South Africa "We Cannot Be Held to Ransom"

Bulldozers last week razed the charred ruins at Crossroads, a black squatter camp five miles southeast of Cape Town, where fierce fighting between radical youths and conservative vigilante groups left at least 36 dead and more than 30,000 homeless. At the same time, the South African government was debating new measures to grant security forces sweeping powers to control the turbulence that has wracked the country for the past 21 months. Critics charge that the proposals, which would allow police to detain people for up to 180 days without trial, will reinforce the apartheid system and virtually reinstitute the harsh state of emergency that was lifted on March 7. In a rare show of defiance, the Indian and mixed-race houses of the tricameral Parliament are blocking the bills. Meanwhile, white members of the ultraright Afrikaner Resistance Movement again clashed with police as they continued their campaign of disrupting meetings of the ruling National Party. Earlier last month, white police in the northern Transvaal town of Pietersburg were forced to fire tear gas at the movement's supporters when they refused to allow Foreign Minister Roelof ("Pik") Botha to address a rally. Against this troubled backdrop, Botha held an hour-long interview in his Cape Town office with TIME Executive Editor Edward L. Jamieson and Johannesburg Correspondent Peter Hawthorne. Excerpts:

On Crossroads. Eight years ago there was no Crossroads. Due to various phases of economic recession, many of the black people in the homelands and their own areas could not find jobs, so they flocked here illegally. We started to negotiate with them and offered to return them to their homes and to try and find jobs for them. We spent millions and succeeded in creating thousands of jobs, but the influx became too great. We warned that factions would be killing each other before long. The faction fighting started, and now we are getting the blame.

On foreign reaction to South African border raids. We cannot be held to ransom by the U.S. or the international community when it comes to the protection of our security. We simply do not understand how it is possible for the U.S. to attack bases and terrorists in Libya, to proclaim that the U.S. will protect U.S. interests and citizens against any form of terrorism wherever it occurs, and then urge all governments in the world to do the same, but when we do it and, with all respect, do it more professionally than they do, the U.S. blames us.

On South Africa's relations with its neighbors. We made it abundantly clear to the U.S. Government, to the United Nations, to the world, that we stand for peaceful negotiations. We expect from our neighbors the same behavior. Some of our neighbors are indeed cooperating, having come to the conclusion that harboring terrorists would in the end only lead to greater violence and economic retrogression for themselves. Other governments unfortunately have not. Once you have exhausted your representations on a diplomatic level, you reach a point where you know you cannot continue because your government virtually becomes an accomplice, withholding the facts from its public and allowing bombs and mines to explode, blowing up blacks and whites.

On violence. We renounce violent means to achieve political objectives. This applies to the African National Congress, and it applies to the white extremists. I hope that the world will now stop criticizing our security forces for insisting that this principle must be obeyed. If you take power by violence, you will rule by violence, and you can only be removed by violence. This principle has no color.

On reform. We have shown we are prepared to reform this country. We have desegregated sports with great success. The number of mixed trade unions is growing. We have removed the offensive racial provisions in our immigration laws. We have declared parity of education as an objective, and it will cost us billions and billions to improve black schools, improve the quality of teacher education and train teachers. We have removed the prohibition on mixed marriages. We are in the process of dismantling further forms of apartheid. We have declared our readiness to remove apartheid, to share power up to the highest level of government. We did not undertake these changes to please the outside world. We undertook these reform measures because we believed that we must extend democracy. It is one of the most tragic phenomena of history. At a time when this government is extending democracy and can demonstrate that we took steps in one year that the U.S. could not take in 20 years, not only do we get no credit for it, not only do you Americans have no perspective of history as far as this is concerned, not only have you forgotten your own trauma, hesitance and difficulties in persuading your people to accept a new order of civil rights, you punish us for doing what you did but in less time than you took to do it.

On South Africa and the West. We believe the strategy of the West is not to give South Africa any credit, in any circumstances. You in the West are blind and insensitive to the possibility of the South African Communist Party ruling this country. You will shrug your shoulders and say, "Well, it is better than apartheid." Maybe. But you are not concerned about what the results would be and what would happen to the rest of Africa. In Mozambique and Angola, the facts are readily available of the repression, the suffering, the dying in these countries after nine years of friendship with Moscow.

On economic sanctions. In the process you are going to harm job opportunities immensely for 2 million blacks from outside our borders whose wages provide sustenance and upkeep for up to 8 million in Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana and Malawi.

On South Africa's isolation. If we are forced to choose between international ostracism and punitive measures on the one hand and our right to defend ourselves against terrorism, then we have no choice. If the U.S., Europe or the rest of the world feels this country ought to be punished for protecting its citizens, a right that you as Americans insist upon, then we say, and not in a challenging way, but with sadness and reluctance, "Go ahead. Just go ahead. We have no choice."