South Africa--Color It Gray : A Returning Journalist Finds No News Is Bad News

CAPE TOWN, South Africa â€”  To return to South Africa from abroad after six months’ absence is to find a country of muted voices and images.

The public opposition is bound and gagged, with no fewer than 18 organizations effectively banned in recent months. Much of what is going on in the teeming black areas of South Africa is known only to those who live there. That is not new. What is new is that the public at-large have become used to their ignorance and seldom complain. Pretoria’s view of reality prevails.

The state of emergency, now two years old, has been effective in its strategy--giving the authorities a free hand to deal with “unrest� and cutting the world off from independent information. Less and less is disclosed about South Africa’s business dealings with the world, because of the need for secrecy in sanctions-busting. The government has even stopped releasing key foreign tourism statistics for fear of a backlash in the countries concerned.

There is tension and ferment beneath the enforced calm in South Africa. The jails are one-third overpopulated. A record number of people face the gallows in Pretoria, many for politically related crimes. Lengthy treason and terrorism trials rumble into their second and third years, costing the public millions of dollars. Accused persons on political charges defy judicial authority and disrupt courts by singing slogans--and some have been jailed for contempt of court.

Defiance is also apparent in the rash of slogan-painting on walls, for example calling for clemency for the Sharpeville Six, sentenced to death for a political killing in the Transvaal Province. There are counter slogans, too, such as this one that was splashed on a wall not far from my home: “Albie Sachs, the African National Congress’ one-armed bandit�--a ghoulish reference to a former Cape Town lawyer and ANC theoretician who lost his arm in a car bomb incident in Maputo, Mozambique. Some of the left-wing wall painters get caught and jailed; the right-wingers seem remarkably undisturbed by brushes with the law.

Trade unions still organize strikes, celebrate May Day, pressure employers and the government--but their leaders are detained or facing charges in court, and legislation is pending to curb the unions’ industrial power. Mass rallies are virtually impossible because there is an absolute ban on gatherings outdoors.

The unrest that has rocked the country since 1984 is apparently subsiding, but that has not ended the state of emergency or guerrilla activity, or the underlying bitterness of many blacks. The growing toll of civilians and activists injured in explosions, inside South Africa and in neighboring states, is testimony to the unresolved clash between white power and black power. With legitimate dissent circumscribed and mass action virtually impossible, the prospect is an increase in acts of mindless terror.

The critical task of reaching a durable South African settlement remains unattended. The government continues along a cautious road of endless discussion about constitutional reform. Black Africans, previously denied access to any central political authority, are vaguely promised shared power at executive level--but as junior part-ners. They will certainly not be able to use their combined vote to change the South African order. Black leaders with any credibility are skeptical or hostile toward the government’s plans.

Moves to reform apartheid are couched in qualification and confusion. Gone are the pass laws, under which thousands of blacks were jailed each week for being illegally in “white� areas. But revamped squatter laws, in some respects, have the same effect. Some residential areas are to be opened to all races, but in others, segregation is to be enforced even more strictly.

The confusions have a dual effect. The apparent “enlightenment� evidenced by the end of pass laws makes the world believe that things are changing significantly in South Africa. The negative side, seen for example in the squatter laws, is intended to blunt attacks by the Conservative Party. The conservative force has grown so impressively that there is a real prospect that a grouping to the right of the ruling National Party could take power at a future election. That is perhaps my most powerful impression after being away from the country for six months.

Meanwhile the gold-based economy, Pretoria’s reliable friend in pulling it out of trouble, takes the strain wearily. It is hampered by government waste on ideological schemes, disinvestment and sanctions, many years of double-digit inflation, a sluggish world gold price and the cost of a bloated civil service. Business and political leaders warily watch developments in the United States, fearing that a win by Michael S. Dukakis could tip the United States more in favor of sanctions and disinvestment.

Yet the essential paradox of South Africa remains: The situation is intolerable but it won’t change. President Pieter W. Botha’s administration, backed by a powerful army, weathers world hostility and internal unrest, and trundles on regardless--detaining people, suspending newspapers, making incursions into neighboring states. Sometimes it talks peace with neighbors, sometimes war. Dissenting South Africans, and the world, can do little about it.

It will take a basic change in the power structure, such as an economic disaster, or far greater black resolve in order to transform South Africa.