Coloureds expected to boycott first poll

Press, 23 August 1984, Page 10

Coloureds expected to boycott first poll

NZPA-Reuter Johannesburg South Africans of mixed race, go to the polls today to elect representatives for a controversial new Parliament which excludes the country’s black majority. Opponents of the Government have called for a boycott of the polls. They say the new system entrenches white minority domination and existing apartheid policies of racial segregation. The voter turnout is likely to be low. The Government, faced with sporadic violence and protests in schools and universities across the nation, yesterday arrested leading opponents of the new constitution. The police declined to

give details but the antiapartheid United Democratic Front said that at least 35 people, including some of its own leaders seized in dawn raids, had been detained without charge. Under the new Constitution, Coloureds and Indians will have a direct voice in national politics for the first time, sitting in a raciallysegregated Parliament controlled by whites. Political observers are focusing their attention on the turnout of voters and what credibility it will give the new parliament, rather than on which Coloured political parties will win the seats. Officials of the front emphasised that only about 60 per cent of potential Col-

cured voters were registered. Coloureds — as the 2.7 million people of mixed race race are classified by South Africa — will vote for 80 Parliamentary seats. A week later, Asians, comprising 850,000 people descended from Indian immigrants, will elect members of their own 40-delegate chamber. Blacks, who number 22 million, still cannot vote, own land, or move freely in South Africa which has a white population of five million. Bitter black opposition to the new Constitution, which continues to deny the majority a Parliamentary voice, was expressed by the Zulu chief, Gatsha Buthelezi, at a meeting in

Durban yesterday. The influential leader threatened an economic boycott of Indian and Coloured businesses if there was a high poll in the two elections. “I give this final warning to my Indian brothers and sisters because I love them too much to sit with folded arms watching them cutting their own throats,” he told an anti-election meeting. Eyewitnesses said a crowd that gathered outside the meeting was baton charged by the police. Proponents of the election boycott say that the threechambered Parliament will entrench white-minority rule. The white chamber will be able to continue even if deputies in the other chambers walk out.