Botha’s brightest boys say ‘no’

Press, 18 July 1985, Page 16

Botha’s brightest boys say ‘no’

From “The Economist,” London

One of South Africa’s white think-tanks has, after four years, come up with a report suggesting that apartheid should be abolished because it has failed. Nothing strange about that, in an increasingly self-critical white society. What is odd — and important — is that the Human Sciences Research Council, which produced the document, is paid for by the Government, is staffed almost entirely by President Botha’s fellow Dutch-descended Afrikaners, and is considered to be close to the people who plan the Government’s strategy. The report recommends ending racial segregation in schools and residential areas. It suggests that classification of people by race

should be abolished and argues that political power should be shared by all the races. By some interpretations, the report also implies that the new three-cham-ber Parliament for whites, Indians and mixed-race Coloureds, which went into action this year, should be changed so that people of every hue be represented in a single assembly. There should, in addition, be a timetable for reform, but the think-tank did not spell out precisely what sort of constitutional alternative should be adopted by the Government. The report makes dire warnings about the future if these recommendations go unheeded. It contains an opinion poll which shows

that 63 per cent of blacks think violence is needed if they are to win their political rights. Of the Indians and Coloureds, 40 per cent and 37 per cent, respectively, share the same view. Will Mr Botha listen? He will certainly not act upon the thinktank’s advice immediately. To some extent, he may use the report to give outsiders a feeling that reform is in the air and to show the extreme Right, of which Mr Botha is afraid electorally, that in comparison with Afrikaner boffins he is still racially “sound.” All the same, for so senior an Afrikaner body to make such radical demands would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Copyright, “The Economist.”