On 17 March 1992 an absolutely remarkable referendum — it could easily be called “shocking” — was held in South Africa.
To be sure, only white South Africans were entitled to respond to the single question put to the electorate for a direct decision on that Tuesday 25 years ago.
But we must recall that South Africans of colour had never been properly enfranchised. Post-1910 there had existed a few tiny cracks in the monolith of white political power. But by 1953 the National Party (NP) had removed Coloured (mixed-race) people from the common voters’ roll in the now Western Cape and by 1960 the law allowing a few (black) Africans to have a few white representatives in parliament had been terminated. Above all, the NP’s system of “legal” discrimination, apartheid, had been in place since 1948.
So the question — “Do you support continuation of the reform process which the State President began on 2 February 1990 and which is aimed at a new Constitution through negotiation?” – was indeed remarkable.
And that this question was being asked by a NP president added to the general astonishment. For the State President to which the question referred was FW de Klerk and the reform process he had begun was aimed at ending the 44-year-old apartheid system.
De Klerk has, perhaps inevitably, been shouldered out of the limelight during the last 25 years. Yet there can be no dispute that in February 1990 he unbanned the African National Congress (ANC) and the Communist Party and released Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners from jail. De Klerk also started negotiations with the anti-apartheid opposition for a new constitution.
Of course de Klerk and those supporting him had not embarked on this course as a result of a Damascene moral conversion. Internally, the country was fractured by anti-apartheid protests, unrest and increasing violence; important people in de Klerk’s own party were moving rightward politically, threatening to fragment the NP; and, before the referendum, the NP had lost three by-elections to the Conservative Party (CP) led by Andries “Dr No” Treurnicht.
Apartheid was also growing increasingly “unacceptable” in the late 20th-century world and white South Africans, including many Afrikaners, especially younger ones, were weary of being the world’s polecats; and, as a sports-obsessed people, South Africans were unhappy about being unable to compete internationally. Above all — and “always follow the money,” as Watergate’s Deep Throat famously said — the economy was starting to stutter as a result of international refusal to “roll over” certain loans.
Additionally, in November 1989 the Berlin Wall had been knocked down, signalling the continuing implosion of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War — and one of the NP’s rationales for apartheid, to “hold off the Communist menace” in Africa, looked increasingly lame.
After losing another by-election to the CP, de Klerk announced on 20 February that on 17 March 1992 a national referendum for the white electorate would be held to test the government’s support. If the referendum results were against him and the NP, de Klerk said he would resign and call a general election.
De Klerk and his supporters, including the then Democratic Party (now DA), went into the “Yes” vote campaign with more savvy and aggression than the former British prime minister, David Cameron, apparently did in his recent Brexit campaign.
The NP held political gatherings countrywide, ran ads in many national newspapers, and bought time on TV. It produced massive election “Yes” posters with the legend “Yes! Ja! SA” and also a poster showing a picture of a member of the AWB (a right-wing group) with a gun and with the words “You can stop this man! Vote Yes”. De Klerk, whose major concern was his own right-wing, argued that the government was not giving up power to Mandela’s ANC but negotiating on the basis of “power sharing”.
The “Yes” campaign was on the front foot because it was backed by the government, the DA, the media, the international community, and the vast majority of commercial and business organisations. Meanwhile, the “No” campaign, led by Treurnicht, advocated white self-determination and warned of “black majority rule” and “ANC communist rule”.
The result was a resounding victory for de Klerk and the “Yes” campaign. Eighty-five per cent of the (white) electorate turned out — and of the 2,804,947 votes cast, 68.73 per cent or 1,924,186 of the voters said “Yes” to de Klerk’s plans for South Africa, while 31.27 per cent or 875,619 of the voters said “No”.
It was the beginning of the end of apartheid.
— Jeremy Gordin is a veteran South African journalist who from 1977 until 2017 worked on major South African publications, including the Rand Daily Mail, Financial Mail, Cape Times, and The Sunday Independent. He has written two books of investigative journalism and a non-authorised biography of President Jacob Zuma
