The World: POISED BETWEEN PEACE AND WAR

(7 of 10)

Most of Vorster's acquaintances would agree that the dour Afrikaner is a strange leader for an age of reform. Says Chief Gatsha Buthelezi of the Zulus, South Africa's largest tribe: "When I'm in church and I'm singing, 1 love not to see the distant scene: one step enough for me,' I think of John Vorster. He's not prepared to go far enough." Adds one of Vorster's own Cabinet ministers: "John's heart has always been in the ox-wagon wing of the party. His head told him it was time to be more liberal, but the heart still rules him." A year ago, Vorster was regarded as belonging to the verligte (enlightened, or moderate) wing of the party; but since the Soweto rioting began, the center of the ruling National Party has shown a greater willingness to compromise; Vorster has hardly budged at all.

In fact, Vorster seems to have decided to sacrifice the Smith regime in Rhodesia and accept independence for Namibia in a gamble that these moves will buy time for him to put into effect Pretoria's own strategy for survival. This does not involve greater integration of the blacks in the country's economic and political life; on the contrary, Vorster's strategy seems to be to complete the original South African blueprint for "separate development" of the races known as apartheid (Afrikaans for "separateness"). Hoping to perpetuate the political power of the whites, who form only 17% of the South African population, the regime plans to convert nine tribal homelands within South Africa's borders into "independent states." South Africa's blacks will be assigned citizenship — including the 10 million who live not in the homelands but in "white" South Africa. Simultaneously, they would be stripped of their South African citizenship.

On Oct. 26, the Transkei (pronounced tran-sky), ancestral home of 3.3 million Xhosa tribesmen, will become the first of these homelands to be granted "full and free" independence. But South Africa will still control its security, its telecommunications and immigration. Forty-five percent of all Transkeians, and 80% of its adult males, will continue to work "abroad" in South Africa, which is just as well, because there are few jobs at home. After independence, the state's ruler, Paramount Chief Kaiser Matanzima, will ask South Africa to give the Transkei more land to ease overcrowding (together, the nine homelands have only 13% of South Africa's land area). Pretoria is expected to refuse, on the rather arch grounds that such a request would amount to interference by a foreign state in South Africa's internal affairs.