South Africa: Opprobrium from All Sides

For a moment it seemed that the South African government had made a significant concession to world opinion. State President P.W. Botha had partly lifted the state of emergency that for the past three months has suspended civil liberties in some of the areas hit by protest. But it turned out that Botha’s order affected only six districts, all relatively rural and quiet, of the 36 areas given emergency status. Then Botha took away with one hand what he had given with the other: he extended the emergency measures to eight more districts, including, for the first time, riot-racked Cape Town.

Rock-throwing black and mixed-race protesters fought pitched battles with police in the southern city all week. The authorities responded with two new weapons. One is a water cannon that spews purple dye onto demonstrators so they can be identified later and arrested. The press immediately dubbed the substance purple rain. The second is more lethal: a rapid-fire gun mounted atop an armored personnel carrier that shoots potentially deadly rubber bullets.

The Cape Town disturbances culminated in a chaotic riot in the heart of the city’s white sector. Bewildered lunchtime shoppers there dived for cover as police launched an assault on a group of blacks outside a courthouse in which three men were on trial for murdering a police officer. Hundreds of bystanders of several races were caught up in the fray as security officers used truncheons and whips in their efforts to clear the streets. In predawn raids the following day, police arrested more than 60 activists, including leaders of the multiracial United Democratic Front, 16 of whose members are now on trial in Pietermaritzburg for treason.

There was thus little reason for the critics of apartheid, South Africa’s system of racial separation, to moderate their tones as they continued last week to shower opprobrium on the Botha regime. At the United Nations’ 40th anniversary celebration, high officials from at least a dozen nations stood to denounce the Pretoria government and demand measures against it. “If you don’t apply sanctions,” President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia warned the leaders of developed nations with investments in South Africa, “hundreds of thousands of people will die and the investments will go up in flames.”

Meeting in the Bahamas, 46 countries that are members of the British Commonwealth did impose sanctions, though British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher made sure they were much milder than originally proposed. The Commonwealth’s declaration threatened stronger action–for example, the prohibition of new investment–by individual countries if Pretoria did not begin moving toward the abolition of apartheid within six months. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Canada threatened to sever all his country’s diplomatic and economic ties with South Africa if the dismantling of apartheid did not begin soon. Mulroney told the U.N., “This institutionalized contempt for justice and dignity desecrates international standards of morality and arouses universal revulsion.”

In London more subtle but much more powerful forces for reform were at work. Fritz Leutwiler, an independent mediator and former Bank for International Settlements president, held private meetings with South African finance officials and representatives of 30 multinational banks to discuss repayment of South Africa’s $14 billion in short-term foreign debt. The government froze payments on the debt seven weeks ago after many banks, fearful that racial violence would destroy the economy, cut off credit. Sources close to the meetings said their object was to find a way to restore South Africa’s credit lines so it can renew normal international commerce and begin debt repayment. South African officials, the sources said, are well aware that the debt problem cannot be resolved without movement toward political reform.

Botha showed no signs last week that he was ready to make concessions. In fact, he seemed particularly pugnacious as he told a political meeting that if sanctions against South Africa resulted in a cutoff of chromium exports, it would put 1 million Americans out of work and bring Western Europe’s auto industry to a standstill. South Africa supplies more than 80% of the U.S. and Europe’s chromium, which is used in the manufacture of stainless steel. A spokesman later said Botha’s statement was not a threat; he was only pointing out that sanctions can boomerang.

The government had more stern words when seven clergymen of various races from the Dutch Reformed Church proposed to travel to Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, to meet with the outlawed African National Congress. Botha responded with anger. “The government has expressed its strong viewpoint on discussions with the A.N.C., which is a murderous organization,” a spokesman for his office said. The government had raised a furor a week earlier when it seized the passports of eight Afrikaner students who had scheduled a trip to Lusaka, and it was widely expected that some similar action would be taken against the seven clergymen.

By week’s end the number of deaths since the disturbances began in September 1984 had exceeded 800, including more than 70 in the Cape Town area. A U.D.F. official said that with the arrests and the new state of emergency, the Botha government has made “an open declaration of war upon the people of Cape Town.” –By Michael S. Serrill. Reported by Bruce W. Nelan/Johannesburg, with other bureaus