South Africa: The Twilight Of Apartheid

By John Greenwald

What a difference a year makes. Exactly 12 months ago, President F.W. de Klerk stunned his country by opening Parliament with a pledge to legalize the militantly antiapartheid African National Congress and release A.N.C. leader Nelson Mandela from jail. With those milestones behind him, De Klerk surpassed expectations again last week by declaring his intention to bring a swift end to legally sanctioned racial segregation. He called on Parliament to repeal ( immediately the remaining pillars of discrimination that dictate where blacks can work and live. "There is neither time nor room for turning back," De Klerk declared. "There is only one road -- ahead."

De Klerk asked lawmakers to dismantle the Group Areas Act, which segregates black and white residential areas, and the Land Acts, which bar blacks from owning land outside specially designated homelands. He unveiled a major surprise by promising to phase out the infamous Population Registration Act. That hated law underpins the entire apartheid system by forcing South Africans to register by racial group for political and economic purposes.

The President's "Manifesto for the New South Africa" drew a wildly mixed response. In Parliament outraged members of the opposition Conservative Party called De Klerk a "traitor to the nation" before staging the first mass opening-day walkout in the legislature's history. "The fight is on for the survival of white people," asserted Ferdie Hartzenberg, deputy leader of the Conservative Party.

Outside, antiapartheid protesters complained that De Klerk's manifesto did not go far enough. A.N.C. supporters demanded immediate voting rights for 28 million blacks, who constitute 70% of the country's inhabitants but have no representation in the national government. Some 20,000 demonstrators marched before Cape Town's House of Assembly carrying placards that denounced the "racist Parliament." They demanded that Parliament, which is divided into chambers for whites, Asians and people of mixed race, be dissolved and replaced by an integrated constituent assembly. Declared Walter Sisulu, a veteran A.N.C. leader: "We don't have the vote. This is what our people want today."

De Klerk's speech capped one of the most fateful weeks in the long struggle against apartheid. Earlier, the A.N.C. and its major black power rival, the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party, moved to end their bloody internecine strife. Mandela and Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi finally met for the first time in 28 years and asked their followers to "cease all attacks against one another with immediate effect." Feuding between the two factions has claimed as many as 8,000 lives since 1984. To underline the message, Mandela and Buthelezi agreed to tour the most violence-torn regions of the country.

Their reconciliation and De Klerk's repeal of apartheid set the stage for the next phase of the black campaign for equality. For years, outspoken | critics of apartheid have argued that even though the legal pillars of discrimination were crumbling, the real test for the nation would come when it finally moved to enfranchise blacks. While the A.N.C. insists that only a one- man, one-vote rule would transfer power from whites to blacks, De Klerk envisions a multiracial government with a system of checks and balances that would give every ethnic group a dominant voice in its own affairs.

The President must now walk a tightrope, maintaining the support of whites while negotiating with black leaders for a new constitution that grants universal suffrage. De Klerk emphasized last week that he had no intention of agreeing to a black-dominated interim government that would oversee the transition to a new regime. At the same time, he reaffirmed plans to convene a multiracial, all-party conference to draft the new constitution.

De Klerk's antiapartheid moves seemed almost to be following a script written in Washington. When the U.S. Congress imposed economic sanctions in 1986, lawmakers said they would lift the ban only if Pretoria enacted a list of major reforms. These ranged from the release of Mandela to the abolition of the Population Registration Act. Now De Klerk has fulfilled or promised to meet each demand, leaving only the release of all political prisoners to be carried out. Pretoria is clearly hoping for a swift lifting of sanctions. However, U.S. officials said last week that the prisoner issue remained a sticking point.

De Klerk appeared determined to root out virtually every major form of legal discrimination. Among the laws he promised to scrap was one that helped create the all-black homelands. Yet a few legal vestiges of apartheid will remain in a technical sense. Children who were born after the repeal of the Population Registration Act will no longer be classified by race, but the register will not be scrapped entirely until the new government comes in.

While the speech summoned South Africans to a new era of harmony, it also exposed the deep rifts that run through every level of the racially torn society. Despite the truce between Mandela and Buthelezi, the two leaders remain far apart in their strategy. As A.N.C. demonstrators called for immediate elections, Buthelezi applauded De Klerk's rejection of such a move, which the Zulu leader denounced as "a constitutional leap into the dark." At the same time, Buthelezi praised the De Klerk government for "lending its weight to breaking the back of apartheid."

Although the A.N.C. officially renounced antigovernment violence last year, Mandela still endorses mass demonstrations and strikes; Buthelezi calls them "anarchistic." He opposes the A.N.C. demand that economic sanctions continue against South Africa until blacks gain power. For its part, the A.N.C. accuses Inkatha of collaborating with the government by encouraging Zulus to live in their segregated homeland. Meanwhile, the A.N.C. has been burdened by the troubles of Mandela's wife Winnie, who faces trial as early as this week on charges of kidnapping and assault in connection with the 1988 death of a youth who allegedly died at the hands of her bodyguards.

Despite their differences, the A.N.C. and Inkatha have tentatively agreed to De Klerk's proposal for an all-party conference -- or Great Indaba -- to help design a multiracial legislature that would replace the white-dominated Parliament. The A.N.C. wants Pretoria to free all remaining political prisoners and allow exiles to return to South Africa before convening the Indaba. If such conditions are met and the talks remain on track, political analysts say elections could be held under a new constitution by late 1993.

But that timetable could grind to a halt amid fresh outbreaks of black- against-black violence or a growing backlash from disaffected whites. Less than 24 hours after Mandela and Buthelezi embraced last week, an A.N.C.-Inkatha clash killed at least eight people and injured 60 others in Natal province, where most of the country's 6 million Zulus live. In Pretoria police used nightsticks and tear gas to battle 5,000 white farmers who paralyzed traffic by parking farm vehicles on downtown streets. Backed by the Conservative Party and the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement, the protesters demanded an end to political reforms. The black violence and right- wing intransigence showed that the final days of apartheid could prove to be as tumultuous as any that have come before.

With reporting by Peter Hawthorne/Cape Town