CAPE TOWN September 5 1996 — Sapa

IFP PORTRAYED AS VICTIM OF ANC AGGRESSION IN TRC SUBMISSION

The African National Congress was painted as the main aggressor in the continuing violence in strife-torn KwaZulu-Natal by the Inkatha Freedom Party's submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Thursday.

IFP president Mangosuthu Buthelezi said if the commission wanted to establish the truth about South Africa's past, it owed the country an explanation for the assassinations of thousands of IFP leaders and supporters.

"These serial killings are a crime against humanity and demand answers," he said.

The party's national chairman, Dr Frank Mdlalose, stopped short of blaming the killings directly on the ANC. But he said the ANC's response to apartheid, particularly its ungovernability campaign, was the "father" of today's violence and the cause of the conflict between the two organisations.

Testifying before a commission panel chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mdlalose said KwaZulu and the IFP had been the target of ANC destabilisation campaigns since a failed conference between IFP and ANC leaders in London in 1979.

"The differing strategies to overcome apartheid proved irreconcilable at that conference. From then onwards Inkatha was singled out as an enemy because it refused to crook the knee to the ANC, or accept its strategy of armed struggle and the destruction of South African economy."

Since the start of the armed struggle in 1961 about 14000 IFP supporters had been murdered in a campaign by the ANC/United Democratic Front to "liquidate" township administrations and render the country ungovernable.

During that time 420 IFP leaders had been systematiclly assassinated to eliminate the IFP as a force to be reckoned with.

Mdlalose said the ANC had rebuffed reconciliatory gestures by Buthelezi and instead continued to call publicly for his removal from power. "Inkatha and its leader, Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, were singled out for vitriolic attacks, many of which took the form of blatant appeals for murder."

The IFP had gone to inordinate lengths to engage the ANC in debate over differing strategies to achieve liberation, but these initiatives had invariably been scorned by the ANC, he said.

The ANC's strategy of attacking and seeking to isolate Inkatha had been clearly detailed in the "Guidelines for Comrades" document issued by ANC structures in 1989, when Inkatha leaders and United Democratic Front leaders had been trying to bring peace to the province.

"This document offered detailed advice on how to engage Inkatha in debate and how to use selective violence against those who did not bend to the ANC will."

In contrast, Buthelezi told the commission, the IFP leadership had never authorised any acts of violence for political purposes, although he acknowledged that some members had been "drawn into violence".

KwaZulu-Natal agriculture and finance MEC Dr Ben Ngubane said a total of 1137 IFP members had been killed between September 1991 and August this year.

The greatest number of deaths had occurred between 1989 and 1994, when the constitutional reform process was underway

Ngubane said the IFP continued to be targetted by its political opponents, although there had been collusion at the most senior levels of the former and present governments to downplay this.


© South African Press Association, 1996
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