Troops Seal Off Soweto, Search Homes : Black South African Officer Shoots His Way Out of Crowd

Heavily armed security forces sealed off part of Soweto, Johannesburg’s black ghetto, for four hours today, making house-to-house searches and frisking pedestrians whose hands they stamped with red-ink passes.

In Bethal, about 90 miles east of Johannesburg, a black policeman threatened by a mob accusing him of collaboration with the white-minority government shot his way out of the crowd today, killing one man, police said.

The searches in Soweto marked the first time in South Africa’s year of rioting that the army was sent house-to-house in the nation’s largest black community, though similar operations have been conducted in eastern Cape province.

No Casualties Reported

There were no immediate reports of casualties or arrests.

Soweto residents said police arrived in a convoy of large armored trucks about 8 a.m. today and sealed off the main road through the Diepkloof area of the sprawling black township six miles southwest of central Johannesburg.

“We were terrified when we first saw the Hippos and Caspers,” one resident said of the giant armored trucks. “We did not understand what was going on.”

Residents reported that police marched blacks from their homes and stamped a small arrow in red ink on their hands so they could pass checkpoints around the area.

The operation ended by 11 a.m. Afterward, roving gangs of black youngsters threatened to hijack and loot delivery trucks, the Soweto residents said. The youngsters threatened one vehicle until a policeman in the passenger seat fired warning shots.

Surrounded by Crowd

In the attack on the black officer, police said a crowd had surrounded the man as he went to work and accused him of being a tool of South Africa’s white rulers.

The officer opened fire with his handgun, fatally wounding one man, said a spokesman at police headquarters in Pretoria.

The officer also arrested a black woman, police said. Black police and municipal officers have been frequent targets for South African blacks who accuse them of collaboration with apartheid, the country’s forced system of racial discrimination.

The searches in Soweto came a day after a delegation of black and white clergymen met with President Pieter W. Botha and said the leader of the white minority government did not appear to recognize the seriousness of the past year of unrest by the black majority. (Stories, Page 4.)

Police reported brief incidents of rioting in scattered areas of South Africa overnight. In a black district near Kimberley, 273 miles south of Johannesburg, police said youngsters stoned cars and looted a beer hall. Cars were stoned near Soweto.

In Washington, the State Department said today that the government of South Africa needs to make clearer what reforms it has in mind to ease tensions. Spokesman Charles E. Redman said the Pretoria government needs to clarify to the black majority “what the reforms portend, how they can be translated into a political dialogue which will permit the government and the leaders of South Africa’s communities to negotiate South Africa’s future.”

“There must be power-sharing by all South Africans on a mutually acceptable basis, “ Redman said at a news briefing. “There are a number of ways participatory democracies can be constituted.”