Vorster: Whites will keep power

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33694, 18 November 1974, Page 17

Vorster: Whites will keep power

(N.Z P A -Reuter —Copyright; ZEERUST (South Africa), November 16. The Prime Minister of South Africa (Mr Vorster) today warned black citizens of the Republic that there was no chance of there ever being “one-man-one-vote” representation for them in the country’s white Parliament. Repeating his recent request for “six months chance” for South Africa, Mi Vorster said this did not mean he had asked for time to “turn South Africa upside down.” Criticising “malicious and completely distorted” interpretations of his earlier (speech, Mr Vorster told a political meeting in Zeerust

that whites would continue to govern South Africa. There would be majority rule in the Republic, he said, but in accordance with the Government’s apartheid policies it would be, for example, a majority of Tswanas in Tswanaland, Vendas in Vendaland, and of other African ethnic groups in their own homelands. The development of South Africa as a “multi-national” country in this way meant that it was governed not by a process of discrimination, but by a . process of differentiation, the Prime Minister said. Since Mr Vorster said in the Transvaal town of Nigel (in his own constituency) last week that political commentators would be surprised at where the country would stand in 12 months, there has been speculation in South Africa about what he meant. EXTERNAL POLICIES Many understood that he was promising dramatic changes in the Republic’s domestic policies, but other Government leaders have

since said he was referring only to external policies, particularly towards Africa.

According to some newspapers, said Mr Vorster, only whites in South Africa had political power. But his Government had made it possible for every non-white man and woman to get the voting right (in their own areas). “Our policy is the living of separate development of the different peoples living in South Africa.” If one said the Republic was a multi-national as opposed to a multi-racial State, “then it is your right to differentiate between one people and another.” As a result of changes brought about by his party in the process of developing South Africa as a multi-national country, people would come to realise that the country was not governed by a process of discrimination but by the process of differentiation.

“Who am I as a creature of God to say that I am better than another creature of God? But I do have the right to accept that! I have been

created as a member of a certain nation, and I therefore have the right to accept the identity of that nation,” Mr Vorster said. Mr Vorster said that, while not being afraid to bring about change, he was not prepared to take any steps which would endanger the identity of peoples, or to take political power out of the hands of the whites. HOMELANDS DECISION The leaders of eight of the nine African, homelands in South Africa have decided not to seek independence at present on the ground that they might forfeit their right to a full share in the wealth of the country as a whole. In a statement released after an eight-hour meeting near Johannesburg, the homeland leaders reexpressed their commitment to black unity and solidarity, and to the object of an eventual federal link of all homelands. The Transkei, the prototype homeland, has already announced that it will ask for independence within five yaars,