Kennedy, S. African Talk Apartheid, Find No Accord

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), an opponent of the apartheid system of racial segregation, met today with South African Foreign Minister Roelof Botha but the two could not agree on anything.

“I think it would be naive to expect me and Kennedy ever to reach common ground. He cannot even reach common ground with the Republicans in the United States, and the Republicans are to the left of us,” Botha told reporters after the hourlong meeting.

“I told him that he sees things differently from us and that’s it,” the foreign minister said.

Kennedy, who is on an eight-day fact-finding mission to gain an understanding of the country and its racial problems, left the government guest house, where the talks were held, without talking to reporters.

Botha told reporters that Kennedy raised “various issues such as the citizenship of blacks in general, voting rights and political rights,” and that he responded by stating South Africa’s position.

“The purpose of such discussions is certainly not to reach common ground,” Botha said.

Kennedy left by helicopter for the rural black settlement of Mathopestad, north of Pretoria. Botha told reporters that the senator asked him about Mathopestad, where black families are being uprooted to be resettled elsewhere.

“I said to him the South African government is against the forceful removal of people, but that must not be confused with removals that must take place for hygienic and medical reasons,” Botha said.

Later in the day, after visiting Mathopestad, Kennedy said South Africa’s forced relocation of black villagers from areas now designated for whites is “an inhumane and indecent policy, which must be changed.”

The black village 80 miles north of Johannesburg is slated by the government to be eliminated and its 2,000 residents moved elsewhere.

“People are being uprooted out of their homes where they have lived for years with their children and their families,” Kennedy said.

Under Pretoria’s long-range plan, black villages located in areas now designated for whites are to be razed and their residents moved to tribal “homelands” established in rural areas by the government.

A major study in 1983 concluded that nearly 3.5 million people had been forcibly removed to these homelands and another 2 million blacks are under threat of relocation.