To Qualify As `Hero`, South Africa`s F.w. De Klerk Must Seize The Moment


February 25, 1990|By JAMES G. DRISCOLL, Editorial Writer

World War II was ending much better than it started, but ungrateful British voters rejected the courageous bulldog who had saved them from the abyss. Winston Churchill was turned out of 10 Downing Street, his legitimate status as a hero brushed into the dustbin.

The ``valiant old gentleman,`` as an essayist called him gently, was to return to power later, but no one knew it then. In 1945, he was yesterday`s hero.

We know of so few real heroes or heroines, even fewer now than before, with the intrusive mass media seeking and finding flaws aplenty. No human hero has been without flaws, but we may be ignorant of them at the time. ``Johnny, we hardly knew ye`` applied not only to fallen President John F. Kennedy, but to others whose imperfections great and small became public knowledge much later.

In recent decades the only unblemished hero or heroine I can think of is Mother Teresa -- among those who are widely known. Why is she a heroine? She gives of herself unstintingly, without thought of personal gain, to those who have nothing.

Other definitions of heroism must apply to those who set off magnificent upheavals behind what Churchill called the Iron Curtain: Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Mikhail Gorbachev. Their heroism consisted of willingness to challenge the status quo on behalf of millions of their countrymen, to make their lives better. Corny, maybe, but true. It was more than willingness, of course, because unlike Don Quixote these leaders made change happen -- or didn`t try to stop it from happening.

Still another kind of heroism comes from Nelson Mandela, unbowed after 27 years in a South African prison and even more revered now by his fellow blacks as well as by millions of non-blacks. His personal courage in a tense, violent land marks him as heroic in a physical sense. More than that, he is seizing the moment and offering the kind of luminous inspiration not seen since Martin Luther King, Jr. -- and Britain`s valiant old gentleman. Mandela, lest we get too laudatory, seems to eschew King`s belief in nonviolence.

In her own way, not without flaws, Winnie Mandela qualifies as heroine. Carrying the torch for years, with her partner behind bars, cannot have been easy.

Veering from conventional thinking: Is there another hero in South Africa these days? Does F.W. de Klerk qualify?

To steer any organization in a radically different direction requires skill and tenacity, because entrenched attitudes must be redirected, skirted or overcome. When those attitudes go to the very marrow, when they literally define the reason for being of those who hold them dear, trying to change them becomes a perilous chore.

De Klerk took over South Africa`s ship of state as an untried helmsman and, to the surprise of many, is steering a different, more enlightened course. To the far right wing he is a traitor or dangerously out of control, a South African Captain Hazelwood, drunk with power and about to crash the ship into a reef.

To South Africa`s blacks, de Klerk is a puzzle, an Afrikaner who longs for world approval of his concessions to other races, but who moves at his own pace. Nonetheless, he makes progress. Freeing Mandela and legalizing the African National Congress are no small moves, no matter what remains undone. Having granted some rights to blacks, can de Klerk withhold others? As Gorbachev learned, allowing a few freedoms to the downtrodden doesn`t work; they demand more, and more.

Is de Klerk a hero? An apprentice hero? A would-be hero?

A hero acts at a specific time and place, under specific circumstances, carrying specific and often heavy baggage. Churchill was a hero in 1940 and 1941, but not so before or after. When Britain needed his unmatched eloquence and John Bull tenacity, he filled the role better than anyone else could have. He was perfect then, very imperfect earlier and later.

If heroism is or can be defined in its relation to specific circumstances, perhaps de Klerk will one day be thought of as a hero, by some although not all South Africans. The rest of the world will judge him too, more dispassionately but less knowledgably, in terms of the conditions he faced and the actions he took.

If he moves too boldly, civil war will devastate his nation. If he moves too timidly, ditto. An impossible dilemma? Not for an apprentice hero.

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