TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/091889/09188900.037

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 5.3 KB | 102 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 46

SOUTH AFRICA

Squeezed Left, Squeezed Right


Opposition forces cut deeply into the government's lead


    In the cold, misty streets of Cape Town's impoverished
townships, blue-clad policemen blasted shotguns at hundreds of
black and mixed-race youths who hurled bottles and rocks from
behind barricades of burning tires. The air stung with tear
gas. By Thursday morning, the bloodiest outbreak of
antigovernment violence in three years had left as many as 23
dead and 100 injured. Yet at that same predawn hour, acting
President F.W. de Klerk appeared smiling on South African
television screens to claim a "mandate for reform" in last
week's parliamentary elections. "We are quite satisfied," he
declared, because "a preponderance" of the white electorate had
"voted for parties favoring renewal and reform."

    Despite such spin doctoring by the head of state, the
election actually showed that the political walls are closing
in on him. For the first time since 1953, the National Party
failed to win the majority of South African whites, although it
retained control of the government. In the House of Assembly,
where 166 members are elected, the Nationalists lost a quarter
of their seats to surging rivals on both the right and left,
falling from 123 to a bare 93. The official opposition, the
apartheid-forever Conservative Party, previously isolated in the
northern Transvaal, seized constituencies in Cape Province and
the Orange Free State for the first time to grow from 22 to 39
seats. On the government's left, the liberal Democratic Party,
formed only last April, increased moderate representation from
20 to 33 seats.

    During the campaign, De Klerk seemed to concede votes to
the right while fending off the challenge from the left by
linking the antiapartheid Democrats with the outlawed African
National Congress. But once the results were in, De Klerk
claimed a majority for reform by adding his party's 48% of the
vote to the Democrats' 20%. In fact, the majority of white South
Africans voted for apartheid last week: the nearly 50% who
support the Nationalists' plan to enfranchise blacks but
maintain white "group rights" and continued segregation of
neighborhoods and schools, plus the 31% who long for the
complete racial partition of the country that the Conservatives
advocate. The only white organization in last week's election
to advocate abolishing all apartheid laws was the Democratic
Party.

    But white politics was upstaged by the country's real
majority, the disenfranchised blacks, who conducted an intense
"defiance campaign" during the past month. Their protest peaked
on election day, when as many as 3 million black workers staged
a general strike in the country's major cities, closing shops
and schools and slowing production at factories and mines.
Violence broke out sporadically, then exploded in more than 20
townships on voting day. Riot squads charged in with shotguns
and whips, and a mixed-race police lieutenant, Gregory Rockman,
30, in the huge Mitchell's Plain township claimed that the
security forces had actually provoked some of the rioting. "They
were just hitting people," he said. "They couldn't care if they
were innocent bystanders or not."

    When the gunfire in the townships died away, black leaders
pointed accusing fingers at De Klerk. "People who begin a new
term of office with a massacre have no right to be in
government," said the Rev. Allan Boesak, a leader of the
antiapartheid movement. Retorted De Klerk: "The government
handled the defiance campaign with aplomb and in a very
reasonable way."

    Negotiation between the leaders of the country's 26 million
blacks and 5 million whites is the key to a "new, great and
just South Africa," De Klerk said repeatedly in his speeches.
The postelection question is how boldly he can move toward that
goal. Optimists point to the rise of the Democrats as a sign
that whites are coalescing around the need for some kind of
negotiation. But De Klerk is more worried about the Conservative
Party opposition; almost twice its former size, the
fast-growing, far-right phenomenon split from the Nationalists
only seven years ago. Afrikaner voters are now almost equally
divided between the Conservative and National parties -- with
English speakers providing the votes that keep the Nationalists
in power. The C.P. leader, Andries Treurnicht, predicted last
week that he would head the government after the next election.
Whatever his vision of reform, De Klerk will try not to make any
concessions that might frighten more of his volk into
Treurnicht's ranks.

    The black opposition is also unwilling to ease De Klerk's
path to the conference table. Under its current name, the Mass
Democratic Movement, the national coalition of antiapartheid
organizations insists that the confrontational tactics of the
defiance campaign will continue. It is calling on all blacks to
boycott goods produced by white-owned factories -- a direct
challenge to the emergency laws imposed in 1986. The muscle
flexing is necessary, says Azhar Cachalia, a leader of the
movement, because "we want the regime to know that when we
negotiate, it is not because we are on our knees." It could,
however, be a long while before the two sides even sit down.