South Africa Apartheid with a Smiling Face

By William E. Smith

The blaze of trumpets heralding the opening session of Parliament in Cape Town had barely died down when State President P.W. Botha unveiled an improbable proposal. Said he: "If I were to release Mr. Nelson Mandela on humanitarian grounds, could Captain Wynand du Toit, Andrei Sakharov and Anatoli Shcharansky not also be released on humanitarian grounds?"

With that highly rhetorical offer, Botha announced that his government might be prepared to end the 23-year imprisonment of Mandela, the leading figure in the outlawed African National Congress, the country's most popular black political organization. Botha's price: the release by Angola of a South African officer captured during a commando raid in that country last year, as well as the freeing of the two prominent Soviet dissidents. Botha then reminded his listeners that he had offered to free Mandela last year if the black leader agreed to renounce the use of violence and that Mandela had refused. "I am conscious of the fact that Mr. Mandela has been in prison for a long time," said Botha. "I have given this matter much thought."

A last-minute addition to Botha's 27-minute speech, the proposal was dismissed by critics as a bit of charlatanry aimed at emphasizing South Africa's solidarity with the West against Soviet Communism. Declared Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu, the winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize: "What has Nelson's release to do with Sakharov? I can't see why they are linked. It looks like a ploy that a politician has thought up, that will sound good to ears in the West (and show) that he is concerned about prisoners of conscience --when he's got so many prisoners of conscience of his own." Other observers speculated that while Angola might be interested in a prisoner swap, the Soviet Union would be unlikely to consider the release of two leading dissidents.

Botha confined the remainder of his speech to summarizing the government's plans for racial reform. He promised to restore South African citizenship to blacks who live within South Africa but whose citizenship previously had been assigned to one of four "independent" tribal homelands. He also proposed extending to blacks in urban townships the right to buy, instead of merely rent, their own homes. He affirmed that the government will issue an identity document to South Africans of all races, replacing the "passes" that blacks are currently required to carry at all times.

Perhaps most important, the South African President said he would negotiate the establishment of a "national statutory council" made up of government officials, representatives of the black homelands, and leaders of "other black . . . interest groups." Though the council would have no power of its own and would merely advise the government on "matters of common concern, including proposed legislation," it sounded much like the "national convention," or indaba (powwow), that the South African government has always insisted would never be created.

The high point of the speech came when Botha declared apartheid "outdated," causing many M.P.s to chorus "Hoor, hoor! " (Hear, hear!). White businessmen were generally encouraged, though many probably agreed with the opposition member who complained that Botha's ideas merely added up to "apartheid with a smiling face." Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert, the leader of the white opposition Progressive Federal Party, said the President's approach was "welcome," but wanted to see whether "substance will follow rhetoric."

The same evening, Botha appeared on television channels that broadcast in the Sotho, Tswana, Xhosa and Zulu languages and told their predominantly black viewers, "The time has come for us South Africans to join together to negotiate the structures that we want." From its headquarters in neighboring Zambia, however, the A.N.C. dismissed Botha's overtures, which it said demonstrated that he was "committed to the maintenance of white-minority domination."

With reporting by Peter Hawthorne and Bruce W. Nelan/Cape Town