South Africa: Wrestling the tiger

(4 of 5)

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.