South Africa Suspending Forced Black Resettlement

The government’s forced resettlement of black communities is being suspended and may be ended entirely because of growing opposition to the controversial program, Gerrit Viljoen, minister for cooperation and development, said Friday.

Viljoen said orders to move “hundreds of thousands” more blacks out of about 60 urban and rural communities have been suspended as part of a total review of the program. He added that most blacks will probably be allowed to remain where they are under new policies easing restrictions on where they may live and work in South Africa.

Speaking with foreign correspondents here, Viljoen was amplifying one of the pledges made last week by President Pieter W. Botha, as part of a series of reforms intended to improve the status of South Africa’s 24 million blacks and to reduce discrimination against them under the country’s apartheid system of racial segregation.

Viljoen also said government policy now is not to move blacks against their will but to attempt to persuade members of black communities to relocate voluntarily by offering them “a better life” through improved land, housing and public facilities.

But Viljoen stopped short of declaring a complete end to either forced resettlement or the overall government policy of moving black communities out of areas reserved for whites. From 1960 to 1982, an estimated 3.5 million blacks were resettled under these policies.

One problem, the minister suggested, is that most of the pending moves were ordered by Parliament, which has not yet approved the new policies or amended the old laws.

Another factor, he said, is the government’s continued determination to prevent a flood of black workers from surging out of impoverished rural areas into South Africa’s cities in search of employment--creating vast urban slums like those in many developing countries.

Nonetheless, Viljoen said, three major changes are being made in South Africa’s resettlement program:

--Residents of 25 to 30 urban black townships and 30 to 35 rural “black spots” who were to have been moved to tribal homelands from designated white areas will be allowed to remain, at least temporarily, while each community situation is reviewed.

The new policy, Viljoen said, will “reduce to an absolute minimum” such resettlements and make them conditional on community acceptance and improved living conditions in the resettlement areas.

--The strict controls on blacks working and living in the country’s urban areas will be eased gradually and supplanted by a program of “orderly urbanization” that will allow blacks to move to the cities if job opportunities and adequate housing are available.

The government has promised that this change would bring an end to harsh measures such as dawn household raids and random identity checks that are used to enforce the present regulations.

--Some of the blacks who have moved into shantytowns on the outskirts of such cities as Cape Town in defiance of present regulations will be offered sites on the outskirts of new black housing areas on which they may build. Present policy calls for their return to the rural areas, generally tribal homelands, from which they came.

Under these measures, Viljoen stressed, no black community should be resettled while the policies are being studied and revised. But the government will continue its efforts, he said, to persuade some communities to move voluntarily, a term that he admitted is open to conflicting interpretations. Viljoen also acknowledged criticism that such promises have been made before but have not been kept by the government.

Viljoen’s statement should protect black farmers in such communities as Driefontein and Kwangema, “black spots” in eastern Transvaal province, from being forced from their lands as they now fear. It may also mean that the farmers will get new land in compensation for acreage that will be lost when a water reservoir is filled later this year.

Viljoen suggested that these measures are as far as the government feels it can go in allowing blacks to live and work where they want without setting off a stampede to the cities and without upsetting the country’s whites, who fear being swamped by a black majority that outnumbers them nearly 5 to 1.

The main reasons for the policy changes are the fast growth of the black communities that were to be resettled, their mounting opposition to resettlement and the criticism of the program at home and abroad, the minister said. The biggest factor in persuading the government of the need for change, he added, was the “strong and persistent arguments” of black township officials and homeland leaders for an end to forced resettlements, easier urban migration and freehold property rights for blacks.