The blacks are starting to organise

Press, 23 August 1976, Page 16

The blacks are starting to organise

From the “Economist”

As rioting spread throughout South Africa’s black townships this month, the unrest began to look like a nationwide protest movement. The most serious clashes were in Cape Town’s three townships, where at least 23 people died in one day’s rioting. The South African Government has been claiming since June that the riots are not a spontaneous eruption of black grievances, but an organised campaign to co-or-dinate internal trouble with the build-up of external pressures on South Africa. There was at first little evidence to support this supposition. The June 16 demonstration in Soweto, which led to the death of 176 people, looked like a popular protest against the compulsory use of Afrikaans in black schools.

But since then, as trouble has rumbled on in Soweto and spread elsewhere, there have indeed been signs of a rudimentary organisation. The instigators appear to be a group of local organisations collectively known as the Black Consciousness Movement The key bodies are the South African Students’ Organisation (5.A.5.0.), the South African Students’ Movement

(SA.S.M.) and the Black People’s Convention (8.P.C.)

S.A.S.O. operates at university level, S.A.S.M. within the high schools; the B.P.C.’s members are adults. They are not closely linked, but

they share the same basic philosophy: that blacks cannot look to whites for help but must liberate themselves by their own efforts.

They are contemptuous of the oider generation for having been too moderate: their slogan is black power. In Soweto the demonstrations have been organised by a high school group calling itself the Students’ Representative Council. It is a purely local phenomenon, but it shares the black consciousness philosophy. Faced with all this, the Government has maintained a remarkable silence. In spite of growing criticism from the press, including several pro-government newspapers, Mr Vorster's only comment for more than a month has been to say, in a brief magazine interview, that he regarded the situation as “serious but not critical.”

In part, this silence may be due to a reluctance to be seen to be giving ground in the face of violence, lest it encourage more violence. In part, it is almost certainly due to divisions within the Government about the right response. The ruling National party is divided between the inflexible verkramptes, who want the Afrikaners to fight to the last ditch, and the verligtes who want reform.

Everything depends on which side Mr Vorster eventually backs. In the past he has mostly supported the

verligtes, but lately has been yielding to a strong verkrampte resurgence in the > party. The only pointers so far have been a statement by the Minister of Police (Mr Kruger) that the Government “won’t turn a deaf ear to black grievances/’ and another by the Bantu Affairs Minister (Mr M- C. Botha) that the Government is working on plans to give urban blacks some measure of local government. But Afrikaans newspapers have pleaded that urban blacks be allowed homeownership rights (at present they are regarded as temporary “guest workers” in “white” South Africa), and L that better shopping centres, cinemas, street lighting and tarred roads be provided in the soulless black townships. The Government has begun to consider these reforms, Mr Vorster has summoned all Nationalist members of Parliament to meet him in Pretoria on September 10, and he may then announce a programme of reform. But, . even if he does, it is bound to be within the frame-work of the Government’s separ- . ate development policy. However generous it may seem to his own party members, it is doubtful whether it will satisfy the militant .. young radicals of the Black Consciousness Movement.