SOUTH AFRICA'S TRAGEDY IN COLORS

"We May Make a Few Mistakes"

AFRICA was in the midst of a cruel process called Population Registration. In informal courts a group of nameless bureaucrats pressed a nationwide inquisition that would, when completed, give every one of South Africa's 12.6 million people a racial label: black, white or Colored.

Most whites seemed not to mind: they would simply be asked to carry an identity card which the police would not ask them for anyway. Not many of the blacks cared either, for the bulk of them already are numbed from years of carrying cards, passes and permits, which the police demand to see almost daily. But for many of South Africa's 1,000,000 Coloreds, half-caste descendants of the days when Boer settlers took Bantu and Bushman mistresses and wives, Population Registration spells tragedy. Thousands are being reclassified as "natives" (i.e., blacks).

Such a "change" of legal color has violent disadvantages in Premier Strydom's South Africa. A man's color decides what part of a town he lives in, what sort of job he may hold, how much he earns and where he may spend it, what buses he may travel on and what school (if any) his children may attend. In most parts of South Africa a Colored enjoys many minor but precious advantages over the blacks. He is allowed to ride on many of the same streetcars as the whites; he may be a member of a trade union and bargain with employers; he may hold many semiskilled jobs that are forbidden to the black man. In some cities, Coloreds may buy freely at liquor stores, just like the whites. Coloreds may even move from city to city without a pass; the African native may not.

New Skins for Old. Last week that was changing. An investigating committee from the Nationalist government's Census Bureau and Native Affairs Department was cross-examining hundreds of Coloreds, and wherever they discovered enough "native blood" or "native associations," freely rescinding their privileges. The cross-examining was centered on the 30,000 Coloreds who have moved from Cape Province, their traditional home, to the hustling metropolis of Johannesburg (pop. 800,000). Their migration does not fit in with the Strydom government's apartheid (segregation) plans.

All week the Coloreds stood in line outside the Johannesburg branch of the Native Affairs Department. Most were coffee-colored, though some had fair hair. They were shopkeepers and typists, clerks and building contractors. Collectively, they are known in Johannesburg as a quiet, untroublesome and dignified lot who, prizing their semi-privileged status, have kept out of politics and instinctively sided with the white man against the black.

Skull Session. One of those in the line was Thomas Wentzel, 59, a skilled woodworker whose grandfather was a German harness maker married to a Colored woman. Wentzel's skin is the light tan of a man who has spent his lifetime working in the sun. But though he lives in a Colored suburb and is married to a Colored woman, Thomas Wentzel was reclassified as a native. "What can I do?" he asked hopelessly. The answer: very little.