It Is Business as Usual for Workers Inside the South African Embassy : Ambassador, Others Feel Misunderstood by American Public

Inside the imposing four-story embassy on Massachusetts Avenue, in an elegantly furnished, white-carpeted room, a uniformed maid served tea and curried-chicken finger sandwiches as the ambassador’s wife talked about her life style.

What makes life different for Daphne Fourie are not the luxurious surroundings and service that are de rigueur in diplomatic circles. Rather, it is the focus of world attention on the demonstrations that have been taking place outside the embassy for more than five months.

Thousands Arrested Daily

This is the embassy of South Africa, and nearly 2,000 people, many of them prominent Americans, have been arrested in daily protests against the South African government’s policy of apartheid.

The protests also have spread to college campuses where students are calling on universities to withdraw investments in racially segregated South Africa.

It is against this backdrop of controversy and disagreement that a small group of people go to work everyday, filing reports, typing letters, gathering and dispensing information, planning social events and otherwise conducting the everyday business of an embassy.

Those inside the embassy portray themselves as unmoved by the demonstrations outside and complain that they are misunderstood by Americans and, in particular, by an unfair American press. They contend that hundreds of supportive letters have been received from Americans who oppose the demonstrations. And, added social secretary Aliceson Wagner, social invitations sent to embassy personnel have doubled.

Said Daphne Fourie: “Our views are the same, if not more sure we’re doing the right thing.”

When demonstrations occur, she said, “it doesn’t affect me that much. If I have to go out in my car, I do. Sometimes I don’t even know they’re there.”

Embassy Life Unchanged

In an interview, her husband, South African Ambassador Bernardus G. Fourie, added: “There’s a feeling we live like hermits. Life really goes on exactly as before.”

Andre Kilian, a South African employed as political counselor, said he doesn’t talk to the demonstrators, but wishes he had, at least in one case.

“I would love to have talked to Stevie Wonder,” Kilian said. “My daughter would have been thrilled.”

(Shortly after the interview with Kilian, Wonder’s music was banned in South Africa by the South African Broadcasting Corp., which has a state monopoly on the airwaves. The action was taken after Wonder dedicated his Oscar for the tune, “I Just Called to Say I Love You,” to Nelson Mandela, the country’s imprisoned black nationalist leader.)

An American secretary working for the embassy, Maureen Doyle, 22, said that when she saw the protesters, “I wanted to scream at them, ‘You don’t understand!’ ”

Social secretary Wagner, a carefully coiffured South African, took a lighter view, and said she enjoys the new-found attention that has been focused on her country.

“This is a very exciting, invigorating time,” she said. “It’s a superb time. It’s lovely. We can share ideas. We’re so proud. We have the most beautiful country.”

Randall Robinson, the 43-year-old, Harvard-educated lawyer who organizes the protests at the South African Embassy, vehemently disagrees with those employees who maintain the protesters have had no effect.

“The demonstrations without a doubt have produced in the U.S. Congress a commitment to support a program of economic sanctions against South Africa,” said Robinson, executive director of the TransAfrica lobbying group and national coordinator of the Free South Africa Movement, which has organized similar protests in 26 American cities.

“One does not naively expect that any government will change a course of action based on a change of heart. When those sanctions are imposed, and I think they will be, when the loans are cut off, when the Kruggerand market is cut off, when American investments are cut off, then you will begin to understand how dramatically South Africa has been affected by these demonstrations that have led to a world focus on the nation.”

Inside the embassy, there is agreement that change is necessary in South Africa, but embassy personnel say they do not understand why their nation has been singled out for criticism at a time when the South African government is making what it considers dramatic improvements, such as last year’s rewriting of the Constitution to provide representation in Parliament for Indians and “coloreds,” those of mixed race.

Vicky Coetzee, a South African and an agricultural researcher who has worked for the embassy for 15 years, said Americans do not understand how South African whites feel about blacks.

Fondness for Blacks

“We’re fond of them. We don’t hate them. Absolutely, sincerely, that is not true,” Coetzee said. “Most South Africans recognize that changes are needed. It’s just a matter of the pace. I don’t think (American demonstrations) are the solution. They may have wonderful aspirations and goals but they are uninformed.

“We’re not perfect but we’re trying damn hard. I believe the demonstrators are genuine and that’s what grieves me so,” she continued. “Because I feel South Africa is on the right road. It’s a time for us to have encouragement. I just wonder, ‘Why South Africa, when there is so much going on that’s worse, like Ethiopia?’ I feel very comfortable, very positive about what South Africa is doing. I don’t feel I have to make excuses.”

The South African Embassy is really two adjoining buildings. In one is the chancery, containing the four floors of offices. Next door, on the left, are the plush living quarters. Farther up the street on Embassy Row in northwest Washington, in an office building, still more embassy employees work in the annex.

It is in the main complex that South Africa’s seemingly unflappable Ambassador Bernardus Fourie works and lives, smiling calmly in the eye of a hurricane of controversy.

In the entry foyer, receptionists in glass-enclosed booths talk through speakers and push buttons to unlock two more sets of glass doors that must be opened to gain entrance to the building’s offices. An escort pushes a series of numbered buttons on another set of double doors leading to Fourie’s office.

When he finally emerges, the ambassador appears cheerful and tiny, an incongruous contrast to the oppressive surroundings. An avid gardener, Fourie likes to read and is said to have a textbook knowledge of American baseball. He lives in the embassy with his wife, Daphne, whom he married 23 years ago while serving on the South African delegation to the United Nations. She is a devoted tennis player. Their two children attend universities in South Africa. A South American couple lives with the Fouries in the embassy, serving as chauffeur and housekeeper.

At an age when many men take to the golf course, Fourie, 68, came out of retirement to this embroiled embassy as keeper of the endangered South African-American dialogue. This is more than his job. It is his calling.

“I think there is somewhat of a wrong perception of these demonstrations,” Fourie said in his British-South African accent. “I find that people telephone you . . . under the impression that it is sort of a siege situation, that it’s something that starts in the morning and goes on until midnight. In actual fact it takes place normally toward late afternoon and is over immediately--you know, TV cameras are packed up and that’s the end of it until the next day.

“Of course, we accept it,” he continued. “It’s the democratic right of anybody or any organization here to demonstrate as long as they don’t interfere physically with the embassy or what we are doing, and as they go about their business, we go about ours.

“What effect has this movement or these demonstrations; what effect have they on South African events? When I say no effect at all, I do mean it candidly, because in South Africa if (it has) any effect, it acts as an irritant.”

For press officer Peter Swanepoel, the demonstrations have become ordinary, everyday occurrences.

“You can pretty much set your clock by the demonstrators. It starts at about 3:30, 500 feet down the street, then they come up at about 4:30. When I hear ‘We Shall Overcome,’ I know it will be over in half an hour,” Swanepoel said. “I don’t talk to them. It wouldn’t serve any purpose.

“To me, this is nothing like what we experienced in London, where in Trafalgar Square there would be 2,000 or 3,000 people demonstrating,” he continued.

“Ours is far from an ideal society. On the other hand, many of the demonstrators don’t know why they’re demonstrating. They basically speak as if they speak on behalf of all South Africans. Do they (the protesters) have a mandate?”

Who has the mandate in South Africa is precisely the question that has embroiled the country in riots, holding it up to world-wide scrutiny.

Leaders of the white minority ruling party claim that they represent the interests of all South African citizens, whether they have representation in Parliament or not. Of the 26 million people living within what South Africa considers to be its borders, 68% are blacks who are not allowed to vote in national elections and who are subject to housing and other restrictions. Whites make up 18% of the population; 11% is designated “colored” (of mixed race) and 3% is Asian and Indian.

The government does not consider the black homelands of Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Ciskei and Venda to be part of South Africa any longer, but critics outside the country feel the distinction is not valid.

Five million blacks live in these lands that South Africa’s government has pronounced independent, and 6 million more live in areas slated to join their disputed status as self-governing, putatively independent nations.

Until recently, the South African government has attempted to solve the apartheid problem by assigning most black South Africans citizenship in the newly invented homelands. The policy, known as “separate development,” has reduced the country’s black population by denying South African citizenship to millions of urban blacks who have lived in or near white South African cities and who have only a remote connection with the homelands. Thus, it is the 10 million urban blacks who pose the biggest problem to South Africa’s current administration.

More recently, a series of hesitant steps have been made toward giving urban blacks a role in South African politics. Critics say those steps are too few and too late.

Pace of Reform Defended

But government spokesmen, such as embassy press officer Swanepoel, defend the deliberate pace and maintain the reforms are serious. One of the most recent attempts at reform was a move to eliminate laws against interracial sex and marriage.

“There are blacks who are detribalized in the urban areas who are not yet having a political say. A majority of South Africans would like to see that change,” Swanepoel said. “We’re moving in that direction. You already have Asians and Coloreds in the government now, and they’re (the government) looking at how the urban black can be included. I’m not pessimistic about development in South Africa. Far from it.”

So-called “petty apartheid,” segregation of restaurants, hotels, transportation and other public facilities “has been on the wane for a number of years,” according to Robert Kott, the State Deparment’s officer for South Africa.

South African whites point to the appearance of blacks in the workplace, on the beaches, and in other previously all-white areas as signposts of change, along with the enactment of a new Constitution last year giving Indians and Coloreds national legislative representation for the first time.

However, the list of humiliations and atrocities directed at black South Africans is long and well known, and they are particularly startling to Americans.

The Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, president of Notre Dame and a former chairman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, visited South Africa in 1958 and 1978. Contemplating possible solutions, he told Newsweek magazine, “The longer I was there, the more confused I became.”

Protest organizer Robinson says that the problem is not as complicated and complex as some people claim.

“It is the only country in the world that enshrines racism,” Robinson said. “The fact is that a tiny minority of the people deny to the overwhelming majority, based solely on race, the right to vote and participate in the political system. It is straightforward and clear that blacks cannot vote on the basis of race. It is straightforward and clear (that) they have no rights to speak of.”

Trouble seemed many worlds away inside the embassy where five fashionably dressed women were gathered together by Daphne Fourie to discuss their feelings about the demonstrations with a reporter.

Joining four spouses of embassy personnel at the mid-morning tea were Pauline Denomy, a Canadian who has worked in the embassy protocol office for nearly 30 years, and social secretary Wagner.

In addition to Fourie, there was Agatha Coetzee, whose husband, Paul Coetzee, is minister of information; Elrie Potgieter, wife of defense and army attache Alexander Potgieter, and Vicky Swanepoel, wife of press officer Peter Swanepoel.

“We are just people. We are not any different. We are trying very, very hard,” Coetzee said. “You know, I don’t understand why the demonstrators have chosen this time, when South Africa is really changing. It is a bit of a waste.

“It is not easy,” she continued. “ It is a very, very difficult problem. There are so many different groups we have to accommodate and look after and care for. And we’re talking as equals when we say these things.”

The women all agreed they do not like the word apartheid.

“It’s that worn-out tread of apartheid,” Coetzee said. “We think in terms of power-sharing, the equal distribution of power.”

Added Fourie: “In the shops back home, black South Africans are really going into businesses. They are working in the stores, behind counters. Now it seems to me there aren’t any whites in the stores any more.”

“It makes me sad that they (the protesters) show such ignorance” Potgieter said. “But we’ve also found so many people who understand and support us. We get calls from people all over the world saying ‘We’re your friends.’ It’s a wonderful experience.”

Gracing one wall in the office of agricultural-scientific attache Neels Wilken is an oil painting depicting the entrance to his 7,000-acre farm in South Africa. Behind him is a map of the United States with dozens of pins indicating places, most of them universities, he has visited to gather technical information for South African farmers who are currently struggling with conditions brought on by a three-year drought.

“Our government is very serious in trying to bring change about,” Wilken, whose native language is Afrikaans, said. “We still have separate living areas. You (Americans) also live in separate living areas. There are just no laws. I’ve never seen a black in McLean, where I live,” Wilken said, referring to the fashionable Virginia suburb where Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese II, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and many other high-level Washingtonians reside.

Outside the embassy, the demonstrators still congregate daily and allow themselves to be arrested. Inside, the diplomatic flow continues. In distance, only 500 feet separates the two life styles. In reality, the space between them is more like an eternity.