South Africa Life Behind the Walls

By William E. Smith

In her address to the graduating class of the University of Cape Town last week, Helen Suzman, the best-known opposition member of the South African Parliament, delivered a stinging rebuke to the Afrikaner-dominated government. Not only was South Africa divided into white and black worlds, she declared, but "in the vast majority of cases, the white citizens have never set foot in the world of the blacks. They have never been in a township, know nothing about the miserable conditions endured by people compelled to live in those areas. But most of all, they know nothing of the seething anger that has built up over the years, so clearly demonstrated at (black) funerals."

Since this was especially true of the majority of Members of Parliament from the ruling National Party, Suzman continued caustically, every Nationalist M.P. should be obliged to attend a black funeral "disguised as a human being." In that way, they might "get some idea of the intensity of feeling, of the heavy tide of resistance sweeping through the townships, instead of sitting on their green benches in Parliament, insulated like fish in an aquarium."

However much Suzman's gibe may have irritated South Africa's whites and enraged her Nationalist opponents, it was essentially accurate. While the country's whites are not so isolated as they used to be now that bombs are going off every day or so in one or another of the biggest cities, the very geography of apartheid has long and effectively separated whites and blacks. Whites are not only physically removed from black residential areas but dangerously isolated from the evidence of mounting black rage.

The Group Areas Act, which keeps blacks in townships far from city business districts and affluent white suburbs, remains a cornerstone of South Africa's policy. The government's harsh new controls on the domestic and foreign press, adopted since State President P.W. Botha declared a nationwide state of emergency on June 12, have further impaired the whites' vision and suppressed any struggling sensitivity to the plight of the country's 24 million blacks.

Even though some 1,900 people, most of them black, have been killed since the current unrest began in September 1984, the lives of South Africa's 5 million whites have changed relatively little--at least on the surface. Most of them still live in big houses with spacious grounds, universally protected by solid walls, which, they like to explain to visitors, are for enclosing children and dogs. Even whites of fairly modest income have a life-style that would be out of the reach of well-to-do professionals in the U.S. or Western Europe. In today's depressed real estate market, a comfortable house with three or four bedrooms, a swimming pool, a well-tended garden suitable for barbecues or evening parties, and perhaps a tennis court, can be had for less than $100,000; $50,000 will buy a house that would go for five times that amount on the outskirts of Washington or in New York's Westchester county. The tree-shaded, flower-filled white suburbs are as glistening, and the shopping malls as spectacular, as ever. In the jammed parking lot of Sandton City, a luxury mall outside Johannesburg, the bumper sticker of a cream- colored Mercedes last week carried these words: WHEN THINGS GET TOUGH, THE TOUGH GO SHOPPING.

Not all whites are rich or even well off--in fact thousands are unemployed --but a comfortable style still seems to be the norm. The presence of servants is an important part of the lives of whites. Most middle-class families employ at least one live-in maid, and, with monthly wages running around $60, many have a cook or gardener as well. The thought of doing without household help seems to panic the whites almost as much as the slogan "One Man, One Vote." The young wife of a lawyer in Johannesburg, who is also the mother of two small children, was recently discussing possible emigration to the U.S. When told what a maid would cost in Washington or New York, she closed the conversation by saying "Then I guess I can't go. I have two maids here, and as it is, I can hardly manage when one of them has a day off."

But behind the surface, there is evidence of mounting white anxiety, much of it related to the current violence. More bombs exploded in South Africa last week. In a dozen such explosions since June 12, three people have been killed and more than 120 injured. At Magoo's Bar in Durban's Parade Hotel, where a bomb went off last month, special window glass has since been installed. Lance Davidson, a university student who was slightly injured in the blast, assured patrons last week, "Don't worry, you're safe in here."

At midweek the government announced that it will press criminal charges against 780 of the 3,000 or more people, most of them blacks, who have been detained under the security regulations since June 12. Amnesty International, the London-based human rights organization, reports that among the detainees are 900 union activists, including Elijah Barayi, president of the 500,000- member Congress of South African Trade Unions. The giant black labor organization set this Thursday as its deadline for the government to meet "minimum" demands, including the release of all union leaders. Otherwise, % the unions may decide to call a national strike.

As the crisis entered its fifth week, the Reagan Administration launched a review of its policy toward South Africa (see box), and the British government prepared to send its Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, on a trip to that country to try to arrange a dialogue between the Pretoria government and black leaders and seek the release of Nelson Mandela, the most prominent figure in the longoutlawed African National Congress, who has been in prison for 24 years. In the meantime, a fourth foreign journalist, West German TV Correspondent Heinrich Buettgen, was ordered to leave the country. When the local Foreign Correspondents Association protested the government's "sinister" expulsions policy, it received an angry retort from the Deputy Information Minister, Louis Nel. The real problem, said the peppery Nel, was that "most foreign journalists have consistently misrepresented South Africa abroad by turning a blind eye to constructive developments."

It is true that the country has recently made some progress in the direction of racial reform. Last month, for instance, Parliament passed legislation abolishing influx control and pass laws governing the movement of blacks throughout the country. But such progress has been overshadowed by the wave of repression that has coincided with it.

The current troubles are behind the almost palpable increase in white unease. In some rural areas, particularly in the Limpopo River valley near the Zimbabwe border, white farmers have formed home guard, or "commando," units, while the army sweeps the roads for mines at least twice a day. Many farmers in the area have built high security fences or walls around their homes, and all are connected by shortwave radio. One such farmer, Johan de Villiers, wears a Beretta pistol wherever he goes on his 2,000-acre spread. Two of his four sons are now farmers, and one of them, Gerrie, was injured by an exploding land mine late last year.

One easy measurement of white concern is emigration--or "taking the chicken run," as South Africans derisively call it. Last year immigration into South Africa fell 40%, while the number of those leaving the country rose by one- third. Among the emigres are a disproportionate number of engineers, accountants, educators and physicians, whose departures constitute a serious brain drain. The most popular destination is Britain, where many have relatives. The runner-up is Australia, to which the South Africans have been flocking in such numbers that they have been dubbed the "new boat people." Quite a few who arrived in South Africa from white-ruled Rhodesia have decided to go back, even though the country has since become black-ruled Zimbabwe. At the time of Zimbabwe's independence, fewer than 100,000 members of a white community that had once numbered 277,000 remained, but 30,000 have since returned.

Leaving South Africa is not easy, for emotional as well as economic reasons. The Afrikaners have no other homeland to go to even if they wanted one, which most do not. Furthermore, an emigrant is allowed to take no more than $40,000 with him, although he can subsequently withdraw the earnings from any remaining investments in South Africa. Says Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, former parliamentary leader of Helen Suzman's opposition Progressive Federal Party: "The chap with the double garage and two kids in school is going to have to think very hard." Even among those who would like to leave, most seem to have decided that they cannot afford to do so. They stay, but they are worrying more about security than they used to. As a result, arms sales are booming and more walls are going up.

The rising sense of unease among South African whites is matched by a feeling that people have no control over what is happening. Many are spending less money, staying home more, not taking small children out with them. John Pegge, a Cape Town sociologist, is convinced that attitudes are changing and that "nobody is complacent anymore." He thinks that most whites have become inured to the reality of violence but that they have been impressed by the growing evidence that blacks are organizing themselves nationally, from labor groups like the Congress of South African Trade Unions to such political bodies as the multiracial but predominantly black United Democratic Front.

Still, notes former Johannesburg Mayor Monty Sklaar, "you find a terrible anti-black attitude among the lower-income groups. Part of the problem is that they see blacks as a threat to their jobs, and it's getting worse." Jacob Kruger, the owner of a Port Elizabeth engineering company, says he is optimistic about some of the recent reforms but pessimistic about a hardening white attitude that seems to him to be saying "The West has deserted us, so we'll go it alone and do it our way." Concludes Kruger: "I'm afraid that if this attitude wins out, there might be a horrific slaughter of blacks."

- Ken Owen, editor of the financial newspaper Business Day, believes that white liberals are becoming more aware of the anger and frustration in black townships, but adds that the liberals have always been relatively well informed and now "are responding by emigrating in large numbers." Overall, he is pessimistic, saying "Ordinary whites think the maintenance of law-and- order justifies the emergency regulations. The country is moving to the right very, very fast, and not just the Afrikaners but the English-speaking population as well. They will fight tooth and claw to avoid their fate."

It is hardly surprising that in a land where some basic assumptions of life are changing so quickly, opinion should range from extreme pessimism to cautious optimism. If South Africans of every racial community have one thing in common, it is that they do not really know where their country is heading. Thus there is a shared sense of uncertainty and foreboding. The most hopeful would probably agree with John Kane-Berman, director of the South African Institute of Race Relations, who feels that the whites in general are growing more receptive to the idea of change. Though they are still a long way from accepting the principle of majority rule, he believes, "they are coming to the conclusion that something is drastically wrong. There is a growing realization that this country has to be shared." The dilemma South Africa's whites face is that if they do not soon find a way of bringing such sharing about, violence and bloodshed may destroy what they are trying to hold.

With reporting by Peter Hawthorne and Bruce W. Nelan/Johannesburg