Cracks in South Africa's Apartheid Wall
HAHN, LORNA
ECONOMIC NEED PRODUCES Cracks in South Africa's Apartheid Wall by Lorna Hahn In the wake of renewed labor and student unrest in his native South Africa, Husdon W. E. Ntsanwisi, chief minister of...
...My colleagues and I are going along with it...
...Ntsanwisi, on the other hand, is regarded by those who know him as a cautious pragmatist Lorn a Hahn, a previous contributor, is executive director of the Association on Third World Affairs...
...and-by relying wherever feasible upon territorial forms of local government and hereditary leaders-to create a group of homeland handmaidens with their own vested interests in preserving the status quo...
...to Balkanize the blacks by herding them into separate territories...
...They must therefore reverse themselves in favor of an integrated society composed of equal citizens...
...Ironically, during 1969-70, when Xhosas were scheduled to be shipped en masse to their Transkei homeland, he brought in 10,000 of them to work on the railroads...
...In a recent aluminum walkout, troops were sent to keep the furnaces going, but striking blacks were allowed to negotiate a pay increase with white managers...
...The Homelands Constitution Act of 1971 then formalized a two-step procedure whereby the territories could proclaim themselves self-governing...
...Working conditions remain generally miserable for blacks, who are prohibited from engaging in collective bargaining...
...to maintain a ready supply of cheap labor...
...Thus his remarks before the Association on Third World Affairs in Washington were startling, particularly to the two members of the South African Embassy in the audience...
...A few, posing as refugees, are even employed in Moscow and Peking as intelligence agents...
...by now, half of them have reached the second stage, possessing constitutions, cabinets (usually given "technical assistance" by whites), and legislatures that are partly appointed and partly elected...
...And, having come to this country as a guest of the State Department, under its policy of tacitly supporting South Africa's efforts to obtain greater worldwide understanding of its plans for "separate development" of the races, he was generally expected to parrot the apartheid line...
...in order to point out-to our own people, to Pretoria, and to the outside world-the injustices of it...
...These, he declared, begin "with a policy that provides one homeland for 3.8 million whites, and several homelands for 16 million blacks, under which we control only 13 per cent of the total land...
...3. The bantustan chiefs, abetted by developments outside their bailiwicks, may play a far greater role in helping their black countrymen than has been anticipated...
...South Africa's blacks finally would have the leverage to demand that Pretoria reverse its ways...
...Black and multiracial political activities are still banned in the white homeland, however, and neither the leadership nor the organization exists for mounting pressure on the national level...
...Yet despite the country's booming economy, barely enough have arrived to replace the whites who have left...
...For years, however, Buthelezi, the chief of 4 million Zulus, has been known to delight in daring verbal confrontations with the white government...
...While purifying itself of blacks, South Africa hoped to attract large numbers of white immigrants...
...who deems it "bad politics" to "frighten whites" with militant talk...
...We must have more...
...In 1970, the town of Bonane hired its first black traffic cops-getting three for the price of one white...
...Eventually the bantustans are supposed to have their own high courts, but there has been no indication as to when the legislatures might be allowed to make laws without white Parliamentary consent, and no legal stipulation as to whether the homelands will someday be granted the complete independence desired by a few leaders of the larger territories...
...Furthermore, blacks will still be working for whites, and whites will be receiving the benefits of their cheap labor...
...Though some whites asked the government to intervene, Pretoria refused, evidently feeling order could be best restored if the parties involved were left to themselves...
...indeed, he has criticized Buthelezi on these grounds...
...Should they succeed...
...Subsequently, blacks were taken into the national police force, including units now stationed in Rhodesia as infantry...
...After land, our most pressing need is jobs...
...Nonetheless, managers in the garment industry, seeking above all to keep the mills humming, have negotiated with white unions acting on behalf of blacks-and the government has not interfered...
...All this, combined with new steps by American firms to improve black working conditions and government initiatives to train more skilled black workers, is slowly giving blacks a small piece of the white economic action...
...This is not fair...
...At a luncheon given him by the South African Ambassador the following day, Ntsanwisi went on to advocate total desegregation: "The whites must ultimately realize that their own economic and political futures will be independence of the blacks...
...Faced with the imperative of keeping the railroads moving, Transportation Minister Barend Jacobus Schoeman, a powerful political figure, had no choice but to ease first coloreds (Asians) and then blacks into "white" jobs...
...For this prudent leader to openly attack the very policy that brought him to prominence, and for South African diplomats to tolerate it-as he apparently knew they would-suggests: 1. Separate development is not proceeding quite as well as Pretoria had hoped...
...Similar instances of de facto job desegregation have occurred of late in the building trades and a few other industries...
...ECONOMIC NEED PRODUCES Cracks in South Africa's Apartheid Wall by Lorna Hahn In the wake of renewed labor and student unrest in his native South Africa, Husdon W. E. Ntsanwisi, chief minister of the newly formed bantustan (or "self-governing" territory) of Gazankulu, recently made an extended tour of the U.S...
...That was the year the Promotion of Bantu Self-Gov-ernment Act established eight ethnic units (later expanded to 10), gave limited executive powers to existing native advisory bodies, and simultaneously abolished white representation of blacks in Parliament...
...I am opposed to separate development," Ntsanwisi said bluntly...
...And the 26,000 new jobs a year that the South African government has promised us are not enough...
...Ntsanwisi's words echoed those of his colleague, Gatsha Buthelezi of the Kwazulu bantustan, who had visited Washington last February...
...In another case of faute de mieux, many blacks have been entering the law-and-order establishment...
...Almost universally, blacks are paid far less than whites, but Prime Minister Balthazar J. Vorster, perhaps seeing the need for hiring more competent blacks, recently asked that their salaries be raised...
...But Ntsanwisi and other bantustan chiefs are optimistic that in a decade or so, after they have developed their territories economically, they may be able to form a federation to represent both the tribal homelands and the 50 per cent of their people who five in white areas...
...More important, during the February strike of 50,000 Zulu tribesmen in and around Durban, white managers felt compelled to negotiate directly with throngs of black workers...
...The "horseshoe of homelands"-so called because the territories involved form a rough, broken semicircle around South Africa's eastern coast-began to take constitutional shape in 1959...
...2. The government is reluctant to displace incumbent homeland leaders, because it is aware that the dearth of educated people in the territories would make this difficult and it is fearful that any successors might be even more outspoken men...
...If Pretoria was vague about its ultimate goals for the bantustans, it was quite clear about its initial reasons for creating them: to further insulate the whites from the growing black population...
...Since he is not a hereditary leader, but rather the titular head of his tribal homeland, chosen by fellow legislative councillors who were themselves selected with Pretoria's approval, Ntsanwisi was assumed to be an ultimate Uncle Tom of the upper Transvaal...
...As a result, there have not been enough whites to fill the jobs formally reserved for them...
...The first bantustan, Transkei, became self-governing "within the Republic" in 1963, and other territorial authorities were "activated" five years later...
...Without more jobs and more benefits for us, the homeland policy will be bankrupt...
Vol. 56 • July 1973 • No. 14
