Q. Many people applaud President F.W. de Klerk for making courageous reforms, but you as a fellow Afrikaner seem to regard him as a traitor.
A. We are not against reform in principle, but the type of reform by Mr. De Klerk is a denial of the existence of a separate people who are entitled to self-determination. He started on the road of a unitary state, of participation by all individuals in the government of the country. For us, that means 30 million black people, with their own cultural, ethnic and racial background, will have an all-out majority against the rest of the population. It means whites are not entitled to govern themselves, to protect their rights, to protect their culture and way of living and aspirations. In South Africa, we should move in the direction of various democracies, to provide political systems for the various peoples ((and)) ethnic groups. What we now see in Eastern Europe, for instance in the Baltic states, the urge toward self-government in their own territories, confirms our attitude.
Q. Your policy goes beyond self-determination. You separate the races right down to swimming pools, park benches and buses.
A. We think that is part of community life, the right of a people to have their own way of doing things.
Q. To many people, that is racism. How do you respond?
A. I am quite frank in saying I am race conscious. I am aware of the fact that I am a white man. I don't think that's racism. I would say racism, in the negative sense of the word, would mean not only being conscious of the fact that you belong to a certain racial group but denying other people certain rights and discriminating in the negative sense of the word against people.
Q. Hasn't that been happening in South Africa for the past 40 years?
A. That is not the only thing that happened. In any system there may be people to whose disadvantage a certain policy is applied. But I refuse to admit that the policy of "separate development" was only to the detriment of the various ((nonwhite)) communities. There are members of these communities who achieved not only positions in their own communities but some of them became really rich.
Q. Two million blacks live in Soweto only 10 miles from "white" Johannesburg. How are they any less South African than you are?
A. What is a nation? According to your American view, a nation is all the individuals inside a country under one government. There is a West European definition: a particular people having its own country and own government. I would regard the Zulu as a nation. For quite a long time, we as Afrikaners spoke of ourselves as "the Afrikaner nation."
Q. What do you do with Soweto? Kick the people out?
A. We recognize that isn't possible. You will have to have large black communities. But we say socially and politically, those communities are not part and parcel of the white nation.
Q. The 2 million blacks in Soweto might just as easily say this is their country.
A. We own land, which we didn't steal. There are various ways in which land becomes the property of people. Actually, that is something that people blame us for. We have 87% of the land.