Johannesburg 6-4-86 1600 Killed In Violence

By Bob Van Leer
(Johannesberg, South Africa, June 4, 1986) - Even with "jet lag" and being nine hours ahead of Gold Beach time we arose at a fairly respectable 9 a.m. and had time for a short tour of Sandton Centre which connects to our hotel, Sandton Sun (which is rated 5 star). A publicity blurb on the shopping center says, "Sandton Centre itself hosts about 250 merchants in shops which for sheer class and variety probably cannot be surpassed anywhere in the world." However, in spite of what the publicity releases say, prices in the Centre are definitely not cheap.

After lunch at the hotel our entire group (14) went on a tour to Gold Reef City. This is a played out gold mine made over into a tourist attraction by a consortium of 41 Johannesburg businesses. It was a quite interesting tour going down into the old mine, through the tunnels and finally watching a red hot gold ingot being poured. Betty and I both posed with two gold bars worth $137,000 each.
  In the evening we got down to work, starting with a reception with members of the South Africa Foundation, the organization arranging our tour, and representatives of' SATOUR, the South African government tourist office. A special speaker was Percy Qoboza, a black journalist who is editor of the City Press, a black newspaper in Johannesburg.
  Qoboza studied in the U. S. at Harvard for a year under a Nieman Fellowship. He was fairly upbeat, but said that everyone except a few lunatics understand that a new political situation is inevitable. He said a few almost-kind words about President P. W. Botha for saying that "apartheid", the system of segregation, is outmoded and outdated. He did, however, criticize government restrictions on freedoms.
  On "disinvestment" in South Af'rica he pointed out that it would disrupt programs such as the Nieman Fellowships, on which he placed a high value. Qoboza said he has hopes it will all come together at some stage or he would be teaching in the the U. S. instead of staying in South Africa. But he did point out the date of June 16, the tenth anniversary of riots in Soweto, the black city next to Johannesburg, and said there is going to be a confrontation then and more people are going to die.
Dean Pottinger, the white assistant director of the Sunday Times, agreed that there has to be a change in the status quo but there is still hope for the future. He felt that government restrictions on the press will likely increase if the government continues its policy of repression of blacks. Both Pottinger and Qoboza agreed that the South Africa based foreign correspondents have been doing a good job.
  After the reception we had dinner with Jim Smith, Associated Press bureau chief for South Africa, and his wife, Charlene. She is a free lancer arranging television production, mainly for the Canadian Broadcasting Company, but also for U. S. net-works. Smith said the United Democratic front is a national coalition of 700 member anti-apartheid groups banded together to boycott a new constitution voted on in 1983 which gave some political representation to Coloreds and Indians but excluded Blacks entirely. The constitution was approved but with limited Colored and Indian participation.
  The new group and the new coalition is the broadest revolt yet seen. Smith said the government likes to understate violence but by the government's own figures more than 1600, mostly black, have been killed in the recent violence, about half by government security forces and the rest "black on black" violence.
  Smith said that the violence is political, not tribal, and about 800 homes of black policemen who work for the government have been burned down since 1984. At first the banned African National Conference tried to make the country ungovernable but now it is trying to create "people's power", setting up courts and defense committees.
  Smith said he didn't think that U. S. sanctions against South Africa would be terribly effective but the threat of imposing them had some effect. In this he was disagreed with by his wife, Charlene, who is a native South African. She said the government changes being made now are only because of pressure, She said that sanctions and disengagements do work. She explained that South Africans are disinvesting themselves, liquidating their assets as a hedge to get out of the country, and because of this property values, "have gone to hell".
  Smith said that last year South Africa had a minus growth. Our scheduled tour to Soweto has been called off because of possible danger to whites visiting there. But I would still like to go and am trying to get a black guide to take me there. So far, I have crossed a couple of palms with folding money and we will see if this produces results.