White House Sees ‘Crisis of Confidence’ in South Africa

Frustrated by the lack of movement toward easing the South African racial crisis, the Reagan Administration on Wednesday nudged the Pretoria government to make concessions, saying there is a “crisis of confidence” in the country and suggesting that it take steps to shore up black confidence so there can be substantive negotiations.

“It is clear that there is a crisis of confidence,” White House spokesman Larry Speakes said in a briefing at the Century Plaza Hotel. “For a dialogue to start, it is essential that the South African government clarify what the dialogue is about and take steps which will build confidence so that negotiations can begin.”

Speakes’ comments came two days after the Administration had indirectly chastised Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu of Johannesburg for refusing to join a meeting between clergymen and South African President Pieter W. Botha.

In the meeting, Botha reportedly was as sternly opposed to demands for radical and immediate changes in the South African policy of racial separatism as he was in a speech last week that rocked the Reagan Administration and intensified the South African controversy.

Both the speech and the session, which disappointed the clergymen, served to increase pressure on President Reagan. He soon will be confronted with the decision of whether to veto economic sanctions virtually certain to be voted by Congress when it returns to work after Labor Day.

A senior Administration official said in an interview that Reagan continues to oppose sanctions both philosophically and because he believes that the measure now before Congress would be harmful to the black majority population the measure is designed to help.

One option before the President, the official said, is to veto the measure that Congress is about to pass and then send lawmakers a message that would spell out what kind of sanctions he might accept, in effect inviting Congress to adopt a compromise measure.

Despite the growing controversy in this country over the South African situation, the official said the Reagan Administration believes it has so far managed to maintain its credibility with leaders on both sides of the conflict. The credibility has been preserved, the official said, “because the United States is trying to get change and nobody else is.”

The statement came in the face of Tutu’s bitter criticism of U.S. policy last Sunday and in the wake of Australia’s announcement of limited economic sanctions against the Botha government.

While the latest statement from the Administration clearly was pointing the finger at the Pretoria government, Speakes would not assign blame for the failure to move toward the negotiations that Botha alluded to in his speech to South Africa’s ruling political party.

Neither would he comment directly on the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s labeling of Tutu, last year’s winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, as a “phony.”

Publicly and privately, Administration officials, though clearly embarrassed and uncomfortable over the Moral Majority leader’s vow to stir up sentiment against congressional efforts to impose sanctions against the South African government, have refused to comment on the latest wrinkle in the controversy.

But for the second time in three days, Speakes made a point of declaring that the Administration recognizes the black Anglican cleric as a South African leader.

Voice of Moderation

At the State Department, spokesman Charles Redman echoed Speakes’ expression of recognition of Tutu’s standing, calling him an important factor in future negotiations and a voice of moderation in the midst of violence and repression.

Redman also renewed the Administration’s public assertion that the Reagan Administration sees the South African government as committed to a program of serious reform, despite Botha’s hard-line speech.

But, speaking on condition that he not be identified, a senior Administration official said in an interview that efforts to move toward negotiations have come to nothing because both South African sides have launched into a battle for headlines.

The same official acknowledged that the prospects of alleviating the crisis might even have been set back by the meeting between White House national security adviser Robert C. McFarlane and South African officials in Vienna two weeks ago. The meeting, the official said, caused an anticipation of progress, which was not borne out by Botha’s speech. Therefore, the official said, the speech has come to be regarded as a setback rather than as a modest move toward reform.

At the United Nations on Wednesday, the United States and Britain blocked the Security Council from adopting a resolution calling on U.N. members to adopt voluntary sanctions against South Africa.

The action ended two days of closed-door debate. When it ended with nonaligned and African members unable to push through the resolution, Security Council President Oleg A. Troyanovsky of the Soviet Union called on the Pretoria government to lift the state of emergency it declared a month ago.