Editorials
SOUTH AFRICA: AT BREAKNECK SPEED THE bloody REVOLUTION in South Africa has begun. More than 700 people have died in the last thirteen months — mere kindling for the mighty conflagration to come....
...The remaining 10 percent of single parents includes fathers, relatives, and friends...
...So are the colored*, and the Indians...
...Although child support is awarded to the parent with custody at the time of separation (whether parents have diCommonweal: 550 vorccd, separated, or never married), less than half the parents awarded child support receive the full amount...
...True, the present disinvestment wave has not come from foreign governments and corporations...
...Under the new legislation strict compliance is required across all income levels so that cost effectiveness seems probable...
...Unless moderates like the United Democratic Front have something to show soon, events will surely pass them by...
...That won't keep their conservative critics from poking for weaknesses and gnawing away at this or that phrase...
...the explosion we have been fearing will take place...
...They have to sit together to discuss their future...
...ninety-one leading South African businessmen, including Afrikaners and representatives of international corporations, signed an advertisement entitled, "There Is a Better Way...
...A continuing discussion may be fruitful, but this is already a solid, helpful document...
...Botha's resignation, as had Business Day, South Africa's equivalent of the Wall Street Journal...
...Frequent offenders can be required to post bond as a guarantee of payment...
...It should be pressed on every available level in this country — religious, financial, social, and political — lest the world think we do not care...
...No one has stated the situation of South Africa today more succinctly and realistically than Zambia's Kenneth Kaunda...
...Their membership is now 700,000...
...Black and white will perish, not by the thousands as in Zimbabwe, but by the hundreds of thousands...
...Consumer credit bureaus can be notified of the amount an individual owes...
...The reforms President P.W...
...The removal of impediments to racially mixed marriages was likewise elusive...
...Other pressures can be applied as necessary: state or federal tax refunds can be intercepted...
...but given the climate of the times, they arc apt to be gentler...
...In a teaching exercise like this one, the committee has obviously been concerned about unnecessarily alienating people...
...This governmental paralysis contrasts appreciably with a range of selfexamination and surprise movement that has suddenly developed in South Africa's business community...
...a phrase which expresses democratic aspirations but ignores the need to guarantee the rights of South Africa's many minorities, of all races...
...That is a remarkable testament...
...But it must not be left to the Reagan administration alone...
...A better way must be tried...
...DEBT TO OUR CHILDREN Last year Congress unanimously passed the Child Support Enforcement Amendment, which provided the states a handy set of tools for collecting delinquent child support payments...
...When it happens — not if, but when — it will make the French Revolution look like a Sunday school picnic...
...The longer it delays reform, the deeper the chasm...
...It called for the abolition of apartheid, negotiations with "acknowledged black leaders," and power sharing...
...Nor is there time to spare...
...Seventy-five percent do receive some money, but 25 percent receive none...
...But isn't it ironic that the penalty for a state's noncompliance is a cut in the federal contribution to AFDC, which would only rob children, the very persons the law is designed to protect...
...President Reagan's national security advisor, Robert McFarlane, has said it clearly: "Pretoria is looking into an abyss of massive violence...
...A lively discussion of church teaching and the economy could thereby continue on a wider basis than simply fine-tuning this letter, while the rudiments of the consensus already obtained might be communicated to the pews...
...In May a black boycott of white stores at Kenton-on-Sea, where there was but one water faucet for more than two thousand residents of the "emergency camp," brought not only more water faucets but the removal of the whites' garbage dump from the middle of the camp...
...The federal law went into effect October 1. It is now up to the states to pass conforming legislation which, if effective, could reduce a domestic debt that has been piling up for years — the debt to America's children — some $3 billion in 1983 alone...
...If they do not...
...In November, sixteen black unions, including the National Union of Mine Workers, will form a "super federation...
...When a payment is thirty days overdue, the new law requires the states to garnish the owing parent's wages...
...Business leaders began talking of the unspeakable — real change...
...A new introduction makes it clear that the bishops have in mind not only the immediate needs of the poor but also the persistent economic anxieties of many middle-income Americans and the marketplace dilemmas that regularly confront morally sensitive managers and investors...
...Swiftly they began withdrawing lines of credit...
...Some flew to Zambia to meet with Oliver Tambo, president of the outlawed African National Congress...
...Pretoria was forced to close its economic exchanges, freeze repayment of its foreign debt until January, and restructure its currency...
...His offer of citizenship for those living in the so-called homelands (black ghettos created and circumscribed by the white government) proved a cipher...
...The bishops have stuck to their guns...
...Critics to the bishops' left have as many, or more, justified concerns...
...According to The New Republic (September 9) there 18 October 1985: 549 has as yet been little mass terrorism by blacks because of "the Christian spirit (hat infuses much of the anti-apartheid movement within South Africa...
...Some called for Mr...
...Nelson Mandela, the black majority's indisputable leader, languishes in jail in failing health...
...Tragically, Pretoria seems not only to have a propensity but a desire to do so...
...more often, simply provocative...
...For the country's disenfranchised blacks, three-quarters of South Africa's population, there is but one demand: inclusion on all levels, encapsulated in the slogan, "One man, one vote...
...In the words of Anton Rupert, head of the powerful Afrikaner-dominated Rembrandt Group, South Africa must now " transform the structure of the country toward fair participation for all " Apartheid is dead, he said...
...It means that the United States should actively pursue what Secretary of State George P. Shultz recently called "the centerpiece of our policy": political dialogue and negotiation between the South African government and representative black leaders...
...Botha announced in a series of disappointing addresses this summer fell decidedly short of substantive change...
...It granted neither social nor political equality, and specifically denied the right to vote...
...Worldwide pleas for his release go unheeded...
...Why hasn't the law been enforced...
...On September 29...
...Clenching his fists, he said: "We must have controls...
...Fortunately, the teeth in the new law look sharp, and there is no reason to believe states will not comply with federal standards...
...Has anyone else entertained the idea that the bishops should revise their plans and approve this letter at their approaching November meeting...
...Suddenly looking at their assured loans teetering on the brink of an enveloping abyss, the bankers' confidence eroded overnight in September...
...economy has just appeared...
...It should be pursued on an immediate, daily, and continuing basis...
...So far, Washington has little to show for past half-measures...
...In one state where the lien on property has been in force, for example, a delinquent father's yacht was impounded...
...It must be buried, not embalmed...
...For the last ten years, enforcement programs were aimed at absentee parents whose children were covered by AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children...
...By folding the topics of employment, poverty, food and agriculture, and the world economy into a single long chapter, the bishops have tried to keep their prudential judgments on these "Selected Economic Policy Issues" from completely eclipsing the more fundamental "Christian Vision of Economic Life" which ought to be forming the conscience of the Catholic population...
...We will have to move at breakneck speed, with only the possibility of averting it...
...They appear to be stonewalling rather than foundation building...
...ECONOMY PASTORAL II The second draft of the Catholic bishops' pastoral letter on the U.S...
...Yet the outstanding fact is the continuity, not the differences, between the two drafts...
...At a number of points, the draft pulls back from earlier formulations that were either factually questionable or...
...President Botha summarized his reforms in a recent Business Week interview (October 7...
...It has come from a generally unanticipated quarter, one thought to have been immune to such social leverage, the international banking community...
...liens can be put on real or personal property...
...While opponents of foreign divestiture in South Africa have repeatedly said disinvestment would have little effect on Pretoria, events are proving otherwise...
...Yet the period of its half-life may have nearly expired...
...The message should be clear responsibility for children belongs to both parents...
...There is a growing generation gap between restive young blacks and their traditional leaders, many of whom are in prison, have been exiled, or have already been killed...
...Barring partition, which Andries Treumicht of the far rightist Conservative party has already called for as the logical extension of apartheid, full power sharing is the only goal on the table...
...The author Alan Paton once told an American reporter that the ruling National party was devoted to "stamping out nonviolence...
...Should he die in prison, there would undoubtedly be fewer tomorrows for South Africa...
...Furthermore, the cutoff for filing paternity suits — which until now varied widely among states — has been uniformly set at the age of majority...
...Power," he said recently, "must be given to all the people of South Africa, all of them...
...Whereas individuals from different races can now marry, because of racial housing zoning they still cannot legally live together...
...The five million whites are as African as I am, and so are the twenty-four million blacks...
...And despite a faltering strike at seven mines in August, the power of black labor unions is growing and appears irreversible...
...But enforcement proved costly and the amounts recovered were meager...
...How to achieve it in a reasonable time frame while containing the centrifugal forces now ready to burst the country' apart will be one of the greatest tests of the century...
...It is a somewhat shorter and definitely more pastoral revision...
...There must be a better way...
...Blacks have shown increasing power through the use of boycotts and unionization, forcing local business people to bring pressure on the government to make changes...
...The rationale was that payments received would defray welfare costs...
...Twenty-two percent of the nation's children live with only one parent Ninety percent of the time that parent is the child's mother — some nine million mothers nationwide...
Vol. 112 • October 1985 • No. 18
