Listening to the silent majority

[134]

Much of how the saga of apartheid in South Africa will end depends upon the strategies of Mr fw de Klerk. I asked many prominent black citizens what they expected from the new np leader. Those who had already spoken with him in recent weeks were outstandingly optimistic and positive about what they heard and felt. Those who had not, like Ephraim Tshabalala, reserved judgement and assumed a ‘wait-and-see’ attitude. Mr de Klerk spent most of April and May in 1989 testing the parameters of black thinking in South Africa. He picked the brains of homeland leaders, like Gatsha Buthelezi, Enos Mabuza and others. He thoroughly updated and double-checked his information about what was motivating black thinking in this late hour. There is no other way in

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forming a judgement without first collecting accurate and solid data. He has already indicated that ‘things must change drastically and quickly’. He said ‘the np does not seek a disguised form of permanent white domination over majorities’. The Nats were ‘not as ideologically obsessed with the group concept as has been suggested by critics’. He added, ‘Our strong emphasis on group rights, alongside individual rights, is based on the reality of South Africa and not on an ideological obsession or racial prejudice.’ He stressed that a non-racial society in a multiracial land was an ordinary pipe-dream. Nevertheless, ‘My party strives for a non-racial country, a country free of racism, and of racial hatred.’

Of course, the Soviets think they already know everything about Mr de Klerk. Borias Asoyan, once Soviet envoy to Lesotho, now is considered ‘a top expert’ on South Africa in the Kremlin. ‘In het land der blinden is een oog koning.’ Dr Philip Nel allowed Asoyan in his magazine of the Stellenbosch Institute of Soviet Studies to circulate unfounded information about Mr fw de Klerk.^122. Glasnost or openness apparently means in Moscow these days that even minor government officials are free to ventilate their expertise in the area of foreign policy, whether their theories are in conformity with official policy or not. As indicated earlier, spokesmen on South Africa in the Kremlin are now all telling different fairy tales about this country. As duly-trained card-carrying communists they stick to the anc as their staunch and loyal partner in their relentless efforts to destabilise this country and replace the current political all-white leadership - aided and abetted by Indians and coloureds, as seen in Moscow - with a one-party Marxist clan under the leadership of the Mandela-Tambo team. Well, this report should contain some news for one-track minds in the Kremlin. Listen to what Ephraim Tshabalala said here, moments ago, about the feasibility of Oliver Tambo ever becoming an acceptable leader to blacks in South Africa. All anc legends are the creations of minds separated by distance from the characters. The world can rest assured that South African blacks will make up their own minds as to what men they want to administer them and lead them to freedom.

Frans Esterhuyse likewise pointed to Boris Asoyan's Stellenbosch magazine article, by highlighting that this Soviet expert feels that Mr de Klerk displays ‘pathos and eloquence, which is not enough in the cur-

122. The Sowetan, May 23, 1989

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rent political conditions’. Asoyan: ‘The continued replacement of positive actions with loud but empty verbiage may prove catastrophic for South Africa. There are ever fewer chances for peaceful settlement of the conflict.’^123. Mr Asoyan, a trained Marxist-Leninist, seems shocked at the fact that ‘Mr fw de Klerk has so far refrained from rushing into a huddle with the anc to create conditions for a dialogue between the two main political forces in the country’. Probably, the Russians really feel that the communist-infiltrated anc on which they counted all along, (money-wise, arms-wise and ideologically), is the leading antiapartheid force inside South Africa. The Soviet experts will be in for a rude awakening. They seem unable to test their own pro-communist support inside the various communist empires, so they probably have a very scant idea of how the minds of blacks in South Africa function. Chinese communists shoot their peacefully-demonstrating students in droves, while Soviet communists have to deploy thousands of heavily-armed soldiers to put down uprisings for freedom and democracy from Georgia, and Uzbekistan to Estonia and Lithuania. They simply do not know in Moscow what they are talking about, when they dream of a future anc-ruled one-party Marxist South Africa. Next comes dr Philip Nel, director of Stellenbosch's Institute of Soviet Studies, naming the Soviets as the ideal mediators on the South African political scene! I consider him a friend, but I beg to differ most fundamentally with this South African expert on Soviet affairs. It was most reassuring to me at least, when minister Chris Heunis emphatically stated on May 9, 1989, that peace and change in South Africa would most certainly not come via Moscow.^124. Communism is a dying political concept whose influence is rapidly waning on the international horizon. The less anyone has to do with it the better.

123. The Sunday Tribune, June 4, 1989

124. The Citizen, May 9, 1989