European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - September 21, 1989, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 10 columns the stars and stripes Michael Reisman in be wieners Are Busy keeping apartheid alive in Pretoria. South Africa the official line is that apartheid is dead. On the streets the government is As Busy As Ever in its crackdown on people protesting apartheid. Wednesday several million whiles were to vote in the National elections. None of the More than 25 Mil lion Blacks even has the right to vote. Under the group areas act Black people arc still required to live in so called townships remarkable for their squalor and dreariness and for the Case with which they can be scaled off militarily. People who demonstrate against these segregated and inferior conditions Are gassed and arrested. Black and White leaders who oppose the system and seem to be effective Are either detained or restricted under so called emergency regulations which the entirely White courts have declined to review. If it weren t for International sanctions the govern ment would t even offer the pretence of change. Leaky and ineffective As they arc sanctions aggravate the eco nomic decline of the country under Way since the begin Ning of the decade. Blacks know that external sanctions arc now their Best Hope because internally opposition i neutralized by an efficient Security apparatus while Exter Nally the military Arm of the outlawed african National Congress always overestimated has been deflected. The extra parliamentary opposition As it is called presses allies abroad to maintain and increase sanctions. The while government is also obsessed Wilh sanctions. It seeks to have Ihm lifted by creating the illusion of change. This is How it works in South Africa. Like bureaucrats in the Brezhnev Era. Pretoria s officials make the smallest concessions just enough to gel by. Words Are changed. Apartheid is dead. But it s nol Many people arc executed. That continues the govern ment is ready to Nego talc. Bui not with the enemy they May be unaware of it but while racists arc also victims of their system. They were taught to Hale in school in i hair families and until four years ago by the Church. All their information is controlled. Every thing they hear and Sec validates the hatred. In an Odd Way the men and women who have taken a stand even if they re detained or restricted Are Freer. In my talks Wilh Black people in the townships i was struck by i hair understanding of the situation and their extraordinary Tranquility. In comes i suppose from a sense of the human dignity of All from courage and from the deep conviction Hal history will vindicate them. The Saddest people in Sputh Africa Are the in be Tecc Nurs mostly Whites in business in the univer Silica and even in the govern men who have some George will moral consciousness and recognize the evil of the sys tem but who accommodate it and arc rewarded with wealth Comfort and respect. So the King is dead. Long live the King. The ruling National party the government Hal proclaimed the death of apartheid is campaigning on a platform of group  that Means that different groups should have their own facilities and the option of Liv ing separately Wilh no group controlling any other. In other words forget one Man one vote and majority Rule. In other words apartheid. Even thai change of vocabulary could Cost the ruling party the election for the right Wing conservative party claims to a Eccl any accommodation. The election May be about As real As the death of apartheid. Many outsiders myself included have thought of South Africa As an Imperial democracy like Israel or England in the Days of its Empire. In Imperial democracies vigorous Power sharing takes place within the ruling group. All of those outside that group arc powerless. South Africa has elections campaigns and a scattering of parties bul emergency regulations a self sterilized judiciary effective censorship and a powerful and widespread secret Appa Ratus All conspire to control non whiles and  most astonishing thing Abdul this police slate is the effect of censorship. Television the major source of information for the Man in the Street is controlled by the govern men so is radio. The press is censored As arc of her publications and movies. People who Are banned May not even be mentioned publicly. The government in Pretoria May capture the minds of its people. In must not capture ours. Apartheid is not dead. Communism new party line never heard of it Washington Hungary s new ambassador has not been Here Long enough to have Gol the hang of the Washington Art of using words to conceal thoughts. When in a sunday morning television interview he was accused of giving an evasive answer to a question. Ambassador paler Varkonyi said Wilh unfeigned cheerfulness ii is it is. I should be evasive on  having been blindsided by the ambassador s Treach Erous resort to Candor the incr viewers fell to Badger ing him Aboul philosophy is Hungary moving away from communism the ambassador allowed a look of Puzzle Cal mingled with injured Pride and sorrow about the confusions by Selling humanity to Socal Over his suddenly woeful count Cnancy. Then he said in effect whal s Hal you arc suggesting thai Hungary has Ever been whal was Hal Peculiar word you used communist How do such Odd rumours gel Slart cd who is saying these hurtful things the ambassador s actual words were As a Mailer of fad we arc not we never called ourselves a communist country. We called ourselves a socialist country. The communist party was called the hungarian socialist workers party and it was not called the communist  the new party line in parts of Eastern Europe is thai there has been an amusing mix up a silly misunderstanding really there never has been a communist party. In the current Issue of the National review rack Sikorski a polish emigre recounts his return to Warsaw where in the inner recesses of communist party Headquarters where the night Porter was Walch ing Miami vice dubbed in polish he asks a party official to pose for a photograph in front of the portrait on the Wall no nol under Lenin bul Aren t you a communist no i m nol a  but you Are one of the lop leaders of the communist  in s nol a communist party. It s called the United workers party and comprises two traditions communist and socialist. 1 regard myself As a social demo  whal is was a communist person Nalion ? in is truth be told hard to say because the master was himself tantalizingly vague about that you would have thought crucial Mailer. Marx was so Busy predicting capitalism s collapse he forgot to describe what would come next. Aside from the withering away of the slate which As a instrument of class oppression would disappear when classes Didwall he said was under capitalism Man is a Hunter or a Fisherman or a Shepherd or a critic where As in a communist society he can be a Hunter in the morning a Fisherman in the afternoon raise cattle in the evening and be a critic after dinner. Marx certainly did not Burden his disciples with a too detailed blueprint. But now we know that in a communist society everyone docs the same thing most of the time they stand in lines. Or they go to Hungary and head West. To the list of i9lh-Ccnlury i heroics slain by 20lh a Colury fads add one 20lh-Ccntury theory now de ceased 25 years ago there was a collage Industry among academics manufacturing variants of the i Cory Hal the soviet and american systems were convert  the former was supposed to Mellow and the latter Progress toward some mild social democracy two Bland Leviathan living happily Ever after. Today the soviet Union is desperately in need of the Book no one thought to Grilc. As a soviet acc Cully said. There have been Many books written on the transition from capitalism to socialism bul not one on the transition from socialism to  consider two stunning facts East Germany from which highly skilled and educated Young people to Morrow s elite arc fleeing is the most productive and materially modern East european nation. And last week Boris Yeltsin the populist described As the Sovil Union s Hucy Long actually he is i hair Imelda Marcos a shop till you drop communist came to America. All my impressions of capitalism of the United slates of americans that have been pounded into me Over the years. All of them have been changed 180 degrees in the Day and a half i have been Here he said. And where was the Here where he had this Epiphany about the commodious life and the sweetness of our people new York City believe it or not. Today East germans residents of what supposedly was communism s closest approximation to a Success Story Are voting with their  the phrase was used in Early 1917 to describe the behaviour of the soldiers inthe Czar s disintegrating army. The phrase maker was Lenin. Whal goes around comes around