Next Step : Wooing White Loyalty After Apartheid’s Fall : S. Africa’s National Party must sell whites on the need for reform. It is a huge job.

As black waiters quietly cleared luncheon dishes, member of Parliament Hennie Bekker invited questions from a small group of his white constituents in a private restaurant room a few days ago.

A white-haired woman, speaking Afrikaans, wanted to know what the National Party planned to do about segregated neighborhoods. Were they on the way out? And, if so, how would whites be able to maintain the “standards” of their neighborhoods?

The genial politician smiled nervously. The Group Areas Act, the pillar of residential segregation, will be gone by next June, he predicted, and everyone should “wave goodby to it.”

As for those “standards,” he added, no protection based on skin color was contemplated. Zoning laws and health regulations would have to do.

Most of the diners seemed to embrace the rightness of the party position. But there was no applause. They didn’t have to like it.

“We mustn’t bluff ourselves,” said Jack Steyn, a constituent who lives in a “white” area where 50,000 blacks also live in defiance of the law. “We have to accept that we whites can’t have the First World anymore. We are moving into a Third World atmosphere.”

Such are the anxious exchanges heard across South Africa these days as a powerful white political party and its loyal members undergo the most rapid, jarring change of direction in the country’s history.

The National Party, the birthplace of white Afrikaner nationalism and apartheid, has been the slickest and most enduring political machine on the continent of Africa.

It has survived the assassination of one leader, a major political scandal, worldwide condemnation, biting economic sanctions and 30 years of guerrilla war waged by two black liberation movements.

And yet in four decades it has not lost a national election. Through the social engineering of apartheid, savvy politicking and brute force, it has managed to maintain white political control and privilege in a country where blacks heavily outnumber whites.

Today, though, the National Party faces the biggest challenge in its 75-year history. Its leaders are trying to break with the past and sell whites on a package of reform that will mean a swift end to apartheid, an end to white privilege and an end to the party’s firm hold on the country’s future.

The sales job, for members of Parliament like Bekker, has been every bit as difficult as anyone could have predicted. And it got even more difficult earlier this month when the party leader, President Frederik W. de Klerk, announced plans to throw the party’s doors open to all races.

“A major part of the National Party constituency has been traumatized by this,” said Robert Shrire, a professor of political studies at the University of Cape Town. “The Nats have irrevocably cut their links to the past, and they will either succeed in becoming a middle-of-the-road party or quite soon vanish from the political scene.”

The move, already ratified by two of the four provincial party congresses, is largely symbolic because blacks cannot even vote in national elections. As Pallo Jordan, spokesman for the African National Congress, remarked upon hearing the news: “A few blacks may join, but I can’t imagine why.”

But ending its racial exclusivity will allow the Nationalists to more easily join forces with moderate black groups in negotiations for a new constitution. At the same time, though, it gives additional ammunition to the right-wing Conservative Party, the only whites-only party in Parliament, whose rolls have swelled in recent months with National Party defectors.

No one knows for sure if the National Party can survive the reformist ideas of De Klerk and other party leaders.

But many agree with Jack Steyn, Hennie Bekker’s worried constituent in Johannesburg, who says, “If we had to have an election tomorrow, I shudder to think what the results would be.”

Preaching equal rights for poverty-stricken black people to privileged whites already has cost the National Party a substantial number of its core supporters--the Afrikaners, ancestors of the first white settlers.

The National Party was founded by Afrikaners who feared that British capitalist interests would lead to the demise of the Afrikaner. They strongly opposed those more liberal parties that supported greater cooperation between Afrikaners and English-speaking South Africans.

The Nationalists held power for four years in the early 1930s and regained it for good in 1948 on a straight apartheid ticket. They not only ushered in racial segregation and white domination of the black majority, they also instituted an unwritten “Afrikaner-first” policy.

During every election from 1961 to 1981, more than 80% of the country’s Afrikaners voted for the National Party. But during the 1989 elections, only 46% voted Nationalist while 45% voted for the Conservatives, who broke away from the National Party in 1982 and consider themselves the new home of Afrikaner nationalism. The National Party margin of victory over the Conservatives in 35 of the 166 seats in Parliament was fewer than 1,500 votes.

Although De Klerk is an Afrikaner and his Cabinet remains overwhelmingly Afrikaner, the party’s Afrikaner drain has continued. The first major test was a June election called to fill a vacant parliamentary seat in Umlazi. The National Party had won that seat with 3,700 more votes than the Conservatives in 1989. This year the Nationalists won by only 550 votes.

The National Party has recently launched a campaign to stem the tide. It argues that the country’s whites have no choice but to end apartheid and grant full voting rights to blacks if they want to revive the economy, end political unrest and be respected again by the world.

But party leaders also promise that any new constitution will have built-in safeguards for the rights of minorities, such as whites, and will only be approved after a white referendum.

In an unprecedented nationwide closed-circuit TV program last month, De Klerk answered questions from his constituents. One of those questions was, not surprisingly, “Why should the people support the National Party?”

De Klerk said his party is the only one that recognizes both the diversity and the interdependence of ethnic groups in South Africa.

“We have always lived in the same towns and on the same farms, and one day we will live in the same neighborhoods, shop in the same shops and mine together for gold,” De Klerk said.

“Because we can never be alone, we must find a way to live together peacefully,” he added. “And the National Party recognizes that.”

De Klerk’s reformist Cabinet ministers have appeared almost nightly across the country to, as one put it, “convince the rank-and-file members of the inevitability of the realities.”

To do that, party leaders are appealing to their constituents’ sense of justice and, for the first time in their history, speaking frankly about the international blots on their reputation.

Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha pointed out during a recent party gathering that 600 organizations worldwide oppose apartheid and more than 700 resolutions have been passed by the United Nations against South Africa because of apartheid.

Then he appealed to reason.

“There is no way the person who polishes the rugby ball will not, sooner or later, want to play rugby,” Botha said. “My friends, there is no way.”

The strategy has worked on many party supporters, such as Humphrey Simes, a retired civil servant from Bloemfontein who joined the party as an organizer in 1951.

“I thought we had to make sure that the white minority in this place, my birthplace, would have a say in matters,” he said recently.

But now, Simes admits, “I think we did a lot of wrong.”

The attempt to force blacks into ethnic “homelands” seemed like a good idea for both blacks and whites at the time, he said.

“We spent millions. We really did our very best. And it seemed to work up until a certain day when we started to see it was unfair,” said Simes, 65. “It wasn’t a just policy. It just wasn’t haalbaar “--feasible.

Earlier this month, Simes cut the ties with his own political past by voting to open his party to all races. He said he gave up his ideas of white exclusivity because “people who think alike must come together, regardless of color.”

Doubts about the future of apartheid were echoed a decade ago in informal discussions among party members and within the influential Broederbond (Brotherhood), the secret Afrikaner society of about 20,000 members that has acted as a think tank and been an important force behind De Klerk’s reform plans.

Former President Pieter W. Botha began a slow reform program in the early 1980s, but De Klerk leaped ahead last February when he legalized the ANC and other black political organizations, freed Nelson Mandela, promised to abolish apartheid legislation and invited black South Africans to the table to negotiate a new future.

“That speech changed the whole country,” Simes said. “It was a new kind of experience for all of us.”

It also touched off a major political shift among whites.

The Nationalists gained supporters from the Democratic Party, a party of non-Afrikaner whites whose members have historically been the voices of white liberalism. The Democrats lately have found themselves in the unusual position of applauding De Klerk as the president appropriates almost every plank in their anti-apartheid platform.

But many whites agreed with the Conservative Party that De Klerk had overstepped his election mandate by beginning to dismantle apartheid and relinquish white power. As proof, they pointed to National Party pamphlets which promised voters in 1989 that De Klerk would never negotiate with the then-banned ANC.

Some Afrikaner supporters of the National Party, though, have kept their membership cards despite reservations about reform. The reason: tradition.

“There’s no logic to it,” says Sampie Terreblanche, a political analyst at Stellenbosch University. “They are against negotiations. They are against the ANC. But they are blood Nats.”

Terreblanche believes that the National Party has become the home of the white middle class, which is worried less about apartheid and more about its pocketbook.

“They’re still hoping that the National Party will deliver a sound economy,” Terreblanche said.

Indeed, the party’s faithful frequently talk about the future of their standard of living, which many believe to be artificially high because of apartheid and racial discrimination. What will happen, they ask, when the millions of unemployed blacks flood the job market and hundreds of thousands of homeless blacks flood white neighborhoods?

“You can’t promise people that it will be possible for them to carry on as if nothing has happened,” Terreblanche warned.

But National Party leaders, trying to hold their fragile constituencies together, tread carefully on those issues. They say the end of international sanctions will help the economy grow to accommodate the blacks who have long been denied economic opportunity.

The issue is housing in Hennie Bekker’s constituency, which includes a so-called gray area where thousands of blacks live in apartments legally restricted to whites. The government has been unable to forcibly move black residents because of severe housing shortages in the townships and a housing surplus for whites.

Jack Steyn believes that the standard of living will fall in that area with the repeal of residential segregation laws. But Bekker, his representative in Parliament, disagrees.

“Once the Group Areas Act is gone, a better class of black will move into the urban areas,” Bekker told Steyn.

But Steyn wasn’t convinced. He has been mugged 10 times in the past four years, and he sees the sidewalks filled with out-of-work, uneducated black youths.

“We’ll be part of the Third World for a very long time,” Steyn predicted. “You’ll need a whole (army) division to patrol our streets.”

But, Steyn added, “I often ask myself what if the De Klerk option fails? We’ll have a black revolution and even more bloodshed and chaos. This country will become a banana republic.”

From Radical Left to Ultra Right: The Spectrum of South African Politics

PAN-AFRICANIST CONGRESS

Leader: Zeph Mothopeng

Ideals: Believes Africans should take destiny into own hands, not turn to other racial groups for resolution of South Africa’s problems; supports “Africanist socialistic democratic social order.”

Strategy: Guerrilla war. PAC refuses to negotiate with government until it agrees to hand over power.

History: Founded in 1959 as breakaway group from African National Congress over issue of whether to include whites in liberation struggle. Banned in 1960, legalized again last February.

AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS

Leaders: Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela

Ideals: One-person, one-vote, multi-racial democracy.

Strategy: Guerrilla war, sanctions against South Africa. Now supports talks, has suspended war.

History: Founded in 1912, banned in 1960. Mandela launched armed struggle in 1961, jailed in 1964. From Zambia exile, ANC led black liberation drive. South African Communists are allies, and many are among ANC hierarchy. Both parties legalized in February, when Mandela was freed.

INKATHA FREEDOM PARTY

Leader: Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi

Ideals: Pro-capitalist, anti-apartheid; it believes in protecting heritage of Zulu nation.

Strategy: It favors constitutional negotiations, strongly opposes both sanctions and guerrilla warfare against government.

History: Founded in 1975 as party based on Zulu aspirations; claims membership of 1.8 million, including a few non-Zulus.

DEMOCRATIC PARTY

Leader: Zach de Beer

Ideals: Pro-capitalist, anti-apartheid.

Strategy: Opposes sanctions and guerrilla war, supports negotiations, believes in working for change within system; has decided not to seek alliance with ANC or other black liberation groups for now.

History: Formed in 1989 by merger of three main white liberal opposition parties. It has traditionally been liberal conscience of white South Africa, but National Party has in the past year appropriated and implemented much of its platform.

NATIONAL PARTY

Leader: Frederik W. de Klerk

Ideals: Pro-capitalist; it believes in granting blacks equal vote as part of new constitution that will also provide built-in protections for “minority groups,” such as whites.

Strategy: It favors negotiation but wants to lead the process and retain control of government until new constitution is written.

History: Founded in 1915 as party of Afrikaner nationalism; introduced notorious apartheid laws following its election victory in 1948.

CONSERVATIVE PARTY

Leader: Andries P. Treurnicht

Ideals: It wants to stop reforms, fears Afrikaner culture will be overrun in multi-racial government, supports “partitioning” nation into separate tracts for separate race groups.

Strategy: Works within parliamentary system; seeks new elections to test National Party mandate for reforms; says it opposes violence but understands frustration of whites who use violence.

History: Founded in 1982 in break from National Party, which it accused of “selling out” white South Africans by working toward integration.

AFRIKANER RESISTANCE MOVEMENT

Leader: Eugene Terreblanche

Ideals: One of many right-wing groups that support idea of Afrikaner homeland, it opposes any integration.

Strategy: It has own military wing, says it is preparing for war with blacks; has violently disrupted National Party meetings. Several supporters have been arrested for attacks on blacks, bombs planted at National Party offices and stealing and stockpiling illegal weapons.

History: Formed in 1979, it is not a political party but a neo-Nazi organization of white South Africans.