South Africa to Propose Blacks Be Given Right to Own Land : Policy Does Not Lift Curb on Where They May Settle

The government said today it will propose next year that blacks be allowed to own land for the first time in 72 years, but the laws will not lift restrictions on where they can live.

A prominent white critic of the government’s racial policies said the announcement was “important to black people in an emotional way” but was “not a dismantling of apartheid.”

National police headquarters in Pretoria said officers shot a black man to death in a battle with stone throwers in the black Crossroads squatter camp outside Cape Town and fought black rioters in five other Cape province townships overnight and early today.

Grenade Thrown at Military

Police said a hand grenade was thrown at an army vehicle today in Soweto, the vast black community outside Johannesburg, but it caused no injuries or damage. They said there was no connection between the explosion and a tour of Soweto by Constitutional Planning Minister Chris Heunis.

Heunis announced the new land policy after the tour when he addressed a meeting of black Soweto township councilmen at a hotel in the white Johannesburg suburb of Florida.

He said the Cabinet decided Tuesday to implement President Pieter W. Botha’s statement of intention in Parliament early this year to extend land ownership rights to blacks as part of a gradual reform program.

Freehold Rights

“I am proud to announce today that the government decided yesterday to grant freehold rights to all black people who qualify under terms of the 99-year leasehold to own property,” Heunis said.

The decision would affect “urban blacks,” who already have rights to live near white cities, he said, but did not imply a change in requirements that whites, blacks, Asians and people of mixed race live in separate neighborhoods.

Sheena Duncan, president of the Black Sash, a multiracial women’s organization that opposes apartheid, said about 4 million blacks would be affected.

For more than five years, “urban blacks” have had rights to buy property under 99-year leaseholds, but comparatively few have done so. Duncan, who is white, said the leaseholds are expensive and, in addition, “they (blacks) don’t trust the government.”

30,000 Applications

The government said in June that about 30,000 blacks applied for leases in 1984.

“Freehold is important to black people in an emotional way, but in practical terms it does not mean anything,” Duncan said. “Ninety-nine-year leases are in effect perpetual, since they can be transferred and the 99-year period is renewed with each transfer.”

“This is the kind of change that is important to whites because some part of apartheid has been abolished, but the majority of blacks still cannot buy land where they choose to live. It is not a dismantling of apartheid.”

Blacks could own land outright until the Land Act of 1913. Hundreds of thousands continued to live in villages they owned, but most have been moved to black homelands in a prolonged government effort to wipe “black spots” from white rural areas.