Tutu Defuses Tense Funeral Confrontation

Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, on Tuesday calmed one of the most tense confrontations yet between black mourners and police enforcing the government’s ban on political funerals for the victims of South Africa’s civil strife.

Hundreds of police officers and soldiers, their weapons held ready, arrived during the funeral service here for a teen-age girl, surrounded the 1,000 mourners and ordered them to disperse rather than make the customary march to the cemetery for burial.

In English and Afrikaans, the police announced that the gathering was illegal and warned that they were preparing to “take action against those who refuse” to leave.

Buses Provided

Tutu then negotiated with the authorities to allow the funeral to proceed. Under a compromise worked out by Tutu with Lt. Col. G.H. Nel, the divisional police commander, the Daveyton town council supplied seven buses to take mourners the short distance to the cemetery for the burial so that they complied with the new funeral regulations imposed under South Africa’s state of emergency.

These rules prohibit processions on foot as well as political speeches, anti-government songs and banners at burial services.

In return for the buses, the black prelate and other priests ensured that the youths left quickly and peacefully after the service.

As Tutu, a solitary figure in his purple cassock, negotiated in a dusty field for half an hour with Nel, who was flanked by soldiers and backed by armored cars, the mourners began freedom chants and jeered at the police and combat troops who surrounded them. Military helicopters circled overhead, and several times, a clash seemed almost inevitable.

“We were within minutes of what could well have been a bloodbath,” said Father James Mabaso, an Anglican priest who had accompanied Tutu, the Anglican bishop of Johannesburg. “The anger of our youths is such that they would have challenged the (apartheid) system even though they have nothing that can match its guns, and dozens would have died in doing so.”

Curiously, Tutu had just defied the ban on political statements by denouncing the restrictions on funerals, the 17-day-old state of emergency and South Africa’s whole system of racial separation with his usual vehemence. During his remarks at the funeral service, he challenged the government to arrest him.

“I do not want to go to jail,” he told the mourners, “but if I have to go to jail for preaching the gospel of our Lord, Jesus Christ, so be it.”

Don’t Provoke Authorities

The cleric also cautioned youths at the funeral for Elizabeth Khumalo, 16--one of four youths slain July 24 in a clash after another funeral--not to provoke the authorities, who have virtual martial-law powers in many black townships under the state of emergency. “Don’t do anything that will give the (apartheid) system a chance to act against you, to hurt you,” he said.

“These kids scare me,” Tutu remarked later. “They have a recklessness that is quite incredible. They say, ‘If that’s how we are going to die, then that’s how we are going to die, and if that’s how we are going to get freedom, that’s how we are going to get freedom.’ The government shows not the slightest sensitivity to what a powderkeg of anger it is setting fire to with this state of emergency and these funeral restrictions.”

As the mourners were dispersing and the police and army were reducing their numbers, Tutu told the police commander, “Well, you enforced some totally unreasonable laws in quite a reasonable way today.”

The bishop conceded that his presence had helped prevent violence but added, “The trouble is, I can’t go to every single funeral.”

The community’s original plans to bury the four youths at a joint funeral were dropped after police warned that this would violate the emergency regulations.

Two of the girls, Khumalo and Agnes Mbokane, 18, were buried separately on Tuesday, and the two other teen-agers will be buried later.

At the start of the funeral--held in a tent in the dirt yard of the small Khumalo home--security police, holding back an angry crowd with shotguns, arrested one of the pallbearers, Aubrey Nxumalo. She is a local youth leader they had been seeking since the emergency was declared.

Mandela Home a Target

Meanwhile, at the town of Brandfort, 160 miles southwest of Johannesburg in the Orange Free State, police said they arrested 30 blacks on charges of public violence at the home of Winnie Mandela, wife of the jailed black nationalist patriarch Nelson Mandela, after a morning-long protest called to demand his release from more than 20 years in prison.

According to the police, a crowd carrying placards and armed with axes, picks and shovels had gathered in front of the Mandela home--she was in Johannesburg at the time--after a school boycott and the looting of a liquor store.

When riot police tried to disperse the protesters, they responded with stones, bricks and a firebomb, according to national police headquarters in Pretoria. The police, in turn, fired rubber bullets and tear gas and used whips to break up the group.

A number of the blacks took refuge in the house, police added, and tear gas was used to drive them out. Authorities reported finding seven firebombs and more than a gallon of extra gasoline in plastic containers in the house.

Outside the port city of Durban, serious unrest continued in black townships following the assassination last week of Victoria Mxenge, a prominent civil rights lawyer. One black youth was shot to death. Later, black mobs rampaged through an Indian suburb, smashing windows, stoning houses and cars and looting shops. Police said dozens of the Asian families fled to safer areas.