When South Africans handed Nelson Mandela's African National Congress a resounding victory in the country's first multiracial elections in 1994, black majority rule became an inevitability. The only question was when that rule would come about. Last week the question was answered with the announcement by former President F.W. de Klerk that he was taking his National Party out of the coalition Government of National Unity, effective June 30, and setting up what he predicted would be a "strong and vigilant opposition" necessary for "the maintenance and promotion of genuine multiparty democracy." By so doing, De Klerk pre-empted the country's new constitution, adopted last week, which provides for majority rule after the next general election, scheduled for 1999.

Ending a 48-year period of National Party participation--and for 44 of those years, domination--in the government, De Klerk telephoned the President to inform him of the withdrawal that will cost the National Party nine Cabinet positions in the coalition government and deprive De Klerk himself of the influential post of co-Vice President. Mandela took the news with customary equanimity. "He was cool, he listened, and was his usual friendly self," said De Klerk. "I thank Mr. De Klerk for his contribution," Mandela said later. "The A.N.C. is confident it can carry on."

Unfortunately, that confidence is not widely shared. The departure of De Klerk & Co. brings to an end a remarkable transition period for the new South Africa, in which the architects of apartheid negotiated themselves out of office and, along with the A.N.C., the liberal Democratic Party, white conservatives and the predominantly Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party under Mangosuthu Buthelezi, embarked on a bold experiment to usher the country into an era of racial reconciliation and economic reconstruction. But the financial markets reacted negatively, spooked by the fear that the A.N.C. government may now make an inflationary dash for economic growth in order to appease the rising expectations of its constituents. With the news of the National Party pullout, shares on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange fell and the rand, rattled by a nationwide strike and the March resignation of Finance Minister Chris Lienbenberg, continued on a downward course that has produced a 20% devaluation in the past three months.

The reasons for De Klerk's decision do not augur well for economic progress and national harmony. During the constitutional negotiations, the National Party pressed for provisions guaranteeing property rights, a clause giving employers and workers equal rights in industrial disputes, and--with the Afrikaner community in mind--the right to retain single-language state schooling. It also sought guarantees of future power sharing. But in the end those demands were largely ignored, and the National Party voted for the A.N.C.-engineered constitution only to head off A.N.C. threats to counter a veto with a national referendum that could have proved divisive and would almost certainly have rejected those watered-down concessions to business and minorities that the National Party had secured.

It is now the task of the A.N.C. government to reassure the country and investors at large that the departure of the National Party will not undermine the progress that has been made so far. That task will be complicated by the possibility of a second defection from the Government of National Unity by Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party, which boycotted the constitution talks. A.N.C. and Inkatha supporters are currently fighting a battle for votes in KwaZulu/Natal, where, as a result of the bloodshed, municipal elections have been postponed. Still, for the difficulties that lie ahead, South Africans of all colors do not believe that violence in KwaZulu/Natal is a portent of things to come.