The Afrikaner leaders I've met are at least as prudent as the American politi- cians I know, and more so.

The well-known reluctance of Afrikaner leaders to submit to one another's leadership, which later so hindered sustained success in the Anglo-Boer wars, was largely to blame.

Smuts emerged from the Boer War as one of the foremost Afrikaner leaders.

Maybe one day Hollywood will make a movie set in South Africa that features some of the following: * An Afrikaner leader who repudiates apartheid.

His thinking was influenced by Hans Strijdom and Hendrik Verwoerd, two Afrikaner nationalist leaders and prime ministers of South Africa.

Afrikaner leaders of the National Party today are seeking to play down emotive festivals that focus on the Afrikaners' isolation and sense of divine mission as they seek new allies in an increasingly hostile world.

And at the center, where for two generations stern Afrikaner leaders enforced the ideology of racial separation, stands the benign, all-embracing figure who brought about the peaceful transformation, President Nelson Mandela.

Enlightened Afrikaner leaders like Mr. de Klerk began to feel the costs and see the practical wisdom in negotiations with black leaders.

"All I had to do was put a hat on" to impersonate such Afrikaner leaders as President P. W. Botha, he said.

The party was led by Piet Retief, an Afrikaner leader.