Moderate blacks form party

Press, 16 July 1987, Page 33

Moderate blacks form party

NZPA-Reuter Johannesburg Several thousand moderate South African blacks have formed a new political party that opposes apartheid racial segregation but is prepared to work with the white-led Government. The party, the Federal Independent Democratic Alliance (F.1.D.A.), was launched at a low-key meeting by 4000 delegates in Johannesburg. The party’s first president, Mr John Gogotya, said its party’s top priority was to fight apartheid.

“The black man has been given a raw deal. There must be redress,” he told reporters.

But he said that F.I.D.A. was prepared to take part in an advisory body proposed by President P. W. Botha to give South Africa’s voteless black majority a voice in the country’s future.

Mr Botha has urged moderate blacks to join him in talks on new constitutional arrangements, although he ruled out admitting blacks to Parliament and has said he will not scrap the main pillars of apartheid legislation.

Most black leaders have turned down Mr Botha’s appeal, saying that he must first end the present state of emergency, under which thousands of people have been detained without trial, and lift bans on outlawed anti-apartheid organisations such as the African National Congress (A.N.C.) guerrilla movement.

Mr Gogotya said that the founding meeting of the party had been held without fanfare because delegates were worried about possible intimidation by radicals who condemn moderate blacks as collaborators with the Government.