Word: botha
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While the speech was in many ways classic Botha, it also turned out to be the most precise statement to date of how far he is willing to bend to accommodate South Africa's disenfranchised black majority. Calling for "cooperative coexistence," he proposed a confederation of geographic and ethnic "units," with each racial group having responsibility for its "own affairs," including education, social welfare and residential areas. On matters of "mutual concern," meaning economic, defense and foreign policy, political structures would be created to permit discussion "without the one group having the right to dominate the others." To those familiar...
...Botha proposed the same formula in Durban on Aug. 15, when he initiated his series of party-congress speeches, it might have been read both at home and abroad as a signal that he was prepared to negotiate meaningful changes in his country's system of apartheid. At the time, prominent South African officials had put out the word that Botha planned to announce a package of unprecedented reforms, and expectations were high. Instead of demonstrating flexibility, however, Botha delivered a finger-wagging sermon that warned foreign governments not to "push us too far." His intransigence only hardened demands...
Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, one of the country's more moderate black leaders, dismissed the Port Elizabeth speech as "bitterly disappointing." Dr. Nthato Motlana, a senior civic leader in Soweto, South Africa's largest black township, branded Botha's remarks an "absolute waste of time." Leaders of the outlawed African National Congress, delivering their assessment from Zambia, called the proposals "meaningless amendments of the apartheid system," while the Sowetan, South Africa's largest black daily, editorialized: "The unified South Africa only reflects another glorified system of homelands . . . (Apartheid) cannot be dressed up in false colors. We are not that...
...Botha was scalded by the poor reviews. "More than any other national leader, I went out of my way to create an attitude of justice toward other groups," he said to party members in Port Elizabeth two days after the speech. "There is no sign of any appreciation for this spirit of justice." Paradoxically, both statements are true. Botha has been more of a reformer than any of his predecessors: he has eliminated such petty indignities of apartheid as bans on marriage and sex across the color line, and he has introduced a tricameral legislature that gives limited powers...
...Botha's Durban speech failed to live up to its advance billing remains a subject of intense speculation. The initial explanation was that there had been a right-wing rebellion within his Cabinet. Diplomats, businessmen and journalists reject that theory, however, noting that the high-level officials who previewed the speech stressed that it had already been approved by a special Cabinet committee. One top official told TIME that the reforms would become "government policy" unless Botha himself revised the draft. South Africans suggest three more plausible explanations. Botha may have changed his mind at the last minute...