Putting a Pretty Face on Apartheid

Prime Minister Botha seeks support for "good neighborliness "

Flanked by his Cabinet, South Africa's Prime Minister P.W. Botha, 63, stood up in a hall in Johannesburg last week and made an unprecedented appeal. His basic goal was unstated but well understood by his audience of 250 English-speaking businessmen, who have long dominated South Africa's economic life. Botha outlined a new policy that would end the harsher restrictions of apartheid, South Africa's all-encompassing system of racial laws, and provide fresh economic opportunities by allowing corporations to employ the country's blacks in heretofore restricted jobs. Political power, of course, would be left firmly in white hands. At the end of his daylong summit with the business leaders, Botha seemed to have won them over. Declared Diamond Magnate Harry Oppenheimer, an influential critic of the Afrikaner regime: "I've got more hope for the future of South Africa than I've had for many, many years."

Botha's reforms are motivated by a conviction that majority-rule settlements in Namibia and Zimbabwe Rhodesia will present South Africa with an "adapt or die" situation. Urged by top military advisers, he has ordered a sweeping review of the restrictive laws, known as "petty apartheid," in an attempt to stave off an overwhelming onslaught from black African nations combined with mass rebellion by the country's 20 million blacks. To the howls of hard-line Afrikaners, the Prime Minister has proposed the "improvement" of laws prohibiting interracial sex and marriage. In order to create new jobs for blacks in the private sector, Botha's government will look the other way if companies violate the regulations that ban blacks from certain skills or positions in which they would supervise whites. In Johannesburg apartheid has been suspended to the point that most restaurants and theaters are racially mixed. These changes have been accompanied by a new set of code words. Botha speaks of "differentiation" between the races instead of "discrimination," "decentralization" instead of "separate development" and "equal opportunity" instead of "equality."

So far, South African blacks have reacted skeptically to Botha's proposals. Says Bishop Desmond Tutu, secretary-general of the South African Council of Churches: "He is talking about applying an inhuman system more humanely. Things are changing, but there has been no fundamental change." Black leaders and even the country's white legal Establishment were shocked last week when a judge in the sleepy Natal town of Pietermaritzburg handed down a death sentence to James Mange, a militant, charged with plotting an attack on a police station. Mange was only the second person convicted of treason in South Africa since 1914; he was the first to be condemned in a case in which there was no loss of life.

Botha has also run into heated opposition from the verkrampte (rigid) wing of South Africa's ruling Nationalist Party. The solemn, humorless Prime Minister has been heckled as a "Judas" by Afrikaner audiences. In four parliamentary by-elections last month, more than half the eligible voters boycotted the balloting as a sign of displeasure with the new policies. Former Cabinet Minister Connie Mulder has founded a new pro-apartheid Action Front for National Priorities that could attract the support of disillusioned Afrikaners during the next election.

Despite his proposed reform of petty apartheid, Botha has no intention of altering the long-range goal of Nationalist policy: maintaining white sovereignty in South Africa as head of a "constellation of states," that might include ten quasi-autonomous tribal homelands, as well as Zambia and Zimbabwe Rhodesia, as a bulwark against Communist expansion. If these measures fail to gain South Africa's security, some Afrikaners are contemplating more drastic steps. Predicted an influential Afrikaner last week: "In ten years' time, the army will appoint the civilians, and no one, black or white, will have to vote."

In his first interview with an American publication since becoming Prime Minister a little over a year ago, Botha last week outlined his reforms to TIME Johannesburg Bureau Chief William McWhirter. Seated behind a desk decorated with a statue of an early pioneer, the unsmiling Nationalist leader made clear that South Africa's reforms will in no way affect the principle of white sovereignty in a white state. Excerpts from the 90-min. talk:

Q. South Africa will soon find itself as the last white-governed state in Africa. What will the future be like?

A. The only way to deal with the future of South Africa is the way we started to deal with it, namely, to allow each proud people--Zulus, Xhosas, Sesothos--to achieve their self-determination and independence from South Africa. When you have arrived at that stage, you can bring together a constellation of southern African states working together on common interests. South Africa is not changing its policy to satisfy our critics. South Africa is developing in the way it is because we believe that by doing this, we shall become a constellation of states strong enough to withstand Communism.

Q. On a recent trip to the U.S., your Minister of Cooperation and Development, Piet Koornhof, said that apartheid is dead. What does that mean?

A. That is not quite correct. I was asked in Parliament what my attitude as Prime Minister was to the word apartheid. It is an Afrikaans word, and personally I think it cannot be properly translated. I prefer to use the term "good neighborliness" because that is what our policy is: good neighborliness of peoples governing themselves with mutual respect. I answered that the apartheid our enemies presented to the world was dead. I will see to it that our enemies do not succeed in creating the idea that we are a lot of racists.

Q. Your government has considered revising the Immorality Act, which bans interracial sex. What other departures from past policy do you envision?

A. All those acts or practices that are unnecessarily discriminatory should gradually be lifted, as people attain higher standards of living, as they develop their local facilities, as they develop their own townships; we are trying to get away from as many of those legacies of the past as are not necessary to maintain [the Afrikaners'] right of self-determination. The Immorality Act and the Mixed Marriages Act are not acts to insult any other people. They are acts that have existed all these years to protect colored and black women from being exploited by ruthless white men. If a white man wants to marry a colored or a black girl, it is for him to take the consequences, to live in the area where his wife lives and get used to it.

Q. Does that mean an end to statutory discrimination?

A. Let me be quite candid about that. It is the right of my people, the Afrikaner, the minority of English-speaking South Africans, the minority of Greeks, the minority of Portuguese, the minority of Italians and French in this country, to retain their cultures and to retain their schools wherever possible. Whites in South Africa want to live in their own communities, and it is their right. We are prepared to grant the right to blacks to live in their own communities. But we are not in favor of mixed communities. We will not deviate from that.

Q. What about voluntary integration: if blacks wanted to move into white neighborhoods or a white theater wanted to admit black customers?

A. Our attitude is that we grant theaters to every separate community. In cases where we cannot duplicate such facilities, we have an open theater where blacks and colored people can come with whites, and it works well. But I think that the black man also has a right to have, in his own community, his own halls for recreation and cultural activities.

Q. Another problem has been the attitude of black African countries that belong to the Organization of African Unity. In the past, they have refused to establish formal relations with South Africa because not enough was being done within your boundaries. How does your strategy hope to overcome these objections?

A. In spite of their protestations, O.A.U. trade with us is increasing. There is a gradual increase in trade between South Africa and many other African states. The proof of the pudding is in the eating and not in what people say.

Q. What happens then to urban blacks who are not in the homelands and who are subject to security legislation, pass arrests, harassment and restricted facilities?

A. We have a number of urban areas where black people are living, vast urban areas like Soweto. I don't believe that a Zulu living in Zululand and a Zulu living in Soweto are two different people. I think they belong to the same proud people, and I am prepared to accept that they must have rights. So we shall grant to the urban areas where blacks are living certain rights. We have made available to them certain facilities in housing, which is welcomed by most of them. Secondly, we will grant them local government so they will be able to control many aspects of their lives, and we have already granted them municipal status, and we may even be willing to go beyond the municipal level.

Q. But their complaint is that they will still be disenfranchised.

A. They are not represented in the white Parliament. That is correct. But they have their own parliaments. We have some urban blacks serving as ministers in their national states.

Q. Do you think that is enough to satisfy them?

A. No, I don't say it is enough. We are daily deliberating with these people, and from time to time new steps are taken as a result of these consultations. What do these people want? Better living conditions, which we are granting. Higher wages, along with higher productivity. We are training them. They want to share in the progress and prosperity of the country, and they are to a large extent sharing it. Our black people are free in South Africa. They have never been slaves like the black people in America.

Q. How do you think a black would answer that question, sir?

A. I will tell you how they answer it. They come into my office, and we speak to them as equals. The mayor of Soweto came here the other day with his whole council and made certain presentations to me because they wanted to show their good will toward us. They came here as equals, but by being equals in South Africa, we do not mean that the white man must sacrifice his life to live here.

Q. Even so, some whites fear that you are taking them too far. There have even been predictions that reaction to your plans might lead to the breakup of the National Party.

A. I don't think that is so serious. We have had 17 by-elections since I became Prime Minister and lost only one. At that rate, it will take the opposition 50 years to come into power.

Q. While refusing to adopt the policy for itself, South Africa supports one-man, one-vote majority rule in Zimbabwe Rhodesia and even Namibia. Why is your own situation in South Africa so different?

A. You cannot compare them with the Republic of South Africa. South West Africa does not belong to the Republic of South Africa. We were only the mandatory force. We accepted that if Rhodesia wants to become a new state on the principle of one-man, one-vote, we won't object to it because we aren't poking our noses into the affairs of Rhodesia. We never prescribe to Rhodesia what she should do. We help to create peaceful conditions in which they can come to terms with other international states who want us to cooperate.

Q. There have been indications that South Africa might intervene militarily to support the government of Prime Minister Abel Muzorewa.

A. We cannot stand idly by and allow a neighboring country to be forced at the point of a gun to accept a form of government that the people don't like. It is not in the interests of southern Africa for there to be chaos in Rhodesia because if people start running, as they did in Angola and Mozambique, they only run one way, and that is to South Africa. If I am asked by a properly elected government to help them, I will consider it sympathetically. We support all people who are well disposed toward us, and Bishop Muzorewa is an independent leader who is well disposed toward South Africa. Why should I be ill disposed to him? The Patriotic Front, on the other hand, are Communists, and I don't like Communists, whether they be in America or Rhodesia. I don't like them all over the world. I think [Communism] is a miserable policy and a miserable ideology.

Q. So the difference is that South Africa is strong enough to withstand international pressure?

A. We are not prepared to commit suicide. That is the reply under any circumstances.

Q. And if acts of terrorism or a revolutionary campaign begins here?

A. We will crush them. We will stamp out any attempt to overthrow the state with the full force that we can collect. I am not going to stand for Communist efforts to overthrow the state. We will fight that tooth and nail.

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