At 11th Hour, a Big Gain for S. Africa : Election impasse is ended as Zulu chief yields

On the eve of South Africa’s historic first all-race election, Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi has blinked. After two days of intense meetings with President Frederik W. de Klerk and African National Congress President Nelson Mandela, Buthelezi finally called off his obstinate boycott of next week’s balloting.

In a welcome albeit last-minute deal brokered by an African mediator, Prof. Washington Okumu of Kenya, Buthelezi dropped his uncompromising demands for parochial changes in the constitution. He also relinquished his self-centered insistence on postponement of the April 26-28 election.

The eleventh-hour agreement is expected to curb election-day violence, which would discourage voting. The compromise may also reduce the internecine fighting between supporters of the ANC and Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party. Their brutal political rivalry, which resulted in a recent massacre in the financial district of Johannesburg, has left thousands dead or wounded. The killing cannot continue if a free and fair election is to proceed smoothly. In addition, calm is needed to persuade foreign investors to return.

On Tuesday, millions of black South Africans will vote for the first time. The majority of them are expected to vote for Mandela, who undoubtedly will become the next president. They will be joined at the polls by the supporters of Buthelezi. His followers, primarily rural Zulus, will not have to relinquish support for their leader in order to vote. Buthelezi and Inkatha will be on the ballot and are expected to do well in regional elections. A victory would allow Buthelezi and others like him to work from inside the system to promote their causes. That is how democracy is supposed to function.

After the election, international mediators will tackle a particularly divisive problem: how power will be shared between national and regional governments. Buthelezi has a vested interest in that decision because he presides over KwaZulu, a quasi-independent but state-financed black homeland, created as part of the apartheid strategy to separate the races. But his political base soon will be integrated into the new South Africa.

The powerful white minority will be losing what was in effect a monopolistic lock on the electoral process. After the ballots are counted, the newly democratic South Africa will face many challenges, not the least of which is maintaining unity despite racial, tribal, political and economic divides. Buthelezi certainly has been part of the problem. Now that he has put the good of his country ahead of his personal ambition, he must also be part of the solution.