S. Africa being ‘redivided’

Press, 12 April 1978, Page 8

S. Africa being ‘redivided’

iNZPA Johannesburg The powerful South African Minister of Plural (Black) Relations has said that his Government’s goal of dividing South Africans (into black and white States : means that in the end whites too will have to trade their South African citizenship for a new “white-man’s country.” Mr Mulder made the comments in an interview on South African television taped before the Transkei announced that it was severing diplomatic ties with South Africa. Mr Mulder, considered likely to be South Africa’s next Prime Minister, described South Africa as a “subcontinent which was incorrectly called a State with the name of South Africa.” He said that British colonial authorities in the last century "artificially amalgamated” several black nations with the whites, Coloureds, ancf Asiatics. The Nationalist Government policy, he said, would bring a “redivision” of the subcontinent to its original composite parts. “And in the same process, and I know 1 am on thin ice, I believe the white man will also have to forfeit his South African citizenship. His country will receive a new name and he will have

I to receive his very own citiI zenship of that country,” he (said. 1 Mr Mulder’s statement appeared to be the latest in a series of efforts he had made since taking office this year to upgrade the image of the nationalists’ internationally discredited policy of apartheid, or “separate development” of the races.

His assertion that no one would be a South African citizen in the end appeared to be an effort to defuse the anger generated by his comment in Parliament last month that the final goal of Government policy was to have no black South African citizens. At the foundation of the Nationalists’ segregation laws is the contention that the country’s 19 million blacks are citizens of 10 tribal homelands, each slated for independence. Blacks residing in “white” South Africa are seen as transients without political or land ownership rights. Since coming to office, Mr Mulder had sought to soften the effects of the policy. He has banned use of the hated term “Bantu” for blacks, has promised blacks secure leases on their homes, and has announced plans to give black community councils extensive authority in the black townships.