At 84, Harry Schwarz still works a full day - no longer for the liberal minority opposition, but as a commercial and corporate lawyer with Schwarz-North law firm in Hyde Park, Johannesburg.
Schwarz ended his 43 years in political opposition to apartheid with a stint as SA ambassador to Washington from 1991 to 1994, after presiding over then-president Nelson Mandela's state visit to the US. His condition for taking the job was that his Yeoville seat would not be contested by the NP. That was how Douglas Gibson, now ambassador to Bangkok, got to parliament.
Schwarz was once part of a group of United Party "Young Turks" (together with James Ramsey, who later emigrated; Horace van Rensburg, now retired; David Dalling, who became ANC chief whip; and Dick Enthoven, owner of the Spier Estate) who challenged the old guard.
He was expelled after he signed the Mahlabatini Declaration for a democratic SA with Mangosuthu Buthelezi. He founded the Reform Party, which soon merged with the Progressives and later became the PFP, but is no longer a member of the Democratic Alliance, of which he is a co founder.
Schwarz believes whites in SA have to come to terms with either being part of a party representing the majority or resign themselves to being a powerless minority.
"The DA made a fatal mistake by merging with the Nats. It should have sought an alliance with black political groups. There's room for a black party in which whites play a part [but] at the moment the DA will go nowhere," says Schwarz, who was elected to the Johannesburg city council in 1951 and the Transvaal provincial council in 1958.
"The other problem with a white party at the moment is that it draws its support from a section of the population that previously supported the Nats. The ANC can get away with having Marthinus van Schalkwyk in its party, which is a disgrace, but the DA cannot." Having Van Schalkwyk in the ANC was a "political machination aimed at getting control of the Western Cape".
Breaking up a party from within - "which some in the DA dream will happen with the ANC" in the hope of forming a coalition, is hard. "We tried the same thing in the UP, it didn't work. Reform from within is difficult because big parties have enormous patronage to keep the party together."
Though democracy must include the vote, " you need its other aspects, such as living in a secure society and a government that is not corrupt, human rights at every level and equality of opportunity," says Schwarz, who after World War 2 co founded the Torch Commando, an ex-servicemen's organisation opposed to government's plan to remove coloureds from the voters' roll. "People who had fought Nazis were now fighting for someone else's freedom. Its political significance was that white South Africans were prepared to stand up for black rights. Much of that is forgotten," he laments.
A great disappointment to him is that the ANC does not recognise those who fought apartheid but are not members of the ANC. "The DA is regarded as right-wing."
Schwarz describes former DA leader Tony Leon as "very clever, [but] his mistake was that he did not follow Churchill's advice to use short words and not long ones when addressing the people. He wanted to lead a larger party and his error was he thought he could do that through the Nats."
He has known DA leader Helen Zille since she was a child - her parents come from the same German Jewish refugee background. Schwarz describes her as "very able, someone I respect", but says "it's a mistake for her not to be in parliament".
