South Africa From God to Mortal

By Michael S. Serrill

Smoke billows from burning houses in the Valley of a Thousand Hills in Natal province, where at least 39 die in clashes among feuding Zulus. In the town of Welkom in the Orange Free State, a black mob surrounds a minibus, hacks to death the six black occupants and sets fire to the vehicle. In the southern Transvaal township of Sebokeng, police open fire on a crowd of 50,000 people protesting high rents, killing perhaps eleven. In Katlehong, east of Johannesburg, war erupts among black taxi drivers, leaving at least 25 dead and scores injured.

Is this the new South Africa promised by the unbanning of the African National Congress and the release of Nelson Mandela? As the A.N.C. prepared for its first meeting with the government of President F.W. de Klerk -- an April 11 session has already been called off by the A.N.C. in protest at the Sebokeng shootings -- the spiral of violence was forcing Mandela to face a sober reality: that he may have wielded more moral authority as the world's most famous prisoner than he does as a political leader in his second month of freedom.

Locked away in jail, where he could not speak publicly or even have his picture published, Mandela was an ethereal inspiration to continued resistance against apartheid. To some South African blacks, however, Mandela out of prison has become an irrelevant figurehead, a dignified gentleman with utopian socialist ideas that have little to do with their daily lives.

Mandela's calls for discipline in the urban black townships have been met by continuing terror from the young warlords who exert life-and-death power in those hopeless precincts. His appeal for children to return to school after a sporadic six-year boycott has been widely ignored. And his plea for the combatants in Natal to "take your guns, your knives and your pangas and throw them into the sea" was answered by even bloodier fighting in the rolling Zululand valleys.

Before the government legalized the A.N.C. in February, the group had argued that its underground network of agents could quickly organize control in the black townships. As it turned out, the A.N.C. enjoys less allegiance than it claimed. Moreover, Mandela has been sending out a mixed message, calling at once for peace and for a continuation of the "armed struggle" against apartheid.

Mandela's reduction in rank from antiapartheid god to mortal man was predictable. "When he was still in jail, there was nothing that he could do wrong," says Willie Breytenbach, head of African studies at the University of Stellenbosch. "It is almost as if there has been a decultification of Mandela." Veteran liberal Helen Suzman says Mandela has been hurt by his inability to stop black-on-black violence. "People who were unreservedly delighted at his release have become a little uneasy," she says.

Mandela's damaged stature has achieved an important aim of De Klerk's white government: to demystify the A.N.C. and make clear that Mandela is only one of many black players. Before his next session with the A.N.C., De Klerk plans to meet with the leaders of the country's six self-governing black homelands and with the chairmen of the ministers' councils of the "colored" (mixed race) and Indian chambers to discuss "the structuring of the process of negotiation." The talks with the A.N.C. will set the ground rules for future bargaining on majority rule that will presumably include other nonwhite groups.

But there is no single black agenda for postapartheid South Africa, and nowhere is that more apparent than in Natal, where for the past three years the inhabitants of the KwaZulu homeland have been killing one another. On one side is the A.N.C., the United Democratic Front and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, whose vision is of a unified black majority taking over the reins of power. On the other is Zulu chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, president of the 1.5 million-strong Inkatha Movement and an old antagonist of the A.N.C., who has a strong investment in the traditional tribal and economic structure.

The violence last week was triggered when vans and taxis returning Inkatha members from a rally in Durban were attacked near Pietermaritzburg by stone- throwing youths loyal to the A.N.C. In three days of clashes, hundreds were injured, villages were burned, and thousands fled.

Buthelezi will meet with Mandela, perhaps as soon as this week, to try to restore peace to Natal. But a rally to be addressed by the two black leaders was called off, and few hold out much hope for the talks. Last week Buthelezi dismissed the power of the A.N.C. as a set of "myths that have now been exploded." Obviously miffed that he was not to be included in De Klerk's session with the A.N.C., the Zulu chief predicted that at the first sign of trouble the A.N.C. would "pack its bags and go home." The comment does not bode well for black cooperation as South Africa tries to negotiate its way to a more enlightened future.

With reporting by Peter Hawthorne/Cape Town