THE RECENT REFERENDUM on the future of the reform process in South Africa was a potentially disastrous step.

If white South Africans had decided that President F.W. De Klerk was not leading the country in the right direction, the proposed general election could have resulted in a victory for the right wing Conservative Party--and a return to apartheid.

Instead, sixty percent of the white minority voted to support de Klerk and continued reform. The Convention for a Democratic South Africa, a multi-racial conference to define South Africa's political future, will now continue to meet and hammer out proposals for a transition government that gives power to non-whites.

Luckily, the voters took the right path in this referendum. Canceling reform would have set South Africa back, bringing on more violence and world alienation. The scare could have been avoided, however, if no referendum had been called in the first place. Reform in the interest of the majority should have continued without any minority affirmation.

THE REFORM PROCESS began in early 1990 with Nelson Mandela's release and the unbanning of the ANC and other antiapartheid organizations. De Klerk can be credited for single-handedly changing the ruling National Party's course from pursuing a cosmetic reform program to actively dismantling apartheid.

De Klerk has been, for the most part, an unsung hero, forced to tread a fine line between National Party voters still committed to the maintenance of apartheid, and ANC members, concerned that the reform process will be stalled. He has had a number of factors stacked against him in his crusade.

The most important of these has been the violence that has continued to plague the townships since Mandela's release. The bitter struggle between Inkatha, the Zulu nationalist organization, and the ANC has led to the deaths of thousands of Black South Africans. It has also given weight to conservative white fears of an ethnic bloodbath after a transition to majority rule.

Similarly, the initial proceedings of the Convention for a Democratic South Africa have given little hope for progress. The 13 participants, most important among them the National Party, the ANC, the Democratic Party (a multi-racial opposition party) and the Inkatha movement, have stuck to outdated blueprints for South Africa's future, leaving little room for compromise. Two major parties--The Conservative Party and the left wing Pan African Congress--refused to participate altogether.

The actions of extreme right wing whites, whose movement has gained a lot in support in recent months, and militant black groups, whose calls for radical reform have become increasingly strident, have only compounded the situation.

On the international front, however, De Klerk has had unqualified success. On his numerous state visits, de Klerk has ended South Africa's many years of diplomatic isolation. He has convinced western leaders of the irreversibility of the reform process in which the country is currently involved.

Many economic sanctions have been lifted, and South Africa's pariah status has effectively come to a close with the end of the United Nations cultural boycott.

However, success in the outside world did not translate into popularity at home with white South Africans. The point was painfully brought home in the recent parliamentary by-election in Potchefstroom, in which the National Party lost a previously safe seat to the Conservative Party.

Because the population of Potchefstroom, which also happens to be de Klerk's birthplace, includes a wide range of income groups, from Afrikaans-speaking farmers to English-speaking professionals, the by-election was seen as a representative test of white feeling on National Party policy.

IN THE FACE OF this electoral snub, De Klerk called this referendum on the country's future.

De Klerk gambled that, rather than vote `no' to further reform, white South Africans would see that the alternatives facing them were quite bleak. He wanted to use the referendum as a vote of confidence in his government.