Spectator's Journal/The Mandela Dilemma

...Crazies of the left and right will begunning for him...

...This is the real stuff now," Winnie Mandela tells reporters at the prison gates...

...Mandela set free inaugurates a messy and probably bloody era of democratic reform...

...The events in Eastern Europe and the wreckage African socialism has inflicted on the continent have not gone unnoticed...

...Economically, this country teeters on the edge of ruin," wrote Ken Owen, the editor of Business Day...

...Mandela will have to deal with contending groups and factions within the ANC and outside it, his job complicated by the fact that he holds no official position in the current ANC hierarchy...

...The young and the poor do not really know him...

...Divisions in black South African politics can no longer be papered over...

...The territorial entities are products of apartheid's failed attempts at balkanizing the black population, largely along tribal lines...

...These guys haven't even embraced Brezhnevism yet...

...The violence is not just rhetorical...

...A major concern of the government and many moderates is that the ANC, still dedicated to "the armed struggle," is firmly controlled by the radical left, particularly by one of its major constituent elements, the South African Communist party (SACP...

...The fax machine and phone lines in his jail-house bungalow are humming...

...And while sanctions play well in Washington, it's the wrong policy at the wrong time...

...At Christmas...

...Recent meetings of antiapartheid moderates with the ANC at its headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia, reinforced the notion that the SACP is made up of neanderthal left-wingers...

...Buthelezi is a moderate who has long engaged Pretoria in a give-and-take relationship...

...At this point, the government's strategy is the more people at the negotiating table, the better its chances for a favorable outcome...

...People with a stake, even a small stake, in the system are cautious about radical plans, and uneducated does not mean stupid...

...Not many kilometers away, dust is blowing through the junkyard lumber walls and broken windows of Soweto's poorest quarters...

...Longtime apartheid opponents are alarmed about the SACP's role in the ANC...

...Next week...

...When Mandela comes out," Myeni said, "he will have to determine whether he wants to continue with the Communists...

...union leaders such as Cyril Ramaphosa of the National Union of Mineworkers...

...Mandela will find that the economic realities of the country have shifted as dramatically as the politics in the quarter century since his imprisonment...

...By Easter...

...A black servant girl, in a clean skirt and shoeless, pads across the carpet, bringing tea as whites discuss her fate...

...Hundreds have died in sporadic clashes over the years...

...There is also a tiny segment of the black population that enjoys wealth and comfort as understood in the Western industrial democracies, without, of course, democratic political rights...

...organizations representing black business interests, such as the National African Federated Chamber of Commerce...

...The SACP and groups to its left such as the New Unity Movement, he argues, have powerful factions of true crazies dedicated to the idea of making South Africa ungovernable by destroying its institutions of civil society, murdering all who stand in their way, and rebuilding from the scorched earth...

...Buthelezi's enemies expend great energy to discredit him and he returns the favor...

...And then the match...

...In a word, said Owen, "Pol Potism...

...Blacks and whites rarely refer directly to the times of upheaval, most recently the 1984-1986 period, when apartheid's social engineers brought the guns and torturers out of the background and the townships erupted, "the comrades" emerging to pass sentence on the ideologically incorrect, "necklacing" rivals and "collaborators" with gasoline-soaked tires thrown around the shoulders...

...Path to Power" calls for "seizures of property by the revolutionary masses" and "the destruction of state institutions...

...But that did not happen, and in the end there will be a very interesting mix of people at the table...

...He is meeting with black leaders...

...An illiterate migrant worker, one of the thousands of men just in from the vast harsh backcountry looking for a job, squats beside a shack to defecate in a bucket...

...The ANC's current position is that it should represent black South Africa and it is mobilizing a broad popular front under the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) and the Council of South African 'nude Unions (COSATU...

...Ramaphosa is an early warning signal from the far left...

...The servant and the worker, serfs in apartheid's twilight, do not have much to say about Nelson Mandela, though they too are waiting...

...In addition to poor and working-class black South Africans, there is a growing class of bureaucrats, service-related personnel such as nurses and technicians, and small-business entrepreneurs which is "middle class" chiefly in the sense that it can provide its children with good homes, food, and education free from a day-to-day struggle for survival...

...He is a mythic figure, but remote...

...Next week...

...By the New Year...

...It's the golem lurking in the psyche of South Africa, the creature that will rise up and destroy everything...

...At the opening of parliament in February...

...They are not waiting for the ANC leader's release, they are waiting for him to make his move, to put his cards on the table...

...Then you're going to see heads rolling, because within certain trade unions you have people who are Communists and are very active in the MDM kind of conglomerate...

...A broad ANC front continues to dominate, but the Inkatha movement of Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, which claims to represent more than six million blacks of Zulu descent, was barred from the conference "by virtue of their track record in supporting the racist government and their continued hostility to the liberation movement and its traditions...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1990 25...

...Inflation is estimated at about 13 percent and unemployment is rising, particularly in the black sector...

...Jesse Jackson is on the way...

...poor—.-a majority of South Africa's 20 million blacks—are cautious and skeptical not only of the promises of rich and powerful whites but also of the rhetoric of distant revolutionaries such as the African National Congress, the ANC...

...and power brokers in the "self-governing areas" of Gazankulu, Kwazulu, Lebowa, Qwaqwa, Kwandebele, and Kangwane...

...The ANC had hoped to come to the negotiating table through the barrel of a gun after winning the armed struggle," said Musa Myeni, a representative of Buthelezi's Inkatha movement...

...For today there is a sense that at long last the deal is going down...

...We will say to the ANC: 'Your own professors, your own mentors in the Eastern bloc are rejecting what you want to give us,' The ANC will be pressed hard to split with the SACP...

...Naturally, all of these groups yearn for an end to apartheid, yet for all of them the stakes are different...

...it doesn't have to be...

...South Africa needs stable growth...

...The Americans are maneuvering...

...Suddenly, the centrality of Mandela is in question...

...Myeni, like others with less direct political antagonisms, believes Mandela is heading toward serious trouble with the SACP...

...The SACP document states that the "struggle for national liberation,the destruction of colonialism of a special type and the transition to socialism in South Africa require a vanguard Marxist-Leninist party capable of providing a highly disciplined organization and the guiding light of the scientific socialist outlook grounded in South African realities...

...He is secretly meeting with President de Klerk, negotiating about negotiations, talking about talks...

...The Marxist ANC, still fighting a sputtering "war of liberation" and including many hardcore Leninists of its own, is looking down the road toward negotiations with Pretoria and calling for unity...

...Education, housing, and health care are in shambles...

...A largely rural black population is becoming a largely urban one...

...It's the sort of talk that would go over well in Rumania—er, make that Albania—but it draws concern in South Africa because of the ANC's leading position...

...As one Johannesburg economist put it, "The difficulty of accepting the sanctions position is that while everybody would agree that apartheid is a cancer in our society, it's hard to agree with those who propose inducing heart failure to get rid of it...

...This has led to much strife with his rivals, who label him a collaborator and a throwback to tribalism...

...Ken Owen fears that the SACP could unleash a firestorm on South Africa that Mandela could not possibly control...

...Although many of them are led by corrupt rulers, these men are not without influence and will demand a place at the negotiating table...

...Union leader Ramaphosa, a leading representative of the younger "Soweto generation" of activists and regarded by many as particularly militant and ambitious, recently caused a furor by declaring that Mandela's "status is no different from the status of any other member" of the ANC...

...The poor remain focused on a job, food, a roof, a bit of dignity and then a bit of freedom...

...nobody has forgotten...

...According to local residents, drug use and crime have sharply accelerated in the last decade...

...Others flatly reject the idea of negotiations...

...The failure of the Communist system in Eastern Europe will be raised with the voters...

...All of this will dog Mandela from the moment he steps into freedom...

...Economic sanctions hit the poor hardest, throwing many out of work and stifling the capital investment that creates job growth...

...We are trapped in a scene from Chekhov...

...Reflecting on the SACP's program of action, outlined in a document entitled "Path to Power" that was adopted at a recent SACP congress, Ken Owen of Business Day wrote that "there is no longer the slightest doubt that the ANC is led, organized, and controlled by members of the SACP which is, by definition, a conspiracy whose stated aim is a two-stage revolution, first to overthrow apartheid, and afterwards to establish a communist state...

...H e is safer in prison than out...

...The aim of the struggle is to eradicate apartheid and capitalism...

...Although the ANC appears to be' strong in many areas, the organization is under increasing factional pressure and a number of other players are maneuvering for power in urban and rural areas...

...Black consciousness, which includes the exiled Pan-Africanist Congress and the Azanian People's Organiby Micah Morrison zation, is generally regarded as more radical than the ANC and bars white participation in "black liberation...

...Foreign investors flee, local money-making citizens emigrate, and the unemployed have become an army of potential recruits for any fool with a flag and a slogan...

...Many of the young who are not poor are militant—they will not wait long for an old man, and Mandela is seventy-one, jailed for more than twenty-five years...

...Meanwhile, we wait...

...Mandela in prison symbolized all of black South Africa's imprisonment...

...Black consciousness groups—in broad terms the third major factor, in addition to the ANC and Buthelezi—chose not to attend the gathering...

...Of course, he will not appear today, or tomorrow, but soon...

...Levels of poverty vary, but millions live at or below subsistence in urban shantytowns...

...He is, in fact, Zulu royalty, and a good measure of his support no doubt stems from traditional Zulu mores...

...The aim of the struggle is not to negotiate," a statement issued by the Azanian People's Organization in response to the conference declared...

...rulers of the "independent states" within South Africa: Ciskei, Transkei, Venda, and Bophuthatswana...

...For24 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1990 eign workers, as well as rural black South Africans, are flocking to the cities...

...Mandela will come under great pressure...

...Pretoria finally appears sincere about engineering apartheid's orderly collapse and suddenly a lot of players are crowding into the room...

...Some estimates put black unemployment as high as 40 percent, though this figure seems unreliable and does not account for a booming "informal," or untaxed, entrepreneurial sector...

...White South African industrialists and businessmen long ago realized they cannot survive without black participation...

...Most blacks reject the SACP's program but refuse to condemn the organization because it has been in the forefront of the fight against apartheid for decades...

...The latest information from the ANC does not exactly inspire confidence...

...The rumor retailers and pundits are certain, government officials quietly confirm it: Mandela is coming out...

...Forget about Gorbachevism and perestroika," a participant at one of the meetings remarked...

...Yet some of the manifestly corrupt parties from the Pretoria-created "tribal homelands" were invited to the conference...

...From now on, all bets are off...

...religious leaders in moderate as well as radical stripes...

...The worst of times—the wretched souls horribly burned, the black schools and shops destroyed—is seldom mentioned...

...Enforcing sanctions will not solve South Africa's political problems —unless the "solution" is revolution...

...A recent conference of anti-apartheid groups revealed at least three distinct divisions...

...The lawyer, an earnest liberal reformer, a soldier in the army of apartheid opponents whittling down the system from within, explains how doing away with excessive government regulation will help "empower" blacks...

...Because that will cost them votes when the elections come...

...The organization shows no inclination to deal with its Communist hardliners...

...And one must also note the presence of the unspoken, a factor which may play in Mandela's favor...

...A new generation of political activists has come to power, many of them scornful of Mandela and the elder generation running the ANC...

...Either the SACP will get rid of him—there is that possibility—or he will get rid of them...

...We are in the elegant beige drawing room of the white lawyer, waiting for Mandela...

...Gorby has sent representatives...

...The Micah Morrison is The American Spectator's roving correspondent...

...These include the Pan-Africanist Movement, the legalized internal wing of the PanAfricanist Congress and other black consciousness groups...

...But compared to the rest of southern Africa, and even with the problems created by international sanctions, the country remains a magnet for black labor, offering the best chance in the region for economic advancement...

...One of the ANC's most bitter enemies is Chief Buthelezi, another potential rival for Mandela's leadership position...

...Political loyalties and realities, including a small but influential element of moderate black capitalists, will tax his strength and patience...