lends an attentive ear to Jacob Zuma who was later elected deputy secretary general. MAKE PEACE! ANC militants chose moderates for their new top team. As a result the prospects for an end to violence and democracy are far brighter.

HE African National Congress must The ANC has squared up, with com­ party offering Democracy with a capital Tbe taken much more seriously after petence and realism, to the crucial D, it will have to convince voters that its Durban conference. That comes business of negotiating a new South this applies not only in its own councils, through loud and clear after the week- Africa with the government. It has held a but in the reporting thereof. long deliberations. remarkable exercise in grass-roots demo­ Peace, ironically, seems closer now in It means yet another course-correction cracy, elected an able top team and spite of the continuing violence in South by the white-dominated establishment Africa. of , and the electronic media I ky I Although the ANC conference was a which primarily influence it. In years militant mass occasion, with plenty of past, the establishment has had to adjust ANTHONY HEARD, | sabre-rattling directed at the govern­ its thinking about the ANC many times. former Editor of the ment, it undoubtedly nudged the negotia­ Past derision is becoming current Cape Times tion process ahead. There was a healthy respect. mix of radicalism and realism, with the survived holding a conference under the delegates possibly more militant than Self-congratulatory assertions in very nose of rival Inkatha. their chosen leaders. Nationalist newspapers that F.W. de Even the downside factors, such as Klerk's team is the only competent over-secret discussions and the stultify­ The ANC emerged with a newly- player on the political scene will have to ing alliance with a rather toothless elected leadership widely recognised in be re-thought. The ideology of indispens- Communist Party, did not seriously South Africa as strong. If you doubt this, ability which has been growing under De detract from the success. But both will just place the following against one Klerk takes a knock. And the unctuous have to be attended to if the ANC wishes another in national negotiation teams: lectures delivered to the ANC by news­ to offer itself in elections as a potential De Klerk, Gerrit Viljoen, Pik Botha, papers over how it should be playing to government. It will simply be impossible Stoffel van der Merwe, ; the rules of the game will have to be to be coy about admitting to membership and, on the other side of the table, curtailed. of the CP. And if the ANC is to be the PAGE THREE From Page Three

account of this by, in effect, accepting a Something quite new for phased withdrawal of sanctions depend­ ing on progress in South Africa. And its finances must be a worry — particularly the social face of Durban in view of the drying up of foreign funds for anti-apartheid causes. Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Cyril to suggestions in some quarters, it seems Moreover, it had the paradox of an Ramaphosa, Chris Hani and Thabo that the ANC leaders want to begin aged leadership and radical youthful Mbeki. substantive talks with the government as supporters. I heard one youth on going Quite apart from the question of soon as possible — certainly before the to the voting booth: "One man, one negotiating skills, it is difficult to forget momentum of their march from exile to vote, but for the same old team." Yet the that the former have enjoyed years of legality flags. sheer all-round respect for the elderly leaders won the day. cosseted white rule; the latter have The top leadership have every reason endured ennobling hardship, yet are to get talks going with De Klerk before But surely the degree of secrecy about rational and not bitter. And they are new they pass physically from the scene. the conference proceedings was un­ faces. The chances are that, given real Obstacles exist, but if De Klerk really necessary. One delegate, Albie Sachs, access to the media for a change, they does want to get talks under way even expressed disappointment that the will bowl many people over. promptly, they can surely be overcome, media was not present to hear the high I found it a conference to remember, or reduced. level of debate. an occasion that would not have been The ANC's task in this its first major Yet, in spite of its problems and the possible a mere year or two ago. It conference inside the country since its ideological "baggage" it carries, the plastered something quite new over the 1960 banning, was a difficult one. ANC broke new ground and became an face of Durban. It had to begin the process of trans­ established part of the legal political Consider the incongruity: Soviet and forming itself from being an under­ scene as never before. PLO officials rubbing shoulders in hotels ground guerilla force into a legal, open One illustration of the changed with kugels dolled up for the "July". The political movement or party. Yet it had, climate: culture mix was mind-boggling. for all intents and purposes, given up one In November, 1985, as Editor of the A city which bore the brunt of ANC card it had held since 1961: armed Cape Times newspaper, I interviewed guerilla attacks in the 1980s acted host to struggle. And it was losing another card. ANC exile leader Oliver Tambo in the very forces it had grown to fear and It knew international sanctions against London and published a full-page hate: guerillas who now seek peace — Pretoria were eroding, so it took due but who threaten to go to war again if negotiations falter. A conference "first" was the extensive voting, which was for the ANC office­ bearers. For many Africans present, this was the only meaningful vote exercised in their lives; and they queued up at the booths, taking this business very serious­ ly. I saw them in long queues, including grave-faced men and women in their seventies or older, doing what had been denied them by the white government all their lives. Before long, maybe, they will be voting for a new government, along with their currently voteless president, Nelson Mandela. The conference was a truly non-racial event. Though Africans were dominant, I gather other races contributed exten­ sively and distinctively to discussions — yet not self-consciously. Ethnic and cultural differences were there, but — from accounts — these were unifying and not divisive factors. "Klein" Jannie Momberg, son of the Simonstown MP, looked as much at home as the rest of the Stellenbosch ANC who arrived by Chilwan's bus at the University of Durban-West ville. Yet, behind the pioneering surface events of the conference lay a sense of urgency among the leadership. Contrary Cyril Ramaphosa's moment of triumph. He is the new secretary general. PAGE FOUR WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE WHITE LIBERALS?

OOKING around the guests and Lother observers at the ANC's national conference in Durban, I was struck by how few white liberals there were. Especially English-speaking liberals. Official invitations were sparse, I know, and perhaps English-speaking liberals are too genteel just to turn up and take pot luck the way many folk did. Even so, their numbers were so meagre as to provide an index of a troubling feature of our political life —- the failure of the liberals, now that apartheid is on its way out, to come forward and embrace its alternative. Helen Suzman was there briefly and Chris Hani has a word of advice for Winnie Mandela so was Zac de Beer. They were the only "old Progs'* who formed the Progressive Party in 1960.1 saw no members of Alan From Page Four produce a dynamic combination which Paton's old Liberal Party. By contrast will lead to greater realism on the part of account of his remarks. I was arrested by there were a number of what might be the De Klerk government in dealing with called Afrikaner dissidents: Jannie the security police in my office and the ANC. charged in court for quoting a person Momberg, Pierre Cronje, Jan van Eck, silenced by official decree. Last week the Mandela, who has discretionary Braam Viljoen (twin brother of the selfsame Tambo — though handicapped powers and enough esteem to carry his former Defence Force chief. Constand by a stroke — walked and talked freely followers into historic agreements with Viljoen), even UNISA's indefatigable in Durban. De Klerk when he wishes, can threaten, Willcm Kleynhans. A tapestry of formerly forbidden when in an awkward spot, to refer Foreign visitors outnumbered the political faces and events displayed in matters back to his more militant move­ local liberals. South Africans' living rooms, as a matter ment. De Klerk would know what THAT means. It could concentrate his mind, It is a phenomenon I first noticed of routine reporting, by government- during the great black uprising of the controlled TV and radio services ap­ and make him continue to value Mandela's "moderation". This could mid-1980s, long before F.W. de Klerk parently out to be less biased than in the and his Pretoriastroika, this reticence on past. Till recently, the same services had strengthen the cement binding the two together; and that cement is arguably the part of white liberals as the prospect demonized the ANC. The course-correc­ of majority rule began to loom before tion was remarkable — and encouraging one thing which stands between South Africa and chaos. them as something that might actually for the future. happen. So much for the conference. The major and immediate obstacle to constitutional progress remains the As the townships raged and P.W. Where do we stand as a nation? What Botha intensified the state of emergency, are the prospects for peace and demo­ violence in black townships as politically- emergent groups fight for turf. The ANC the liberal reaction became increasingly cracy? They are far better. The decks ambiguous: while they disapproved of have been cleared for negotiations that accuses the government and police of lie ahead. A flagging economy sends fomenting violence, and not doing urgent signals to all concerned to reach enough to stop it. This the government Their absence agreement quickly, and get on with the denies. Whatever the truth (and I, for intrigued task of reconstruction. one, cannot believe that military destabi- lizers can be transported to angel status One point about negotiations. From A Hi1st er Sparks, overnight), the violence must be reduced the applause and general responses at appreciably before constructive talks get formerly Editor of the conference, the delegates were more under way. radical and militant than the top leaders the Rand Daily Mail chosen. The fact of a hawkish following Nothing that happened in Durban and a dovish top leadership might changes that reality. • PAGE FIVE