Wrestling the tiger

By William E. Smith

Wrestling th Tiger

Continuing violence clouds the government's tentative move toward reform

The violence that continued to rack the black townships outside Johannesburg last week took no account of the significance of a forthcoming event that could eventually change the complexion of South Africa's policy of racial discrimination. This week in the city of Cape Town, where white settlers first landed 332 years ago, the whites' absolute monopoly on the country's political power will come to a theoretical end. Representatives of South Africa's 2.8 million "coloreds," or people of mixed race, and its 850,000 Indians will formally take their seats in a new tricameral Parliament that for the first time gives some non-whites a limited voice in the central government.

The nation's latest bout of violence, the worst in seven years, broke out during last month's elections to choose members of the new Parliament. Some 625,000 pupils staged school boycotts, scores were arrested, and newly enfranchised voters showed little interest in the whole proceeding: only 30% of the eligible coloreds and 20% of the eligible Indians bothered to vote. The trouble grew uglier two weeks ago, when South Africa's new constitution went into effect and Prime Minister P. (for Pieter) W. Botha, 68, was chosen as the country's powerful new Executive President. Rioting swept the black town ships in an area known as the Vaal triangle, to the south and east of Johannesburg, resulting in the deaths of at least 31 people. While the unrest was sparked by rent increases of 15% to 20% for government-owned housing, at the root of the rebellious mood was the fact that the country's 23 million blacks, who make up about 73% of the population, still have no political power whatsoever. The new constitution, which was approved by two-thirds of the 2.7 million white voters in a referendum last November, fails to give blacks either a franchise or a voice in running the country.

The violence continued through last week, largely concentrated in Soweto, the sprawling, densely populated township eight miles south of Johannesburg that was the center of racial unrest in 1976. A worried government put a ban into effect in 21 black urban areas on all indoor meetings called to criticize or even discuss government policy; outdoor meetings on such subjects have long been banned. Nonetheless, a large crowd gathered at Soweto's Regina Mundi Church for a prayer meeting to commemorate the death of Steven Biko, a black student leader who died in a South African prison seven years ago. Police broke up the meeting with whips and tear gas. The next day in Soweto they shot and killed a black man who threw a gasoline bomb at a police bus. The shooting brought the number killed in the riots to 41. In Durban, six political activists whom the government was trying to detain fled to the British consulate, where they were granted sanctuary. The wife of one of the men is Ela Ramgobin, granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi. Indeed, the week's events seemed likely to overshadow ceremonies for the introduction of the new constitution. Bringing nonwhites into the government for the first time had been achieved by the ruling National Party government with difficulty, and the plan was fiercely opposed by right-wing Afrikaners. The new Parliament is itself an apt metaphor for apartheid, the official policy of separation of the races, since its three chambers are separate and unequal. The 178-member all-white House of Assembly will meet, as always, in a gracious, wood-paneled chamber. The 85 colored members of the new House of Representatives will sit in the old Senate chamber, while the 45 Indian members of the new House of Delegates will gather in an office building across the street. The existing parliamentary dining room will remain an all-white facility, to which only Cabinet ministers and the opposition leader are permitted to invite non white guests. But a dining room for all M.P.s will soon be built, and all will be allowed to use the previously "whites-only" sporting club in the Newlands section of Cape Town. An other change: Indian M.P.s traveling to and from Parliament will be permitted to ride in the same railway cars as whites. Otherwise, racial separation remains the rule on the country's railroads.

There is wide difference of opinion in South Africa over whether the electoral changes represent a strengthening of apartheid or are the first steps in a long retreat. Says Helen Suzman, an opposition M.P. and one of the government's most articulate opponents: "The new constitution is based on apartheid. It leaves out the best feature (of a democratic system), namely universal franchise under the rule of law." Zulu Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, a leading black moderate, has declared that those who participated in the recent elections were committing a "mammoth betrayal" of the black population. On the other hand, Afrikaner diehards agreed with Eugene Terreblanche, head of an extreme-right group, who said that "South Africa, the land of promise, will be given away to non-Christians." Against such criticism, Botha has argued, "I don't say that what we are entering into is perfect, nor is it the total solution to our problems. But I ask, what is the alternative?"

Botha insists that the new constitution will lead to "further steps to evolutionary reform," a view that is cautiously welcomed by some of the government's traditional opponents, including Novelist Alan Paton, 81 (Cry, the Beloved Country), the grand old man of South African liberalism. Paton says, "What we are watching here is a great, dramatic event. For many generations the white people of South Africa have been riding a tiger. Now the tiger is getting stronger and stronger, and the rider is getting older and weaker. He'd like to get off. What we are watching is a lot of politicians trying to do an impossible thing: making a constitution for getting off that tiger."

The newly enfranchised Indians and coloreds seem intent on unseating the whites from the tiger as quickly as possible. "We are going to dismantle apartheid," says the Rev. Allan Hendrickse, a Congregational minister who leads the Labor Party, which won most of the coloreds' House seats. He has called for repeal of the laws that forbid marriage and sexual relations between people of different races. He also favors the release of Nelson Mandela, a founder of the banned African National Congress, the black nationalist movement, who has been a prisoner for 20 years. Similarly, the head of the leading Indian party, Amichand Rajbansi, declares, "We intend to bring the black majority into the system. We are not abandoning our disenfranchised friends."

The apartheid system has been South African policy since 1948, when the Afrikaner-dominated National Party came to power. The party thereupon began the elaborate task of institutionalizing the traditional patterns of racial separation that had existed since colonial times. Essentially, apartheid has two aspects: social separation, or "petty apartheid," which is gradually breaking down, and the creation of black "homelands," which are seen by South African whites as their main hope for retaining political power.

Starting in 1949, the government passed a spate of laws specifying where blacks could live and work. It banned interracial marriage and sexual relations, leading to enforced separation of married couples, families, lovers, friends. It imposed segregation in public places, including schools and on transportation. To reinforce this harsh new system, the government introduced security laws that curtailed personal freedoms and made it possible for suspects to be detained without trial, placed under house arrest and otherwise "banned" or restricted. Last year 453 South Africans, the vast majority of them black, were placed in detention without trial. Another 130 were "listed" under the Internal Security Act, which meant that they were not allowed to be quoted in the press; a dozen were banned and restricted to their homes or other specified places. So far this year 572 have been detained.

Despite the severity of the detention laws, much of the abrasiveness of petty apartheid is gradually disappearing from city life, in part because of criticism from Western countries and in part, perhaps, because the rules of social apartheid are just too complicated and arbitrary to enforce. In Johannesburg today, a black couple, visiting from the "independent" homeland of Bophuthatswana, can be seen drinking tea in the lounge of the Carlton Hotel. Restaurants, hotels, shops and offices have become largely multiracial in character. Black traffic cops give out tickets to white motorists. At lunchtime, black secretaries share hot dogs and Cokes in the park with white colleagues.

Similarly, apartheid has almost disappeared from sports and from the job market. Because of the need for skilled workers, the exclusion of blacks from certain jobs in private industry has largely ended. Black unions have been legalized. Most, though not all, companies have a policy of equal pay for equal work. However, what is true in cities like Johannesburg is not necessarily true in more conservative areas. Petty apartheid still flourishes in the rural bastions of the Afrikaners and in the English redoubts around Durban, where rules governing whites-only beaches remain intact.

But apartheid really means the perpetuation of white political power, and that part of the exclusionary system is as entrenched as ever. In 1959 the late Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd introduced his plan to create ten Bantustans, or homelands, in which all of South Africa's blacks would become "citizens," regardless of whether they lived there or not. Through this curious legerdemain, Verwoerd saw a way to turn South Africa into a predominantly white country, at least on paper. Millions of blacks would continue to live and work in the vicinity of the big cities, because the South African economy needed them. But in theory they would be voting citizens of homelands hundreds of miles away.

In December the homeland of Kwandebele, a grubby, dirt-poor, black farming district to the north of Pretoria, will become the country's fifth "independent" homeland, thereby bringing Verwoerd's dream to the halfway mark. In the process, another 250,000 blacks will be written out of South Africa's official population figures and added to the more than 5 million already classified as citizens of the other four homelands. Kwandebele has just one paved road, no resident doctor, an acute water shortage, and employment opportunities for only about 2% of its people. The rest must find jobs in South Africa if they have not done so already.

The resettlement of many blacks into homelands, including the merciless removal of "black spots" from some areas designated as white, has proved to be one of the most inhumane aspects of apartheid. Some 3.5 million blacks have been uprooted and resettled over the past 20 years, and another 2 million remain to be moved. In reality, the homelands have become an expensive embarrassment. Last year the program cost South Africa about $1.5 billion, or almost 9% of the national budget. But whatever its failings, the creation of black homelands remains essential to public policy because the government knows of no other way to assure the perpetuation of white power.

In foreign policy, the Botha government has made several tentative steps toward a reconciliation of sorts with its black neighbors to the north. Last March it signed a pact of "nonaggression and good neighborliness" with Mozambique, assuring the Mozambicans that it would stop aiding rebels if they, in turn, would stop offering help and hospitality to guerrillas of the African National Congress. Botha has also agreed to a phased withdrawal of his armed forces from southern Angola. Both of these accomplishments are credited in part to the Reagan Administration's policy of "constructive engagement," under which South Africa is no longer treated by the U.S. as an international pariah but is, in theory at least, encouraged through negotiation to change its internal and external practices.

The real test of the Reagan policy will be Namibia, or South West Africa, the territory that South Africa has ruled since 1920 under a long-expired League of Nations mandate. Negotiations for Namibian independence have taken place off and on for years, and last January Botha indicated that South Africa wanted to get rid of Namibia, mainly because of the huge cost ($1 billion a year) and the loss of lives in the continuing bush war against guerrillas of the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO). Despite this, the South Africans still see Namibia as a psychological bulwark against their black neighbors to the north, and the war goes on. It was the Reagan Administration that in 1981 introduced the notion of linking Namibian independence with the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola. So far, that policy has failed to achieve either end.

Both from within and without, the question is incessantly asked: Where is South Africa heading? Most observers doubt that political change, when it comes, will be sudden or savage. Says Chief Buthelezi: "There are no prospects either now or in the foreseeable future of toppling the government by violent means. The harsh reality, which for us is inescapable, is that we do not destroy the foundations of the future by what we do." More likely, there will be a grudging, lurching, erratic pressure toward genuine reform. By the year 2000, the white population is expected to increase only slightly, from 4.7 million to 5.2 million. The black population, on the other hand, will jump from 23 million to 50 million, with 20 million settled in the industrial urban areas, where they will dominate the labor and consumer markets. A gradual increase in black political power thus seems inevitable.

Alan Paton cites three reasons for believing that the recent parliamentary reforms are a halting step in that direction. He thinks that the Afrikaner does not dare "to be finally rejected by the West, because that would be the end of Afrikanerdom." He feels the whites have conceded that "the Verwoerdian dream will never be realized." And he believes "the Christian conscience of the Afrikaner is troubled." The only problem with the third point, Paton adds, is that the Afrikaner conscience "is not yet troubled enough." --By William E. Smith. Reported by Marsh Clark and Peter Hawthorne/Johannesburg

With reporting by Marsh Clark, Peter Hawthorne