After 37 Years, S. Africa Ends an Apartheid Law : Segregation: That doesn’t mean separation of the races is over. Towns write new ordinances to perpetuate it.

The apartheid law that for 37 years has allowed white towns to bar blacks from swimming pools, recreation halls, libraries and other public facilities was formally abolished on Monday.

But it was apartheid as usual in this small, conservative white town and dozens like it on the platteland, where town councils have hastily written new ordinances aimed at keeping their facilities all white.

The Bethal Public Library opened to all races for the first time Monday--but people who do not live in the white town must pay a $200 annual fee for a library card. That is several months’ salary for most blacks who, by law, must live in the township of eMzinoni, a mile away.

“Sure, libraries in big cities will be open now, but it will take some time before that happens here in Bethal,” said Fanyi Sithebe, a 26-year-old black insurance agent who was walking near the tidy brick library.

The Bethal city fathers, all nine of whom are members of the right-wing Conservative Party, still reserve the 500-seat municipal meeting room “for the white population group.”

And they have adopted a series of strict regulations for parks and other public facilities, denying admission to anyone who lies down on a park bench, hangs out clothes to dry or “walks, stands, sits or lies in a flower bed.”

“The white people have built and developed this town,” said Paul Marais, a member of the Bethal town council. “Our fear is that they will be swamped by the black majority.”

The Separate Amenities Act, repealed by Parliament in June and officially erased from the statute books Monday, was the first key piece of apartheid legislation eliminated as part of President Frederik W. de Klerk’s sweeping reform program.

Many communities in South Africa have already opened beaches, parks, buses and trains and city-owned resorts to all the races, a process that began in earnest a year ago when De Klerk announced that the act would be repealed. A few towns waited until Monday to open their facilities.

But there is widespread resistance to De Klerk’s reforms in rural areas, especially in the several hundred towns controlled by the Conservative Party, the government’s far-right opposition.

In recent weeks, some have closed public swimming pools and sold others to private companies, which may still legally discriminate. Many of those towns are reserving their facilities for whites by using another pillar of apartheid, the Group Areas Act, which segregates all residential areas.

Sasolburg, south of Johannesburg, has limited access to swimming pools to residents, effectively barring blacks, while other towns have instituted high user fees and deposits for non-residents.

Hernus Kriel, the minister of planning and provincial affairs, has warned town councils “that if they try funny tricks . . . to get around the full implications of the scrapping of this act, they may be taken to court.”

De Klerk has promised that the government will scrap residential segregation at the next session of Parliament, in February.

The African National Congress welcomed the scrapping of the Separate Amenities Act but complained that piecemeal dismantling of apartheid is allowing discrimination to continue. And it called on blacks to “exercise their right of access to facilities” in Conservative-controlled areas.

In Bethal, population 10,500, the town hall still has separate entrances for whites and “non-whites,” and the 35,000 blacks who live in eMzinoni and work in the white town have little access to public facilities.

In an informal opinion poll conducted by the town council last month, 91% of the white residents said they want to maintain whites-only public facilities. So the council passed the law requiring non-residents to pay $400 a year to use the library’s 30,000 books. The fee was arrived at by figuring the cost of four books, the maximum number that may be borrowed at one time.

The librarian, Susan Kemp, said her hands are tied by the new law.

“I can’t do anything about it,” she said. “This is the law that’s been laid down for us.”

Johan de Beer, the town clerk, said he is sure that some black people “are in a position to pay it (the fee), but I doubt they will.”

An interview with De Beer was interrupted by a telephoned bomb threat that forced the evacuation of the town hall.

No blacks applied for library borrowing privileges on Monday. The township of eMzinoni has its own library, but it has only about a sixth of the books that the white library has.

Librarian Ben Maseko said he often needs books that are available only at the white library. But he has to drive 120 miles to integrated libraries in Johannesburg to see them.

“I’d like to become a member of the Bethal library,” he said, “but I can’t afford it.”