Softening Apartheid

For more than a generation, the cornerstone of South Africa's internal policy has been apartheid, or "separate development" for the country's 16 million blacks, 4,000,000 whites, 2,000,000 "coloreds" (mixed bloods) and 750,000 Asians. To protest such racist policies, the United Nations General Assembly last week refused, by a vote of 72 to 37, to accept South Africa's credentials. It was a symbolic gesture, signifying the assembly's disapproval but carrying no force to keep the nation from taking its place in the U.N. TIME Correspondent Lee Griggs recently traveled extensively throughout South Africa for the first time in eleven years to assess the plight of blacks. He discovered that in countless ways the granite-hard face of apartheid is cracking.

In perhaps the most significant modification of apartheid since it became national policy in 1948, Prime Minister John Vorster last week virtually abandoned the Job Reservation Act, under which the best jobs in the country have long been reserved for whites. Though the law will remain on the books, Vorster declared that, if employers and trade unions approve, the government will allow more and more blacks to move into skilled jobs. The goal, he said, is to find ways to improve "the productive use of non-white labor."

The reasons for the change are hardly altruistic. South Africa's booming economy is faced with a white-labor shortage, and the obvious solution is to train blacks to fill the gap. Blacks now drive trucks, and supervise shunting in rail yards; soon they will take over 14,000 mining jobs formerly reserved for whites. The change is also a result of continuing social pressures--the migration, for example, of Afrikaner farmers who are moving to the cities and becoming partly liberalized in the process.

Whatever the reasons, the effects are visible everywhere. In the capital city Pretoria, public parks were integrated a few weeks ago. On a recent evening in Pretoria's new luxury hotel, the Burgerspark, the dining room was filled with almost as many black guests as white. Elevators may still carry "Slegs vir blankes " (reserved for whites) signs, but the rule is ignored. Whites stand beside blacks in many of the same queues. Air travel is integrated. Some parishes of the Dutch Reformed Church now permit multiracial attendance at weddings, funerals and other services.

The Immorality Act, which bans interracial sex, is still in force, but prosecutions are rare. Even the courts seem to be mellowing. A black man recently sued and collected damages from a white who had called him a kaffir (the South African equivalent of nigger). Ever since blacks and whites competed against each other in body-contact sports at the South African Games last January, integration in athletic events has been increasing. This month blacks played against whites for the first time in an international cricket tournament.

Aid Centers. One of the most hated aspects of apartheid has been the "pass laws," which require blacks to carry permits whenever they travel outside the semiautonomous black regions called Bantustans. The pass laws are still in effect, and more than 600,000 blacks were arrested last year for violating them. But nowadays an offender is less likely to be automatically jailed for a pass-law transgression or other minor infraction--partly because of the work of a string of government "aid centers" that have been established to help blacks cope with the law. Moreover, the area within which a single pass is valid has been increased--from about 50 miles to as much as 180 miles.

None of these changes exactly qualifies John Vorster for a human-brotherhood award. South Africa's blacks, after all, still have no vote, no right to own property and no real freedom of movement outside the black regions. And, given the depth and prejudice of white South Africa's attitudes, it remains to be seen whether a profound social change has really begun. But the short-term trend is clearly toward modest liberalization, particularly in business and industry, and for this the Vorster government deserves a measure of credit.

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