THE PRESS MONDAY, AUGUST 9, 1982. South Africa’s future

Press, 9 August 1982, Page 12

THE PRESS MONDAY, AUGUST 9, 1982. South Africa’s future

The South African Prime Minister, Mr P. W. ’Botha, has received overwhelming support from the ruling National Party for complicated and far-reaching proposals to change South Africa’s constitution. Much of the detail of the changes has still to be worked out. Broadly, the Prime Minister’s advisers propose that the country should have ’an executive president, elected by an electoral college representing the white, Coloured, and Indian populations. The President would have power to appoint a Prime Minister and members of the Cabinet, who would not necessarily be members of Parliament. The President would also have powers to dismiss the Cabinet and dissolve Parliament, which itself would have representatives of whites, Coloureds, and Indians. Important details remain unclear, such as how far the mixed-race Parliament would retain power to control taxation, and thus preserve a veto over the actions of the President and the Cabinet. Members of the Cabinet would be chosen from leaders of the three racial groups, but in what proportion has not been spelt out. The whole complicated system is described by its promoters as “cosociational democracy,” an attempt to express the idea of a sharing of power between whites, Coloureds, and Indians on matters affecting South Africa as a whole, while leaving the three communities separate to run their own day-to-day affairs. Few other South Africans appear to share the South African National Party’s approval of the scheme. Hard-line white South Africans who broke away to form a new Conservative Party recently, have condemned the plan as a decisive break in the policy of apartheid, or separate development, which has been followed by the National Party for more than a generation. Leaders of the Indian and Coloured communities see the plan as an attempt to lure them into an alliance with white South Africans against the country’s black majority. They point out that, as part of the plan, military conscription would be applied to Indian and Coloured youths. Most important of all, the plan continues< to apply a strict policy of separate development to South Africa’s blacks. A kind of independence will continue to be thrust on the tribal homelands, even though those so far declared “independent” have been recognised by no State except South Africa. On paper the new proposals may bring comfort to white South Africans who have viewed with alarm the rapid increase in the country’s black population. At present 45 million white South Africans find they are confronted by 2.5 million Coloureds, 800,000 Indians, and more than 20 million blacks. By dismissing more and more blacks.r as citizens of "independent” homelands, and by attempting to bring Coloureds and'lndians into an alliance with whites, South Africa can achieve, on paper, a situation in which the whites and their allies outnumber the remaining black citizens of South Africa.

The reality on the ground is quite different. Most of the fragmented territory of the homelands remains confined by white-ruled South Africa. This can be seen as a means of continuing South African domination, Hut the homelands also provide a potential base, within South Africa, for black movements hostilp to Pretoria.

Either way, the future of the blacks cannot be divorced from the fate of South Africa as a whole, a point made frequently by the country’s most important black leader, Chief Gatsha Buthelezi of the Zulu people.

Chief Buthelezi has refused to accept "independence” for the homeland of Kwazulu. He is also resisting vigorously an attempt by the Pretoria Government to give away a strip of Zululand to the neighbouring independent Commonwealth State of Swaziland. For any country to offer to surrender part of its territory to a neighbour is remarkable. South Africa’s intention seems to be to get rid of 750,000 Swazis (and about 100,000 Zulus) who live in the territory. The Swaziland Government has said it would welcome the land and people (who number more than the total population of Swaziland), but the Zulu opinion is that the lost land might well become a “Zulu Falklands.”

South Africa, in its complicated juggling with boundaries and constitutional organisation, gives the impression of a State groping for a way to preserve the dominance of a minority, while attracting allies for that minority and reducing the number of real or potential enemies within the State.

In the background, the South African armed forces have hinted that they cannot guarantee to preserve the country’s borders from increasingly hostile neighbours if, at the same time, the security forces have to face a growing threat of internal rebellion. Creating “independent” homelands friendly to Pretoria, and linking Coloured and Indian populations with the whites in the curious “cosociational democracy,” would go some way to easing South, Africa’s burdens of internal security. So far, there is little sign that the proposals will be accepted with sufficient enthusiasm to make them workable. -

Yet any change that has the prospect of breaking down some of the country’s racial barriers deserves at least a second glance from South Africa’s many critics in other parts of the world. Mr Botha’s proposals would move South Africa closer to the mainstream of political development on the African continent in which a powerful executive, drawn from dominant tribes, is only loosely responsible to a weak assembly. South Africa may well be drifting towards the kind of politics practised in such states as Tanzania so far, no strong man comparable with; say, President Nyerere, has emerged. Still lacking in South Africa is the open intrusion of the armed forces into politics. Elsewhere in Africa, politicians who have shown themselves inept at securing their country’s well-being, or unrealistic in assessing the strengths of their country’s tribal groupings, have been swept away by the military. South Africa’s politicians have come to listen increasingly to the voice of the country’s armed forces on whom, ultimately, South Africa’s survival depends. If Mr Botha’s proposals turn out to be unworkable, or if the proposals arouse increasing hostility — whether from segments of the “white tribe” or others — the military can be expected to appear more openly in the political, arena. In that event, ; South Africa might become indistinguishable in its political behaviour from many other states of Africa.