12/9 Reading Assignment

1. Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha and the Zulus as critical to what? 2. Secessionist tendencies and the necessary deal making to address them. 3. During the inagural parliamentary election, forms of violence and where 4. Non-violent ethnic and socioeconomic obstacles to the electoral process 5. The question is not who will win but rather the threshold of victory. Why? 6. What is fascinating about coming in second place, no matter how distant from first? 7. How and why are three provinces treated differently in the elections? 8. Ethnically or racially, which group would be the likeliest to reject the results?

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Democracy and secession South Africa expects

Anticipating the country's first full election

Apr 23rd 1994 | JOHANNESBURG | From the print edition

THE voters of South Africa—white, black, Xhosa, Zulu—go to the polls next week. A decade ago a non-racial election seemed as unlikely as the collapse of communism. Even a week ago a truly general election seemed an impossibility. Now, because Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha will, after all, take part in the poll the fear of a bloody birth for South African democracy is receding.

Celebration is in order, along with commiseration also many years of suffering and deprivation. Yet it should not be forgotten that those years have given South Africa one benefit: the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of others, especially the mistakes committed in black Africa during three decades of independence. If Nelson Mandela is to satisfy the expectations of his people, he would do well to start by looking north.

Black Africa‘s biggest political problem has been to accommodate the interests of disaffected ethnic minorities. Mr Buthelezi's late capitulation—in returm for some (largely ceremonial) constitutional powers for the Zulu king in Inkatha‘s home base of KwaZulu—is good news for South Africa. Zulus, the backbone of lnkatha support, are the country's biggest tribe and the most formidable political ethnic force. Until this week Mr Buthelezi had been urging them to boycott the poll and take up arms to fight for a sovereign Zulu kingdom; hundreds have been killed. Now, he will at least press his case democratically, and ensure that South Africa's first democratic parliament is indeed representative of the entire country. Yet, at best, Inkatha's co-operation will reduce the violence, not end it. Even before Inkatha declared its boycott, rivalry with the ANC had hardened into bloody warfare. The fighting has set black against black, Zulu against Zulu. Since the ANC was unbanned in 1990, more than 13,000 people have died political deaths. ln the new spirit of co- operation, Mr Buthelezi may urge restraint. But if, as is possible, his party is beaten by them on his own turf, the Zulu chief might turn recalcitrant again. Mr Mandela could find that his first difficult task as president is to deal with a renewed demand for Zulu secession.

The precedents are certainly there. All too often, from Eritrea to Angola (never mind Yugoslavia), discontented minorities excluded from power have taken up arms instead. Angola‘s rebels did so even alter taking part in—and losing—an election whose result they had promised to respect. Mr Buthelezi could try the same. South Africa, home to 11 minorities, black and white, whose mutual suspicions have been etched into minds and statute books for decades, needs to be particularly careful to respect its minorities.

Yet should respect extend as far as allowing secession? Africans though hardly happy with the borders drawn by colonists, have generally argued that changing them would make make matters worse. Between 1967 and 1970 Nigeria fought a ferocious civil war to stop its oil-fired Ibos splitting oft to form Biafra. Most African leaders were pleased to see the lbos fail. Yet times are changing. After a 30 year war Eritrea held a referendum last year and then broke free, peacefully, from Ethiopia. If a majority of people, with some common binding identity, wish to set up their own state peacefully, and can do so without victimising other minorities or stealing the crown jewels, then their claim should be treated sympathetically.

How does the Zulu secessionist case stand up? Zulus seem to pass the “nationhood” test. lt is less clear that a majority actually want to leave South Africa: lnkatha’s showing in the poll will give some indication. Even if they do want to go. it is not clear what they would take with them. Zulus currently live on a string of unconnected, and unprepossessing, bits of land. lt may be that the deal struck this week with the Zulu king, combined with the regional arrangements of the new constitution, will be enough to keep most Zulus happy. South Africa may alternatively, be better off choosing something more akin to federalism proper for its permanent constitution after 1999—though that model did not stop Biafra‘s bid for freedom in the 1960s nor has it solved Nigeria‘s subsequent ethnic woes. At this stage the only certainty is that South Africa will be in for vastly more bloodshed if the new govemment tries to suppress the Zulus. Experience in black Africa suggests that stability can be bought only if opponents are given a role in govemment.

Democracy in South Africa At last The freedom to vote

Apr 30th 1994 | JOHANNESBURG | From the print edition A magnanimous man

IT WAS an event many South Africans had thought they would never live to see. On April 26th, 27th and 28th voters of all races alike went to the polls to bury apartheid for good and elect their first democratic government.

With the last-minute inclusion of the Inkatha Freedom Party, which had vowed to boycott and disrupt the poll, South Africans had let themselves relax at last. The partying began in some places before the polling was finished. Hundreds gathered in Cape Town to watch the old South African flag being lowered outside Parliament, and the new one raised in its place. A cheering crowd drowned out a mainly white choir as it struggled with the words of the new national anthem, Nkosi sikelel’i Afrika, God bless Africa. A carnival spirit broke out in Soweto, the biggest black township, as local inhabitants set up barbecues and played music in the streets.

Black South Africans, who have waited for the vote since the birth of modern South Africa 84 years ago, did not seem to mind waiting another few hours as they queued to vote. Outside one polling station in Ulundi, home of Inkatha’s leader, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, some women started queuing at 5am, wrapped in blankets against the early chill; they did not reach the polling booth till mid-morning. Long neat lines of waiting voters snaked out of polling stations into nearby streets or football fields. Some voters held umbrellas to shade themselves from the heat of the sun. Children hawked bananas up and down the queues. One elderly woman was transported to the polling booth in a wheelbarrow.

Violence did not take a holiday: between Monday and Wednesday, 13 people died in political killings in KwaZulu- Natal. Four bombs exploded, three in Johannesburg, one in Pretoria, killing 21 people. Yet the daily death toll has fallen by more than half since Inkatha abandoned its boycott. Even the bombs—blamed on white extremists—were not enough to keep voters at home. In Ulundi too, tense with fear just weeks ago, Zulus emerged from polling in celebratory spirit. They had left their spears and clubs at home. After the first day of voting, the stockmarket jumped 4%.

Inevitably, not all went smoothly. Months of voter education—mock election roadshows, a "democracy" game show (define a polling station and win a china tea-set) could not get round the act that 30-40% of South Africans cannot read. Photographs of each leader were supposed to help. So at the top of the daunting, foot-long ballot paper, listing 19 parties, was a picture of a grey-haired black leader—not Nelson Mandela, though, but Clarence Makwetu, leader of the Pan Africanist Congress.

More seriously, ANC people complained that electoral officials in KwaZulu, Inkatha's home territory, were marking voters‘ ballot papers for them; just helping illiterate voters, as they were allowed to, the officials said. Inkatha was furious that some ballot papers in some ANC strongholds, such as the township of Lamontville, outside Durban, did not have an Inkatha sticker attached at the bottom, as they were supposed to.

Still, difficulties had to be expected in a country most of whose 22.7m electorate had never voted before. Only five years ago the ANC was outlawed, its leaders in exile or in jail. Less than a month ago the independent electoral commission had concluded that it would be impossible to hold elections in KwaZulu-Natal. Inkatha’s late entry into the poll meant that preparations there were hurried and chaotic, though the party, in a six-day campaign, still managed to paste up posters of its leader and tell voters to "go for the bottom line".

Official figures are not due until April 30th, but the result has never been in doubt: an outright majority victory for the ANC, to be followed by the election of Mr Mandela as South Africa’s first black president—one of astounding magnanimity, given the 27 years that white rulers kept him in prison. The big question was whether the ANC could win the 67% that would give it enough members to write the permanent constitution in five years’ time by itself.

In second place will come the revamped non-racial National Party, once the party of apartheid, whose leader, F.W. de Klerk, will take his place in a coalition govemment alongside members of a movement he once called terrorist. He too deserves praise. Not much esteemed when he succeeded to the presidency, he soon astonished the world by his readiness to abandon apartheid. Yet few believed he would be able to bring South Africa to majority rule without a bigger backlash from the white electorate.

In only three provinces—voters faced two ballot papers, national and provincial—was there any chance that the ANC would not take a firm hold of power. One was KwaZulu-Natal. Though Inkatha was sure to sweep up in the Zulu heartland around Ulundi, the rest of the province was hotly contested three ways: between it, the ANC and the National Party. This is where Mr Mandela went to vote, at a school in Durban, to boost confidence among ANC- aligned Zulus (though at least lnkatha’s participation in the poll meant that Zulus no longer had to fear for their lives if they ventured out to vote).

The other two provinces to watch were Northern Cape and Western Cape, where blacks are a minority. Most voters are Coloureds, of mixed race, whose half-way status under apartheid left them with a peculiar contempt for blacks. "l hang my head in shame when l say it," said one Coloured woman near Cape Town before the election, “but l could never vote for a black."

The National Party, inventors of the system that uprooted Coloureds from their homes and arbitrarily disfranchised them, was set to win many of their votes.

After the ballots are counted, the question is whether the losers will accept the result. South Afiicans are keenly aware thatJonas Savimbi, in nearby Angola, restarted a civil war after losing an election that he had promised to respect. Mr Buthelezi too said he would abide by the resu|t—if it had been freely and fairly produced. His colleaguts soon started to mutter that ballot papers had been deliberately withheld from Inkatha areas, and that too many lacked Inkatha stickers. On April 21th Mr Euthelezi threatened to withdraw Inltatha from the poll—whatever that might mean— unless his grievances were met, but withdrew the threat when extra and amended ballot papers were issued. The time allowed for voting was also extended. lnkatha-supporting Zulus have been celebrating their right to vote. But as one Zulu voter in Ulundi put it, “I don’t mind if the ANC wins, because Buthelezi is my president. l only listen to him." Up in the remote hills of KwaZulu, the reality of the new South Africa is yet to sink in.