The main commemoratived event for Chris Hani this year will be the wreath-laying on 10 April (Sunday), 10h00, at Thomas Titus Nkobi Cemetery, Boksburg. President Jacob Zuma will attend. Below are extracts from the second (long, 20-page) O'Malley interview of Cde Chris. To read the full document, use the links given below to go to the CU Chris Hani Archive. The parts quoted here have to do with the Constitution, which was being negotiated at the time (1992). Chris Hani had been General Secretary of the SACP for about seven months.
_____ <https://studycircle.wikispaces.com/6+CU+Chris+Hani+Archive> CU Chris Hani Archive.png Interview by Padraig O'Malley on 15 July 1992 with Chris Hani (Excerpts on Constitution and democracy) POM Chris, let me start off with a kind of a personal question. You stepped down last year from a very prominent position in the ANC, what many people would have considered to be a very prominent position, where in the eyes of many you are worthy, as [heir] apparent to Mr. Mandela, you were certainly were the leading personality and dominant force within the movement. You left that to take over as Secretary General of the SACP, which in many circles, would have been seen as kind of a downward career movement. What motivated you? It is not many people who would give up such an obvious kind of proximity to power to take the head of an organisation that would not give you such a powerful position. What considerations led you to do so? ... CH Strangely, many people have said that I am one of the heirs apparent. I have never considered myself as an heir apparent. I thought that when the Communist Party needed somebody, I should assist for the simple reason that, I see the Communist Party, despite what has happened in other parts of the world, as a key vehicle in empowering the ordinary working people in South Africa, especially the black workers, who are so exploited and oppressed, and with the wisdom of hindsight, in terms of what I have seen in Africa, I have no guarantee that a movement, on being elected as a new government in future, will pay the necessary attention in terms of improving the lives of our people because I have seen a lot of revolutionary rhetoric in the past in a number of countries which was never really applied when there was a situation of freedom, of independence, and therefore I see the building of the Communist Party in alliance to the trade unions as a watchdog for democracy in our country because we have learnt important lessons from the Soviet Union, where a Communist Party has neglected to democratise the society. Strangely, and you won't believe it, but we in the party feel strongly about democratising the society, not in terms of the existence of our immediate party, but the existence of other democratic committees, so that it should never be left to the government to decide what the society should do, to decide the direction of society. I feel the people at every stage should stand up and defend their own interests where a government, for instance, is not tackling the socio-economic issues, where a government begins to favour the elite, to allow corruption and the accumulation of riches by a few people at the top and neglecting the very people really who carried the movement along in terms of the struggle against apartheid and white domination. POM Are you a subscriber to the school of believers to the fact that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely and that the Communist Party is one of those parties that will keep an eye, or watch over those who have the power to on behalf of the people? CH I really subscribe to the view that it is easy for those in the corridors of power to lock themselves up in their ivory towers, in their beautiful offices and lose the earlier perceptions which made them involved in the struggle. They get flooded and surrounded by the bureaucrats who conduct their own experiments in their offices away from the people. They get surrounded by powerful economic interest groups, internationally and nationally and locally and gradually you see their advice is sometimes based on their immediate circles. Therefore, if we have a vibrant movement on the ground, that movement cannot be ignored and therefore the party also wants to correct the mistakes which it has seen committed in communist countries, so that it does not become a party of elites and bureaucrats, but a party which is accountable to the people on the ground, the members, the workers, the poor in the cities and the rural areas. POM I want to relate that to the course the recent negotiations covered and particularly the arrangement or offer by the alliance ANC/COSATU/SACP alliance to the government of 75% veto threshold for provisions in the Bill of Rights and a 70% threshold for provisions in the constitution and it struck me, from abroad, that these are extraordinarily high provisions and many people perhaps in the ANC and certainly in the SACP would regard these concessions as a form of sell-out. (1) Do you think that has something to do with what you were talking about, like when elites get together and bargain things away from the people, that they start reaching accommodations with each other and; (2) do you think that if those concessions had been accepted by the government, that the alliance would have had real trouble selling them to the rank and file of the people? CH I want to take you back to CODESA talks. The 75% on the Bill of Rights was widely and comprehensively discussed by the entire line. There was a feeling that the Bill of Rights is an important document because it guarantees the human rights of individuals, prevents a situation where individuals become victims of a powerful state without protection from the courts and other mechanisms. So the alliance felt on the Bill of Rights, there was no problem about accepting 75%. But we went to CODESA II with an agreement that we were going to press for a two thirds majority in terms of the adoption of the constitution. But as you remember there was a deadlock, the government was refusing to budge. The government was insisting that on everything, the Bill of Rights and the constitution, it should be 75%. The ANC's Constitutional Commission was meeting the other side quite a few times before CODESA II in order to break the deadlock, so that would be possible to put before CODESA II an agreement coming from the Working Group II. The government was stubborn. Then a sort of hurried up meeting was called of the patriotic forces in CODESA, of which I was a part as the SACP. The party stood up very vigorously and opposed any form of concession. We said two thirds is a universally accepted standard in terms of adopting the constitution. We argued that after all that a two thirds majority is a later concession and it is going to be very difficult to get two thirds as shown by the Namibian example. It would demand a lot of work on our part in terms of mobilising the people, in terms of assuring that when elections take place for a Constituent Assembly, we actually have about 70% supporting our position and the position of our allies. We could have argued for 52% or 53% but you know a constitution is an important document, it must be all inclusive and therefore it must not be seen as a constitution of a political party, or political movement, but as a constitution generally of the majority of the inhabitants or the citizens of a country. Then some of our people in the ANC as well as some components of the Patriotic Front said that let us offer 70% in order to facilitate movement forward. We were defeated when a vote was taken, so our position was defeated. But after that we went to the ANC later and we said that we are of the view that there should have been a meeting of the tripartite alliance before the meeting of the Patriotic Front because the tripartite is part of the struggle in this country, and therefore it is important before you open up and not for us not to trust each other amongst ourselves. But you see, the government was foolish and it rejected that 70% and for us as the parties right now to get to the original position of 66%. We got a lot of flak from the ground from our members, both ANC and the party and COSATU, and the people were very, very critical of that concession. For me it was indicative of a growing tendency which we should avoid, of sometimes, you see, in a haste to reach agreements, we at the top sometimes find ourselves accepting positions which we are going to find very difficult to defend and justify when we confront the people, the members of our organisations. Visit the CU Chris Hani Archive at: https://studycircle.wikispaces.com/6+CU+Chris+Hani+Archive To download the above interview in full (20 pages, PDF), Click here <http://studycircle.wikispaces.com/file/view/Padraig%20O%E2%80%99Malley%2C%2 0interview%20with%20Chris%20Hani%2C%2015%20July%201992.pdf/578350801/Padraig %20O%E2%80%99Malley%2C%20interview%20with%20Chris%20Hani%2C%2015%20July%2019 92.pdf> -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. 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