TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/103089/10308900.032

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 9.5 KB | 180 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 66

SOUTH AFRICA

Testing the Waters


Though the temperature is not yet right, the white government
and black leaders are tiptoeing closer to negotiations over the
fate of their country

By Bruce W. Nelan


    Outside the tan stucco shoe-box house in a dusty corner of
Soweto, bands of shouting youths draped the black, green and
gold banner of the outlawed African National Congress over the
driveway. Others hoisted a smaller version up a makeshift
flagpole atop the roof. Inside, Walter Sisulu, 77, the
liberation organization's former secretary-general, conferred
by phone with the A.N.C.'s exiled leaders in Lusaka, Zambia.
Then he walked across the street to an Anglican church that had
been transformed into a meeting hall. Hundreds of supporters
were gathered there, celebrating Sisulu's release from prison
after serving more than 25 years of a life sentence for sabotage
and plotting to overthrow the white government. As he and six
other newly freed prisoners raised their clenched fists and
shouted "Amandla" (power), the crowd roared back "Awethu" (is
ours).

    Banned since 1960, the A.N.C. vividly returned to the South
African political stage last week. By releasing several A.N.C.
leaders without restricting their activities, and by allowing
their celebrations to take place unhindered, the government
seemed to grant the group a sort of provisional legal status.
The leaders will appear at an A.N.C. rally in Soweto this
Sunday, the first such assembly to be permitted in 30 years.
State President F.W. de Klerk was beginning to make good on the
promise he made at his inauguration last month to ease tensions
and move the country into a new era of negotiations. His action
signaled his potential willingness to go even further -- to free
Nelson Mandela, the symbolic leader of black nationalism, and
to sit down for talks with the A.N.C., which for three decades
has been dedicated to toppling the government by "armed
struggle."

    Like his colleagues in the A.N.C. and the Mass Democratic
Movement, a coalition of antiapartheid organizations, Sisulu
believed the government's nascent benevolence had been forced
on it by domestic and international pressure as well as by its
desire to avoid further economic sanctions. While no one from
the government notified Sisulu's wife Albertina that he was to
be released, De Klerk found time to telephone British Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher to tell her he was freeing a group
of aging black leaders as she had urged him to do. Thatcher took
that news with her to the Commonwealth conference in Kuala
Lumpur last week, where she opposed all proposals for additional
sanctions. This malleability was something new for Pretoria,
however. "The classic Afrikaner response is never to be seen to
be giving in to foreign pressure," says a Western diplomat. "De
Klerk is showing much greater sensitivity."

    Of all the pressures exerted on South Africa from abroad,
perhaps the most sobering to Pretoria was the action of Western
bankers, who in 1985 halted all new loans and demanded
repayment of some $14 billion in short-term debt. South Africa
has been paying back the loans ever since, but the export of so
much capital has limited the country's economic growth. Last
week the pressure was eased significantly. The South African
Reserve Bank announced that it had negotiated a deal with its
creditors to repay $1.5 billion through December 1993 and turn
$6.5 billion into long-term credits. Antiapartheid campaigners
attacked the arrangement as a sellout. "I deplore the
collaboration of the banks with the evil system prevailing in
South Africa," said Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu. "They give
capitalism a bad name, and they close off peaceful avenues for
bringing about fundamental change."

    In a series of earlier gestures to outside opinion, De
Klerk had ordered the police to stop using long plastic whips,
called sjamboks, and to allow mass protests in public if they
were peaceful. But those were changes in the enforcement of
security rules, not political reforms. The new President is
setting the stage for more substantive steps. On Saturday, for
example, De Klerk announced that the government could lift the
1986 state of emergency and "unban" restricted organizations if
they showed "by word and deed" that such moves would not lead
to political unrest.

    De Klerk has also appointed Gerrit Viljoen, 63, to the post
of Minister of Constitutional Development, making him chief
political negotiator with the black majority. Viljoen, a former
professor and chairman of the secret Afrikaner society the
Broederbond, said last week that by releasing Sisulu and other
A.N.C. officials, the government was "testing the waters" to see
if it could free Mandela without causing uncontrollable
demonstrations.

    Viljoen provided a large opening toward negotiations with
the A.N.C. by rejiggering the ground rules on who could take
part. Previously, the government had insisted that no
organization could come to the table without renouncing the use
of violence for political ends, something the A.N.C. still
refuses to do. Now, said Viljoen, "we are trying to include as
many people as possible, provided there is no threat of violence
to back up positions at the negotiating table." This formula,
dropping the demand for a formal renunciation, clears the way
for A.N.C. participation.

    The government casts its invitation even wider. "We are
prepared to include in discussions all people working toward a
peaceful solution," Viljoen stressed. Thus the A.N.C. would not
be the government's sole negotiating partner -- a role it
demands -- but would have to sit down with leaders of
Pretoria-created black "homelands" and possibly members of black
municipal councils, officials the A.N.C. calls "collaborators"
with the apartheid system. This plan could lead to either a
dilution of the organization's power at the bargaining table or
the onus of failure if it refuses to take part in talks that
include other black groups.

    Cyril Ramaphosa, a leader of the Mass Democratic Movement,
says Viljoen's proposal would cause the A.N.C. to "lose ground"
if it were simply "one of many groups." Zulu Chief Mangosuthu
Buthelezi, head of the 1.5 million-member Inkatha movement and
an opponent of the A.N.C.'s socialist orientation, responds, "I
shudder to think what would happen to South Africa if we all
stood aside and allowed only one black party to negotiate the
country's future." To try to hurdle this and other obstacles and
preconditions, Viljoen suggests preliminary "talks about talks."

    Other, more radical activists of the Pan-Africanist
Congress, which is also banned, reject talks altogether. Jafta
Masemola, a P.A.C. leader released with Sisulu, said, "We cannot
negotiate with the usurpers of our land." While most black
leaders agree that De Klerk has set off in a new direction, they
remain skeptical because of the destination he has in mind. De
Klerk's policy, fully endorsed by the ruling National Party, is
one of constitutionally guaranteed "group rights" defined by
race, including the right of whites to veto legislation they
might consider threatening, to live in whites-only neighborhoods
and to attend segregated schools. "Ethnic and cultural
differences exist," says Viljoen, "and should be recognized in
a new constitution."

    At its core, the A.N.C. position is equally nonnegotiable,
calling for a swift transfer of state power from whites to
blacks. The exiled organization stands unwaveringly for
one-person, one-vote majority rule in a unitary state. Such an
arrangement is "unfair" and unacceptable, says De Klerk.
"Afrikaners won't agree to that until they are militarily
defeated," says a senior diplomat in Pretoria, "and the balance
of power in the country right now does not favor revolution."

    Leaders of the domestic Mass Democratic Movement are in a
quandary: they tend to favor negotiations because the process
might lead to government concessions that are unforeseen now,
but they do not want to go to the table if their presence offers
nothing but a public relations success for De Klerk by making
him look like a peacemaker. Ramaphosa, head of the black
National Union of Mineworkers, concedes that the government does
appear to be seeking change. "One could say they are willing to
usher in a new South Africa," he says, "but some of us have
serious doubts because they are still talking about group
rights. That to us is still apartheid." Even so, black leaders
do not want to pass up what could be an opportunity. They
understand that De Klerk is not simply going to hand over the
government and that a step-by-step process is the only realistic
approach. "But if we were to say that publicly," one leader
admits, "it would have a devastating effect on our movement. It
could demobilize our people."

    After his release from prison, Sisulu said he had learned
that "pressure" was the only way to make South Africa change,
and that "the struggle in all its aspects" should continue. That
remains the consensus among black leaders, who say that
protests, boycotts and strikes will go on -- with the full
blessing of Nelson Mandela -- and the A.N.C. will work to
rebuild its organization inside South Africa. If De Klerk is to
get negotiations on track, he will have to offer more
concessions to prove that reconciliation rather than image
building is his goal.