Johannesburg Backs Lifting of Racial Borders : South Africa: The white City Council would let blacks live wherever they wish. However, the final decision is up to the national government.

After a heated four-hour debate Tuesday night, the white City Council here adopted a resolution in favor of opening the neighborhoods of South Africa’s largest city to people of all races.

“We have thought through the consequences of an open city and we will live (with) them,” said Ian Davidson, a council member who belongs to the anti-apartheid Democratic Party. “We are saying to the government: ‘You are not alone.’ ”

Only the national government, with presidential approval, has the authority to designate “free settlement areas,” so the council’s action had no force of law. It did, however, open the way for Johannesburg to apply for such a declaration.

The government’s Free Settlement Board already has before it applications to open six Johannesburg neighborhoods. Nationwide, the agency so far has opened 33 areas to all races.

The 30-year-old Group Areas Act, a pillar of apartheid, restricts residential areas to whites, blacks, mixed-race people or Indians.

President Frederik W. de Klerk said last week that the act would be abolished when Parliament reconvenes next February, but he added that it would be replaced with other measures that will allow South Africans to protect “their own community life” if they wish to do so.

Nearly two years ago, council members in Cape Town voted to request their city’s exemption from the Group Areas Act. The government has yet to act on that request but has opened several areas of Cape Town.

The Johannesburg resolution expressed the council’s desire for a city “in which all people, irrespective of race, color or creed, can own property and live in the residential areas of their choice.”

Earlier Tuesday, officers of the security police raided the offices of the Congress of South African Trade Unions and arrested three union leaders on kidnaping and assault charges after the labor leaders had detained a plainclothes constable stationed outside and paraded him before reporters.

Jay Naidoo, general secretary of the union group, his assistant general secretary, Sydney Mufamadi, and a third union officer were released on bail.

They allegedly had held the policeman, who they said was spying on the union, for several hours at the offices of the union federation in downtown Johannesburg.

The black police constable, trembling and hiding his face with a sweater, told the news conference that he had been assigned to monitor the movements of a Communist Party official who works in the federation building.

At one point, union officers pulled the man’s hands away from his face and grabbed his hair to lift his face for photographers, witnesses said.

Naidoo, sitting next to the constable, told reporters: “We took it upon ourselves to apprehend this person” because “we have absolutely no confidence in the police.”