Botha Endorses Plan for Optional Integration

President Pieter W. Botha on Monday endorsed an advisory panel’s recommendation that racially separate neighborhoods be given the option of opening themselves to all races.

However, he backed away from a second suggestion made by the panel: repeal of the law segregating facilities such as beaches and swimming pools. He said such action would be irresponsible without further study of the consequences and possible “replacement legislation.”

Although endorsing the slight relaxation of apartheid--South Africa’s system of racial separation--the president sought to reassure the country’s white minority that communities wishing to remain racially segregated will be allowed to do so.

“It would be unjustifiable to deny those who do want to live amidst their own community the right to do so,” Botha said. “On the other hand, it would also not be correct to deny those who prefer to live in the context of an ‘open’ area their right to do that.”

Legislation to allow the “open” areas will not be introduced before next year in any case, he said, adding that in the interim, “the government intends to enforce” the status quo.

Botha’s remarks, delivered to the whites-only chamber of the three-chamber Parliament in Cape Town, were part of what government officials have described as the president’s step-by-step approach to political, economic and social reforms in the country.

The recommendations were made Sept. 17 by the President’s Council, a 60-member legislative and advisory commission. The council called for amendments to the 1950 Group Areas Act, the centerpiece of racial segregation legislation in the country, to allow residents to declare their neighborhoods “open areas” and developers to build suburbs open to all races.

In the debate after Botha’s speech Monday, conservative and liberal white legislators alike criticized the council’s report, as they have since it was issued.

Moolman Mentz, a Conservative Party member, assailed the government’s proposed changes as “a total violation of all that is holy and a wedge between the volk and the fatherland.”

Members of the liberal white Progressive Federal Party argued, on the other hand, that the council should have gone further and urged immediate repeal of the act.

“This is a sad example of political expediency taking precedence over the elementary principles of a just society,” said Helen Suzman, a member of the Progressive Federal Party and perhaps the country’s best-known white opponent of apartheid.

Repeal of the Group Areas Act is a major demand of the anti-apartheid movement. The government’s proposals are sure to face even sharper criticism in debate later this week in the other two chambers of Parliament, the Indian and the Colored (mixed-race) houses.

By law, South Africa’s 5 million whites, 25 million blacks, 3 million Coloreds and 1 million Indians must live in separate areas. But thousands of blacks, Coloreds and Indians live in neighborhoods officially reserved for whites in urban centers here, in open defiance of the Group Areas Act.

The council’s recommendation that the Separate Amenities Act, which segregates many public facilities, be scrapped was welcomed by most anti-apartheid groups, and the government had been expected to go along with it.

However, although Botha said he agrees with the council that the 24-year-old amenities act “was never a success,” he said its immediate abolition would “create more problems than it could solve.” Before such a step is taken, he said, “alternatives for action after the repeal of the act will have to be considered.”

He did not specify what alternative action might be necessary.

In describing the Group Areas Act changes, Botha outlined an elaborate set of procedures for determining whether residential areas should be opened up. A board of experts would investigate requests to desegregate suburbs and submit the results of its inquiry to the president, who would be empowered, with the consent of the Ministers’ Council, to decide whether an area could become integrated.