The dying days of white rule in South Africa do not augur well for a peaceful transition to democracy.
The black townships are burning. The whites are arming themselves. The Zulus are threatening war. There are random, racist attacks by blacks and whites against each other.Yet at the same time, change is proceeding briskly, well ahead of the country's first-ever democratic elections scheduled for April 27, 1994.
Blacks in record numbers are moving into white neighborhoods, taking jobs once reserved for whites and attending formerly white universities. There is a black Miss South Africa, a black pilot flies for the national airline, and blacks are on the boards of most major companies.
These are small steps, but they are revolutionary by South African standards and hint of the massive changes to come. For South Africa is in the throes of a revolution.
So far, it has been a long, slow revolution. More than three years has passed since the government lifted its ban on the African National Congress and freed its charismatic leader, Nelson Mandela, from 27 years in prison.
That it has - so far - been a negotiated revolution makes it no less profound. An entire social system is in the process of being overturned, and a way of life that systematically denied the overwhelming majority of the population rights taken for granted in many other countries is ending.
In its place, a new, democratic dispensation is being forged in which the oppressors ultimately will find themselves being ruled by those they oppressed.
And still, April 27 seems a long way off.
For this is also an uncertain, uneven revolution; its outcome still is hanging in the balance. More than 700 people have died in political violence in the six weeks since the election date was fixed, raising fears that South Africa may yet disintegrate into full-scale civil war.SO FAR, the violence has been confined to a few key flashpoints.
But there are signs that it is spreading: an unexplained assault on a previously peaceful squatter camp, a drive-by shooting in an otherwise quiet township, the reappearance of mysterious and terrifying attacks on commuters traveling on trains.
No one in South Africa much doubts now that groups, either black or white, opposed to any kind of election are attempting to stir up trouble and that they may even succeed. President F.W. de Klerk warned in mid-August that unless the level of violence subsides, there will be no election.
"We are failing to prevent the water rushing in," says Tokyo Sexwale, a top ANC regional leader. "But we are all in the same boat, the boat of South Africa, and if we let the boat sink, the horizon of April 27 will disappear."
Yet most parts of the country are experiencing little violence or none at all and are marching in step with the nationwide reform process. At the local level, the old structures of apartheid are being replaced by new, multiracial municipal councils with shared tax bases that will give black communities greater access to the country's resources.
Other parts of the country remain virtually untouched by change. Blacks and whites continue to coexist as they have for decades, leading separate, unequal lives in conditions of enforced segregation. Some white town councils still bar blacks from swimming pools, hotels, restaurants and schools and refuse to integrate local government structures. Somehow, these towns will have to change, too.SOUTH AFRICA is possibly the most complex country on Earth, surpassing even the United States in racial, cultural and ethnic diversity. Third World and contemporary cultures exist side by side; Africa and Europe are jumbled together, often oblivious to and ignorant of each other's customs.
Within its borders, 40 million people speak 11 different languages. The Venda of the north are as different from the Zulus to the south as the Irish are from the Italians. Descendants of Dutch, British, Portuguese, Indian and Malaysian settlers, although born in South Africa, have scrupulously preserved their cultures.
The people of South Africa live in thatched huts in rural areas, in tin shacks sprawling just beyond the cities, and in mansions with servants and swimming pools. The blacks in the shacks look forward to the day they can live in houses. The whites in the mansions are throwing up razor-wire around their homes, buying guns and scanning the classifieds for jobs overseas.
But it is no longer possible to view South African politics simply in black and white terms. In no part of the country will the experience of revolution be the same.
The country's 3 million white voters are deeply divided between those braced for the inevitability of change and those who have pledged to resist it with violence. Fewer than half now say they support De Klerk's ruling National Party, and fewer than a quarter favor right-wing groups.
In the urban townships, rival blacks are fighting bloodily for control of single blocks. Yet most of the 17 million blacks expected to vote next April live in remote rural areas, far from the trappings of modern life and the militant anger that holds sway in the urban townships. Many are illiterate and without a clue about voting; they pledge allegiance to local tribal chiefs.
In rural Natal, rivalry between the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party of Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi is being fought by heavily armed warriors on both sides, often continuing ancient quarrels that predate modern politics.
In the Cape, where blacks are in the minority, it is the mixed-race descendants of the first settlers whose political inclinations will hold sway. Two million of these so-called "coloreds" will be eligible to vote, and more than half of them live in the Cape region.
The political parties competing for the loyalties of this diverse national electorate run the gamut from the Communist Party to neo-fascists vigorously opposed to change. There are ethnic movements of all sorts and colors, from whites squabbling over where to locate their proposed homeland to a resurgence of Zulu nationalism.
These separatist aspirations are directly at odds with the vision of those in the newly emerging political center, dominated by the ANC, who dream of a single united South African nation.
Whites who refuse to contemplate sharing power or land or resources with blacks are teaming up in a potentially disruptive alliance with the black leaders who stand to lose their positions as heads of the "homelands" that were the cornerstone of apartheid.ALREADY, hopes that South Africa's first democratic election will be fair and free of intimidation are fading.
In a July survey of black attitudes, only 40 percent said they would readily accept the result if their party doesn't win, 33 percent approved of breaking up meetings held by opposing parties and 2 percent said they were committed to violence during the election, which translates into some 350,000 potential troublemakers.
Fourteen percent said they would be too afraid to vote, a figure likely to rise if violence intensifies.
At the same time, black confidence in the white-dominated security forces is at an all-time low - one reason why violence is spiraling out of control.
How the police and the army respond to the looming changes is another unknown element. One white police officer investigating reports of police abuse in the black community estimated that 70 percent of whites in the security forces have right-wing sympathies, and therefore have an agenda counter to that of the government they serve.
Thus it is with a sense of deep uncertainty and foreboding that South Africa's revolution unfolds. Neither blacks nor whites have yet found much to be joyful about in the new order.
"The new South Africa is being born into an atmosphere of weariness and disillusion," said a recent editorial in the Sunday Times newspaper, reflecting the nation's gloom. "South Africa, no longer ruled by apartheid, is ruled instead by fear."
The crime that whites constantly gripe about is far worse in black townships than in the white suburbs. Blacks bear the brunt of the violence. And if violence continues, hoped-for foreign investment and economic recovery will not materialize, postponing any significant improvement in living standards until long after black political empowerment.IF EVERYTHING does work out, however, South Africa's future is bright. It has rich natural resources, an infrastructure that is the envy of Africa and a tradition of political debate and activism that could flower into a robust multicultural democracy.
On a practical level, much remains to be done before elections are held.
Despite one of the most cruel and cynical pieces of social engineering ever devised, South Africa has not yet been plunged into the terrifying race war that always seems to lurk just beneath the surface.
The question now is what it would take to push South Africa over the edge - and if those who want to prevent change are powerful enough to do it.