Dear Mr De Klerk
I acknowledge receipt of your reply dated 2nd July, 1992.
It is unfortunate that your reply has not addressed the issues I raised in my memorandum of the 26th June, 1992. Instead, you deliberately obscure matters.
It appears that we are all agreed that South Africa faces a serious crisis. When it comes to charting a way out of the crisis, however, it is clear that there are hardly any points of convergence.
This is particularly so because you have chosen to elevate a number of peripheral issues to the status of 'fundamental' ones, while relegating those of critical significance to a secondary place. The matter is made worse by the factual inaccuracies, distortions and blatant party political propaganda involved in the manner in which you raised these so-called fundamental issues.
To call for face-to-face talks in such a situation is entirely unacceptable. We would sit down to do no more than haggle about what should constitute the agenda of such talks, rather than the serious business of taking our country to democracy and developing firm foundations for curbing and eliminating violence.
Reaffirmation about your commitment to a negotiated resolution to the South African conflict needs to be supported by stating positions which offer the potential to break the deadlock.
I. NEGOTIATIONS
1.1 You state that 'the fundamental difference between the approach of the ANCand that of the government regarding the purpose of negotiations lies, on the one hand, in our commitment to constitutionality and a transitional government as soon as possible; and on the other hand, on the ANC's insistence on a unstructured and immediate transfer of power before a proper transitional constitution is negotiated'. (Paragraph 3 Page 4)
1.2 This is indeed a novel description of the purpose of negotiations, to say nothing about its gross distortion and patent party political propaganda.
The characterisation of your own position as 'commitment to constitutionality and a transitional government as soon as possible' bears very little relationship to the purpose of negotiations, as set out in the Declaration of Intent we adopted together at CODESA 1, namely:
5. to set in motion the process of drawing up and establishing a constitution that will ensure, inter alia:
(a) that South Africa will be a united, democratic, non-racial and non-sexist state in which sovereign authority is exercised over the whole of its territory;
(b) that the Constitution will be the supreme law and that it will be guarded over by an independent, non-racial and impartial judiciary;
(c) that there will be a multi-party democracy with the right to form and join political parties and with regular elections on the basis of universal adult suffrage on a common voters' roll; in general the basic electoral system shall be that of proportional representation;
(d) that there shall be a separation of powers between the legislature, executive and judiciary with appropriate checks and balances;
(e) that the diversity of languages, culture and religions of the people of South Africa shall be acknowledged;
(f) that all shall enjoy universally accepted human rights, freedoms and civil liberties including freedom of religion, speech and assembly protected by an entrenched and justiciable Bill of Rights and a legal system that guarantees equality of all before the law.
Working Group 2 was specifically charged with determining the set of general constitutional principles consistent with and including those in 'Declaration, as well as the form and content of the constitution making body / processes.
1.3 The question of a transitional government was the subject matter of one of the five working groups created at CODESA 1. Unless the question of the constitution making body is dealt with as the primary focus of negotiations, issues relating to transitional arrangements are deprived of their proper relevance. Your insistence on elevating this to the central focus of negotiations betrays the positions your government has been taking and which lie at the heart of the crisis.
1.4 If there is to be away out of this impasse then it is imperative that we isolate the question of transitional arrangements from that of the constitution making body. With regard to the constitution making body (Constituent Assembly), it is necessary that you pronounce yourselves in keeping with basic democratic principles. A democratic constitution will be fatally flawed if the body charged with drafting and adopting it is itself undemocratic - be it in its composition or the way in which it is to function. Your response to our positions is therefore critical. It is the authority of the people, through their elected representatives, that gives a constitution its fundamental legitimacy. Our position is founded on the basic features of any democratic structure charged with the task of constitution making:
1.4.1