Hard-liners digging their last ditch?

Press, 26 March 1980, Page 17

Hard-liners digging their last ditch?

By: i

ERIC MARSDEN,

“Suridav Times.” London

The earth has been shaking under South Africa's political parties since Robert Mugabe’s Rhodesian election landslide —- and the heaviest tremors are still to come.

The ruling National Party almost split in two over whether Coloured schoolboys should be allowed to play rugby with white boys during the Craven Week festival, which will be part of the British Lions’ tour. The split was averted by an unsatisfactory compromise between the Prime Minister, P. W. Botha, and the “Verkrampte” leader. Dr Andries Treurnicht (“Dr No”), who both claim to have held their ground. Rugby, especially at school level, is a subject of passion in South Africa. The dispute has been simmering for weeks, but was reduced to an absurd squabble by the news from the north. Botha saw a chance to bring his dissenting colleague to heel bv demanding support for the multiracial event. But he met unexpectedly strong resistance and the future of his reformist programme is seriously at risk.

As a dramatic intervention by the former Prime Minister, John Vorster. showed, the Afrikaner mood is swinging back to the politics of the last-ditch stand. Vorster’s emphatic reendorsement of “separate development” and his call for a return to Verwoerdian principles will strengthen opposition to racial reforms. Mugabe’s triumph has changed the whole political spectrum in southern Africa. Most important of fall, it has made the reipublic’s foreign policy, redundant and destroyed any

chance that Botha’s “constellation” of states might become a reality. Rhodesia, from being a whitedominated ally and dependant, has become a potential political enemy and a serious trade rival, which could take over South Africa’s role as •supplier to neighbouring black states.

As a consequence, Botswana will not rely so heavily on South Africa, but will look to the north, economically and politically. Similarly, Zambia will no longer be under threat from Salisbury and will not need Pretoria’s embarrass-

ing relief aid. The Zambians will be able to import ' and export through Beira.

Closer to home, Lesotho will call to the world more loudly for aid in its plight as an “economic prisoner,” while the chances of international recognition for the former Bantustans — Transkei, Bophuthatswana, and Venda—are now nil.

Immediate pressure, will be applied by the reinvigorated Organisation of African Unity for a speedy handover of Namibia, but 'the South Africans are certain to resist this strongly...

In the political inquest on Rhodesia, the South African Government is being heavily criticised for its naive over-confidence in Bishop Muzorewa and for its . military posturing, which boosted support for Mugabe.

African excitement has been stirred by the Salisbury revolution. A black Sunday newspaper promptly called for the release of Nelson Mandela and other African National Congress leaders from their Robben Island jail to take part in the multiracial conference which Botha has proposed. The call was

taken up by Bishop Desmond Tutu, "general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, and other leaders.

Tutu, whose passport was taken away this month to prevent him speaking in Switzerland, says that to avert a bloodbath the Government must agree to a unified, non-racial South Africa, abolish pass laws, stop forced removal of population, end detention without trial and bannings, and call a national convention at which whites must agree to a redistribution of wealth.

As. in . Rhodesia,. _ both

sides now have “boys on the border,” he pointed .out — a reference to the black guerrillas in Mozambique who recently raided and rocketed parts of northern Natal.

A black journalist reports that “hundreds of thousands of blacks are watching developments with hawk eyes” and asks: “WiH'the whites (in South Africa) move to hold their own Lancaster House talks?

They won’t, but the exaggerated expectations reflect the new mood among blacks. Returning from Rhodesia, I was told by a

Transvaal petrol pump attendant: “Very interesting things are happening in Africa — baas.” These days, the “baas” carries a hint of mockery, as “bwana” did in East Africa in the early 19605.

Most whites are unaware of black thinking and retain their dangerous illusions. In the Transvaal Platteland, where Treumicht has his main support, they still talk of black “ingratitude . . . after all we’ve done for them.” Government ministers and the army chief, General Magnus Malan, preach the need to “win the hearts and minds of blacks against the threat of communism.” Rhodesia has probably made this approach.

obsolete, too. Given the chance, . South,

'African blacks would vote for revolutionaries against moderates. There is. no intention of giving them the chance. Rhodesia has shaken Botha into the realisation that time 7 is shorter than ever,, but until he can bring Treumicht under control, he -will , not achieve his hope of peaceful, limited reforms. . Botha’s dilemma is that if he forces Treumicht out, he may lose most of .the Transvaal Nationalists. Treumicht is believed to control 35 of the party’s 66-mari caucus in the province — which has 60 per cent of the nation’s voters . and 62 per cent of its white’ I workers, including the rabidly Right-wing miners. But if Botha seriously in-

tends to carry out reforms — for instance, to the Immorality Acts banning relations between the races -— he will have to be pre-

pared for a break, with Treumicht taking away the party’s Verkrampte wing. Treumicht claims his stand on rugby is in accord with his belief that the elimination of petty apartheid makes nonsense .of “grand apartheid” (separate housing . and schools), which is basic to Nationalist philosophy. Botha’s supporters maintain that to ensure Afrikaner survival, change is inevitable and urgent. Unless the crisis comes quickly, it will be top late. Even moderate blacks who work “within the system” — the kind Botha wants to invite to his conference and who are accused by radicals of selling out — -are now calling for universal suffrage.