Majority Rule

A measure of the progress toward majority rule in South Africa is the deal between the white government and the African National Congress. President F. W. de Klerk and ANC leader Nelson Mandela say they want a five-year government of national unity, following elections late this year or early next. First they agreed, then they backed down under pressure, and then they agreed again.Objections were manifold. The Inkatha Freedom Party, an ANC rival, wanted strong regional government in territories it dominates.

WASHINGTON -- C. Lani Guinier, President Clinton's choice to head the Justice Department's civil rights division, is quickly becoming the Robert H. Bork of the left.A voting-rights attorney who once battled to give blacks a chance to win elections in the South, she has spent the past four years as a University of Pennsylvania law professor writing about new strategies for ensuring political fairness and "empowerment" for minorities.But like Judge Bork, her many writings on touchy subjects have given her critics the words with which to brand her an extremist outside the mainstream.

LANI GUINIER complained that a permanent white majorit often denies a permanent black minority the equal right to decide issues of importance to blacks.One of her solutions is to give blacks in Congress and legislatures the right to overcome majorities. Let's take the race issue out of this and see what we have.The 350,000 residents of the Eastern Shore are a permanent minority in the state. There are ten times as many citizens in Baltimore City and the Maryland suburbs between it and D.C.These two groups have different interests.

Tis the season of commencement speeches. At bigger schools we'll look for the celebrity speechmakers and listen for sound bites from the Bills - Clinton or Cosby - along with an assortment of CEOs and novelists and local politicians. Most of their talks inspire, but there has come to be an underlying message that links education, graduation and material success. In our excitement for the new grads, are we putting the emphasis in the wrong place? As we celebrate, we calculate the value of a high school or college degree: We compare tuition with the expected wages and future positions as if that's the transaction in full.

Chicago. -- Our constitution has many checks and balances -- too many, some have thought in the past.One House of Congress can block another; the president can veto what is passed by both Houses.But the Republican Contract With America would add another check, one not decreed by the framers of our government -- a three-fifths majority vote needed for the passage of new taxes.This reflects the mood of the Republicans, who want to cripple government, to take freedom of maneuver away from our representatives.

James Guest, president of Planned Parenthood of Maryland, laments the amount of money that will be spent on a drive to defeat the state's new abortion law, once abortion opponents succeed in gathering enough signatures to place the law on the ballot in November 1992. In a time of scarce resources it is regrettable that each side of this debate will probably spend more than a million dollars to carry its case to the electorate.Yet a referendum can be worth the money, and especially so in this case.

NELSON MANDELA has recently announced that he is not a socialist. This is enormous progress for a man of the radical left who, during his long incarceration, was cruelly deprived of exposure to the swirling currents of intellectual change in the world outside.It is also remarkable when one considers that for most of his life his only substantial white allies, apart from a few churchmen and a handful of liberal intelligentsia, were members of the South African Communist Party. Even today communist members make up a significant part of the executive of Mr. Mandela's African National Congress.

-- Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. -- As South Africa approaches its first democratic election next month, apprehension over the prospect of majority rule is not confined to Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha movement, nor to the country's 5 million whites.Apartheid has left behind a legacy of fear and suspicion that infects all ethnic groups, not just black and white. Although widely viewed as a collaborator with the former apartheid regime, Chief Buthelezi has become a leading articulator of those fears.

KHAYELITSHA, South Africa -- Albert Khandekana is relishing all the attention his calling is getting under black majority rule here.He hopes that the government will fund an ambitious training center in this impoverished township and that a major corporation will come knocking on his door.Khandekana is a traditional healer, one of an estimated 350,000 in the country who treat their millions of patients with a mixture of natural remedy, counseling and spiritualism.For decades they were forced underground by the minority white supremacist regime, which scoffed at traditional healing as primitive, despite its use by the masses.

Majority ruleThe purpose of the Supreme Court is to be a watchdog over the Constitution. The Constitution and its amendments are the product of the wishes of the majority. Majority rule is what makes the U.S. a democracy.To guard democracy, nine judges were to be able to rise above their own personal beliefs. Biased decisions are not the will of the majority and are therefore a threat to our democracy.Stanley M. OringBaltimoreHomosexuals don't need special lawsKenneth B. Morgen, psychologist and co-chair of the Baltimore Justice Campaign, is a proponent of legislation to prohibit discrimination against people due to their sexual orientation.