Courier-Post from Camden, New Jersey • Page 15

15A COURIER-POST, Tuesday, December 9, 1986 AS OTHERS SEE IT South Africa balking at the crossroads WASHINGTON Black South Africans, speaking indirectly through an opinion poll, have made the government of P.W. Botha an intriguing, sensible offer that they probably could not have made directly: Let us sit down, before it's too late, and talk about a plan for sharing political power and ending the violence. If such a moderate proposal had been put on the table at a meeting of black activists, it might have been hooted down, and its authors humiliated or worse. But when individual blacks had the chance to express their views through a recent nationwide poll conducted by Omnicheck: Three out of four said they prefer a multiracial government. Only 14 percent insisted on an all-black government based on one man, one vote.

Seventy-four percent said they favored negotiations rather than violence as a way of ending apartheid. Halfsaidtheybelievethereisstill a large reservoir of good will toward whites among blacks. Well over a third said they would support blacks working with Botha on a National Council to work out a new racial dispensation. In short, the respondents seemed to be saying, there is still time for reason to prevail but not an unlimited amount of time. WILLIAM RASPBERRY Apartheid scar reopened By DAVID CRARY The Associated Press CAPE TOWN, South Africa On a prime location near the city center is a wasteland of overgrown fields dotted with six churches and mosques a conspicuous scar left by apartheid.

Now a large company, British Petroleum, has reopened the wound by offering to rebuild the razed District Six area into the nation's first legally integrated neighborhood. In more than a century, District Six evolved into a dilapidated but In 1966, the South African government declared it a "whites-only" area, but within 15 years it demolished virtually every non-church building and moved more than 40,000 people of mixed race to characterless, faraway suburbs. In mid-November, when British Petroleum offered to organize a mul-timillion- dollar redevelopment effort if the area were opened to all races, not only the government but also its opponents were unenthusias-tic. "Until such time as all South Africans can live where they want, let District Six be a reminder of the pain that an ethnically based land policy can cause. Let it be an open wound," said the Rev.

Alan Brews, a Methodist minister whose church on the edge of the district lost much of its congregation to the evictions. Even Cape Town's City Council, dominated by members of the liberal Progressive Federal Party, has given BP'S offer a lukewarm response, in part, council members say, because they were not consulted. CLIVE KEEGAN, chairman of the council's planning committee, described the plan as "an exercise in public relations," and said it was unlikely the National Party government would relax its Group Areas Act the law that segregates neighborhoods. BP'S plan, if implemented, might serve as a positive example, Keegan added, but the City Council would rather have the Group Areas Act scrapped entirely. Similar views were expressed by Richard Rive, an English professor whose mixed-race family left District Six in 1965.

"There is no sense trying to righta wrong here symbolically when the wrong is still perpetrated elsewhere," he said. "I'm not terribly excited about District Six becoming non-racial. I'm excited about South Africa becoming non-racial." BP, apparently realizing the sensitivity of its offer, has declined public comment since its announcement. The government has made no detailed response beyond noting that multiracial neighborhoods are illegal. BP'S PROPOSAL has been welcomed by some moderates, such as the Rev.

Allan Hendrickse, leader of Parliament's mixed-race chamber. He said BP had given President P.W. Botha "a golden opportunity" to demonstrate his sincerity about reform. Botha, as community development minister, issued the whites-only proclamation in 1966. But Brews, a white whose congregation is largely mixed-race, called BP'S proposal "a ghastly capitalist public relations exercise." "People don't want District Six to become an open area so Botha and his cohortscangooverseasand say, 'See what we've Brews said.

"The true story of District Six is still being written. There are people who psychologically died the day they were moved and have been physically dying ever since." Brews and Keegan said BP would do better by providing low-income housing or rehabilitating squalid settlements, like Crossroads nearby. THE OLD DISTRICT a melting pot of Moslems, Hindus, Christians and Jews settled by freed slaves in the 1 830s lives on in books, paintings and even in a new musical scheduled to open in Cape Town in April. Rive, author of one of the books, perceives the district as "a symbol of the government's arrogance and greed" but hopes the neighborhood's past will not be falsely glamorized. "It was a slum dingy, dirty, rat-infested, landlord-exploited," he said.

"But it did have a kind of vibrancy about it. It was urbane, sharp, slick the lifestyle was articulate, even if the residents weren't." them as a basis for moving his government toward negotiations. ABOUT THE SAME time the findings were released, Botha's Minister of Internal Affairs, Stoffel Botha, was dismissing as unacceptable the Kwa-Natal Indaba (council) blueprint for a joint, multiracial administration of the homeland of KwaZulu and the province of Natal. That prompted expressions of outrage from both blacks and white moderates. "How a cabinet minister can summarily dismiss the recommendations is beyond my comprehension," Kwa-Natal council chairman Desmond Clarencesaid, adding that the rejection was based on "untruths," including a charge that the proposal was based on a one-man, one-vote formula that failed to provide for true power sharing.

The Progressive Federal Party, the white opposition party, was even blunter, describing the rejection as "a reaction from bigots who seem to have a death wish for South Africa." THE DANGER is that the rejection of the KwaNatal Indaba proposal, like the anticipated failure of the government to take advantage of the black moderation revealed in the Omnicheck poll, will cut the ground from under moderates of all races. While strengthening the moderates would seem to be the government's best hope of reducing violence in South Africa, the Botha regime seems hellbent on moving in the opposite direction, leaving the action to the Nazi-like Afrikaner reactionaries and the most violent of the township blacks, whose trademark is the "necklace," a blazing gasoline-filled tire draped about the necks of those thought to be cooperating with the white-run government. The crucial contest now is between those whites who might persuade Botha to draw on the surprising moderation of a majority of the blacks and those who believe the only way for whites to survive is to tighten the screws of repression between the forces of moderation and, as the PFP put it, those "bigots who seem to have a death wish for South Africa." four percent, admitted that more than half the blacks approached refused to answer political questions. Was it the more moderate blacks who declined to answer? Or was it the more militant blacks who feared that their answers might get them in trouble? But even if the poll's findings are accurate, there is scant reason to suppose that President Botha will use THE SAME POLL showed that four of five blacks support calls for international sanctions against the South African government, even if it costs them their jobs. And more ominously, while 82 percent of the men over age 50 condemn political violence, 34 percent of the men 24 and younger see such violence as justified.

One caveat: Omnicheck, while claiming a margin of error of less than CIA keeps secret 'offshore' slush funds JACK ANDERSON and Joseph Spear to put pressure on defense contractors or their employees who speak out on public policy matters. Weinberger was responding to a stinging inspector general's finding that high Navy officials includingNavy Secretary John Lehman were instrumental in the firing of a Raytheon executive who voiced public doubts about the need for every penny the Pentagon asks for at budget time. The officials, according to the inspector general, showed "bad judgment" and "a lack of understanding." MINI-EDITORIAL: Switzerland has flung down a gauntlet of sorts. Agricultural experts there claim that Swiss cows produce enough manure each year to cover the entire country seven layers deep. Even if this preposterous boast were true, we're not impressed.

The relatively tiny area known as Washington, D.C., has few if any cows, but we're willing to bet that the paperwork produced here 46 percent of the city's trash, at latest count is enough to cover the entire United States 700 layers deep. And we bet its manure quality is at least up to Swiss bovine standards. THE WORLD'S BIGGEST TOY STORE Mattel MY CHILD 14" BABY GIRL OR BOY Lifelike doll with bright baby eyes and soft, huggable Poseable, with hair kids can really stylel Ages 3-up. (Black, Hispanic dolls also available) Our Price 29J87 Mail-In Rebate 5J0O FINAL COST 24.97 WASHINGTON The CIA's money-laundry operators could teach the Mafia a thing or two about offshore banking techniques. So it's hardly surprising that the agency has been implicated in the intricate financial finagling that transformed Pentagon military hardware into cash for the Nicaraguan Contras by way of Israel, Iran and Switzerland.

In the last few weeks we've been disclosing details of another subterranean money laundry the CIA set up for earlier arms deals. Understanding how that operation involving banks in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands worked will shed light on the financial labyrinth created to hide the strikingly similar Iranian Contras deal. Here's the money trail laid out in records obtained by our associates, Corky Johnson and Donald Goldberg, with additional guideposts supplied by knowledgeable banking sources: On the day after Christmas 1984, Michael Linden, an agent of Associated Traders, a CIA front, wrote to the First National Bank of Maryland ordering the transfer of $5.3 million into a secret Swiss account. First National was to "transfer the sum to Bank Cantrade AG, Zurich, Switzerland," for deposit in Account No. 273830.

The account was in the name of "Dr. Schaefer," presumably a fake. THE FUNDS didn't go directly from Maryland to Switzerland, of course; this would have left a financial trail too easy to follow. First the $5.3 million was wired from a CIA money-market account in the Cayman Islands to the Banco Sudameris Int. in Panama.

The Panamanian bank then telexed the amount to the Union Bank in Zurich, which finally shunted it over to the Bank Cantrade. Throughout the complex transaction, the transfers were authorized "by order of a client," a deliberately obf us-catory phrase used to protect the identity of theCIA and its front, Associated Traders. Like Switzerland, both Panama and the Caymans have strict banking confidentiality laws, which make complete financial disclosures difficult if not impossible. "The CI A wanted its name kept out of it," explained Robert Maxwell, a former officer of First National Bank. "They went to great lengths to hide everything." It was the possible impropriety of such secret deals, and the fear that he might be held responsible for violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, that led Maxwell to resign from the Maryland bank.

Several similar transactions used Bank Cantrade as well as other Swiss banks.OnJan.3,1984,forexample,the CIA deposited $175,000 in the Zurich Handelskredit Bank; on Jan. 17 and Jan. 18, 1984, $150,000 was deposited in Account No. 91457 at the Geneva Discount Bank Ltd. THE OA'S SECRET accounts in the Cayman Islands are crucial to its worldwide financial wheeling and dealing.

Millions of dollars are kept on deposit in these accounts, virtually sight. Records we've obtained show that one Caymans money-market account alone had an average of more than $2 million on hand over the past several years. A banking source said the CIA couldn't care less about earnings on its huge accounts. "They didn't careabout interest rates," the source said. "It was just a deposit on the books to them." What does the CIA do with all these secret funds? Associated Traders, the front involved with the Maryland bank, was running a global arms network that moved more than $20 million worth of weapons around Europe.

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