South Africa Apartheid By Another Name

By Jill Smolowe

It was State President P.W. Botha's fourth address in six weeks before a provincial congress of South Africa's ruling National Party. Earlier speeches had drawn international TV crews and standing-room-only crowds, but this one played to a half-empty hall. Even the usually thunderous Botha seemed somewhat weary of the routine. Once again his theme was racial reform, and once again his message was fraught with ambiguities and contradictions. "I finally confirm," he announced in Port Elizabeth, "that my party and my government are committed to the principle of a united South Africa, one citizenship and a universal franchise." But, Botha warned, one man, one vote in a unitary state would result in the "dictatorship of the strongest black group," which would lead to "greater struggle and more bloodshed."

While the speech was in many ways classic Botha, it also turned out to be the most precise statement to date of how far he is willing to bend to accommodate South Africa's disenfranchised black majority. Calling for "cooperative coexistence," he proposed a confederation of geographic and ethnic "units," with each racial group having responsibility for its "own affairs," including education, social welfare and residential areas. On matters of "mutual concern," meaning economic, defense and foreign policy, political structures would be created to permit discussion "without the one group having the right to dominate the others." To those familiar with the serpentine convolutions of Afrikaner rhetoric, the message seemed plain: racial groups should keep to themselves on matters relating to their own welfare, but on issues of national concern, white dominance would prevail.

Had Botha proposed the same formula in Durban on Aug. 15, when he initiated his series of party-congress speeches, it might have been read both at home and abroad as a signal that he was prepared to negotiate meaningful changes in his country's system of apartheid. At the time, prominent South African officials had put out the word that Botha planned to announce a package of unprecedented reforms, and expectations were high. Instead of demonstrating flexibility, however, Botha delivered a finger-wagging sermon that warned foreign governments not to "push us too far." His intransigence only hardened demands for bold reforms. Whereas many critics were disposed in August to consider a gradual easing of apartheid, by last week, as Botha's state of emergency entered its twelfth week and two more blacks were killed by riot police, they seemed unwilling to embrace reforms that fell shy of a total renunciation of all racialistic policies.

Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, one of the country's more moderate black leaders, dismissed the Port Elizabeth speech as "bitterly disappointing." Dr. Nthato Motlana, a senior civic leader in Soweto, South Africa's largest black township, branded Botha's remarks an "absolute waste of time." Leaders of the outlawed African National Congress, delivering their assessment from Zambia, called the proposals "meaningless amendments of the apartheid system," while the Sowetan, South Africa's largest black daily, editorialized: "The unified South Africa only reflects another glorified system of homelands . . . (Apartheid) cannot be dressed up in false colors. We are not that stupid."

Even the Reagan Administration seemed unimpressed. The day after the speech, President Reagan acted on his Sept. 9 pledge to apply economic sanctions against South Africa and ordered a ban on U.S. imports of Krugerrands, effective Oct. 11. A day later, Secretary of State George Shultz declared that apartheid was "doomed." In an interview with the New York Times, he argued that apartheid "is not only wrong in our view, but, at least in my judgment, it is over." Shultz encouraged the South African government to "signal" its willingness to negotiate with blacks by releasing imprisoned A.N.C. Leader Nelson Mandela.

Botha was scalded by the poor reviews. "More than any other national leader, I went out of my way to create an attitude of justice toward other groups," he said to party members in Port Elizabeth two days after the speech. "There is no sign of any appreciation for this spirit of justice." Paradoxically, both statements are true. Botha has been more of a reformer than any of his predecessors: he has eliminated such petty indignities of apartheid as bans on marriage and sex across the color line, and he has introduced a tricameral legislature that gives limited powers to South Africa's Indians and coloreds (those of mixed race). The result, if anything, has been to increase the pressure for more sweeping changes.

Why Botha's Durban speech failed to live up to its advance billing remains a subject of intense speculation. The initial explanation was that there had been a right-wing rebellion within his Cabinet. Diplomats, businessmen and journalists reject that theory, however, noting that the high-level officials who previewed the speech stressed that it had already been approved by a special Cabinet committee. One top official told TIME that the reforms would become "government policy" unless Botha himself revised the draft. South Africans suggest three more plausible explanations. Botha may have changed his mind at the last minute out of pique, balking at the pressure implicit in the advance publicity. Another possibility is that Botha failed to realize how important the speech had become in the eyes of the international community. South Africa is often so inept at public relations that one Western diplomat in Pretoria jokes that there is a secret government office called "the ministry of bad timing."

Finally, Botha may have decided to space the enunciation of his reforms over the course of the four provincial congresses, thereby involving the whole National Party in his plans. "He had established a timetable, building up to a climax," says one Afrikaner journalist, "and he was not prepared to change that plan for anyone." During that six-week period, however, much of the world caught on to what the blacks of South Africa knew all along: the new pitch for "cooperative coexistence," much like earlier calls for "separate development," "plural relations" and "co-responsibility," is just another way of saying apartheid.

With reporting by Bruce W. Nelan/Johannesburg