Editorial
COMMONWEAL The road taken s one looks down the road for the future of South Africa, it is not hard to see trouble. Civil war is possible—not simply between blacks and whites, but within each...
...At the moment, the major one is the overwhelming vote by white South Africans in favor of reform and a new constitution, along with general approval of the path along which President de Klerk would like to lead the country...
...There are other whites who see that a new accommodation must be reached, but who hope to retain the social and economic privileges that apartheid has provided them...
...That some did so for an utterly pragmatic reason—the threat of a renewed international boycott of South African businesses and its sports teams, especially a champion soccer team—only serves to underline the degree to which ideology has fallen to reality...
...And the list could go on and on...
...Though the white community may have given up on apartheid, there are still those who argue for a substitute—national homelands based on race...
...Civil war is possible—not simply between blacks and whites, but within each group...
...Nelson Mandela is another reason for hope...
...Some of this internecine conflict rises out of the very prospect of change and genuine political power for black South Africans...
...In what is certainly the final whites-only referendum, 68.7 percent agreed, as de Klerk said after the election, that the country had "closed the book" on the ideology of apartheid...
...The white electorate has risen above itself in this referendum...
...But at least some of these warring factions have been funded and supplied with weapons by whites opposed to the new order...
...Mandela's moral authority, his hold on the African National Congress, and his conviction that a multiracial society will benefit all South Africans makes him de Klerk' s primary negotiating partner in the Convention for a Democratic South Africa, the forum that will negotiate a new power relationship among blacks, colored, and whites...
...Two leaders, able to call forth the best from their people, may be what is needed to look a precarious future in the eye and rise above it...
...Commonweal10 April 1992: 3...
...Right-wingers are eager to foment violence and intertribal struggle in the black community, which in turn will heighten fear among whites and resistance to the reforms that President F.W...
...It doesn't often happen that in one generation a nation gets the opportunity to rise above itself...
...It is not hard to imagine why South Africa might have an exceedingly dismal future...
...In defending his decision to call the referendum and restrict it to whites, de Klerk noted the "element of justice" in asking those who had started apartheid to end it...
...Violence, terrorism, and thuggery now constitute a form of low-level civil war among blacks...
...To this political uncertainty add widespread drought and a sluggish economy...
...And yet, despite all of this, there are reasons for hope...
...de Klerk has set in motion...
...Those whites who can imagine living under what South Africa must ultimately become—a black majority government—are certainly in a very distinct minority...
Vol. 119 • April 1992 • No. 7
