South Africa Specifies Areas for Integration

The government today for the first time publicly identified “whites only” neighborhoods that could be opened legally to people of all races.

Tens of thousands of nonwhites already live illegally in districts of Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth, which Constitutional Planning Minister J. Christian Heunis cited as areas likely to be integrated.

In a session of Parliament today, Heunis reintroduced three bills under the Group Areas Act, which segregates all neighborhoods by race and sharply increases the penalties for violations of the act.

The bills, viewed as an attempt to appease conservative white voters before the nationwide municipal elections on Oct. 26, were first introduced last month, but were withdrawn after anti-apartheid groups and black leaders condemned them.

The new legislation, however, also proposes to legalize a limited number of multiracial neighborhoods that have developed in recent years as whites moved out of urban neighborhoods. The measure has been denounced by the Conservative Party, which is expected to make gains in the elections at the expense of President Pieter W. Botha’s National Party.