South Africa Gray Matter

By Guy D.Garcia

Since the government of State President P.W. Botha formally repealed its pass laws two years ago, South Africa's black workers have been free to go anywhere in the country in search of work. There is a hitch: they are still expected to comply with the Group Areas Act, an apartheid law that compels them to live in segregated nonwhite homelands and townships. For many, the only recourse has been to leave the townships and rent housing from white owners in the cities or erect makeshift shacks on idle farmland, roadsides and in parks and / gardens. The result: as many as 7 million illegal squatters and the rise of "gray areas," whites-only districts where landlords have rented space to more than 100,000 blacks, coloreds and Asians.

In an effort to stem the flow of nonwhites into the cities, President Botha last month introduced five new housing-related bills, which were described by the South African weekly Financial Mail as "the government's most regressive political step since Botha became National Party leader eleven years ago." The bills would provide for compulsory eviction of squatters and the destruction of their shacks; government-ordered improvements in gray-area buildings, which could be used to force blacks to move out; and stiff penalties for squatters and landowners who tolerate them.

When the government tried to push through the bills by declaring that they affected whites only and therefore would be dealt with by the all-white chamber of the tricameral Parliament, the mixed-race Labor Party responded by threatening to quit the body. In a sudden, unexpected retreat, the government announced last week that it would withdraw the bills, rewrite them, and then submit them to all three houses of Parliament. The delay is considered only a temporary setback for Botha, who has ample time to force the legislation through the President's Council and into law before the national municipal elections, which are scheduled for Oct. 26.

Last week the government announced that imprisoned Black Nationalist Leader Nelson Mandela, 70, was being moved from Tygerberg Hospital, where he has been receiving treatment for tuberculosis, to a private nursing home outside Cape Town. The news rekindled speculation that the government was inching toward releasing Mandela, despite his refusal to renounce violence as a political tool. Whatever the reason for Mandela's transfer, Botha is unlikely to make any move that would risk the wrath of right-wing white voters until after the October elections.

With reporting by Bruce W. Nelan/Johannesburg