Thursday, Oct. 3, 1985
Nation/World
University Daily Kansan
11
Botha accuses Reagan of hypocrisy
United Press International
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — President Pietter Bota said yesterday he would not repeal the Group Areas Act, a pillar of apartheid that dictates where blacks can live, and he accused President Reagan of hypocrisy for condemning segregation in South Africa.
In an address to his ruling National Party's regional congress in Port Elizabeth, Botha said Western nations were demanding too much change too quickly and were using double standards to judge white-ruled South Africa.
The world, Botha said, wanted South Africa to "abdicate and create a state as was done elsewhere in Africa, where the white minority is overwhelmed without structures to protect its birthright."
The president denied that the Group Areas Act — which prevents blacks, mixed race or "colorized," and Indians from living in white residential areas, assigns specific areas to each race group and forbids non-whites from owning property in white areas — was discriminatory.
S. African students skip school, protest apartheid
The Group Areas Act—along with the Pass Laws and the Population Registration laws, which restrict the
The Associated Press
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa Thousands of black students boycotted classes on the first day of the new school term yesterday in a protest against apartheid.
Police reported scattered isolated rioting but no deaths.
In Soweto, the nation's largest black area, southwest of Johannesburg, students roamed the dusty streets as soldiers aboard armored personnel carriers took up positions in school yards.
No students attended classes at
174 of the 7,000 black schools in South Africa, and attendance appeared to vary from 5 percent to 95 percent at others, said Job Schoeman, spokesman for the national Department for Education and Training.
movement of non-white - is the basis for the white-minority government's policy of apartheid, or racial segregation.
He said it was impossible to know how many of the 1.73 million black students in South Africa had joined the boycott, which also protested the deployment of police and army units in black areas torn by 13 months of riots against white rule.
A government commission last month recommended abolition of the Pass laws. Legislation barring interracial marriage and sexual relations was lifted earlier this year.
"It is not discrimination to protect
black, colored and Indian communities in their own areas and to give them property rights which they did not have before," he said.
"In the United States, President Ronald Reagan, who has much to say in his pronouncement way about apartheid, is shoving Indians into reservations and entrusting all the affairs
Reagan has announced a limited series of sanctions against South Africa to protest apartheid, and a number of other Western nations have taken similar action.
affecting their lives to a single bureau."
"We are dealing with a hypocritical Western world." Botha said to thunderous applause from the floor of the congress. "We will follow the road of justice but not to the point of suicide, and the sooner we tell them that the better."
In his opening remarks to the congress Monday, Botta said he would admit blacks to the President's Council, the country's highest advisory body and part of the three-Parliament system of government that excludes the majority black population. Black leaders Tuesday condemned the offer as inadequate.
Botha made his remarks amid another outbreak of violence.
Police said a black died in the hospital after he was wounded by officers firing at blacks who were throwing stones in Worcester, north of Cape Town. Eight blacks were injured in firebombings and stonings by other blacks during the day, police said.
Vietnam veterans speak against bill
United Press International
WASHINGTON — Testifying against a bill to sharply restrict smoking in federal buildings, a spokesman for Vietnam veterans said yesterday they were less concerned about the hazards of tobacco than Agent Orange.
Vietnam veterans who seek help at Veterans Administration hospitals and counseling centers, which would be covered by the proposed law, think their physical and emotional problems exceed the "claimed hazards of smoking," said J. Thomas Burch, chairman of the National Vietnam Veterans Coalition.
"They're more concerned about the effects of Agent Orange." Burch told a Senate panel in a hearing on the bill, which is called The Non-Smokers Rights Act of 1985
Most of the other witnesses, including a spokesman for the American Medical Association,
spoke in favor of the bill, which would restrict smoking in all federal buildings, including U.S. embassies abroad.
Burch said the bill would put a disproportionate burden on Vietnam veterans, 67 percent of whom are smokers, the largest proportion of any segment in U.S. society.
He said many Vietnam veterans "developed the taste for tobacco during their service in the military under highly stressful conditions. Trauma and hardship associated with Vietnam service linger today and smoking, in many cases, helps these veterans cope."
Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, who presided at the hearing before a civil service subcommittee, said he did not doubt a large share of Vietnam veterans smoked and suggested they were encouraged to adopt the habit by government policies, such as packing cigarettes in field rations.
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