S. Africa Official Seeks Line Between Reform, Backlash

Most South Africans, whites as well as blacks, want racial reform, says Chris Heunis, South Africa’s minister for constitutional development and planning, when asked about the future of his troubled country, “but they could still get revolution.”

Jan Christiaan Heunis is an optimist, as befits the minister charged with charting South Africa’s way out of its current troubles, but 16 months of sustained civil unrest have left him worried.

“It’s difficult, damned difficult, to negotiate with leaders of black, Indian and Colored (mixed-race) communities who are immediately branded as stooges for talking to you,” he said in an interview here. “But it’s impossible, flatly impossible, to develop new political structures--let alone to write a constitution that will be accepted and will work--except through negotiations.”

And that describes the box in which the minority white government of President Pieter W. Botha currently finds itself. It is seeking ways to enlist moderate black leaders in a dialogue that would result in the whites sharing--but not ceding--political power. At the same time, however, the government must satisfy the fast-growing demands of the country’s black majority without losing control so abruptly that the already-apprehensive whites rebel.

Protege of President

Heunis, 57, a political protege of Botha and one of his possible successors as president, readily acknowledges that he does not have the answer to what South African political scientist Hermann Giliomee calls “the riddle of our times.” But, Heunis says, that is because “we will not be prescriptive any longer, laying down plans and blueprints and models that cannot solve our problems because the people who are most affected did not participate in drafting them.”

Heunis has had only limited success, however, in drawing blacks into political negotiations on the country’s future, and he and other government ministers now describe this as the biggest barrier to accelerated reform here.

Although some of the leaders of South Africa’s rural tribal homelands and of local black governments do participate in discussions with him and other officials, such people are largely rejected by other blacks as collaborators with the minority white regime.

Leaders with broader support, such as Bishop Desmond Tutu, Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi or officials of the United Democratic Front coalition of anti-apartheid groups, say bluntly that they will not talk with the government until certain conditions are met. Among the conditions are release of imprisoned black political leaders, including Nelson Mandela, and a formal government commitment to end apartheid and minority white rule. They dismiss the current discussions as a “talk shop.”

Heunis’ Problem

A political scientist, who asked not to be quoted by name because of his occasional role as a government adviser, said, “Heunis’ problem is that blacks want up-front concessions he is prepared to make only in exchange for concessions from them, such as a commitment to peaceful change, such as a commitment from them to sharing power with whites. He has the further problem that he cannot appear to whites to be giving away the farm without getting anything in return.

“This gives the appearance of stalemate, of deadlock to the reform process. In fact, there is quite a bit of movement. Heunis has moved both the government and National Party and the black community into the pre-negotiation stage by getting them to define their priorities, set conditions, challenge each other, modify their own positions and so forth. Secondly, some reforms are already emerging out of these preliminaries.”

Heunis, reviewing the process of political reform, argued that the informal negotiations he has had with blacks--”they are by no means stooges,” he said, “and they are very tough”--have led to fundamental changes in government and National Party policy over the past year.

“We have committed ourselves to one country, one citizenship, one constitution,” he said. “We have accepted the permanency of the black urban population, property rights for them, the need for political entities for them, their representation at the highest levels of government and for these political structures to be negotiated. I won’t say this was unthinkable three years ago, but it certainly was not government policy then.”

‘Universal Franchise’

Botha has also committed the National Party to the principle of “universal franchise”--though not on the basis of one-man, one-vote in a unitary state--and is expected to propose other ideas for negotiation next month when he opens Parliament.

Heunis ticked off other changes--elected local governments for blacks in urban areas, multiracial regional councils implementing power-sharing on a metropolitan basis, spreading integration of public facilities and the likely end of the much-hated “pass laws” that bar blacks from moving freely to urban areas and require those who do live and work there to carry their “passbooks” at all times.

To these changes, Botha has added possible black inclusion in the President’s Council, a constitutional body that advises the state president and is now formulating many of the planned reforms. And the government has broadened the right of blacks to buy their own homes in urban areas.

But many of these measures are rejected by blacks as devices intended to ensure continued white control of the country, not as steps toward ending apartheid and establishing the majority rule they want. Others, seen as “too little, too late,” fail to win the broad support the government hoped for. And many of the broad commitments, described by Heunis as “fundamental shifts,” are too vague to satisfy even moderate blacks.

‘Not the Final Steps’

“These are not the final steps in terms of black participation in politics, the economy or society in general,” Heunis said, “and I am in the process of consultations and negotiations with black leaders on the next steps, those steps that will bring blacks into decision-making at the highest levels of the government.”

Heunis is now drawing up constitutional options that the government can present to black leaders in an effort to get broader negotiations under way. Among the social scientists who advise him, the expectation is that the proposals will lean toward a federal system for South Africa in the future.

The reform process is “irreversible,” Heunis said, “but it can be impeded by both unrest and by foreign pressure. There is a real danger of white resistance, a white backlash, and there is even greater danger of arousing expectations (among blacks) that cannot possibly be met in this country.”

Government spokesmen have stressed the step-by-step approach Heunis is taking by warning that 1987 will be the earliest that fundamental political reform can be undertaken. Parliament, in its coming session, they said, will be able to discuss various proposals but not to act on them.

Although blacks’ demands for political power have become the dominant theme of the unrest here over the past year, Heunis says that the origin of much of the strife is the severe economic recession here and the widespread unemployment among blacks.

“We have not been able--we have not had the funds--to improve the quality of life within the black community as we wanted,” he said. “All these factors together have given radicals fertile ground to spread the gospel of revolution, to say that black political power is the solution to all problems.”

Pledges of Shared Power

Botha, bit by bit over the last year, has tried to meet these black demands with pledges of shared power. In his latest speeches on political reform, he has gone further than before and has sketched a broad federal system for South Africa in the future based on ethnic and geographic “units,” which would retain elements of racial separation but end the present discrimination against blacks.

Botha’s vision--and that of Heunis--is of a system that recognizes within South Africa “the existence of a diversity of nations and population groups,” that “recognizes the principle of self-determination of . . . community life such as education, residential areas, social welfare, local management and private ownership” but that provides “political structures in order to discuss matters of mutual concern without one group having the right to dominate the others.”

Although neither Botha nor Heunis uses the word federation, which has long been anathema to the Nationalists, they seem to suggest some form of federation in the future, with urban black communities and rural tribal homelands forming federal units together with the white, Indian and Colored communities.

And Heunis will go no further in describing what he expects the eventual outcome of his current negotiations will be. “The minute I mention a goal, a mere possibility even, I am accused of being prescriptive,” he explained. “And whatever I mentioned is, ipso facto , rejected.” He agreed to present some “embryonic ideas” for a new constitution only when he could make no further headway without such proposals.

Cagey About Details

He is similarly cagey about disclosing details of the negotiations. “If the negotiations were public, everyone would be talking to the gallery, instead of speaking to the issues,” he said. For this reason, he dismisses as “a stupid idea” calls by the white liberal opposition Progressive Federal Party for a constitutional convention to work out power-sharing arrangements.

“I have also learned,” Heunis continued, “not to announce anything before I can do it. The ability to deliver is all-important in these negotiations. . . . Remember, these discussions are multisided. I have black leaders, some occupying elective posts and others from religious, educational, cultural and civic circles; I have Indian and Colored leaders, both in and outside the government, and I have my party’s own white constituency. To move forward, there has to be a fairly strong consensus among them all.”

Heunis, who calls his job “a daily fight against racism,” has nearly as many problems, in fact, persuading whites to accept changes, which inevitably will end their privileged position in South Africa, as he does trying to persuade blacks to compromise on their demands.

Maligned by Rightists

The ultraright Conservative Party, which broke away from the Nationalists over reforms, calls him a “leftist liberal” and accuses him of using “dictatorial powers to force racial integration, knowing it will bring black-majority rule.”

White businessmen blame him for all the increased taxes needed to finance the proliferation of governmental structures that have been established to bring Indians and Coloreds into the political system and to allow blacks some autonomy in running their own affairs.

And political commentators here, trying to assess the implications of his many reform proposals, call his ideas woolly and complain that he speaks in political code words that only he can understand.

To shape his consensus for reform, Heunis is almost in constant motion. He holds conferences here, in Cape Town and other cities with black, Indian and Colored political leaders. He travels to the remote constituencies on which the National Party still depends for much of its parliamentary power but where the white residents have misgivings about the reforms. And he tries to sell his ideas for step-by-step reforms at press conferences and in television interviews.

Long Days of Meetings

Meetings often start at 7:30 a.m. and continue until after midnight. Sometimes, Heunis moves back and forth between two meetings going on simultaneously in his office.

His only bit of peace comes, he says, during a half-hour bike ride early each morning.

“When you look around the country, you easily realize the urgency of his task,” another Nationalist member of Parliament said. “If we are going to get out of this mess, Chris Heunis will have to find the way and persuade P.W. Botha to follow it.”

Heunis, a graduate of Stellenbosch University, the leading Afrikaans educational institution in South Africa, has been close to Botha his entire political career. A lawyer from George, a small community in Cape province that Botha represented in Parliament from 1948 until last year, Heunis spent two decades on the local school board, town council and provincial council, as well as in National Party posts, before he was elected to Parliament in 1970.

Oversaw New Constitution

He served as minister of economic affairs, of transport and of internal affairs before becoming minister of constitutional development and planning in 1982. In his present post, Heunis oversaw the drafting of the new constitution that brought Coloreds and Indians into Parliament with the creation of their own separate houses last year.

He has long had a reputation as one of the National Party’s most ambitious politicians--”Chris Avis” was his nickname for a long time because he was said to try harder than the others--and the growth of his ministry has given him the image within the party of an empire builder. It now not only encompasses constitutional development and government reorganization but also administers most black affairs and oversees the process of gradual racial integration.

From “minister of nearly everything,” a political columnist in the Johannesburg newspaper Sunday Times wrote when Heunis took over black affairs, he moved up to “minister of really everything.” Another commentator dubbed him “Jaws 3” for the way his ministry has swallowed other departments in its “insatiable maw.”

May Succeed Botha

As one of Botha’s senior Cabinet members and as deputy leader--under Botha--of the Cape province National Party, Heunis is well positioned to succeed the president, who is nearly 70 and reportedly may not serve his full five-year term.

Heunis’ most likely rivals for the job are Gerrit Viljoen, an Afrikaner intellectual and former head of the influential and secret Broederbond, who is the minister for cooperation and development but has been losing authority to Heunis in recent Cabinet shake-ups, and F.W. de Klerk, the National Party leader in Transvaal province and minister of national education.

Two other candidates--Roelof F. (Pik) Botha, the foreign minister, and Gen. Magnus Malan, the defense minister--lack the personal power bases that Heunis, de Klerk and Viljoen have within the party.

“Heunis’ chances depend entirely on the success or failure of the reform process,” a member of Parliament from the party’s liberal wing said. “If we manage to find our way out of this mess in the next couple of years and all Heunis’ structure-building begins to work, then he will be the man to take us through the next decade. If not, if it all collapses under its own weight and the lack of black support, then Heunis and Botha can retire to George together while the rest of us fight the war they have left behind.”