Is There Substance Behind De Klerk’s PR Moves? : South Africa: Many anti-apartheid leaders remain in prison, gagged and exiled. Apartheid lives--off camera.

South Africa, in a period of unprecedented acts, faces great danger and great promise. Since the day Parliament opened, the new president, Frederick W. de Klerk, has suspended key laws. At a march in Cape Town to protest the police terrorism that marked recent elections, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, leading the huge crowd arm-in-arm with the mayor of Cape Town, said, “We have won a great victory for justice and peace.”

The police were leashed. And for the first time in the history of South Africa the head of state was doing what the majority told him.

Throughout the country, in cities and in small villages, other peaceful marches followed. At one, the police gave flowers to demonstrators.

Perhaps De Klerk has suffered an overnight conversion. Perhaps he is trying to wipe out election pictures of police whipping civilians, of a mother weeping for her baby, shot at point-blank range. For months, the international community has warned that ostracism and economic decline will persist unless South Africa breaks the cycle of violence.

De Klerk has a better TV image now. In another first for the country, he met face-to-face with church leaders who speak for the majority and won pictures of himself with Tutu and the Revs. Allan Boesak and Frank Chikane. He then released a handful of distinguished, aged prisoners and called Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher immediately to say she has what she needs to resist sanctions at this week’s British Commonwealth conference.

There may be some substance behind the public relations. Members of the Afrikaner Establishment are talking with the imprisoned Nelson Mandela and other leaders of the African National Congress. What more can the world want?

What more can the churchmen want? De Klerk sounds plaintively surprised that the churchmen expressed distrust. Hasn’t he shown his good intentions?

They have said what they want. Justice and peace. No substitutes. Perhaps he finds these demands extreme. Revolutionary. Perhaps he is taking the first steps. He offered vague promises.

The churchmen are wary, and with good reason. The last few weeks have suggested a new course in South Africa’s history. They show that the minority government cannot silence the majority and has had to restrain the key resource of illegitimate rule, brute force. International opinion will not support more visible repression. Internally, a police officer broke ranks on election night to protest fellow police acting like wild dogs. Hundreds of men refused service in the apartheid army. These events suggest historic turning points, such as the opening of the Bastille, the Allied landing in Normandy.

After such turning points, events move quickly. De Klerk seems to hope they will move slowly and that he will control the timetable. He may not be able to.

For years, the daily practice of apartheid has been eroding. Integration is breaking out all over, in schools, universities, residential areas, work. White and black have been fraternizing. And the intransigent ruling minority is fragmenting.

Where will De Klerk turn? South Africa has a lavish tradition of government treachery and duplicity, of smiling words and cruel actions. During the last decade, while proclaiming that apartheid is dead and promising reform, the government has used ever more guns, whips, prisons, nooses.

Speaking English, De Klerk promises, smiling at the cameras, that in five years or so, there will be equal rights for each racial group, sort of. He can’t really promise equal rights for individuals. Speaking Afrikaans, he reassures his internal constituency that there’s nothing to be afraid of, really.

But Tutu and other South Africans understand Afrikaans. They know that many anti-apartheid leaders remain in prison, gagged and exiled. Apartheid lives--off camera.

Some will give De Klerk a few months to show what his promises mean. If he balks at real change, there will be renewed violence. Apartheid cannot be maintained with white gloves and smiles.

Even if he is sincere, the course ahead is fraught with danger.

South Africa has created people, black as well as white, with vested interests in apartheid. For the bureaucracy, the “independent” homelands, the military and the police, apartheid means security, jobs, status. Some will rally to save the old order. They have implacable supporters who would rather die than yield. Would rather kill than negotiate. They are armed, dangerous and undisciplined. They will add to the hazards of the difficult transition that must be made.

Those demanding a new order may also prove dangerous. Apartheid has created millions of embittered, impoverished and reckless people unwilling to wait and suffer. It has kept them in ignorance, and they are impatient.

If peaceful protest has no effect, they may resort to other ways to take rights, restitution or revenge. The reign of love and flowers may give way to a reign of terror. This is what peaceful leaders in South Africa seek to avoid.

They need support in maintaining peace. They need the skills of respected leaders now in prison. They need visible results to make the great victory for justice and peace a victory that lasts. They need the international community to understand that substitutes will not suffice.