Anger, Dignity Mark Rites for S. African Blacks

In funeral rites marked by expressions of pain and anger but with dignity, too, 27 blacks slain by South African police in recent unrest were buried here Saturday with the prayer that their deaths would help hasten the end of the country’s policies of racial segregation.

After the services, two black youths set fire to a South African flag at the grave site, waving a sign proclaiming it to be “the Flag of Apartheid.” Otherwise, the event was peaceful.

Bishop Desmond Tutu, last year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, told an estimated 50,000 mourners who crowded a soccer stadium at Kwanobuhle, a suburban black township outside Uitenhage, that the victims represented “the price of freedom in South Africa. . . . And that price is not getting any cheaper.”

“We in South Africa, black and white, will be free, but many, many more are going to be detained, many, many more are going to face treason trials . . . and many, many more are going to die,” Tutu said.

Nineteen of those buried were killed when police opened fire with rifles and shotguns to halt a funeral procession of 4,000 blacks at Langa, another Uitenhage township, on March 21, a day now known as “Bloody Thursday.” Police said they shot in self defense but have since admitted that only a single stone had been thrown at their armored cars when they fired.

Most of the others buried on Saturday died in incidents that followed the Langa shooting.

To avoid further confrontations, the government withdrew police from Kwanobuhle on Saturday. Although large numbers of police were stationed around the township’s perimeter, they did not interfere with the lengthy service and procession to the cemetery.

Since March 21, Uitenhage has become “a symbol of the total disregard for human life, a symbol of the wanton destruction of the possibilities for love and reconciliation in our country,” the Rev. Allan Boesak, a leader of the anti-apartheid United Democratic Front and president of the World Alliance of Reform Churches, said in another funeral address.

“Uitenhage is not simply an accident. It did not just happen. Uitenhage is the inevitable result of a deliberate, devised, consciously executed policy of greed, racism and (white) domination,” he said.

Looking out over the line of 27 coffins, Boesak said that it is impossible “for people to forget the horrors that have been perpetrated upon them,” but he called on South Africa’s blacks to turn their anger and bitterness into a “holy rage.”

“I am not talking about senseless anger, a craving for revenge, a calling for blood,” he said. “I am talking about an anger for the sake of others. I am talking about a desire to do what is required. I am talking about a commitment to peace, which is not just the absence of war but the active pursuit of justice.”

In his address, Tutu said that reform must begin with the complete ending of apartheid.

“Until apartheid is removed, everything else everyone is trying to do is merely playing marbles,” he said. Gradual changes, “an adjustment here, an adjustment there,” will not work, he added. “What we want is not crumbs from the master’s table, but to be at the table deciding the menu together.”

The six-hour service was punctuated by shouts of “Power to the people!” and “Africa--let it rise again!” Banners declared, “Shooting Us Will Never Stop Our Struggle” and “They Will Never Kill Us All.”

Fikele Kobese, a local trade union leader, gave the township residents’ version of the Langa incident, accusing the police of opening fire without warning, of executing some of those who were only wounded during the fusillade and of killing at least 43 people, not the 19 acknowledged by the government.

When the speeches, the prayers and the scripture readings were finished, the caskets were carried shoulder-high in a procession to the Kwanobuhle cemetery with tens of thousands of people lining the route, their right hands clenched in a fist in a black consciousness salute.

Finally, after a last blessing, the caskets were lowered into a row of graves as the hymn “God Bless Africa,” the anthem of the anti-apartheid battle, was sung for the third time of the day.

Meanwhile, three black men were reported killed Saturday in two ghetto townships outside nearby Port Elizabeth, an industrial center on the southern coast.

Two were shot during an attack on the homes of black policemen and court officials at Zwide, and the third was killed when a black constable fired on a crowd trying to burn down his home at Kwazekele, police said.