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                                                                                SOUTH AFRICA, Page 42

ENEMIES: Black vs. Black vs. White

Negotiations should eventually resume, but De Klerk can save his
reforms -- and the nation -- only if the bloody cycle of black
violence is halted

By SCOTT MACLEOD/JOHANNESBURG


    Something ominous was forgotten over the past two years as
President F.W. de Klerk went about burying apartheid and
accepting praise from grateful citizens and foreign statesmen:
even more than in the past, South Africa's 5 million whites and
28.5 million blacks were living in separate worlds. Whites, of
course, continued to enjoy the comfort and security of leafy
suburbs. At least two-thirds of them were prepared to share
governance with blacks -- but not to surrender all their power
or any of their wealth. Life in the matchbox townships,
meanwhile, became a daily nightmare unimagined by whites. Not
only were jobs a rarity because of the recession, but blacks
were dying in a spasm of political violence that was deadlier --
at least 8,000 killed since 1989 -- than any before De Klerk
took office. Shut out of the country's good life, black South
Africans are all the more impatient to acquire the power whites
have exercised to their own advantage for so long.

    When negotiations between De Klerk's government and Nelson
Mandela's African National Congress collapsed last week, it was
attributable as much to a collision between these diverging
worlds as it was to the failure of the negotiators or the
latest massacre of blacks. That is one reason why the breakdown
has caused so much anguish among people of all races. After
more than two years of progress, they were suddenly asking
themselves whether their remarkable attempt at reconciliation
might actually fail, and with disastrous consequences. "I can
only say," wrote Allister Sparks, the South African journalist
and author, "that I despaired for our country."

    The immediate cause of the breakdown was the A.N.C.'s
indignation over the particularly pitiless slaughter of 42
people in Boipatong, near Johannesburg. Discontent has grown
intense in A.N.C. ranks over the ceaseless violence. When
Mandela visited Boipatong last week, he and his entourage were
taunted by a song that included the lyrics: "While they kill
our people, you behave like lambs."

    But there are more fundamental reasons for the decision to
withdraw from the Convention for a Democratic South Africa
(CODESA). The A.N.C. is deeply frustrated by both the one-sided
power De Klerk has wielded in the negotiations and their
failure to yield tangible change.

    To the A.N.C., the two problems go hand in hand.
Secretary-General Cyril Rama phosa blamed De Klerk for the
massacre, accusing the government of pursuing a strategy that
"embraces negotiations together with systematic covert actions,
including murder." Survivors of the atrocity accused Zulu
migrant workers staying at a local hostel and loyal to the
Inkatha Freedom Party of carrying out the killings -- but the
survivors also claim that government security forces took part
in the attack.

    Privately, A.N.C. leaders say they do not believe De Klerk
is orchestrating a Machiavellian plot. They understand that part
of the problem is a culture of intolerance and factional
hostility from which their own members are hardly immune. They
do angrily blame the President, however, for cynically doing
little to stop the bloodshed in the hope that it will
exacerbate divisions in the massive black electorate and hinder
the A.N.C.'s ability to build a strong political organization
in the townships.

    The suspicions are not altogether farfetched. De Klerk has
been criticized repeatedly by human-rights groups for not
reining in his security forces. Despite previous success in
crushing illegal A.N.C. military activities, the government has
notably failed to punish the perpetrators of township
massacres. Says Helen Suzman, a white liberal and former Member
of Parliament: "They have got to get cracking on the security
forces and weed out those elements known to be against reform."

    De Klerk, moreover, has expressed ambivalence when Zulu war
parties known as impis have paraded provocatively through
township streets carrying spears and other so-called cultural
weapons. Professor David Welsh of the University of Cape Town
believes the government is guilty of "gross negligence" for
having all but ignored repeated recommendations that could have
prevented the Boipa tong massacre, such as maintaining police
surveillance of migrant-worker hostels.

    While it has made similar threats before, the A.N.C. decided
to break off negotiations this time because the Boipatong
massacre came amid indications that De Klerk was beginning to
drag his feet on ceding full-fledged democracy. He started to
take a harder line immediately following the March referendum
in which white voters overwhelmingly endorsed his reform
program. In May, Round 2 of CODESA ended in failure largely
because De Klerk's negotiators adamantly insisted on powerful
checks and balances amounting to an effective white veto in a
future political system. De Klerk seemed to be turning his back
on black expectations.

    His remoteness was apparent when he unwisely tried to visit
Boipatong, only to be forced out of the township by an enraged
crowd. As he fled, policemen opened fire and killed three more
local people. Rather than make plain his concern for the victims
and the developing political crisis, De Klerk flew to Spain on
a trade mission.

    All may not be lost, however. At a meeting last week of the
A.N.C.'s executive committee, officials recommitted the
organization to negotiations, provided that De Klerk takes
several practical steps to curb the violence: terminating
covert operations, closing hostels, banning the carrying of
cultural weapons. The committee also proposed that Mandela
quickly meet with De Klerk to discuss the crisis, which suggests
that the A.N.C. is prepared to bargain.

    The Boipatong furor seems to have shaken De Klerk. His
security forces moved with uncharacteristic speed in tracking
down the suspected killers. Police commissioner Johannes van
der Merwe said the preliminary police investigation showed that
"certain residents" of a Zulu migrant-workers' hostel were
involved but denied that government forces participated. De
Klerk also agreed to allow international jurists to join a
continuing independent inquiry into the violence. Yet the
A.N.C. will expect a more permanent change of attitude on the
part of the government toward halting the violence if reform is
to have any hope.

    Many South Africans soothed their fears by repeating the
comforting aphorism that "there is no alternative to
negotiations." The talks will probably resume once the tensions
caused by Boipatong cool. But a successful conclusion to the
talks may depend as much on whether blacks and whites can break
out of their separate worlds. In a sermon after the massacre,
Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize
laureate, said, "I hope, somewhere, somehow, it will sink into
the consciousness of most of our white fellow South Africans
that we are human beings who cry when our children die." As
long as blacks are allowed, even encouraged, to keep killing
one another, neither world in South Africa has a bright future.