S. Africa in Transition, Wieder Says : Pretoria-Sponsored Trip Prompts Views on Minority Rule

Orange County Supervisor Harriett Wieder said Friday that her just-concluded 19-day stay in South Africa as the guest of the Pretoria government convinced her that the nation is moving away from white minority rule but may not be moving quickly enough.

“It’s a country in transition,” Wieder said a day after her return from a trip with her husband to South Africa, with all expenses paid by that government. “It’s definitely a country in transition. I just hope it doesn’t blow up before (the transition). I definitely believe apartheid will be dismantled.”

Wieder also said that while she opposes the racial separation and discrimination practiced in South Africa, she saw no problems in accepting the government’s invitation to tour the country, where 4 million whites rule nearly 20 million blacks, Asians and people of mixed race. She said other countries have invited legislators to tour their countries for years, “Israel being one.”

“I think the investment that was made in me (by the South African government), for whatever reason, helped me,” she said in an interview at her Huntington Harbour home.

A Look at Problems

Wieder said the tour of South Africa and her meetings with at least 60 people gave her a look at problems on the local and national level in another country and the chance to see how others try to solve their problems.

The supervisor’s trip to South Africa came at a time of increasing unrest and violence there, but Wieder said that, by and large, she saw little sign of the strife.

Two weeks ago, police shot to death 19 blacks and then arrested more than 200 people who marched to Parliament in Cape Town to protest the shootings and demand an end to the country’s system of racial separation.

Wieder said that before visiting South Africa, she knew little about the county and joked that she “wasn’t even sure where it was on a map.”

She said the South African government offered her the chance to name anyone she wanted to meet, but she left it up to the government to decide who she should see because she didn’t know anyone there. She said she had no particular reason to meet Bishop Desmond Tutu, the black Anglican archbishop of Johannesburg and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, although the government offered her the chance to meet him.

Wieder’s husband, Irv, said that some of the people chosen to meet Wieder were critics of the nation’s system of racial discrimination and were vocal about their opposition to the government.

Opposition Viewpoints

The supervisor said that although South Africa “is a police state in the way they do their controls” of blacks, opposition viewpoints can be found in the country’s newspapers. She said South Africans were aware of the government-run broadcasting network’s ban on singer Stevie Wonder for praising the nation’s most noted political prisoner when Wonder won his Academy Award. Of the ban on Wonder’s songs, Wieder said, “They do dumb things.”

Wieder said her tour convinced her of the correctness of her original beliefs that U.S. firms should not withdraw their investments from South Africa but should instead use them as leverage to break down the racial barriers.

She said one black she met disagreed with her position, contending that life for blacks could not be any worse if foreign firms left the country. But most people she questioned were opposed to any “disinvestment” by overseas companies, Wieder said.