S. Africa to Suspend Laws Curbing Blacks’ Movement

President Pieter W. Botha on Friday ordered the release of all blacks jailed on charges of violating South Africa’s much-hated pass laws and said that as of next week no further arrests will be made under these laws.

For more than two centuries the pass laws have prohibited blacks from entering urban areas without government permits.

Taking a major step toward honoring his pledge of sweeping political, economic and social reform, Botha said that the “reference books” blacks have had to carry along with their permits to be in urban areas, and which they have had to produce on demand, will be replaced with the same identity documents that whites carry.

And he said that the present system of “influx control,” which is intended to restrict black migration to the cities, will be scrapped.

To the cheers of “Hear, hear” from his own National Party and the liberal opposition Progressive Federal Party, Botha told Parliament in Cape Town that the discriminatory laws restricting the movement of blacks around the country will be repealed and that the government will promote “orderly urbanization.”

Botha, apparently seeking to build momentum for his step-by-step reforms, also announced that the Cabinet has approved a request by the white provincial government of Natal to merge most of its functions with those of the adjacent Zulu tribal homeland, giving the country its first racially integrated administration.

“Such cooperation is not only needed in Natal,” Botha said. “It is required in other parts of the country as well.”

Botha’s proposed repeal of the pass laws drew wide praise as one of the government’s most significant reforms yet, but black reaction was muted. Many blacks said it was only a preliminary step toward dismantling the whole apartheid system of racial separation and minority white rule and was years late in coming.

Tutu Calls Move Late

“The release of pass offenders and the moratorium on the enforcement of the influx control laws can only be welcomed,” Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace laureate, said in Cape Town, “but why, why has it taken so long? If it is right to repeal these laws today, why not yesterday, last year, 10 years ago? So much human suffering could have been averted, and our country might not be in the crisis it is today.”

Murphy Morobe, publicity secretary for the United Democratic Front, a coalition of 680 anti-apartheid groups, urged the government to “take the next logical steps” and repeal the other laws that provide the legal foundation of apartheid.

“Without addressing the crucial issue of political power and the popular demand of our people to take part in the decision-making process in this country,” Morobe said, “Botha’s latest move will remain an act of political posturing.”

Morobe expressed concern, as did Tutu and other leaders, that the government’s new program of “orderly urbanization” will turn out to be another way of preventing blacks from moving freely from rural areas to the cities and from city to city, perhaps by requiring them to obtain jobs and government-approved housing in advance.

White Liberals Approve

White liberals, including business leaders, who have long sought the repeal of the pass laws, praised Botha’s initiative on influx control as a major step toward resolving the country’s problems.

“It will undoubtedly help to ease the tension and conflict in the country,” Colin Eglin, leader of the Progressive Federal Party, commented, “and it could help create the climate necessary if there are going to be meaningful negotiations in the constitutional field.”

More reforms are expected to be announced over the coming week as South Africa’s tricameral Parliament continues its debate on government policies, but most of the necessary legislation will be deferred until a special parliamentary session that Botha plans to call in August.

Botha drew a clear line Friday on how far he is willing to go in these reforms. While the Group Areas Act, the basis of racial segregation here, “can be changed,” Botha said, he will resist demands for its repeal.

“What I stand for is not retention of the act in a particular form, but the retention of individual communities in particular residential areas and the protection of their life styles and cultures,” he said. “The principle of own (racially segregated) residential areas and own way of life cannot be touched.”

‘Come Out of Laager’

Nonetheless, he called on conservative whites to “come out of their laager,” or encircled wagons, before they are trapped there by their “narrow-mindedness and meanness.”

Blacks have protested against the pass laws for years, declaring them “enemy No. 1” in their struggle against apartheid. Their abolition was the main purpose of the 1960 demonstrations that led to the Sharpeville massacre in which 69 blacks were shot and killed by police south of Johannesburg. Anti-apartheid groups and labor unions were preparing for new protests against the pass laws in the next two months.

The laws require all black adults to obtain permission to live in urban areas, if they were not born there, and to carry the reference books stating where they may live and work. Although the National Party strengthened these laws after coming to power in 1948, they date back to 1760, when white settlers imposed their first regulations restricting the presence of blacks in their colonies.

Blacks Defied Law

Many blacks have defied the law to take urban jobs or to join their relatives in the city. An average of 200,000 blacks have been arrested every year over the past decade for violating the laws, though the figure dropped to 98,970 last year as enforcement was relaxed.

Conviction, after trials lasting from one to three minutes, brought fines of $20, about three days’ pay for a black factory worker, or jail terms of up to 40 days.

Pressure for faster and broader reform increased Friday with publication of a report that blamed the government’s “incomprehensible lack of sensitivity” for the first incidents in the year and a half of unrest that has cost nearly 1,500 lives.

“It should never have happened,” Prof. Tjaart van der Walt, rector of Potchefstroom University, concluded in a report commissioned by the government and then suppressed for more than a year.

“Humanly speaking, the entire crisis situation could have been prevented had there not been such an incomprehensible lack of sensitivity and communication,” Van der Walt said. “Alarm signals were disregarded, legitimate grievances fell upon deaf ears, mistrust and suspicion mounted visibly and, sooner or later, the situation simply had to explode.”

Three more blacks, including a policeman, were killed in the country’s continuing unrest, according to police headquarters in Pretoria.