Residential Segregation Will Continue, President Botha Vows

President Pieter W. Botha vowed Wednesday that racial segregation of South Africa’s residential areas will continue as long as he is president.

Botha defended segregation in those areas as the cornerstone of his government’s policies and the basis for any further reforms.

“You will have to get rid of me first before you get rid of this principle,” he told the annual Cape provincial congress of his National Party in the port city of East London.

He added, however, that his government is willing to allow greater flexibility in the enforcement of residential segregation by opening a few urban areas to all races and granting permits to individual blacks, Asians and Coloreds (mixed-race people) to move into some upper-class white suburbs.

“It is strange that we are prepared to travel in a car with a Colored, and allow him to ride on our bakkie (pickup truck) on the farm,” Botha said, “but when he wants to live close to you, then there is trouble. We must try to keep our sense of proportion in this matter.”

Flexibility Limited

But he emphasized the strict limits on his flexibility, saying: “We cannot agree that the principle of (a racial group’s) own residential area be destroyed. It is the cornerstone of our minority population policy.”

While he is willing to permit blacks, Coloreds and Asians to move into exclusive suburbs now reserved for whites, he will not permit them to move into working class white neighborhoods, where opinion polls show resistance to racial integration is strongest.

“I am pleading for the poor when I plead for the retention of community life,” Botha said, arguing that poor whites would be pushed out and become “slum dwellers” if their neighborhoods were opened to all the races.

He also said he favors ending what racial segregation there still is in public facilities, saying that he has never believed that the 1953 Separate Amenities Act is practical.

In the last year, most of South Africa’s restaurants, bars and hotels have been opened to all races, but other facilities, ranging from public toilets in some cities to buses to libraries and town halls, continue to be segregated or closed to blacks.

Harsh Attacks by Right

“Now I will probably get attacked by right-wing groups,” Botha said after his comments on segregation in public facilities. He was referring to the increasingly harsh attacks by the ultraright Conservative Party on his government and its step-by-step reforms.

An opinion survey published here Wednesday shows that 71% of low-income whites oppose racially integrated neighborhoods, but that 67% of those in the highest income group favor such integration. Overall, 56% of whites believe that legal prohibitions should remain against blacks owning property in urban areas now reserved for whites, according to the poll.

The President’s Council, an advisory body, is studying revision of the Group Areas Act, which established racially segregated neighborhoods and became the basis for other apartheid legislation, to determine what provisions can be scrapped as part of Botha’s continuing reform program and what is to be retained.

The council is expected to recommend that individual communities be allowed to “zone” neighborhoods for different racial groups and, if they choose, to open some areas to all races.