Vorster Calls for Elections

And mourners for a martyr challenge the system

In its long history of defiance and grievance, South Africa, and especially its ruling, Afrikaner-dominated National Party, has almost seemed born for conflict. Even so, the tumult that raged around the government of Prime Minister John Vorster last week may very well have set the stage for the supreme struggle between the Afrikaners and African nationalism.

Amid mounting evidence that Steven Biko, founder of South Africa's black consciousness movement, died as a result of injuries he received while in detention (TIME, Sept. 26), blacks and whites alike demanded the resignation of Justice Minister James Kruger for his callous handling of the case. At the same time, black unrest was fusing into a sustained campaign of resistance. In Johannesburg's Soweto ghetto, only 1,000 of 27,000 post-primary students and half their teachers showed up to register for the new school year; the dissidents are protesting the inferior system of "Bantu education."

Despite these signals of discontent, Vorster seemed extraordinarily confident last week as he made a surprise announcement dissolving Parliament and calling new elections for Nov. 30, a year and a half ahead of schedule. In a terse, tough statement, the Prime Minister made clear that the campaign would be fought on two issues: 1) interference from "foreign meddlers"--meaning the U.S. and other Western countries--who, in Vorster's words, "go so far as to claim one man, one vote for the whole of South Africa"; and 2) a new constitution, which would give some measure of self-rule to South Africa's "coloreds" and Asians (see box), while keeping essential authority in a white-ruled presidential Cabinet.

There was no question that Vorster and his National Party would not only win handily but substantially increase their 121-seat majority in the 171-member Parliament. The liberal opposition parties, which gain most of their support from South Africa's English-speaking whites, are riven with angry feuds. Both they and the neglected minorities who would supposedly benefit under the new constitution are opposed to it, but they have little chance of thwarting John Vorster's will.

Railroaded through party congresses early this year, the new constitution would end South Africa's system of parliamentary supremacy, based on the British model. Three separate but unequal parliaments would be set up: one for the 4.3 million whites, with 185 members; another for the 2.5 million coloreds, with 92 seats; and a third for the 1 million Asians, with 46 seats. Real power would be vested in a President who, unlike the present Prime Minister, would have virtually supreme powers. Assuming he wins the election, Vorster would become the President.

The new constitution might have been more acceptable, if less politically feasible, a decade ago, when the unyielding stance of the National Party had a broader base of white popular support. To succeed now, the government will have to allay suspicion by coloreds that it is only trying to capture them in a subservient position within a white fortress and (far more difficult) overcome black hostility to any system that denies them representation.

The proposed constitution has already come under fire as intolerable because it offers no political rights to the country's 8 million urban blacks. South Africa's 10 million other blacks are considered to be citizens of nine tribal homelands* that Pretoria--but virtually no one else--envisions as sovereign nations. The Colored Labor Party, which is more inclined to make common cause with blacks than with whites these days, has also rejected the constitution.

Other critics of the government argue that the proposed reforms are only a thin disguise for a total takeover of power by the National Party. "I think this is really the first step toward the creation of a neo-dictatorship," says Allister Sparks, editor of Johannesburg's Rand Daily Mail. But not everyone is so pessimistic. Vorster's tentative start at restructuring the political base of South African society may still be accepted by many as a welcome sign of movement. Willie Esterhuyse, a noted Afrikaner philosophy lecturer at the University of Stellenbosch, regards himself "as one of the people who want to see drastic changes. We hope the elections will give the Prime Minister the opportunity--and the courage--to push ahead with some dramatic and drastic changes."

Some of those changes may take place inside the National Party, in which a personal contest for power is shaping up, roughly along lines defined mainly by the speed of change rather than resistance to change. Assuming that the election strengthens Vorster's hold over the party, he may be able to fire Justice Minister Kruger for his role in the Biko scandal without alienating his hard-lining allies.

A soft-spoken moderate who had founded the black South African Students Organization, Biko, 30, was the 20th black known to have died in detention over the past 18 months. Although results of an autopsy had not yet been released, sources close to the investigation said last week that Biko had suffered injuries that suggested he had been beaten or tortured. Kruger, who at first said the 6-ft. 2-in., 200-lb. Biko had died as a result of a one-week hunger strike, later declared: "I do not think that this is a suicide case." He added that "heads may roll" when the facts are in. If so, it would be a novelty for South Africa. Only one case of those who previously died in detention ever came to trial; a judge acquitted four policemen of murder on a technicality, while strongly implying police responsibility.

There were apparently some embarrassed attempts within the police to cover up Biko's death. Kruger was not told of Biko's death until twelve hours later and readily accepted the explanation of a "hunger strike" from his own security police without waiting for the initial results of the postmortem. Kruger further added to the mystery of Biko's last hours when he disclosed that in the 24 hours before his death, Biko had been transferred from Port Elizabeth, where he was originally held, to Pretoria, a distance of 750 miles.

South Africa's blacks lost a leader, but gained a martyr. Protests over Biko's death were widespread, this time among whites as well as blacks. At a rally inside the Johannesburg city hall, 2,000 members of the opposition Progressive Federal Party called for Kruger's ouster and repeal of the internal security laws. Kowie Marais, a prominent former judge and onetime member of the National Party, declared that Biko's death had made him a "complete and unequivocal enemy of the security legislation in South Africa." Even the pro-government weekly Rapport editorialized that "it is no longer the security police's reputation that is at stake, but that of South Africa."

As eulogies continued throughout the country, police shot and killed a 15-year-old black youth and wounded a teen-age girl at memorial services in Soweto. On Sunday Biko was given a hero's burial at his home village of King William's Town; black and white dignitaries were present to pay final tribute.

The growing furor over the circumstances of Biko's death will inevitably focus attention in the coming campaign on the government's racial policies. Even more crucial, perhaps, it may prove to be a final showdown in the 200-year-old cultural and political war between South Africans of English descent and the Dutch-descended Afrikaners. The Afrikaners' ability and willingness to adapt, if only to survive, are yet to be tested. But knowledgeable observers believe that a convincing electoral victory would allow Vorster to relax the apartheid laws and work toward peaceful settlements in Namibia and Rhodesia--much as Charles de Gaulle was able to pacify the French right and yet also end the Algerian War. One promising sign: Vorster has already warned Smith to accept two senior emissaries if, as expected, the Security Council passes a British resolution this week endorsing such a peace-keeping mission. The officials would be empowered to visit both the Rhodesian armed forces and the guerrilla armies of the Patriotic Front to try to arrange a ceasefire.

Vorster well knows that the pressure for change is growing, particularly in South Africa's business community. Since the Soweto riots of June 1976, the country's credit position has been badly hurt--losing some $115 million monthly on short-term capital accounts. As a result of deepening recession, black unemployment ranges up to 40%, and some 200,000 eligible black workers are out of jobs in Johannesburg alone. The government has discouraged business investment by scare talk of "total war" and an "economy of survival." One survey of white Johannesburg university students showed that 72% of them wanted to emigrate.

Earlier this year, twelve major U.S. companies agreed to end segregation and promote fair employment practices in their South African plants. Last week the European Community agreed to a new code of conduct for European subsidiaries in South Africa. Although nonbinding, the code forbids wage discrepancies between races and allows blacks to join trade unions and join in collective bargaining. If the rules are observed, the economic impact on South Africa could be dramatic, although there is a danger that companies may simply raise the salaries of some black workers while abolishing the jobs of others.

"We know what we face in black urban areas," says Michael Christie, secretary of the South Africa Foundation, a booster organization for the country. "We know that the time of unrest has come. There isn't that much time left. We have got to do away with every form of prejudice and economic discrimination."

Perhaps unthinkable a few years ago, a University of Cape Town seminar recently devoted an entire summer session to the future of the Afrikaner. Dreyer Kruger, a visiting Afrikaner psychologist, produced a somber prediction on the twilight of Afrikaner power. Declared Kruger: "The whites in South Africa as a privileged, ruling group, are finis, klaar, afgehandel--finished, over and done." Intriguingly, John Vorster may already be laying groundwork for his party's plans to avert just such a finale.

*One of them, Transkei, gained its "independence" in October 1976; a second homeland, Bophutha-Tswana, will be set free in December.

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