THE contest for the future of South Africa seems, even on good days, like a duel of schizophrenics. Both the white Government and the African National Congress are torn by conflicting impulses of civility and confrontation. Last week, on a very bad day at a razor-wire checkpoint near the town of Bisho, each side put forward its belligerent half. The outcome was grimly predictable, and sufficiently chilling that now, mercifully, the conciliatory halves may have their turn.
Within the African National Congress, the divide is between the romantic militancy born of the liberation movement that the congress was during its 30 years of banishment, and the prudent pragmatism of the governing party that the congress hopes to become. These are not simply rival factions but rival instincts that coexist to some degree in many congress leaders.
Last week the Bastille-stormers were personified by Ronnie Kasrils, a thickset, kinetic white Communist who fought in the congress's armed underground in the days when ordinary political avenues were foreclosed. The occasion was the sort of "Leipzig option" mobilization that Mr. Kasrils had long promoted, only to be overruled by the pragmatists. But as frustration mounted in the black townships, the congress's mood had swung toward militancy. Top leaders of the congress endorsed a march aimed at occupying Bisho, the campus-sized capital of the ostensibly independent black homeland called Ciskei, and toppling its military dictator.
As the main column of marchers marked time at the border, Mr. Kasrils was assigned to lead a breakaway group in a flanking maneuver. The group sprinted toward the city center through a gap left -- temptingly, and no doubt deliberately -- in the fence, and straight into an ambush by several hundred machine guns of the Ciskei army.
The white Government of President F. W. de Klerk has its own split personality. There is the Rubicon-crossing, apartheid-disavowing, make-nice Government that craves the world's respect, and that promises majority rule. And there is the Red-baiting, divide-and-rule, make-war Government that shudders at the prospect of rule by the black majority; this is the Government that tolerates (if it does not actually orchestrate) the police torture, vigilante murder and homeland despotism that keep that majority from coalescing.
On Monday, while the make-nice Mr. de Klerk was occupied at a conference on the fine points of federalism in the forthcoming nonracial South Africa, his make-war surrogate at the Bisho border was Brigadier Oupa J. Gqozo, master of Ciskei. Mr. de Klerk supplies the brigadier with guns and comforts and advisers; the brigadier, in turn, does all he can to rattle the African National Congress in a region that has traditionally been its stronghold. When Mr. Kasril's young following charged through that inviting gap in the fence, Brigadier Gqozo's soldiers opened fire with abandon.
In simpler times, the consequences of such a massacre would have been clear-cut: worldwide opprobrium heaped upon Mr. de Klerk, calls from South African white liberals for sanctions against the regime, perhaps a surge of fresh martyrs to the barricades.
But these are more ambiguous times. Although, in fact, little has changed on the ground -- the black majority is still impoverished, separate and disenfranchised -- perceptions have changed profoundly. By disowning the ideology of racial oppression, Mr. de Klerk has persuaded much of the world to judge him in ordinary political terms rather than moral absolutes. By entering the political realm, the African National Congress has conceded that it will no longer be judged solely on the justice of its grand cause; it will be judged on its fitness to govern.
Neither side admits to being even marginally in the wrong at Bisho. Mr. de Klerk, at a press conference Wednesday, never even suggested that firing thousands of rounds without warning into a crowd that is fleeing in panic might constitute excessive force.
Source: New York Times
No comments:
Post a Comment