Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 7, 1994 TAG: 9405090152
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA LENGTH: Medium
But the emerging democracy in South Africa is too delicate for such muscular tactics. Taking cues from its conciliatory leader, the ANC is avoiding any triumphalism in its treatment of the losing parties.
Despite the win and cushion in parliament, Nelson Mandela's African National Congress has made it clear it will seek consensus in its government.
Final results Friday showed the ANC got 62.6 percent of the vote in South Africa's all-race election and will have 252 seats in the 400-seat parliament, compared with 148 for all opponents combined.
In interviews and in his victory speech Monday night, Mandela has stressed his desire to work with everyone. The constitution negotiated with outgoing President F.W. de Klerk calls for a ``government of national unity,'' and Mandela said Friday that no one in the coalition should feel like a ``rubber stamp'' for ANC policies.
Aside from the ANC, which will have 18 posts in a Cabinet of 26 or 27 seats, executive power will be shared with de Klerk's National Party, with six ministers, and the Zulu nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party, with perhaps three.
De Klerk will be a deputy president, along with the ANC's Thabo Mbeki, a low-key conciliatory figure who is Mandela's obvious heir apparent should the 75-year-old president not serve out his term.
The ANC is not legally obliged to make Cabinet decisions unanimous, but it did agree in constitutional negotiations to seek consensus. In any case, it is clear it cannot risk major rifts with its governing partners.
The reason is evident: even though the ANC has the political allegiance of the vast majority of South African blacks, to govern effectively it must get cooperation from whites, who retain near-total control of the country's capital, technology and industry and serve as commanders in the army and police.
The chief task of the new seven-party parliament will be to pass, within two years, a new constitution. If the ANC had achieved a slightly larger victory, it would have won the two-thirds majority required to approve a charter unilaterally.
In theory, the ANC could have taken back the concessions it had made in four years of negotiations leading to the elections. The concessions had mainly to do with checks and balances on the central government.
But there were no tears being shed at ANC headquarters for failing to meet the two-thirds benchmark. Quite the opposite: Mandela said he felt relief because if the ANC victory had been any more lopsided, foreign investors might have been frightened away.
He recognized that the retention of a strong role for the pro-market National Party now in power will help woo foreign investment that he badly wants to provide growth and fund development.
Even the victory of Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha in the country's second-largest province, KwaZulu-Natal, can be seen as positive for the ANC.
The victory gives Buthelezi a base from which to continue his power struggle with the ANC, which has cost more than 10,000 lives in five years. It may also keep him happy and KwaZulu at peace.
The ANC has charged that Inkatha never would have won if not for massive vote fraud in Inkatha areas. Yet, it withdrew its objections to a final tally that gave Inkatha just a fraction over 50 percent in the province.
That has fueled speculation that the ANC decided to be generous to Buthelezi in exchange for at least a truce in the ANC-Inkatha conflict.
by CNB