Stay in S. Africa, Zulu Chief Urges U.S. Firms
Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, the influential Zulu leader, urged U.S. companies Tuesday not to pull out of South Africa despite the call by the Rev. Leon Sullivan, an American civil rights campaigner, for a complete economic boycott of the country until apartheid is ended.
Buthelezi, chief minister of the Zulu tribal homeland of Kwazulu and president of the 1.3-million-member Inkatha political movement, said in a speech to American executives that if their firms withdraw, “South Africa will be thrust into the caldron of revolution and be reduced to Third World chaos.”
In a separate letter to Sullivan, a Baptist minister in Philadelphia, Buthelezi said: “There is now more urgent reason than ever for your continued involvement in the South African situation. . . . We expect brothers like you to be the staunchest when the going gets toughest.”
Significant Force
Sullivan last week abandoned his decade-old fair employment code for American companies, which had made them a significant force for change within the South African business community. Instead, he urged the United States to break relations with Pretoria and impose a total economic boycott on the country.
Buthelezi has long opposed economic sanctions on South Africa, saying that they punish black workers more than the white-led minority government. He argued that economic development promotes a modern, Western-style democracy here.
“We know that big business has a very definite role to play,” he told the Johannesburg-based American Chamber of Commerce. “We ask you to remain active with us in that role.”
In his letter to Sullivan, he said: “If the South African economy is destroyed with apartheid, we will have to attempt to build on the quicksands of deepening poverty. . . . Whatever else we do, we dare not sacrifice any prospects of increased economic development.”
‘Rank Foolishness’
He told the chamber that the 24-month deadline that Sullivan set in 1985 for the abolition of apartheid was “rank foolishness.” He noted that he and other black leaders have struggled throughout their lives to make limited headway and that the African National Congress’ armed struggle has not achieved in a quarter-century what Sullivan wanted in two years.
Sullivan “has scrapped himself before we have scrapped apartheid,” Buthelezi said. “The point I want to make is that no force on Earth could even now ensure that statutory apartheid will be eliminated in the next 24 months.”
Meanwhile, tension continued to increase around the country in anticipation of the anniversary Friday of the state of emergency declared a year ago by President Pieter W. Botha to curb the mounting political violence.
The United Democratic Front, a coalition of 700 anti-apartheid groups with 3 million members, and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the country’s largest labor federation, joined with other opposition groups in asking Botha not to extend the emergency when it expires at midnight Thursday.
However, according to local press reports, Botha will not only renew the broad powers assumed by the government but issue new regulations closing many of the loopholes found by civil rights lawyers over the last year.
In Cape Town, the government reintroduced controversial legislation aimed at ending a year-long rent strike by residents of many of the country’s black townships.
The proposed law would permit township officials to get court orders requiring employers to deduct rent, taxes and utility fees from the pay of their workers. A similar measure was blocked last year by strong objections from business, which fears it would bring widespread labor unrest.
The rent strike, one of the most successful protests in the last year by black militants, is aimed at lowering rents and improving living conditions. So far, it has cost the government more than $135 million and virtually bankrupted many township administrations.
Botha in Kwandebele
Botha met in Cape Town on Tuesday with officials of Kwandebele, a tribal homeland that has asked South Africa for independence. He told them that broad support must be demonstrated for such a move before he will agree to it and that any transition must be orderly.
Kwandebele, an impoverished region northeast of Pretoria, had sought to become South Africa’s fifth nominally independent homeland last year, but it dropped the plan after eight months of almost daily clashes that left more than 160 dead. Kwandebele’s new chief minister, George Mahlangu, revived the plan last month, and fighting has resumed between supporters and opponents.
In Lebowa, another tribal homeland, a magistrate found 10 policemen responsible for the death 14 months ago of a local newspaper reporter. Lucky Kutumela was severely beaten by the homeland police and then denied medical care, the magistrate found, recommending criminal prosecution of the policemen involved.
Police headquarters in Pretoria announced the arrests of a suspected African National Congress guerrilla and a number of collaborators believed responsible for an attack on a Kwazulu police barracks six weeks ago and four bomb blasts around Natal province in the last three months.
The police said that AK-47 assault rifles, submachine guns, hand grenades, land mines and other explosives were found as the result of tips from residents of Newcastle in Natal.
