Family Troubles

Family Day in South Africa is an expanded version of Mother's or Father's Day--a time for all kinfolk to get together. South Africa's whites and blacks last week celebrated the holiday in ironically contrasting ways. While whites picnicked or frolicked on beaches, thousands of blacks mourned the absence of relatives--who were either banished or behind bars.

Under the country's maze of white-supremacist apartheid rules, nonwhites may be banished from urban areas to distant villages for a variety of causes. Example: workers who have been in a city for 20 years or more may be sent back home at once if they lose their job. Others, after a lifetime's residence in South Africa, find their wives "endorsed out" * under the new restrictions if the women were born outside South Africa. In western Cape Province alone, 500 men and women are now banished monthly. Even worse is the plight of some 5,800 nonwhites jailed in recent months as part of the government's antisabotage drive, which increased South Africa's prison population to a record of some 67,700 (out of a total population of 15 million).

Bread & Water. This grim aspect of the holiday was bitterly marked by the Black Sash Organization, a handful of courageous white matrons, who oppose apartheid. Said their spokesman: "Family Day becomes a farce when so many of our African families are disrupted." Wearing their customary black sashes, members of the group went into retreat, sat in bare rooms on hard chairs for 24 hours of complete silence, eating only bread and water.

The leaders of Africa's new black nations observed Family Day in their own manner, by trying to expel South Africa from what is still occasionally known as the family of nations. Later this month, black leaders will propose sanctions against South Africa, and possibly its expulsion from the U.N. The U.S., while violently disapproving of apartheid, will probably abstain in any vote on the grounds that expelling all countries whose domestic policies are reprehensible could pretty quickly destroy the U.N.

"Top Polecat." Not overly concerned whether they are in or out of the club, South Africa's leaders simply went on buying modern weapons, including French jet fighters, to crush any possible black rebellion (this year South Africa's defense budget will reach a record high of $180 million). Reporting on "sabotage schools" in neighboring black countries, Justice Minister Vorster said: "We are dealing with stupid people who are power-drunk. But we are ready for whatever they are planning against South Africa." Said Afrikaaner Student Leader Tertius Delport, referring to the country's growing international isolation: "The white South African has become the polecat of the world."

* A colloquialism possibly growing out of the elaborate paperwork involved in South Africa's rigid control of blacks.

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