Will Not Be Stampeded, Botha Says : S. African Rejects Calls for Dramatic Policy Changes

Despite the mounting calls at home and abroad for a timetable of specific reforms, President Pieter W. Botha declared Friday that the South African government will not be stampeded into hasty political changes.

Angrily brushing aside recent pleas by church leaders, businessmen and liberal opposition parties for a dialogue with opponents of the country’s apartheid system of racial segregation and of minority white rule, Botha said his government’s reforms will be worked out behind closed doors, as past constitutional changes have been, then presented to the public to accept or reject.

“Let me tell them, reform does not come overnight,” he said, replying to calls for dramatic moves that might end the continuing civil unrest that has cost more than 650 lives, most of them black, in the past year. “Real stability and development cannot be achieved by the stroke of a pen.

‘Our Proud Heritage’

“We shall not be stampeded into a situation of panic,” he told cheering delegates to the youth congress of his ruling National Party in Pretoria. “We shall not be forced to sell out our proud heritage built up over decades.”

And, alluding to the Reagan Administration’s call this week for him to end the “crisis of confidence” here by talking with black opposition leaders and setting out an agenda of specific reforms, Botha declared, again to the cheers and applause of his party’s new generation, “Attempts to make us a pushover for our enemies will prove to be a march of folly.”

His past proposals to anti-apartheid activists to halt their protests and take part in negotiations with the government have been taken as signs of weakness, Botha said, adding, “This is the last of those calls that I will make.”

6 Blacks Killed

Six more blacks were killed overnight Friday in the third straight day of violence in the small town of Aliwal North, according to police headquarters in Pretoria. The deaths occurred when local police opened fire with shotguns on a large crowd of black youths they said had begun to stone them and were preparing to throw firebombs, gasoline-filled bottles with lighted newspaper wicks. In addition to those killed, at least 20 blacks were wounded in the incident.

Nine people have now died in Aliwal North, a crossroads town on the border of the Orange Free State and Cape province, about 350 miles south of Johannesburg. The clashes began with a school boycott by black students and then a one-day strike by all blacks in the town. A consumer boycott was planned, but residents said they were not certain what would happen after so many deaths. Police imposed a curfew Friday night to prevent further violence.

In Cape Town, the Rev. Allan Boesak, a leading anti-apartheid activist, announced plans for a “march of thousands” Wednesday on Pollsmoor Prison, outside the city, where African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela is held, to demand his unconditional release as “an essential prerequisite to a meaningful solution in South Africa.”

Such a march would be illegal under South Africa’s severe security laws and could launch a long-expected campaign of civil disobedience. Boesak, the president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and a patron of the United Democratic Front coalition of anti-apartheid groups here, promised Friday that the protest would be peaceful. A police spokesman in Pretoria said security forces would “ensure that law and order is maintained.”

17 in Coalition Held

In an effort to prevent the march from drawing protesters from around the country, security police Friday arrested at least 17 officers and senior members of the United Democratic Front in Cape Town and Durban. Among them was Dr. Farouk Meer, the front’s acting president, Billy Nair, its Natal provincial president, and Christmas Tinto, its Cape Town regional president.

With 38 members of its top leadership now on trial charged with high treason, more than 600 local leaders detained without charge under the state of emergency and others in hiding, the front with its 650 affiliates is struggling to survive as the principal anti-apartheid group in the country. The march will be both an effort to muster its remaining strength and a test of its viability.

In another setback for the government, Zulu leader Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi called again Friday for Mandela’s immediate release. For the first time, Buthelezi made it a condition of his participation in any discussion, such as a proposed national or constitutional convention, on the country’s future. He is also demanding a declaration by the government of its intention to dismantle apartheid and share political power as a basis for talks.

“As long as Mr. Mandela is in prison, the feet of other black leaders are tied,” said Buthelezi, whose participation in such talks would be essential as the leader of South Africa’s 6 million Zulus. “If we go in these circumstances to the conference table, people will say, ‘How can you talk to the government while the real leaders are in jail?’ ”

Soweto Students Held

In Soweto, the sprawling black suburb outside Johannesburg, police Friday continued rounding up hundreds of schoolchildren, many only 7 and 8 years old, for violating regulations imposed during the five-week-old state of emergency that prohibit students from being outside their classrooms during school hours. The rules are an attempt to end the long-running school boycotts and reduce unrest.

Police and soldiers, armed with rifles, shotguns and tear-gas grenade launchers and using whips and dogs, took more than 500 elementary and high school students into custody. If the children are charged and convicted, they could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison. About 350 had been similarly detained on Thursday.

Distraught and increasingly angry parents, teachers, doctors, clergymen and social workers besieged Soweto’s Moroka police station seeking the students’ release, only to be kept away from the frightened and wailing children by soldiers armed with rifles and backed by snarling police dogs.

Although police said all had been detained while “loitering” or being off school grounds during classes, reporters witnessed an army raid on a Catholic high school when squads of soldiers, armed with assault rifles and firing tear-gas grenades, took students out of their classrooms. “They were throwing stones earlier,” a police sergeant with the unit said. “We didn’t have time to get the little black bastards then.”

‘Back to Normal’

“We are cracking down,” Brigadier Jan Coetzee, the Soweto police commander, told the local Sowetan newspaper. “We will not allow 5,000 stupid students to disregard law and order in Soweto and in South Africa. We are going to bring the schools situation in Soweto back to normal.”

After meeting with Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace laureate and Anglican bishop of Johannesburg, Coetzee relented. He said all children under 13 would be released, that older students would be paroled in their parents’ custody, that the question of criminal charges against them would be left to the provincial attorney general and that in the future, police will not arrest anyone less than 10 years old.

Unrest was reported Friday in nine other areas around the country. Most of the incidents involved the stoning of police patrols, firebomb attacks on delivery vehicles, schools, government offices and stores and “illegal gatherings,” according to police headquarters in Pretoria.

Among the incidents was a firebomb attack, the second in a week, on the home of Arthur Stanley, a Colored (mixed-race) member of Parliament, outside Cape Town. Damage was minimal, and Stanley, who was slightly injured last week, was not hurt.