Apartheid Apocalypse

By Richard Lacayo

On a roadside in the black homeland of Bophuthatswana -- an ersatz nation created by the South African engineers of apartheid -- the two men in khaki lay bleeding on Friday beside their bullet-riddled Mercedes. A third, stretched out beside the car, was dead from gunshot wounds. "Please help us!" pleaded Fanie Uys, a member of the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement, who was hit in the leg. "Please!" cried Alwyn Walfaart, hands outstretched. "Can somebody just get us an ambulance?" Moments later, a black soldier stepped forward. Before a stunned group of news photographers and TV crews, he calmly executed the men with an automatic rifle.

The three would-be warriors had been part of a doomed attempt to defend a remnant of apartheid even as South Africa transforms itself into a multiracial state. One of 10 remote domains created and recognized only by Pretoria's old leadership, Bophuthatswana -- nicknamed "Bop" -- symbolizes apartheid's failed ambition to confine South Africa's blacks in putatively independent tribal homelands. It is home to Sun City, the lavish gambling resort that has been loudly boycotted by many American performers. President Lucas Mangope, who has ruled as a dictator since the homeland was founded in 1977, suffered such a stinging rebuke from his own people last week that on Sunday the South African government announced it was taking control.

In a week of demonstrations, riots and arson, residents had demanded that they be allowed to vote next month in South Africa's first all-race elections. Before bending at last to their demands, a desperate Mangope invited the hapless cross-border incursion from South Africa by thousands of armed white extremists. Expecting to fight the first great battle of a racial war, they careered down roads with guns firing, leaving as many as 12 dead.

The climactic violence came after more than a week of strikes by teachers and civil servants worried about pensions in the event that the homeland stayed out of the elections. On Thursday and Friday protesters swelled the streets, and looters exploded through shopping centers. "This is part of my pension fund," said a smiling young man who called himself Michael as he walked away from a store with a stolen jug of wine. After consultations with A.N.C. leader Nelson Mandela, order was restored when President F.W. de Klerk sent in 2,000 troops of the South African Defense Force, plus additional police units to help negotiate the retreat of the right-wing bands. Estimates of the casualties ranged to as many as 24 dead and 300 wounded.

After the uprising, Mangope vowed to stay in power, but again with the A.N.C.'s blessing Pretoria placed its ambassador to Bophuthatswana in charge of running the homeland until next month's elections. Mangope's troubles also led to the collapse of the so-called Freedom Alliance, an odd coupling of right-wing black and white parties boycotting the elections in an attempt to preserve some of the privileges they had accrued under apartheid. General Constand Viljoen, leader of the Afrikaner Volksfront, just beat the Friday- night deadline to register a new white separatist party called the Freedom Front. Though Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party, missed the deadline, he indicated he may not work to disrupt the balloting, as many have feared.

With armed extremists still licking their wounds, threats to a peaceful vote remain. But many South Africans hoped that De Klerk was right last week when he observed the wreckage of apartheid's twisted hopes in Bophuthatswana: "This is the last chapter of an old, imperfect system."

With reporting by Abbey Makoe/Mmabatho