Botha Holds Out Promise to Blacks of Right to Vote in S. Africa Reform Plan

President Pieter W. Botha on Monday sketched a government agenda for political reform in South Africa that for the first time includes the promise of a “universal franchise” giving blacks the right to vote.

However, Botha did not spell out how the “universal franchise” would be applied to blacks or how it would square with his opposition to the principle of one-man, one-vote. He said only that it would be consistent with maintaining the unity of South Africa.

Botha was reaffirming his commitment to an eventual sharing of power with the country’s black majority. He said his government and the ruling National Party want to negotiate a new constitutional system that would bring blacks, who now have only a limited voice even in their own affairs, into the country’s decision-making “at the highest level.”

‘Important Step Forward’

As a start, Botha said he might restructure the President’s Council, a constitutional body that both advises the president and acts as an additional house of Parliament, to include blacks. The 60-member council, restructured last year to include Indian and mixed-race members as well as whites, has drafted many of the political, economic and social reforms now under way here.

“This is to my mind an important step forward,” Botha said of the proposed inclusion of blacks in the deliberations of the President’s Council.

He also suggested more strongly than before that he sees white-ruled South Africa evolving into a complex federal system of integrated metropolitan areas, white-governed provinces and black tribal homelands with each area managing its own affairs and cooperating with others on broader questions.

Describing South Africa as at “a critical stage in its history,” Botha said the country faced one major question--how blacks could be included in the constitutional system developed for whites over the years--and that he hoped this agenda would move it forward.

Botha, speaking to a provincial National Party conference here, struck a more conciliatory note than he has in recent appearances. Monday’s speech, which brought a standing ovation, sharply contrasted with his combative and often angry statements in the past.

But Botha also restated his opposition to the one-man, one-vote principle.

“In the case of South Africa, this would cause an even greater struggle and more bloodshed than we are experiencing today,” Botha said, referring to the 13 months of civil unrest in which more than 725 persons have been killed.

For this reason, he stressed the government’s basic demand that any political changes safeguard South Africa’s 4.9 million whites from “domination” by its 25 million blacks.

And, despite calls that he declare the government’s intention to dismantle apartheid, South Africa’s system of racial separation and minority white rule, Botha said this was not the real issue.

“The facts are that we are busy trying to outgrow ‘apartheid’ in the discriminatory and negative sense and have done so in many respects,” he said.

These heavy qualifications and the slowness in outlining the reform program even in this limited way will undoubtedly diminish its acceptability to many of the black moderates with whom the government hopes to negotiate.

This was the fate of two major reforms proposed by the government last month--the restoration of South African citizenship to those who lost it when their tribal homelands became “independent” and the abolition of the much-hated “pass laws” that require blacks to get permits to work and live in urban areas reserved for whites.

Yet Botha voiced his government’s conviction that the reforms, to be acceptable and to work, must be based on negotiation with black community leaders.

Gradual Reforms

Botha also stressed that his commitment is to a process of gradual, step-by-step reforms, not radical change, and that these would proceed on their “merits” and would not be forced by either anti-government riots or foreign pressure.

“Because we remain committed to peace, South Africa will not be surrendered to control by fire-raising, stone-throwing mobs,” he said. “Freedom is not to be found along this road.

“Action by the government to maintain law and order and to ensure the safety of all members of our society must therefore be judged in terms of the government’s irrevocable commitment to reform. I wish to emphasize that security action does not oppose reform . . . (and) does not occur for purposes of oppression and maintaining the status quo. We recognize the right to protest, but the right to protest may not lead to violation of the law.”