South Africa Curbs Foes of Apartheid : Bans Meetings by 29 Groups, Arrests Political Activists

The government began its expected crackdown on the anti-apartheid opposition here Friday with a ban on meetings of the United Democratic Front and 28 other organizations and the arrests of more than 20 political activists.

Louis le Grange, minister for law and order, prohibited the 29 groups from holding any meetings for three months in most of eastern Cape province, the focus of recent unrest, and in two suburban districts of Johannesburg. The ban, he said, is to “maintain public peace.”

Le Grange also banned any meetings in those areas to plan protest strikes by black workers. He had earlier prohibited meetings anywhere in the country to plan school boycotts.

Workers are Detained

Police, meanwhile, continued detaining community workers and organizers for the United Democratic Front, a coalition of 645 groups opposed to South Africa’s system of apartheid, or racial segregation. At least 24 were arrested in eastern Cape province and in Ciskei, a neighboring, nominally independent tribal homeland.

Arrests during the past three days could total 60, according to officials of the United Democratic Front. Many are being held under South Africa’s and Ciskei’s security laws that permit indefinite detention without trial.

Further government moves against anti-apartheid elements are expected soon. On Wednesday, President Pieter W. Botha directed South Africa’s security forces to take the “appropriate steps to restore and maintain law and order” after the recent surge of unrest around the country. More than 100 people have died in clashes here since the first of the year.

The government’s intention appears to be to weaken the United Democratic Front and its affiliates by destroying grass-roots organizations, arresting local leaders and banning local meetings, rather than to risk provoking an international outcry by banning them altogether and detaining their top officials under the country’s security laws.

More Restrictions Expected

Front officials said Friday that more restrictions along these lines are anticipated. They said that the government might, for example, extend the ban on meetings to other areas--18 magisterial districts are now affected--and detain more local organizers. It might also prohibit the front and its major affiliates from receiving domestic and foreign contributions, they said.

In addition, 16 top front officials and trade union leaders are now scheduled to go on trial May 20 on charges of high treason in what will be the biggest political trial here in 20 years. The trial date was set Friday.

The United Democratic Front, whose constituent groups have about 2 million members, emerged last year as the leading anti-apartheid organization inside the country. It has vigorously opposed the government’s recent efforts to satisfy the demands of South African blacks for change by making gradual and limited reforms.

Other major groups named in Le Grange’s order Friday included the Congress of South African Students and the Azanian Students Organization, both active in black school boycotts during the past year. Meetings of a number of civic associations, women’s groups and youth organizations were also banned.

The measure was specifically directed at recent unrest around the industrial center of Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage on the country’s southern coast, and at several troubled black townships north and east of Johannesburg.

Of the 104 people killed in unrest so far this year, 60% have been in eastern Cape province, according to figures released Friday by the South African Institute of Race Relations. The institute said that the death toll since January already is half that for all of last year.

Although the government moves are less drastic than originally expected, they were still denounced Friday by liberal politicians and anti-apartheid activists.

“These bannings will not prove to be the solution, but rather exacerbate an already volatile situation,” the Rev. Allan Boesak, president of the World Alliance of Reform Churches and a patron of the United Democratic Front, said in Cape Town. “If people cannot meet to voice their protests and if open discussion of important issues is banned, the South African government will drive the people to other measures to express their feelings.

“Unless the South African government addresses the basic issues and begins a process of fundamental change, no amount of banning or intimidation will prove to be a solution to the problems facing our country,” he said. “In any case, we will continue to seek ways to express our anger and our aspirations as clearly as possible.”

‘Act of Desperation’

The Rev. C.F. Beyers Naude, general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, called the crackdown “an act of desperation to stem the tide of liberation.” The move can only increase “tension and polarization because they do not address the real problems or their solution,” Naude said.

And Sheena Duncan, president of Black Sash, a women’s group that monitors civil rights, described the measures as “an utterly stupid way of reacting to what is now a very serious crisis,” and she warned that more violence, not less, is likely as a result.

Unrest continued Friday around Port Elizabeth, Uitenhage and other eastern Cape cities with a number of schools burned and one man killed in a clash with police.

Tear gas, rubber bullets and birdshot were used repeatedly to disperse crowds of blacks gathering around government offices, schools, shops and other buildings in the province’s black townships, police spokesmen said.

Inquiry Into Shootings

In Uitenhage, meanwhile, the judicial inquiry continued into the fatal police shooting there last week of 19 blacks. Government accounts of the incident were sharply contradicted again on several key points.

Police Warrant Officer Jacobus Pentz, who commanded one of the two armored cars at Langa, outside Uitenhage, testified that the vehicles could have retreated from a confrontation with a crowd of 4,000 and waited for reinforcements, that police were safe inside the cars and that no firebombs were thrown at them--thus contradicting Minister Le Grange’s assertions in Parliament last week that the police had to fight for their lives at Langa.

Pentz had testified Thursday that he believed at the time that he and the other 18 policemen would have been killed by the angry crowd. But he admitted under cross-examination Friday that most of the danger resulted from the two cars having taken a position on the road inside the black township, and that they could have withdrawn safely.