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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, AUGUST 16, 1985
PAGE 11
What � human dilemma!
And that's just the beginning.
It is into this
crucible that communist-backed forces have moved, hoping to capitalize on
what they see is their opportunity to effect a revolution.
Leaders of the radical groups (the ANC and United Democratic Front) had
already dismissed ahead of time any concessions the President might have
made. For them, gaining power through total abdication by the government
is the only issue. Zulu Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, on the other hand, while
also expressing disappointment, said he advocates some form of power
sharing, adding that South Africa "is a completely different kettle of fish
from other places where the armed struggle has worked, such as Zimbabwe. We
don't have settlers. We have an indigenous white population which is as
indigenous as Americans in America. They have got nowhere else to go and if
you put them� against the wall they will scorch the earth....
�
"If you ask me, black disunity is the biggest problem," added Buthelezi,
while on a visit to Israel. "Most ofthe deaths happening now, the burning
of people that we have seen, is not being done by the government, but by
black people to other black people. You have got an incipient civil war
going on already. My brothers and sisters in the UDF state that they would
like to make the country 'ungovernable' and they syncronize their moves
with the ANC. I think it is nonsensical to regard the killing of blacks by
blacks as a 'liberation struggle.'"
Mr. Botha's speech almost certainly guarantees that the U.S. Senate will
approve a first-rung-of-the-ladder sanctions bill in September. Senator
Edward Kennedy said the speech "dashed all real hopes that the South
African government is ready to change its racist ways." Congress, he said,
must act quickly to pass the sanctions bill.
Even if President Reagan
vetoes it, there will probably be enough strength to override it. Then, in
another year "unless there is significant progress away from apartheid,"
the sanctions will be strengthened.
A few days ago, one of the leading advocates of sanctions, Representative
Stephen J. Solarz of New York, met with President Botha in Pretoria. He
said afterward that what Mr. Botha told him showed no change "that could be
seen•..as significant by the blacks in this country or by the world." Mr.
Solarz was stunned when President Botha compared ANC leader Nelson Mandela,
serving a life sentence for sabotage, to convicted Nazi war criminal Rudolf
Hess, who is still held in Berlin's Spand_au prison. American liberals and
civil rights leaders tend to look on Mandela as sort of a Martin Luther
King, and the ANC as a mirror image of, say, the Southern Christian Leader
ship Conference.
After his trip to Pretoria, Solarz went to Lusaka,
Zambia, to embrace (literally) the leaders of the ANC at their headquarters
in exile.
The August 23 NATIONAL REVIEW emphasized the flaw in viewing what's happen
ing in South Africa in terms of the U.S. experience, as opposed to what is
happening elsewhere in Africa:
The South Africans�� dealing with lunch-counter sit-ins.
On May 6, the African National Congress broadcast the following
message to South Africa, in English, from Communist-held Ethio
pia: "Ambushes must be prepared for policemen and soldiers••.with
the aim of capturing weapons from them. Our people must also
manufacture homemade bombs and petrol bombs..•. Our people must