De Klerk, the last white president of South Africa and his vision of power-sharing
FW De Klerk, the last white president of South Africa who led the complex and delicate phase of the dismantling of apartheid and the transition of the country to the government of the black majority, is gone.
It was undoubtedly a significant figure who leaves a political and historical balance that is not easy to evaluate, given the unique and so complicated context in which he found himself operating.
South Africa in 1989 was in an extremely complex condition, facing a growing internal conflict and a coordinated international siege. PW Botha's decade of government had already been marked by a number of reforms which, however, had been underestimated and ignored by the international community, which had actually strengthened the "total onslaught" against Pretoria since the mid-1980s.
The sanctions against the country undermined its economic prospects, to the detriment of all inhabitants and incidentally, to an even greater extent, the prospects of improving the living conditions of blacks.
On the internal level, on the other hand, the demographic reality made the idea that the political future of the black populations of South Africa could only be expressed in the context of the so-called "Bantustans" untenable. The project of guaranteeing a space for black emancipation through a "constellation of states" established on an ethnic basis had been stalled for some time and the pressure for political representation of the " urban blacks" was growing stronger.
The transition from Botha's leadership to that of De Klerk in 1989 was anything but cordial. Botha, weakened by the political stalemate as well as by health problems, was first induced to step back from the leadership of the National Party and then forced to give up the role of president as well. In a short time De Klerk created the conditions for the break with the line followed by his predecessor and within a few months, on February 2, 1990, he made public decisions intended to heavily reconfigure the political framework: the legalization of the African National Congress, the release of Nelson Mandela, the elimination of the state of emergency in force since 1986.
De Klerk had probably seen the right in believing that the status quo was now becoming unsustainable.
On the one hand, it was increasingly evident that a system of government cannot stand if its foundations are not recognized by the majority of the population. In many ways, precisely the growth in living conditions, in the cultural level of blacks, which had been made possible precisely by the economic model imposed by the "Europeans" meant that the voice of blacks could no longer be ignored. On the other hand, on the international level, racial discrimination was now too easy a target for the enemies of South Africa and at the same time an element of embarrassment for those who instead empathized genuinely with the "white tribe of Africa".
In his autobiography “The Last Trek – A New Beginning” De Klerk explains that one of the factors that led to his decision to change was the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. what had been a major concern of ours for decades, namely the influence of the Soviet Union on the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party. This opened a window of opportunity for a more courageous approach than might have been conceivable in the past. "
In fact, there was now a greater chance that the ANC could opt for a moderate and pro-Western approach and not repeat the sad path taken by Robert Mugabe in neighboring Zimbabwe.
De Klerk was also probably aware that the time available to initiate a transition was limited, as the international situation could only worsen over time.
In the 1980s, South Africa could still count on a not wholly hostile attitude from Washington and London, but even this limited solidarity would probably fade in the following years. Moreover, the end of the Soviet danger made Pretoria's role as an anti-Communist garrison in Africa fade, also considering the resolution of the Namibian question and the political realignment in Angola and Mozambique.
Moreover, the old South Africa could never have survived the era of globalization and the heavy orientation of the Western cultural and political mainstream – and above all the Anglosphere – in place since the 90s on the issues of "civil rights ".
In short, De Klerk had to act – and he did.
However, it was immediately evident that the government of the National Party was now moving on a very different ground than the programmatic platform with which, with Botha still president, it had won the 1989 elections – and it was not at all obvious that the new line was actually appreciated by the electorate.
Between 1991 and 1992, the National Party saw its seat taken from the Conservative Party, opposed to reforms, in three important supplementary elections. The Potchefstroom supplementary in February 1992 caused a particular uproar and led the right-wing opposition to call for new elections.
De Klerk responded with a move that will prove to be a crucial junction for the South African transition. De Klerk believed, in all likelihood, that a renewal of Parliament was actually risky and preferred to bet everything on calling a referendum that would give the government a binding mandate to negotiate a new institutional framework. The referendum scenario was more promising for the president because it allowed him to add those of the progressive parties to his supporters.
The "yes" to the negotiation won with a clear majority. However, the key to De Klerk's success was the fact of sending the electorate a message as reassuring as possible – that is, that the white population was not giving up power, but that it was preparing to "share it", through appropriate "power- sharing " .
As Margaret Thatcher recalls, in the autobiography "The Downing Street Years" , about the meetings with FW De Klerk, the path that the South African president seemed to prefigure was clearly that of a sharing in executive power – a "hybrid" and "federal model" ". "The fundamental principle he held was that in the new South Africa no one should have as much power as he did at the time."
But how much of the prospect the South African leader promised has actually been realized? FW De Klerk himself acknowledges, in his autobiography, that something went "wrong" in the negotiations. Indeed, he admits that he should have "pushed harder to have effective power-sharing tools included in the final Constitution" and regrets that the African National Congress "did not want to accept stronger devices to adapt to our complex multicultural society" , including power sharing at the executive level.
De Klerk's failure on these aspects does not translate into limited defects in the new South African order, but unfortunately, into deep and conditioning gaps for the evolution that the country has had since 1994. The final Constitution that was agreed for South Africa in practice, it envisages a “uninational” and fundamentally centralized state model, with only modest forms of regionalism.
It is an outcome that not only has little to do with the power-sharing vision that was the basis of the 1992 referendum campaign; it is also an outcome entirely outside of what had been the South African political debate of previous years. In fact, even the most progressive positions represented in the panorama of white South African politics had, in any case, foreshadowed federal outcomes. The very name of the Progressive Federal Party, which represented the "liberal" and anti-apartheid opposition, referred to models of federalism among the various ethnic groups.
But then, the question that can be asked is whether the 1992 vote was actually respected – that is, whether the South African president had a legitimate democratic mandate for the type of landing he arrived at, or whether he hijacked the mandate of the citizens. towards an outcome that is certainly "popular" on the international level, but without any effective constitutional protection of minorities.
In the end, all De Klerk managed to come up with was the possibility of forming a coalition government in the first legislature, in which, however, the African National Congress alone enjoyed a large absolute majority.
However, it was almost immediately clear that the National Party was unable to exert any real influence on the new course, so after just two years, in 1996, De Klerk resigned as vice-president and took the party to the opposition. . Since then, the ANC's hold on the country has been unshakeable.
That different types of arrangements were conceivable and politically acceptable, even internationally, is demonstrated by the case of the peace process in Northern Ireland, roughly contemporary. In that context, the key to the solution of the political conflict was precisely the willingness to abandon the dogma of majority democracy and to recognize that the level of polarization between communities was reasonably composable only through the establishment of effective forms of power-sharing between the Protestan majority and the Catholic minority.
And forms of minority protection are present in various forms in all Western countries where different ethnic and linguistic groups coexist. In some cases they consist in carving out areas in which this minority is actually a majority and equipping them with institutions with special autonomy – think of South Tyrol or the areas of Eupen and Malmedy for the Belgian German-speaking community. In other cases, where a recognized minority does not constitute a majority in any area, ad hoc arrangements are used, including non-territorial ones, to guarantee them forms of representation and cultural autonomy – think of the Italian community on the Slovenian coast.
In this sense, the management of a context as plural, articulated and ethnically polarized as that of South Africa should not have been done simply by lowering a “standard model” of Western democracy from above – where simply the winner is the one who gets the most votes.
South Africa represents a unique case of a minority of Western history and culture within a country mostly inhabited by African ethnic groups. A country with such special circumstances did not deserve the slavish transposition of the traditional hierarchical and centralized state format. Instead, it would have deserved the identification of original “horizontal” solutions, a little Northern Irish, a little Belgian and a little Swiss.
In fact, one should not be afraid to affirm that in multi-national contexts, respect for individual rights can also include the recognition of "community rights", while a simple majority principle, only nominally "ethnic-neutral" , can translate into facts oppression and debasement of minority groups.
However complicated the circumstances of the negotiation were, De Klerk could not reasonably attribute the insufficient protection of minorities to the cynical and cheating fate. De Klerk's government was the " incumbent " in South Africa and, as such, had the tools to guide the negotiation process and to veto the final outcome.
The fact is that, in substantial terms, the South African president let the negotiations slide entirely on the conceptual and lexical terrain of the African National Congress which reduced the South African question to the dichotomy between a "white privilege" and an "anti-racist revolution".
The alternative strategy that De Klerk should have undertaken, on the other hand, should have been that of shifting the political discourse on the subject of self-determination as much as possible in a multi-national context. Paradoxically, the South African president became so dependent on his relationship with Nelson Mandela that he marginalized black positions in favor of a federal or confederal order, such as those represented by Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha.
The government of the National Party should have put on the table, as a non-negotiable red line, the recognition of the new South Africa as a "nation of nations", in which all the "founding" ethnic groups had the right to the preservation of their own history, culture, language , historical memory and identity, regardless of their numerical consistency.
Eliminating the concept of nationality and community in favor of a centralized democracy without distinction "uninational" creates, unfortunately, the conditions for the South African reality to be read exclusively through "para-Marxist" lenses, that is in terms of class conflict between the white minority privileged and the oppressed, the so-called " previously disadvantaged ". This way of reading things indefinitely imprisons the reality of South African politics and gives the political class of the African National Congress a power that is in fact unlimited in time. For those who embrace this vision, the effects of white privilege will never be exhausted and the white minority is the bearer of a guilt that will never cease to expiate.
This is how, more than thirty years after the dismantling of apartheid, the pervasive affirmative actions foreseen by the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) continue to be imposed – the only case in the world in which this type of programs are carried out not to protect a minority, but to hit it.
At the same time, the national history of the white population, present in the country for over three hundred years, is debased when not demonized, while the Afrikaans language and Afrikaner culture find themselves devoid of any true form of institutional protection.
FW De Klerk was a politician of intelligent and balanced ideas in many political fields, with a strong sensitivity on the issues of economic development and the effective progress of the living conditions of citizens. From his point of view, “the key to solving the problem of discontent and disillusionment is rapid and sustained economic growth. Experience has shown that the faster the economy grows, the faster a better distribution of income is achieved ” . For this reason it is necessary to "encourage domestic and international investments, open the country responsibly to global competition, continue privatizations and create a more flexible and productive work organization system" , as well as maintaining "an efficient government machine from the point of view cost-effective, effective and honest " .
He would have been a brilliant center-right politician within a "normal" Western democracy – like Australia or Canada. Unfortunately, in the specific South African context, he did not fully understand – or understood too late – how much the "renunciations" made during the negotiation process between 1992 and 1994 structurally compromised the possibility of pursuing precisely those objectives of social and economic development which it set out to hand over to the African National Congress the monopoly of power and "narration".
In fact, none of the hopes or forecasts that De Klerk formulated, neither in terms of economy and good governance, nor in terms of the development of a complete democracy of alternation has unfortunately been realized. The 2019 elections confirm a vote that is still deeply aligned on racial patterns , with 70 percent of the consensus still garnered by the ANC and the black radical movement EFF, while corruption remains widespread and there is no sign of reducing economic inequalities.
Ultimately, despite having to acknowledge De Klerk that he understood the inevitability and urgency of getting the country out of the impasse in which it now found itself, the feeling is that he has not put in place sufficient negotiating force in the negotiations that have led to the birth of the new South Africa – which did not believe enough in the possibility of reaching, if necessary with longer times, more ambitious and more useful points of understanding for the future.
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/de-klerk-lultimo-presidente-bianco-del-sudafrica-e-la-sua-visione-di-power-sharing/ on Tue, 16 Nov 2021 03:46:00 +0000.