Page 4067 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 24 October 1990
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The violence appals me and I despise the fact that Inkatha supporters have been drawn into the bloodshed. I have never encouraged or directed violence and I take great exception to being accused of unleashing a "wave of terror".
Let me also categorically deny that I work "in league with members of the highly unsavoury white Right ...". I am a black South African who has felt the boot of racists on my neck for as long as I can remember and to be accused of stabbing my own people in the back, in cohorts with fascists, is just too much.
For a real understanding of the causes and effects of the violence between the ANC and Inkatha one needs to first examine what apartheid has done to this country and how it has ruthlessly fragmented black and other political opposition to it.
Add to this dimension the winner-takes-all attitude of the ANC which sees itself as a government-in-waiting. It tolerates no opposition and those of us who called for a "multi-strategy" approach towards liberation were declared the enemy many years ago.
Simply put, if you were not "with" the ANC you were given a death sentence - as the widows of many town councillors and black policemen can readily testify. Inkatha is not the only organisation to have faced ANC guns, bombs and hit squads. Others, including the PAC and AZAPO, are as vocal as I in denouncing their bully-boy tactics and are also, like us, burying their dead.
The ANC long ago instigated a culture of violence in South Africa, called for the country to be made "ungovernable" and the results are clearly evident now.
To date more than 100 Inkatha branch leaders have been systematically assassinated. In addition, I have 90 pages available listing more than a thousand Inkatha members and supporters (that we know of) who have also died violently. ANC killers have set out to murder me, of which there is proof. There are 6000 homeless Inkatha refugees in Natal/Kwazulu and nearly 500 in the Transvaal.
The ANC embarked on an "armed struggle" (terrorism) to achieve its political goals and to this day employs trained and equipped forces beyond our borders.
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