P.W. Botha, who has ruled South Africa since 1978, seemed destined for a time to go down in history as the man who brought his country back from the brink of catastrophe. ``Adapt or die,`` he told South African whites after he came to power. Indeed, Botha appeared to be capable of persuading the white minority that it must truly begin to share power with the black majority, and of persuading the black majority that it was worth bothering to talk about power with the whites rather than simply planning to seize it from them one day.
But such hopes now seem naive in retrospect.
Botha may yet go down in South African and world history--not as a hero, but rather as one more case of a narrowly based ruler who offered his subjects too little too late, who at first raised expectations but finally lacked the vision to go beyond token reform and bring about lasting, meaningful change.
The new constitution put into effect by Botha last year, establishing additional, separate chambers of Parliament for Indians and mixed-race
``coloreds`` (but no such theoretical participation in the central government for blacks), has proved to be another exercise in divide-and-rule, whose real goal is to perpetuate white supremacy.
Although a few emblematic statutes, such as the Immorality Act and the Mixed Marriages Act, have been repealed, most of the rest of the structure of apartheid remains solidly in place. Black people are still third-class subjects--not treated as citizens at all--and the white government tells them where they may live, what they may do and when they may come and go. Black education is still totally separate and far from equal; black anger is probably greater than ever.
The state of emergency imposed by Botha last month on two parts of the country--and the various curfews put in effect since then in black townships
--have done little to quell unrest in South Africa. Hundreds of people have died, and thousands more have been detained. Among the most chilling developments are the attacks nearly everywhere by young militant blacks against ``system blacks`` who cooperate with the authorities, the
assassination of some black leaders by mysterious hit squads thought to be related to extreme right-wing movements and the violence that has broken out among different factions of blacks and Indians in Natal province.
Botha`s speech in Durban on Aug. 15 to the Natal provincial congress of the ruling National Party was a particular letdown to those at home and abroad --especially in the Reagan administration--who were counting on him to take bold new initiatives to increase the chances of racial peace in South Africa. Advance briefings and news leaks predicting dramatic, historic moves turned out to be mostly the wishful thinking of South African Foreign Minister R.F.
``Pik`` Botha (no relation to the state president), a leading member of a relatively liberal faction of the ruling party.
While P.W. Botha repeated earlier vague promises of new political
``structures`` for blacks in which they might have ``coresponsibility and participation`` in national affairs, the main thrust of his distinctly unhistoric pronouncement dealt with the need to preserve ``white South Africa`` and its prerogatives. Describing himself as ``lenient and patient up to now,`` he warned black and other opposition forces not to ``push us too far.``
The main problem with Botha`s speech was that for all the international anticipation and attention it generated, it was really directed only at the narrowest of audiences, South Africa`s 4.8 million whites, who make up less than 15 percent of its population--and not even to all of them, but primarily to the 3 million Afrikaners, the descendants of the 17th Century Dutch, German and French settlers who now monopolize political power in the country.
For a large majority of the Afrikaners, even for some with an advanced education, it is extremely difficult to conceive of fundamental change in South Africa. Unlike the white settlers who came to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe)
and other European colonies in Africa, many Afrikaners have roots in southern Africa that go back three centuries, and the distinct Afrikaner culture--with its own arts and architecture, cuisine and other folkways--can be traced back at least two centuries.
The language they share with the ``coloreds,`` Afrikaans (originally based on Dutch but ultimately incorporating components of various other languages), is unique; it is spoken nowhere else in the world. Similarly, the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa, while officially linked to other Calvinist denominations, is a kind of international religious outcast, because of its teachings of racial separateness and its justification of doctrines of racial superiority.