Botha offers U.S. little hope of reform

Press, 10 January 1986, Page 6

Botha offers U.S. little hope of reform

NZPA-Reuter Johannesburg A 9G-minute meeting with the South African President, Pieter Botha, has given United States Congress members little hope of important reforms in apartheid.

Mr William Gray, leader of the six-member Congressional group, said after the meeting: “I was not given much to hope for in terms of the question of major apartheid reform.” The group had put to Mr Botha six proposals for radical change in apartheid policies, which are under increasing fire internationally and are widely blamed for unabating black unrest. So far 35 people have died in the violence this year, according to official reports. While the American legislators were meeting Mr Botha, the black nationalist leader, Winnie Mandela, was being mobbed by supporters outside Johannesburg’s Supreme Court. Mrs Mandela will continue her first legal challenge to government ban-

ning orders which have curbed her freedom of movement and speech for 22 of the past 23 years. Her lawyer argued at yesterday’s hearing that the Government had been inhuman and grossly unreasonable in telling her to quit her home in Johannesburg’s black Soweto township immediately last month, when it imposed the latest set of curbs on her under security laws.

The United States team said that it had urged Mr Botha to scrap laws which curb the freedom of blacks to go to seek work in “white” cities and which stop families of migrant workers from joining them.

It called for an end to press curbs, for changes in laws which racially segregate residential areas, for an end to forced removals of black communities from “white” areas to “black” homelands, and for equal education for all races.

Student boycotts in protest at apartheid in general and separate “Bantu educa-

tion” in particular marked the official start of the school year yesterday. The department responsible for black education said that half the 1.8 million pupils at its schools did not go back. Its figures exclude many children at schools in the 10 tribal homelands set aside for blacks. Parents had said that they would persuade their children to return to school conditionally, until the end of March, after more than a year of sporadic boycotts. But the parents’ organisations had asked the Government to put off the start of classes until January 28, to allow them time to spread the message. The South African Bishop, Desmond Tutu, led a demonstration outside his country’s embassy in Washington yesterday against what he called the evil system of apartheid and he accepted “Freedom Letters” signed by one million Americans.

Fifteen protesters, including the folk singers Peter,

Paul and Mary, crossed police lines after the demonstration and were arrested in what has become a daily ritual since protests began at the embassy more than a year ago. “These, one million signatures say (Americans) support the struggle for justice and peace in South Africa,” said Bishop Tutu, Johannesburg’s black Anglican Bishop and 1984 Nobel Peace laureate.