Black S. Africa President Possible, Official Says

Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha, defending the South African government’s proposed political reforms, said Thursday that his country could be governed in the future by a black president provided there is an agreement protecting the rights of the white minority.

Botha, going further than any Cabinet minister has dared to go before, said he saw a black-led government as the “inevitable result in the future” if President Pieter W. Botha’s new proposals on power-sharing are accepted by South Africa’s black majority and become the basis for a new constitutional system.

As for himself, Foreign Minister Botha told foreign correspondents, he would have “no objection whatsoever” to serving under a black president. “If it is in terms of structures jointly agreed, how can I be opposed?” he asked.

Other Cabinet ministers and President Botha himself have emphasized the far-reaching nature of the new proposals, put before the South African Parliament here last week. But until the foreign minister spoke up Thursday, none had been willing to accept that this country, ruled by whites for three centuries, could have a black-majority government.

Protection for Minority

“As long as we can agree in a suitable way on the protection of minority rights without a racial sting,” the foreign minister said, “then it would possibly become unavoidable that in the future you might have a black president of this country. If blacks share in the power of this country, that to me becomes the inevitable result in the future, as long as the minorities feel safe.”

What his government opposes, he went on, is any system, especially one-man, one-vote in a unitary state where blacks outnumber whites five to one, that does not include “full protection of minorities.”

This would include preservation of their residential areas, school systems and other cultural facilities, all presumably racially segregated, and a constitutional guarantee ensuring that the majority would not overrule their agreed political rights.

“The object is to remove the racial stigma of apartheid, the humiliation of it,” Foreign Minister Botha said, defending the proposed reforms against criticsm that they mask a form of neo-apartheid. “But the idea is not to stamp out all cultural differences.”

Complex Federalism

Although President Botha, who is not related to the foreign minister, has yet to elaborate in detail his grand design for South Africa when its system of racial separation and minority white rule has been ended, he appears to favor a complex form of federalism based on ethnic and geographic units that manage their own affairs but come together on matters of common interest.

Foreign Minister Botha said that the president’s proposal last week of a new national council in which black leaders would sit with whites to deliberate on new legislation, and ultimately perhaps draft a new constitution, represents a bold step toward sharing power.

So far, however, only Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, the Zulu leader, has publicly expressed any interest in the reforms, and he has qualified it heavily. The government is clearly worried that the proposal will quickly die as others have over the past two years, leaving it nothing to negotiate and no one to talk with.