Roanoke Times Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc. DATE: THURSDAY, March 19, 1992 TAG: 9203190184 SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO SOURCE: BY BARRY RENFREW ASSOCIATED PRESS DATELINE: JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA LENGTH: Medium
At a time when rival ethnic groups are tearing each other apart in many nations, South Africa's whites voted to end their monopoly on power and seek a common future with the black majority.
The 69 percent vote Tuesday to scrap apartheid and negotiate a new constitution exceeded even the most optimistic predictions.
"The white electorate has risen above itself," President F.W. de Klerk said.
Enormous problems still must be solved, however. Whites are not likely to surrender power overnight. Also, many want a veto on the power of any future multiracial government and oppose drastic redistribution of wealth to correct inequities created by apartheid.
For decades the white-minority government refused to see blacks as equals. White leaders concocted apartheid - a rigid system of legal, social and economic divisions - to ensure blacks could never be more than laborers and servants.
The architects of apartheid claimed they were defending Western civilization and Christianity.
"Perhaps it was meant for us to have been planted here at the southern point of Africa . . . so that from [us] . . . might emanate the victory whereby all that has been built since the days of Christ may be maintained for the good of all mankind," Prime Minister H.F. Verwoerd said in 1958.
As recently as 1988, de Klerk's predecessor P.W. Botha, said he would never consider accepting a black government.
The country was carved up to give blacks their own "nations," and millions of blacks were summarily deprived of citizenship and dumped in barren areas of the nation. Whites retained 87 percent of the land, insisting it had been empty until their forefathers settled it.
White leaders said they could fend off the entire world, often sneering at sanctions imposed in an attempt to force South Africa to abandon segregation. The country could live with sanctions, but much of its wealth and energy was devoted to propping up apartheid.
It has been a futile battle.
Five million whites, some opposed to apartheid, could not dominate 30 million blacks.
De Klerk stunned South Africans and the world when he announced in 1990 that apartheid would be scrapped by the same government that created and defended the system for four decades.
Although the lifestyles of whites have not changed much, the certainties they grew up with crumbled almost overnight. Whites were no longer assured of the advantages setting them apart as the ruling class.
Many whites still don't see blacks as equals. But the white vote for reform shows, if nothing else, that some want to change.
by CNB