Durban 6-12-86 State of Emergency

By Bob Van Leer
(Durban, South Africa, June 12, 1986) - Today started with a quiet trip to Zululand but wound up with the major development of the day: a declaration of a State of Emergency by the government, roughly equivalent to declaring Martial Law in the United States. President P. W. Botha declared the State of Emergency effective at midnight last night and before dawn police swooped down and arrested activists.

With the declaration a number of normal civil liberties are suspended and the police are able to make arrests and detention without the normal warrants. According to the newspapers, there have not been a whole lot of arrests for a large country, but there appears to be no accurate account. According to one report, the entire staff of a radical opposition newspaper was "detained". For most of our activities the Emergency has no practical effect.
  Indeed, without reading the newspaper, there is no way to tell if anything is different. But there has been one change in our schedule. I had arranged for a Zulu consultant to take us tomorrow morning for a tour of the black residential townships of Durban. He called this evening and said we had better call off the tour, saying, "If you go into the townships now you will surely be arrested."
  The South African currency, the Rand, dropped again to 36.0 cents to the American dollar. When we bought some Rand in Gold Beach before coming here the rate was just over 44 cents. This is a devaluation of 18 percent in about a month; and there doesn't appear to be any end in sight to the problems. We had dinner with F. Martin, a high government official of Natal state, roughly equivalent to governor. Martin is the second speaker we have had who appears to have no real understanding of the attitude in the U. S. today. Martin told us that if South Africa gets a vast infusion of capital, then reforms can accelerate and the U. S. can best help South Africa by massive investment. He doesn't seem to understand at all that there is not a prayer of such U. S. investment under the present circumstances. Martin is the last of 18 formal speakers we have heard, plus a number of informal talks. By now we are about speeched out.
  The last few days we spend in southern Africa will be more informal with more sightseeing. Zululand Tour The tour to Zululand today was educational; about a two-hour drive from Durban through the sugar cane growing area, and they have lots of cane, mile after mile of fields. It is a pretty countryside, green with rolling hills, and cane planted on anything not too steep to fall off of. It is a tidy area; roadsides are clean and the dwelling areas are not junked up. This is more what we had expected to see in Africa. Dwellings tend to be beehive shaped thatched huts and the native women walk with large burdens balanced on top of their heads. Our tour guide said that few of them have back problems and there may be a connection.
  We wound up for lunch at a Zulu kraal set up for the benefit of tourists. While it has an artificial atmosphere, I looked into a couple of the grass huts and people are living inside. This is Zulu country and these are interesting people. It is the largest ethnic group in South Africa, six million in a country of 30 million, and headed by an hereditary chief, Mangosuthu Buthelezi.
  The Zulus lost two key battles to the whites, to the Voortrekkers in 1848, and the British in 1878, but the tribe still survived as a functioning unit and remains so today. The Zulu spokesman last night made it plain that there will be no deal worked out for South Africa without participation of the Zulus. The Zulus, incidentally, are not in favor of the current campaigns in the U. S. for sanctions against South Africa and 'disinvestment".
  Tomorrow we fly back to Johannesburg and travel by bus to Sun City in Bophuthatswana, one of the semi-independent black countries set up by South Africa.