Birth of a Nation

By Scott MacLeod/Johannesburg

"I consider myself neither morally nor legally bound to obey laws made by a Parliament in which I am not represented."

-- Nelson Mandela, 1962

That brave repudiation of a regime bent on perpetuating white hegemony in South Africa earned Mandela a lifetime's incarceration, while his jailers pressed on with their megalomaniac construct called grand apartheid. At the same time, his stance just as surely launched South Africa on the road to democracy. Last week the country took an irreversible step forward when black and white political leaders declared that every citizen will be able to vote to choose the government. With that historic agreement, Mandela and South Africa's 28 million blacks will be able to savor the success of their freedom struggle when the country holds its first-ever free elections on April 27, 1994.

The announcement came at the end of a tension-filled day in the fitful talks among 26 parties that began in December 1991. While dissenters will be able to raise the issue again, a majority nonetheless provisionally set the poll date to bolster the hopes of blacks impatient for more rapid change. Afterward, African National Congress Secretary-General Cyril Ramaphosa rushed to a previously scheduled gala dinner to receive a Man of the Year award jointly with government negotiator Roelf Meyer. To the cheers of 400 guests, who represented all the country's races, Ramaphosa declared, "We now stand at the gateway of the democracy that so many of us have worked so hard for and so many have died for."

For blacks, the long-awaited vote will formally end the humiliation, injustice and injury of the past four decades and complete the dismantling of apartheid, that pervasively dysfunctional experiment in political and social engineering. The balloting will allow the pariah state to regain a place in the community of nations. And the voters will almost certainly reward Mandela's stoic struggle by conferring on him the leadership of his country.

But the elections will not usher in a ready-formed New South Africa. Even as most South Africans delight in the prospect of free elections, they are beginning to sense that the immediate future holds much hardship and that the three years of turmoil following De Klerk's decision to dismantle apartheid and release Mandela is a taste of things to come. "The pattern has already been set," warns Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party. "It is going to be turbulent, no matter who is at the helm."

Frustrating too, particularly when it comes to fulfilling the expectations of a populace impatient to see political power translated into a more equitable distribution of resources. "People have suffered so much that they now expect the opposite," says Harry Gwala, a senior member of Mandela's African National Congress in strife-torn Natal province. "But we can't perform miracles."

Indeed they cannot. South Africa may be rich in gold and diamonds. It may again qualify for international aid and may even succeed in luring back foreign investors kept out by sanctions or scared off by violence. But it will still take years of patient reconstruction to undo the damage of the apartheid era and break the cycle of violence. Nor will it be easy to find jobs for a fast-growing work force that cannot be absorbed by a capital-starved economy.

The country's main hope as the perils and pressures crowd in is that the remarkable spirit of cooperation and compromise that has developed in recent months can be preserved and built upon. Former enemies are already gathering ^ in countless forums to address critical issues like the economy, education, jobs and housing. Says Anglo American Corp. labor negotiator Bobby Godsell: "We cannot achieve political and social stability without addressing the issue of poverty immediately." For the A.N.C., contact with business has made it warier of socialism's nostrums. "We have no intention of introducing a command economy," insists the A.N.C.'s chief economist, Tito Mboweni. "We want to improve productivity and the investment climate."

Despite the legacy of hatred, negotiations have progressed with a smoothness that few would have predicted when Mandela was released from prison in 1990. Although many important issues remain unresolved, the blueprint for the country's political future has been drawn, and in the coming weeks negotiators hope to complete the details. The next move should be the appointment as early as this month of a multiparty Transitional Executive Council that will have no executive authority but will oversee De Klerk's government policies to ensure their nonpartisan nature. When South Africans finally go to the polls, they will elect a bicameral legislature that will serve during a five-year transitional period and double as the constituent assembly responsible for drafting a postapartheid constitution. The party receiving the largest number of seats will choose the new President to succeed De Klerk -- almost certainly Mandela.

But for that five-year transition period, Mandela will be required to form a government that includes leaders from all the major parties as a safeguard against an A.N.C. monopoly on power. Negotiators have also accepted National Party demands that in sensitive areas like security policy, Mandela could be overruled by one-third of the Cabinet's members.

The most serious sticking point remains De Klerk's demand for permanent power sharing, which the A.N.C. regards as an effort to deprive blacks of the chance for true majority rule. During the period of Mandela's national-unity government, De Klerk proposes that real power be invested in an Executive Committee made up of party leaders and that the presidency become a largely ceremonial job. He is also demanding up-front guarantees of power-sharing in the final constitution, although he rejects suggestions that he is trying to secure a permanent white veto.

Forcing Mandela and De Klerk to compromise is the recognition that time is running out for South Africa's once mighty economy. Apartheid cost the country millions in lost investment. Since 1990, some 500,000 jobs have been wiped out by recession, drought and violence. With South Africa heading toward its fourth straight year of zero growth, the repair task will be that much harder.

Most daunting of apartheid's legacies is the near total collapse of education for most of the 6 million school-age black children. Ever since the 1976 Soweto uprising, students have manned the barricades under the slogan "Liberation Now, Education Later," and the government has funneled much more money into white schools. The results have been horrendous: 40% of black students drop out, and last year only 44% of those remaining passed. An estimated 3 million young blacks make up a "lost generation" that is virtually unemployable.

At least Soweto and other townships have schools and additional basic services. They are the envy of the country's worst off: the estimated 7 million blacks -- 18% of the population of 38 million -- living in urban shanty towns. Like Crossroads, the notorious squatter camp on the edge of Cape Town, these settlements are mostly populated by impoverished peasants from the countryside seeking jobs. The squatter camps are a breeding ground for black extremists who will make life difficult for a Mandela-led government unable to work economic miracles overnight.

Hopes are high that a political settlement will greatly reduce the potential for black-against-black violence. Since 1986, some 10,000 people have died in an A.N.C.-Inkatha power struggle that in parts of Natal has taken on civil-war proportions. Even assuming the rivalry cools among top leaders, blood feuds, local turf wars, scrambling for scarce jobs, general intolerance and even tribal antipathy could spark continued fighting.

The A.N.C. goes into the April elections as the anti-apartheid champion and the party of change. But it will be handicapped by its lack of experience in government, and both the National Party and Inkatha are certain to exploit the competence factor as well as employ scare tactics that draw attention to the A.N.C.'s links with the Communist Party of South Africa. Although De Klerk says he will be out to win the election, his basic goal is to get at least 34% of the vote. That way he can block any constitution the A.N.C. tries to ram through the constituent assembly. Wild cards in the electoral deck will be the 3 million colored, or mixed race, voters and the 1 million Asians. Although both groups suffered under apartheid, their conservative outlook is working in De Klerk's favor. Says Magda Bellwood, a Cape Town receptionist: "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't."

It should be heartening that despite years of anti-A.N.C. propaganda, the majority of whites seem ready to live with black rule. Although many talk of leaving, a 1992 survey showed that only 27% of English-speaking and 13% of Afrikaans-speaking whites contemplate emigration. Some, like Wilhelm Verwoerd, 29, grandson of Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid and head of the government that locked up Nelson Mandela, have decided that what they cannot fight they should join. Last month Verwoerd stood on an A.N.C. platform in Parow, a conservative suburb of Cape Town, and confessed his political conversion to fellow Afrikaners. "I am much more than just the grandson of a symbol," he told them. "I am the symbol of a new generation who wants to stand up for democracy." Whatever their voting preferences, South Africans have good reason to say amen to that.

With reporting by Peter Hawthorne/Cape Town