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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:-
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Industries:-
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CMMT Comment & Analysis.
The Financial Times
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