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In another attempt to soften the face of apartheid, he had set up the tricameral Parliament in 1984. It established a strictly limited form of power sharing that for the first time included coloreds, or people of mixed race, and Indians, but not blacks. Whatever the failures of that system, Pik Botha insists, it at least helped condition the minds of whites "to see a man of color acting like a gentleman just like everybody else." By the time De Klerk ordered the removal of the remaining WHITES ONLY signs on South Africa's beaches just before the Christmas holidays, whites complained about "crude" black sunbathers but accepted the inevitable. As Christiaan Kirstein, 51, a corn farmer from the Orange Free State, said, "You can't keep the blacks down; you can't stop development."
However, the whites' commitment to reform stops short of entrusting their own destiny to any other than white hands. If apartheid as a method has failed to protect their rights and privileges, whites will find another, more palatable way to retain them. De Klerk has put the position squarely a number of times: "White domination must end, but we are not prepared to exchange it for black domination."
In practical terms, that means something far less than the black demand for a nonracial democratic system based on one man, one vote, which would transfer power from whites to blacks. The National Party is willing to accept only a partial sharing of power on the basis of what it calls group rights, under which each racial group would decide its own affairs on the basis of self- administration.
What the carefully coded words mean, in effect, is a system of separate but equal parliaments, neighborhoods and schools, a form of private rather than government segregation. At the local level, the group-rights concept would permit whites to live much as they do now. At the national level, it would require a cumbersome system of multiple lawmaking bodies ruling on narrow issues, with some sort of mechanism to settle issues of common interest that would allow the minority white community to retain a disproportionate share of power. Whites may be willing to go further than before toward accommodating black demands, but not all the way to a fully integrated society.
Despite the white limits to reform, De Klerk has managed to create a climate of optimism and opportunity with his language of conciliation, moderation and flexibility. His constant emphasis on negotiations and on finding a peaceable resolution of racial differences has won domestic support and international approval. It has also confronted black organizations with a host of thorny questions about how to adapt their strategies and whether to trust their old enemies. Much of the antiapartheid movement has been caught off balance and disorganized. Under the emergency, government policy effectively shackled them: 30 organizations were banned, hundreds of leaders were jailed or severely restricted from engaging in political activism, protests and demonstrations were forbidden, and the police presence in the townships squelched most rioting. The violent liberation movement guided by the A.N.C.-in-exile was virtually moribund.