Word: klerk
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...time included coloreds, or people of mixed race, and Indians, but not blacks. Whatever the failures of that system, Pik Botha insists, it at least helped condition the minds of whites "to see a man of color acting like a gentleman just like everybody else." By the time De Klerk ordered the removal of the remaining WHITES ONLY signs on South Africa's beaches just before the Christmas holidays, whites complained about "crude" black sunbathers but accepted the inevitable. As Christiaan Kirstein, 51, a corn farmer from the Orange Free State, said, "You can't keep the blacks down...
However, the whites' commitment to reform stops short of entrusting their own destiny to any other than white hands. If apartheid as a method has failed to protect their rights and privileges, whites will find another, more palatable way to retain them. De Klerk has put the position squarely a number of times: "White domination must end, but we are not prepared to exchange it for black domination...
Despite the white limits to reform, De Klerk has managed to create a climate of optimism and opportunity with his language of conciliation, moderation and flexibility. His constant emphasis on negotiations and on finding a peaceable resolution of racial differences has won domestic support and international approval. It has also confronted black organizations with a host of thorny questions about how to adapt their strategies and whether to trust their old enemies. Much of the antiapartheid movement has been caught off balance and disorganized. Under the emergency, government policy effectively shackled them: 30 organizations were banned, hundreds of leaders were...
...most powerful of the younger figures, Cyril Ramaphosa, the 37-year-old general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, declared that Mandela's status "was no different from the status of any other member." Others were angered by Mandela's presumption in initiating a personal dialogue with De Klerk. Mandela's first and quite daunting task will be to end this black disunity...
...white community is also divided. Polls indicate that De Klerk is slightly ahead of the white population at large in pushing for reform. Fully 31% of whites voted for the breakaway Conservative Party, the bastion of the verkramptes, or ultraconservatives. They object to any form of power sharing and resist not just negotiations but all attempts to pare the laws of segregation. At worst, they talk of secession and partition, retreating to a smaller but still pure Afrikaner land where whites would dominate. While the conservatives probably cannot block De Klerk from pursuing reform, their reactionary attitudes...