POLITICS

Mr De Klerk crosses the Rubicon while Mrs Thatcher halts at the Elbe

NOEL MALCOLM

We are living in momentous times. One of the last remaining countries to be built on the principles of white colonialism opened has a new chapter in its history. The small ruling minority announced some important concessions which will make it easier for representatives of the majority to compete for power. And, to everyone's surprise, these changes were pushed through by a President who, less than a year ago, was still publicly committed to the continuation of minority rule.

I refer, of course, to the Soviet Union, with its colonial empire (almost the last and incomparably the greatest of the Euro- pean colonies in Asia) and its system of minority rule, the Communist Party. But the news from Moscow has indeed been confusingly similar to the news from Cape Town and Pretoria during the last week. Short-sighted people switching on their televisions may have had some difficulty in telling the two bald-headed and rather nervously smiling Presidents apart. Every detail seems to conspire to remind us of these parallels: when all the newspapers printed the same photograph last weekend of an ANC supporter perched on the head of a giant statue of Jan Smuts, I was startled to see that General Smuts was somehow beginning to bear an uncanny resemblance to Lenin.

Mr Gerald Kaufman, Labour's foreign affairs spokesman, was quick to spot a connection:

Just as the brave people of Eastern Europe brought about the destruction of authorita- rian government in their countries, so the brave people of South Africa are making progress towards the destruction of racialist government in their country. No one else deserves the credit, and no one else should have the effrontery to claim the credit.

This must count as an historic declaration by a Labour Party front-bench spokesman. It is the first time they have completely repudiated the argument that sanctions were playing a role — any role at all — in forcing the South African government to change its policies.

So the 'Sanctions Report' issued by the Commonwealth Committee of Foreign Ministers on South Africa, which describes the sanctions imposed so far as 'a partial success', goes into the wastepaper-basket at Walworth Road. That report's predic- tion that no change would occur in South Africa unless massive new sanctions were imposed has been (like so many of the sanctions it commended) busted wide open. If any economic pressures have influenced Mr de Klerk, they have come not from sanctions but from the three-year debt rescheduling package which South Africa negotiated in 1987. Much of that debt was incurred during the 1980 gold price boom, which filled Pretoria with false optimism about its ability to make rapid repayments. So there, oddly enough, is another Moscow connection: the gold which the Soviet Union has sold heavily to help pay for its military and economic entanglements, and which has therefore kept world prices down, has done far more to damage the South African economy than all the world's sanctions put together.

Have I misrepresented Mr Kaufman's argument? It is difficult to tell — the argument shifts slightly each time you look at it. Here is another of his official pro- nouncements from last week:

When we have a revolution in Eastern Europe . . . Mrs Thatcher says we mustn't relax our guard. But when we have the first chink of light in South Africa, she tumbles over herself to relax what small pressure we're putting on.

As Mr Kaufman has conceded that this small pressure has made no difference, it is hard to see what can be wrong with relaxing it. Or is he, perhaps, making a more abstract point about symmetry and even-handedness? In which case this dec- laration too is historic, since it must be the first time that a Labour spokesman has called for stronger sanctions against the Soviet Union. The only sanctions we main- tain against Moscow are the ones concern- ing military technology. In that small area, relaxing our 'guard' might count as relax- ing 'pressure'; but in all other respects, Mr Kaufman's comparison is meaningless.

And yet the contrast between Mrs Thatcher's reactions to these two different sets of events is not without interest. In both cases she has claimed that her policies have been 'vindicated', and in both cases that claim (if modestly interpreted) is true. But there is already a great difference in spirit between her reactions to the changes in South Africa and Eastern Europe. On the former she has always been clear and forthright about her position, and now there is a new spring in her step. On the latter she has wavered uncertainly between caution and enthusiasm, and now she seems to have lost her way.

Of course she has barely set foot in the maze of South African politics; the world sanctions lobby has presented the main issue to her in black and white (so to speak); opposing is always easier than proposing. In addition, South Africa is one of the few places in the world where she feels entirely happy with the Foreign Office line (thanks partly to a particularly congenial British Ambassador, Mr Robin Renwick). The British policy there, which reties heavily on the role of the Zulu leader, Chief Buthelezi, may begin to unravel once the infighting starts between the various black political groupings.

But, assuming that the Soviet Union has halted its plans for expanding its empire, the political future of South Africa is of comparatively little relevance to the vital interests of this country. What happens in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is ten times more important. And here the ultimate reason for Mrs Thatcher's dither- ing is the one I mentioned in this column last week: her fear of a united Germany. Everyone who talks to her about this comes away with the impression that her underlying concern is the one shared by many ordinary people of her generation the fear that a united Germany is a Germany which goes to war. That, we are constantly told, is 'the lesson of history'.

History's real lessons are a bit more complicated, however. History suggests that countries do not go to war just because they are strong; they do so because they estimate that they can gain a special advantage or redress a special grievance thereby. Germany will not become belli- cose just because she is united; you might as well say that if Britain had a stronger navy we would go round the world again invading coastal areas of Asia and Africa and setting up colonies. Strength is a condition but not a cause of action.

And while Mrs Thatcher wavers over Eastern Europe, important opportunities will pass her by. I am thinking not only of a major campaign, of propaganda and prac- tical help, to proclaim and demonstrate the virtues of the free market. There is also the chance to seize the initiative on the future of the EEC by urging the eventual inclu- sion of the Eastern European countries in what would be a much looser, more purely commercial association — in other words, the sort of Europe she wants.