South Africa Apartheid By Another Name

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It was State President P.W. Botha's fourth address in six weeks before a provincial congress of South Africa's ruling National Party. Earlier speeches had drawn international TV crews and standing-room-only crowds, but this one played to a half-empty hall. Even the usually thunderous Botha seemed somewhat weary of the routine. Once again his theme was racial reform, and once again his message was fraught with ambiguities and contradictions. "I finally confirm," he announced in Port Elizabeth, "that my party and my government are committed to the principle of a united South Africa, one citizenship and a universal franchise." But, Botha warned, one man, one vote in a unitary state would result in the "dictatorship of the strongest black group," which would lead to "greater struggle and more bloodshed."

While the speech was in many ways classic Botha, it also turned out to be the most precise statement to date of how far he is willing to bend to accommodate South Africa's disenfranchised black majority. Calling for "cooperative coexistence," he proposed a confederation of geographic and ethnic "units," with each racial group having responsibility for its "own affairs," including education, social welfare and residential areas. On matters of "mutual concern," meaning economic, defense and foreign policy, political structures would be created to permit discussion "without the one group having the right to dominate the others." To those familiar with the serpentine convolutions of Afrikaner rhetoric, the message seemed plain: racial groups should keep to themselves on matters relating to their own welfare, but on issues of national concern, white dominance would prevail.

Had Botha proposed the same formula in Durban on Aug. 15, when he initiated his series of party-congress speeches, it might have been read both at home and abroad as a signal that he was prepared to negotiate meaningful changes in his country's system of apartheid. At the time, prominent South African officials had put out the word that Botha planned to announce a package of unprecedented reforms, and expectations were high. Instead of demonstrating flexibility, however, Botha delivered a finger-wagging sermon that warned foreign governments not to "push us too far." His intransigence only hardened demands for bold reforms. Whereas many critics were disposed in August to consider a gradual easing of apartheid, by last week, as Botha's state of emergency entered its twelfth week and two more blacks were killed by riot police, they seemed unwilling to embrace reforms that fell shy of a total renunciation of all racialistic policies.

Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, one of the country's more moderate black leaders, dismissed the Port Elizabeth speech as "bitterly disappointing." Dr. Nthato Motlana, a senior civic leader in Soweto, South Africa's largest black township, branded Botha's remarks an "absolute waste of time." Leaders of the outlawed African National Congress, delivering their assessment from Zambia, called the proposals "meaningless amendments of the apartheid system," while the Sowetan, South Africa's largest black daily, editorialized: "The unified South Africa only reflects another glorified system of homelands . . . (Apartheid) cannot be dressed up in false colors. We are not that stupid."