As he made his way towards the buffet table after his summit with Mobutu Sese Seko, he hesitated for a moment to gaze at some red flowers on the ”Pragtig,” he said to the scores of assorted journalists, microphones and cameras hanging on to his immortal words. ”Are they bougainvillaeas?” For the rest, nothing escaped Acting State President De Klerk, his entourage or his hosts that was not part of a slick, stage-managed performance that proved academic Herman Gilliomee’ s ”iron law” of South African politics- never underestimate the National Party. Having set up negotiation as, perhaps, the issue of the elections, De Klerk walked straight into the superbowl that the party itself erected.
In one week he met Zaire’s President Mobuto, Unita leader Jonas Savimbi, Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda and Lesotho’s General Metsing Lekhanya Pik Botha was always at his shoulder, chaperoning novice De Klerk through the highways and byways of African diplomacy. On the plane on the way back from Livingstone, Botha sang the acting state president’s praises, patronisingly describing his endeavours in heroic terms. If he wins big next week, De Klerk will be in debt to the Department of Foreign Affairs and its minister. Botha was able to produce a line-up of black leaders in the absence of the government having anyone major from inside the country to wheel into a summit the week before the election. By rights, that should be regarded as pathetic for a party that has been strenuously trying for years to win over black negotiating partners. Instead, the summits represent a victory of sorts for the NP.
The Angolan crisis broke with perfect timing, providing De Klerk with a platform to show off his new-found skills as a diplomatic fixer. Most importantly, Angola overshadowed the question of negotiations with the African National Congress which former President PW Botha, in his angry last stab in De Klerk’s back, had inferred would be on the agenda with Kaunda. De Klerk was able to build the image of himself as a statesman and a negotiator without dwelling on the specifics of what that would mean if real negotiations are ever to start in South Africa. On Monday he was quick to dispel any notion that indirect contact with the ANC had taken place via Kaunda. He said of the ANC plan, adopted by the Organisation of African Unity last week: ”It didn’t come up, it wasn’t on the agenda and it wasn’t discussed.” Making an issue of negotiations, and showcasing it with meetings with black African leaders, is a sophisticated but risky strategy in a white election. Backed up with a modicum of the iron fist, it is intended to harm the Democratic Party and the Conservative Party at the same time.
In 1987 the government and the SABC scared whites so effectively with the black/red gevaar bogeys, that they stampeded them into the far right parties. If white voters want rulers who can bust heads, why not go for the real head busters? Well, 29 percent of them did. This time the approach is more subtle. The NP want to show they’re tough and able to crack down on the mass democratic movement. But they also want to show that they can negotiate and in so doing, they are stealing the clothes of the DP. In their campaign speeches, DP candidates such as Wynand Malan are being forced onto the defensive, having to counter that the NP is engaging in sham negotiations and the DP is the party of serious negotiations. That they have to make the point at all proves the Nat campaign is hurting them. Meeting black leaders is more dicey for the Nats on the right. It is not the kind of visceral issue that has the volk stamping in the aisles. It is wide open to exploitation by the CP.
Ferdi Hartzenberg, CP deputy leader, this week raised the spectre of Jan Smuts, the international statesman who neglected his own people and paid the price. Speaking in Carletonville, Hartzenberg asked: ”What kind of leader is it that goes and asks Margaret Thatcher and Kenneth Kaunda and Joachim Chissano first what they think of his five year plan?” One suspects, though, that the round of summits in the past days has helped the NP immensely, and that they, despite De Klerk’s denials, planned it this way. The party want pundits to underestimate them, to get swept away by the euphoria of the prospect of a hung parliament, so that an NP loss of a few seats will be interpreted as a victory.
In every election since 1953, the hopes of the well-meaning that the NP would be swept out of power have been cruelly dashed. But many pessimists will be watching on their television sets anyway, just in case. Just in case, white people will finally have had enough. This time, even if Wednesday night is a bad one for the DP, however, there is a dimension to the campaign that extends beyond September 6. De Klerk has used the election to try and buy time for himself. Wherever he has gone, he has spelled out a ”positive vision” – to British Prime Minister Thatcher, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Mozambique’s Chissano, Kaunda, United States assistant secretary of State for Africa, Hank Cohen et al – but said he cannot begin to implement it until the election is out of the way.
After Wednesday, there will be no excuses. De Klerk will have to start delivering with specific advances. Congressman Howard Wolpe says he has little more than six months to get moving before a multilateral, bipartisan ton of sanctions bricks comes crashing down on his head. And there is only one way he can start to move, in the next six months to a year. That is, to at least pretend to be serious about negotiating with the ANC and the MDM. The ANC already have a peace plan on the table that could have been drawn up by Thomas Jefferson. It will be hard for the NP to reject that one out of hand and still maintain the diplomatic high road that De Klerk has come into power on. Slick trick or not, by having chosen negotiation as their rallying cry and garnished it with summits in Goma and Livingstone, the NP will quite simply have a mandate to negotiate after September 6. They will have less explaining to do when that inevitable day dawns and they have to sit down to talk to the ANC. They will owe nothing to the extreme right, who did not vote for them anyway.
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
