Botha Appeal in Black Area Draws Rebuff

President Pieter W. Botha flew to a center of black discontent Thursday to appeal for talks with black leaders but received an immediate rebuff.

Even before Botha delivered his speech, Mayor Esau Mahlatsi, regarded by many blacks as a collaborator with the dominant whites, told him that only political equality is a subject worthy of negotiations.

Botha’s tightly guarded trip to Sebokeng, in a cluster of eight dusty townships about 35 miles south of Johannesburg, was only his second visit to a black township since he became head of government in 1978.

As Botha sat beside him, the mayor rejected the white leader’s idea of a statutory council to advise the president on including blacks in decision-making.

“It is our belief that the reform which you have now been mandated to pursue will be an exercise in futility if it does not have as its ultimate aim the participation of blacks and whites on a par in the Parliament of this country,” he said.

Botha has rejected the inclusion of representatives of the 25-million black majority in the white-dominated Parliament.

In his speech, Botha said South Africans must unite to resolve the problems facing the racially divided country.

“These problems cannot be solved through violence,” he said. “We have to do it by sitting down and talking to each other. A peaceful future has to be built through peaceful negotiations on the basis of mutual good will.

“My government and I have the power and desire to negotiate . . . with leaders who reject violence and intimidation as instruments for achieving political ends,” Botha added.

A good-natured crowd of about 4,000 blacks was on hand when a helicopter brought the 71-year-old president to the township, in an area known as the Vaal Triangle and among the most militant black communities in the country.

Hundreds of the area’s residents have died in political violence since 1960, when police shot and killed 69 blacks in Sharpeville.

Riots flared in the Vaal Triangle in September, 1984, leading to the deaths of more than 2,500 nationwide since and prompting Botha to impose a state of emergency.

Four town councilors and more than 60 other people in the area were killed in the 1984 rioting, which broke out partly in protest over a proposed rent increase. The subsequent rent boycott has cost authorities more than $99 million nationwide.