This book was completed in May, 1989. Since then, a number of dramatic things have happened in the world. None of these events, however, gainsay the political premise of this story: namely the serious threat posed by the right wing in South Africa.
United Nations Resolution 435 has been implemented and Namibia has been granted its independence from South Africa. It was his anxiety about this possibility that made the hero of this book, James McQuade, return to southern Africa. The South West African Peoples Organization (SWAPO), which represents the largest tribe, the Ovambos, won the election as McQuade predicted, and Mr Sam Nujoma is the country’s president. Whilst preparations for Namibia’s independence were in progress, Mr P. W. Botha was succeeded as state president of South Africa by Mr F. W. de Klerk, who immediately embarked on a bold programme of reform.
Then, completely unpredictably, the Berlin Wall came tumbling down almost overnight, followed rapidly by the collapse of most of the communist governments in the Eastern Bloc, effectively proving the failure of Marxism and the effectiveness of People Power.
While the erstwhile state president, Mr P. W. Botha, may legitimately be said to have initiated the first cautious steps towards reforms in South Africa – the ‘glimmers of hope’ grudgingly mentioned by characters in this book, reforms that gave rise to the right-wing backlash in the shape of the neo-Nazi AWB and similar movements – the new state president, Mr F. W. de Klerk, has initiated reforms with breathtaking speed.
The ANC and all other political movements have been unbanned, including the South African Communist Party; Nelson Mandela has been released from a life sentence imposed for treason, and most political prisoners have been released; the demolition of the Apartheid Wall and its repressive legislation has begun; a new constitutional dispensation has been promised; and formal negotiations between the government, the ANC and other political organizations have commenced to hammer out the details of this constitution. These negotiations will be protracted, probably covering years, and they will involve considerable posturing, walkouts, ‘card-playing’ and ‘horse-trading’, and finally, it is to be hoped, hard-won concessions by both sides.
The basic bone of contention is likely to be whether, under the new constitution, ‘winner takes all’ in a unitary state, as the ANC demands, or whether ‘minority group rights’, in addition to an individual’s rights, will be protected, as the government demands. This the government sees as a necessary guarantee against black domination of whites, while the ANC sees it as a form of continuation of Apartheid.
Whatever the merits of either argument, all this is regarded by the right-wing organizations as an outrageous, perfidious sell-out by the government to the forces of darkness, and they vow to fight to the bitter end for the preservation of a white South Africa with Verwoerdian Apartheid or, at the very least, for a pure-white state within South Africa.
These right-wing groups, notably the AWB and the Boerestaat Party, are well-armed, well-trained and well-organized for the civil war they swear is coming (or will provoke), and they intend to derail the negotiation process. Like Heinrich Muller in this book, they vociferously declare that in the chaos that will ensue from the reforms – chaos which the government will be unable to contain – whites will see the error of Mr de Klerk’s ways and flock to the laager under right-wing banners, whence the right-wing commandos will storm forth and restore Verwoerdian law and order in the land.
The chaos the right-wing clamorously forecasts is rumbling in the wings. Black-versus-black civil war is raging in Natal between the Zulu impis of Inkatha and the black ANC/UDF, with both groups trying to impose their political will on the other. Neither government forces nor the pleas of Mr Nelson Mandela to ‘throw your pangas into the sea’ have had any effect – indeed, apart from the many thousands rendered homeless, the fighting has already caused more deaths and injuries than did the seventeen years of South Africa’s border war against SWAPO and its Cuban allies. The ‘independent’ homeland of Ciskei has erupted in mayhem and nihilism as the people ousted their black president, and a similar attempted coup in the ‘independent’ black statelet of Bophuthatswana was crushed. Demonstrations within South Africa have turned into riotous assemblies, resulting in police dispersals (whether justifiable or not) and more deaths.
The ANC is itself divided between the official representatives who are negotiating with the government on the one hand, and their own hardliners on the other, who want to bring the government to its knees. AZAPO (the Azanian Peoples Organization) condemns the ANC for ‘illusory goals’, and the PAC (Pan African Congress), with its motto of ‘One Settler One Bullet’, accuses the ANC of ‘selling out’ to the government and absolutely refuses to come to the negotiating table, proclaiming that power can only be won from the barrel of a gun. All this divisiveness is compounded by the age-old African tradition that political opposition is not to be tolerated, that it is the chief’s natural right to rule without challengers.
Another complication is that throughout this land, which is bigger than France, Spain and Great Britain combined, there is the disturbing problem of ‘the Youth’: the vast masses who are unemployed and unemployable largely because they chose to follow the slogan ‘Liberation Before Education’; the volatile, immature legions whose expectations have been raised by all these recent heady events and who are demanding action and rewards now.
Most – though not all – of this witches’ brew of trouble is the legacy of the failed, repressive system of Apartheid, and perhaps the violence we are seeing, and will see, is but a purging stage that the country has to go through, an evacuation of steam, now that Mr de Klerk has let the genie of freedom and political expression out of the bottle – nonetheless a witches’ brew it is. It is this potential chaos, along with the ‘failure’ of the rest of Africa, that the sabre-rattling right wing realistically points to as their raison d’être. The threat they pose is very dangerous indeed. They could, and certainly want to, stop everything and drive South Africa back into the laager, whereupon the Bloodbath, so long expected of this country, is likely to ensue.
The right wing could not defeat the government in a straight fight – that is not how the battles would be fought. However, the right wing’s capability to wear down the government’s forces in a ‘Boer War’ of attrition is beyond doubt, especially as the loyalty of a substantial percentage of the police and army is questionable. Their ability to derail the negotiations by confrontations with blacks is obvious – ‘a single spark can start a prairie fire’, as Mao Tse-tung said. The threat they pose to peace and the new South Africa is frightening, and it is taken very seriously indeed.
As Heinrich Muller says in this book, for the right wing things have never looked better. They have never been so strong, and they are likely to get stronger in the anxious years of transition ahead.
JGD
May 1990