S. Africa’s White Voters Face Daunting Choice : Referendum: Supporters and opponents of the reform process conjure rival visions of apocalypse.

After a bitter and emotional three-week campaign, South Africa’s white minority goes to the polls Tuesday faced with a choice between two visions of apocalypse.

Vote to end President Frederik W. de Klerk’s reforms, say the president’s supporters, and see the country racked anew by sanctions, Draconian emergency decrees, racial segregation laws, sports boycotts, township revolts and guerrilla war.

But vote “yes” for De Klerk, say the president’s opponents, and watch as he hands over the country to the African National Congress and its Communist Party allies.

For many thousands of the 3.3 million eligible white voters, the choice is a difficult one. They are being asked to give up their lives of white privilege in exchange for an uncertain future.

Most political analysts predict a narrow “yes” victory, but they say the right-wing forces have been gaining ground in recent days. Anything is possible.

And no one doubts that it is the most important vote whites will cast in the history of this white-ruled country.

If De Klerk prevails, he says, the pace of power-sharing negotiations with the country’s 27 million blacks will be stepped up, leading to an interim government with black participation by the end of the year. The larger the margin of victory, he adds, the quicker he will be able to move ahead.

If De Klerk loses, he promises to resign and call new white elections, which the right-wing Conservative Party is likely to win. But, in an interview on state-run television Sunday night, De Klerk warned that if whites veto his reforms: “I doubt there will be another constitutional election of any kind in South Africa. There will be chaos.”

A victory for De Klerk will not solve all the president’s problems, however. A strong showing by the right wing will be a reminder that South Africa’s whites remain deeply divided over reform. And right-wing violence is likely to escalate unless De Klerk can lure his opponents to the bargaining table with the black majority.

The referendum, asking whites if they want to continue the reform program De Klerk launched two years ago, has captured the country’s attention and brought daily affairs to a standstill.

New investments have been put on hold, foreign transactions have been postponed and the stock market has ground to a standstill. Home buyers are inserting clauses into their contracts, stipulating that their deals will be voided if a “no” vote prevails in the referendum.

South African whites traveling outside the country streamed to embassies in the United States and elsewhere last week to cast their ballots. The country’s cricket team, which advanced to the semifinals of the World Cup on Sunday, cast a unanimous “yes” vote by absentee ballot from Australia. It was De Klerk’s reforms that earned the cricketers their first World Cup invitation in 18 years.

Any white South African who is 18 years old may vote, and a high turnout is expected. The results will be announced Wednesday, De Klerk’s 56th birthday.

Thousands of white foreigners who have worked in South Africa for five years or more have waited in long lines at government offices to become naturalized citizens just to acquire the right to vote.

The run-up to the election has been characterized by right-wing attacks on De Klerk and bombs at his party offices, skyrocketing black violence and the most expensive advertising campaigns in the country’s history. The national television network has featured a debate on the referendum nearly every night since the campaign began.

Big business has a war chest of $1 million, which it is pouring into full-page advertisements in the country’s dozen daily newspapers urging a “yes” vote. One ad that ran in newspapers over the weekend showed an empty gurney in a hospital hallway and warned voters that if they vote “no” to reform, there will be “no more foreign investment, renewed sanctions, more unemployment and poorer medical care.”

The National Party’s campaign has included ads highlighting the right-wing Conservative Party’s close links with the militant, neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement, or AWB.

The “yes” forces have heavily outspent the “no” forces, which have relied instead on hundreds of town meetings, flyers delivered door-to-door and posters suggesting that De Klerk has become Nelson Mandela’s “klerk” and has already relinquished power to the black ANC leader.

De Klerk himself has delivered 85 speeches in three weeks, crisscrossing the country to address schoolchildren, college students, housewives, retirees, factory workers and community meetings.

Conservative Party leader Andries Treurnicht, 71, and his ally, AWB leader Eugene Terreblanche, also have maintained exhausting schedules, concentrating their efforts on their traditional support base in the rural heartland, where fears of a black-controlled government and unhappiness with De Klerk are high.

The Conservative cause has been bolstered by an upsurge in black violence. Since the campaign began, more than 225 blacks have been killed, and the right-wing hopes to benefit from suggestions that De Klerk has lost control of the country.

De Klerk argues that the current of violence stems from power struggles among rival black groups, and he adds that the cause of that conflict will disappear within months when blacks see their leaders shaking hands on a new constitution.

De Klerk wants a constitution that will grant the black majority, which outnumbers whites 5 to 1, a vote for the first time but that also will entrench legal protection for the white minority and ensure a free-market economy.

The Conservatives favor separate and autonomous white and black countries, a policy De Klerk’s predecessors tried for several decades to implement, without success. And the ANC says it will never agree to divide the country along racial lines.

The campaign waged by De Klerk’s supporters and opponents has focused on dire post-referendum scenarios, creating a mood of widespread uncertainty.

“What will happen if we send the wrong message to blacks?” De Klerk said as he concluded his campaign Saturday night. “It will be chaos, it will be a disaster.”

Although South African law prohibits opinion polling in the final days before an election, the president’s support base appears to have been eroded by black violence, high crime rates, the worst drought in decades and a three-year recession.

The Conservatives also have gained some support among moderate whites with their claim that a “no” vote would not invite renewed international sanctions but would simply slow down the pace of reform and allow whites to vote in a new parliamentary election.