More Rights for South African Blacks Proposed : President Tells First Multiracial Parliament He Still Backs Racial Separation

President P. W. Botha, opening South Africa’s first multiracial Parliament, offered Friday to discuss giving greater property and political rights to the black majority. But he held firm to the nation’s policy of racial separation.

A spokesman for the ultraconservative white faction vowed to fight the president’s proposals, and a spokesman for the mainstream black point of view called Botha’s suggestions a ploy to divide blacks.

The legislature was expanded last fall to add two new chambers for Asians and for people of mixed race, but the white chamber has the final say. The nation’s 22 million voteless blacks are still excluded.

In his 40-minute speech, Botha said the government would negotiate property ownership for millions of blacks in townships near white cities. Blacks in those areas now can only rent or lease their homes.

Few Details

Moreover, he said these “urban blacks” should be allowed some participation in politics and that “negative and discriminatory aspects” of laws limiting the number of urban blacks should be scrapped.

However, Botha said, “It remains the government’s point of departure that, because of the diversity of South African society, it is neither desirable nor practicable to accommodate all communities in the same way.”

He gave few details of his proposals but said black leaders would be invited to an unofficial forum to discuss them.

Government aides described the address as a watershed in the ruling white minority’s attempts to come to terms with growing demands, both inside and outside South Africa, for major steps toward racial equality.

Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, whose opposition Progressive Federal Party opposes apartheid--segregation of the races--said Botha’s proposals could mark a new approach to the country’s racial conflicts.

Citizenship Issue

But Patrick Lekota of the multiracial United Democratic Front, which represents the mainstream of black opposition to apartheid, dismissed the suggestions on property ownership and political participation. He said they were a “ploy to divide the African majority.”

Andries Treurnicht, who broke with Botha to form the Conservative Party, contended the president’s remarks indicated that racial integration has become government policy.

“The die is cast,” he said, vowing his party “will fight this fatal course on every terrain.”

In his speech, Botha said the government hoped to reach agreement with blacks on the crucial issue of citizenship.

But he said the dominant National Party still believed that blacks should be citizens of 10 separate homelands. He made no reference to the government’s practice of moving blacks from rural settlements in white areas to the homelands.

The speech did not directly answer black demands for a one-man, one-vote system within a single nation of South Africa and the elimination of laws providing whites with separate and superior schools, residential areas and hospitals.

Botha also took note of the riots that spread through black townships last summer and fall, claiming at least 150 lives. Such violence, he said, suggests “certain problems that lead to frustration in black communities.” Those problems, he continued, were receiving “urgent attention so as to create better prospects for all.”

He also said the government would not let foreign countries dictate the course of change in South Africa, an apparent reference to the continuing demonstrations in the United States against apartheid.

Still, Botha said, “The government must have regard to the fact that circumstances and events in the rest of the world have a definite influence on our country and our subcontinent. It is our responsibility to take cognizance of the implications of the views of both friendly and hostile countries.”

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) recently visited South Africa and said afterward he might recommend that Congress consider economic sanctions against South Africa as a way of spurring change.

The National Party says the new Parliament is a major step toward racial reform, although it excludes the nation’s blacks.

Under the new system, there are 166 white members in the House of Assembly, elected by 5 million whites; 40 members in the Asian House of Delegates, representing 850,000 descendants of immigrants from India; and 80 members in the House of Representatives, for the 2.8 million people of mixed race.

Disputes among the three chambers will be decided in white-controlled Cabinet committees and a white-dominated president’s council.

Opponents say the system just makes white-minority rule more entrenched because the white chamber has the final say and could govern even if members of the other bodies walked out.

The Asian and mixed-race legislators were seated without a majority mandate. Fewer than a third of the registered Asian and mixed-race voters cast ballots in the August elections.