Baker Blames Apartheid for Poverty in S. Africa

Secretary of State James A. Baker III toured this sprawling black township today and blamed apartheid for its poverty.

Baker said the contrast between Soweto and the wealth of South Africa’s whites in nearby Johannesburg is “quite distressing and that’s why I said the system of apartheid should be abolished as soon as possible.”

The visit came one day after he said the white-run government was committed to ending the system of racial separation.

Baker met with Walter Sisulu at the African National Congress leaders’ home in a neighborhood of small brick houses, visited community centers, a day-care center and drove past a squatters’ camp erected on an old golf course.

On Thursday, Baker met with South African President Frederik W. de Klerk. A senior U.S. official said Baker told him that “what he had done so far was courageous in light of the obvious political pressures and restraints he is subject to.”

In February, De Klerk lifted a 30-year ban on the ANC and released black nationalist leader Nelson R. Mandela from jail after 27 years.

Moments before Baker arrived at Sisulu’s home today, children, perched on a jungle gym, shouted ANC slogans and sang songs honoring Mandela. Baker didn’t see or hear the children.

Sisulu said: “I told the secretary of state we are very grateful to the people of America for the support they gave us over the years and that we are hopeful but we are only making a beginning and we will expect more support as the day goes by.

“We have particularly mentioned to the secretary . . . lack of facilities for proper education, which we consider can be very harmful,” he said.

“We have also mentioned . . . the lack of accommodation which is also dynamite for violence,” Sisulu added.

More than 2 million people live in Soweto but by far the worst conditions are in its growing squatter camps such as Mshenguville, which have virtually no utilities or drainage. Rows of mobile toilets, inscribed with “Easy Loo Toilet Hire,” line the garbage-strewn dust tracks between shack dwellings.

Opposite the Sisulu home where the meeting took place, 3- and 4-year-old children in a preschool center shook clenched fists in the air and shouted “Power, Power” and “ANC, ANC.”

Baker, not by nature a spontaneous man, watched some children jumping on a trampoline and shook the hands of two infants before being whisked to his next appointment.

Baker was flying to Kinshasa, Zaire, for meetings with President Mobutu Sese Seko and Angolan guerrilla leader Jonas Savimbi.

Sisulu’s organization publicly opposed Baker’s meeting with De Klerk but the subject wasn’t mentioned today until reporters questioned Sisulu, who appeared to put the issue behind him.

“The United States realizes no fundamental change has been made but that some encouragement should be made. We’ve had that,” Sisulu said.