‘Sanctions Now,’ Tutu Says in Appeal to World Leaders : U.S. Sticks to Quiet Diplomacy

With violence flaring in nine black townships, Nobel Peace Prize winner Bishop Desmond Tutu today demanded immediate international economic sanctions to counter President Pieter W. Botha’s refusal to ease South Africa’s apartheid race laws.

Asked when economic sanctions should be imposed, Tutu said: “If it is going to happen . . . then I think I should say immediately. Man, I’m not playing marbles. Our children are dying.”

Tutu earlier had urged the world to wait 18 months to two years before imposing economic sanctions to force changes in the South African policy of racial segregation that has been in force since 1948.

But the bishop, his voice breaking and fighting back tears, said Botha’s failure Thursday to announce major race law reforms forced him to reconsider.

Tutu’s comments came amid widespread disappointment over Botha’s determined declaration in a speech in Durban to a meeting of his all-white National Party that apartheid will remain the law of the land.

Some changes had been expected, but Botha instead offered the nation’s 24 million-strong black majority only an unspecified role in some government processes and promised to negotiate with some black leaders, whom he did not name. (Story on Page 4.)

Chester Crocker, the State Department’s top policy maker on South Africa, said today that the Reagan Administration will continue to oppose economic sanctions on the South African government.

Crocker, delivering the official U.S. response to Botha’s speech, said it was necessary to “develop, rather than withdraw, our influence (in the nation) and be prepared to use it,” indicating Washington is sticking to its policy of constructive engagement, or quiet diplomacy, to bring about change.

In a speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Crocker called for power-sharing among South African blacks and whites to end apartheid.

Other top U.S. officials and critics of South Africa said, however, that they are disappointed with Botha’s failure to take decisive steps away from apartheid, with congressional and black leaders calling the speech a “big zero.”

South Africa’s blacks reacted by turning to violence in some areas overnight. Riot squads clashed with rock-throwing youths and arsonists in nine black townships around Johannesburg and Port Elizabeth.

No injuries were immediately reported and authorities claimed a “marked decrease” in the level of unrest, which has left at least 630 people dead since a new constitution took effect last September excluding blacks from power.

Reacting today to the criticism of his speech, Botha said there was a “confusion of Babel” about his announcement.

“It seems to me there is the confusion of Babel over my speech this morning,” he told the Natal Congress of the National Party today.

“Give them time to study the speech,” he said. “Apparently some have slept badly last night. Let us hope that reason triumphs, that reasonableness prevails.”

Tutu, who won the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize for his decades-long nonviolent struggle against apartheid, said Botha plans to “bludgeon blacks into total submission” and predicted that the prospects for peaceful change are “virtually nil.”

“I believe we are on the brink of a precipice,” he said.

Tutu said Botha behaved like a “hack politician,” seeking votes by “merely rehashing shop-soiled, fly-blown cliches.”

Tutu said South Africa, with the support of the United States, Britain and West Germany, three of its major trading partners, plans to force blacks into total submission.

“Blacks in their view are expendable,” Tutu said.