After apartheid: an interview with F.W. de Klerk - includes related article on relations between African National Congress and Mangosuthu Buthelezi - interview

National Review, Oct 15, 1990 by Colin Vale, R.W. Johnson

YOU'VE BEEN in politics most of your adult life and you have played a significant of the National Party. In your present position you have virtually reversed its traditional policies. At what stage did it become clear to you that these traditional policies had to be radically overhauled?

A. It is a wrong perception to say that I changed the basic philosophy of the National Party. I was party to the changing of the philosophy of the National Party, but the fundamental change of the policy away from one of separate development was introduced at a federal congress of the National Party in August 1986. That new policy provided for power-sharing without domination, for full participation of all South Africans in a non-discriminatory manner in government at all levels. It provided for the right of all South Africans to vote for joint governmental structures.

This policy was then presented to the white electorate in the 1987 election, which we won with a large majority. It was repeated in even clearer terms in the 1989 general election.

In that sense, therefore, I was co-architect under the leadership of P. W. Botha of this fundamental change in policy. Since I became leader of the National Party and state president, we've reached a stage where we want to take real and dynamic steps to bring about the new realities which would flow from this policy. In a general sense, I think, within the National Party (and that applies to me and all other Nationalists) there was a gradual process of realizing that the ideal of finding a just and equitable solution along the lines of nationstates for the various black nations and for the whites in South Africa would not work, a realization which culminated in the fundamentally changed policy.

Q: Clearly you concurred with the new direction the NP decided to take in 1986 ...

A. I not only concurred, I played a leading role.

Q: Were there any special influences on your thinking which made for this new departure?

A: I think the main influence is the fact that when you're in a responsible position you realize that it is almost criminal to stick to policies which you realize cannot work out in practice. You have a duty to assure stability for the country and to strive for practical solutions.

There was no sort of Damascus-road experience. It is a process Mr. John Vorster started-the outward movement [the opening of communications with black African states-ED.] Even in his time there was a realization that apartheid as born in 1948 would not work out to the full. He started dismantling many forms of so-called petty apartheid. Mr. Botha, very early in his term of office, took this further when he said, in a famous speech, "South Africans must adapt or die."

I would say other influences would include the political process itself inside South Africa. I would identify as one of the main influences the fundamental principle of the National Party, from its inception round about 1915, namely, to strive for the best interests of all sections of the community. In English there isn't as strong a word as the Afrikaans word geregtigheid-justice. This was always a fundamental basic value of the National Party which has its roots in Calvinism. As it became clear that separate development would not lead to a really just and equitable system, it became clear that from the vantage point of justice, therefore, apartheid had become an untenable policy.

Q: Many people might argue that the evidence that the policy was not going to work out in a just way was to be found at almost any time since the mid Fifties. So one must assume that the ideal of geregtigheid was one that was seen perhaps through dark glasses for a long period of Nationalist history. Many people might say that there has recently been a dramatic change in thinking, and, when it comes to justice being done, the greatest section of the population, the black people, have only really been included in Nationalist thinking since the 1980s. A Part of Its Time

BUT FOR the greatest part

of the early period, the colonial

powers were still running most of Africa on the basis that the indigenous people did not have any real political rights. In other words, there has also been development in political thinking across the whole world. The apartheid of 1948 should be seen in the light of the then prevailing attitudes throughout the world-I was about 12 years old at the time and the colonial history of Africa. The point that I would like to get across, therefore, is that it's always easy ex post facto to have a particular perspective on things, but one must, I think, try to understand what has happened at particular points in history in the light of what was then the prevailing philosophy in wider terms.

Q: I recently read in Time magazine a comment on Helmut Kohl-that he has no driving ideology, no grand vision. He is simply a unifier. Would that be a reasonable description of your approach?

A.- No, not at all. I don't like to talk about myself. I am basically a shy person, but in response to a similar question, I once described myself as a practical idealist. I am driven by a basic philosophy that has been the theme of the National Party under my leadership: that is the ideal of reconciliation, fundamental reconciliation aimed at a fully just and equitable new dispensation for all in South Africa. I don't think that the interests of my constituency, of my people, of the Afrikaner people of which I am part, can be served by being unjust toward others; but it goes deeper than that. I am a believing Christian and I think that leaders are called upon as Christians to ensure that the basic values laid down in the word of God should be the basis on which we want to build our private lives, our public lives, and also our country's life.