FT932-15491 _AN-DDMB0AC2FT 930413 FT 13 APR 93 / Signs of resilience in a fragile society: The measured reaction to the assassination of Chris Hani suggests South Africa is committed to negotiated reform By PATTI WALDMEIR The worst may be yet to come. Black South Africans may yet seek revenge for their assassinated hero, Mr Chris Hani, who now awaits a martyr's funeral. But by local standards of violence, the Easter weekend was a relatively quiet one in South Africa. On Saturday, Mr Hani, head of the South African Communist party and guerrilla leader, fell to a white assassin's bullet. But black South Africans did not revolt. They fumed, and mourned, marched and threw stones, fired shots at passing motorists. In the worst incident, blacks incinerated three white men outside an illegal bar in a black township in the Cape. But a few racial incidents do not necessarily suggest a race war is about to start. In a society renowned for its political intolerance and crime (some 18,000 people were killed last year, 13 per cent of them in political violence) the weekend death toll was unusually low. Almost every political party condemned the assassination in the strongest possible terms. Even Mr Eugene Terre'blanche, leader of the white-supremacist Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement), the party to which the alleged murderer is rumoured to belong, condemned the killing as 'atrocious'. Unanimity is rare in this fractured society, but the almost unanimous instinct of leaders from extreme left to hard right was to stress the need to talk, not fight. It was a striking affirmation of South Africa's commitment to negotiating peace and a new constitution. Their restraint was already coming under increasing pressure last night, as the African National Congress announced mass protest action leading up to the largest political funeral ever held in South Africa, to mark the assassination of Mr Hani. No man in South Africa was better loved by the poor, the young and the radical in black society (certainly the majority). That they have contained their rage and resentment thus far is a remarkable achievement, a hopeful sign that South Africa's tortured society is perhaps more resilient than it appears. Race relations will inevitably suffer, as they have already done in recent months as white party-goers, schoolchildren and motorists have come under attack from the radical black Azanian People's Liberation Army and some disaffected members of the ANC. But inter-racial relations in South Africa have defied the logic of apartheid for decades already: black and white relate more cordially in South Africa than in some American inner-cities. The ANC yesterday condemned attacks on whites, pointing out to its supporters that if the hand that killed Mr Hani was white, the information that led to his arrest also came from a white witness. 'Thirty years ago, the possibility of race war was always in my mind,' says veteran liberal politician Mr Zach de Beer. 'It has steadily receded since. One passage of history after another makes me believe that South Africans don't think like that.' Some of them do, of course. Black callers to a weekend radio talk show demanded that 'every red and every white corpuscle of Chris Hani's blood must be accounted for' - and avenged - while white callers complained at the media attention given to the Hani assassination. Reversing the classic complaint made by blacks under apartheid, one white caller protested: 'a white life is worth nothing, but if a black gets killed, it's treated like a big tragedy.' That comment reflects one of the dangers of the current situation: for whites can use this new-found sense of oppression to justify their own liberation struggle. Ironically, reaction would almost certainly have been worse if Mr Hani had been murdered by the ANC's black rivals, the mainly Zulu Inkatha Freedom party, rather than as he allegedly was, by a white immigrant from Poland with a virulent hatred of communism. White extremists such as Mr Janusz Walus, who will today be charged with the Hani murder, pose far less threat to peace than the ongoing war between the ANC and Inkatha. There is circumstantial evidence to suggest that Mr Walus was part of an organised extremist movement: the gun he allegedly used for the murder was stolen from air force headquarters in Pretoria in 1990 by white supremacist Piet 'Skiet' (shoot) Rudolf, formerly a member of the AWB. Crucially, the assassination did not bear obvious hallmarks of the 'hit-squad' killings carried out in the past by the security services: Mr Walus allegedly killed Mr Hani in full view of an eyewitness, using a car easily traceable to him; he was apprehended moments after the attack, with the murder weapon still in his possession and gunpowder traces on his hand. South Africa's hit squads normally show more professionalism. Still, even if a full police investigation shows that Mr Walus has no security force links, no one in the townships will believe it. So many black South Africans have been murdered by the police and military over long years of struggle that blacks acknowledge only one salient fact: that a white has killed the man who was probably South Africa's greatest liberation fighter, former head of the revered Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), the ANC military wing, and the second most popular man in South Africa after Nelson Mandela (according to a recent opinion poll). Mr Hani was a potential successor to Mr Mandela for the ANC leadership (though the more moderate Mr Cyril Ramaphosa, ANC secretary-general, would probably have defeated him). But among township youth, the unemployed and disaffected, Mr Hani's leadership was undisputed: no other ANC leader could so easily make compromise seem like triumph, could argue for peace as a form of struggle (as he so effectively did in the last weeks of his life); in short, could guarantee to deliver the radical youth behind a negotiated settlement. That is what makes Mr Hani's death such a tragedy. For the ANC has made clear that, far from halting negotiations in protest, it will pursue constitutional talks with renewed vigour. Those talks have proceeded smoothly in recent months, with an outline deal already in place between the ANC and government to install a multi-racial power-sharing coalition. That deal, as well as the crucial issue of devolution of power to regional governments, must be agreed by the 20-odd other political organisations attending the multi-party constitutional forum. Progress in the forum has largely been achieved by deferring contentious issues for future consideration, leading to unrealistic optimism about the pace of progress: ANC leaders are still promising that a multi-racial 'transitional executive council' (the first phase of interim government) will be in place by June, but this looks an impossible goal. The ANC will be pressing harder than ever for interim government now, arguing that joint control of the security forces is essential to control violence. But even if that can be agreed, the large differences remaining between negotiators guarantee that talks will eventually hit a snag - and Chris Hani will no longer be there to ensure that such a breakdown does not lead to township revolt. The next few days will sorely test the ability of other ANC leaders to step into that void and the will of the security forces to contain protest without brutality: in short, the capacity of South African society to withstand this blow with political maturity and calm. So far, so restrained. Countries:- ZAZ South Africa, Africa. Industries:- P9229 Public Order and Safety, NEC. Types:- CMMT Comment & Analysis. The Financial Times London Page 14