ANOTHER VOICE
Black and white: end-games
CHARLES MOORE
Johannesburg ou have only to sacrifice the "nig- ger" absolutely, and the game is easy,' wrote Sir Alfred Milner, the British High Commissioner in Cape Town, in 1897. Few followers of South African affairs in the ensuing century would think this assess- ment right as a matter of fact, let alone as a matter of morality. The 'nigger' has been sacrificed again and again, and now, it would seem, the game is up.
What is about to happen is something for which I can think of no parallel in history. Never before has the ruling tribe given up ruling but stayed put. When President F.W. de Klerk proposed this policy and put it to his people in the last whites-only election, a majority of them supported him. This was the most extraordinary political achieve- ment. I heard Mr de Klerk address a con- ference and answer questions in Cape Town last week, and I left only more per- plexed than before as to how a man so obvi- ously decent could have for so long held key positions in the system of apartheid and how someone so apparently ordinary could have done something so daring that it is, by all normal standards, mad. `Vote for me,' he in effect told his people, `and I shall take away your power.' They did, and he will.
The biggest danger is that he has given too much away, that he has underplayed his hand. Historians will focus on the last year or so of the discussions and negotiations, and will question whether de Klerk needed to force his own pace by setting an exact date for an election before the constitution was agreed. For that constitution is a `win- ner takes all' one. It imposes on a deeply un-unitary nation a thoroughly centralised power. The voting system allows for no constituencies at all: you have to vote for a party list over whose individuals you have no control. And if, as is quite possible, the ANC wins more than two-thirds of the votes, it gains the untrammelled power to amend the constitution. It is a draft propos- al for a one-party state, which is not sur- prising, given the fact that the leading ANC drafter was Joe Slovo, the head of the South African Communist Party, and that the National Party has had a virtual monopoly since 1948.
One suspects, too, that Mr de Klerk has succumbed a little to the vanity of states- men. He probably sets too much store by the personal relationship he has established with Mr Mandela. He trusts Mr Mandela, which is understandable, and appears to believe that Mr Mandela can deliver what he promises, which is a mistake.
Mr Mandela addressed our conference too. He is a surprisingly dull speaker, but undoubtedly a great man. He looks, except for the colour of his skin, like an English lord-lieutenant, tall, distinguished, kindly, with an unhurried, unworried bearing. He seems as uncomfortable as a white man when he puts on African clothes. Yet his almost Uncle Tom-like appeal to the rest of the world does not seem to weaken his hold over his own party. He strikes me as the Ronald Reagan of his people, old, deaf, and formidable because he is lovable.
It is reasonably clear that Mr Mandela wants a one-party state. The ANC is already a huge system of patronage to which millions look for advancement. It has the capacity for large-scale organised vio- lence. It has the rather sentimental indul- gence of the outside world. It has a socialist programme and a strong communist con- tingent. Why should it let niceties about multi-party democracy stand in its way? It needs capital, yes, but not freedom as the word is understood in the West. When he spoke to us, an audience of journalists, Mr Mandela said he wanted `diversity in media'. This meant that there should be important black-run newspapers and a black-run broadcasting system, a natural thing for him to want. But his vision was not of more competition between titles, but of less: he wants ANC control. I would guess that the currently free white-owned press has less than two years' liberty left.
Mr Mandela's opponents realise what is happening and are angry. Chief Buthelezi has been outmanoeuvred, and so is forced to say that his Inkatha Party will take no part in the elections. His nephew, King Goodwill, says that the Zulu nation will secede. De Klerk and Mandela apparently believe that the King is happy with the panoply rather than the reality of power and wants only his title, motor cars, palaces and five queens guaranteed before he agrees to come quietly into the new South Africa.
Certainly, when I had an audience of His Majesty in one of his palaces near Ulundi last week, I formed the impression that he was more dignified than efficient. Certainly Inkatha is weaker than it was. But Buthelezi's main point, that the constitution excludes the people he represents, is right, and he has some power to fight about it.
If I were running the new South Africa, however, I might find Milner's words quot- ed above strangely apposite. There are all too many precedents for blacks crushing blacks. The ANC could have a very nasty time fighting the Zulus, but, given the power of the state and of money, it would win. The 'nigger' could be sacrificed. But there are no precedents for blacks crushing whites. The Afrikaners have only been defeated by other white men. If they rebel after 26-28 April, who will defeat them?
'Gentlemen,' [telegraphed President Paul Kruger to his generals early in the Boer War], 'I have received report that you gave up position. Understand please, if you give up position there, you must give up the whole land to the enemy. Please stand fast, dead or alive, each man at his place, and fight in the name of the Lord. . . If you give up position, and surrender country to England, where will you go then?'
Take out the clause about England and the question stands — where will the Boers go? In Pretoria, I visited General Constand Viljoen. He used to be chief of the South African armed forces and is now leading those Afrikaners who want their own volk- staat. He is the most moderate of the lead- ers of his movement and, as far as I could tell, genuinely wants a constitutional deal if he can get one. At this moment, the ANC are wooing him with an offer of a white mini-parliament. But General Viljoen seemed equally, if not more, genuine in his determination that a volkstaat would be created if necessary. It seems mad — the carving out of a new white state somewhere in the Transvaal where, even in the small white communities, the blacks in the neigh- bouring shanties outnumber whites by five or ten to one. But madder than most of the history of South Africa, or madder than de Klerk's handover of power? If I were an Afrikaner I would find it difficult to decide.
General Viljoen's supporters are armed and trained. The only people with the power to subdue them are other whites, in the security forces. Will white kill white at the orders of black? Would white trust in Mr de Klerk survive such a confrontation? As Rian Malan explains in his confession of a liberal Afrikaner, My Traitor's Heart, all whites in South Africa fear the blacks and are subject to 'the law of genetic complici- ty'. At present, hope outweighs fear, but the balance is fine, and getting finer.
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