S. Africa Blacks Boycott Stores : ‘White Christmas’ Looms for Re-Segregated Town

Pop music pulsed through Bob Bieber’s clothing store for the expected stampede of Christmas shoppers. Crisp dress shirts were stacked floor to ceiling along the walls. Mannequins were smartly turned out in windbreakers and white summer hats.

But Bieber’s five salespeople stood awkwardly in the empty aisles, hands clasped behind their backs, without a single customer to wait on.

The telephone rang. It was a supplier.

“You going to the funeral?” Bieber said into the phone. “Everybody’s going bankrupt in Boksburg. It’s a living death, is what it is.”

This peaceful, 100-year-old mining community is at the center of a nationwide furor over the future of apartheid in South Africa. Right-wing whites here are turning the clock back on apartheid reform, and the black majority is flexing its substantial economic muscle to stop them.

Boksburg is one of half a dozen towns where the far-right Conservative Party, after winning control of 135 local councils in October municipal elections, has followed through on promises to strengthen and, if necessary, reimpose segregation of city-owned facilities.

But, so far, this is the only place where blacks have fought back with a boycott. In a matter of days, sidewalks once clogged with shoppers have become nearly empty.

It all began a few weeks ago when the newly elected Boksburg Town Council declared the downtown lake and its palm tree-shaded park, the new library, the tennis courts, the swimming pool and even the public toilets for “whites only.” All those facilities had been integrated two years before.

The 200,000 blacks and mixed-race Coloreds, who live in two satellite townships and work, shop and sometimes share public facilities with the 87,000 whites in Boksburg, decided to give the town back to its white residents.

Just as the Christmas shopping season began in earnest last weekend, the blacks and Coloreds took themselves and their pocketbooks to other stores in nearby towns, often riding buses paid for by whites who oppose the Conservative Party.

Today, business is down between 20% and 90% in downtown Boksburg.

“Our dignity has been trampled upon,” explained Buchanan Jantjes, a leader in the Colored township of Reiger Park. “We are just granting them (whites) their Christmas wish. Now they’ll have a ‘white’ Christmas.”

Community Faces Isolation

Even before the cash registers fell silent, everyone from athletic organizations to chain stores had sharply criticized the 12 Conservative Party members on Boksburg’s 20-seat Town Council and threatened to isolate the community, in much the way that the rest of the world isolates South Africa.

Sponsors canceled two professional golf tournaments here, and cricket, hockey and cycling federations vowed to prohibit tournaments and tours in all towns that reimpose apartheid. A large clothing chain withdrew from negotiations to build a new Boksburg store, and major department stores said they would never consider opening new branches here.

An annual Christmas program that draws thousands of people to Boksburg Lake to hear black and white children sing carols by candlelight was canceled by the organizers in protest, even though the council had indicated that it would give permission for such multiracial special events.

Dozens of independent merchants in town put up “All Races Served With Pleasure” signs in their windows and complained loudly to the councilors. But to no avail.

‘Retrogressed 30 Years’

“Boksburg has retrogressed 30 years in the past two months,” said car dealer Bob Delport, shaking his head and chain-smoking. Gasoline purchases at Delport Motors have fallen 21%.

Delport, like dozens of other business people, has pleaded with the new mayor, Beyers de Klerk, to change his mind.

“But the guy’s got blinkers on,” Delport complained recently. “You can’t talk to him.”

The mayor’s political actions have cost him his savings and loan business; the parent company took away his franchise a few days ago. Pressure is also building on Mobil Oil, whose Boksburg station is run by another Conservative Party councilor.

Now Mayor De Klerk, a hefty, bearded man, stalks his offices with a pistol holstered on his hip for protection and the Bible kept handy for moral justification.

“We will succeed because God is on our side,” De Klerk tells the angry business people. “I expect all the thunderbolts of hell to rain down on me.”

Backed by Workers

The Conservatives’ main supporters are not the business community but the blue-collar workers, who often compete with blacks for jobs and promotions and resent having to share their swimming pools, parks and meeting halls.

“I can’t even sit on a park bench without them (blacks) all over the show,” a Boksburg woman complained recently.

The council says it has received 800 calls and telegrams of support from across the country, and the Conservative Party has threatened to urge its supporters elsewhere to apply their own pressure against companies who make life difficult for Boksburg.

“We were elected on a mandate, and that is all we are doing now, carrying out that mandate,” said Clive Derby-Lewis, a national spokesman for the party. “We would be totally dishonest if we did a somersault on it. We will not surrender.”

Ready to Maintain Boycott

Residents of the Colored township of Reiger Park and the black township of Vosloosrus say they are prepared to continue their boycott indefinitely.

“Why should we spend money in a town where we aren’t even allowed to appreciate God’s nature?” said Jantjes, 36. “It was our buying power that helped pay the upkeep of those places.”

Phillip Samson, a 25-year-old black clerk in Boksburg, has started doing his shopping elsewhere, even though he knows it might one day cost him his own job.

“Wherever you go in Boksburg, you feel you’re not wanted,” Samson said. “It makes us feel horrible. I don’t feel safe here anymore.”

Boksburg, about 15 miles east of Johannesburg, has become the showcase for the Conservative Party, which believes the ruling white National Party caved in to international pressure in instituting limited apartheid reforms.

Similar Moves Elsewhere

Similar re-segregation moves have been made in Brakpan, Carletonville and Stilfontein, and the Conservatives are opposing moves to open up the central business districts of other white towns to black business people.

Although the ruling National Party has been among the loudest critic of the Conservative Party actions, the Conservatives note that they are merely enforcing the apartheid legislation that the Nationalists put on the books.

The government’s Separate Amenities Act empowers local councils to segregate public facilities, and, in fact, most towns controlled by the National Party also have segregated beaches, buses and swimming pools. The government recently said it has no intention of scrapping the act. (The act gives councils no control over privately owned facilities.)

“The truth is, the Conservative Party is doing what it promised and the laws make it possible,” said the Rev. Allan Boesak, president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and a leading anti-apartheid campaigner.

Ruling Party Sees Threat

Nationally, the government sees the Conservative Party as the chief threat to its 40-year rule in South Africa. The right-wing party won 20% of the vote in the 1987 general election and gained a strong foothold in the Transvaal and Orange Free State provinces during the recent municipal elections.

But the brouhaha in Boksburg may slow the Conservative Party’s growth. And the national government, so far at least, has been watching from the sidelines even though calls for boycotts violate the 30-month-old state of emergency.

“Boycotts appear to be OK when used against the Conservative Party but subversive when used against the National Party,” said Wynand Malan, a white liberal member of Parliament. “When those same people use the same strategies against the government, they are detained without trial (or) charged with treason.”

Boycott leaders say they have been surprised by the National Party supporters who call with words of encouragement.

“I never thought so many Nationalists would be our friends,” Jantjes said. “But they’re rooting for us.”

Blacks’ Economic Power

The boycott shows the growing economic power of blacks, who make up more than 75% of South Africa’s population.

At Bob Bieber’s store, Champion Outfitters, which caters primarily to blacks, sales are down more than 90% and the few customers who come in “are up-tight with us,” he said.

He and his wife invested $300,000 in stock for the Christmas season and $500,000 to give the store a face lift. Every penny they have is tied up in the store.

“I’ll be unemployed at 50, trying to find something to do with my life,” predicted Bieber, a father of six. He doesn’t fault his customers, though.

“What they’re doing is 100% morally right,” he said. “But you know who gets hurt? It’s the innocent people in the middle.

‘Will Be a Ghost Town’

“If it lasts just four months, I guarantee you Boksburg will be a ghost town.”

Even if the council reverses its decision, it would take at least a year for Boksburg’s economy to recover, business people say.

“I’m embarrassed out of my mind for Boksburg,” said George Green, whose furniture store has seen sales plummet by 55%. Some of his black customers have called and asked him to send a truck to collect their installment payments because they don’t want to be seen in his store.

“I feel like I want to cry,” Green said.