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South Africa: Rhetoric and Reality
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12777 |
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EDITORIAL
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| Issue
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3 / 1987 |
925 Words |
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Morton A. Kaplan
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This issue of THE WORLD & I contains an article by Gatsha Buthelezi, the Zulu chief of Kwazulu and the head of Inkhata, the largest dues-paying organization in the Union of South Africa. He has been variously described as a puppet of the white government, by Randall Robinson of TransAfrica, and as a dangerous radical, by the conservative leader Howard Philips. If a man can be honored by his cast of enemies, Chief Buthelezi would meet that test.
But Chief Buthelezi needs no defense. While living under a regime that deprived him of his elementary rights of citizenship, he nonetheless formed an organization that could not be denied a political role. He courageously refused to accept a phony independence for a Kwazulu homeland and offered a plan for all of Natal that developed out of the Oppenheimer report that itself was influenced by earlier private meetings in which I participated. The striking fact about Chief Buthelezi's plan for Natal was that it was accepted by white and Indian leaders in the province and could have served as a model for the rest of South Africa had it not been rejected by President Botha.
Although Chief Buthelezi favors a fully integrated political state in the Union of South Africa, he is aware that this goal cannot be achieved directly without destructive warfare. He has long been prepared to accept interim arrangements that would preserve essential rights for all ethnic groups provided only that power was genuinely shared. His has never been a rule-or-ruin philosophy.
Chief Buthelezi and his followers, unlike some other groups that are contesting for power in South Africa, genuinely wish to maintain political democracy. They are aware that the maintenance of democracy depends on the development of a stable middle class and their program is designed to achieve this goal. They also understand the power of market economies to improve living standards and they have no ideological compulsion to destroy the only effective economy in all of Africa. They do, however, insist that its benefits be spread more justly.
After President Botha established a three-tiered parliament, Chief Buthelezi broke with the some of the leading figures who participated in that arrangement because of the absence of a black chamber. I understand why he did so, but some admirable people did participate in that arrangement in the hope that it would become a way station on the path to a democratic South Africa. The Reverend Allan Hendrickse, the leader of the (colored) Labor Party, who recently defied the regulations against mixed bathing, is also a moral leader who is trying against heavy odds to move South Africa to a just and democratic multiracial political system.
There have been two main impediments to the changes that are required. Although President Botha's verklarte wing of the Nationalist Party was in fact committed to democratic multiracial change, the president's unwillingness to move at more than glacial speed was sure to produce an internal polarization that would undercut the democratic forces in South Africa. That President Botha could not be made to move faster made it impossible to implement Rev. Hendrickse's request to reestablish a dialogue group two years ago.
The second main impediment to change lay in the United States, for the type of pressure now being applied was sure - as many who knew the Boers
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