Baker Visits Soweto, Vows to Urge End to ‘Distressing’ Apartheid : South Africa: The secretary of state also meets with ANC official Walter Sisulu.

SOWETO, South Africa —  Secretary of State James A. Baker III, his consciousness sharpened by a quick tour of South Africa’s largest black township, said Friday that he is distressed by what he saw and is even more determined to push for an end to apartheid.

After four days of intense diplomacy in the affluent, swimming-pool-studded neighborhoods of South Africa and neighboring Namibia, the trip through Soweto marked Baker’s first look at the living conditions of southern Africa’s majority black population.

Although Baker had deplored the apartheid system of racial segregation at every opportunity, he had not had a chance to look closely at its victims.

“It’s quite distressing,” Baker said. “I think it is necessary for the system to be abolished.”

Even in Soweto, the sprawling black township of 2.5 million outside Johannesburg, Baker spent most of his time with the relatively well-to-do.

He breakfasted with anti-apartheid community leaders at a U.S. Information Service library, conferred for about an hour with African National Congress official Walter Sisulu at Sisulu’s modest stuccoed house, watched preschool children bounce happily on a trampoline and walked through an education center financed by the South African business community.

It was only on a brief drive through the Mshenguville squatters camp that Baker confronted the true poverty of tin-and-tar-paper shacks without electricity, running water or other facilities.

Baker did not stop, viewing through the windows of his limousine the squalor of life just 25 miles from the high-rise buildings of Johannesburg and the gold mines that help support the South African economy. A motorcade of security personnel and reporters followed in his wake.

Sisulu is a longtime associate of black nationalist leader Nelson R. Mandela, and, like Mandela, has spent most of his adult life in South African prisons. Sisulu urged the United States to withhold its support for South African President Frederik W. de Klerk until the white-minority-led government keeps its promise to end apartheid.

“I think that Mr. De Klerk is making an effort,” Sisulu said. “We have appreciated the start he has made. We want to urge Mr. De Klerk to be a bit speedier about things. The very first stage has not been completed.”

Sisulu, recently released after 25 years in prison, talked to reporters after showing Baker around the tidy kindergarten that is attended by his grandchildren. The school is across the street from Sisulu’s house.

“I told the secretary that we are very grateful to the people of America for the support they have given us over the years,” Sisulu said. “We will expect more support as days go by.”

State Department officials arranged the visit to Soweto to balance Baker’s talks Thursday in Cape Town with De Klerk and other top officials of the government, which marked the end of Washington’s diplomatic isolation of South Africa.

The visit was planned as a high-visibility “photo opportunity,” exploited both by the State Department and the African National Congress.

While Baker was meeting with Sisulu and his wife, Albertina, children at the school entertained television crews by shaking their fists and chanting “ANC, ANC, ANC” as soon as the cameras began to roll.

The visit gave Baker a chance to renew his acquaintance with Albertina Sisulu, an anti-apartheid leader who became the first ANC representative to meet President Bush when she visited Washington last year.

Despite De Klerk’s liberalizing steps, Sisulu told Baker that conditions for blacks remain deplorable. Poor schools and inadequate housing, he said, amount to “dynamite for violence.”

Although De Klerk’s government is scheduled to open unprecedented talks with ANC leaders next month, Sisulu said true negotiations over the future of the nation cannot begin until the government makes more fundamental changes than it has carried out so far.

BACKGROUND

Soweto is synonymous with the struggle of South Africa’s black majority against apartheid. The sprawling township outside Johannesburg was the scene of a famous, tragic protest by black schoolchildren. On June 16, 1976, thousands of them marched against a decree requiring some classes to be taught in Afrikaans, the language of the Dutch white minority. When pelted with stones, police opened fire, felling Hector Peterson, 13. Riots ensued in what became known as the Soweto uprising. Violence spread, and in the next eight months, hundreds died in anti-apartheid protests.