S.Africa's de Klerk says racial harmony crumbling

Former South African President F.W. de Klerk

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (Reuters) -- Former South African President F.W. de Klerk broke a long silence on Thursday to warn that the racial harmony that marked the transition from apartheid to democracy was starting to crumble.

De Klerk, the white Afrikaner who handed power to Nelson Mandela in 1994, said in a statement that whites, mixed-race coloreds and Asians were feeling alienated and increasingly afraid.

"The positive relations that we experienced in 1994 are beginning to unravel," he said in response to President Thabo Mbeki's analysis of post-apartheid race relations on Wednesday.

De Klerk and Mandela shared a Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of their success in leading South Africa peacefully from white minority rule to democracy.

Opening a four-day conference on racism, Mbeki said on Wednesday that whites had a special responsibility to acknowledge and fight racism in South Africa's young democracy.

"Our transition to a non-racial democracy in 1994...has not ended the inherited racist, discriminatory and inequitable divisions of our country and people," Mbeki said.

Whites, coloreds and Asians remain generally more wealthy than the four-to-one black majority six years after blacks won the right to vote.

De Klerk agreed in his statement with Mbeki's description of South Africa as a country of two nations, one rich and white and the other black and poor.

He said the answer lay in better communication between leaders and communities of South Africa's diverse ethnic groups.

"The temperature of the national debate is rising. There appears to be little real communication and exchanges are increasingly characterized by insults and angry charges of racism.

"Many of the members of white, colored and Asian minorities are demoralized and confused. Rightly or wrongly, they wonder how they fit into the government's Africanist vision of the country," he said.

De Klerk, who became president of South Africa's last white government in 1989 and repudiated apartheid a year later, has established a foundation to promote racial and social harmony.

Dave Steward, executive director of the F.W. de Klerk Foundation, said the former president's statement was the first in his new, non-political role as an advocate of reconciliation.

"Mr de Klerk has deliberately kept a low profile to put some space between his political career and his new, non-political role as a facilitator of social harmony in a multi-ethnic society," Steward said.

De Klerk did not directly criticize Mbeki's record but said the failure to address white fears was leading to the emigration of those with somewhere to go and the withdrawal of others.

"They have adopted a defensive and apathetic mode...they are not participating vigorously in the institutions of civil society," he said.

While Mbeki had argued on Wednesday that the distribution of wealth remained skewed in favor of whites, De Klerk said this perception was an example of black defensiveness.

"Many black South Africans see the relative wealth of whites not as a result of hard work and enterprise, but as the ill-gotten fruits of apartheid.

"They increasingly regard any form of criticism or opposition from their white compatriots as racism," De Klerk said.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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