S.A. better for blacks than U.S.— Mulder

Press, 17 August 1978, Page 8

S.A. better for blacks than U.S.— Mulder

NZPA-Reuter Durban) Blacks have more opportunities in South Africa than: in the United States, the: South African Plural Relations Minister (Dr Connie Mulder) has said. Dr Mulder told the Natal provincial congress of the ruling National Party, that America’s integrationist policy had failed to provide blacks with opportunities for advancement. He said that the highest position held by a blade in the United States was that of Andrew Young, Ambassador to the United Nations. “The highly praised policy of forced integration in the United States does not, therefore, in practice provide the paradise for blacks so often propagated by integraticnists," Dr Mulder said

| In contrast, South Africa’s ! policy of setting up separate 'black homelands — he described them as plural democracies — had already led to the creation of black Prime Ministers, the Minister said. “It is tragic that our honest endeavours in this regard do not receive the proper recognition,” he said. Two of South Africa’s’ black homelands, Transkei and Bophuthatswana, have been declared independent by Pretoria. No other country has recognised their independence. In Johannesburg, it has been reported that the police are investigating the death of a black prisoner in South Africa’s notorious Robben Island jail. The “Rand Daily Mail” said that the prisoner, Johannes Matsobane, aged 21, serving an eight-year sen-

tence for sabotage, died last Wednesday. A Department of Prisons’spokesman said that Mr Matsobane had been returned to Robben Island recently after treatment at a psychiatric hospital. Since then he had been a patient in the prison hospital. Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was attempted when he was found to be ill last Wednesday, but without success. The spokesman said it was first thought he had died of natural causes but a medical investigation showed otherwise. “According to preliminary investigations, no prison members were involved,” the spokesman said. In Port Elizabeth, an inquest has opened into the death of a black youth killed, according to the police, when he leapt from a window at security headquarters last month. Lungile Tabalaza, aged 20, fell five floors while he was being questioned about possible involvement in arson and the use of bombs. He was the second black in two years to die in a fall at the Port Elizabeth security police headquarters where the "Black Consciousness” leader, Steve Biko was questioned before his death from brain injuries last year. A 17-year-old youth who was arrested with Tabalaza after they were alleged to have robbed a baker’s van said the last he saw of Tabalaza was when a policeman dragged him away by the collar at the headquarters.

The public were cleared from the court while the youth', unnamed because he is a minor, told how he Saw Tabalaza in tears after one round of questioning and that he himself had been assaulted by a policeman. When the inquest opened crowds of blacks squashed into the non-white benches in the segregated courtroom, but later they spilled on to the almost deserted white benches. I Many gave clenched-fist black-power salutes and shouted “Amandla” (Power) as they left the building.