Botha Rebukes Top Aide for Saying Reform Could Yield Black President

President Pieter W. Botha sternly rebuked his foreign minister Friday for suggesting that proposed political reforms could lead to a black president’s governing South Africa in the future.

Exposing the deep rifts within the ruling National Party and even his own Cabinet, Botha publicly repudiated the liberal interpretations by Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha of the “power-sharing” reforms that he proposed a week ago.

Stressing again that although South Africa’s political system might change as a result of future reforms, it will continue to be based on racial separation, President Botha made clear the limits on his willingness to share power with the country’s black majority.

“I never want to be untrue to my own people,” the president told a parliamentary debate on his policies. “If I am forced to do that, there is no place for me in public life.”

In another dramatic political development, Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, leader of the liberal opposition Progressive Federal Party, told Parliament that he believes it is unable to tackle South Africa’s deepening crisis and that, as a result, he was resigning.

‘A Ridiculous Debate’

“My efforts here are a waste of time,” Slabbert told the stunned lawmakers. “Here we are caught up in a ridiculous political debate while our country is bleeding.”

The government’s refusal to discuss political reforms on any basis but that of racial and ethnic groupings makes negotiations pointless, Slabbert said. The system of racial separation and minority white rule must first be dismantled, he continued, to allow negotiations on a new political, economic and social system for the country.

“What I have heard and seen of all of the government’s proposals in the past week is simply not good enough,” Slabbert added. “It is another false start. . . . It is time for me to go.”

The two actions--the president’s rebuke of one of his senior ministers and the resignation of the leader of the government’s liberal opposition--left white politics in complete disarray.

But together the moves could prompt other whites to ask themselves where they stand and set in motion far-reaching political realignments that will affect the course of reform here.

Rumor on Mandela

Meanwhile, rumors circulated here and in Johannesburg that Nelson Mandela, the African National Congress leader serving a life prison sentence for sabotage, is about to be released, possibly this weekend. A spokesman for the banned African National Congress, headquartered in Lusaka, Zambia, said he is aware of the reports but could not confirm them.

On Friday, the government announced the lifting of the state of emergency in seven magisterial districts, four around Cape Town and three in eastern Cape province, after a reduction in the level of unrest there.

This leaves 23 districts under emergency rule, which gives the police and army virtual martial-law powers to curb the continuing unrest. Those areas include most of Johannesburg, Cape Town and the industrial center of Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage.

The state of emergency, declared July 21, has been imposed at different times over the past half year in 44 of the country’s 265 magisterial districts, but has now been lifted in almost half of these as the level of violence has been reduced.

Sides With Conservatives

In publicly rebuking Foreign Minister Botha, one of the most liberal members of his Cabinet, and requiring him, under threat of dismissal, to admit that he had breached Cabinet discipline and had gone too far in discussing the reform package, President Botha openly sided with his most conservative ministers. (The two Bothas are not related.)

“No minister of the governing party in this assembly has the right to compromise his party without prior consultation,” the president told Parliament.

Of Foreign Minister Botha’s suggestion that a black president might be an inevitable result of power-sharing, President Botha said: “I want to make it quite clear that any speculation or discussion around the future of the state presidency is quite hypothetical and confusing, and that it does not represent my party’s policy.”

A political furor, fanned by right-wing critics, developed after the foreign minister’s remarks Thursday to foreign correspondents that, provided there were sufficient guarantees to protect South Africa’s white minority, black officials, black Cabinet members and even a black president were possible and acceptable to him. He later repeated his remarks to a local newspaper.

Told to Admit or Resign

So serious was the crisis within National Party ranks that President Botha told the foreign minister that, unless he admitted he spoke only for himself and had transgressed in suggesting this was party and government policy, he would have to resign.

An urgent Cabinet meeting was called to discuss the matter, according to National Party members of Parliament, and the president told his ministers that, whatever their motivations, they must not stray from the reform proposals outlined last week.

Foreign Minister Botha’s comments had “caused serious problems of interpretation on what the party’s principles were,” the president told Parliament, acknowledging that “a government of men with very strong convictions cannot always think similarly.”

But the president fully supported his hard-line Education Minister F.W. de Klerk in his equally controversial declarations to Parliament and newsmen that the government’s whole reform initiative is based on the sharing of power among racial groups and that the National Party would never accept racial integration in schools, residential neighborhoods and other areas that would “affect its own identity and life style.”

To Calm the Rightists

In an effort to calm the angry right wing of his party, Pieter Botha told Parliament, “We must develop a constitutional form of government that does not destroy the right of whites to determine their own spiritual and material existence while we search for justice for each other.”

He then promised the country’s 5 million whites that they would have the chance to accept or reject in a referendum any “drastic decisions” on constitutional changes here.

Slabbert told a brief press conference after his resignation that the Nationalist government had shown itself to favor only “amelioration” of the country’s apartheid system and not fundamental reform.

“With my resignation, I am trying to convey a sense of urgency to the country,” Slabbert said. “We don’t have time to mess around with pseudo-constitutional structures and reforms. The country is polarizing too fast.

Pessimistic on Peace

“The state president’s response to tension within his own party proves there has been no shift,” he said. “The state president still believes there must be communities predetermined by the government and that power must be shared on that basis and no other. . . . I see no chance for peaceful change as long as we compel people to belong to racial and ethnic groups.”

Although he strongly believes in the Progressive Federal Party and in its role as a critic of the Nationalist government within the parliamentary system, Slabbert said he felt that he personally “could not go on any longer” in a powerless legislature.

And with only 27 seats in the 178-member white House of Assembly, where the Nationalists have 127 seats, and no elections likely before 1989, the Progressive Federal Party can do little except criticize the government.

‘Co-optive Domination’

He strongly condemned as “fundamentally and tragically flawed” the controversial 1 1/2-year-old tricameral Parliament, which has white, Indian and Colored, or mixed-race, chambers but no black representatives.

“This is not power sharing,” he said, “but a form of co-optive domination.”

Leader of the Progressive Federal Party for the past seven years, Slabbert, 45, a sociologist and university professor before he entered politics in 1974, said he now will pursue the “politics of negotiation” outside Parliament.