SOUTH AFRICA: The Soweto Uprising: A Soul-Cry of Rage

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White Hands. The Soweto riots almost certainly will reduce Vorster's leverage potential to bring a recalcitrant Rhodesia around to acceptance of black majority rule. Smith can now raise South Africa's own racial troubles in defense of his determination to keep power in "civilized" (meaning white) hands. He can also point out that despite guerrilla attacks, Rhodesia's own black townships remain free of the violence that wracked Soweto. Beyond that, Vorster presumably will be subject to pressure from conservative whites to keep a firm hold on the blacks.

Kissinger, for his part, wants to avoid an all-out racial war in Rhodesia, which might force South African military intervention to prevent the slaughter of the country's 278,000 whites. The Secretary recognizes the unique role that Vorster and his people can still play on the continent: in his Lusaka speech last April, he told a predominantly black audience that white South Africans "are not colonialists" and that "historically they are African people." At the Bavarian summit, Kissinger will urge Vorster to surrender jurisdiction over Namibia and proclaim a timetable, "acceptable to the world community," for greater self-determination for blacks in South Africa itself. In light of the Soweto tragedy, it would seem likely that this particular message will come through to Vorster−very loud and very clear.