Time to Take Charge

By Bruce W. Nelan

White-haired, bearded Cronje Tshaka is older than the 82-year-old African National Congress. Now he has outlived apartheid. Clutching his identity book in one hand and his cane in the other, Tshaka, 95, waited patiently in line to vote last week -- like all South Africa's black citizens, for the first time in his life. He shook off offers of help, walking unsteadily but unaided into the polling station in Guguletu, one of the toughest and grimiest of the black townships around Cape Town. Minutes later he emerged, a broad grin lighting his face. "I never thought I would see this day," he said.

Those very words echoed in millions of minds across South Africa last week. In a series of astonishing episodes, beginning with all-race voting from the Limpopo to the Cape of Good Hope, the old South Africa of segregation and oppression dissolved itself and re-emerged as a tentatively hopeful, newly democratic nation. On Wednesday morning at 12:01, the old order formally ended as cheering crowds in the nine new provincial capitals hailed the lowering of apartheid's blue-white-and-orange flag and the raising of a banner with six colors symbolizing the people, their blood, their land, the gold under the ground, the sky -- and white for peace.

At the same moment, the country became whole again. The 10 black homelands, including four that had pretended to independence, designed by apartheid architects as places of exile for surplus people with black skin, were abolished. The armed services became the South African National Defense Force, and will begin to absorb former enemies from guerrilla armies like the A.N.C.'s Spear of the Nation. Things were changing so fast, a South African Broadcasting Corp. interviewer lost track of who was President, Nelson Mandela, who will be sworn in next week, or F.W. de Klerk, the incumbent. He turned from talking with De Klerk to sign off, saying, "Well, there's State . . . former State Pres . . . well, State President de Klerk, Mr. de Klerk . . . not former yet."

Perhaps predictably, a group of bloody-minded white rightists had tried -- and failed -- to disrupt the process of change. They had launched a campaign of small bombings against railways, power lines and A.N.C. offices in the conservative farm region west of Johannesburg. Then last week they detonated powerful car bombs in downtown Johannesburg, in neighboring Germiston and at the international airport, killing a total of 21 people and injuring more than 150. By the end of the week the police had rounded up 34 suspects, all members of the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement.

Voters, especially blacks eager to embrace the day of their liberation, were not deterred. The election, astonishingly peaceful, succeeded beyond all preparations. Lines of determined voters stretched a mile and more at polling places. Many polls opened hours late or ran out of ballots or the invisible ink used to mark the hands of those who had already made their choice. The ballots, printed weeks ago, did not include the last entry in the race, the Inkatha Freedom Party, and had to be updated with paste-on stickers; to ensure fairness, Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi demanded a fourth day of voting. While exasperated thousands waited, election workers gave puzzled first timers impromptu lessons in how to mark a ballot. Mandela said some of the ballot shortages looked like outright "sabotage," and he too called for another day of polling. At last the election officials requested and got an extension of the voting, originally scheduled to end Thursday, into Friday in several parts of the country.

Neither the terrorists' bombs nor the confusing logistical snarls had a significant effect on the voters' turnout or their enthusiasm. The night before she went to vote, Gladys Mswele, 60, a farmer in the hilly country north of Durban, did not sleep well. "I was thinking about this all night," she said, as she rose before dawn to walk the two miles to the main road, where she patiently waited for transport to her polling place. "This is our day." Seven hours later, she made her X next to the party of her choice. Voting, she said, as she rested after the long journey home, "is hard labor. But we have done our duty." On Saturday A.N.C. Secretary-General Cyril Ramaphosa confidently predicted a 60% landslide for his party.

The surprise was not that the election was carried out well but that it happened at all. Here was a white government, still with a monopoly grip on political power, handing over control of the country to the black majority it had held in servitude for 300 years. It was an event without historical precedent in the days of sweeping decolonization in Africa three decades ago, or even in 1980 when the former British colony of Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, because 5 million former rulers are not leaving.

South Africa's whites had methodically segregated blacks, paid them a pittance, ignored their housing and barely pretended to educate them. Blacks were not second-class citizens but third or fourth class. Suddenly last week, by agreement, the whites stepped back and passed the government to that eager but ill-prepared majority. "I feel a sense of achievement," said De Klerk, the Afrikaner who made himself into the country's last white President. "My plan has been put into operation."

Now the victors must govern the country they have won. It is up to Mandela and his comrades to set the course. They must finish the task of dismantling the apartheid structures, reforming bureaucracies and constructing a unified, multiracial South Africa. "We are starting a new era," said Mandela, after casting his vote outside Durban, "of hope, of reconciliation, of nation building."

It will not be easy, for a variety of reasons.

BLACK EXPECTATIONS. Millions of blacks, mostly poor and illiterate, went to the polls and, with a few strokes on a piece of paper, took control of their own future. It is their plan that matters now. The A.N.C. will be judged primarily on its handling of the national economy, because if that collapses, political and social reforms have little chance of growing. The A.N.C. will succeed only if it can, in the current township phrase, deliver the goods. If Mandela and his colleagues fail to show they are making progress, the long- ! suffering black majority may turn against them and follow other, more radical leaders who promise more.

Among whites the term "black expectations" raises the specter of vastly increased taxes or even seizure of their comfortable homes and swimming pools. But for most blacks -- at least in the short term -- expectations begin at a far more basic level, with services that would be simply assumed in an industrialized country. But apartheid has left them with almost nothing: the great majority live in such desperate poverty, in dusty, refuse-strewn townships or gritty rural backwaters, that their dreams are of clean water, paved streets, garbage collection, sewers.

A bit further in the future are their freshly renewed hopes for steady jobs, well-lit houses, modern schools, neighborhood clinics. Few delude themselves that a mansion and a Mercedes are at hand, but almost all expect -- even demand -- some visible improvement in their everyday life. "There is a transfer of power taking place to the toiling masses of this country," says Voice Mabe, a trade-union worker in Soweto. "From the end of April, there will be drastic changes."

Some of South Africa's whites fear that their black fellow citizens will visit on them the same codified cruelty they inflicted on the blacks. "Those who have followed our policy generally," Mandela insisted, "will dismiss those rumors without hesitation." No doubt some of the 30 million blacks would savor a taste of revenge, but for now they are a small minority.

ON-THE-JOB TRAINING. Now that the voters have spoken, the A.N.C. will dominate the five-year life of the new government of national unity. It will share the Cabinet at least with the National Party; De Klerk is expected to be a Deputy President.

But the A.N.C. was a liberation movement for more than 80 years and fought its battle for equality with boycotts, protest marches and occasional sabotage; it has been a registered political party only since February. It will have to learn the arts of constitutional governance, legislation, political compromise, as it goes along.

Once his ballot was in the box on a schoolhouse porch in Inanda, a township soaked with the blood of battles between the A.N.C. and Inkatha, Mandela very quickly stepped into his new role as leader of the nation -- all the nation. "Our message," he said, "is that the basic needs of the masses of the people must be addressed. These are our priorities." At the same time, he had words of reassurance for whites. "We are concerned about giving confidence and security to those who are worried that by these changes they are going to be in a disadvantaged position," he said. Perhaps aware he was sounding very lawyerly, he then quoted from his speech at his trial 30 years ago: "I cherish the idea of a new South Africa where all South Africans are equal, where all South Africans work together to bring about security, peace and democracy in our country."

South Africa offers him plenty of room to make highly visible improvement. The problems are so enormous they cannot be eliminated in the short term, but almost any tangible effort will help. Most of the country's black citizens are without electricity or running water at home. Eight million live not in houses but in the squalor of squatter shacks. About 18 million black families earn less than $220 a month. Half the black population is illiterate and half its work force has no job. Development experts say the national economy must grow at 3.5% a year to make even a dent in joblessness; the growth rate this year is expected to hover between 2% and 3%.

WHO PAYS THE BILL? Though the A.N.C. has cast off most of its earlier Marxist affection for planned economies, it does have a five-year plan to address what Mandela refers to as "the basic needs of the masses." It is a 147-page document called "The R.D.P: The Reconstruction and Development Program," a blueprint for reorganizing and democratizing the society. At its heart is an $11 billion economic-development program that promises to provide employment and job training for 2.5 million people in public-works projects. It aims at putting up a million new houses, providing a million others with running water and flush toilets, and bringing electricity to 2.5 million more homes. The plan provides for free and compulsory schooling for children and adult education for millions of blacks who learned almost nothing under inferior "Bantu education." It also calls for diverting public-health funds to provide and improve clinics in the poorest areas.

Trevor Manuel, the A.N.C.'s economic chief, asks the key question, "How much is all this going to cost?" White businessmen are likely to add, "And do you propose to pay for it by soaking the rich with big tax increases?" Manuel replies that the development program is relatively modest and can be financed at projected levels with a portion of the present government's budget. Further, he argues, some of it can be paid for by cracking down on corruption, cutting defense spending and collecting taxes more efficiently. "The kind of South Africa we can build," he says with a smile, "is one where parents in Australia and New Zealand would have to hold their children back from emigrating here."

Many white liberals believe the idea is not entirely farfetched. They point out that the A.N.C. will be taking office but not taking complete power. It will be restrained from extreme measures, even if it wanted to take them, by other social forces like the white-dominated business sector, the civil service, the police and army, and the nine new provincial governments. The country's democratization, says Hermann Giliomee, a leading Afrikaner academic, is "a bold and brave experiment with a real chance of success." A.N.C. spokesman Carl Niehaus points to purely pragmatic limits on policy: "In order to keep the country afloat, to get economic growth, to avoid further flight of capital and skills from the country, you have to play it that way."

To its credit, the A.N.C. is cautious about adding to the nation's debt burden. Thabo Mbeki, who will probably be First Deputy President and heir apparent to Mandela, said in an interview with TIME last week that the incoming government has two immediate goals. First, it intends to write a budget that will reassure the international financial community that the A.N.C. is not going to borrow heavily. Second, it hopes to round up early commitments of aid money from friendly governments. "It will be very good if we can generate a billion dollars from around the world," Mbeki said, "that can go into projects that will produce relatively quick results." He hopes Mandela can soon announce "that we have commitments to enable us to build 50,000 houses within a short period without additional government borrowing or raising taxes."

PROMISES, PROMISES. In a televised debate before last week's election, De Klerk declared, "The A.N.C. and the National Party promise the same thing. The real test is who has a plan to achieve it." As leader of the parliamentary opposition, De Klerk is preparing to argue that the A.N.C.'s calculations do not add up. His National Party analysts say the development plan is more likely to cost $19.7 billion rather than $11 billion in its first year alone. He also says the popular idea of skimming billions off the defense % budget is not likely to work if the A.N.C. persists in its plan to add 12,000 of its guerrilla troops to the armed forces and intends to provide tight security.

Under the interim constitution, any of the 19 parties on the ballot that receives at least 5% of the vote is entitled to a seat in the new Cabinet. In any case, as one of his confidence-building measures, Mandela intends to keep present Minister of Finance Derek Keys and Central Bank director Chris Stals in his government of national unity. Keys is an optimist about the transition. "From an economic point of view," he says, "I think it is going to work very well." Even so, Keys is worried that the A.N.C. development plan was put together as a wish list without figuring carefully what each government department can actually spend.

Keys says there is no disagreement about first principles: "Jobs. If we can't run an economy capable of creating jobs, then we will be thrown out. And so will every other government that suffers from that defect." But differences have already cropped up on how job growth is to be achieved. The A.N.C., says Keys, is unable "to perceive what a growing economy could really do." Its leaders tend to "feel they have to take away things from certain sectors in order to give things to other sectors." He insists that if the economy is going to grow at a high rate, it must "offer something to everybody." In spite of such discussions, Keys is encouraged, he says, that the A.N.C. does not seem to be coming in bent on filling ideological prescriptions in economic policy.

FAULT LINES. Once Mandela's Cabinet is announced, the unity government is likely to show significant lines of stress. It will probably include Communist Party chairman Joe Slovo -- an interesting prospect for white officials who long used the fear of communist encirclement to justify apartheid policies. No fewer than 16 of the top 50 names on the A.N.C. parliamentary election list are members of the Communist Party. While they have forsworn Stalinism, Slovo still argues that "only under socialism could you have a combination of political and economic democracy."

Another brewing problem is the possibility that Mandela's estranged wife Winnie might get a minor Cabinet post. Though she was convicted in the kidnapping of a township youth who was later murdered, she scored an upset last year in winning election as head of the A.N.C. Women's League. This year the party put her high on its list for a parliamentary seat.

LACK OF DISCIPLINE. This sort of thing highlights a critical weakness in the A.N.C. leadership: accountability. The party's own bylaws bar convicted criminals from holding office. Nevertheless, Winnie Mandela was allowed to take a prominent role. Oddly, Mandela defended the inconsistency by arguing that it was somehow only democratic to let her pursue her political career in spite of the rules. "Democratic culture in the A.N.C. is deeply entrenched," he said. "What the people decide, we accept." Mandela and his colleagues have also gone easy on several A.N.C. officials implicated in killing and torturing prisoners in the organization's detention camps in other African countries.

Mandela may simply find it impossible to discipline the wife who suffered so much during his 27 years in prison. Or he might prefer to have her in his government where he can keep an eye on her, since she has staked out a separate role as leader of the most militant and potentially violent of the township proletariat -- especially the gun-toting youth gangs. While the A.N.C.'s top echelon is mostly moderate, almost 50% of its 1 million rank-and- file members are in the militant camp. If reforms begin to slip and there is no tangible progress in a year or so, Mandela may find his fiercest challenger is his fiery, camouflage-clad wife. "Winnie," says Tom Lodge, an authority on South African political movements, "is an instinctive populist. She will tell the masses what they want to hear."

THE THREAT OF VIOLENCE. One worry that unites all South Africans is fear of crime. The pre-election bombings failed to shatter the elections partly because violence is already out of control in black shantytowns and white suburbs alike, where burglaries, carjackings and robberies are everyday events. The incidents often have nothing to do with politics, and they scare everyone. Mandela may be planning something like a law-and-order crackdown: he was an advocate of the state of emergency that was imposed in Natal province last month, and he has been talking more and more about enacting strict gun- control regulations. Right-wing whites and township gangs can be expected to resist them.

At the final A.N.C. election rally in Soweto, when a burst of celebratory gunfire ripped the air, Mandela turned stony faced. "It is clear," he said sharply, "that criminality is deep seated even amongst members of the A.N.C." If he found out who was carrying the arms, he said, he would suspend ! them from membership "because one of our commitments is to ensure gun control." His close colleague Mbeki also says violence must be curbed. One reason is to safeguard "the first impression this new South Africa makes, particularly on the investor community inside and outside the country."

Mandela intends to purge the officers and covert units inside the white-led national police force who have directed assassinations against A.N.C. members and supporters and have supplied Inkatha fighters with weapons. "You've got to find the criminals," Mbeki says. "The threat to democracy does not end with the effort to disrupt the elections. Some of them will take up guns and place bombs." At least one police officer and one reservist were among the 33 whites arrested last week as suspects in terrorist bombings.

As he steps toward the executive offices in Pretoria's imposing Union Buildings, Mandela is preaching what amounts to a sermon of reassurance and inclusion. He stresses over and over that all the minorities -- 5 million whites, 3.5 million coloreds and 1 million Asians -- will be valued for their contributions and have nothing to fear from his government. He says not only that whites should stay, but also that those who left in recent years should come back and help rebuild. "They have knowledge, skills and expertise," he says. "We are going to need them. We are going to rely on them."

Mandela's long walk to freedom has ended in a jubilant, triumphant election week and the liberation he has worked 50 years to achieve. But his second struggle is just beginning. He now shoulders the mantle of the state, and while he will be praised for the things it achieves, he will be held responsible for everything it does not do for the people who expect the most. His plans may yet fail and his hopes collapse. But with his message of reconciliation and the euphoric support of the great majority of his countrymen last week, he was clearly the most presidential man in South Africa.

With reporting by Peter Hawthorne/Cape Town, Scott MacLeod/Johannesburg and Andrew Purvis/Durban