Botha Falls Far Short

President Pieter W. Botha’s “manifesto for a new South Africa,” however daring and progressive it may have appeared to his white constituents, fell miserably short of satisfying the demands of the black majority in his nation.

Some of the disappointment felt in the United States was the fault of the White House, so anxious to maintain its relationship of “constructive engagement” with Pretoria that the national-security adviser had rushed to Vienna for a preview and then let it be known, in the words of a press spokesman, that “we are encouraged by what we are hearing.”

There were, within the address, welcome new elements that seemed to carry Botha beyond his January promise of negotiations with the majority. Influx control, which restricts the movements of black people through the issuance of special residence passes, will be abandoned, he hinted. Significant increases in funds for job development and infrastructure for housing expansion for the blacks are planned. More will be done to facilitate blacks helping themselves.

But the prospects for meaningful and useful negotiations were dimmed as the president said that he would talk only with elected officials, not “self-appointed leaders,” at a time when those who speak most authentically for the black majority have no way to win an electoral mandate. His blindness to the basic issues was evident in his dismissal of the violence spreading in the nation as the work of “revolutionaries,” of “barbaric communist agitators and even murderers” manipulated by “masters” far from South Africa.

The prospects for meaningful dialogue were further inhibited by the conditions that he placed on the negotiators. He ruled out any solution based on universal suffrage in a single nation; the creation of a black parliament to complement the white, Indian and mixed-race parliaments now in operation; any structure that envisioned “winner take all”; any action “that would lead white South Africa and other minorities to abdication and suicide.” The sum of his proposals seemed limited to perpetuating white domination much as it is.

Botha’s greatest mistake in this address was his decision once again to refuse to consider the release of Nelson Mandela unless Mandela makes a commitment against the use of violence. Many whites in South Africa would cheer the demand for a renunciation of force. But all blacks know that Mandela cannot accept that condition any more than the government itself could renounce the use of force. And blacks know, as surely as Botha also knows, that there can be no meaningful negotiations until Mandela is at the negotiating table. Whatever may have been the charges against him 20 years ago, Mandela symbolizes the most popular black political movement, the African National Congress. If that movement has become increasingly violent, it is because political alternatives until now have been closed to it. If Botha is serious about negotiations, he must devise a way to bring the ANC to the table.