A Way Out in South Africa

...His white minority regime, not unlike governments everywhere, responds to the wishes of its electors no matter how devoid they are of common sense or historical vision...

...1 am betting on a bloodbath, and hoping to lose my money...

...In fact, a whole series of studies (which must have slipped off Administration desks) has shown that we can get by for quite a while without any imports at all from South Africa...

...Pretoria has to be aware that neither leader can much longer turn a deaf ear to the rising volume of the demands for sterner measures to end apartheid...

...Still, approaches to equality other than confrontation do exist—whether or not Pretoria can be browbeaten into embracing them—and I would here like to sketch what is by my lights the best of them...

...and given South Africa's ability to meet about half its fuel needs by coal liquifaction, it would be crippling without being fatal...

...Even the concern that the U.S...

...sanctions against Libya, Cuba and Nicaragua are intended to demonstrate how futile they are...

...I suspect the latter would be easier to sell to black South Africans, since it would instantly bring them—at least formally—into the political system...

...Although I do not believe it has anywhere close to a 50 per cent chance of being implemented, it does offer a genuine hope for a peaceful transition to full democracy in South Africa...

...And from a long-term view it is clear that for the sake of the South African people as well as for broader geopolitical reasons, a policy of actively prodding Pretoria toward opening up its government is preferable to letting events in that troubled country run their violent course...

...Increased access to education is thus the sine qua non of the merit franchise as I envisage it...

...President Reagan, Secretary of State George Schultz and Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Chester Crocker seem similarly naive when it comes to South Africa, behaving as though they are persuaded the Pretoria regime will move of its own volition toward representative government...

...A military resolution to the conflict in South Africa, if that is what it comes to, will have the atrocious character both of civil war and of revolution...

...Thatcher is in a similar position for having angered half her own party, all the Opposition, and reportedly the Queen herself by her stand...

...South Africans to vote each year, eventually bringing about majority rule, while (b) unfairly yet pragmatically favoring whites, Eurafricans and Asians during a "breathing space" that would permit the development of an experienced political infrastructure among the 73 per cent black maj ority...

...A concomitant plan— or rather a whole congeries of plans— would have to be designed to train and promoteblacks for high positions in the government bureaucracy...

...Ironically, Reagan has in effect gained muscle visa-vis the South African government from the chorus of prosanctioneers in Congress...

...With a little luck, the outcome would be one man-one vote without its all too frequent African addendum: one time...

...The rationale of this scheme is (a) to enable moreandmore black and brown Russel Warren Howe, a frequent contributor to The New Leader, is a veteran observer of African affairs...

...Gradualism...

...In practical terms, the proposal would entail looking at demographic data and asking the computer the appropriate questions: If the vote were given to people of x age, y education and and z property, or some logical combination thereof, how many black, brown and white citizens would qualify now, two years from now and in a decade...

...these must be left to negotiations between the white government and black leaders...

...This would take effect slowly but very surely...

...This word acquired a hollow ring through its deceitful use in American racial politics a generation ago...

...Yet there is nothing wrong with gradualism perse, provided it is an honest policy with a timetable agreed to by both sides (in South Africa, white and genuine black leaders), and that the alternative would create worse consequences...

...If such-and-such an amount of funds per year were locked into the extension of secondary education, how would the numbers change...

...Perhaps, though, the President should consider something more ballistic than the rubber dagger of suspending Suid Afrikaanse Lugdiens' landing rights at Kennedy Airport...

...Since the immediate threat posed to theU.S...

...Until the Reform Act of 1830, Britain only permitted a propertied few to participate in legislative polls...

...In justifying their refusal to apply economic sanctions against South Africa, the United States and Britain have contended that they " won't work...

...But whereas the gullibility of Chamberlain and France's Edouard Daladier and Paul Reynaud was, if regrettable, at least understandable—their reasoning having been dominated by the conviction that nothing could be worse than another world war—no such explanation accounts for the wishful South African policy of Ronald Reagan and company...

...Revolution's aftermath is generally vicious and all too often retrogressive, witness the cases of France, Russia, China, and to some extent the United States...

...Civil war is exceptionally savage because you know your enemy and why he richly deserves to die...

...There isnoriskofU.S...

...The symbolic allure of the year 2000 might help to produce consensus on the last one...

...Particularly contentious would be the time frame, involving three key dates: when blacks and browns will outvote whites, when blacks will outvote browns and whites, and when the merit franchise will finally give way to one man-one vote...

...by events in South Africa is not grave, we do not have to focus on propping up P. W. Botha as long as possible...

...Is there any way that the United States and its allies might persuade Pretoria not merely to endorse such a process in principle and rhetoric, but to quickly pass the constitutional legislation needed to start the ball rolling...

...It is the most easily justified and acceptable yardstick for full citizenship...

...the right to vote was progressively advanced over many years by the abolition of property qualifications, of literacy tests and of poll taxes, and by the extension of suffrage to women and 18-year olds...

...Consequently, it could not merely brush off their calls for adoption of the merit franchise...

...But 1 also think it lacks the political courage to set in motion what will inexorably lead—say, in a decade or so—to the black majority occupying three quarters of the seats in Cape Town (South Africa's legislative capital...

...In any event, it would probably be unacceptable to black leaders...

...Basing the franchise on property and education would be more equitable, not to mention more politic...

...military involvement, let alone a world war...

...As I have noted in previous NL articles, there is one sanction that is probably sufficient in itself to make South Africa more flexible: an oil boycott...

...We must believe by implication that U.S...

...Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher are, furthermore, in a position to credibly threaten such a move precisely because of their records of opposition to serious sanctions...

...In the U.S...

...Since blacks in South Africa today are paid only about one-fifth of the value of their labor, the use of income as a criterion for franchise really ought to be excluded...

...Rather, he is scored for believing this goal was possible, indeed that he had achieved it...

...There is nothing novel about a system that restricts the franchise by education or economic standing...

...The property factor would protect from humiliating exclusion the unlettered tribal chief with thousands of dollars of farmland, and the untutored owner of a chain of taxis who carries his accounts in his head...

...What I have in mind is a franchise based on educational and economic (hence, explicitly nonracial) qualifications—a "merit franchise...

...It would be introduced in combination with a specific timetable for the gradual expansion of the electorate by reducing these qualifications, so that at the termination date adult citizenship would be the sole requisite for going to the polls...

...in retaliation for sanctions, because that would only aggravate its economic distress...

...Nevertheless, I remain pessimistic...

...In addition, it has the virtue of a colorblind "look," for it would eliminate some white citizens from the voting rolls...

...1 think the Botha regime has the foresight to know what is coming...

...The merit franchise introduced into Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in the 1960s—the precedent that would naturally come to the minds of South Africans—incorporated a mixed bag of qualifications...

...Western political culture did not give the vote to the peasantry overnight...

...What looms is an intramural escalation of the present conflict—plus, admittedly, the possibility that the Soviet Union will help the victors and end up feasting at their banquet table...

...I can hear the reader sighing...

...It is doubtful, moreover, that Pretoria would slap quotas on exports to the U.S...

...Terrible as the prospect of full-scale war may be, it does not seem to deter President Botha from speaking and acting in a provocative manner...

...Some of them were clearly unjust, especially those related to annual income...

...might lose access to vital and irreplaceable South African minerals is largely a canard...

...The education criterion, which would guarantee suffrage to everyone who has attained a certain level of schooling according to the descending timetable, is of course the more important...

...It would be presumptuous to try to produce what academics call a model, with actual figures and dates...

...Only religious wars, in which both sides butcher each other with the mindless assurance of God's blessing, are as bad...

...Whether a merit franchise gives one vote to each member of the "qualified" categories and excludes the others, or whether it enfranchises everyone but gives educated and propertied persons multiple votes (a "weighted franchise"), is a matter for negotiation...