Enemies: Black vs. Black vs. White

By SCOTT MACLEOD JOHANNESBURG

Something ominous was forgotten over the past two years as President F.W. de Klerk went about burying apartheid and accepting praise from grateful citizens and foreign statesmen: even more than in the past, South Africa's 5 million whites and 28.5 million blacks were living in separate worlds. Whites, of course, continued to enjoy the comfort and security of leafy suburbs. At least two-thirds of them were prepared to share governance with blacks -- but not to surrender all their power or any of their wealth. Life in the matchbox townships, meanwhile, became a daily nightmare unimagined by whites. Not only were jobs a rarity because of the recession, but blacks were dying in a spasm of political violence that was deadlier -- at least 8,000 killed since 1989 -- than any before De Klerk took office. Shut out of the country's good life, black South Africans are all the more impatient to acquire the power whites have exercised to their own advantage for so long.

When negotiations between De Klerk's government and Nelson Mandela's African National Congress collapsed last week, it was attributable as much to a collision between these diverging worlds as it was to the failure of the negotiators or the latest massacre of blacks. That is one reason why the breakdown has caused so much anguish among people of all races. After more than two years of progress, they were suddenly asking themselves whether their remarkable attempt at reconciliation might actually fail, and with disastrous consequences. "I can only say," wrote Allister Sparks, the South African journalist and author, "that I despaired for our country."

The immediate cause of the breakdown was the A.N.C.'s indignation over the particularly pitiless slaughter of 42 people in Boipatong, near Johannesburg. Discontent has grown intense in A.N.C. ranks over the ceaseless violence. When Mandela visited Boipatong last week, he and his entourage were taunted by a song that included the lyrics: "While they kill our people, you behave like lambs."

But there are more fundamental reasons for the decision to withdraw from the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA). The A.N.C. is deeply frustrated by both the one-sided power De Klerk has wielded in the negotiations and their failure to yield tangible change.

To the A.N.C., the two problems go hand in hand. Secretary-General Cyril Ramaphosa blamed De Klerk for the massacre, accusing the government of pursuing a strategy that "embraces negotiations together with systematic covert actions, including murder." Survivors of the atrocity accused Zulu migrant workers staying at a local hostel and loyal to the Inkatha Freedom Party of carrying out the killings -- but the survivors also claim that government security forces took part in the attack.

Privately, A.N.C. leaders say they do not believe De Klerk is orchestrating a Machiavellian plot. They understand that part of the problem is a culture of intolerance and factional hostility from which their own members are hardly immune. They do angrily blame the President, however, for cynically doing little to stop the bloodshed in the hope that it will exacerbate divisions in the massive black electorate and hinder the A.N.C.'s ability to build a strong political organization in the townships.

The suspicions are not altogether farfetched. De Klerk has been criticized repeatedly by human-rights groups for not reining in his security forces. Despite previous success in crushing illegal A.N.C. military activities, the government has notably failed to punish the perpetrators of township massacres. Says Helen Suzman, a white liberal and former Member of Parliament: "They have got to get cracking on the security forces and weed out those elements known to be against reform."

De Klerk, moreover, has expressed ambivalence when Zulu war parties known as impis have paraded provocatively through township streets carrying spears and other so-called cultural weapons. Professor David Welsh of the University of Cape Town believes the government is guilty of "gross negligence" for having all but ignored repeated recommendations that could have prevented the Boipatong massacre, such as maintaining police surveillance of migrant-worker hostels.

While it has made similar threats before, the A.N.C. decided to break off negotiations this time because the Boipatong massacre came amid indications that De Klerk was beginning to drag his feet on ceding full-fledged democracy. He started to take a harder line immediately following the March referendum in which white voters overwhelmingly endorsed his reform program. In May, Round 2 of CODESA ended in failure largely because De Klerk's negotiators adamantly insisted on powerful checks and balances amounting to an effective white veto in a future political system. De Klerk seemed to be turning his back on black expectations.

His remoteness was apparent when he unwisely tried to visit Boipatong, only to be forced out of the township by an enraged crowd. As he fled, policemen opened fire and killed three more local people. Rather than make plain his concern for the victims and the developing political crisis, De Klerk flew to Spain on a trade mission.

All may not be lost, however. At a meeting last week of the A.N.C.'s executive committee, officials recommitted the organization to negotiations, provided that De Klerk takes several practical steps to curb the violence: terminating covert operations, closing hostels, banning the carrying of cultural weapons. The committee also proposed that Mandela quickly meet with De Klerk to discuss the crisis, which suggests that the A.N.C. is prepared to bargain.

The Boipatong furor seems to have shaken De Klerk. His security forces moved with uncharacteristic speed in tracking down the suspected killers. Police commissioner Johannes van der Merwe said the preliminary police investigation showed that "certain residents" of a Zulu migrant-workers' hostel were involved but denied that government forces participated. De Klerk also agreed to allow international jurists to join a continuing independent inquiry into the violence. Yet the A.N.C. will expect a more permanent change of attitude on the part of the government toward halting the violence if reform is to have any hope.

Many South Africans soothed their fears by repeating the comforting aphorism that "there is no alternative to negotiations." The talks will probably resume once the tensions caused by Boipatong cool. But a successful conclusion to the talks may depend as much on whether blacks and whites can break out of their separate worlds. In a sermon after the massacre, Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said, "I hope, somewhere, somehow, it will sink into the consciousness of most of our white fellow South Africans that we are human beings who cry when our children die." As long as blacks are allowed, even encouraged, to keep killing one another, neither world in South Africa has a bright future.