Negotiations about What in South Africa?

Negotiations about What in South Africa?Author(s): Heribert Adam and Kogila MoodleySource: The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Sep., 1989), pp. 367-381Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/161098 .

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The Journal of Modern African Studies, 27, 3 (1989), pp. 367-38I

Negotiations About What in South Africa?

by HERIBERT ADAM and KOGILA MOODLEY*

WIDESPREAD scepticism prevails that the proper conditions for

negotiations do not as yet exist in South Africa. Yet, most major parties to the conflict (with the exception of the Pan-Africanist Congress) flaunt negotiations as the magic formula for settling a seemingly intractable dispute. From the western governments to the Soviet Union, from the African National Congress to the National Party, all advocate

negotiations. In I989 the N.P. fought a successful election campaign to receive a mandate for talks. The A.N.C. issued a lengthy policy document that aims at preparing its constituency and setting well- known preconditions (lifting of the emergency, release of political prisoners and return of exiles, free political activity). Even the Conservative Party admits that it eventually will have to negotiate the boundaries of a Boerestaat when it 'opts out' of an increasingly integrated, undivided one-nation state.

Few protagonists, however, have bothered to think realistically about how a compromise settlement would turn out. The refusal to

speculate about the outcome of negotiations does not prepare the various constituencies for compromise. Instead, they are still encouraged to view negotiations as talks about surrender, or alternatively as astute manipulation and the entrenchment of

preconceived solutions. Neither side so far has educated its supporters in the art of open-ended compromise. Instead the antagonists mutually demonise each other.

None the less, there are essentially five distinct alternatives being advocated: (i) the National Party insistence on group rights in a multiracial state, with various variants of laissez-faire economic policies, (2) the socialist vision of a centralist economy, (3) partition as advocated by the ultra-right, (4) transitional bi-communalism, and (5) non-racial social democracy in a mixed economy. These models will be

* Heribert Adam is Professor of Sociology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, and wishes gratefully to acknowledge a research grant from the Canadian Institute for International Peace and Security. Kogila Moodley is Associate Professor of Educational Studies, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

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HERIBERT ADAM AND KOGILA MOODLEY

briefly reviewed with a more extended critique of bi-communalism, and an analysis of the prospects and obstacles for social democracy in the post-apartheid state.

I

The National Party bases its justification for racial-group domination no longer on ethnic ideology but on technocratic survival and privilege. The 22-page 'Plan of Action' of the N.P. never even mentions such loaded terms as race, nationhood, destiny, heritage, ethnicity, Afrikaans, English, African, or Calvinism. There is only one brief reference to the 'Christian faith' in support of the advocacy of

supposedly 'common values' shared by 80 per cent of the population. The current identity of groups itself is questioned: 'The present basis in terms of which groups are defined for the purpose of political participation creates many problems'. The authors advocate 'freedom of association', meaning that a 'a person must be able to change to another group subject to the consent of the recipient group'. This

phraseology leaves voluntary racial groupings (whites) entrenched, although a group for which South African citizenship is the only qualification is also proposed. Since the programme constitutes an election manifesto, the party must obviously expect its voters to share these sentiments.

The interesting question is: Does the absence of ethnic legitimation of groups reflect supreme self-confidence in the persistence of racial

categories that can be taken for granted? Or does the technocratic reference to 'democracy', 'civilised norms', 'negotiations', 'free

enterprise', 'safety and harmony', and 'depoliticised deadlock-braking mechanism' in a state 'in which cultures and interest differ' herald the search for an overriding new legitimacy? If the ruling party itself is no

longer willing to justify its domination in ethno-cultural terms, does this reflect a shift to an inclusive patriotism as state ideology rather than an exclusivist nationalist/racial struggle?

The dominant party among whites has now in principle conceded the civic vision of patriotism. The crucial turning point was the

acceptance of Africans as permanent citizens in the urban areas in the late I970S. That meant the end to the dream of partition through 'grand apartheid'. The National Party, however, has so far failed to concede the full implications of common citizenship, particularly universal franchise. By insisting on the untenable distinction between

'own' and 'joint' affairs, Pretoria tries to keep racial control of the

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NEGOTIATIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA

central government. This political schizophrenia lies at the heart of South Africa's legitimation crisis, as the separatist conservatives and non-racial democrats have jointly stressed. This twilight status of a unified state in the making has also prevented the emergence of

unifying symbols and shared feelings of belonging to a common South Africa. If such a new non-racial 'nation' is to develop, it cannot rely on ethnic histories but must look to a common future for its cohesive glue. Since the past shapes the future, the project of South African nation-

building faces unprecedented challenges. Unlike the Conservative Party, the ruling National Party has also

accepted the concept of a one-nation state in an undivided South Africa with common citizenship for all inhabitants. In theory, at least, this amounts to a major paradigm shift from the traditional apartheid state. In the last election, 48 per cent of the white electorate supported N.P. candidates, while the C.P. platform of partition, with sovereign nation states for different ethnic groups, received 31 per cent of the vote. The fault-line in white politics now runs between the advocates of an

integrated state versus the supporters of ethno-nationalism in separate states. This split is final and irreversible. The logical outcome would be a two-party system in white politics. Significantly, in his first post- election speech, F. W. de Klerk lumped his National Party support together with the liberal Democratic Party. Had it been a hung parliament the N.P. would have formed a coalition with the D.P., not with fellow ethnics in the C.P. The N.P. now represents the interests of the growing Afrikaner urban middle-class and bureaucratic bour- geoisie. The logic of retaining B.M.W. cars and access to the spoils of multiracial state capitalism is pitted against notions of self-determination in a self-reliant but poorer racial state, with more internal strife and external ostracism.

Will the right-wing face its impending demise passively? Will the security establishment, on which P. W. Botha based his expanding executive state, accept being cast aside under the new regime? When the right-wing police are ordered to clamp down on fellow nationalists, reformed neo-apartheid will be confronted with its most severe test. In addition to a legitimation crisis vis-a-vis the majority, the Government is likely to face a security crisis among its own constituency.

In this predicament, convenient assistance has been provided by the privatisation and free-market policies long advocated by capital and by the Democratic Party, and propagated in such best-selling books as South Africa: the solution (Cape Town, 1987) by Leon Louw and Frances Kendall, published also as Beyond Apartheid: the solution for South Africa

369




(San Francisco, I987). In this model, the state is no longer charged with legitimating the system of production and unequal distribution.

Instead, this function is assigned to the market. Politics, so to speak, are

privatised. A highly decentralised political system with minimal interference in the economy would deflect explosive conflicts from the centre to the periphery. Issues would become depoliticised by being turned into administrative problems in autonomous cantons.

While a good case may be made for federalism and greater democratic participation and freedoms, the hopes of the free-market advocates for such a political solution in South Africa are clearly unrealistic. The struggle is for central state power. No political movement of the dispossessed can allow itself to be cheated out of this prize. After nationalist Afrikanerdom used the state for its own

advancement, the disenfranchised want to rectify their neglect and receive their fair share. Restructuring, in this view, requires control of the state. Given the widespread poverty, it is unlikely that a fledgling consumerism would depoliticise the development demands.

Federalist proposals also labour under the suspicion that they are

designed to sneak the Bantustans into a post-apartheid state. The demand for a united (as opposed to a fragmented) South Africa is

constantly confused with a strong central state, as if a federal state were a divided state. For all these reasons a depoliticised Swiss canton system for South Africa must be seen as a romantic dream and wishful

thinking. II

The socialist vision of power in the hands of a victorious working class envisages that the just society will not be brought about 'by merely changing the mode of distribution within the framework of the

capitalist mode of production ', but considers it 'essential that the mode of production be radically changed' as well.1 An increasing number of the disenfranchised, particularly in the workerist factions of the

Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), adhere to these

beliefs, including large-scale nationalisation. It is astonishing how little Mikail Gorbachev's reforms in the Soviet Union have been noticed in South Africa. The events in Poland or Hungary seem to have bypassed the country. An orthodox South African 'left' is embarrassed rather than motivated by the disintegration of'really existing socialism' in Eastern Europe.

1 Neville Alexander, 'Intersecting Strategies in the Transition from an Apartheid to a Post-

Apartheid South Africa', Conflict Resolution Conference, Friedrich Nauman Foundation/ Institute for Democratic Alternatives, Bonn, 9-I3 September I989.

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NEGOTIATIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA 371

The central control over the means of production has been a failure not because it could not motivate workers sufficiently, as is frequently assumed. A command economy cannot be steered from above in all the

necessary details. The dynamic needs of modern societies escape planning that has no built-in mechanisms to correct mistakes. Such a

system responds by the denial of failure instead of using constant trial and error creatively. However, centrally caused errors are compounded compared with decentralised failures. Under the ossified dominance of the party, the system failed to encourage autonomy and innovative self-

regulation. For all these reasons, the very idea of socialist economics remains in

a world-wide crisis. Given the end of the cold war and the integration of the South African economy into the global capitalist system, the

prospects of socialism in a post-apartheid society look cloudy indeed. Even so, it is unlikely that the socialist vision of equality without the

exploitation of the many by the few will ever lose its universal appeal. However, the A.N.C., let alone Gatsha Buthelezi's Inkatha, does not

advocate socialist restructuring. Its constitutional guidelines eschew

utopianism. Commentators called them 'remarkably conservative'.1 The earlier vague advocacy of nationalisation of key industries in the

I955 Freedom Charter significantly is not repeated 30 years later. While redistribution of wealth is envisaged, it stays within the framework of social democracy. State regulation of a mixed economy is considered the most practical way to achieve an equitable, just society. This socialist modesty may well not reflect the ideological preferences of sections of the A.N.C. membership. However, it indicates the pragmatism of a leadership that wishes to avoid economic chaos at all costs. To all intents and purposes, socialism has been 'put on ice' for a second stage, after national liberation and liberal democracy have been achieved. The need to fulfil the material expectations of a

politicised constituency without disruptive economic restructuring will

put pressure on socialists to compromise with the real power of

capitalists. Zimbabwe has been an obvious example.

III

Hermann Giliomee and Lawrence Schlemmer venture to offer the

compromise formula for genuine negotiations: a power-sharing contract between a non-racial majority alliance and a white minority

1 E.g. Tom Lodge, 'The Lusaka Amendments', in Leadership (Dover, NJ.), 7, 4, I988, pp.

I7-20.




grouping. Both blocs would have guaranteed parity in the legislature and executive for a transitional period, regardless of numbers. It would offer 'African nationalists equal status in the running of the country'.1 On the other side, 'for the period of the transition, the white

community and any other minorities which have the same needs, should continue to elect their own representatives, preferably in some kind of minority alliance .2

Instead of a tricameral parliament with excludes the majority, the

proposal amounts to bi-partisanship with the inclusion of everyone. However, the essence of the anti-apartheid movement would be severely compromised by its agreement to the continuation of racial representation. The A.N.C. would hardly survive such a compromise without splitting. It already has become vulnerable to strategic outbidding by even considering to enter the negotiations. Giliomee and Schlemmer justify their proposal on the ground that constraints on

power will be equal and mutual.

This may fall far short of the ideal of liberation under an unconstrained popular leadership, but it can conceivably offer joint 'second prize' as an alternative to a decade or more of armed struggle, exile, the impoverishment of the black masses and possibly the destruction of the major economy on the continent.3

Despite such noble intent of accommodation in bi-communalism, 'national dualism' would conspicuously perpetuate minority privileges. First of all, far from transcending nationalism, constitutional dualism would institutionalise invidious group affiliations. It would, admittedly, be an advance compared with the present situation where non-racial or

'groupless' representation does not exist at all. A transitional period may also be useful and necessary as an educational device. However, the disadvantage of further uncertainty and instability, with another constitution of doubtful legitimacy, would clearly outweigh the

advantages of luring more whites into political concessions to the non- racial cause. Racial bi-communalism seems as illegitimate as a qualified franchise: full of good intentions but not realisable in practice. It may well be better to let the conflict ripen.

Secondly, communal representation of whites perpetuates an order in which the minority ultra-right and the reformist majority are

1 Hermann Giliomee and Lawrence Schlemmer (eds.), Negotiating South Africa's Future (London and Basingstoke, I989), p. I5I.

2 Hermann Giliomee and Lawrence Schlemmer, From Apartheid to Nation-Building (Cape Town, I989), p. 226.

3 Giliomee and Schlemmer (eds.), op. cit. p. I5I.

372




lumped together. The concept of a 'white community' is as

questionable as that of a black community. It makes a caricature of the

deep political cleavages among Afrikaners to attribute to them 'a vivid sense of oneness of kind'.1 In each camp, class issues have gained increasing salience. These are often couched in strategic divisions, which reflect differential discrimination but appear as racial or

community conflicts. Unlike conflicts where two mutually exclusive nationalisms confront

each other (Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland), in South Africa racial nationalism is challenged by liberalism and socialism. The non-racial

camp comprises adherents of various cultural traditions, and even the

ruling Afrikaner 'nationalists' are increasingly forced to co-opt members of other racial groups into their formerly exclusive realm. This further diffuses a racial conflict into a dispute between privileged power-holders and excluded subordinates in the same state. Due to the

heterogeneous composition of each camp, intra-group conflicts fre-

quently override the inter-group divide. The intensity of strategic disputes between the Government and its ultra-right opposition testifies to this constellation, as does the fighting between the anti-apartheid Inkatha and the A.N.C./United Democratic Front and Africanist/ Azanian tendency.

Therefore, a compromise formula that grants rights of political participation to non-exclusive minority parties through proportional representation and other guarantees, accords far better with democratic justice than bi-communal parity. As long as political parties are not

racially exclusive, but based on common interests and ideologies, their

'group rights' can indeed be entrenched, as they are in many western democratic constitutions. Moreover, if' powerful white identity needs' are as volatile as many analysts, including ourselves, suspect, it would be more effective to neutralise them in a separate symbolic state than to institutionalise racial interests in the same policy.2

Entrenching racial groups in the political system and bureaucracy would allow a fifth column to destroy non-racial democracy, just as a conservative civil service undermined the rule of social democrats during the Weimar Republic in Germany. Therefore, it seems more feasible to have an incorrigible racist minority outside the borders of a post-apartheid South Africa than inside. If the boundaries of a sovereign 'white Bantustan' in the Transvaal were to be negotiated, an

1 Herman Giliomee, 'The Communal Nature of the South African Conflict', in ibid. p. I I8. 2 Giliomee and Schlemmer, op. cit. p. 243.

373




infinitely more prosperous non-racial state with the wealth of the Rand as its core would reduce the racial entity to a dependent colonial relic. Bi-communalism and power-sharing between two nationalist groupings arrests the prospects of non-racialism. It attaches advantage to communal mobilisation (even only for a limited period of'at least ten

years'). In so doing, it does not transcend communal attachments but freezes them.

Transitional bi-communalism further cements class distinctions in ethnic terms. The continuing conflict between 'haves' and 'have nots' will increasingly appear in an ethnic guise, as a minority of wealthy whites and Indians against a mass of poorly paid or unemployed blacks. Bi-communalism will give impetus to notions of racial capitalism by institutionalising this class perception in the political realm. In this

view, the downfall of apartheid means the inevitable eclipse of capitalism. The chances of a non-racial capitalism or social democracy are further undermined by such ethnic power-sharing which overlaps with race and class.

Finally, transitional bi-communalism is deferring to blackmail. Why should 'parity' or equality in representation and decision-making be

granted to a 'minority alliance' that 'will defend the interests of

property owners, business and many of those employed by the existing state'?1 The reason that it would otherwise not concede control, or wreck an accord, is a pragmatic concession to immoral power. Whatever concessions have to made to existing power relations, regardless of morality, must be intrinsically justifiable and generalisable on other grounds than blackmail.

IV

A transitional period or buffer time between exclusive ethno- national dominance and inclusive patriotism aims solely at the dominant group. It is meant to ease the pain of the loss of monopoly power and educate the dominant constituency in the benefits of civic

rights for all. By practicising non-racial co-operation under the control of the old masters - like the Turnhalle in Namibia or the Muzorewa

interregnum in Rhodesia, so the reasoning goes - resistance against too sudden a transformation is minimised. Whites will be 'acclimatised'.2

Such legitimate concerns, however, neglect the perceptions of the subordinates. They are more important than the ruling group for

2 Ibid. p. 225.

374

' Ibid. p. 226.




legitimising a settlement. For the subordinates, transitional parity merely means more of the same old domination in a new guise. Incremental progress never receives the credit it deserves. It further discredits the political process as clever manipulation and co-optation. The same reforms from above, and identical concessions gained from

below, have fundamentally different implications for identification with the system of governance.

Therefore, those interested in reconciliation must be able to tolerate and even allow for the 'victory' of the other side. The Egyptians did not win the October I973 war against the Israelis, and the

Cuban/Angolan forces did not defeat the South Africans at Cuene Cunavale in 1988. But without the perception of victory among the

Egyptians and Cubans, Sadat would not have been able to visit

Jerusalem, and Castro might not have been willing to pull out his

troops from Angola. The secret of successful negotiations lies in giving all parties the legitimate impression that they have made 'gains', compared with the consequences of a continuing status quo.

Transition periods rob the political transformation of the necessary drama. Incrementalism, as useful and necessary as it may be, fails to elicit legitimacy. Therefore, a sharp, dramatic change, even if only symbolic, seems far more conducive to accommodation than a cautious, drawn out, reluctant reform. The reception of'reform-apartheid' during the last decade should prove this assessment.

As far as public opinion is concerned, politics boils down to the

manipulation of symbols. Legitimacy, as almost any other

conceptualisation of reality, amounts to a social construction; imagined bonds sustain social mobilisation. Successive Afrikaner governments have not shown themselves particularly apt in the manipulation of

symbols. Under Connie Mulder and Eschel Rhoodie, Pretoria crudely tried to buy acceptance abroad. Under P. W. Botha's permanent emergency and destabilisation policy, the Government tried to bully opponents into compliance. In order to regain acceptance in the world, Pretoria may have to reconcile itself to a symbolic victory of its

opponents. As long as at least the Frontline states do not testify to such a victory of a universal cause, South Africa will remain on the moral agenda of the world.

The victory of non-racialism over apartheid does not imply capitu- lation, reversal of tyranny, or subordination of Afrikaner culture. As long as whites join a new inclusive South Africanism, instead of sticking to an exclusive racial nationalism, they self-define themselves as part of the new majority.

375




The invaluable merit of non-racialism in the Charterist tradition lies in its acceptance of such civic inclusivism. Instead of a declining demographic minority, clinging to ever-more dubious ethnic-group rights, individuals assert their influence on the basis of universal

competence in alliance with like-minded people from other cultural

backgrounds with the same value-system. In South Africa, unlike other divided societies, a vast majority on

both sides agrees theoretically on a secular multi-party democracy in a unified state. Democratic majority rule, however, can itself be undemocratic if ethnic minorities are permanently frozen out of

political decision-making. It is the nature of the groups that make up South African society which lies at the heart of the constitutional

controversy. Could it be that South Africa with an advanced, interdependent economy constitutes far more of a common than a

plural society? A compromise settlement through genuine negotiations can then be envisaged. If the conflict is not over mutually exclusive identities but power and privilege, a bargain can be struck where both sides benefit from a political resolution. The definition of a nationalist conflict most likely precludes such an outcome.

v

In this respect the 1989 election provides encouraging clues. The

gains of the liberal Democratic Party, now comprising 20'5 per cent of the popular vote, show an increasing minority of whites defining themselves as part of the majority. While the D.P. failed to make a

breakthrough into Afrikaner ranks (only 9 per cent of Afrikaner voters

supported the party's candidates in the limited constituencies with this

opportunity), it carried the English urban upper- and middle-class. This segment represents by no means a 'leftist' formation as has been

frequently portrayed. The D.P.'s free-market policies of minimal state interference and association with capital interests place the party to the

right of the Government in economic policies. However, its unequivocal commitment to non-racialism, universal franchise, and individual

rights in a constitution negotiated with representatives of all groups show a decisive lack of concern with identity. It is significant that 80

per cent of English university students and up to 25 per cent of

university-educated Afrikaner professionals broadly agree with this

position. When, therefore, substantial sections of the opinion-makers and economic power-holders in the dominant group have departed from group-based definitions of nationalist competition, the South

376



NEGOTIATIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA 377 African conflict no longer resembles inter-communal strife elsewhere. In Israel, for example, a fundamental consensus exists across the Jewish political spectrum that Israel should remain a Jewish state, and party differences do not affect this shared national self-definition. Likud and Labour Party squabbles, therefore, cannot be compared with Con- servative and National Party controversies in South Africa.

The prospects for a social democracy in a post-apartheid era obviously depend on economic growth. Only a government that can fulfil the minimal expectations of a politicised constituency can be expected to be stable. That necessitates some considerable measure of redistribution. Contrary to pure free-market recipes, central state in- tervention will be necessary for setting priorities, although this may not involve large-scale nationalisation. In the context of wealth creation with a high growth rate, a gradual equalisation policy through fiscal measures need not impoverish the formerly privileged. Their slower economic climb from a high income base, however, will have to be

paralleled by a rapid advance of the underprivileged from a low income base. The higher taxes of affluent areas, for example, will have to subsidise the infrastructure of neglected townships. Since the 'have nots' experience increasing benefits from a lower basis, a revolution of rising expectations can be contained within a context of both sides winning from a political settlement. Thus redistribution will not turn out to be a zero-sum operation, where one side loses at the expense of the other. As is widely realised within the A.N.C., wealth creation is

predicated on investor confidence. Together with the restoration of external credit-worthiness, renewed access to formerly restricted world markets, and the mobilisation of internal productivity by a legitimate government after a political settlement, the post-apartheid economy could, indeed, experience a dramatic take-off. The impediments to such a scenario, however, remain formidable as well. A prolonged siege economy within an escalating civil war would destroy the basis for a later growth. Only extremists on both sides, however, dream of rebuilding the paradise from the decay.

More worrying, however, is a scenario in which a post-apartheid government or opposition party would attempt to feed its constituency with symbolic rewards because it cannot 'deliver' materially. Radical rhetoric would compensate for real development because of the huge backlog. Messianic utopianism would aim at repairing a damaged identity, through Africanist populism or counter-racism.

Such a turn of events remains remote, because the Congress opposition has always espoused pragmatic universal values rather than




projected itself as a narcissistic or xenophobic movement. With continued political restrictions, however, it is uncertain how far and how long the A.N.C. can influence a frustrated youth in pragmatic accommodation. The potential loss of a Congress hegemony to nationalist Africanists increases with the emergence of serious nego- tiation politics, unless the movement has the opportunity to educate its

constituency legally and freely. The embarrassing display of self-

indulgent militancy by some students against the liberal crusade to mobilise white voters during the 1989 election campaign reflected a lack of sophisticated political education, as well as splits within the Mass Democratic Movement and the A.N.C.

There is the further possibility that the union movement may not go along with an A.N.C.-inspired social-democratic compromise. At

present strongly influenced by a workerist faction around the Metalworkers Union, the genuine 'socialists now' fear a perpetuation of non-racial capitalism. In order to make a social democratic settlement possible, the union movement too must be brought into its orbit. Unlike during the I950s and I96os, when the A.N.C. and the South African Communist Party controlled the South African Congress of Trade Unions, the unconditional support of populist policies of a broad anti-apartheid alliance by much more powerful independent unions can no longer be taken for granted.

Bringing labour into an informal consensus with state agencies and

employers requires far more enlightened policies of incorporation than South African capital is willing to contemplate at present. Too many enterprises still practise adversarial labour relations rather than the

corporate partnership that has been successfully introduced elsewhere. Unless unions are a real part of workplace and boardroom decision-

making, as they legally are in the German co-determination model, the

highly politicised unions will strive for a restructuring of 'racial

capitalism'. Such a stance will be further fostered by the almost all- white composition of South African management. Appropriate affirmative-action policies to redress this imbalance at every level of the

economy are only now being discussed. The situation in South Africa has been compared to that in Poland

during I987-8: The majority of the population may be rebellious and reject the government, but the government is firmly in power, and neither impressive guerrilla actions nor huge frequent and widespread quasi-insurrectionary demonstrations have been able to alter this fact.1

1 Theodor Hanf, 'The Prospects of Accommodation in Communal Conflicts: a comparative study', in Giliomee and Schlemmer (eds.), op. cit. p. 105.

378




Few could anticipate that hardly a year later the Polish Government had entered into a historic compromise with its opposition. Could de Klerk be aJaruzelski and Mandela a Walesa? But Poland is one nation and not an ethnically divided society, Giliomee and Schlemmer would

reply. But how significant is racial identity compared with the lure of the purse? In Poland a derelict economy forced the compromise. Does the comparatively prosperous South African economy, with its

higher stakes for the dominant minority, hinder or facilitate a similar democratic transformation ?

VI

While formal negotiations between the antagonists in South Africa are a long way off, and their aims are poles apart, informal contacts between the A.N.C. and the Afrikaner establishment have continued to take place since their first encounter in Dakar in July i987. Even Nelson Mandela, despite his imprisonment, has met several Cabinet Ministers for exploratory 'talks about talks'. It was Mandela who demanded the historic meeting with President P. W. Botha shortly before his resignation in August 1989. Normally, a State President does not meet political prisoners unless forced to by a stronger rationale. Such has become the messianic standing of Mandela that he can now almost dictate the terms of his release. He will not leave jail unless conditions are ripe, unless he and his organisation can play a

meaningful role, and in the meantime has been visited by most of the leading activists inside the country. As a result, a 76-page 'Mandela document' outlines a new strategy in light of the serious initiatives that are being taken to draw the A.N.C. into negotiations. Some government planners hope to expose the A.N.C. as 'unreasonable' in this process, perhaps to split the organisation and use rivals for a multiracial internal settlement. This then, it is envisaged in Pretoria, would lead to the readmission of the country into the international community and the lifting of sanctions.

The Mandela strategy anticipates such manoeuvring. By carefully co-ordinating his role with the A.N.C. exiles in Lusaka and with a number of internal leaders, maximum unity is ensured. Mandela counsels his followers to strive for the unity of all black groupings, and for the support of those in the Bantustans who are usually denounced as collaborators. Already Enos Mabwza, the Chief Minister of KaNgwane, has frequently consulted with Lusaka, and recently the leadership of Transkei seems also to be wavering in its loyalty to its sponsors in Pretoria. For the first time again, massive A.N.C.

379




demonstrations have been allowed in Umtata, and the Xhosa homeland of Mandela could well become his solid power-base.

The outstanding question remains whether Buthelezi's Inkatha will be readmitted to the Congress organisation as well. In this respect the

fragile intermittent peace talks in Natal go well beyond their regional significance. While Mandela strongly advocates that the Zulu movement should be brought inside the A.N.C., where Buthelezi had his political home before spliting away in I979, many younger A.N.C. executives in Lusaka oppose such a development.

A perceptive study by the veteran journalist Allister Sparks, The Mind of South Africa (New York, forthcoming), argues that with the

banning of the A.N.C. in 1961 and its turn to armed struggle, the oldest and most legitimate anti-apartheid movement virtually opted out of

politics. At its consultative conference in 1985, the A.N.C. still

envisaged negotiations only about the handover of power. At present, as Sparks point out, we are witnessing the re-entry of the boycott- opposition movement into politics. This process is not about the surrender of one side or the other but about new alliances, bargaining, and compromise. The A.N.C.'s continued commitment to armed

struggle should be little or no obstacle to such a development. It has been largely a symbolic exercise anyway, and the few bombs or mines, which mostly go off at night as a reminder, have actually helped the Government to mobilise its constituency against a 'terrorist threat'. But the symbolic armed struggle has also benefited the A.N.C. It gave an essentially moderate leadership an aura of militancy. Thus the frustrated township youth could be kept in the non-racial camp rather than having them drift away into a nationalist counter-racism or

anarchy. Were the A.N.C. to renounce violence formally, as the Government demands, it would commit political suicide. The A.N.C. must also insist on tangible preconditions for negotiations being met in order to demonstrate to a sceptical constituency the benefits of

negotiations. The crucial sticking point of the eventual bargaining will be

Pretoria's insistence on guaranteed racial-group rights, at least for a

long transitional period. The fallacy of this stance lies in a dwindling minority setting itself up for continuous hostility. In addition, constitutional racial-minority status will prevent whites from mentally adjusting to being part of Africa. Only a small liberal minority realise that a protection of values which many other racial-group members share will be a far better guarantee of individual white security than

racial-group rights. Alas, when the chips are down and the pressure is

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on for a negotiated compromise, a Zimbabwe-type guarantee of

minority representation, regardless of numbers, will probably emerge none the less. Afrikaner nationalism and white security anxieties are

simply too strong to be ignored completely. In the most optimistic scenario of minority representation, a

common-voters roll would at least allow voting across the colour bar; whites could vote for a non-racial, black-led A.N.C. and blacks for a white-led National Party, which would essentially represent conservative interests. That would be a departure from the Rhodesian model. Since many blacks share a capitalist law-and-order orientation, the opening of the National Party to voters from non-white groups would allow it to break out of its racial ghetto. Under such conditions, entrenched minority guarantees, which would apply to all political parties under a system of proportional representation, could indeed be

justified. Three other contentious matters need to be settled: (I) recognition

of property rights with only limited redistribution of wealth; (2) state

guarantees for cultural rights, particularly subsidised mother-tongue instruction in Afrikaans-language schools; and (3) guarantees of

physical security by keeping police and army units under community control. In all three areas a potential compromise formula is conceivable. Since the South African conflict is over power and

privilege, it is bargainable and negotiable. That distinguishes the

dismantling of racial domination from far more intractable communal conflicts elsewhere.

However, once apartheid is abolished, and all South African citizens are enfranchised equally, normal and real politics only begins. The material inequality among the population groups is so staggering, and the development needs are so massive, that any government of whatever ideological persuasion or racial composition faces a formidable challenge. Perhaps, only a broad coalition of national unity, with as wide a backing and consensus as possible, can tackle this task.

Only such a national strategy would be able to keep in check the

separatist ultra-right, as well as the extremist demands for immediate nationalisation and redistribution on the left.

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Documents

Negotiations about What in South Africa?