Black councils, white parliaments, 1920-1987

Date
1991-04
Authors
Roth, Mirjana
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Abstract
States under siege do not necessarily use only force to achieve their aims of staying in power. An alternative may be to look back into their historical past and find ways in which they perceive that they have handled similar- situations and attempt to use these methods again. The National Council Bill of 1987 comes under the latter category. This Bill contained proposals for the setting up of a multiracial council, a council whose purpose it was to have to discuss constitutional proposals which would lead to a new political dispensation in South Africa. The last attempt in this direction had failed dismally 36 years previously. What had changed by the mid 1980s to persuade the government to make another attempt in this direction? In September 1984 soldiers were brought into the townships. Black communities were ground down by political thuggery and armed occupation. Labour relations took a knock with many trade union officials in jail or in hiding. The State of Emergency was declared in July 1985. Whites were fearful and had little to feel confident about, 63 United States companies having withdrawn from South Africa by December 1986. Black pupils continued to keep up with their stay aways. It was believed that only negotiations would or could end the violence. The government was urged to "take its courage in both hands and present to the country a just and coherent plan for all groups to live together without domination." The PFP, the Parliamentary Opposition was urging the government to call together the representatives of all the important political groupings to sit down together and try to hammer out a peaceful compromise. The government's answer to this state of affairs was the planning of yet another national statutory council. The obvious method of achieving the goal of instituting a new political dispensation for South Africa would be through a genuine constituent assembly, one whose members would be elected on an equal and free basis. A constituent assembly that when it has done its work of formulating the new constitution, will then allow the tricameral parliament to dissolve itself and constitute the constituent assembly as the first non-racial and democratic legislature of South Africa. This however, meant that the strategic initiative would no longer be in the hands of government and was thus not acceptable to them…. This paper will examine the development of the Council concept in South African history from Union in 1910 until the publication of the National Council Bill in 1987. The central purpose of this paper is to trace and analyse the evolution of this significant strain of white political thought and why they used this mechanism. Particular emphasis has been placed on the perceptions that white governmental policy makers had of the role of the African urban intellectual as a potentially revolutionary vanguard of the African people, and the formulation of the Council concept as a way to counteract this perceived threat.
Description
African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented April 1991
Keywords
Local government. Law and legislation. South Africa
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