Soweto - continued from page 7

Soweto

continued from page 7

25 per cent of the shacks have electricity and fewer have hot running water. Even then, no one owns their shack or the few fashionable homes occupied by the tiny black elite- the government owns everything and can force anyone to move at any time.

It is bleak in Soweto, and usually the heavy, constant police repression keeps the violence turned inward. People drink heavily, robberies are common, and there were more than 800 murders reported in Soweto last year. During the rebellion - for a change - the pent up frustration and rage were directed outward.

In Alexandra, another ghetto area outside Johannesburg where heavy fighting took place, a black activist took a French correspondent aside and told him why people were torching sports facilities and liquor outlets, as well as white administrative buildings: "We don't want football stadiums and beer halls. We want schools and education. Don't think it's just school kids doing the burning. It's organization." That is white South Africa's nightmare - an organized black rebellion, and worst of all, one that is armed. The Soweto uprising frightened whites in Johannesburg into a flurry of gun-buying. The government was terrified that the fighting in Alexandra would spill over into the fashionable white suburbs of Kew and Bramley Gardens.

Even though South Africa already has the largest and best equipped army in sub-Saharan Africa and is well on its way to developing nuclear weapons (if it doesn't already have them), the apartheid regime knows it can't guard its border with Mozambique, occupy Namibia, rescue Rhodesia, and put down black rebellions at home -alone. South Africa wants an even firmer political and military alliance with the West, with NATO, and with the United States. After the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, the apartheid regime faced a crisis in international support. Many African countries were gaining their independence from former European colonial powers, and after the Sharpeville incident, many in the West began to express doubts that South Africa's white minority regime could survive.
Western investment in South Africa began to slow down as investors grew wary.
Then a consortium of U.S. banks-led by Chase Manhattan-put together a $60 million loan package for the apartheid regime. It was a gesture of confidence in the regime, and it stabilized the South African government. with the help of the U.S.-weathered the storm and went on to prosper.

Now Vorster is hoping once more that the West, especially the U.S., will bail him out. He was encouraged by Kissinger's Lusaka speech, delivered on his recent African tour, which hit hard on Rhodesia but left South Africa unscathed. He was very pleased that Kissinger agreed to meet with him in West Germany, and he has said he would be honored to meet with President Ford.

Now Soweto has erupted, threatening to upset Vorster's plans. The situation has polarized rapidly in South Africa. The U.S. will no longer be able to maintain its $ 1.6 billion in investment in South Africa and sit quietly by. Apartheid is, once again, out in the open, and the lives are being drawn.

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Steve Talbot is a writer-editor for Internews, the alternative radio and print international news service based in Berkeley, California. He specializes in southern Africa.