Botha Assails Move by Business for Talks With Rebels

President Pieter W. Botha on Sunday denounced as dangerous and disloyal the plans of top South African businessmen to meet with leaders of the outlawed African National Congress to discuss a solution to the past year’s civil unrest and to talk about the country’s future.

Botha stopped short of forbidding the meeting, as he might have done under South Africa’s severe security laws, but his intention clearly was to try to halt a growing campaign by business leaders for broad political, economic and social reforms.

The president’s angry denunciation of the businessmen’s initiative, seen by South African political observers as one of the most significant developments in recent years, emphasized the president’s determination to let reform proceed at his own pace and no faster.

Plans to End Apartheid

Business leaders, most of them political moderates, not only have called for a dialogue with the African National Congress but have recently put forward several detailed proposals for dismantling apartheid. These proposals would proceed much further and faster than Botha’s own plans for a gradual reform of this country’s institutionalized system of racial discrimination.

By rejecting the business initiative, Botha appeared to underscore his own growing isolation from past and future political allies, raising the question: If the business community, including Botha’s fellow Afrikaners as well as English-speakers, is no longer with him, who is?

Botha’s concern Sunday appeared to be aimed at keeping the loyalty of the right wing of his ruling National Party, which must fight several tough by-elections next month in conservative districts.

Squelching widespread reports here that he had approved a meeting between South Africa’s business leaders and the African National Congress, perhaps as the basis for later discussions between the government and the rebel black nationalist organization, Botha issued a statement saying:

“As long as the African National Congress is under Communist leadership and supports violence in South Africa, there can be no question of my approving discussions with them.

“I want to warn South Africans against Communist tactics of this kind, and I regard such attempts as unwise and even disloyal to the young men (in the army and police) who are sacrificing their lives in defending South Africa’s safety.”

Although the makeup of the business delegation remains secret because of the sensitivity of the proposed talks, one executive frequently mentioned in reports about the forthcoming meeting commented Sunday: “Botha won’t scare us off. The future of this country is too important to be left with just him.”

The executive added that the meeting will undoubtedly go ahead later this month in Lusaka, Zambia, where the African National Congress, the main guerrilla group fighting white rule here, has its headquarters. Zambian President Kenneth D. Kaunda would serve as a host and perhaps mediator.

Key Businessmen

Among 10 or more business participants, according to widespread but unconfirmed reports here, would be Gavin Relly, chairman of Anglo American Corp., South Africa’s largest company; Mike Rosholt, head of Barlow Rand, which probably ranks as No. 2; Anton Rupert, head of the Rembrandt group and the leading Afrikaner businessman, and Fred du Plessis, another top Afrikaner businessman who heads the Sanlam insurance, banking and industrial conglomerate.

The main problem now, according to several business executives involved in arranging the meeting, is one of logistics--how to coordinate schedules of a dozen of the country’s busiest executives with the complicated schedules of African National Congress leaders, some of whom are in guerrilla camps.

There are other organizational problems--an agenda, a final list of participants, a communique that could become a working document for change in South Africa. But those involved say that the meeting could be held as early as this week, if all participants agree.

“A meeting between business and the African National Congress is not going to solve our problems, nor will it make them more difficult,” the executive added, asking not to be quoted by name. “But it could be the start of a very, very important dialogue, and we are not willing to sacrifice that to the shortsightedness or political vanity or whatever of P.W. Botha.”

The embattled president now finds himself under pressure not only from the country’s black majority and its liberal whites but also from business and the churches, both of which had supported his earlier efforts at gradual reform.