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Time for the World to Get Tougher with De Klerk

by Derek Ingram
THE international pussyfooting has to stop. Whatever the exact circumstances of Bisho, Boipatong and all the other massacres tn South Africa whoever did what first — the fact is that the clashes should never have happened.
The so-called homelands like Ctokei, with their tinpot dictators, should not by now be in existence if State President FW de Klerk had meant real business.
Everyone began Jumping for Joy over political progress in South Africa far too soon. The euphoria that followed Nelson Mandela s release tn February 1990 and the beginning of negotiations lulled the inter national community into the idea that Pretoria had undergone a conversion overnight.
De Klerk was a man to be trusted, they said, dedicated to taking South Africa peacefully to majority rule. Although his record in earlier National Party governments — and that of most of this team, like the seemingly indestructible Plk Botha— was anything but liberal, the world feel for the new line.
The result of a masterly public relations exercise was that in no time South Africa was respectable again after decades of isolation.
In April de Klerk visited Nigeria, whose President Ibrahim Babangida is current chairman of the Organisation of African Unity, and was given a red carpet and a 21-gun salute. Two months later President Daniel Arap Moi of Kenya paid the first visit to South Africa of a black African head of state since 1971.
De Klerk went off to Japan and southeast Asia and rapidly began to normalise his relations with Europe.
Sporting links were re-
sumed. South African cricketers went to India and then Its athletes took part in the Olympic Games— with the blessing. It has to be pointed out, of the African National Congress (ANC). Mandela himself went to Barcelona.
Pretoria had every reason to be pleased with its success in finding Itself literally back in the International swim. And all without anything firmly agreed on the introduction of a democratic system In the country and without even the certainty that the most basic of democratic tools— the vote— is to be given to the 30 million black people of the country.
Although sanctions are still supposed to be in place— and the most effective of them all. investment and other financial sanctions, have not been lifted— the international community has come to sec them as a thing of the past.
The ANC pressed for the retention of sanctions until it was further down the negotiat Ing road, it needed the bar gaining cards in its hand. Mostly its advice fell on deaf cars.
Too much trust had already been put in de Klerk, whose smooth, urbane talk had come as such a contrast to the style of his unappealing, combative
predecessor, PW Botha.
What to do? One of the most effective instruments in marshalling International pressure against South Africa in the mid-1980s was the Com monwealth.
Its Eminent Persons Group (EPG) mission and Influential report of 1986, followed by the setting up of a committee of foreign ministers, chaired by Canadian External Affairs Minister Joe Clark, Intensified world measures to combat apartheid.
The action of the US Congress and the American banks tn squeezing South Africa financially helped bring the Botha regime to an end. free Mandela and start the negotiations rolling. Commonwealth sanctions studies, carried out largely by the Australians, had been heeded in Washington.
But now the. Commonwealth Committee of Foreign Ministers on Southern Africa (CFMSA) is inert. It remains in existence, but has not met for a year
The time has come to reconvene it. to take a look at the new situation and work out what new action the Commonwealth can take to ensure that the de Klerk government quickly implements thef pledges It has so often made to bring real democracy to the country, to give birth to what it calls, in the cynical manner of the soap manufacturer, "the
new South Africa."
Britain is not a member of this Commonwealth Committee. Margaret Thatcher, then prime minister, refused to Join when It was formed at the Vancouver summit tn 1987. The Canadians took the lead.
The door has always been open for Britain to join the foreign ministers group. It should do so straight away and put itself In the key position of being able to talk to South Africa with the Commonwealth as well as the European Community behind it.
In the last few years that has not been the situation. Since Thatcher's Britain, alone among the 50* Commonwealth members, rejected the use of most sanctions. Britain could not speak for the Commonwealth.
Today the situation is different. With sanctions no longer a central issue, the views of Britain and the rest of the Commonwealth have been coming together again, Prime Minister John Major has changed his government's tone on South Africa.
When Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary Douglas Hurd went there the other day. however, the wore only the hat of the British presidency of the European Community. Former US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance went there on behalf of the UN.
But it is the Commonwealth and nol Europe or the
United States which has the historical base to take the international lead on South Africa
The distractions of what is happening In Yugoslavia, the ex-Soviet bloc and the Middle East arc forcing h Africa down the International agenda. Ukd so many other countries, it is no longer a pawn in the Cold War.
The UN already has too much on its plate. The right tool to deal with South Africa is the Commonwealth. After diplomatic pressure in New York, the resolution on sending UN observers to monitor the violent* put the Commonwealth top of the list of other international organisations asked to provide observers. A team is now being put together.
The Commonwealth Secretary-General, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, is in contact with the de Klerk government the ANC, and all the parties and has twice visited South Africa.
It is said that Commonwealth action is limited by the few resources it has to carry out a bigger operation. Yet South Africa is the one issue currently on the Commonwealth agenda for which leading commonwealth countries are most likely to offer to spend more. Not only Canada, Australia and Britain, but India and Nigeria should be forth-, coming.
The foreign minister, with Britain added, should sit down' together and work out a new. Commonwealth strategy on South Africa. As recent events have shown, along haul to freedom still lies ahead.
Trusting de Klerk to deliver has been a mistake. The pussyfooting has to stop.
DEREK INGRAM is Editor of Gemini News Service.