Facing the Inevitable in South Africa

...Members of the radical Left and the conservative Right are rescued from irrelevance only by each other...

...It has already introduced a few eyedropper reforms...

...Eventually, given the white birth rate and because interracial marriage would grow more common, it would be as "miscegenated" a nation, proportionally, as Brazil...

...Because whites could not eat in "nonwhite" restaurants, and vice versa, we were to meet in Time magazine's Johannesburg office, borrowed for the occasion, and have a meal sent in by a nearby restaurant...

...As in Algeria and in Rhodesia, the ultras will come to the fore among the settlers, justifying and helping the political careers of the extremist blacks...

...The most likely government counteroffer to the African demand for universal suffrage is a merit franchise, based on education, property, income, or a Rube Goldberg mix of these...

...The government of President Pieter W. Botha has officially abandoned the scatterbrained "independent homelands'" policy in favor of an undefined, untimetabled South African confederation based on race and tribe, with some sort of tribally divided African representation at the European-controlled confederal center...

...Mandela, after two decades in the gulag on Rob-ben Island, is currently in a mainland prison where family visits are less difficult in winter...

...Move over Beirut...

...In time there may be a role for outside mediation, although the UN Secretary General would probably be able to fill it better than the U.S...

...communities is so...

...For instance, persons of different races may now marry, although they cannot live together because racial housing zoning persists...

...Mandela neversliowed up...

...Still, it is not inconceivable that at some point virtually the entire white population will want out...

...Alan Paton told me many years ago that the ruling National Party was devoted to "stamping out nonviolence...

...In part, this is a tribute to the remarkable effectiveness of Randall Robinson and his TransAfrica movement in getting almost everyone except Jesse Helms and Jerry Falwell to demonstrate against apartheid at the South African embassy...

...An attempt is being made to avoid going down the tube with yet another roguish oligarchy...

...A company that invested now would be volunteering to be first on the list for nationalization later...

...The roughly 3 million Afrikaners of largely Dutch descent pose a different problem...

...Since the National Party's rise to power in 1948, South Africa has been a Troj anhorseforthe Soviet Union in Africa...

...There is no solution...

...Actually, an oil embargo is the only thing that would be needed to paralyze the country, but it would probably have to be implemented by a naval blockade under the UN flag...

...I agree...

...The country could stay self-sufficient in food almost indefinitely, regardless of the economy's certain collapse...

...As for the talk about forbidding new investment, it is surely moot...

...Unlike the pieds-noirs of Algeria they do not have a mother country, their Afrikaans language is a pidgin form of Dutch barely understood in the Netherlands, and very few of them speak Dutch itself...

...For what the United States does or does not do will make little difference in South Africa itself...

...Moreover, what countries would willingly accept tens of thousands, let alone millions, of Afrikaners...

...As the leader of the African National Congress (ANC), he is serving a life sentence for advocating resistance—"theviolentoverthrowofthe government" in local legalese...

...Deaths and arrests multiply...

...To see the U. S. voting for a UN resolution opposing the execution of a South African black poet who killed a black policeman, as it did last September, is interesting...

...Supporters of sanctions are right in saying they would "make a point...

...To hear Ronald Reagan calling for the release of Nelson Mandela, suddenly restored from "terrorist" to "authentic spokesman," is edifying...

...Yet the small gestures made so far merely appear to have energized the country's majority...

...A small number of motivated, younger Indians and Eurafricans may stay on in the bigger, African-ruled country and perhaps achieve significant political, military and administrative roles...

...In a country like South Africa, where the government itself is a terrorist organization, it is difficult to affix that label to any individual for long...

...REVOLUTION AND PARTITION Facing the Inevitable in South Africa by russell warren h°we Nearly 24 years ago, on assignment in South Africa for the Washington Post, I arranged a luncheon interview with Nelson Mandela...

...The revolution in South Africa must run its course...

...As everyone knows, Pretoria has strong armed forces at its disposal—military, paramilitary and police...

...Meanwhile, fighting rages daily in the streets of the larger cities...

...finally reaching out to the black majority, it is apparent that the West has been made a little wiser by the fate of the Shah and the prospects of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines...

...A lot of hot air has been generated in the discussions of sanctions...

...Although much has been changing in South Africa, most things political have remained essentially thesame...

...self-interest of [South Africa's...

...No doubt the government will initially offer the sort of modest concessions associated with the first stages of a revolution, such as the release of particular political prisoners...

...The one fairly analogous situation in modern times was that of Algeria...

...Europeans would of course keep their electoral majority...

...History will probably date it from the declaration of the state of emergency last July, for this is unlikely to be lifted until the revolution is completed...

...Does that mean revolution...

...The nearly 2 million "Anglos" of mostly British origin have a wide choice of English-speaking countries to move to, if they can afford the globe-girdling travel costs (many have British passports thanks to a grandfather clause...

...The long trail from here to there, however, will surely be drenched in blood...

...Pretoria, under the unforgiving stare of the video camera, reacts with all the subtlety of a medieval palace guard...

...A contributing factor to the economic crisis may well be another slide in the price of gold, coincidentally fueled by Moscow saturating the gold market to compensate for diminishing oil revenues (Soviet petroleum exports will be down 40 per cent this year...

...My tendency has been to begin by noting the Utopian irrationality of expecting the European community to surrender power to the African majority without proof that doing so is unavoidable...

...Moderates like the leaders of the United Democratic Front or Bishop Desmond Tutu (if he survives) will be overtaken by events and personalities, Kerensky-style...

...A second obvious gimmick would be to switch from the present executive presidency to a president-prime minister format, and make some worthy black schoolteacher the head of state...

...The country's native majority leaders have all rejected the approach as unacceptable, and the white press has largely called it unrealistic...

...And the future course of events seems as inevitable as it did a quarter of a century ago...

...The State Department spokesman presumably had something of the kind in mind a few weeks ago when he mentioned "power-sharing on a mutually acceptable basis...

...lution have been marked by the revenge killings of quislings...

...Practically speaking, inviting South Africans to " homestead" Alaska might be the one useful and humanitarian step the U. S. could take at this stage, to head off some of the enormous emigration problem we know is coming...

...the commercially successful Indians—exclusively settlers, a la the Europeans—are often a special target for African enmity, witness the recent events in the eastern Cape...

...Civil rights lawyer Bartle Bull wrote recently on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times: "EvenmorethaninNorth-ern Ireland and Palestine, the fundamental...

...The main virtue of the Administration's belated display of concern, and of statements such as National Security Adviser Robert McFar-lane's warning that Pretoria is "looking into an abyss of massive violence,' is that they will make it harder to stigmatize America as the enemy of the Third World...

...I cling to the belief, therefore, that the ultimate solution in South Africa can only be partition, with an independent "Europstan" in the western Cape...

...But because the second-class status of the two groups has always been resented by the blacks, held in steerage, three quarters of the 3 million Eurafricans and most of the 1 million Indians are likely to doubt their welcome...

...Ironically, what multiracial prospects there are would thus find fertile ground in the Europstan...

...Today, with theU.S...

...Later that afternoon, a story on the South African Press Association ticker told us why: The country's most prominent African had been arrested...

...Indeed, following the Algerian pattern, the first stages of South Africa's revoRussell Warren Howe, a frequent contributor to The New Leader, is a veteran observer of African affair...

...It would start out approximately (or slightly less than) half white...

...Again as in Algeria, a small clutch of non-Europeans—Africans, Eurafricans and Indians—can be expected to lend their names to various band-aid "solutions" during thecomingyears, at obvious physical risk...

...Of the close to 5 million whites, it is bound to attract at least 3 million...

...Of course...

...The Algerian crisis was "solved" when Charles de Gaulle, after four years in power, changed course 180 degrees and pulled out .taking practically all the 1 million non-Moslem citizens (and a few Moslem collaborators) "home" to France...

...The regime also has nuclear weapons, but it is hard to see how they could be used in a civil war—or in any circumstance, except as a lunatic threat...

...enter Soweto...

...That would enable a fraction of the blacks, and a larger proportion of the Eurafricans and Asians, to vote in "nonraeial" general elections, and give an appearance of fairness by disfranchising a token number of illiterate or skid-row whites...

...Gradually, thesituation will get bloodier...

...It will not be pretty to watch or to read about...

...Moscow has had no difficulty denouncing the tactics of the regime...

...The western Cape is, in any case, home to the bulk of the Eurafricans (some of whom descend from the country's Dutch founding fathers, who had no white offspring...

...Now the revolution has started...

...Shades of preindependence Rhodesia...

...incompatible as to make a violent future more acceptable to them than submitting to the central demands of the other side...

...Those contemplating becoming "boat people" would face covering staggering distances to reach South America, India or Australia...

...We Americans are optimistically habituated to problem-solving...

...The blacks know that they can get what they want only through violence...

...The resistance will be directed more toward encouraging whites to depart (bombs in restaurants and movie theaters) and total disruption of the infrastructure (strikes, civil disobedience), but violence within the nonwhite residential areas will continue to be the most risk-free form of revolutionary activity...

...But even if a black elite were to accept a scheme faffing short of universal suffrage in the short run, it would simply facilitate their political defeat by the leaders of what Kipling called the great unwashed, who would insist, American-style, on no taxation without representation...

...Clearly the Administration has been irritated by Botha's five years of prevarications on the matter of Namibia's independence, which repeatedly convinced the gullible Assistant Secretary of State for African affairs Chester Crocker that he had defused the issue...

...Johannesburg academics have dubbed this the "Here come de Judge" model...

...This is where the similarity between South Africa and Algeria begins to weaken...

...But he has not been free since...

...The Western countries, traditionally supporting any status quo that is not hostile, have by contrast been modestly critical while generously investing in—and exploiting—the South African economy...

...Probable places of refuge are extremely far away, though, and many would find it impossible to uproot whole families on their own resources...

...Harassment of the press and the regular expulsion of foreign correspondents will spur the whole process by encouraging self-censorship, including a sycophantic inclination to report that each new "solution" might work...

...Nonetheless, Congress was determined to make the gesture with a sanction package...

...Over the years, in articles, books, lectures, and discussions, I have found myself addressing the question: What will happen in South Africa...

...In the local context, unfair as it may seem, besides black policemen and informers these can include pretty much anyone who makes government work—tax inspectors, bus drivers, postal clerks, and so on...

...Whether his agreeing—on a presumably bugged line—to give an interview to the Post was a contributing factor, I do not know...

...This Malice-in-Wonderland situation enables another reform to be announced later...

...they are seen as proof that the government is on the run...

...But the same could have been said of the American or French or Russian or Algerian revolutions...

...Beleaguered whites talking and drinking themselves into thinking they are the last outpost of civilization will evoke Rhodesia too...

...Yet the proposal does mean something: official recognition that the 22 million blacks who make up three quarters of the population exist...

...Secretary of State...

...critics are right in saying they would be circumvented by other countries...

...Does one need to order people not to enter a burning building...