South Africa Showdown

The 10th anniversary today of the bloody riots in Soweto finds South Africa in a new crisis, faced with a new wave of violence, still unable to break from the repressive injustice of apartheid to construct a new society of shared power.

In recent days two events have measured the depths of the crisis and the bleak prospects for finding a peaceful solution. The Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group has acknowledged defeat in its effort to establish a meaningful dialogue between the government and the most influential black political leaders. The Commonwealth leaders concluded that there is no alternative now to tougher economic sanctions designed to force South Africa to implement the reforms that it has talked about for two years. At the same time, the government has imposed a national state of emergency designed to control the threat of violence as this awful anniversary approaches. The recourse to police repression in itself measures the virtual impossibility of reform, for once again black leaders, including many dedicated to peaceful change, are being incarcerated.

The promises of President Pieter W. Botha to do away with apartheid, to engage the black majority in power-sharing negotiations, had begun to evaporate in the weeks before this latest crisis. He had virtually assured failure of the Commonwealth peace effort by unleashing an attack on neighboring states to root out sources of sabotage from the African National Congress even while the Commonwealth group was negotiating a renunciation of force from the ANC. And at Crossroads, near Cape Town, Botha had left his security forces standing idly by while vigilante Witdoeke forces mounted an attack on the reform-minded Comrades, black against black, in fighting thatleft 35,000 homeless. It was a denial of equal protection of the law--if not a deliberate effort to use one black group, desperate for land, to destroy another.

At this stage there is no way to judge whether Botha is deliberately undermining his own reforms or whether he has lost control to the reactionary forces of the extreme right that are determined to maintain white control at any cost.

Regardless, the new circumstances call for a new international response. It is not enough to do what President Reagan has done--maintaining the failed policy of “constructive engagement.” The call of the Commonwealth statesmen for tougher sanctions cannot be ignored. There inevitably will be increased support for the harsher measures now taking shape in the House of Representatives. Gov. George Deukmejian has, correctly, given leadership to the search for more effective sanctions within California.

Much has been said by the government of South Africa, in resisting sanctions, about the way in which sanctions would impose suffering on those whom they are intended to help in South Africa. That is true. But that suffering may prove modest compared to the toll already being taken because of the stubbornness of the whites, clinging to their privileged position as if there were no tomorrow.

Nothing better measures the failure of the South African government to deal effectively with the crisis than its effort to hide the violence and the repression behind a screen of censorship.

The injustices manifest in South Africa and the resistance to change serve to inflame opinion in the world and encourage an extreme response. The dangers of excesses are increased by the absence of leadership in Washington. The most promising opportunity for useful action now may come from the Commonwealth report--implemented carefully, deliberately, selectively--to try to salvage some opportunity for peaceful change.