R.W. Johnson

One of the great lessons of the Nineties is that democracy can be a doomsday machine: some states – Yugoslavia, East Germany, the Soviet Union – are unable to survive its coming. This may be the year in which we see whether South Africa is one of those that can. With the launching of Codesa – the Convention for a Democratic South Africa, whose first plenary session was held on 20-21 December – the march towards a democratic, non-racial South Africa has entered its climactic phase. Nineteen of the country’s political groups attended, but ominously, the absentees included the extreme Africanist Left – the PAC (Pan-Africanist Congress) and AZAPO (Azanian People’s Organisation) – and, perhaps more significantly, Treurnicht’s Conservative Party and such far-right groups as Terreblanche’s AWB. ‘More significantly’, because the white Right may now command 40 or 50 per cent of the white electorate and because these whites are often armed to the teeth. Currently, at least, the PAC and AZAPO lack that sort of political and military firepower. On the other hand, some of those who did attend, such as the generally unelected Bantustan oligarchs and the various Asian groups, represent comparatively little. Nonetheless, the summoning of Codesa – its working parties are in session now and will report to another plenary meeting in March – represented a great day in South African history. The road ahead is studded, no doubt, with symbolic walkouts, furious ultimata and all the other necessary histrionics of a meeting, called after centuries of oppression and exclusion, to re-found a great and divided country. But no one, after all, is going to die of histrionics: the real dangers lie elsewhere.’

As multi-party negotiations on a new constitution for South Africa get under way at last, there is a widespread impression that what is really in prospect is a two-party deal between the Government and the ANC. Of the many groups this leaves out of account, Chief Buthelezi’s Inkatha movement is the most significant. In preparation for this new phase, Inkatha has transformed itself from a ‘national cultural movement’ into the Inkatha Freedom Party.

Hearing mention of an old friend who is a long-time stalwart of the South African Communist Party, I enquired how he was. ‘Oh, the same as the rest of them,’ our mutual acquaintance replied. ‘You know – clinging onto his collapsing world view as best he can.’ The man in question holds a powerful position within the ANC and is spoken of by some as a possible future cabinet minister: in that sense his world is hardly collapsing. But his case exemplifies the strange paradox of the SACP, a paradox which has become all the sharper in the wake of recent events in the USSR.’

An Aids epidemic is coming to South Africa. The countries with the highest Aids incidence in the world are grouped in East-Central Africa – Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda and Malawi are probably the greatest sufferers of all – and gradually the virus has been making its way southwards. It has indeed been possible to work out South Africa’s ‘HIV prevalence lag time’: nine years behind Burundi, eight behind Tanzania, Uganda and Malawi, seven behind Zaire, Zambia and Rawanda, five behind Kenya and Angola – and so on. South Africa has been protected not only by its position on the continent’s southern tip, but by its social and economic isolation: trade sanctions and the inhibitions on tourism have been an ill wind blowing some good. However, 60 per cent of the world’s Aids victims are to be found in Africa – and there is no prospect of South Africa avoiding the scourge.’