JOHANNESBURG - The death of Fredrick Van Zyl Slabbert a week ago invites critical assessment of his achievements as a prominent politician on the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary fronts for the best part 25 years.  As a man of great intellectual ability, he would expect no less.

A convenient starting point in any assessment of his political career is February 1986 as it marked the end of his parliamentary career and the start of his foray into the extra-parliamentary arena, a decision that was shrouded in controversy because of the manner in which it was announced.

Slabbert's parliamentary career began in 1974 when he won the Rondebosch constituency for the Progressive Party to become one of six successful PP candidates to join Helen Suzman in parliament, Suzman having being the sole PP parliamentary representative for 13 years.

A man of great charm and charisma, Slabbert rose rapidly through the ranks and in 1979 was elected as leader of the Progressive Federal Party (PFP) as the PP had become known after a merger with the Reform Party. Under his leadership, the PFP ousted the moribund United Party as the official opposition after the 1981 election.

In February 1986, however, Slabbert stunned parliament by announcing his resignation from parliament and the leadership of the PFP at the end of his response to President P W Botha in the no-confidence debate. The controversy arose because he did not inform his colleagues, including Suzman and Colin Eglin, whom he had ousted as PFP leader in 1979, until the morning before the afternoon that he was due to speak

Suzman was appalled that the "leader of the official opposition would undermine his party in so drastic a fashion." She failed to dissuade him from doing so, however, and did not talk to him for three years.

Slabbert wrote a letter to the PFP parliamentary caucus, explaining that he saw no future for himself in parliament and did not want to treat it as a sinecure. He asked Eglin to read it out to the caucus,

Eglin commented in his memoirs 20 years afterwards: "Slabbert's letter did not help to mollify feelings ... for most of the caucus their leader had abandoned them."

During the month before Slabbert had confided to Eglin another sensational threefold plan: the first step was for the PFP parliamentary representatives to resign en masse, the second was for them to seek re-election, and third was for the successful candidates to refuse to take up their seats until and unless the government agreed to abolish the Population Registration Act, on which the apartheid edifice rested.

Eglin rejected the idea as unworkable, as did another PFP parliamentarian, Nic Olivier, whom Eglin advised Slabbert to consult. Eglin's revelation in his memoirs demonstrated that Slabbert was determined to undertake a sensational manoeuvre against the apartheid system come hell or high-water.

An editorial in the Sunday Times on Slabbert's decision to quit parliament and renounce his leadership of the PFP reflected the feeling of most PFP supporters whose votes Slabbert had sought in the 1981 election: "The judgement on Dr Van Zyl Slabbert's dramatic exist from parliamentary politics must, sadly, be harsh. He leaves behind him a bewildered party that may well be rent asunder, thus enabling the (pro-apartheid Conservative Party) to acquire the enhanced status of official opposition."

The prediction was fulfilled. In the 1987 general election the Conservative Party replaced the PFP as the official opposition. Five years later the CP nearly scuppered the settlement talks that had begun in 1990 when it defeated the National Party (NP) in a by-election in Potchefstroom that was widely punted as a critical test of whether the white community supported the decision of President F W de Klerk - who had replaced P W Botha in September 1989 - to negotiate a new political dispensation with the outlawed "liberation movements" and the existing parties.

De Klerk saved the day by holding a referendum in the white community on whether or not they were in favour of his decision to negotiate a new deal. He received a clear mandate to proceed, thanks largely to the support of English-speaking voters.

The rise of De Klerk and his decision to rescind the decrees outlawing the ANC and its allies, as well as the rival Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) is relevant to Slabbert's decision to quit parliament for a simple reason.

It showed that Slabbert may have misjudged the situation when he decided that the NP was implacably committed to apartheid and could not be nudged by persistent pressure in parliament and elsewhere into negotiated a new beginning.

The year 1986 was not only important because Slabbert quit parliament to establish the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa and the series of meetings organised abroad under its auspices between leading South Africans and the exiled leadership of the ANC.

It was a watershed for another reason: it was the year in which the P W Botha administration decided to scrap the hated pass laws and - as important - to abandon the attempt to deprive black South Africans of their citizenship by conferring the citizenship of their putative "homelands" on them.

These measures, like the Population Registration Act, were integral to the apartheid system: the pass laws to restrict the "influx" of black citizens into white-designated areas and conferring of "homeland citizenship" on them as a justification for denying them political rights and treating them as "temporary sojourners."

Even before Slabbert's announcement of his decision to quit parliament another important event took place: a visit to Nelson Mandela by Kobie Coetsee, Botha's minister of justice and prisons, which marked the start of a dialogue between Coetsee and Mandela on how to avert the threat of a racial war.

These talks were later expanded to include Neil Barnard, the head of the national intelligence service and eventually, in July 1989, the culminated in a meeting between Mandela and Botha.

It set the scene for F W de Klerk's decision to conclude what Botha had started by initiated what amounted to a second national convention, in which, critically, blacks were included, among who were men and women who had been considered to be dangerous radicals and incorrigible terrors not excluded.

Seen in that context Slabbert's role in the extra-parliamentary field diminishes in importance, which, of course is not to assert that it was superfluous or of no importance: it undoubtedly added impetus to growing awareness in South Africa of the need for a negotiated settlement.

Slabbert's initiative in organised dialogue and brain-storming session between eminent home-based South Africans and exiled members of the "liberation movements" had two main weaknesses, valuable as it undoubtedly was.

There was almost a surfeit of meetings involving the ANC but a corresponding dearth of contacts with the exiled leadership of the PAC and the Black Conscious Movement. The torture of alleged government agents in the guerrilla camps and of purported mutineers was not a prominent issued of discussion as far as can be established.

To put it differently, ANC leaders were given ample opportunity to prove that they did not have horns while their rivals were not accorded similar opportunities.

In an article published in the Sunday Independent after the June 1999 general election, Slabbert reflected on the success of the Democratic Party (DP) -into which the formed the PFP had mutated -increasing its share of the poll from less than two percent in 1994 to nearly 10 percent.

While recognised that it was a sterling achievement, Slabbert warned Tony Leon, the leader of the DP, against the dangers of concentrating on winning the votes of disillusioned and angry former NP voters at the expense of recruiting black voters. If it not corrected, it would result in the DP becoming a party of minorities confined forever to the opposition benches.

In the same article, however, Slabbert's references to the ANC were conspicuously devoid of critical comments. Indeed, he was of the view that there was no "serious ideological dispute" between the DP (and other opposition parties) and the Mbeki government. This despite the ANC's declared policy of posting party cadres to every lever of power, including the chapter 9 institutions whose function was to prevent abuses by the government.

In his last book The Other Side of History, published in 2006, Slabbert was, however, forthrightly critical of aspects of ANC policy, including its description of the people of Africa north of the Sahara as Africans, although many of them appear to have Caucasian features, while denying that the whites of South Africa that status.

It might be noted in conclusion that Slabbert referred to himself as an Afrikaner-Afrikaan, the world Afrikaan being the Afrikaans equivalent of African.

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