The Big Hedge

Never before had the assembly chamber of the Union of South Africa's Parliament echoed with more noble sentiments, nor had Prime Minister Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd and his Nationalists sounded more concerned with the welfare of the country's Bantus (blacks).

"In Africa." cried the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development, his mournful face almost aglow, "a number of nations have gained their freedom or are on the road to freedom, and this desire is also present amongst the Bantu people of the Union." He was speaking last week in behalf of a bill--"a God-given task"--that would ostensibly grant that freedom to the Bantus by setting up what will eventually become eight separate black states, which presumably would gradually become more and more nearly self-governing. The Prime Minister himself compared the arrangement to the British Commonwealth of independent nations, looked after but not ruled by a benevolent mother country.

"What Will Happen . . .?" In reality, the Promotion of Bantu Self-Government bill was nothing more than the logical last step in a policy that began some 300 years ago, when Dutch East India Co. colonists settled on the Cape of Good Hope and there planted an almond hedge to keep blacks and whites apart. The recent turmoil all over Africa has made South African whites increasingly anxious to raise a thick hedge that would prove impenetrable to the Union's blacks.

From British-governed Basutoland and Bechuanaland, both moving gradually toward independence, come thousands of workers each year, heading for South Africa's gold mines and carrying, along with their cardboard suitcases, dangerous new ideas about African rights. To the approving cries of "Hoor! Hoor!" (Hear! Hear!), Verwoerd warned that something must be done, and that multiracial political development was no answer.

"What will happen." said he, "if there are black commissioners of police, black generals of the army, black air vice marshals?" Far better would be to partition the country up into black and white units. "I would have no hesitation in choosing a smaller white state [in which] the white man would be able to control his own destiny. This I would prefer, whatever the tribulations might be." Soon after, the bill sailed through, 102 to 58.

A Voice Removed. For the Union's 3,000,000 whites, the "tribulations" of which Verwoerd spoke will be small: the

Union of South Africa's 9,600,000 blacks will get what, before later additions, amounts to only 13% of the land, and far from the best land at that. And for all the glowing promises about a gradual "creative withdrawal" of white leadership, the promised Bantu rights are largely illusory in their own reserves, and nonexistent outside of them in the places where Bantus continue to work.

Except for the territory of Transkei. the Bantus' councilors will be appointed by the government (elected officials, the Prime Minister blandly explained, are interested mainly in getting re-elected). White officials are empowered to veto anything the native authorities do, and each Bantustan treasury will be under strict government control. The major immediate effect of the bill, in fact, will be to remove a voice from Parliament that can be a nuisance, but never a threat, to the government--that of the seven white Senators and Assemblymen who are there specifically to represent the rights of the Bantus.

For weeks a handful of Afrikaans-speaking intellectuals have been lashing out at Verwoerd's "futile Balkanization of the country," and last week the opposition United Party, itself thoroughly lily-white, denounced the bill as one of ''desperation and despair." But like the Bantus, the opposition is weak and the government is not: even South African liberals concede that the government has the might to have its way. Last week, as a sign of things to come, South African police were inspecting their newest equipment--80 British-made Saracen armored cars, each armed with two machine guns, that will be distributed to local outfits all over the Union. Their primary purpose, declared the Minister of Justice, will be "to deal with disturbances."

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