Inkatha has been concerned about the role that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission may allow itself, wittingly or unwittingly, to be drawn into the rewriting of the history of the struggle for liberation. Political parties will inevitably recall events and give their own interpretation to what actually happened during crucial moments of our history.

Inkatha is particularly concerned about the rewriting of history to suit party political ends because of all parties, Inkatha has been the most damaged by what has already been done in this regard. Inkatha and its President have been sorely misrepresented to the world. In the very nature of South African political realities the distortion of what Inkatha has been, and now is, has cost many lives and has generated a great deal of conflict which persists even now, and which should never have occurred.

For Inkatha no rewriting of history to make virtually all living members of the National Party super-verligte people who always meant well, but were shown in the end to have been mistaken, can take away the hideousness of what actually happened. Nor, from Inkatha's point of view, no rewriting of history should ever be allowed to hide the fact that the ANC spent many years far more involved in fighting and killing their fellow black South Africans, than they spent involved in fighting the regime of the time.

Inkatha is aware that a danger may exist that Inkatha too has blind spots in its thinking about itself in the past. We plead therefore that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is at all times aware of how necessary it is to be sensitive to the need for correct historical interpretations.

Inkatha wishes to place itself in an historic perspective which it, as a liberation movement and more latterly as a political party, accepted as in part defining what it ought to have done.

Inkatha also hopes that its own interpretation of history and the role that it played in it, as Inkatha sees it, will help those who have despised Inkatha, and subjected it to abuse and physical attack, to agree to normalise relations between Inkatha and other political parties generally, and the ANC in particular.