CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA, DEC. 22 -- South Africa's white-minority Parliament voted itself out of existence today.
Shouts of "Power to the people" came from a small cluster of members aligned with black-liberation forces after the speaker announced the vote tally of 237 to 45 in the latest step in South Africa's transition from white-minority to black-majority rule.
The constitution, which had been drafted over the last two years by a nonparliamentary, multiracial negotiating forum, wipes all remnants of apartheid-era laws off the books. In a country that is 86 percent nonwhite, it will also effectively end the careers of the vast majority of members who cast votes today.
"It is not the end, but a new beginning," said a buoyant President Frederik W. de Klerk, a co-recipient with African National Congress President Nelson Mandela of the Nobel Peace Prize for leading the country from apartheid to a multiracial democracy. "The parliamentary traditions will continue, but this time without the albatross of injustice, exclusion and discrimination hanging about its neck."
Not everyone was quite so sanguine. "You are busy with treason," a young man in the gallery shouted just before the vote was taken. He had to be escorted out of the Great Hall of the century-old chamber.
Members of the Conservative Party and their supporters in the gallery staged a more dignified protest just before voting when they rose in unison and sang "Die Stem," the current national anthem -- likely to be replaced by an African anthem once the black majority comes to power.
Conservative Party leader Ferdi Hartzenberg called the new constitution a "monster" and said it would lead not to democracy but to communism. Unless it was amended, he said, his party would neither participate in the April 27 election nor recognize the validity of the vote.
Similarly, Inkatha Freedom Party member Jurie Mentz warned that his Zulu-based party would make things "impossible" for the government if amendments aimed at strengthening the powers of regions are not incorporated into the new constitution before the April 27 vote.
Negotiations to bring the dissident parties into the fold before the constitution was adopted foundered this week. But the government, the ANC and all the rejectionist parties have given themselves a month-long extension, until Jan. 24, to find a settlement. Parliament still has the power to call itself back from the dead for a brief session to approve whatever changes might be needed in the new constitution.
Most political analysts here say the Inkatha Freedom Party is far more likely to agree than the Conservative Party, which is holding out for a separate homeland for Afrikaners -- whites of mainly Dutch extraction who first settled here in the 17th century.
Hartenzberg, meeting with reporters before the vote, said the extension is aimed at getting "us on a train to a destination where we don't want to go." He said his party would proceed with plans to set up its own units of government in areas of white resistance, and engage in tax boycotts and other forms of nonviolent protest against the black-majority government he expects to come to power next April. But he eschewed violence. "The Afrikaner built this country," he said. "We do not want to destroy it."
Given the end-of-era dimension of today's session, the day curiously lacked a sense of nostalgia.
"I would much prefer to talk about the future than the past," said Secretary to Parliament Robin Douglas, a 32-year employee of the institution, sounding a common theme. He said what excited him the most was the opportunity to meet with counterparts all over the world. "For so long, we have been isolated and excluded. It will be interesting to see how other countries do things."
"This building represents everything that was abhorrent," said member Jan Van Eck, an ANC-leaning independent. During the apartheid era, Parliament enacted a web of laws to institutionalize racial oppression -- Population Registration, Group Areas Act, Separate Amenities Act -- and security measures to ensure that they could all be enforced.
A decade ago, de Klerk's predecessor, P.W. Botha, realized that South Africa could no longer continue with such overt white domination. He tried a half measure by changing the white-only Parliament to a three-chamber body -- with one house reserved for whites, one for Indians, and one for those of mixed race known as Coloreds. Blacks, who make up 75 percent of the population, continued to be excluded, and Indians and Coloreds only had power over their "own affairs."
The change backfired, provoking widespread voter boycotts and strengthening the anti-apartheid movement here and abroad. Hence there was no mourning as the last session of the tricameral Parliament ended today. "Order, order," said Speaker Eli Louw. "That concludes the history of this day. The council is adjourned."
