'Culture of political tolerance' needed in South Africa.

"Apartheid must be dead and buried by the end of the year", Ibrahim Gambari of Nigeria, Chairman of the Special Committee against Apartheid, said in a 19 March interview with UN Radio. Having visited South Africa as head of a five-member fact-finding mission of the Special Committee from 1 to 11 March, he concluded that the country needed a "culture of political tolerance"--somethi that must be established before elections for a Constituent Assembly. That should be are excerpts from his statements.

The mission's mandate was broader than that of the UN Observer Mission in South Africa (UNOMSA), which focuses principally on the issue of violence. We were to assess the whole programme of transition from apartheid to a non-racial democracy, with particular emphasis on the resumption of the multiparty negotiations.

We met with representatives of all major political parties and observed that there is cautious optimism regarding the resumption of multiparty negotiations. And that optimism has to be cautious, because there are still many problems, such as the issue of violence, the acrimonious debate about the issue of regionalism and federalism, and thirdly, what we perceived as lack of trust among some of the key players in the multiparty negotiations. Anyway, we strongly support negotiations, because we believe that the more you talk, the more you reach understanding and confidence. The media has also a very important role to play--it can help the leadership. On our part, the Special Committee is planning to organize in June a Conference on Political Tolerance in South Africa.

Although the General Assembly lifted the ban on people-to-people contacts, the sanctions should remain in force, because the international community still needs a leverage to pressure the South African Government not to renege and to make sure that the process of negotiations continues. What would warrant their lifting would be, for example, the progress towards the establishment of an interim government and, perhaps, the establishment of the Constituent Assembly which would serve as an interim parliament. At the same time, the reconstruction process should be initiated, because one of the sources of violence is that people are living under appalling conditions.

The international community should not wait until apartheid is eradicated to help the South African people in dealing with its legacies. And South Africa itself has the funds for reconstruction. Its people have savings in access of 200 billion rand (about $70 billion), but they are not investing domestically because of uncertainties of the future, of the political process, and because of the violence.

But for now, as we observed, the level of violence seems to be in fact becoming narrowed down to Natal, and most of the dashes are between the supporters of the Inkatha Freedom Party and the African National Congress (ANC). Before we left we saw a joint approach by those parties' leaderships to begin work at a grass-roots level to see that the violence subsides.

In this regard, the presence of UNOMSA was highly praised. Its role was found to be so commendable that there is now a move to increase the number of observers and to somewhat broaden its mandate, so that the international monitors become really part and parcel of the process of investigation of the root causes of violence and of finding solutions to them.

Apartheid will not be dead and buried unless there is a non-racial constitution, which permanently guarantees the people's rights, and elections are held under that constitution. The people of South Africa do not deserve the prolongation of apartheid beyond 1993. By the end of this year, substantial progress ought to be made--at least, a Transitional Executive Council should be in place and preparations concluded for elections, the first elections where all adults who are eligible to vote, of all races, are allowed to vote and do vote.