TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/020590/02050011.000

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                                                                                WORLD, Page 26

COVER STORIES

At the Crossroads


Nelson Mandela may soon be free, but is South Africa ready --
or able -- to take the road to a nonracial democratic society?

By SCOTT MACLEOD/JOHANNESBURG -- Reported by Peter Hawthorne/
Cape Town


    Mandela. The name reverberates like a mantra through South
Africa these days, half in excitement, half in anxiety. Mandela
will soon be free. Mandela will solve the problem. If Mandela
can't do it, who can?

    South Africa is at a crossroads. For the first time since
the National Party came to power in 1948 and began introducing
the laws of apartheid, or separateness, there exists a
widespread acceptance of the need to change. With the exception
of a diehard minority, most of South Africa's 5 million whites
have gradually resigned themselves to the fact that they cannot
continue forever to dominate 26 million blacks politically,
economically and socially. Blacks, who have fought so
ineffectually for almost 80 years, have come to feel that their
long struggle has not been in vain. In the climate of
flexibility fostered by the reform-minded government of State
President F.W. de Klerk, the vast majority of South Africans
expect a new kind of country to emerge. But the races are still
far, far apart on what kind of country that will be.

    In one of those astonishing ironies of history, many have
invested their hopes in Nelson Mandela, the aged black
revolutionary now endowed with almost mythic stature.
Imprisoned for life for sedition, unseen and largely unheard
from for more than 27 years, he is somehow expected to lead
South Africa to salvation. But can any man perform that miracle?
Is South Africa really ready to be led out of the wilderness
of apartheid into the promised land of . . . of what? The black
dream of a nonracial democratic society -- in short, black
rule? Or something less, a revision of the old system in which
white power would not be transferred but only shared, in effect
preserving white rights and privileges?

    If the current wave of hope has an epicenter, it is at the
end of a dirt lane on the grounds of Victor Verster Prison
Farm, 35 miles east of Cape Town, where Mandela remains
confined. There, in a comfortable three-bedroom former warder's
house overlooking the vineyards of the Franschhoek Valley,
Mandela rises early each morning to begin another day of
appointments. The government suggests that his freedom is
imminent, but even while still behind a prison fence, Mandela
is already playing his self-appointed role as "facilitator."

    His choice of that word seems to indicate that he has
accepted the job of wresting tangible results from this moment
of opportunity. For three years Mandela has held periodic
meetings with a team of government officials, and since
November he has had sessions with Cabinet ministers as well as
almost daily talks with anti-apartheid leaders to try to find
a common meeting ground. The 71-year-old prisoner, still tall
and distinguished looking, his smooth face barely lined, his
black hair just flecked with gray, greets each visitor with a
smiling embrace.

    Mandela's unconditional release is widely regarded as the
key to implementing the government's promises of reform. It is
believed that if anyone can bridge the vast divides between
whites and blacks, and among the blacks themselves, Mandela
can. The white government looks on him as a born-again
moderate, a "man you can negotiate with," as De Klerk himself
decided. For blacks, Mandela may be the one who, as the
personification of their long suffering, can help them transcend
the disagreements over strategy and allegiance that have
splintered their strength, and bargain on equal terms with the
whites.

    When he is freed, Mandela will walk out into a world vastly
different from the strict apartheid society he vowed to
overthrow. Starting with then Prime Minister P.W. Botha's
warning in 1979 that whites must "adapt or die," the idea of
changing national institutions and the realization that power
should be shared with the black majority have moved into the
mainstream. That change of attitude has been given real impetus
in the five months since De Klerk was elected to succeed Botha.
With a speed that surprised almost everyone, the new and
little-known President made a series of conciliatory moves,
unofficially lifting a 30-year restriction on mass protests,
releasing several prominent political prisoners and giving
restricted antiapartheid groups some leeway to operate.

    But De Klerk's most important step was to begin a personal
dialogue with Mandela, a revered leader of the African National
Congress. The government wanted to speed up the "talks about
talks," designed to get formal negotiations under way. On Dec.
13, at the presidential residence in Cape Town known as
Tuynhuys, the two men held the first of a planned series of
meetings on ways to convene an indaba (Zulu for "negotiations")
that would write a new constitution granting blacks the right
to vote for a national government. The meeting signaled that
De Klerk, unlike his predecessors, was willing to negotiate
with the outlawed 78-year-old A.N.C., which only months ago was
still officially vilified as a band of terrorists.

    The step was a huge psychological leap for the National
Party. But, acknowledges Roelf Meyer, Deputy Minister for
Constitutional Development, "there is no chance of a legitimate
process of negotiations if only three-quarters of the players
are around the table." Adds Education Minister Stoffel van der
Merwe: "Mr. de Klerk has fully accepted that blacks, whoever
they are, have a right to participate."

    With expectations growing daily, anti-apartheid leaders will
be listening closely this Friday when De Klerk delivers his
maiden state of the nation address to the opening session of
Parliament in Cape Town. They want the President to outline a
timetable for negotiations and to meet the main conditions
blacks have laid down for participation: Mandela's release, an
end to the 1986 state of emergency and the lifting of bans on
antiapartheid organizations.

    "Clearly," says U.S. Ambassador William Swing, who was a
junior diplomat in South Africa in the mid-1960s, "there has
not been a time in my association with this country that the
prospects for a settlement along just lines have been as
favorable." Yet Pretoria is notorious for its habit of taking
two steps backward for every step forward. De Klerk is urging
against unrealistic hopes. But if he fails to fulfill at least
some of the expectations, he will risk a powerful backlash that
could wreck any prospect for progress in the near future.

    What private understandings, if any, De Klerk and Mandela
may have already reached is a tightly guarded secret, but
indications are that the two leaders have come to respect each
other. "Mandela had the impression that De Klerk was a man he
could do business with," said Azhar Cachalia, treasurer of the
A.N.C.-allied United Democratic Front. "But he also made the
point that history is not simply made by people who are good
and honest. Whether the National Party as a whole will shirk
its past, he is not able to say." For his part, De Klerk
confided to colleagues that Mandela is "a man of integrity, a
man you can trust."

    Freedom will mark a great personal triumph for Mandela, who
has repeatedly refused offers for his conditional release and
never wavered from his demand for a multiracial South Africa
based on a system of one man, one vote. When Botha announced
in 1985 that Mandela could go free if he simply renounced the
A.N.C.'s armed struggle, Mandela defiantly replied, "Let Botha
show that he is different. I cannot and will not give any
undertaking. Only free men can negotiate."

    A year later, with South Africa reeling from two years of
unrest that left 5,000 people dead, the government acceded to
Mandela's request for top-level political talks, initially
focusing on the release of political prisoners. But a historic
45-minute tea with Botha last July, the first and last meeting
between the two men, seemed only to show how little they had
to say to each other.

    Following De Klerk's election, according to a Cabinet
minister, the government's talks with Mandela took on real
meaning. In October they worked out the release of eight
political prisoners, including Walter Sisulu and other A.N.C.
leaders who were convicted along with Mandela in the Rivonia
treason trial a quarter-century earlier.

    For the past three months, Mandela has pressed the
government to meet the A.N.C.'s terms for negotiations. "He has
told the government that he does not want to leave prison
empty-handed," says one of Mandela's lawyers, Dullah Omar.
"Otherwise, he would report to A.N.C. headquarters that three
years of discussions have been a waste of time."

    Mandela's busy life at Victor Verster contrasts sharply with
the years of hard labor he endured on Robben Island, a penal
colony across from Cape Town Harbor where he was incarcerated
for nearly two decades. For the first ten years he swung a
pickax in a limestone quarry, breaking boulders into gravel.
But the harsh punishment only strengthened his resolve, and he
directed his anger into a crusade for better prison conditions.
"To us," says Steve Tshwete, an A.N.C. guerrilla leader
imprisoned for 15 years, "he represented the correctness of our
cause and the inevitability of our victory."

    Mandela's talent for leadership traces back to his tribal
heritage as the son of a royal family of the Thembu tribe of
the Xhosa people. After earning a law degree from the
University of the Witwatersrand, he joined the A.N.C. With
classmate Oliver Tambo, he set up the first black law practice
in South Africa in 1952. Defiantly working from a whites-only
downtown neighborhood, they specialized in representing blacks
who failed to carry the passes that were required of blacks in
white neighborhoods.

    Mandela and Tambo helped form the Youth League in 1944, and
three years later drew up a program of action calling for
strikes, boycotts and acts of civil disobedience. In 1955 they
supported the Freedom Charter, an economic credo many
considered to be socialist. But Mandela abandoned peaceful
methods after the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, in which police
killed 69 black protesters. When Tambo left to establish a
headquarters in exile, Mandela stayed behind to set up the
A.N.C.'s underground military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear
of the Nation) and launch a campaign of sabotage. After 17
months on the run, he was caught in 1962. He was convicted in
June 1964 of attempting to overthrow the government along with
seven others in the Rivonia trial. His sentence: life in
prison.

    In his years away, apartheid has acquired a more presentable
face. The humiliating restrictions of petty apartheid have
largely faded away. A sizable black middle class has sprung up,
bringing with it consumer power that has not escaped the notice
of white merchants. "Buppies" live in handsome Soweto
neighborhoods like Diepkloof and drive their BMWs to work each
day. Black businessmen make deals over lunch at trendy
restaurants while being served by scurrying white waiters.
Compared with blacks on the rest of the continent, many in
South Africa live well. More, of course, do not.

    But the main pillars of Hendrik Verwoerd's Grand Apartheid
remain firmly in place, with no explicit commitment to remove
them: the Population Registration Act still legally classifies
people by race; the Group Areas Act still bars blacks from
residing in most white neighborhoods or from sending their
children to whites-only government schools; land acts dating
back to 1913 and 1936 still reserve 87% of South Africa's land
to whites, who today constitute 14% of the population.

    Yet the issue is no longer really apartheid; it is political
power. Foreign Minister Roelof ("Pik") Botha explains that the
government began to shift away from apartheid when the National
Party realized that it was impossible to stem the tide of
blacks moving to urban areas in search of employment. "As the
economic realities overwhelmed the dream," he says, "so did we
come to realize that there were consequences of these policies
that were indeed oppressive and humiliating." Bowing to those
realities, P.W. Botha scrapped the hated pass laws in 1986.

    In another attempt to soften the face of apartheid, he had
set up the tricameral Parliament in 1984. It established a
strictly limited form of power sharing that for the first time
included coloreds, or people of mixed race, and Indians, but
not blacks. Whatever the failures of that system, Pik Botha
insists, it at least helped condition the minds of whites "to
see a man of color acting like a gentleman just like everybody
else." By the time De Klerk ordered the removal of the
remaining WHITES ONLY signs on South Africa's beaches just
before the Christmas holidays, whites complained about "crude"
black sunbathers but accepted the inevitable. As Christiaan
Kirstein, 51, a corn farmer from the Orange Free State, said,
"You can't keep the blacks down; you can't stop development."

    However, the whites' commitment to reform stops short of
entrusting their own destiny to any other than white hands. If
apartheid as a method has failed to protect their rights and
privileges, whites will find another, more palatable way to
retain them. De Klerk has put the position squarely a number
of times: "White domination must end, but we are not prepared
to exchange it for black domination."

    In practical terms, that means something far less than the
black demand for a nonracial democratic system based on one
man, one vote, which would transfer power from whites to
blacks. The National Party is willing to accept only a partial
sharing of power on the basis of what it calls group rights,
under which each racial group would decide its own affairs on
the basis of self-administration.

    What the carefully coded words mean, in effect, is a system
of separate but equal parliaments, neighborhoods and schools,
a form of private rather than government segregation. At the
local level, the group-rights concept would permit whites to
live much as they do now. At the national level, it would
require a cumbersome system of multiple lawmaking bodies ruling
on narrow issues, with some sort of mechanism to settle issues
of common interest that would allow the minority white community
to retain a disproportionate share of power. Whites may be
willing to go further than before toward accommodating black
demands, but not all the way to a fully integrated society.

    Despite the white limits to reform, De Klerk has managed to
create a climate of optimism and opportunity with his language
of conciliation, moderation and flexibility. His constant
emphasis on negotiations and on finding a peaceable resolution
of racial differences has won domestic support and
international approval. It has also confronted black
organizations with a host of thorny questions about how to
adapt their strategies and whether to trust their old enemies.
Much of the anti-apartheid movement has been caught off balance
and disorganized. Under the emergency, government policy
effectively shackled them: 30 organizations were banned,
hundreds of leaders were jailed or severely restricted from
engaging in political activism, protests and demonstrations
were forbidden, and the police presence in the townships
squelched most rioting. The violent liberation movement guided
by the A.N.C.-in-exile was virtually moribund.

    More troubling, the prospect of negotiations has brought to
the surface intense differences within the black community over
how -- or even whether -- to proceed. Despite their
overwhelming superiority of numbers, South African blacks pay
allegiance to half a dozen movements with divergent goals and
ideologies. All will settle for no less than black majority
rule, but each has a different notion of how to obtain it. The
A.N.C. commands the largest following, especially among the
politically active young, urban, working and middle class. Yet
many are uncertain about subscribing to the old socialist
rhetoric that still colors A.N.C. pronouncements. Many more are
doubtful about continuing the "armed struggle," which the
A.N.C. has yet to disavow. Nevertheless, the A.N.C. has long
demanded the sole right to represent the country's
disenfranchised.

    That right is challenged by 1.5 million Zulus, who pledge
their loyalty to Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. He claims an equal
right to participate in any negotiations, and has kept close
ties to Mandela personally. But Buthelezi's Inkatha movement
is suspect to many blacks for its history of cooperation with
the government. The A.N.C. despises Buthelezi as a white
puppet, and violent rivalry between the two organizations over
the past two years has left more than 1,200 blacks dead. Also
at odds with the nonracial A.N.C. is the much smaller Pan
Africanist Congress, whose slogan is Africa for the Africans.
But its main disagreement is over tactics: the P.A.C. does not
believe blacks can get a fair deal in negotiations when all the
weight is with the whites. The P.A.C. refuses to countenance
talks and wants to keep up the struggle until the whites
surrender.

    While the P.A.C. has limited grass-roots support, its vow
to fight to the end is endorsed by radical elements in the
A.N.C. Mandela's biggest challenge may come from within the
A.N.C., where some in the new generation of leaders resent his
automatic resumption of leadership and consider him too willing
to compromise. One of the most powerful of the younger figures,
Cyril Ramaphosa, the 37-year-old general secretary of the
National Union of Mineworkers, declared that Mandela's status
"was no different from the status of any other member." Others
were angered by Mandela's presumption in initiating a personal
dialogue with De Klerk. Mandela's first and quite daunting task
will be to end this black disunity.

    The white community is also divided. Polls indicate that De
Klerk is slightly ahead of the white population at large in
pushing for reform. Fully 31% of whites voted for the breakaway
Conservative Party, the bastion of the verkramptes, or
ultraconservatives. They object to any form of power sharing
and resist not just negotiations but all attempts to pare the
laws of segregation. At worst, they talk of secession and
partition, retreating to a smaller but still pure Afrikaner
land where whites would dominate. While the conservatives
probably cannot block De Klerk from pursuing reform, their
reactionary attitudes act as a heavy drag on attempts at
compromise. The challenge for De Klerk is to build enough white
support for each step as he inches ahead.

    For now, the first one is to convene the indaba. According
to Gerrit Viljoen, who as Minister for Constitutional
Development is the government's chief negotiator, De Klerk's
sole precondition for A.N.C. participation is a "peaceful
commitment to a negotiated resolution." That is something the
A.N.C. has yet to address definitively. Two weeks ago, the
A.N.C. national executive in Lusaka adopted a platform, based
on a ten-point plan sent by Mandela through intermediaries,
affirming the group's commitment to negotiations and offering
a truce if De Klerk meets its conditions for talks.

    If the great indaba finally does begin, it could founder all
too quickly because the fundamental aims of the two main
parties are so far apart. Stripped to their most basic
positions, the A.N.C. says it will settle for no less than one
man, one vote, black majority rule, while the government
demands that an equal share of power for whites be written into
the constitution. But the A.N.C. flatly rejects any political
system based on racial groups. According to Mandela's lawyers,
he has told the government he remains committed "to a single
nonracial democratic South Africa with a single Parliament on
a common franchise."

    Both sides are going out of their way to sound flexible, but
how much give is there on either part? Viljoen says the
government is prepared to negotiate everything, including its
proposal for "group rights," but few believe the whites would
give up that demand. A.N.C. leaders have acknowledged a need
to somehow provide protections for minorities. But, says Thabo
Mbeki, the group's foreign minister, "we will argue that group
rights are the same as apartheid."

    Perhaps the only realistic outcome at this time is a
transitional one, to what one deeply involved Western diplomat
calls a "zebra-striped government." Says he: "Power sharing
with a real share for the blacks is definitely on offer in the
next phase. A surrender of white power is not." But, he adds,
once that first hurdle is surmounted, South Africa will be
poised for the final jump. "The next constitution," says this
diplomat, "will not be the ultimate constitution."

    Yet it is far from clear that either side is ready to
abandon its maximum demands. Says Lawrence Schlemmer, director
of Johannesburg's Center for Policy Studies: "What normally
precipitates conflict resolution is a need to limit damage."
But South Africa is not in a desperate crisis, and neither the
government nor the A.N.C. is feeling enough pressure to make
concessions on vital issues.

    Mandela is the sole black leader in South Africa who has a
chance to bring both sides to compromise. Despite his advancing
years and his near fatal bout with tuberculosis in 1988, he was
described by a visitor to Victor Verster as "very nimble,
alert, self-confident, charismatic, not a mere symbolic leader
but someone who is in touch with events." Few others possess
the pragmatism that Mandela has honed over the years, which may
enable him to grow from a facilitator of negotiations to a
reconciler of men.

    Yet despite his avowed eagerness to engage in talks, the
going has proved bumpy. After Winnie Mandela visited her
husband last Saturday, she emerged despondent. Complications
had arisen, she said, that might delay her husband's freedom.
"It is quite clear," said Mrs. Mandela, "that problems have
cropped up about his immediate release."

    Whatever the government's cause for hesitation, Mandela has
none. Newspapers last week published the text of a document he
had delivered to the government prior to his tea with Botha
last July. In it he urged both the A.N.C. and the government
to "meet urgently to negotiate an effective political
settlement." But he also made it clear exactly where he stood.
"White South Africa," he wrote, "must accept the plain fact
that the A.N.C. will not suspend, to say nothing of abandoning,
the armed struggle until the government agrees to negotiate"
with recognized black leaders. In addition, wrote Mandela,
white South Africans will have to "accept that there will never
be peace and stability in this country" until the principle of
majority rule is accepted. The distance between these demands
and De Klerk's offer to negotiate a division of political power
could be too great for even Nelson Mandela to bridge.