New Man, Old Attitude Will Rule in South Africa

WASHINGTON — In the nasty climate that is South African politics, Pieter W. Botha’s sudden resignation has quelled the thunderstorm over which National Party oligarch will run the government. Unfortunately there is no sign things will get substantially better soon. Frederik W.de Klerk, Botha’s interim successor--who appears certain to be elected president after whites choose their new Parliament in September--inherits a country that has been in a debilitating crisis for more than a decade. De Klerk enters office with countless problems and three assets: relief, expectations and opportunity.

Everyone is happy to see Botha go. His irrationality and tantrums are legendary. Botha screamed at Cabinet ministers, foreign ambassadors and visiting U.S. congressmen. He once told his own vice president to “shut up” at a meeting where Botha personally fired the director-general of the South African Broadcasting Corp. for straying from his prescribed line for TV news. He told Cape Town’s Catholic cardinal to “listen or get out” when the cardinal asked Botha to stop human-rights violations by the police and army. Given Botha’s close connections to South Africa’s dreaded intelligence and security forces--forged during 14 years as defense minister--his ire was terrifying. Few had the guts to tell Botha the truth, and he clung to a dream world where he relied on thugs, rogues and political alchemists to respond to the demand for black rights, the most pressing issue confronting the South African government.

Botha never accepted the fact that the majority of black South Africans support the African National Congress, he never comprehended the effects of burning barricades in Soweto on the decisions of bank presidents in Zurich and New York. Botha also reserved a special contempt for foreigners who sought to be involved in South African affairs. Two exceptions were British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, but Reagan fell from grace after the U.S. President imposed mild sanctions on South Africa in 1985, to ward off harsher measures then gaining support in Congress. Botha still believes Reagan betrayed him.

In August, 1985, as international financiers and Western governments waited for Botha to deliver a speech drafted by the South African Foreign Affairs Ministry to restore confidence in South Africa’s stability, Botha threw away the text and declared he would keep South Africa on a course of repression and segregation. The next year, Botha promulgated state-of-emergency laws that the police and army used brutally in an attempt to kill off support for the ANC and its internal allies in the United Democratic Front. They failed, and the effects of the state of emergency, still in force, were to strengthen the resolve of anti-apartheid dissidents, to increase black support for the ANC and to prolong the political stalemate while the government refused to talk to legitimate black leaders.

Meanwhile large sums of money continue to flow out of South Africa, and no one will lend South Africans capital needed to modernize industries and put employment opportunities in sync with population growth. Black unemployment is already dangerously high--more than 60% in some areas. Blacks are increasingly being politicized and activated against the government because of their desperate economic conditions. Ironically whites, whom Botha claimed to protect, are also pinched by the deteriorating economy, while feeling ever more threatened by the country’s permanent political crisis. Botha saw his role as that of a parochial, white Afrikaaner politician. He leaves South Africa in a terrible mess.

Many people expect, or hope, De Klerk will find a way out of the mess. Principal among them is Thatcher, who met with De Klerk in London last month and told him it is getting tougher everyday for her to defend South Africa from those in the European Community and Commonwealth who want to punish Pretoria for its treatment of blacks. De Klerk, for his part, probably responded by assuring Thatcher of his plans eventually to release ANC leader Nelson Mandela and to enter into negotiations with blacks.

What is less likely is that De Klerk could have told Thatcher he is prepared to allow blacks equal political rights with whites. De Klerk is a segregationist who wants to maintain white privilege despite spiraling political and economic costs. He is solidly within the National Party right wing that hopes to attract blacks away from the ANC by imposing black quislings on the black masses as “leaders” and sponsoring public works projects in areas where blacks live. This will never succeed. Similarly, De Klerk opposes admitting blacks into a national Parliament on a one person-one vote basis. When he told Thatcher recently that he will seek a system of government in a South Africa where no racial group will be able to dominate any other, Thatcher reportedly interjected impatiently: “What are you, afraid the blacks will do to you what you did to them?”

Yet De Klerk might be susceptible to a contrary influence if he realizes repression and cooperation won’t solve South Africa’s problems. Three years ago, his brother Willem (Wimpie), formerly editor of an Afrikaans paper, was fired for being too liberal. Willem de Klerk wants the South African government to negotiate with the ANC and other popular anti-apartheid organizations that the National Party has consistently tried to discredit. The brothers stay in close touch despite their differing politics.

De Klerk has an opportunity to cast his image of a South African president above his predecessors’ Afrikaaner parochialism and to exploit propitious circumstances that currently exist for talks with the black opposition. The ANC has declared its interest in discussions and has offered reasonable proposals outlining how De Klerk could create a context for negotiations to begin. Even more important, various black groups in South Africa have begun to talk to each other about how they would relate during negotiations.

Washington, London and Moscow have great interest in promoting such negotiations. These governments, and others in Africa and Europe, would jump at a chance to apply their diplomatic facilities in support of talks. In South Africa, De Klerk can count on the extensive propaganda capabilities of the state-run electronic media to sell the idea of negotiations to whites. If the National Party needed proof of its capacity to form white political opinion, it was apparent last year in the government’s successful effort at selling Namibian independence to South African whites.

Whether De Klerk will use the opportunity is questionable. He would have to arrive at the decision that it is more important to save South Africa from the steady disintegration of its current course than to preserve National Party hegemony plus segregated schools and neighborhoods for the white minority. A group of British businessmen recalled a long social conversations with De Klerk when they pressed him to speed reform in South Africa. After listening patiently to their suggestions and warnings about the effects of allowing the crisis to go on, De Klerk reportedly answered: “Gentlemen, I am prepared to accept any conceivable form of constitution and government system--as long as it keeps the National Party in power.” If this is indeed De Klerk’s goal, God help South Africa.