To be all things to all people – that's the government's new strategy on the Group Areas Act, unfolded yesterday by the National Party-dominated President's Council. In its long-delayed report on Swap areas the constitutional committee of the President's Council said it believed the principles of the Group Areas Act should be retained.
However, it recommended that local authorities and new township developers be given a choice of having open or racially exclusive residential areas. The pattern of "own" residential areas was "a reality" and formed part of the basic pattern for the ordering of South African society", it said.
But an element of flexibility of choice should be built into the system to allow open areas where local authorities accepted this, the committee said. It also recommended the repeal of the Separate Amenities Act, which governs facilities such as parks and transport, The Conservative Labour and Progressive Federal Party members of the committee refused to sign the report.
The office of the state president issued a statement saying it would study the report after the parliamentary debate and make its general position known as soon as possible. However, the government's all things to all people strategy is already evident. By keeping the Group Areas Act in force in residential areas, Nationalist leaders, particularly President PW Botha, will be able to say to the party faithful and potential rightwing voters that the policy has not changed. Separate residential areas and "own" schools are still government policy.
In spite of "adaptations", Nationalist policy has not changed the party leadership will be able to say. But the call in the report for some open residential areas, the scrapping of the Group Areas Act in business and industrial zones and the ending of the Separate Amenities Act will enable the public relations people w tell diplomats, foreign visitors and the press that racial segregation is on the way out. In a sense, both will be right. This new government strategy is remarkably similar to the tactics adopted when it started changing its sports policies from strictly enforced segregation to open sport.
For years, Nationalist leaders, led by the then minister of sport Dr Piet Koornhof, ducked and weaved as it dragged reluctant white voters away from the time when Dr Hendrik Verwoerd banned Maori rugby players and John Vorster barred the MCC's Basil D'Oliviera from playing here.
The public relations people could tell the world that South Africa was moving away from racism in sport and the National Party members could go onto the platteland and tell rightwing whites that there was no change. It was so confusing at times that PFP leader Frederik van Zyl Slabbert once said the government's sports policies were like a chameleon out-of step with itself.
Nevertheless, in spite of the HNP split, partly because of sport, the sports policy did eventually change and racial controls were removed, although by the time it did South Africa had been expelled from most of world sport.
In a sense, therefore, the strategy – worked for the National Party. Why not try it again? The President's Council Committee for Constitutional Affairs certainly seems to think they can. Reading between the lines of the President's Council report it seems apparent that Nationalist members of the committee realise the Group Areas Act has to go eventually. This is particularly because of the views of black people.
Yet "among the majority of whites, and also among the other population groups, it is feared that the abolition of group areas will lead to this phenomenon (of 'invasion and succession') occurring on a large scale and some residential areas being swamped, particularly now that section 10 of the Blacks (Urban Areas) Consolidation Act, 1945, has been repealed," the committee says. With this perception of the problem, the committee has recommended, New Republic Party-style, a system of local option in terms of which local residents can decide, possibly by referendum, whether they want to open up their areas to all races.
The possible procedures, structures and methods of doing this are examined at some length, but these are largely technical details. Even if the Group Areas Act was discriminatory, even if black people were unfairly relocated away from the cities, even if blacks are "highly emotional" about the law, "the process of proclaiming group areas is almost complete; therefore all that remains to be done is to consolidate the existing position".
The basic issue now, for the committee, is to devise a system for some residential areas to be open to all races. Once whites get used to the idea and market forces in property operate effectively, this process will continue. For the government, it will be all very convenient. It will sit on the fence, portraying an image of fairness as it arbitrates over the conflicting pressures, and it will be all things w all people.
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
