Tragedy Without Cause

For several months now, the United States and its ideological allies have rested easy as the political situation in south Africa has remained fairly tranquil. Friction between the Inkatha Freedom Party and the African National congress had ebbed, and rightist whites had been held in check by the government. But an ill-timed holdout against free elections by Lucas Mangope, president of the "Black homeland" Bophuthatswana, swept the whole nation into hysteria.

The motives at the heart of this tragedy were only the worst. Mangope was resisting the elections only in order to hold onto his own power and hoped that his small, independent province would become a sovereign state. The South African government finally lost its patience and threatened to send troops into the area to keep the peace in preparation for free elections. Mangope acceded to the plan after he saw that he could not successfully repel the soldiers, but his submission came too late.

As soon as the threat of force became publicly known, the leaders of the Afrikaner Volksfront and Afrikaner Resistance Movement, two right-wing organizations of separatist whites, called for members from all over south Africa to go to Bophuthatswana and defend it as a bastion of the apartheid system. And they did. South African security forces managed to keep some of the hundreds of heavily armed civilians from entering the province, but many did reach its borders.

Imagine the sight that greeted the (Black) police officers on the calm outskirts of Bophuthatswana: scores of whites in khaki uniforms were driving towards them at top speed, brandishing automatic weapons. The inevitable massacre ensued. The police did not suspect that the whites had come, too late and without warning, to help them dispute what had become a moot point of history. The whites, still looking ominous though they had tactfully removed their swastika-like armbands, became (and were in any event) armed invaders against whom the country had to be defended. The extreme hatred between the two groups completed the mix; the last, wounded survivors of one car were killed by the police as reporters looked on.

The whole incident should never have happened. No matter how jaded or trigger-happy the people on either side were, they had no real reason to fight. Still, we must ask what might have happened had Mangope continued to defy the wishes of the south African government. Though support for him in the ranks of the police was quickly eroding, he might have found it advantageous to welcome the white paramilitary groups in one last attempt to maintain his despotic position.

Thousands of people could potentially have been killed had the right-wing Afrikaners and the South African Army waged a pitched battle in a country that trusted neither. It is unlikely that the Bophuthatswanan police would have fought gladly alongside their strange bedfellows from the other side of the apartheid bed. A three-sided conflict could have emerged and threatened the entire election process. Instead, the government mopped up after a day of bloody skirmishes and brought a tense peace to the region.

When one instance of a lack of communication results in such horrific consequences, all of the parties should take stock of their positions. Hopefully, this one senseless occurrence will focus enough attention on the evolving South African state to avert greater catastrophes in the future.

Daniel Altman's column appears on alternate Mondays.