TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/091889/09188900.037

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 5KB | 93 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.