Changing Strategies in Southern Africa

...At least that would appear to be the case from his largely unnoticed reunion in London last November with Zulu Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, a classmate at South Africa's Fort Hare University...

...He has further observed that Motlana himself works within the system: The Soweto leader has allowed his son to take out citizenship in Boph-uthatswana, a homeland that became "independent" two years ago, and sends several children to school there...

...Yet here, too, Zimbabwe's Prime Minister might produce some surprises...

...Although he usually refrains from quarreling with other black leaders, Buthelezi has retaliated by accusing his opponents of elitism, and an inability to organize...

...Like others before and after them, all of these visitors returned home convinced that the Front's top priority is economic development...

...Since the members of both councils will be appointed by the government, and neither one will have more than advisory powers, they are not really an acceptable substitute either for the constitutional convention sought by Buthelezi...

...But to head off a revolt by reactionary members of his Nationalist Party, he has reiterated that one-man, one-vote arrangements are out of the question...

...Given this atmosphere, it is hardly surprising that at the economic summit of nine southern African nations convened in Lusaka on April 1, the focus was on South Africa and the tone was conciliatory...

...He agrees that South Africa needs a new name, but he notes that "Azania" was coined by Arab slave traders and means "place of slaves...

...A two-man delegation from the Cape Citrus Board sought increased export facilities for South African fruit...

...Taking account of the ferment in the black community, and responding to the growing world pressures against South Africa, Prime Minister Peter W. Botha has asked the minority white population to scrap the Immorality Act and other features of apartheid that are not necessary for their survival...

...Mugabe foreshadowed this position back in November, when he told an Oxford audience: "It is not for us to intervene militarily in South Africa...

...The problems there are for those people themselves to solve...

...In the light of these tensions, it was widely expected that Mugabe's reception of Buthelezi would be lukewarm at best...

...AFTER ZIMBABWE Changing Strategies in Southern Africa micmA hahn CHIEF GATSHA BUTHELEZI Since His election last February 27 as Zimbabwe's first Prime Minister, Robert Mugabe has injected an unexpected note of realism into the whole southern African scene...

...that are to replace Parliament's all-white Senate...

...An equitable constitution should be thrashed out, he says, at a national convention of bona fide representatives of all races...

...After years of insisting that a liberated Zimbabwe would serve as the launching site for a final, concerted assault against South Africa, leaders of the Frontline States (Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zambia) are now ruling out a military confrontation...

...More significantly, Buthelezi has rejected his opponents' use of "Azania" as the new name for their country...

...Arabs have traditionally used the term zanj (slave) interchangeably with "black...

...Last month, Botha took the bold political step of announcing the formation of two councils??one for coloreds and Asians, and another for blacks...

...Also in early March, four delegations from South Africa arrived simultaneously in Mozambique...

...Recalling that even exiled ANC leader Oliver Tambo had urged the Chief to accept the prime ministership (a job he was entitled to by heredity anyway), Mugabe told Buthelezi that he has been pursuing the right policies...

...Realities," a Zambian official later observed, "must be taken into account...

...Meanwhile, 30 representatives of Business International attended a four-day conference sponsored by the Samora Machel government, and three members of the Louis Trichardt Memorial Committee visited the memorial to the Vortrekker leader in downtown Maputo...

...And if the mounting unrest in South Africa finally persuades Pretoria that this would be the best way "to avoid violence and confrontation," the move would win the support of the great mass of non-white South Africans and of southern African leaders, including Chief Buthelezi's friend Robert Mugabe...

...By organizing people in tribal areas along lines and customs they understand, Mugabe said, Buthelezi was doing precisely what he had done in the Tribal Trust Lands...

...The first, which will embrace whites, too, is to have the title President's Council...

...Shortly thereafter, Mugabe reaffirmed his own plans for economic cooperation with South Africa...

...On the issue of constitutional reform, as an alternative to the national convention requested by Buthelezi and by members of the white parliamentary opposition, Botha suggested a "committee of experts," made up of homeland leaders and white officials, to discuss black problems...

...Young blacks, who hail Mugabe as a revolutionary hero, are skeptical of the Chiefs nonviolent approach...

...The Frontline States are unable to do without South Africa...

...To be sure, southern Africans do not find the apartheid regime any less abhorrent than before...

...Instead, joining Mugabe, they seek to bring about change in the region's last bastion of white power peacefully...

...Buthelezi's challengers fault him for relying heavily on workers and peasants, and Motlana has called him a traitor for functioning within the system...

...Believing that meaningful changes must be negotiated from organized strength, Buthelezi has enlarged Inka-tha, the formerly all-Zulu National Cultural Liberation Movement, into an all-black organization that today boasts nearly 300,000 members...

...In addition, he has made it the core of the newly founded Black Alliance, consisting of colored (i.e., mixed race), Asian and other nonwhite bodies...

...His main opposition, though, has come from the Azanian People's Organization (Azapo)??successor to such banned black-consciousness groups as the Black Peoples Convention, the Black Renaissance and the South African Student Association??and from Dr...

...They simply distinguish the racial situation in Rhodesia from that of South Africa, regarding the first as having been a colonial issue and the second as involving a sovLorna Hahn, a veteran New Leader contributor, is the director of the Association on Third World Affairs...

...Ntha-to Motlana's Committee of Ten in So-weto, the large black township outside Johannesburg...

...But Buthelezi's willingness to accept the Kwazulu post has drawn sharp criticism from radical elements...

...Botha seemed to leave the door open, though, by calling also for a "state conference" where all population groups would meet "to avoid violence and confrontation...

...In a message to the annual congress of the business-oriented South Africa Foundation in Johannesburg, read by the chairman of the Rhodesian Promotion Council, he acknowledged the importance of existing South African investments in Zimbabwe and expressed the hope that the country's new stability would act as an incentive for new ones...

...They could be converted to that purpose, however...

...it will serve as a consultative body to the government...

...We will accept refugees from South Africa, but we could not allow the opening of bases in our country...

...While agreeing to strengthen ties among themselves in an effort to lessen dependence on Pretoria, the participants endorsed economic??and, by implication, political??coexistence...

...Southern Africans nevertheless generally expect the solution in South Africa to be a violent one??probably forced by the banned African National Congress (ANC), the only South African liberation organization officially recognized and assisted by the Organization for African Unity...

...The second is to be all-black and will advise the President's Council...

...ereign state whose troubles must be settled internally...

...A team of five officials, led by the deputy manager of South African Railways, discussed cooperation on railroad and harbor matters with their counterparts in the ruling Mozambique Liberation Front Party...

...Among other things, the Chief supports foreign investments in South Africa to provide more jobs, advanced training, and economic and political power for blacks...

...But quite the contrary occurred...

...In early March, for example, Zambia (the recipient of over 100,000 tons of South African grain in 1979) became the first black African nation to establish direct air links with Johannesburg...

...He also lauded Buthelezi for organizing workers, women, students, and other groups throughout South Africa, and commended his recent fence-mending sessions with exiled ANC and Pan-African Conference leaders in an effort to forge a more united front...

...Since Buthelezi is the Prime Minister as well of the Kwazulu homeland, with some 2.5 million inhabitants, he has an excellent base from which to attack separate development, to refuse a sham "independence" for his people, and to insist that blacks be allowed full participation in a unitary form of government...