TV REVIEW : PBS Primer on South Africa

Like last week’s “Frontline” report on “The Struggle for South Africa,” PBS’ “The Death Throes of Apartheid” (tonight at 10 on KCET Channel 28) shows that PBS is beginning to seriously unpeel the complex onion that is South Africa. It is in some ways a better primer for the newcomer to the issue than the outstanding BBC-produced “Frontline” edition.

For one thing, “Death Throes,” perhaps reflecting the fact that it was produced by Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and hosted by the school’s dean, Peter F. Krogh, gives us a map of South Africa’s splintered face.

It zooms in on three distinct regions--the Natal province and its KwaZulu homeland, the Capetown metropolitan area and the central Orange Free State province--to examine a nation trying to free itself of a 300-year legacy of racial strife and economic feudalism.

Amidst the myriad factions and deep alphabet soup, certain patterns emerge in Krogh’s report. While President F.W. deKlerk’s government and Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) are trying to jump-start their on-again-off-again negotiations, each faces tough opponents.

DeKlerk may lose his right flank to the growing Conservative Party, which demands to be part of the negotiations (the paramilitary right could be serious, but appear here to be overfed white men playing soldier).

The ANC may lose its left to the anti-capitalist Pan-African Congress (PAC), whose “colored,” or mixed-race leader, Barney Desai, calls for a national redistribution of wealth and laments that “apartheid is alive and well.”

Both Desai and the Conservatives ask whom the negotiating parties are representing, as does Zulu chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, whose fellow Zulus are now in locked combat with ANC supporters. This could be dismissed as so much opportunistic cynicism, except that delegates at the ANC’s conference last weekend asked the same of Mandela. In a sense, “Death Throes” is already dated, as South Africa’s onion layers get thicker and thicker.