Part of The Solution?

By SCOTT MACLEOD JOHANNESBURG

If South Africa slips deeper into conflict, it might be traced to a morning in June when President F.W. de Klerk attempted to visit Boipatong, scene of the most recent township massacre. Until then he was often greeted in black communities by chants of "Viva comrade De Klerk!" But in Boipatong angry young men blocked his way and called him a murderer. De Klerk fled in the presidential BMW, consternation written on his face.

What has become of the great white hope -- the man who saw the writing on the wall, dismantled the bars of apartheid and promised to shape a new South Africa? The harsh answer dawning on an increasingly militant Mandela and others is that De Klerk, despite his reforms, is not intent on securing justice and freedom for all; if that were true, he would be doing more to end the township violence. Instead, they believe, De Klerk has revealed himself as a ruthless practitioner of realpolitik, determined to preserve decisive white power and privilege.

Even as De Klerk impressed the world with his reforms, some in South Africa feared that the process of change might one day run up against the unwillingness of whites to cede power to blacks. Reform, says Cape Town novelist Andre Brink, went against De Klerk's grain but was forced upon him by circumstances -- black uprisings, international isolation, economic rot. "Now, at the first sign of things not going his way," says Brink, "his real colors are beginning to show -- his conservatism and belief in force as the only way of getting out of a dilemma."

To be fair, De Klerk has never concealed his determination to ensure that the Afrikaner-dominated National Party, in power since 1948, continues to govern. But recent events leave little doubt about his real agenda: not majority rule for blacks but power sharing, with as much power as possible retained in white hands. He has openly boasted that his party will retain control, either by winning the first post-apartheid election or by forging a "Christian Democrat" coalition with other white parties and conservative blacks.

What angers Mandela and the A.N.C. is that De Klerk's strategy is manifesting itself in his proposals for a lengthy transition process calculated to entrench the National Party in a system of power sharing. The A.N.C. believes that De Klerk revealed his true colors at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa, which became deadlocked in May over his demand that, in effect, whites be given a veto in the proposed two-chamber constituent assembly that will draw up a post-apartheid constitution. When the President insisted on allowing a mere 26% to block any constitution favored by the vast majority, the A.N.C. balked at a system that it called "loser takes all."

Revealing as De Klerk's maneuvering has been, it was the Boipatong massacre that prompted Mandela to break off talks. His group charges that the violence is part of a calculated strategy of using the security forces, often in collusion with supporters of the predominantly Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party, to engulf the A.N.C. in factional bloodletting, disrupt its ability to build a strong political machine and discredit it in the eyes of those hoping for a peaceful transition to post-apartheid democracy. De Klerk, they say, is either orchestrating the violence or unable to rein in his apartheid-minded police. Last week brought damning allegations from Dr. Jonathan Gluckman, a pathologist who conducted autopsies on the victims of apparent police foul play, charging that more than 200 were murdered in custody. The physician decided to go public with the information after writing to De Klerk four times to no avail. "I can't stand it any longer," said Gluckman. "The lower rungs of the police are totally out of control."

For all his hopes of winning black support and building a nonracial party, De Klerk has remained largely the President of white South Africa. The reformer has not lived up to hopes that he would also be a conciliator who stood above party politics. The moment he clearly relished the most was not his release of Mandela but his defeat of the ultra-right Conservative Party in the March whites-only referendum on reform. De Klerk interpreted the victory as a mandate to drive a hard bargain on behalf of whites, not as an opportunity for reconciliation with blacks. "His line is not that apartheid was immoral but that it didn't work," says Robert Haswell, a white member of Parliament who recently joined the A.N.C.

De Klerk is in danger of misreading the patience of blacks; their expectations have never been higher. Even if the hands of A.N.C. followers are anything but clean, the responsibility for pushing reform is his: he governs not with the consent of the governed but by virtue of an undemocratic system. It will be South Africa's greatest tragedy if he circles the wagons rather than continuing to the final destination on the road to democracy. In announcing Mandela's release in 1990, De Klerk warned that "the time for reconstruction and reconciliation" had come. That was true then -- and remains true today.