White Fear in S. Africa Rises as Unrest Spreads : Stoning, Firebomb Attacks Grow Beyond Black Areas, Raising the Specter of Racial Civil War

Every time Stephanie Botha drives by Kwathema, the large black township next to Springs, she shudders with fear.

She is afraid that the angry black youths who now stone and firebomb passing motorists will attack her car, that the rage that has killed at least 34 blacks in Kwathema over the last year will explode and engulf Springs and that South Africa is plunging head first into a racial civil war.

“For the first time in my life, I am truly afraid,” she said. “I am afraid for my family, for my people, for my country. All the security we have known is gone, all that we have is in jeopardy. And there seems to be no way out. It’s like a nightmare in which you are trying to escape and all the doors are closed in your face, in whatever direction you turn.”

Black Violence Spreads

With the recent spread of black violence into white areas and the government’s apparent inability to contain or end the unrest, now in its 15th month, such anxiety is growing among South Africa’s 4.9 million whites, who for much of the last year had been untouched by what was going on here.

“The average white South African has a great capacity for excluding things from his vision, from his consciousness and from his conscience,” said Angela Byrne, a liberal, Irish-born businesswoman. “And we excluded the unrest, even when it was happening next door, as with Springs and Kwathema, simply because for years we have excluded the whole black problem, thus making it the problem that it is. . . .

“People are panicking now because they have begun to sense the dimensions of the situation and realize what stark choices they face--maybe just civil war or majority rule. The result of the unrest over the last year is that, at last, blacks in this country have become a force to be reckoned with, and whites are now frightened.”

No Unanimity

In Springs, an industrial town about 30 miles southeast of Johannesburg, there is no unanimity among its 59,000 whites on how to react to the fear among them being generated largely by the presence of the 98,000 blacks in neighboring Kwathema. While political moderates are more convinced of the need for faster and broader reforms, others say that apartheid, South Africa’s system of racial separation and minority white rule, should be strengthened, not discarded.

“There has been a sharp polarization among voters,” said Piet Coetzer, the ruling National Party’s candidate in a parliamentary by-election here Wednesday. “A year of unrest, some of the worst of it just a couple of kilometers away, has changed attitudes considerably.

“Most people want reform to get going, to become more than talk; with them, the message on the need for change has finally gotten through. But, on the right, attitudes have hardened, and some people feel very, very threatened and say they will fight to the death to keep what they have.”

Gert Parsons, former mayor of Springs and the right-wing Conservative Party’s candidate, sees a mounting white backlash, resulting both from “this government’s giving away of our birthright and jeopardizing everything we have built” and from “its inability to stop this violence that . . . is going to consume this country.”

“The average guy on the street is completely confused and increasingly frightened,” Parsons said. “He has no idea of what’s going on or where we are headed, but he sees that everything he has grown up with, everything he has now and all his hopes and ambitions for the future, are at risk. Even the liberals--in Springs, most of them live in districts that are only a kilometer or two from the unrest in Kwathema--are very, very scared.”

Although Afrikaners, who are descended from Dutch, French and German colonists and make up 60% of Springs’ population, tend to be more conservative than English-speaking whites, similar currents run through both groups, according to Leonard Neill, editor of the Springs Advertiser.

“If you live in Springs,” he said, “you can’t help but notice you are an individual in a rapidly changing world--even the little world around you.”

Whites Now Attacked

A major reason for the change in white attitudes has been the now daily attacks--not here yet, but elsewhere around the country--on whites in their homes, in their shops and on the street by black and Colored (mixed-race) youths.

Until these attacks, the unrest, most whites here thought, was something confined to black areas like Kwathema--a minor problem that the government would deal with. They might read about it in the newspapers, but state-run television gave only the briefest reports.

Most of the anti-white violence has been spontaneous, a spill-over from riots in black and Colored areas, but some, including firebomb attacks on white residential areas, now appears to be planned, following recent calls by the African National Congress to “spread the struggle beyond the borders of the black ghettos” into white areas.

“We all go armed now, and if those damned Kaffirs want a fight, we’ll give them a war,” Jack Whiteside, 44, a brawny machinist, said over a beer at the Casseldale Hotel here, lifting his shirt to show an automatic pistol tucked in his belt. “I am ready to shoot anyone who throws a stone at my car, comes onto my property at night or makes the least threat to my family.”

With the encouragement of half a dozen friends, most of whom also had guns with them, Whiteside, who came from England more than 20 years ago, declared, “We are getting close to the point, what with the police and the army spread so thin, that we will be responsible for our own safety and should start forming our own commando units to protect the white people of this town from the Kaffirs--from the blacks.”

Reservists Called Up

As the unrest has spread, the government has begun calling up military reservists for duty in black townships as well as on the border and in many areas is registering white men up to the age of 55 for service in local militia units.

However, the broader white response to the unrest, according to Richard S. Gosse, general manager of the Springs Chamber of Commerce and Industry, has been to “realize that changes--political, economic, social, across the board--have to come and that we had better hurry them up.”

“In Kwathema,” Gosse said, “and this is true among blacks across the country, we have a quality of life for the people who live there, who have had to live there, that did not improve enough to meet their expectations. Anyone who doesn’t admit that, especially after the past year, is a bloody fool.”

Candidate Coetzer, who is regarded as a liberal within the National Party, said that in his canvassing he has found a new understanding among whites for black grievances, if not for their political aspirations.

Unrest Ends Complacency

“When I tell people the facts about life in Kwathema--the housing situation where nine or 10 people must live in four small rooms, an unemployment rate of 30-plus percent, the appalling condition of the township and its facilities--there is a very sober reaction,” said Coetzer, a member of the President’s Council, a national government advisory body.

“People had over the years paid so little attention to what went on in the townships . . . that most whites probably had no closer contact than dropping their maids at the entrance once in a while. The unrest has shaken them out of their complacency.”

Now, however, “they ask what the plan is, how do we get out of all this,” he said, “and, unfortunately, while we have ideas, the solution depends on negotiations with the blacks.” He said this “does not trouble people as much as it leaves them unsettled and uncertain.”

Gosse said that companies in Springs, which include the American-owned Kellogg Co. and Gillette Co., are now “extremely conscious of improving the quality of life of their black workers.”

No Easy Solution

“Before,” he said, “we used to say we were concerned, but we didn’t do much. In the past 12 months, we have tried to do something. . . . But there is no instant, easy, Reader’s Digest-simple solution to these problems. It is just hard work, persistence, patience and a helluva lot of courage to promote change, not just accept it.”

The burden of those changes, Gosse, Coetzer and others here said, will probably fall heaviest on Springs’ blue-collar workers.

“These guys are starting to realize they will have to compete for jobs in the future, compete with blacks, on the basis of education and skills,” Gosse said, “and the days are ending when they will get a job just because they are white. . . . Extend this to other areas, such as housing or education or medical care, and you can understand the reasons for their resistance.”

This apprehension has been increased by South Africa’s deep economic recession. Unemployment is widespread among whites, as well as blacks, in Springs. Inflation is running at nearly 17% a year, and the declining value of South Africa’s currency has driven up the local prices of imported goods by almost 70% in the last year.

Whites Feel Hardship

Bankruptcies and foreclosures are common. White schoolchildren are being fed in anti-hunger programs, and many elderly were found earlier this year to be eating dog food because their low pensions would not let them buy more.

“People are becoming desperate,” a middle-level manager at a paper company here said, asking not to be quoted by name, “and for some, particularly the Afrikaners, who are so used to getting their own way, it seems their world is coming apart. They are losing their jobs, their companies are going out of business, they can’t feed their families or make their house payments.

“Add to this the political turmoil. The blacks start rioting not just in Kwathema but in all the other townships around us, too. Every day, there are more dead, and the cops and the army can’t seem to stop it. Now, the violence is moving into white areas, though only half a dozen whites have been killed. And the government seems to have no idea of what to do.

“And then there is racial integration. We don’t have much of it in Springs, it’s true, but it really bothers some whites to sit next to a black. The trains have just been integrated, the bars and hotels will probably be soon, then the cinemas. They let blacks use the country club the other day for a company golf day, and you should have heard the complaints around the bar later that night. Most people here are not really racists, but there are so many of them (blacks) and so few of us--the ratio is about 5 to 1--that people do worry about being swamped. And altogether that’s why people are so pessimistic.”

Fewer Whites Optimistic

Nationally, only 47% of whites surveyed recently by Markinor, the South African affiliate of the Gallup organization, expressed any degree of optimism about the country’s future--a sharp decline from 74% in 1977--and only half of those thought the situation would be better in a year than it is now. Another Markinor survey found that 30% of whites, including half of those 16 to 24 years old, expected an eventual civil war.

Markinor also found, however, that 63% of whites believe that apartheid will be ended within a decade, 59% think South Africa’s problems will be resolved peacefully and that 51% now think a multiracial government could work.

“One feels so trapped today,” said Stephanie Botha, wife of a production engineer and mother of two sons, one in the army and the other to be drafted in January. “There seems to be so little we as individuals can do, that we as whites can do. We are willing to share power . . . but blacks want everything, including all we have. We don’t want this violence, let alone a war that our sons will die in. But how are we going to avoid it?”

Today’s crisis, she continued, is far worse than those in 1960 that followed the fatal police shooting of 69 blacks at Sharpeville and the 1976-77 unrest over conditions in the black urban ghettos and black education.

“This not only goes on and on, but it is spreading and becoming more intense,” she said. “We feel our country, our way of life being taken from us, bit by bit, each day. We fear that what has been happening in places like Kwathema could start happening in Springs.

“And what do we do? Leave, emigrate? Where would we go? Our family has lived here nearly three centuries. Accept majority rule, one-man, one-vote, and watch the blacks do here what they have done to the rest of Africa? No way. Continue as we have been and try to make apartheid work? Impossible. So what do we do? What, in God’s name, do we do?”