If President F.W. de Klerk is getting jittery, he doesn't show it. In last week's by-election in the Natal district of Umlazi, his ruling National Party barely retained a safe seat against a strong showing by the Conservative Party. Undeterred, the President announced another move, guaranteed to further rile right-wingers: he lifted the four-year-old state of emergency in three of the country's four provinces. The exception: Natal, where largely black-on- black factional fighting recently flared up.
By shelving measures that gave police sweeping powers to arrest and detain activists and otherwise clamp down severely on individual rights, De Klerk sought to...
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