Landslide White Vote Backs End to Apartheid : South Africa: Result rocks the nation. Students dance in the streets. President De Klerk sees ‘future full of challenges’ in constitutional negotiations with blacks.

White South Africans, who have ruled their country’s voteless black majority for centuries, overwhelmingly endorsed President Frederik W. de Klerk’s steps to end white privilege and negotiate the country’s future with black leaders, the count of the votes in a referendum on the issue showed Wednesday.

The landslide in favor of De Klerk’s reforms--68.6% of an unprecedented 85% of the 3.3 million eligible white voters--rocked the country. At taxi stands, black drivers honked their horns in delight. A group of college students, blacks and whites, danced down a Cape Town street, singing “Welcome to the new South Africa!” And millions of black as well as white South Africans breathed a sigh of relief.

“Today we have closed the book on apartheid,” De Klerk told cheering supporters in the garden behind his office in Cape Town. “This is a great day for our land.

“We (whites) who started this long chapter in our history were called upon to close it,” he added. “What started out with idealism in a quest for justice . . . had to be abandoned and replaced by the only policy that could work, and that is power-sharing and cooperation.”

The president, who had promised to resign if he lost Tuesday’s referendum, said whites had “risen above themselves and reached out in this landslide vote to all other South Africans.”

The vote was likely to speed De Klerk’s negotiations with the African National Congress and other black groups, which analysts say could lead the way to an interim government, with black participation, by the end of the year.

And while the verdict also could begin to ease the racial enmity that has resulted from 44 years of apartheid and often-brutal white rule, political analysts warned that it could trigger more violence among angry and frustrated right-wing extremists.

“We face a future full of challenges,” said De Klerk, who turned 56 on Wednesday. “Nothing is going to be easy. But we have laid a foundation on which to build.”

Later, De Klerk told reporters that the vote is “a powerful message that those who have the power really mean it when we say we want to share power in one, undivided South Africa.”

The referendum carried all the major cities in the country and 14 of the 15 election districts by margins ranging from 52% in the rural Orange Free State to 85% in Cape Town. In Johannesburg, the largest city, the referendum was endorsed by 78% of voters.

The “no” forces won only in the northern Transvaal province, the heart of right-wing support, where 57% voted against reforms.

ANC President Nelson Mandela said the verdict “will be a great relief right across the country.”

“We are happy, indeed,” Mandela said. “This overwhelming yes vote means the (negotiation) process is definitely on course. It is also a source of encouragement to all South Africans.”

But Mandela told a news conference that the ANC will not end its support for economic sanctions against South Africa until an interim government is in place.

“Apartheid is still very much alive,” Mandela said, citing racial differences in education spending and pensions.

“Above all, I still cannot vote in my own country,” Mandela added. “I cannot say that we have bade goodby to apartheid if these glaring injustices still exist. This vote means the majority of whites are now prepared to address these problems. And that is a very good development.”

Andries Treurnicht, who led the Conservative Party opposition to the referendum, said black majority rule is now inevitable and he called that “a recipe for clashes and power struggles.” He warned whites that they would have to “pay the bill” for voting yes by being dominated by a government controlled by the ANC and its allies in the Communist Party.

Treurnicht also vowed that the struggle for a separate white-ruled state will continue “with even greater earnestness than before.” He said, however, that his party remains committed to peaceful, constitutional means of opposition, as long as those avenues remain open.

Treurnicht repeated his long-standing refusal to join De Klerk, the ANC and others at the bargaining table.

“I will never enter talks where I have to beg for my freedom from Nelson Mandela,” he said.

The ANC said the vote indicates that right-wing whites do not speak on behalf of the majority of whites, though it warned that militant whites remain “a dangerous and desperate minority.”

World leaders congratulated De Klerk on his victory. President Bush “welcomes this outcome,” said White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater. “White South Africans have voted yes to a just and democratic future, and they’ve said no to apartheid.”

Fitzwater, who reported that Bush telephoned De Klerk to congratulate him personally, added that the referendum keeps alive the negotiating process, which “the United States firmly and fully supports.”

“While the specifics of a transition to a new constitution are for the people of South Africa to decide, we believe that all South Africans must now participate in that process and help draw a new democracy with a free-market economy,” Fitzwater said.

British Prime Minister John Major said the vote “will bring South Africa back into the international community.”

U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali said the results “constitute a major . . . new factor for peace and development throughout Africa.”

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of blacks took to the streets of the country’s cities in ANC-organized marches to keep the pressure on De Klerk’s government. The peaceful protests were staged to coincide with the government’s annual budget message to Parliament, and marchers carried signs reading “Stop Bosses’ Budget Now.”

But blacks from all walks of life welcomed the referendum’s result and expressed surprise that such a large number of whites were committed to negotiating a new constitution that will grant the vote to 27 million blacks, who outnumber whites 5 to 1.

“I think whites have changed,” said Maureen Skhosana, a 35-year-old mother of two in the Orange Free State town of Klerksdorp. “After all these years, they’ve begun to realize that black people are also people. It’s a relief.”

Kenneth Baloyi, 20, a technical-college student in Johannesburg, said he was amazed by the vote. “We are happy and hoping for a wonderful future,” he said.

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