Word: klerk
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...great conundrum of the Afrikaner politician is that the starting point of black demands -- one man, one vote -- exceeds the end point of white flexibility. Moderate Afrikaners find the idea of black rule fearsome primarily because they are convinced it would lead to economic chaos. De Klerk's real mandate from his Afrikaner supporters is to find a way to give power to the black man without rendering the white man powerless...
...Klerk has his own way of explaining this. "Over the years," he said in an interview with TIME, "it became clear that the ((National Party)) policy of separate development could not be realized within the framework of the realities of South Africa. It became clear that the interests of all the people of this country have become so interwoven that it is impossible to totally extricate the various groups and nations from each other. As early as 1986, the National Party specifically adapted its policy and discarded the concept of total separation of political power, and exchanged...
...Klerk occasionally apologizes for his lumpy English (Afrikaans is his first language), but the obfuscation is not accidental. "Sharing power" means that whites may be willing to give blacks equal, but not superior, power. Even so, De Klerk objects to anyone questioning his commitment to change. Like many Afrikaners, he gets angry when the outside world criticizes South Africa for not doing enough rather than acknowledging what it has done. "Anyone who says that we are just looking for another way in which to entrench white domination has either not taken note of what has been said and what...
...expectations have been raised. For many, the release of Mandela is meant to signal the beginning of the end of apartheid. Now anything less than an agreement between white and black about the shape of the future will be a bitter disappointment. De Klerk knows this, and he must find some middle path that will satisfy both sides. Yet it must be more than apartheid with a human face. "His mandate is somehow to maintain white supremacy without alienating the black majority," says Alan Morris, an anti-apartheid activist and sociology lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand...
Like many Afrikaners, De Klerk talks about the "reservoir of goodwill" that still exists between black and white in South Africa. This is more wishful thinking than reality, but if the idea is that the black majority will give him more time, De Klerk is probably right. But how much more time is the question...