Taipei Times: According to an old Chinese saying, "The minority should treat the majority with wisdom." As your National Party has long been the minority in South Africa, what was the wisdom with which it treated the majority in your society during the process that finally led to the end of apartheid?
F.W. de Klerk: My guiding line and guiding philosophy was that you can't put the future of my people on the basis and the foundation of injustice toward the other people living in the same country. Justice for all can be the only basis on which we can have peace, good relations, and on which everybody in South Africa could have a safe future.
Originally I supported the policy which would give each of the black-cultural nations in South Africa [its] own country. We wanted to build a little Europe there, where the Zulus had Zululand, Xhosas had Xhosaland ... and where the white South Africans would have their own country. ... And all these countries would organize themselves into something like the EU. That, in South Africa's case, failed.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
And when I realized in the 1980s that this dream, this ideal, and this way of bringing justice to everybody had failed, I had to say then [that] I couldn't continue with it and I had, therefore, to find another way of bringing justice.
Therefore, already in 1986, we accepted a new vision, the vision of one united South Africa, with one citizenship for all, with all discriminations to be removed, with "one person one vote," but with the effective protection in the new constitution of cultural minorities with regards to their language, with regards to their right of the freedom of association, with regards to all the rights of human freedoms.
TT: Your National Party in South Africa in some ways is similar to the KMT in Taiwan. Both remained in office for decades, became criticized for their undemocratic practices, and then were forced to democratize their countries. To some extent, do you think your party's experience can shed light on the KMT's experience, especially given the fact that the KMT, like the National Party, has become the opposition, like your party?
De Klerk: One can't draw direct parallels. The situation in every country is different. I tried to outline in my speech here the lessons we've learnt. The fact is that your country is different from mine in the sense that it's basically homogeneous. You all speak one language. We have 11 official languages.
So our problems are different. In our case, the challenge is not to have ethnic parties, but to have parties based on values. Are you to the left of center? Are you all socialist-oriented? Are you to the right of center? Are you very strong on free markets? Are you like, if we take Germany for instance, are you like the Social Democrats, or are you like the Christian Democrats? That is what I want for South Africa now. That is, real alignment of politics, [with] people supporting across the color-band -- white, black, brown, Indian -- who believe in the same values, to come together in one political movement.
I think you already have it here in Taiwan. And therefore your politics have become normalized. But what I said while I was here was also that all of you face a common challenge, and the common challenge is the situation with regard to China. To deal with that common challenge, if it can be done, it would be wise to remove it from typical party/political fighting. Treat it as a national issue -- to find a way to build a national consensus of a clear majority of people across party lines about the route to follow, about how to deal with this challenge.
If you reach the state where you start negotiating, then your negotiators must know that they have a clear mandate from a clear majority of the people.
TT: During your speech on Wednesday, you also mentioned other factors such as timing and mutual trust, among others, contributing to the success of negotiations leading to the end of apartheid. But in the case of cross-strait relations, some have argued that mutual trust is lacking.
De Klerk: Let me say this: you can't build trust unless you talk to each other. As long as you shout at each other, there is no possibility of building trust. So the starting point is communication. And you also can't build trust unless you have the commitment from both sides to say we want to negotiate, not to play games, not as a game to gain time or whatever, or not just as a strategy. We want to negotiate because we want to reach an agreement -- the commitment to real negotiation.
So in our case, the initial talk was talks about talks. It wasn't about issues; it wasn't about what the constitution should be like. It was about the need to negotiate. It was to reach an agreement on how we would negotiate, on how decisions would be taken once we start negotiating. And the formula we found before we started really negotiating, was to say, "Before we can say there is any agreement, we need to say that there is sufficient consensus." And we defined sufficient consensus to say that the three major parties, irrespective of their numerical state, had to be satisfied that we could move forward. Then we could say we had sufficient consensus.
So the starting point is talking -- commitment to real negotiations. And once you have that, negotiations become viable, trust starts to develop.
Another lesson we've learnt ... is you should start from what we agreed. You shouldn't begin to negotiate about the most difficult issues where you are the furthest apart from each other. You should start with what we all agree. And as the depth [of talks] grows, then the people around the table change. They realize that we agree on so many things. And surely if we agree on all this, we can resolve the things on which we disagree. So work from the easier part toward the difficult part.
There is no guarantee about when you'll reach the most difficult issue because things will stall.
The other lesson ... [is] not to walk away when there is a deadlock [otherwise] you get the situation that you have in Israel and "Palestine" now. But negotiators should try to find other ways, to use technocrats to cool down the political climate a little bit, but to keep on talking.
TT: Taiwanese writer Chen Yu-hui (
De Klerk: There is a great element of truth in that. There is a great sense of disillusionment among many whites. There are two groups within this disillusioned group. The one group is [unhappy] because they still have not made peace with the changes in their hearts. But the other group, they believe in the new South Africa, and they believe it was necessary for us to do what we did. But they feel that they are now being treated unfairly. With affirmative action, their children are being discriminated against. They are not appointed to the civil service. If your skin is white, you are not eligible to be employed by the state. There is now discrimination in favor of blacks and against whites.
I believe some form of affirmative action is necessary, but it must not become a new form of apartheid; that would be as wrong as the old apartheid was.
I said publicly in South Africa that I supported affirmative action, but the emphasis must be on education, on fast-tracking black people, but not to throw merits for young people out the window. You'll find the balance between the need for fast-tracking black people but in the end not saying, "I'll appoint you because you are black even though we have somebody with better qualifications," and so on. So we are struggling with affirmative action and this is resulting in the sense of disillusionment.
But I think, like in anything, the pendulum will swing. I have already seen it coming back to the middle, and in that sense I have faith in the future of South Africa. I think we'll overcome these problems, and already some of the young people who have left are beginning to return.
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