South Africa: Nationalist Losses Mean More Violence

Reputedly the most dangerous animal in Africa is the unpredictable buffalo. Bothered by parasites in its nostrils, it will go into a blind rage and trample or gore anything in range.

The South African government is a little like the buffalo when confronted by anti-apartheid demonstrators: It uses maximum force, without regard to the consequences, against a minimal threat--peaceful demonstrators.

Last week’s elections saw the Nationalists lose 30 seats in Parliament, it’s worst election losses in 41 years in power. It has lost to the right and the liberals among the white electorate. As its grip on power becomes more tenuous it appears to have lost the ability to reform or negotiate.

The violence directed against peaceful demonstrators by the security forces--29 people were shot dead in election violence, including 18 children, and hundreds were injured--also bodes ill for the next five years under President-elect Frederik W. de Klerk.

The harsh measures leveled against demonstrators opposed to Tuesday’s apartheid elections upset the reformist image De Klerk has attempted to convey to the West--an image already clouded by the government’s actions against those who, as part of the Defiance Campaign, are protesting segregation of such facilities as swimming pools, beaches, schools and living areas. It will be difficult to persuade the world that a white government that will shoot to keep blacks off white beaches is committed to power sharing and ending apartheid.

A failure to eliminate apartheid from the statute books will only increase the revolutionary climate within the country. As whites further polarize, the National Party will hemorrhage more supporters to the left or the right--as it did in this election.

Meanwhile, the South African government will confuse the world by chatting amicably to other African leaders about regional peace initiatives and then, when at home, taking out the tear gas, batons and shotguns to deal with blacks.

By lying to the world, the government has increased black frustration and white confusion. It says apartheid is an albatross and they will remove it from around the neck of South Africa, and then they shoot students who protest elections or baton-charge whites and blacks for attempting to hold a multiracial beach picnic.

The president entertains jailed African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela at tea, and says the government is willing to negotiate, but blocks talks with internal anti-apartheid groups by banning them. Yet power sharing and negotiation have now been ingrained into the psyche of white South Africans.

The liberal Democratic party--pro-negotiation and power sharing--showed the greatest gains at the expense of the National Party. The ultra-conservative Citizen newspaper correctly interpreted this as “a stronger vote for faster reform.”

Despite a narrower mandate from the polls and spiraling unrest, it seems unlikely that De Klerk is paying heed to the storm warning that election uprisings have given. Unless the new president makes some major concessions fast, South Africa could enter one of its cyclical turns to violence, repression and death.

For repression is only effective in the short term. Although it can crush revolt, resistance returns doubly militant and ever more widespread in the long run.

In 1985-86, there were massive detentions and deaths of black leaders leading to a lull in anti-apartheid protest in 1987 and 1988. However, the fire did not go out. The state, through massive intimidation, repression and censorship, merely put a screen before the volcano.

Last week’s election brought seething discontent from behind the screen into the streets--just as the first tricameral election did in 1984.

Tuesday saw the worst day of violence in three years. Police stalked the streets of mixed-race townships in the Cape, firing shotguns at singing crowds protesting the elections. A young police lieutenant, Gregory Rockman, lodged an official complaint about “the brutal unprofessional conduct” of riot police against “peaceful crowds.” Rockman, who was threatened with arrest by a superior when he tried to stop police battering civilians, said units “stormed the kids like wild dogs.”

On the same day 3 million black workers stayed away from work to protest the racial elections.

These disturbances undercut the reformist facade that the South African government has worked so hard at, painfully aware that bankers and governments will not roll over debts or open the purse strings to future loans if conflict and repression runs high.

The positive impact of regional peace initiatives and talk about negotiations have been lost in the past few weeks as the government reacted harshly to the anti-apartheid Defiance Campaign.

The election violence has dimmed the message from white voters that they want power sharing with blacks, which both the ruling party and the liberal Democratic Party advocated to some degree. De Klerk has already indicated he will disappoint white reformists and disenfranchised blacks. In his first post-election press conference, he warned South Africans not to expect too much.

He said his party would seek the cooperation of “chosen leaders who represent majorities.” However, this is the same chord the National Party has been playing for more than five years. It has been persistently rejected by black South Africans, while Indian and mixed race, or “Colored” voters have rejected the tricameral Parliament that has offered limited power-sharing since 1984. Election results among mixed-race and Indian voters have remained low, at around 30% of those registered to vote.

The Mass Democratic Movement, which probably represents the majority of blacks in this country, has embraced the outlawed ANC negotiation plan and is unlikely to accept anything short of that.

The South African government has attempted for five years to coerce African leaders to accept its negotiating conditions and has failed. Its arrogance in maintaining that it will “choose” the leaders it will talk with suggests the government has no commitment to negotiation and intends to hold onto power at any cost. That cost is a rapid decline in the economy, escalating black anger and defiance with increasing incidents of white right-wing extremist terror against liberals and the left.

Certainly, negotiations will be the buzzword for the five years De Klerk is set to govern this country.

Business Day, a conservative Johannesburg financial daily, noted the day after the election, “The clearest negotiating position put forward has been that shaped by the ANC, in consultation with (internal anti-apartheid groups) in Lusaka and endorsed by the Frontline States and the Organization of African Unity. By comparison, the five-year plan put forward by the National Party was a woolly, ill-defined set of ideas, and the policy of the (liberal) Democratic Party was stronger on principle than on detail. All the (ultra-right-wing) Conservative Party offered was an atavistic war cry.”

Many believe that the next five years will be the most crucial in the nation’s history. Upon these five years the volatile pendulum of South African politics will either swing to increased white intransigence, repression and conflict, or see the first steps toward a negotiated meaningful settlement to the problem of apartheid and minority rule.