The Michigan Daily-Saturday, May 27, 1978-Page 11
Vorster defends National Party
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa
(AP) - South Africa's ruling National
Party celebrated 30 years of political
power yesterday, savior of a way of life
to its supporters and fount of racist evil
to its foes.
John Vorster, South Africa's prime
minister for the past 12 years, says his
party's greatest success has been that
it "held the fort for so long against ex-
ternal political pressure."
The Nationalists, dominated by the
Dutch-descended Afrikaners, came to
power in 1948 and have ruled ever since,
systematically implementing their in-
ternationally condemned policy of
apartheid, or separate racial develop-
ment.
"THE ROAD ahead is difficult," Vor-
ster said in a newspaper interview
published here. "There are no instant
solutions which can be offered."
He described the government's policy
of restricting the citizenship of the
nation's 19 million blacks to rural,
tribal homelands outside "white" South
Africa as "a great deed by the National
Party."
The homelands constitute 13 percent
of the nation's entire land area. Blacks
have been denied all political rights in
the rest of the country, which has been
declared a preserve for South Africa's
4.4 million whites.
MANY OF the party's opponents,
black and white, view the Nationalist's
leadership as a national tragedy.
"We see heartless, cruel enforcement
of pass laws restricting black
movement on our men and women,
dispossession of property and the im-
position of inferior education," said
Dr. Nthatho Motlana, a community
leader in the nearby segregated black
township of Soweto.
"We see a very catalogue of vicious
measures imposed on a defenseless
community in pursuit of a mirage of
racial purity in a pure white state at the
bottom of a black continent." He spoke
in an interview ina black newspaper.
THE NATIONALISTS succeeded the
United Party of Prime Minister Jan
Smuts, under whose rule racial
segregation was widespread but not en-
shrined in law, a task the National Par-
ty embarked on with zeal once it gained
power.
The United Party advocated
separation of white and black areas,
but with representation for all in the
central government, a policy rejected
by the Nationalists.
Three decades of Nationalist gover-
nment have brought the whites of South
Africa one of the highest standards of
living in the world. Over the years it has
also built up the most advanced in-
dustrial and technical society in Africa
and uplifted the 2.5 million Afrikaners it
represents politically and
economically.
"I MAKE bold to say that the
National Party will remain in power as
long as it sticks to its basic policy," said
Vorster. "The policy is designed to give
each population group a place in the
sun."
"It takes some doing to achieve this
in a multinational country where people
have different languages, customs and
beliefs and also different levels of
development."
"I do not fear the future," he said.
"Not on the economic level, in spite of
problems and boycotts, and not on the
military level."
The South African leader said the
army would have to guard the nation's
borders for as long as Communist
nations arm black nationalist guerrillas
and "continue their strategy of world
domination.".
I HAVE not the slightest doubt we can
withstand this onslaught. We have the
human material. We have the skilled
and dedicated people and the people
with the necessary brains," Vorster
said.
The deterioration of race relations
under the National Party has been
marked by increasing violence and
bloodshed - security forces massacred
69 blacks at Sharpsville in 1960, black
militants engaged in a widespread
sabotage campaign in the early 1960s,
and black student unrest in Soweto in
1976 flared into the nation's worst race
rioting ever.
The local press this weekhas been full
of opposition attacks on the record of
the Nationalists.
THE PARTY'S foes accuse the
government of stripping millions of
blacks of their citizenship and
uprooting some 2 million blacks from
their homes in an effort to build a
clearly defined wall of separation bet-
ween black and white.
They also charge that mounting cen-
sorship and increased use of detention
without trial is bringing South Africa
ever closer to the repression of a
police state.
The Black Sash, a movement of white
women dedicated to easing the plight of
blacks in a white-ruled society, sum-
med up the situation as they see it this
way:
"In 1948 we had hope and the respect
and friendship of the world. In 1978 we
are a divided nation in a fractures coun-
try at odds with the world."
SIDNEY LUMET'S 1974
MURDER ON THE
ORIENT EXPRESS
Albert Finney, Jacqueline Bisset, Sean
Cannery, Michael York, Vanessa Red-
grave, Ingrid Bergman, Lauren Ba-
call, Anthany Perkins, Richard Mid-
mark, Jahn Gieglund & Martin Balsam
in an all-star who-dun-it based on
Agatha Christie's Best Seller. IN
COLOR.
SUN: WAY DOWN EAST
(Griffith Silent) FREE at 7:30
TONIGHT at 7:30 & 9:30
OLD ARCH. AUD.
CINEMA GUILD
$1.50
The Ann Arbor Film Cooperative
presents at MLB 3
Saturday, May 27
TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT
(Howard Hawks, 1944) 7 ONLY-MLB 3
A cynical Caribbean seaman (Humphrey Bogart) is forced by circumstances and stubborness into the
camp of the French resistance against Fascist Vichy. Luren Bacell's debut made her a star. A sus-
penseful, sultry script by WilliamFaulkner and Jules Furthman of the Hemingway novel raised theatre
temperatures 20-degrees as Bogie and Baby sparred playfully like jsded cats. One of Bogart's
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THE BIG SLEEP
(Howard Hawks, 1946) 9 ONLY-MLB 3
A detective (Humphrey Bogart) is hired by an aging, wealthy patriarch to investigate the possible
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recalling one scene after another from the original. Screenplay by William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett,
and Jules Furthman. With Elijah Cook, Jr., MarthaVickers, DorothyMolqne. Aclassic.
TUESDAY: Anthony Mann's T-MEN." i -