Economy of First All-Black Region Is Insignificant - South Africa is trying to justify apartheid by developing the economy of the Transkei, the first self-governing African Bantustan, but so far the economy of the Transkei is a bust. Under the theory of apartheid, eight independent Bantustans or tribal homelands, created out of 13% of South Africa's land, will someday absorb the great bulk of the country's black Africans. Whites, who are now outnumbered four to one, would then outnumber blacks in the rest of South Africa. Once in the majority, the whites believe, they would have the moral and democratic right to run their own country. But development in the Transkei, the pride of the South African government, is so sluggish and insignificant that it's hard to believe it will ever attract masses of African workers from the industrial towns of the white areas. The Transkei seems destined to remain a dull and poor rural area that young men yearn to leave behind...

The extraordinary growth of the South African economy is undermining the theory of apartheid and, in the long run, perhaps threatening its practice. The economy is doing this by drawing Africans into the big industrial cities and increasing their skills and wages. But, though the theory of apartheid is foundering under the impact of economic growth, there has been no change so far in the practice of apartheid. In fact, life for an African is as cruel as ever, in some cases, crueler. But, if the theory goes, can the practice stay for long? There are conflicting guesses about this. Some liberals believe economic prosperity will bring whites and blacks together in a way that will break down racial barriers. But others, more cynical, believe the white rulers of the country would rather choke the economy than let a barrier fall. In the meantime, the white politicians have promised the white voters both prosperity and apartheid and are busily juggling the economy and the race laws in hopes of keeping both, however contradictory they may be...

Nation's Growing Trade Leads to Close Contacts With Area's Black Officials - A white cab driver recently answered a call to the exclusive Langham Hotel in Johannesburg and was amazed to see the doorman lead a black man to his cab. But the driver shrugged and figured the Langham Hotel knew what it was doing. The well-dressed black man must be one of those foreign diplomats he had read about in the papers. The doorman instructed the driver to take the guest to the airport, and the cab quickly headed that way. A policeman stopped the cab a few blocks later. "Isn't this a first class taxi?" he asked, a euphemistic way of demanding why a white taxi had a black man in the back. The driver looked him in the eye. "This gentleman is a VIP from the Langham Hotel," the driver said. The policeman snapped back to attention and saluted. "Carry on," he said. The cab took its passenger on to the airport. This incident was hardly more than a prick in the enormous bastion of white supremacy and racial apartheid in South Africa. But it's worth recording simply because it could never have happened in South Africa a year or two ago... [This is one of a number of articles on South Africa written by Stanley Meisler, Times bureau chief in Nairobi, Kenya, his headquarters covering sub-Sahara Africa.]

Encouraging Signs of Change - An outsider can fume about the cruelty and immorality of South African apartheid, but there's little he can do to change it. That cold fact about his impotence is hard for an outsider to accept, especially when his emotions are wrought by the sight of an uncaring and unfeeling government trampling on the rights and lives of little people, both black and white, for the glory of an abhorrent race theory. Yet unless one accepts the truth of his weakness, an outsider will look too far and too high and fail to see what few, minor but real ways are left for trying to change South Africa. The power of South Africa must be analyzed with cold logic, not emotion, and the possibilities for change must be analyzed the same way. Three facts about the South African situation must be faced. First, the white South Africans who oppose apartheid and speak in the same liberal idiom as many outsiders have little influence and less power. At the moment, their way offers no hope for the future. South Africans like Alan Paton and Helen Suzman are courageous, honest and exciting people who deserve their worldwide renown and respect...

Caltex Petroleum Corp. is placing elaborate advertisements in newspapers and magazines here to tell South Africans about its search for South African oil. Caltex is 50% owned by Standard Oil Co. of California, San Francisco, and by Texaco Inc., New York. "Ahead of Caltex," the ads say, "lies lonely years of search and, perhaps disappointment - or the discovery which will free South Africa, for all time, from dependence on outside oil supplies. "Caltex means business - and the business is South African oil." This Caltex campaign is a dramatic illustration of how American business grows more deeply involved in South Africa every year despite all the protests by student groups and liberal organizations in the United States that American investment, bolsters apartheid. Sometimes American firms seem embarrassed by the involvement. Not one, for example, volunteered to testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in 1966 when it had hearings on American policy toward South Africa. But profits are so good that the firms swallow any embarrassment, do more business in South Africa, and, as the Caltex campaign shows, even boast about it to South Africans...

Gained Rapport Mainly Through Vitality, Wit - The powers of his office are so limited that an American Vice President can bring Africa only good will and homilies and take back the same. That must be understood when trying to assess Vice President Humphrey's African tour. In his visit to nine countries in 12 days, Humphrey offered no new foreign aid projects, wrought no changes in American policy toward Africa, and solved no African problems. But he did show a flair for establishing rapport quickly with Africans, who liked his brashness, enthusiasm, vitality, frankness, wit, and interest. Without that rapport, the trip would have been lackluster and tepid, just like that of the last high-ranking American tour in Africa, Nicholas D. Katzenbach's, the phlegmatic undersecretary of state. Humphrey's trip seems to have been planned with two goals. The first was to demonstrate to African leaders that the United States, despite all its preoccupation with Vietnam, still cares about Africa. The second was to excite a little interest back home about American nonmilitary agencies abroad, like the Peace Corps, which is having trouble recruiting young people to its ranks, and the Agency for International Development, which is having trouble recruiting congressmen to its budget...

Motion Picture Assn. Expected to Send Representative to Nairobi for Talks - Kenya officials and film distributors expect the Motion Picture Assn. of America to send a representative to Nairobi soon to try to negotiate an end to the dispute that has closed Nairobi's main English-language movie houses for almost a month. The dispute has centered on the attempt by the government here to put distribution of films in the hands of African businessmen. In the past, 20th Century-Fox distributed 70% of the English-language movies shown in Kenya. All Indian movies and the rest of the English movies were distributed by smaller operators, none African. The antagonists in the dispute are the Kenya Film Corp., an agency set up by the Kenya government, and the Motion Picture Export Assn. of America, the exporting arm of the MPAA. At stake is $2 million a year. That's the estimate of gross rentals that English-language movies earned in Kenya last year. Of this, about $1.3 million went to American producers as royalties. The rest was shared by British producers and by distributors in Kenya...

In the past, novels in Afrikaans, the language of the Dutch-descended whites of South Africa, were mainly pastoral, patriotic and puritanical. Now two Afrikaner novelists are writing books that break the line. The Afrikaner literary set likes to describe the new novels as "the renaissance in Afrikaans prose." That's overblowing it, but the novels do have significance, for politics as well as art. The two novelists are Etienne Leroux and Andre P. Brink, who call themselves the "sestigers," the men of the 60s. They explore sex, evil and decadence, and sometimes treat their Afrikaner characters with irony. For Africa's Old South Africa in the 17th century. It simplified in centuries of use and changed under the influence of English, French, German and Portuguese. By the turn of the 20th century, it was spoken by most of the Dutch-descended Boers in South Africa, but it was considered a kitchen language. The official languages were English and Dutch. No one wrote books in Afrikaans...

Natural Homelands Theory Doesn't Apply to South Africans of Mixed Ancestry - The theorists of South African apartheid, with all their rationalizing and moralizing, have failed to rationalize and moralize the place of the coloreds in apartheid society. The coloreds of South Africa are the people of mixed ancestry. One out of every 10 South Africans is classified as colored. Their skin color shades from yellow to tan. Their features sometimes seem Negroid, sometimes Asiatic, sometimes European. Their plight weighs heavily on those whites who feel the conscience of their country. "Even Verwoerd could not fit these people into his logic," says one influential leader of the ruling Nationalist Party, referring to the late Prime Minister Hendrik F. Verwoerd, who liked to indulge in long, logical expositions of apartheid. The theorists of apartheid claim that South Africa will some day be divided into a number of independent homelands, each for a different race or culture. But where is the natural homeland for the almost 2 million coloreds? Their coloredstan? There isn't any...

Warring Group Loses Backing in Fight That Paralyzed One-Fourth of Country - The Shifta guerrillas of Kenya, agreeing to wait and see what diplomacy can do, have halted the rebellion that has paralyzed a quarter of the country for almost five years. In a remarkable triumph of diplomacy over passion, the troubled northeastern and eastern provinces of Kenya have become quiescent just three months after President Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya and Prime Minister Mohammed Ibrahim Egal of the Somali Republic signed an agreement to try to end the fighting. The speed at which the document was translated into action shows just how dependent the Shifta have been on the neighboring Somali Republic for arms, training, advice and even policy. Once the Somali Republic made a decision to stop this support, the rebellion suddenly stopped. But, though the shooting has stilled, the great problem of these provinces remains. The Shifta are Kenyans of Somali descent who believe their part of Kenya really belongs to a Greater Somalia...

Questions for Brooke of Massachusetts Bristle With Attacks on American Policy - The African students at the University College of Nairobi seemed puzzled at first when they met Sen. Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass.) on the next to last stop of his tour of 13 countries in Africa. Local newspapers and the U.S. information service bulletins had described him as the only Negro in the United States Senate, and a good number of the students probably came because they wanted to listen to an important American Negro visiting his ancient homeland for the first time. But, sometimes, when an American Negro meets an audience of Africans for the first time, he is too urbane, too Western, and, in fact, too lightskinned for the Africans to identify him right away as one of them, It makes no difference even if he talks of his "African brothers" and describes himself as an "Afro-American." That seemed true Friday when Brooke showed up in the junior commons room of the university to talk with 200 or so students...

Nairobi Regime Heeds African Charges of Exploitation, Acts to Further Exodus - Everyone here calls it "the Asian exodus." Toward 10 o'clock in the evening the airport of this African capital takes on the air of Bombay or Karachi. The hall of the airport grows crowded with Sikhs in turbans, women in in their Benares saris, mischievous, brown-skinned, black-eyed children in short pants, old bearded men in baggy trousers, chic girls in trim Punjabi dress. There is a festive air, though it is not a festive time. Soon the loudspeaker calls out the charter flight to London. Goodbyes are said. A hundred or so head for the departure lounge. The few thousand others cram into their cars and drive back to Parklands, the Asian neighborhood of Nairobi. Their turn will likely come soon. The airport is the scene of a great uprooting of population - the departure of thousands of people of Indian and Pakistani descent from their homes in Kenya to new homes in Britain...

Leaders of the Masai tribesmen, invoking the glory of tradition, are now beginning to speak out in defense of Masai nakedness. For almost six months, the Masai have felt the lashing criticism of reformist Tanzania politicians who want them to modernize and dress up. The criticism has irritated even educated and westernized Masai leaders like Stanley Oloitiptip, a Kenya assistant minister who represents a Masai district in parliament. "If Almighty God could stomach to see the entire anatomies of Adam and Eve in their complete nudity," Oloitiptip told a recent news conference in Nairobi, "is it not a little prudish for an African government to have fits by merely viewing a casually exhibited Masai buttock?" The controversy stems from the conflict between sentimentality and reform that usually erupts during a time of great change. African political leaders believe the development of their countries often bogs down because of the refusal of traditional tribesmen to accept the change all around them...

The Kenya government, condemning "the methods adopted by hostile intelligence services to subvert and undermine governments," expelled two Russians Wednesday, just a few weeks after it had banned two Americans. Kenya closed the office of the Novosti Press Agency and ordered its manager, Veniampin Zakharov, to leave the country in 48 hours. At the same time, the government closed the office of Sovexportfilm and withdrew the work permit of its representative, Eduard Agadzhanov. Since an alien cannot work in Kenya without such a permit, the order will have the effect of forcing Zakharov to leave the country. Earlier this month, Kenya government sources reported that they had declared two Americans, Robert Gabor and Richard Garvey, prohibited immigrants. At the time of the report a local newspaper, the East African Standard hinted that there were signs of involvement with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency...

The current clamor over South Africa and the Olympics can be stripped to one issue. Is there any hope left for peacefully drawing South Africa out of its racist isolation? Those who still have hope felt comfortable with the International Olympic Committee's decision last week to let South Africa take part in the Olympic Games in Mexico City this October. In their view, the decision strengthens the hand of those white leaders in South Africa who are trying to change the racial policies of their country, at least a little. But the decision is abhorrent to those who have given up hope. In their view, the decision strengthens the hand of a racist government that, no matter how flexible, intends to maintain forever the basic race laws and policies of South Africa. In South Africa, participation in the Olympics has become a major political issue. Prime minister John B. Vorster has been attacked in scathing terms by members of the right wing of his Nationalist party for making concessions on race to the Olympic Committee...

Complete apartheid reigns at the winery of fictional Jock Silberstein: white wine is bottled by colored girls in white uniforms while red wine is bottled by white girls in brown uniforms. Jock Silberstein is a creation of Etienne Leroux, an Afrikaner novelist who explores sex, evil and decadence, and sometimes treats Afrikaners and apartheid with mocking irony. By doing so, Leroux and André P. Brink, another Afrikaner novelist who is like him, desert the traditional way of the pastoral, patriotic and puritanical Afrikaans novel. The Afrikaner literary set in South Africa likes to describe the new novels of Leroux and Brink as "the renaissance in Afrikaans prose.” That’s overblowing it, but the novels do have significance, for politics as well as art. Afrikaner nationalists have long looked on their language, which comes from 17th-century Dutch, as more than a means of expression; to them, it is an end in itself. Using Afrikaans glorifies nationalism. Extreme nationalist Afrikaners, convinced that Leroux and Brink use it in a way that soils Afrikaner nationalism, now condemn the two writers as traitors to their culture. After the Boer War, Afrikaners, descendants of the early Dutch settlers, tried to avenge the humiliation and indignities of their defeat by intensifying their belief in the worth of their own culture...

Little can be done to save the lives of those bloat-bellied children of Biafra until the civil war in Nigeria is over. That is the heart of the matter; all else is peripheral. The pitiable pictures in the London press, the stricken conscience of the British people, the rush of volunteers to feed and nurse Biafran babies, the American powdered milk piling high on the docks of Lagos, the mad scrambling of relief workers to crack Nigerian inefficiency and push the supplies somewhere, somehow — all mean little as long as the war goes on. Some idealists believe that the world’s indignation, outcry and shamed anger over the thousands dying in Biafra will force the two sides to end their war, in the name of decency and humanity, but that is doubtful. “No group can stop a war because people are dying,” said Alison Ayida, an influential Nigerian civil servant, in a meeting with foreign newsmen in Lagos recently. “It’s never been done in a war before, and it won’t be done in Nigeria — unless you stop the cause of the war. That’s what war is all about.” The federal government feels that it is about to crush the rebellion in Biafra, and it is in no mood to be cheated of this victory by pictures of starving children...

The white Afrikaner administrator swept his hand out to show the poverty of the Transkei in South Africa: the round mud houses with their thatched cone roofs, the green hilly land that produced only a pittance of corn during the year, the bony cattle that the Xhosa people refused to sell. “We have to succeed,” the administrator said with a weak, nervous laugh. “Our existence depends on it.” But so far, he and the other white officials of the Transkei are failing. The Transkei is the most advanced of the Bantustans, the word coined by the white supremacist government to describe those areas of South Africa it has set aside for black Africans. Under the theory of apartheid, the Transkei and seven other Bantustans, created out of 13 percent of the land, will some distant day become independent black nations and absorb the great bulk of South Africa’s black Africans. Whites, who are now outnumbered four to one, would then outnumber blacks in the rest of South Africa. Once in the majority, the whites say, they would have the moral and democratic right to run their own country — white South Africa. To implement the theory and justify it to the rest of the world, the white South African government is trying, though in a desultory way, to develop the economy of the Bantustans. As the Afrikaner administrator pointed out, the government has no other choice. Without vibrant economies, the Bantustans could not absorb more millions of Africans. The so-called white areas of South Africa would still be left with black majorities, and a powerful and rich minority would still have to hold down the black masses by force. This would expose apartheid as an immoral and impossible solution to the dilemma of South Africa...