TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=89TT2436> <title> Sep. 18, 1989: Squeezed Left, Squeezed Right </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989 Sep. 18, 1989 Torching The Amazon </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> WORLD, Page 46 SOUTH AFRICA Squeezed Left, Squeezed Right </hdr><body> 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. </body></article> </text>