Beware the Fallen Mighty

JOHANNESBURG How the mighty have fallen! And where they fall is anyone's guess.

As the last, fragile barriers to majority rule are collapsing in South Africa, a strange breed of political alliances is developing.

This past weekend was quite an eventful one for South Africans as President Lucas Mangope of the Bophuthatswana homeland was forced to resign by the South African government. Mangope had declined to take part in April's national elections. As president, he stood to lose too much with the reintegration of Bop (Bophuthatswana's more colloquial name), becoming yet another insignificant ex-leader rather than remaining a big fish in a little pond. The South African government seems to have forgotten that five years ago they reinstated Mangope after a popular coup removed him from power.

Ironically, the South African Defense Force rolled into Bophuthatswana's capital, Mmabatho, this weekend amid welcoming cries of joy from the general populace where in previous years they were greeted with understandable resentment. Stranger things have happened. After all, who rallied in support of Mangope, taking over Mmabatho's airport as leverage for demands pressuring the South African government? Why, the Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB)!

The AWB's pseudo-swastika emblem and violent hatred of Black people is notorious throughout the country. Yet their support of Mangope is not as astounding as it initially might seem.

Setting the trend, the Afrikaner Volksfront has a similar, but more institutionalized, bond with Gatsha Buthelezi and the Inkatha Freedom Party in Natal. Their Freedom Alliance poses a serious threat to the prospect of free and fair elections, a threat no-one could have perceived even a year ago.

On closer inspection, each of these groups is in a minority and feels that the present government has sold them out to the "communist" African National Congress. They all seek autonomy in the form of a separate state which no other political party shows any signs of recognizing. The elections are thus a threatening and frightening process for them.

Political alliances aren't the only things that have been skewed by the turmoil. The Human Rights Commission's just-released January statement reports that "no major massacres" occurred in that month. How warped our sense of perspective has become, that massacres are determined as "major" or "minor." The killing this weekend of three AWB members in Bop, and the racially motivated executions of three Iranians attending Bahai church services elsewhere in the country, both reflect the terrible trauma this country has suffered and must now deal with.

So, yes, the "mighty" have fallen or are about to, but we as South Africans are going to have to take more from these turbulent times than simple delight at the fall. We need to turn that into a positive enjoyment of our wonderful country and each other, working towards constructing a new nation that will accommodate differences but not tolerate abuses. We need a new sense of self-respect and self-worth.

South Africa no longer needs or wants a watchdog to reprimand us, but we would like to share as equals this part of our history which, despite high levels of violence, is an exciting and joyous occasion for us all.

So next month when Johannesburg begins to look like Olympic Circa with masses of international monito observing the election process, remember us and wish us well.

Nichola M. Beukes '95 is spending the spring semester developing conflict management workshops at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation in Johannesburg and monitoring for the Independent Electoral Commission during South Africa's April elections. In the coming months, she will comment occasionally on South Africa's transition to majority rule.