High-Rise Apartheid

South Africa's expanding economy has given nearly every white householder the means to afford black domestic servants. In Johannesburg, the nation's largest city, the demand for black maids, nannies, cooks, chauffeurs and gardeners has increased so sharply that blacks now outnumber whites by nearly two to one. But South Africa's white apartheid government does not want the domestic workers to live in the city. Reason: too many blacks on the street at night. Thus it has decided to force the servants to move into a complex of high-rise "hostels" on the outskirts of Johannesburg. The plan has set off a hot racial debate.

The barracks-style quarters, says Gerhardus van der Merwe, who is in charge of the project, are designed "to ensure that inmates will live and relax together under pleasant conditions" --and inmates is precisely the word. According to the government's plan, the twelve-building complex will provide accommodations (strictly segregated according to sex) for some 60,000 blacks, most of whom are married.

So far, two five-story structures have been completed. They have no elevators, no electrical outlets ("these people would just abuse them," said an official) and no heating ("to keep costs down"). The bathtubs--five for every 100 people--are not even full size. The government made sure, however, that the buildings included police offices and cells for potential troublemakers, as well as electronically controlled doors that can be used to seal off any part of the building "in case of unrest." The black workers, who earn between $20 and $50 a month, will have to pay $8 a month for the privilege of sharing a room with three other people.

Orwellian Horror. By last week, when the first two hostels were scheduled to open, the proposed living conditions had raised a storm of protest. Progressive Party M.P. Helen Suzman called the hostels an "Orwellian horror." White women, churchmen and students staged placard protests. Some of the shock felt by chic matrons over the city's "white by night" policy, as it is called, was undoubtedly at the prospect of having no servants to wait on candlelit dinner parties--but by no means all of it was. At a jampacked citizens' meeting, Anglican Bishop John Carter condemned the hostels as the work of "morally sick" people. Said one white housewife: "My maid, who is 66 years old, just wept and said to me: 'Madam, we are people, not cattle.' "

The government did its best to defend the scheme. "It compares favorably with white migrant laborers' accommodations overseas," said Van der Merwe. Nonetheless, mindful perhaps that a similar attempt at a "white by night" policy aroused such concern in the nearby town of Randburg that the ruling National Party suffered seriously in local elections, the Johannesburg city council decided to postpone the hostel opening for another two months. "We are putting in an open-air cinema, and the women's block will get a basketball court," explained an official. "We are also considering putting in heating."

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