South Africa’s New Reform Proposals Will Not Satisfy Blacks Without Power-Sharing, Tutu Asserts

Bishop Desmond Tutu said Friday that the South African government’s latest reform proposals, while some of the most far-reaching ever advanced, would not satisfy the country’s black majority until whites are truly willing to share political power.

“We have reached the stage where any announcement the government makes on reform leaves us cold,” the black prelate told a news conference. “Things that would have been exciting and had tremendous impact three months ago are damp squibs today.

“We want a serious discussion of the problem facing this country, and that problem is political power, sharing political power.”

Three more persons, including a white man, died on Friday in South Africa’s continuing civil unrest, now in its 13th month.

Fatally Hurt in Stoning

Neels Kaap, 42, a garage owner and church deacon in Cape Town, who was hit in the head by rocks when his car was stoned Thursday near the Crossroads squatter settlement outside the city, died Friday. He was the fifth white killed out of more than 715 people who died during the past year of unrest.

A 15-year-old boy was shot and killed outside Cape Town when police fired on 300 blacks attacking a police barracks in the black ghetto township of Langa, according to police headquarters in Pretoria, and another black youth was killed by a shotgun blast when police fired to disperse rioters attacking a delivery truck in Soweto, outside Johannesburg.

Police also disclosed that during the past week they detained without charge more than 1,400 persons, including almost 900 students picked up in Soweto, under emergency regulations. More than 2,100 persons are currently detained, according to police figures.

Tutu made clear that he was not rejecting President Pieter W. Botha’s offer this week to restore the South African citizenship of millions of blacks who lost it when their tribal homelands were declared “independent” or the even more important proposal of the President’s Council to repeal the bitterly resented “pass laws” that restrict blacks’ right to live and work in urban areas.

Overshadowed by Killings

But, as significant as these measures would be if enacted, they are not sufficient to end the civil unrest, Tutu said, because they are “all overshadowed by the fact that a 4-year-old girl was killed by a rubber bullet fired by three white policemen”--a reference to a child’s death in a black ghetto township outside Pretoria earlier this week and, more broadly, to the killings of hundreds of other blacks by police in the past year.

What is needed, Tutu said, is a firm commitment to end South Africa’s apartheid, the lifting of the state of emergency declared in large parts of the country two months ago, the release of political prisoners, the return of exiled black leaders from abroad and negotiations on sharing power.

Tutu, as the Anglican bishop of Johannesburg and the winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, is South Africa’s foremost black leader not in prison or exile, and he increasingly is taking on the role of political spokesman for the country’s 25 million blacks.

He announced plans for a one-day national protest Oct. 9, to be led by clergymen of all races and denominations, that will include prayer services, demonstrations and a general strike. He had scaled back his original call for a weeklong protest, he explained, in order to get white participation.

‘Boss Throws Us Crumbs’

“Maybe we are seeing the start of a miracle,” Tutu commented. “I have said that we are on the brink of a catastrophe unless a miracle intervenes, but maybe with white participation in this day of prayer and protest we are seeing the beginning of this miracle. . . . With white participation, this will have tremendous impact, and we are far more likely to accomplish the things we want.”

Political reform in South Africa, he said, “is almost always too little, too late. . . . The boss throws us crumbs from his table and expects us to cheer. I am sorry to sound almost peevish, but there is almost nothing substantial so far in these proposals to acknowledge.”

Zulu Sees Progress

But Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, the moderate Zulu leader, said that Botha, whom he has criticized sharply over the past three months for what he has called a lack of commitment to reform and plain political blunders, is now heading in the right direction. If the pass laws are repealed quickly and restrictions lifted on black urban migration, Buthelezi said, “then considerable progress will be made in de-escalating the levels of conflict now so apparent in South Africa.”

Tutu was scheduled to speak at a weekend meeting of the World Conference on Religion and Peace in Soweto, but police banned the two-day meeting under the emergency regulations as “likely to endanger public safety and the maintenance of public order.” The government also barred five leading delegates from Britain, France, India and the United States from entering the country to participate.