FW DE KLERK’S first instinct when confronted with the information that 3 500 security force members and two cabinet ministers had secretly applied for indemnity on the eve of the April elections was to defend his men. He later changed his tune, going along, it seems, with a cabinet decision not to recognise the validity of these indemnities.
This flexibility is vintage De Klerk: the major flaw in his political character has always been his inability to deal firmly and decisively with the security forces when the situation has demanded it.
This presents him, and his party, with a crucial decision at their federal congress this weekend. The issue is whether De Klerk wants to spend the rest of his political career being the spokesman for and defender of the criminals and aparatchiks of apartheid.
In the first nine months of the new order, the National Party has defined itself as a reactionary force. Its main concern has been to defend the most conservative elements of its traditional constituency — in other words, to ensure that it does not lose votes to the rightwing. De Klerk, therefore, has expended his energy defending apartheid criminals and civil servants — and often the most old-guard of them — with vigour.
These are the habits of the past. The fact is that the NP drew in the last election more white votes than it has for decades, indicating that it has overcome the rightwing threat.
But if it has its eyes focused on this constituency alone, then it has reached its maximum size, as it probably won every white, coloured and Indian vote it will ever win — and will not be able to win many black votes.
Now the crucial test is whether the NP can project a vision of itself that overcomes the impression given by the indemnities debacle — that it is a party that still can’t be trusted to put the crimes of the past behind it and behave differently and honestly.
Besides, the NP will have to stop attaching itself to the reconstruction and development programme.
As long as it tries to hold on to the coat-tails of ANC policy, it will fail to project its own vision of a different South Africa.
De Klerk’s attitude to the truth commission has been a defensive one. He misses the point. It could be, if played right, an opportunity for him and his constituency to purge themselves of these hangovers from the past. If, however, he treats it as deviously as he has until now, then it will only reinforce the lasting impression that he himself has too much still to hide.