Girl, 12, Slain by S. African Police; Boycotters Whipped

Violence flared near the capital of Pretoria and in Johannesburg today as riot patrols fatally shot a 12-year-old black girl and police whipped black and white students urging a consumer boycott.

In another development, a judge warned the government that it could lose a major treason case against 16 anti-apartheid dissidents for lack of evidence.

Police headquarters in Pretoria said the girl died after police fired shotguns overnight at a group of blacks hurling gasoline bombs at riot patrols in Mamelodi township. A man’s charred body was found Sunday in the township.

In Johannesburg, south of Pretoria, riot police whipped and chased a group of white and black students urging consumer boycotts as they marched out of the prestigious Witwatersrand University.

Students Beaten

A Reuters correspondent watched as police, some with tear-gas grenades, beat students as they fell to the ground. Sobbing female students were helped away by friends.

And in KwaThema township near Johannesburg today, about 800 troops helped by black policemen enforced tough new laws that allow the security forces to bar children from the streets during school hours.

The unrest in Transvaal province in the north followed a week of bloodshed and arson near the coastal city of Durban, where at least 66 people died and hundreds of Indian families were driven from their homes by outraged Zulus.

That region, which witnessed some of the most gruesome violence, including the stoning and burning of a black policeman Sunday, was relatively calm today. (Story on Page 4).

More Details Required

The judge’s warning in the treason case came during proceedings against 16 anti-apartheid dissidents in the Natal provincial capital of Pietermaritzburg. Supreme Court Judge John Milne said he might have to order prosecution lawyers to provide more details of the charges or risk losing the case.

Prosecuting counsel Nick gey von Pittius told the court that he would give them a copy of a publication called Dawn, which some of the 16 are accused of distributing.

Milne said: “If at the end of the trial all you have got is that the accused joined a conspiracy by distributing a document, I will have to discharge the accused. No reasonable man could draw that inference.”

The 16 are members of the main internal group fighting South Africa’s race discrimination laws, the United Democratic Front. They have not yet been asked to plead.

In Washington today, the State Department called on the South African government to make “bold decisions” and to begin negotiations with that country’s black leaders to help build a better future for the country.

In the first on-the-record statement since the return of U.S. officials who had met last week with South African Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha, State Department spokesman Charles Redman would not comment directly on reports that the U.S. delegation had warned Botha that the situation would require radical changes to satisfy the demand in Congress, which is preparing a series of stiff economic sanctions.

Redman’s statement called for an end to the violence and repression in South Africa and a restoration of order but did not call for the lifting of the state of emergency. Asked about the omission, Redman said the U.S. policy calls for an end to the emergency regulations.