South Africa Yes!

By Bruce W. Nelan

A victory of such magnitude on an issue so fundamental could easily push a political leader toward hyperbole. But President F.W. de Klerk was not exaggerating a bit when he said in Cape Town after last week's referendum, "Today we have closed the book on apartheid."

Many more books will have to be written before the country's problems are solved. But white South Africans -- including a majority of the Afrikaans- speaking descendants of the original Dutch settlers -- voted resoundingly for continuing negotiations with their black compatriots on a new constitution. At least 85% of the registered voters turned out, and 68.6% of them said yes to the talks, aimed at creating a new political system in which the black majority will participate fully.

Even De Klerk and his government were surprised at the 2-to-1 mandate for reform. A population widely perceived as the most stubbornly racist in the world was effectively agreeing to give up its monopoly on power and share it with a black majority that whites have traditionally feared, persecuted and patronized. "Good and sensible people must be breathing sighs of relief," was the verdict of Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Others agreed. "South Africa is a different country today," blared Business Day, Johannesburg's financial daily. Approved the Sowetan, the largest black daily: "Whites did the right thing."

In spite of the triumph of reform at the ballot box, De Klerk's main negotiating partner, Nelson Mandela, president of the African National Congress (A.N.C.), could not share the euphoria. The country's 30 million black citizens still suffer profound inequalities in housing, education, ( medical care and other basic necessities. As Mandela watched whites streaming to the polls, he said, "I still cannot vote in my own country." But when it was over, he smiled and said at last, "I am very pleased."

White South Africans voted their fears, their hopes and their wallets. Business leaders joined De Klerk's de facto alliance with the liberal Democratic Party, chipping in for a massive advertising campaign that predicted renewed international sanctions and economic disaster in the event of a no vote. One ad, recalling the cancellation of landing rights abroad for South African Airways, depicted a deserted runway with the caption, "Without reform, South Africa isn't going anywhere."

Another ad showed an empty cricket ground and advised, "Without reform, South Africa hasn't got a sporting chance." That was a particularly telling shot. One of the sanctions that most pained and angered South Africans over many years was the ban on their participation in international sports, especially cricket and rugby. In the days leading up to the referendum, a rehabilitated South African national cricket team had won a place in the semifinals of the World Cup. Sport-centered South Africans knew that the team, on its first overseas tour in 22 years, would have to pull out if the referendum failed. More than a few votes were strongly influenced by the thought.

The naysayers to the referendum, led by the right-wing Conservative Party, had little to offer but a return to apartheid. Arguing that the government's course would lead to political and cultural annihilation for the country's 5 million whites, party leader Andries Treurnicht forged an alliance that included the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement, a link that may have damaged the Conservative cause. Former President P.W. Botha, now 76 and retired, also urged a no vote. "I cannot," he said, "support a reform process that leads to the suicide of my people." But even the largely Afrikaner voting district of George, which includes Botha's former parliamentary constituency, went for reform 65% to 35%.

In the end, most whites decided, for their own reasons, that they had to back the government, though clearly many have yet to confront the fact that a transfer of power is likely to be accompanied by a redistribution of wealth within the country. "Change," said golf pro Gary Player, "is the price of survival."

A jubilant De Klerk, welcoming the result on his 56th birthday, called it "the real birthday of the real new South African nation." His position is now immensely strengthened. Until last week he had been trying to enforce his reforms from the top down. But he had lost three parliamentary by-elections in the past nine months to pro-apartheid Conservatives, and he could claim no clear popular mandate to negotiate whites out of their exclusive grip on power.

Now he can. The 2.8 million people who voted could not have been under any illusion about the choices before them. Like Mandela, De Klerk saw the paradox in the all-white vote. "There is an element of justice," he said, "that we who started this long chapter in our history" had been called upon to end it.

More than half of the country's 3 million Afrikaners backed reform, though support from English speakers, who tend generally to be more liberal, was the basis of De Klerk's unexpectedly sweeping success. Of 15 regions, only the Afrikaner bastion of Pietersburg, in the drought-stricken farmland of Northern Transvaal, registered a no, 57% to 43%. Even the blue-collar mining towns around Johannesburg said yes, though by a narrow margin.

While it was a famous victory, the euphoria was short-lived, giving way to the familiar problems of recession, urban crime and political warfare in the townships, where more than 300 blacks were killed in power struggles during the three weeks leading up to the referendum. Confrontation also resumed on the political front. Three days after the vote, Mandela vowed to halt the government's plan to put a 10% tax on basic foods and threatened to engineer a series of strikes and protests "even if we destroy the economy." The government has no right to impose such taxes, he said. "They must get our express approval."

If strikes by black workers could bring down the economy, they probably would have done so years ago. Still, the economy is in serious trouble, battered by sanctions, recession and capital flight. The growth rate has averaged barely 1% a year during the past 10 years. Taking population increases into account, that has actually meant a 1.3% annual loss in per capita domestic output. By the end of last year, 4.7 million adults, or 47% of the work force, mostly black, were unemployed, and the inflation rate stood at 16%.

Though most countries have lifted their economic sanctions, South Africa desperately needs new investment. The A.N.C. says the country would need a 9% annual growth rate to absorb all those entering the labor market. But financial analysts in Johannesburg say growth of even 4% a year would demand about $7 billion a year in investment from abroad. It is slow in coming because of apprehension about the political future and how soon it will arrive. De Klerk wants to get to the future as soon as possible. "We should not waste any time," he says. "The uncertainty that bothers so many will only go away if you put a negotiated solution on the table."

Measurable steps toward that solution began in December, when 19 political groups representing all races created a forum called the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA). It set up five working groups, and one of them reached agreement on "basic principles" involved in establishing an interim government. When CODESA's second plenary session is held next month, A.N.C. officials say, agreement on an interim government could be reached. "It will," says Mandela, "supervise the transition from an apartheid to a democratic state."

Just how the interim authority will be created is still not clear. According to one scenario gaining currency, Parliament could amend the present constitution to transfer power from the all-white Cabinet to a government of national unity. De Klerk, however, has said he must retain control of the government until agreement is reached on the text of a new constitution.

To write the constitution, the A.N.C. is calling for a "constituent assembly," while De Klerk speaks of "a transitional parliament." If negotiations succeed, the two concepts could turn out to be roughly the same. The A.N.C. is hoping to come up with a constitution a year from now, while De Klerk says the parties have until 1994, when the next national election must be held under the present constitution.

Despite continuing public arguments, the two sides have agreed on some of the points De Klerk describes as his "bottom line," including devolution of significant governmental power to provincial and local levels. He predicts that "some tough negotiations lie ahead." The biggest gap is between the A.N.C.'s unyielding demand for majority rule and De Klerk's concept of "power sharing." To him, that must mean constitutional provisions for including minority -- that is, white -- parties in the executive branch and providing them with an effective veto over vital legislation.

De Klerk, wary of the A.N.C.'s long-standing association with Communism, also wants a constitutional provision for a "market-oriented economic system." The A.N.C. opposes the provision but denies it is wedded to a plan for blanket nationalization of South Africa's biggest corporations. "There is nothing in the thinking of the A.N.C. that says we must nationalize," says Thabo Mbeki, one of the group's chief negotiators.

The President has said several times that he regarded the referendum as the country's last exercise in all-white voting. Even so, he has suggested that if the A.N.C. does not go along with his bottom-line items, he would have to submit the outcome of the negotiations to whites for another possible veto. "We will continue negotiating," he said, "until we are satisfied that a new constitution will be able to accommodate the needs arising from the complexity of our society."

De Klerk called the referendum last week for two reasons. The first was to obtain a clear mandate for reform, and he got it. The second was to demonstrate the intellectual bankruptcy of the right wing. On that he was also successful, largely discrediting the Conservatives, but they and those who are even more extreme have not yet rolled over. Party leader Treurnicht insists that "the struggle for our freedom and survival continues" and says he will refuse renewed invitations to join the CODESA talks.

De Klerk's advisers are concerned that some of the 876,000 who voted no may turn to terrorism and cause both physical and political damage. But De Klerk pledges to take a stand against ultraright forces and not to allow them to derail his plans for reform. "I expect a small radical core group will not just lie down and accept it," he says, "and will be thinking of doing some wild things. But that is what the law is for, and we will apply the law."

He now knows the majority of Afrikaners want him to succeed, to restore the country to peace and prosperity and end its pariah status. "Afrikaners have become Africans," says Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, former leader of the liberal opposition in Parliament. "They cannot continue standing apart. De Klerk has said, Forget it. We tried that and it didn't work."

Sampie Terreblanche, a professor of economics at Stellenbosch University, was long one of the ruling National Party's policy planners. He rebelled against P.W. Botha's autocratic rule and helped move the party toward moderation. "There was always this attitude that the world can go to hell," he says. "Now Afrikaners have become aware of the outside world." De Klerk and Mandela are hoping that all white South Africans have finally, permanently come out of the laager and into the world.

With reporting by Peter Hawthorne/Cape Town and Scott MacLeod/Johannesburg