty would not have secured truth at all. There is no formula through which absolute or total truth would be secured, none whatsoever. If we had followed a route other than that of the TRC we might not have reached the truth in respect of many of the violations which we have secured now during the course of the process. My own view is that the process has been a great success, that it is achieving its objective. It is causing some strains in certain quarters but I think it has brought about a realisation that reconciliation cannot be obtained cheaply and so the moral aspect of the matter, the exposure of human rights violations and the need for people actually on an individual basis to come forward and to make full disclosure helps not only to effect reconciliation but also to begin to establish accountability.

POM. The impression I get from talking to blacks and whites who have attended sessions or listened is that among many blacks there is a feeling of these guys are getting off scot free. The Act doesn't call for remorse and most of them don't even show the slightest sign of remorse. It's as though they are disclosing, looking at their watches and saying - you know in ten minutes I have disclosed the full truth about the past and I'll be eligible for amnesty, and that the lack of justice, for example with the Hani family and with the Mxenge family, being just two examples of families who say some justice must be seen to be done and no justice is being seen to be done at all. What response would you give to them?

DO. I say that that was a decision which was taken during the course of negotiations, that in the interests of a democratic future and to secure that democratic future some compromises were made and without those compromises we would not have had a democracy in our country. We would still be a society at war with each other. That having been said, there must be maximum justice and the whole idea of creating a third committee in the TRC process, the reparation and rehabilitation committee, is designed to ensure that in terms of individual victims there is maximum justice. It provides us with an opportunity to begin to apply in a serious way principles of restorative justice to see what can be done insofar as victims are concerned. If, however, justice equals revenge then of course we have ruled that out. We have ruled out revenge because if we were to embark upon revenge our society would not be at peace. We have not secured a revolutionary victory. I repeat that. I think it's a very important understanding which is necessary to appreciate the significance of the mechanisms created by the TRC.

POM. I just want to relate that to there are two books recently come out, one by Patti Waldmeir and one by Van Zyl Slabbert and Heribert Adam and I think somebody called Moodley called Comrades in Business, but in the course of it they said that when the chips were down Afrikaners meekly handed over power without ever seriously attempting to bargain any special group privileges, they even agreed to simple majority rule. And their conclusion is that affluent Afrikaners sold out the poorer Afrikaners because they felt more confident of their ability to either survive in or leave the new South Africa and, finally, that De Klerk's negotiators were really a part of Mandela's team in facilitating the transition to majority rule, it was a pushover. Part of the thesis is that the National Party negotiators were simply out-manoeuvred in negotiations at about every level and gave it all away, they could have achieved a better settlement if they had had better negotiators. One, do you think they gave it all away? Two, do you think they in fact secured the best negotiated settlement they could find?

DO. Well I think those statements are just a lot of rubbish. I think the authors of that particular book were living in a dream world or they are talking about some other country. I don't think they understand the titanic struggles which were taking place in South Africa and the fact that the negotiation process itself was a site of struggle. It is true that we achieved our major objectives in many respects but we also had to make compromises in order to secure them and we had to back up our demands with mass action which played a very important role insofar as we are concerned to compel the NP and De Klerk to move in certain directions. To say that the NP simply handed over does not reflect an understanding of the real struggles which were taking place in our country and the fact that the NP was compelled to give in with regard to areas that they never intended giving in on.

POM. But when you talk about compromises that were made on the liberation movement side, what would you talk of, what would you point to as the major compromises made on your side to secure a negotiated settlement?

DO. All the institutions of the old apartheid order remained intact. The army remained intact, the police remained intact, civil service, our courts, and at least in the interim constitution there is a large measure of protection for people who were in those positions. That is a major compromise. The very complex procedures created to deal with the situation in the civil service, for example, is also a major compromise. So things did not come easily. We did not win the democracy very, very easily. There were some tough negotiations. I think we got the better of the NP ultimately in securing democratic elections and in securing a Constitutional Assembly and the writing of a final constitution, but we had to make compromises and agree to an interim constitution with certain protections for the old order. We had to agree to a government of national unity. In other words we had to compromise at least for a period of five years the principle of democratic majority rule. So it was not a pushover at all.

POM. I have a quote here from Deputy President Mbeki and I'll preface it by giving a quote from Waldmeir's book and then there is a quote from Mbeki contained in it, I think it was a speech he gave, but she says: -

. "Afrikaners, pragmatists as they are, made the peace with the new South Africa with extraordinary rapidity. Theirs is a political culture based on obedience that borders on obsequiousness so they easily made the transition from obeying the NP to obeying the ANC. Even the Afrikaner dominated civil service and security forces, groups that the ANC had feared would undermine black rule, fell swiftly into line. All of this surprised the ANC which had expected far greater resistance. The sunset clauses were offered because the ANC feared it could not rule without the NP to guarantee civil service and security force co-operation so the ANC had agreed to protect the jobs and pensions of white civil servants and having FW de Klerk as a Deputy President, but within months of the elections senior ANC figures were asking whether these gestures had been necessary."

. And then the quote from Mbeki is: -

. "The ANC discovered quite late that we had made a mistake. None of us really factored in the dynamism of what was going on. We didn't factor in the speed with which the Afrikaner would shift, recognise the fact that here is a majority party, here is a new government and we have to define a relationship with that majority. The notion of a government of national unity derived precisely from the understanding that the NP would be the political representative of the army, the white police, white business, the white civil service, that it would have had a hold on very important levers of power. When we came into government we would have come in with the numbers, they would come in with the power and we would need to work together for a certain period instead of saying to those centres of power, you are the opposition."

. My question there is, it seems to me that the sunset clauses gave the Afrikaners, or whomever, the security to be co-operative and the more co-operative they became the more secure they became so that kind of smoothed the transition, that in the absence of those sunset clauses there might have been a lot more resistance and it might have been a lot more difficult and that events might have turned out a lot differently. So it's a false analysis to say those guarantees weren't necessary in hindsight because things have gone so smoothly when it may have been those guarantees that in fact made things go so smoothly.

DO. I think it's a question of interpretation. The reality is that during the course of negotiations the NP still represented those security forces, the political representative and protector of the security forces, the civil service in our country and whilst it is true that many Afrikaners have come to terms with the new democracy the reality also is that we need a great deal of transformation. I don't think that one should speak of the Afrikaner people as a block because they are not one uniform block holding one particular position. The Afrikaners are a very divided people. Many of them have come to terms with the democracy, others have not, and that can be seen from the fact that many Afrikaners support the NP, some support the right wing Freedom Front, others support the Conservative Party and yet there are some Afrikaners who support the DP and there are some who support the ANC. So you don't have one composite block of Afrikaners. They hold different positions and I think it is a welcome thing that the situation is actually opening up and that Afrikaners are accommodating themselves to the fact that they must live within a democratic order. To create the impression that there is no problem with our transformation is completely wrong. I think that transformation is proving to be a very difficult process and while some people have accommodated themselves to political democracy they have not adjusted themselves to the need to pursue the process of transformation.

POM. So when De Klerk says: -

. "The people who structured apartheid and put it on the books were not evil people. Apartheid was in its idealistic form a plan to make all the people of South Africa free. The Afrikaner fought the first anti-colonial war in modern history in Africa against Great Britain so Afrikaners have a deep understanding of the need of a people to be free."

. Do you find that (to be) denial hogwash or is it an attitude that is still at the bottom of the psyche of what you would call 'this divided Afrikaner'? There is still this predominant sentiment in that community?

DO. I think that De Klerk ignores what took place in South African history. The reality is that when the NP secured power in 1948 it did so on the basis of the ideology of apartheid and white domination. White domination was its creed. Denial of political rights to blacks was the basis upon which they came to power. Enforcing that domination over blacks was what they did throughout their rule, using white domination in order to dispossess blacks, make them servants in the country of their birth was part and parcel of NP policy and practice. Securing a privileged position for the white population was a strategy of the NP throughout its history. The massive disparities which we have in the country today at a social, economic, at every level of our society is the result of NP policy and the kind of sentiments that De Klerk expresses run counter to the realities of our country.

POM. But do you think they are sentiments that are held by most white people?

DO. Well you know one can clothe whatever one is doing in all kinds of sentiments and maintaining white civilisation, avoiding ourselves being swamped by barbarism and communists, so those are all subterfuges which were used to clothe white domination in our country. I don't think that De Klerk could have been serious when he made that statement.

POM. Why is it, and this is something that I've noticed, that the TRC pays far more attention to the submissions that De Klerk makes and takes issue with him on a number of levels and yet appears to have left PW Botha, who presided over the most oppressive part of apartheid throughout the eighties, virtually alone?

DO. The reason for that, in my view, and that's a question of interpretation, lies in the fact that De Klerk and the NP have sought to create a break in the history of the NP. De Klerk was not speaking on behalf of the NP and its history. He has tried to separate himself from that history even though he has been part of that history. It was a dishonest way, in my view, of presenting the NP case to the TRC. The TRC wanted an NP submission on its role during the apartheid years. De Klerk comes along, separates himself from that history, as if he can be separated from it, and then projects himself as being something different from the 'old' National Party; there's an 'old' National Party and a 'new' National Party. And so it is the NP which went to the TRC and projected themselves in a way that separated themselves from PW Botha. In my view the reality, of course, is there has been one history and whatever adjustments they made were made because of the balance of forces in the country as our history unfolded. So it was not the TRC which chose that route, it's the NP that did that. Secondly, they went to the TRC in the hope of projecting De Klerk in a particular way and therefore it is De Klerk who made the submission on behalf of the NP. It's De Klerk who answered all the questions. The rest of his team were like dummies, they sat there and did not participate in the interaction between the TRC and the NP. There was an interaction between the TRC and De Klerk. It is the NP that personalised it in the person of De Klerk and I think for very good reason, because they can't explain their history in a way which would be acceptable. So I don't think that the TRC consciously decided to focus on the De Klerk era. They wanted explanations for what the NP did. It's the NP that chose to answer in this way and the present impasse and dispute between the NP and the TRC, in my view, arises largely from the way in which the NP decided to present its case.

POM. I don't know whether you heard this but this is about two weeks ago and Dr Boraine was on television and he was talking about the High Court case that the NP was bringing, but he said that he had documents in his possession that showed that FW de Klerk was present at National Security Council meetings at which the elimination of people had been discussed, and I said, "Wow! That's an extraordinary statement to make", and it never appeared in the newspapers. I picked up all the papers in the following days expecting to see it on the front pages and I couldn't even find it in the small print. But if that is so it would mean that not only would De Klerk been present at discussions of eliminations but that every other member of the National Security Council who was present at those meetings with him would also have knowledge of those discussions. Do you recall Boraine making that remark?

DO. Well he may have said it, I can't comment on that, but every black person in South Africa knew that people were being eliminated. Every black person in South Africa knew that the security forces were acting in a particular way. Every black person accepted that people who were arrested and detained by the security police were tortured and confessions were extracted from them. Some of them died in prison as a result of it. Blacks knew all about it and it's very difficult to accept that the NP and its leadership did not even suspect that such a thing could  be going on. I find it very difficult to believe.

POM. Would you find that difficult to believe of whites in general, that when white people say we simply never knew anything, that there is a collective amnesia or a collective denial at work?

DO. Well of course there was a massive propaganda machinery at work and if you look at the media, the radio, television was totally controlled by the NP. They had a massive propaganda machinery which they used and it became comfortable and convenient for whites not to know and not to enquire. If you look at the newspapers, the newspapers today are very, very critical of government. They were not so critical during the apartheid years. The same newspapers, English, Afrikaans, they were very, very supportive of De Klerk and you did not find the kind of critical independent journalism from English and Afrikaner newspapers such as you have today. In fact they were all supportive of white domination whether they were liberal or otherwise in one way or the other and covered up the situation and contributed to the kind of situation where whites found it comfortable not to know.

POM. Would you think in a way, going back to one of my first questions, that in fact the NP actually secured a very good deal for themselves, they got off the hook in terms of the crimes of the past, they have maintained their wealth and their privilege, three years later there has been no real change in the distribution of income, and most of the privileges they had before they continue to enjoy today?

DO. Well I don't agree with that. I think it's too simplistic. Even if we had achieved simple democratic majority rule with no strings the current imbalances would still have existed. It is impossible to address the imbalances created by 200 years of colonial conquest, 70 odd years of segregation, 50 years of apartheid, in other words 340 odd years of white rule and domination, it is impossible to address the imbalances created by colonial rule and apartheid in the space of three years or through a single event. Elections do not bring about change in the economic order, it does not bring about social justice. What one is required to do is to use political power in order to secure a process which will ultimately bring about social justice. Social and economic transformation is not a single event, it is a process. What the first few years did is maybe slow down that process but it cannot stop the process. Ultimately simple democratic majority rule is secured and the question will be: what is the balance of forces, not only nationally but internationally, which will enable us to move as rapidly as possible to effect social and economic transformation? In that regard they are not only internal constraints in the form of counter-revolutionary forces, third force activities, but also international constraints like globalisation and the world economic order in which we are operating and we can't step out of the economic order.

POM. Are you convinced that there is still a nascent third force operating and what would you point to as manners in which it operates to slow or derail transformation?

DO. De Klerk asked the President when during the last years of apartheid the President said there was a third force, De Klerk said, "Give me the evidence", so of course we were not able to give him the evidence on a plate but we could deduce it from what was happening in the country and today the Truth Commission is uncovering the fact that it did exist, that the highest officers in the army and in the police were part of that force which was participating in crime, eliminating people, constituted part of the so-called third force. We are in the same situation today. From what is happening in our country it is very clear that there are elements that are sabotaging transformation and this democracy and that is destabilising or attempting to destabilise the country. A great deal of the crime in our country is perpetrated by third force elements. I am not saying that if a woman is raped somebody pressed a button and sent somebody to go along and rape, but encouraging this culture of violence, of lawlessness, undermining the criminal justice system through organising disappearance of police dockets, spreading corruption, participating in syndicate crime, trans-national crime, there is a great deal of evidence or information of these elements participating at all these levels. So if you ask me to point out the individuals who are participating in these third force activities I cannot do it but the evidence is very clear and I am quite confident that as we proceed into the future the concrete evidence will come to light.

POM. Some people have said to me that part of the destabilisation with regard to crime may be attributable to the fact that white police officers simply don't do their job. In other words simply let things happen, don't pursue cases, don't put themselves in situations where their lives may be endangered, i.e. don't act as professional policemen and it's that passivity that allows a certain amount of crime to happen, passivity on the part of elements in the police.

DO. I think it is a little bit more complex. If one takes the police then there isn't that enthusiasm to defend the democratic state as you had to defend the apartheid state amongst large sectors of the police. There isn't amongst prosecutors in court the same enthusiasm to prosecute people in the name of the state as there was during the apartheid years because many of those people are still in position. In other words there is not that loyalty to the democratic state in many elements. At the same time I should hasten to say that there are people who have been in those forces and who have been prosecuting who have accepted the democratic order and are doing their work and are working very hard but we do have that element that is not acting with the same enthusiasm which they did during the apartheid years. During the apartheid years they fought for a cause they believed in, they defended a cause they believed in. Today there are many elements who are still there, who are doing their job but owe no loyalty. So that is the one aspect.

. Then there are elements that are constantly sabotaging and participating in sabotage activities and destabilisation activities. Groups are planning destabilisation, violence. In KwaZulu/Natal police have been accused of being involved in a great deal of the violence. So you've got that kind of element as well. Then you have elements who participate in crime and then you have elements who are corrupt, who because they owe no loyalty to the state just don't care, want to enrich themselves now, who have been in key positions, and they use that in order to make money and so they work for syndicates. And so I think there are different levels of attitudes and activities, all of which combine and create a situation which makes the task of transformation more difficult.

POM. I saw a figure quoted in the paper, and maybe one you can verify or can't, but it said that one in every four policemen in the John Vorster police station was under investigation, had been involved in crime or corruption.

DO. I am not able to comment on the figures or percentages.

POM. OK. Just talking about corruption in general, can one distinguish between apartheid legacy related corruption and new corruption and to what degree is 'new corruption' becoming a serious problem where again it is having an effect on the confidence of foreign investors to come into the country? I think there are two rankings of South Africa recently, one, by a German firm, ranked them 33rd out of 52 countries and another -

DO. Well I don't know how reputable that firm is who made that kind of ranking. There have been some very good rankings by very reputable institutions but let's talk about corruption and not about rankings. We have had corruption at many levels in the old apartheid order, at a political level and within the bureaucracy at many, many levels. Then the apartheid regime relied on corrupting people in the homelands, blacks, in order to secure their political support. So there was rampant corruption amongst black officials and white officials throughout the country. We inherited that officialdom and that bureaucracy and it did not mean that just because we had elections on one fine day that the next day that corruption came to an end. In point of fact the transition period implied a break in government, the coming into being of a new political authority that had to find its feet and it provided elements who were involved in corruption with greater opportunities to pursue their activities. Now in that kind of environment I have no doubt that new elements have come in and have found the opportunity to acquire ill-gotten gains very attractive and have participated in the corruption, but essentially we have inherited a massive system of corruption into which others have fed and what we need is a total clean up of the whole system and so the transformation of the bureaucracy in our country is an absolute prerequisite to eliminate the corruption.

POM. How does that transformation get under way since I think just a recent report by the Director General of the Public Service Department, Zola's department, points to the inefficiencies, the inability to get a grip on transformation in the public service sector?

DO. You know most of the people who have come into the new bureaucracy are not necessarily people who have been dedicated ANC cadres. They are blacks who have come into the bureaucracy and in the environment in which they find themselves some of them have got involved in corrupt practices but the biggest problem is that we have created through our constitution a provincial system, a system of provincial government where no government existed before, or the only government which existed were these corrupt Bantustan structures and so you used those structures in an attempt to create your provincial government where none existed before, you start off on a bad wicket and what the Director General in Dr Skweyiya's department has done is to indicate that we have put into place provincial government structures with no bureaucracy, with people with no expertise, no training, no systems, people with no financial experience and therefore an environment in which corruption can breed. I think that that kind of brutal telling of the truth is a prerequisite for cleaning up and that is what the objective of the exercise is.

POM. Do you think this whole idea of provincial government with nine provinces should  be re-visited or re-thought?

DO. I do not think it should be re-visited. I think what we need to do as a matter of urgency is to examine the needs of each province, put into place systems, provide training for people and ensure that there are lines of accountability, especially financial training and management training. That's what we need at those levels. I don't think that the answer to our problems would be to change the political system and once again revert to an over-centralised state. I don't think that it will solve the problem at all.

POM. But President Mandela, I think it was two years ago, called for a new patriotism for people, like working together for the future of the country, a spirit that you had to sacrifice in the short run to gain in the longer run, that in a way it is the legacy for our children not for those who are there right now. Do you think that cohesion and will exists among the people at large to effect transformation on the scale that you are talking about, particularly in terms of what is called this culture of entitlement whether it's in regard to jobs, services, where there seems to be more of, even among unionists, securing benefits for themselves rather than saying the real need here is that we must all share to create new jobs?

DO. Well I think you raise a number of points, let me try to separate them because there are a number of questions you ask and there isn't one answer to those series of questions. Trade union activity is legitimate and trade unions are perfectly entitled to use the mechanisms created by the constitution and to use their power in the collective bargaining process to secure an improvement in the lives of their members. I personally think it's an exciting period. It does create problems for many people insofar as the public sector is concerned, it creates problems for government but I think in the same way as COSATU is learning to de-politicise its role and other unions are learning to de-politicise their role so too government is learning to live within the framework of a democratic order in which this kind of activity is legitimate and I think it keeps government on its toes, to look at itself, how is public money spent, are we doing enough for the public sector with it? I think it's a good thing. So I have no problem with what the unions are doing. I may disagree and I may be irritated and it's of nuisance value to us but if I had to choose between the unions having the power to do it or not having the power I support the right of the unions and I think that's a general ANC attitude as well. Some angry people may think otherwise but I don't think so.

. I think also that there is that cohesion within the ANC. We continually build up that cohesion in our activities. We do take knocks as we go along because we are now in government, we have to adjust ourselves to being in government and being a liberation movement at the same time. We keep on stressing that we are a liberation movement and not just a political party and I think our December conference is going to endorse that position once again. It will re-discuss the character of the ANC, it will re-discuss the question of the strategy and tactics of the ANC in achieving its objectives. The ANC will reiterate that we have not achieved our objectives. We have achieved some of our objectives but the issue of transformation is crucial. So within the ANC we constantly seek to ensure that that cohesion is there and is built upon but the new situation has created a stress and pressures upon that cohesion and therefore we need to take steps to ensure that that cohesion is retained under new circumstances. I think within the trade union movement there is a great deal of cohesion even though there is also a great deal of fragmentation. But in the civic movement, women's movement, there is a great deal of cohesion as well. The youth are pulling themselves together and I think they are also building up cohesion. Fundamentally in different ways everybody is saying that our process of transformation has only begun, it has not ended. But at the same time the situation opens itself up to opportunism, people jump onto the bandwagon, they get jobs, they look at the opportunities for business, all sorts of things so it's a very mixed situation with diverse responses from different people. It is true that there are areas where large sections of the people believe that they are entitled to certain things but there are other people who are simply unable to pay for services because there are no job opportunities and I think that once our economic lift-off gains momentum and people get jobs that situation also is being improved but I think it's a mixed situation.

POM. I've only two or three more questions for you, you must be tired. The SAPS Research Director, this is at a conference last week on South Africa beyond the year 2000, CP de Kock, he warned that: -

. "The political culture in South Africa had not changed, that the blessing of a smooth transition from apartheid to democracy could become a curse in a country where human relations remained bedevilled by attitudes of racism and self-righteousness and a culture of entitlement and intolerance seemed to be on the increase."

. Do you find that an accurate analysis or an inaccurate analysis?

DO. Well I don't know, I don't know whether it's an accurate analysis, but certainly the pace of transformation is too slow. Secondly, we need institutional transformation and we need attitudinal transformation. There is still large scale racism in our country which means that there is racism amongst whites and a great deal of change is necessary in that regard. If I were to locate what he says I would say that we need social, economic, institutional and attitudinal transformation and that all those processes are far too slow at present.

POM. Last question, the question of illegal immigrants. Is this becoming a major problem?

DO. Yes, again it is a complex question. It is a problem when hundreds of thousands of people enter the country and you have two or three million, I don't know what the correct estimate is, but two or three million people who have entered the country, large numbers of them illegal. Many of them, however, are refugees and I think that we need to find a way to ensure, number one, that we don't develop xenophobia, number two, that we recognise that we are part of Africa and that the reason we have so many refugees is because there are also problems in the north, many of those problems created by apartheid South Africa, and that we ought to be sympathetic to the problems of our neighbouring countries, not in a patronising way but in a way which understands and takes into account the solidarity which our neighbours offered us during the apartheid years and that much of their problems have been occasioned by South African intervention, apartheid forces. And there is still an allegation now that South African elements are still supporting UNITA, for example, that Mobutu still enjoyed some collusion, collaboration, support from elements in South Africa right up to the last over which we just had no control. Now those are allegations, strong allegations, and I would not be surprised if they were true. So when South Africa looks at the refugees, other illegal migrants into the country, I think we need not to deal with the problem in a uni-faceted way, there is not a single response. We need to deal with refugees in accordance with international conventions and standards and observe those conventions. On the other hand there are problems created by people who come in and who commit crime but it's not only foreigners who commit crime, there are local people who commit crime. So we need to ensure that that does not take place. Then there must be some procedure in which we are able to separate refugees from others. We need to control entry into our country but we must not develop xenophobia.

POM. So in one word the biggest problem facing the country in the next two years?

DO. I think that transformation, as I've been saying over and over again, encapsulates what our country needs at every level. That also includes addressing problems of poverty and the life that people lead and improving the conditions of people. Our slogan during elections was 'A better life for all' and I think that that remains the major challenge to ensure that that process is on the move.

POM. OK, thank you.

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