Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/081092/08109932.000

Text File | 1993-04-08 | 6KB | 113 lines

                                                                                SOUTH AFRICA, Page 42

Part of the Solution?


Or is President F.W. de Klerk, with his strategy for maintaining
white power, now part of the problem?

By SCOTT MACLEOD/JOHANNESBURG


    If South Africa slips deeper into conflict, it might be
traced to a morning in June when President F.W. de Klerk
attempted to visit Boipatong, scene of the most recent township
massacre. Until then he was often greeted in black communities
by chants of "Viva comrade De Klerk!" But in Boipatong angry
young men blocked his way and called him a murderer. De Klerk
fled in the presidential BMW, consternation written on his face.

    What has become of the great white hope -- the man who saw
the writing on the wall, dismantled the bars of apartheid and
promised to shape a new South Africa? The harsh answer dawning
on an increasingly militant Mandela and others is that De Klerk,
despite his reforms, is not intent on securing justice and
freedom for all; if that were true, he would be doing more to
end the township violence. Instead, they believe, De Klerk has
revealed himself as a ruthless practitioner of realpolitik,
determined to preserve decisive white power and privilege.

    Even as De Klerk impressed the world with his reforms,
some in South Africa feared that the process of change might
one day run up against the unwillingness of whites to cede
power to blacks. Reform, says Cape Town novelist Andre Brink,
went against De Klerk's grain but was forced upon him by
circumstances -- black uprisings, international isolation,
economic rot. "Now, at the first sign of things not going his
way," says Brink, "his real colors are beginning to show -- his
conservatism and belief in force as the only way of getting out
of a dilemma."

    To be fair, De Klerk has never concealed his determination
to ensure that the Afrikaner-dominated National Party, in power
since 1948, continues to govern. But recent events leave little
doubt about his real agenda: not majority rule for blacks but
power sharing, with as much power as possible retained in white
hands. He has openly boasted that his party will retain
control, either by winning the first post-apartheid election or
by forging a "Christian Democrat" coalition with other white
parties and conservative blacks.

    What angers Mandela and the A.N.C. is that De Klerk's
strategy is manifesting itself in his proposals for a lengthy
transition process calculated to entrench the National Party in
a system of power sharing. The A.N.C. believes that De Klerk
revealed his true colors at the Convention for a Democratic
South Africa, which became deadlocked in May over his demand
that, in effect, whites be given a veto in the proposed
two-chamber constituent assembly that will draw up a
post-apartheid constitution. When the President insisted on
allowing a mere 26% to block any constitution favored by the
vast majority, the A.N.C. balked at a system that it called
"loser takes all."

    Revealing as De Klerk's maneuvering has been, it was the
Boipatong massacre that prompted Mandela to break off talks. His
group charges that the violence is part of a calculated strategy
of using the security forces, often in collusion with
supporters of the predominantly Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party, to
engulf the A.N.C. in factional bloodletting, disrupt its ability
to build a strong political machine and discredit it in the eyes
of those hoping for a peaceful transition to post-apartheid
democracy. De Klerk, they say, is either orchestrating the
violence or unable to rein in his apartheid-minded police. Last
week brought damning allegations from Dr. Jonathan Gluckman, a
pathologist who conducted autopsies on the victims of apparent
police foul play, charging that more than 200 were murdered in
custody. The physician decided to go public with the information
after writing to De Klerk four times to no avail. "I can't stand
it any longer," said Gluckman. "The lower rungs of the police
are totally out of control."

    For all his hopes of winning black support and building a
nonracial party, De Klerk has remained largely the President of
white South Africa. The reformer has not lived up to hopes that
he would also be a conciliator who stood above party politics.
The moment he clearly relished the most was not his release of
Mandela but his defeat of the ultra-right Conservative Party in
the March whites-only referendum on reform. De Klerk
interpreted the victory as a mandate to drive a hard bargain on
behalf of whites, not as an opportunity for reconciliation with
blacks. "His line is not that apartheid was immoral but that it
didn't work," says Robert Haswell, a white member of Parliament
who recently joined the A.N.C.

    De Klerk is in danger of misreading the patience of
blacks; their expectations have never been higher. Even if the
hands of A.N.C. followers are anything but clean, the
responsibility for pushing reform is his: he governs not with
the consent of the governed but by virtue of an undemocratic
system. It will be South Africa's greatest tragedy if he circles
the wagons rather than continuing to the final destination on
the road to democracy. In announcing Mandela's release in 1990,
De Klerk warned that "the time for reconstruction and
reconciliation" had come. That was true then -- and remains true
today.