Tutu Rebuffed in Bid to See President Botha

President Pieter W. Botha rejected a request Monday from Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, for an urgent meeting to discuss South Africa’s continuing civil unrest and the near-absolute powers that Botha has given the police and army to deal with it.

In an equally tough reaction to the widespread international criticism of the state of emergency he declared 10 days ago, Botha threatened severe economic reprisals against South Africa’s black neighbors if further sanctions are imposed on his country.

Threat of Retaliation

“Retaliation can be expected for every move against South Africa,” Botha told a youth rally at Potchefstroom, 75 miles west of here.

Botha said he has instructed his government to draw up plans for the expulsion of the 1.5 million workers here from neighboring black-ruled states, to prepare to close South Africa’s ports, airspace and railway network to those countries and to be ready to break off other economic and technical cooperation with them in the event of sanctions.

Ruling out conciliation, either at home or abroad, Botha declared that he, his government and all white South Africans are determined to hold on to what they have and “refuse to hand over our country to the forces of darkness.”

500 Dead in a Year

Tutu, the Anglican bishop of Johannesburg, warned that Botha’s refusal to open a dialogue with the country’s 25 million black people will heighten the present crisis, which has left nearly 500 dead over the past year, and could foreclose a peaceful resolution of South Africa’s problems.

“I’ve tried and I’ve failed,” a dejected Tutu said of his effort to see Botha this week, adding that “only those unserious about the situation” could put off a meeting until Aug. 19, when the president will receive a delegation of church leaders.

Botha, in reply to Tutu’s request for a meeting as quickly as possible, said that he is too busy to see him for the next three weeks and suggested that he join the other delegation, which will be led by Archbishop Phillip Russell, the head of the Anglican Church in South Africa.

“I’m scared and frightened,” Tutu said, adding that black youths are becoming increasingly militant, rejecting negotiations and nonviolence as ways to solve the country’s problems and pushing aside moderate leaders like himself. “If he is unable to talk to someone like myself, it is highly unlikely he will talk to people who are, as they say, radical. . . .

“Our situation is desperately serious, and I had hoped for statesmanship from the president and not the scoring of political points,” the black prelate said at his home in Soweto, the sprawling black ghetto city outside Johannesburg. “I have exhausted my own options, and it is up to him now, for I am still willing to talk with him. I hope for the sake of our country that he will realize that we should grasp every opportunity.”

Major Political Risk

Tutu, who ran a major political risk in the black community by seeking the meeting, made his request after Botha said last week that he was ready to talk with anyone who rejected violence as a way of solving the country’s problems, and presidential aides encouraged speculation that the two men would meet this week for the first time in five years.

“Now, young blacks will say, ‘They don’t want to talk to you, so don’t even try,’ ” Tutu said. “The young will say, ‘We told you so--there is no language they understand except violence.’ The young people are quite right: We have nothing to show for our advocacy of nonviolence.”

Tutu also said he could not accept a new condition imposed Monday by Botha--that he forswear not only violence but also civil disobedience as a political weapon against apartheid, South Africa’s system of racial separation.

Tutu expressed fear that perhaps a hundred more people might be killed in the continuing violence before Botha sees the church delegation next month.

‘Scared About That Date’

“I am scared about that date, so far away,” he said. “Are we going to continue at an average of four deaths a day? What’s happening to our people and their spirits all that time?”

Since Botha declared a state of emergency in 36 of South Africa’s 265 magisterial districts, more than 20 people, all blacks, have been killed and 1,215 people, mostly blacks, have been detained without charge under the emergency regulations.

In Washington, the State Department said it was disappointed at Botha’s refusal to meet with Tutu and called on the government to meet with black leaders as soon as possible.

“We believe South Africa’s internal situation is such that a meeting between the state president and important black leaders is imperative,” spokesman Charles Redman said. “Dialogue between the government and the nation’s black leaders is the only way out of the crisis South Africa faces. We are disappointed that Bishop Tutu’s request for a meeting has not been favorably acted upon.”

Threat to Economies

In his speech at Potchefstroom, Botha said South Africa would not hesitate to repatriate hundreds of thousands of the 1.5 million workers, a third of them gold and coal miners, from neighboring countries should the U.N. Security Council adopt mandatory economic sanctions against South Africa.

The sudden return of these workers would cripple the economies of such countries as Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique and Zimbabwe and throw them into social and political turmoil.

South Africa would also end its economic and technical cooperation with neighboring countries and refuse to allow them to use its ports and rail lines for shipment of their imports and exports--moves that would badly hurt three or four more black-ruled African countries, including Zambia and Zaire.

The voluntary sanctions that the Security Council approved last week “threaten the economic stability and economic development of the whole of southern Africa,” Botha said, adding that the workers who would be sent home would be told that international sanctions were to blame.

Need for Employment

“Those countries that are attempting to institute punitive measures against South Africa will probably, in accordance with their expressed concern about the welfare of the blacks, soon make funds available to create employment opportunities for the hundreds of thousands of workers who will have to return to their countries should the Security Council continue its present illegal action against South Africa,” Botha said.

Police headquarters in Pretoria reported Monday that a truck driver was shot and killed when he apparently tried to run down an army patrol near the southern coastal city of Port Elizabeth and that another man was killed when police fired upon a march by several thousand blacks outside Cape Town to protest the state of emergency.

A black policeman was stabbed to death over the weekend near Durban, and the bodies of three black men, all shot to death, were found in Port Elizabeth’s Kwazakele township, but police said they were uncertain whether these deaths were due to black unrest.

Protests against the state of emergency continued to spread Monday. Waves of student boycotts hit schools and universities around Johannesburg, Cape Town, Pretoria, Port Elizabeth and other cities. In Durban, about 400 students from the University of Natal marched on the American and British consulates, demanding that Washington and London take tougher action against South Africa, before police dispersed them, arresting two.