S. Africa Whites Fear Post-Vote Armageddon

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa â€”  From morning until night Monday, scores of callers to the popular talk shows on AM “Radio 702â€� were in agreement: Armageddon is coming in three weeks.

“I think there’s going to be bombings,� warned Penny. “People who are stockpiling petrol and food are very wise,� opined Phyllis. “I’m getting my family out,� promised Keith.

The callers apparently were all white and obviously all afraid of what will happen to South Africa after polls open for three days on April 26 and the long-oppressed black majority votes for the first time and finally takes control of the world’s most racially polarized country.

White fears of a black-led future have long dominated the airwaves here. But the talk has turned to frantic action in the week since a Zulu protest march erupted in blazing gun battles amid the skyscrapers of downtown Johannesburg, leaving 53 people dead in the streets, in a public garden and on the roads and trains leading to the city.

Only one white civilian was killed--an accountant shot at his desk near an exposed window. But the bloody battle seemed a nightmare come true for the nervous white minority that has been sheltered from the daily violence and death that plague many of this country’s black townships.

Several supermarkets reported panic buying of candles, matches, cooking oil, canned food and non-perishable milk. Gasoline stations said drivers filled up extra jerrycans to store for emergencies. Homeowners lined up to buy fuel for stoves and lamps. Shelves emptied of water purification pills. Gun stores reported record sales of weapons and ammunition. Travel agents filled flights out of the country, while Western embassies denied published reports that fleets of jumbo jets were on call to evacuate their citizens.

“It’s going to get worse and worse and worse from now on,� Gordon Strachan, a 72-year-old white retiree who carries a pistol, warned at a packed supermarket in the city’s posh northern suburbs. “I think it’s gone out of control entirely.�

Nearby, Estelle Gautier, 34, said she plans to leave before the election for three months in Europe and hopes to resettle there. She admitted mixed feelings about fleeing at such a momentous time in her nation’s history.

“Your humanitarian side tells you everything should be OK,� she said. “But your fear . . . drives you away. Because we know the standard of living of the whites will come down. It will just have to. It’s the price we pay.�

The white fright was fueled in part by a series of mysterious letters and faxes sent to offices and schools warning people to prepare for cuts of water and electric power after the elections and to expect riots that would close all the shops and markets. The source of the missives was unclear.

As doomsday rumors spread, the government asked the national power utility, Eskom, to reassure the public that the national power grid is safe from sabotage. “Eskom has adequate measures in place to deal with any eventuality,� the company said later, including increased security around power stations.

“South Africa is not going to war,� Pangami Kumalo, an Eskom spokesman, said Monday. “South Africa is going to the elections.�

Adding to the alarm, however, was the declaration of a state of emergency last Thursday in Zulu-dominated Natal province and the black homeland of KwaZulu.

Since the crackdown was announced, more than 60 people have been killed in clashes between followers of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress and Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party.

The ANC is expected to win a landslide victory, but Inkatha has announced an election boycott and mobilized thousands of zealous Zulu warriors to oppose the balloting.

Mandela, Buthelezi, President Frederik W. de Klerk and Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini are scheduled to meet in a four-way summit Friday at an undisclosed location in hopes of defusing the crisis and curbing the violence. International mediators may also be called in.

In a telephone interview, ANC spokesman Carl Niehaus complained about the panic buying and wild rumors. “It’s a very unfortunate response that is entirely unrealistic,� he said. “They buy into a fear psychosis that helps fuel instability at a very volatile time.�

White fear is nothing new here. Over the decades, whites have repeatedly spread terrifying tales of a coming “Kill the Whites Day,� supposedly a secretly planned apocalypse in which the nation’s blacks would rise up to slaughter whites.

It never happened, of course, and the overwhelming majority of victims of the raging political violence of the last four years have been black. Violent crime, which targets comfortable whites far more than political or racial violence, is a more realistic concern.

So, many whites have already voted with their bankbooks and their feet.

The South African Reserve Bank estimates that nearly $5 billion was sent out of the country last year, more than twice the year before and triple the year before that. It attributed the record capital outflow to “political uncertainty, the ongoing internal unrest, pressure on the rand and the high cost of borrowing overseas,� as well as a growing number of scams used to evade the nation’s strict foreign exchange controls.

Similarly, the Department of Home Affairs reported that more than 8,000 South Africans emigrated last year in what local papers dubbed the “chicken run.� That was almost double the total who left in 1992, although it was lower than in some periods of the late 1970s and the 1980s. The most popular destinations in 1992 were New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the United States and Britain.

The exodus was small compared with white stampedes from European colonies such as Angola or Algeria before independence. One reason is that a majority of South Africa’s 5 million whites are Afrikaners whose families have deep roots here. Few have second passports.

And the number of people who moved to South Africa in 1992--drawn home after years of bitter exile during apartheid or simply excited at the chance to witness the birth of a new nation--actually surpassed those who left by about 1,500.

Still, white flight--and brain drain--continues. About 90 whites attended a two-hour “overseas moving seminar,� sponsored by an international moving company, in a hall outside Pretoria last Wednesday night.

Among those attending were Dr. Michael Treisman, 28, and his wife, Charisse, 27. They sold their suburban Johannesburg home two weeks ago at a loss and are moving next month to St. Louis, where five of his medical school classmates have already encamped.

Asked why, the internist had a quick reply. “Political uncertainty and violence. Worrying about getting shot and killed. Worrying about getting hijacked. Worrying about the kids. . . . We finally both woke up one morning and said, ‘We’ve had enough.’ �