South Africa scraps legal foundation for apartheid system.

The law that laid the legal foundation for apartheid, classifying in all South Africans by race from birth, was repealed by the South African Parliament on 17 June, more than four decades after it was enacted.

"Now it belongs to history", President F. W. de Klerk said of apartheid, the racially discriminatory system institutionalized by the National Party in 1948. "One cannot build security on injustice", Mr. de Klerk told a joint session of Parliament after the repeal of the Population Registration Act, which leaves the country without a statutory justification for apartheid for the first time in 40 years.

Two weeks earlier, Parliament had scrapped from the books two other legal pillars of the apartheid system: the Land Acts-which set aside 87 per cent of property for whites-and the Group Areas Act, which dictated where people could live on the basis of their race. The Separate Amenities Act, calling for separate accommodations for blacks in many public facilities, was eliminated in June 1990.

The African National Congress of South Africa (ANC) welcomed the repeal of the Population Registration Act in a statement issued on 17 June in johannesburg, the South African capital, but said little would change "as long as blatantly racist practices continue".

The elimination of the four laws still leaves the black majority without the right to vote. President de Klerk has promised that universal franchise will be extended in a new constitution, and has invited black leaders to join him in drafting one. As an early step, he said, a conference of all political parties will be convened before the end of 1991.

UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar will send a high-level mission to South Africa during the first half of August to assess the degree of progress in dismantling apartheid. A similar mission visited that country in 1990.

The racial policies of South Africa have been under discussion by the UN since 1946. Both the General Assembly and the Security Council have declared apartheid incompatible with the UN Charter. The Assembly has condemned it as a crime against humanity, and the Council, which has considered the question since 1960, has termed apartheid a crime against the conscience and dignity of mankind.

During the 1950s, the Assembly repeatedly appealed, to South Africa to abandon its racial policies. Deploring South Africa's failure to comply, the Assembly in 1962 asked UN Member States to break off diplomatic relations with that country, boycott South African goods, and refrain from all exports. A voluntary arms embargo against South Africa was imposed by the Security Council in 1963.

In 1962 a special Assembly body, known since 1974 as the Special Committee against Apartheid, was established to keep under review South Africa's racial policies.

A new Constitution

President de Klerk told Parliament that a new Constitution had to be framed that would guarantee participation and representation to all South Africans "within a true democracy and with effective protection of minorities". This could be successfully achieved in a matter of a few years through negotiations, he predicted.

"The new South Africa is on the march", he affirmed. "Nothing can stop it any more. The whole process has developed its own dynamics which are greater than the will or recalcitrance of any participant."