Beyond Pieter Botha, a Day of Reckoning? : A Wider Window for Change May Open in the Direction of Social Justice

In the aftermath of President Pieter W. Botha’s stroke in January and his resignation Thursday as the leader of the ruling National Party, South Africans are acclimatizing themselves to the prospect of having a new leader. And change at the top could create a new atmosphere of opportunity.

Whites, the minority who hold power, are excited and expectant. A new leader could mean, in their terms, important shifts in policy and life style--even touching on their survival.

For blacks, a new white leader, coming inevitably from the ranks of Afrikaner nationalism and committed in one form or other to segregation, will be a distinction without a difference. The security forces’ rule over their lives will be the continuing reality. Many in the outside world probably incline to this view, too.

The truth, I think, lies somewhere between the perceptions of whites and blacks. A new political situation could arise overnight. A South Africa without Botha could be a more exciting place to live in, offering a wider window for change--in the direction of social justice.

Botha, 73, recuperating after what was termed a “mild” stroke, is near the end of his rule. His resignation from the party leadership is the first step toward total retirement. The race to succeed him is on. The narrow election of Transvaal leader F. W. de Klerk as party leader in Botha’s place makes him the favorite to take over when Botha goes, though meanwhile he will be on trial.

Meanwhile, critical problems are building up--like a new liberal clamor to have the Group Areas Act, which enforces residential segregation, repealed in view of a right-wing campaign to hound people of color out of homes bought or rented in “white” areas in disregard of the law; the delicate, problem-ridden path to independence in Namibia; the vital question of when to call a general election, which by law must be held by March next year, and how to deal with widespread allegations of official corruption. These problems have to be tackled soon, and with resolution.

Botha’s era has notched up some success in Africa. However hostile the world in general has been, he has gotten on better with African countries than might have been expected, resulting in a thriving but clandestine trade with many of them. And he has brought Namibia to the brink of internationally supervised independence, foreshadowing an end to the Angolan conflict.

Internally, his success has been more modest. He has drawn some mixed-blood “colored” and Asian people into his new constitutional scheme for limited power-sharing, and, at the time of his stroke, he was preparing a new attempt to draw in blacks--something always thwarted by the African National Congress.

Botha’s South Africa has been racked by racial unrest, which alternately simmers and surfaces. Government repression has been greater than under any of his predecessors. Black statelets sporting “independence,” the government’s quid pro quo for denial of full-scale rights for blacks, have progressively become rickety, corrupt, warring regions reminiscent of the worst parts of Africa.

The South African economy has suffered double-digit inflation for more than a dozen years, unemployment is high enough to threaten social peace, and a recent Carnegie-backed study found a staggering degree of abject black poverty. This, for a well-endowed country, is indictment.

As members of Parliament gather in Cape Town for the session that opens today --with Botha suddenly wrenched from their midst, though not far away taking recuperative walks around his garden, there is much speculation about a successor. He has held the reins of government so tightly that there is no crown prince in the wings. His style has been highly “personal”--presidential rather than committee chairman.

Clearly, a new untested person will emerge who will have to form an early alliance with the military if he wants to rule this almost ungovernable country. The military could even take over, de facto if not de jure . Yet military options have their limitations, as experience in South America and elsewhere has shown. Sooner rather than later a new leader will face the awesome choice: Either broaden the base of government by offering meaningful rights to blacks or risk a full-scale race war.

The right-wing backlash to meaningful reform would be severe. The right could even win a future general election. But that, too, could hasten the day of change.

There are signs that the steam has gone out of white South Africa. The hegemony of Afrikanerdom, so skillfully forged in the 1930s and ‘40s, has given way to political division and class differences. Factors like Afrikaner urbanization and the growth of Afrikaner business have cracked the monolith. The police and army still guarantee white security, but the ideological self-confidence of past years has declined. Few young whites can realistically look forward to drawing pensions in a white-dominated South Africa.

Blacks, by their numbers and their labor (if not by guerrilla war), are showing increasing clout. Despite repression and denial of rights, there is a resilience and a determination to govern, with or without white cooperation.

Someone, sometime, somehow will have to break the news to white South Africans that their elaborate system of patronage and privilege, backed by the security forces, must give way to social and political justice for all.

Botha’s moving from the scene could bring that day closer.