South Africa The Pilgrim's Slow Progress

By Scott MacLeod/Johannesburg

When F.W. De Klerk took his oath of office one year ago, few predicted that the cautious and conservative lawyer would move so quickly toward ending the scourge of apartheid. But since then De Klerk has been cheered by blacks during a tour of Soweto and booed by right-wing white students at the University of Pretoria.

De Klerk's meeting with President Bush this week -- the first such visit by a South African leader in 45 years -- is the latest measure of how far he has brought his pariah nation. Bush invited De Klerk as a gesture to encourage reform; De Klerk welcomed the chance to put his best case forward, knowing that sanctions will not be lifted until he finally meets the various congressional requirements for doing so.

Because De Klerk's steps have been as substantive as they have been swift, he deserves respect when he pledges a new deal for the country's 28 million blacks. Having freed Nelson Mandela, De Klerk has agreed to release hundreds of other political prisoners and has ended the state of emergency in much of the country. Most important, he and his National Party have started down a road that made De Klerk's predecessors tremble: toward negotiations on a new constitution that will finally enfranchise blacks. If everybody votes in the next election, this son of Afrikanerdom could be the country's last white President.

Now that De Klerk has jump-started the negotiating process, the real question is whether he can engineer the final transition of power. One of the main stumbling blocks will be reconciling, as Mandela has put it, "the demand for majority rule in a unitary state" with "the concern of white South Africa over this demand." De Klerk's proposal for power sharing is to establish a constitutional mechanism that would safeguard "group rights," which sounds like a way of perpetuating privilege for the country's 5 million whites. Nonetheless Mandela recently endorsed the idea that the first post- apartheid government would be a coalition of all major parties.

A more serious obstacle, perhaps, is the escalating violence. For months De Klerk has proved unable to persuade Mandela and the African National Congress to hold peace talks with rival leader Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi on ending the black-against-black fighting that has taken more than 700 lives since mid- August. Although the A.N.C. may include Buthelezi in talks with other black homeland leaders in October, Buthelezi has signaled that the discussions are not the direct talks with Mandela that he has been seeking for an end to the bloodshed. On the other hand, Mandela contends with some justification that right-wingers in De Klerk's security forces are aiding Buthelezi and that the President has been reluctant to put a tighter leash on them. Last week he charged that De Klerk's "Iron Fist" crackdown policies in the townships ignored the problem and that peaceful negotiations were in jeopardy.

Hope remains strong that the current talks about talks will end and real negotiations begin by early 1991. Yet in the absence of a new constitutional order, De Klerk will have to face the white electorate again in 1994. He may thus feel increasingly pressured by party hard-liners to revert to the ways of Pretoria's repressive past if violence bogs down the process of reconciliation and seriously threatens white security.