S. Africa Offers to Let Blacks Elect Delegates to a Constitutional Council

The South African government, hoping to draw moderate blacks into a political partnership, Wednesday offered to permit blacks to elect their representatives to a proposed national council, which the government says will draft a new “power-sharing” constitution for the country.

J. Christiaan Heunis, the minister of constitutional development and planning, told a special convention of the ruling National Party here that such elections could ensure blacks’ representation on the new council, and in themselves constitute a major step toward the system of shared power envisioned by the government.

However limited in purpose, these are the first nationwide elections ever offered to South African blacks in more than 300 years of white rule. Blacks make up 25 million of the country’s 34 million people.

In a second overture to blacks, as well as to white critics on the left, Minister of Justice H. Jacobus Coetsee endorsed parliamentary enactment of a bill of rights to protect individuals from state oppression and police brutality.

Would Strengthen Courts

Such a measure, previously rejected by the government, would greatly strengthen the authority of South Africa’s courts to review both legislation and government actions for basic fairness.

And by allowing people to approach the country’s courts for redress of grievances, Coetsee said, “energy and efforts (would be directed) away from revolution, uprising and terrorism,” and the bill of rights would become “an agent of national reconciliation.”

In proposing elections for a national council, Heunis said the government would help compile voter lists and establish representative districts.

Otherwise, the authorities would try to avoid involvement and would lift as many of the present restrictions on political activities as possible so that the elections would “truly represent the black political will,” a senior party official said.

Blacks now are entitled to vote in local elections in urban ghetto townships and in rural tribal homelands. But their total exclusion from national power under a new constitution that brought the Colored (mixed-race) and Indian minorities into Parliament touched off the two years of civil unrest in which more than 2,200 people have died.

Black Demands Unmet

The offer, although a breakthrough in National Party policy intended to demonstrate the government’s sincerity on the proposed national council, falls considerably short of black demands--not only for participating in the council but also for a long-term settlement of South Africa’s problems.

Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, who as chief minister of the Kwazulu tribal homeland would automatically be a member of the council, has told the government that Nelson Mandela, the imprisoned leader of the outlawed African National Congress, must first be freed and offered a chance to participate before he could even consider the proposal.

Buthelezi, whose participation is regarded as crucial for the council’s eventual success, has also called for strengthening of powers given the council, originally billed as an advisory body, in order to turn it into the “national convention” long sought by blacks to lay the basis for a new political system.

Many other black leaders have rejected the proposed council, regarding participation in it as acceptance of the apartheid system of racial separation and minority white rule. They insist, as does the African National Congress, on the unqualified “transfer of power” to a majority-rule government.

Equal Footing

Heunis reiterated his government’s commitment to develop a new political system based on “everybody participating in the political processes at all levels on an equal footing,” and on the representation of blacks, as well as whites, Indians and Coloreds, at the highest levels of the government.

Heunis and other speakers, including President Pieter W. Botha, stressed the party’s even stronger commitment to maintaining “group identity” in politics and “group security,” including racially segregated residential areas and schools, as the basis for any new political, economic and social system here.

“Group identity--I do not apologize for it at all, but regard it as the cornerstone of mutual respect in South Africa now and in the future,” Botha said in a speech closing the special two-day party congress. “Let’s cling fast to this cornerstone of community self-determination.”

F.W. de Klerk, the minister of national education and, with Heunis, a leading contender to succeed the 70-year-old president, hammered away in another speech to the 1,700 delegates at the congress here on the continued need for “group security,” “group self-determination” and “control of our own affairs,” all taken by blacks as a political bulwark against majority rule in order to preserve white domination of the country’s political, economic and social system.

Botha made an impassioned appeal for understanding and reconciliation as the congress closed. “Let’s put bitterness out of politics,” he said, pleading for all South Africans not to be discouraged by the country’s current crisis, to set aside their past differences and individual interests and to “put South Africa first.”

This apparent schizophrenia ran as a theme through many of the discussions Wednesday. Some delegates argued strongly for even bolder reforms, including integrated residential areas and schools, while others, even more vehemently, warned that the measures already taken had undermined the country’s security.

Louis le Grange, the hard-line minister of law and order, and Gen. Magnus Malan, the defense minister, sought to reassure delegates that the two-month-old state of emergency is bringing two years of political violence to an end and re-establishing stability.

Both men warned that the government is ready to take even tougher measures if necessary. “We have not even started to use our muscle and capabilities,” Malan said in a warning directed particularly at South Africa’s neighbors supporting the African National Congress.