PURGATORY OR HELL
Andrew Kenny on
the hopeless alternatives for South Africa
Richard's Bay ON 7 August, Nelson Mandela announced the end of the ANC's 'armed struggle'. During the next week, 47 people were killed by rampaging mobs in the Coloured areas of Port Elizabeth, nine black men were gunned down at a hostel near Vereeniging, and Winnie Mandela proc- laimed that the suspension of the armed struggle was merely a 'strategy'. None of these events had much effect on the mood of white South Africa, which has now settled into the darkest pessimism I have ever known. The period of bliss after the release of Mandela was very brief, and within six months use of the term 'the New South Africa' has passed from hope through irony to derision.
Even if everything goes well over the next few years, South Africa's prospects are not good. But if things go badly, they are dreadful. To ward off calamity, it is becoming clear that a deal for the New South Africa is in the making. The shape of the table for the negotiations which will decide the new constitution is being discus- sed. Should it be square (seating only the ANC and the National Party Government) or should it be round (seating various other white and black parties)? But in fact the table already looks triangular, with big business forming the third party. The ANC, the National Party and big business were talking to each other long before the release of Mandela and, despite obvious 'Better the Great Satan you know. . differences, have common aims and much to gain from each other. Each wants an orderly status quo in which it will have power, privilege and security. The NP can provide physical control through the white security forces and administrative control through the bureaucracy of the state; big business can provide financial and indust- rial expertise and capital; the ANC can provide a path to international legitimacy and the means of controlling black labour. All three, despite their different origins, are now collectivist and authoritarian. The ANC, reflecting a traditional African in- tolerance of dissent and variety, wants no opposition to its power, especially no black opposition. The NP, descended from the fiercely independent Boers of old who trekked and fought rather than submit to authority, now consists of obedient party hacks and servile state functionaries. The swashbuckling rogues who forged South Africa's capitalism on the goldfields at the turn of the century have now been replaced by grey organisation men who resemble nothing so much as the 'Suits' of Heath's cartoon strip. These are men who use terms like 'corporate image' and 'executive lifestyle' without a trace of self-parody, who love agreements and cartels and hate arguments and competition, and who would be every bit as willing to comply with the ANC's desire for monopoly con- trol over black labour as big business in England was to comply with the Labour Government's closed shop legislation.
This triumvirate of despotic Africans, oligarchic Afrikaners and corporatist businessmen would carve up the New South Africa into zones of influence. Each would respect the zones of the other two and expect help from the other two to defend its own. Certain other groups would have to be incorporated. The Zulu- based Inkatha organisation of Chief Buthelezi would have to be part of the deal, but as Inkatha, unique among the black groupings, has a settled and well- defined constituency, this would be quite easy. The triumvirate would require only a narrow blade to cut out Chief Buthelezi's slice of the New South Africa.
The conditions for the world's accept- ance of such a three-cornered deal are simple: Mandela must be the head of state and the ANC must be, nominally at any rate, the principal party of government. Whether the black majority in South Afri- ca wants the ANC is utterly irrelevant. The world — by which I mean the handful of pressure groups, newspapers and television networks who now form the ruling class of international politics — has decided that the ANC should rule and that's that. South Africa must heed the new colonialists if it wants to be recognised. All three parties of the triumvirate understand this. Thus, if there is to be an election to decide the government of the New South Africa, it does not matter whether the election is fair or foul; all that matters is that the ANC should win, and this outcome, by means well understood in Africa, the triumvirate might be able to deliver.
If such a deal is to be struck, it must be struck soon because time is running out for all three parties. The NP and the ANC are rapidly losing their constituencies and the economic tides are running against South African business. The forces opposed to the New South Africa are mounting with frightening speed. It is important to under- stand where the danger comes from and where it does not come from.
For me the saddest thing to admit is that there is no danger from the cause of liberty. The New South Africa will not be
free. The spokesmen of the ANC, in pronouncements on freedom of speech that seem to come straight out of Animal Farm, say they will acCept criticism only if it is 'responsible criticism'. Of course to allow only 'responsible criticism' is in effect to allow no criticism at all. This does not much bother either of the other two members of the triumvirate or more than a handful of the South African population. One should not be surprised. Throughout the ages, freedom has trailed way behind need, greed and nationalism. Most men are more interested in bread and motor- cars than in liberty, and would rather be enslaved by a fellow-countryman than liberated by a foreigner.
Neither does the danger come from Marxism despite the flurry of excitement from certain commentators at discovering that, after the unbanning of the South African Communist Party (SACP), its leaders speak just like communists. The argument that ANC policy has been largely directed by its SACP wing is true but this is not so much a proof of the diabolical strength of the SACP as of the astounding lack of any political ideas at all on the part of the rest of the ANC. Mandela's speeches illustrate the point. The SACP is led by the dismal figure of Joe Slovo, a white man born in Lithuania, who has followed with puppylike devotion every curve of the Moscow line, even when Moscow was violating his birthplace. But what the ANC wants is power and pri- vilege, not dialectic materialism, and while the communist empire is falling apart and seductive voices from Anglo-American and the Broederbond are offering a surer route to this end, the Marxist threat, never very large, will disappear.
Nor is there any danger from the suffer- ing masses. South Africa's rising popula- tion of jobless, homeless blacks presents no threat to anyone. This month in Mid- rand, a rich, white, liberal, English- speaking area between Pretoria and Johan- nesburg, the government, in a fit of en- lightened desperation, set aside a portion of land for black squatters. There is no humane option since neither the squatters nor the government has the money for decent housing. Instantly the Midrand liberals began to sound like the pro- apartheid parties they had previously de- spised. For them, like all people with houses regarding those without, racial tolerance means that Harry Belafonte can live in the mansion at the end of the road, not that black squatters are allowed to live in the empty field next door. Unfortunate- ly South Africa has few Harry Belafontes and millions of black squatters. In Zim- babwe, President Mugabe agrees with the rich in Midrand and sends in the bulldozers to deal with his squatters. In the New South Africa these wretched people will be driven away beyond the sight and smell of the new rulers. For the world outside Africa, black suffering has no meaning unless there is a white persecutor to consecrate it. The world was interested in black suffering under white South African presidents but under black South African presidents this suffering, which is almost certain to increase, will pass from notice and the hungry multitudes, shivering under plastic sheets in the storms of the Cape or under cardboard boxes in the sub-zero Highveldt winter nights, will join Africa's black legions of despair, too weak to threaten revolution, too poor to invite exploitation and too boring to arouse demonstrations in London or speeches in New York.
The danger lies in black and white nationalism, of which the latter is over- whelmingly the more menacing. White nationalism is much more dangerous than black not only because its followers have far more important positions in the eco- nomy and the security forces but because it is sure and proud of its origins whereas black nationalism is uncertain and ashamed of its. If Nelson Mandela appeared on the world's television screens barefoot, barechested, with loin-cloth and spear (the regalia of the African warrior of the last century), it would fill his suppor- ters with shame and embarrassment; if Eugene Terre'blanche appeared in full beard, slouch hat, jacket and rifle (the regalia of the Boer warrior of the last century), it would fill his supporters with pride and delight. A nationalist who is ashamed of his fathers is a weak force.
On the black side the ANC is faced with a bewildering array of opponents. The Pan-African Congress (PAC) is probably the most important and all the signs are that its support is rising rapidly at the expense of the ANC. An academic survey, since disputed, found that 80 per cent of the black youth of Soweto supported the PAC. The rhetoric of the PAC varies from its infamous 'One Settler One Bullet' to calm pleas for a non-racial democracy, but its great advantage in the eyes of militant black youth is that it refuses to treat with the government It is also exploiting the disappointment felt in the townships that after the release of Nelson Mandela the millennium has not dawned. There are a multitude of other 'Africanist' parties but it is difficult to pin down what they stand for. The ANC itself has serious divisions of age, race, region and ideology. On the white side the picture Is clearer and grimmer. Whatever the differences of strategy, all the white nationalists in South Africa want the same thing now as they have been wanting for the last 300 years: rule of themselves by themselves in their own country. Among the parties of the white parliament, support for the pro- apartheid Conservative Party, a party born just after international sanctions began in earnest, has rocketed since the release of Mandela. The Conservative Party, which already has the suppori of most Afrikan- ers, is now making rapid inroads into white English-speaking South Africa and if a white election were held next month it might well win. The white nationalists have two divisions of opinion. The first division is over means. Should they be constitution- al (the Boers are a people of the law and there has been no history of insurrection by Boers against lawful Boer governments, of which F. W. de Klerk's government must qualify as one), or should they resort to armed force to prevent a transition to a multiracial state before the end of the present white parliament in 1994? The second is over ends. Do the white national- ists claim the whole of South Africa or only part of it, a 'Boerestaat' whose borders would follow historical delineations or whose size would be proportional to the number of Boers in the South African population? The most radical and, I be- lieve, important proposal has come from one Professor Carel Boshoff, a gaunt, righteous Boer intellectual. He has prop- osed a Boerestaat in the semi-desert region of the northern Cape, a large area of sparse population, no economic importance and arid beyond the imagination of anyone from Europe. Boshoff would gladly hand over all of South Africa's goldfields and rich soil to the blacks and here on the dry banks of the Orange River build a Christ- ian Israel of Boers. His proposal might well offer the New South Africa its only hope of accommodation with hard Boer national- ism. Swirling around him are wilder men with bloodier visions of white supremacy.
South Africa remains a stable country with the National Party government well in control. But if, through economic collapse, things begin to fall apart, the only possible outcome is a brutal civil war and the ascendancy of an unspeakable white fascist regime. The triumvirate should be able to make a deal before this. President de Klerk has promised to submit it to the approval of the white electorate. Given his dwind- ling white support, this might seem a needlessly risky promise by a brave man, but he really has no option if he is to stem white fears right now. If the test of white approval is to lie in a referendum where we are asked to say yes or no to a deal drawn up by the triumvirate, then I should be asked to approve of a New South Africa, corporatist and authoritarian, which for me would be sheer purgatory. I should vote 'Yes'. Purgatory is better than hell.
Previous page
