Police Kill 6 in S. Africa; 900 Children Seized

Police fired shotguns at black rioters in Cape province Friday, killing six and wounding 20, and arrested almost 900 children for boycotting classes in Soweto.

Some of the children were only 6 or 7 years old.

Bishop Desmond Tutu negotiated for their freedom, then used a bullhorn to tell hundreds of worried parents outside a police station: “All those under 13 will be released immediately without being charged. Those over 13, the police are taking their particulars and they will be released to their parents.”

Police headquarters said Friday night that all but six of the 542 black children picked up Friday had been released and that 339 detained Thursday also were let go without charge.

Headquarters said the people killed and wounded were in crowds of blacks who threw stones at riot patrols in Aliwal North, a remote town of the eastern Cape province.

Rubber Bullets Used

Police said the officers used shotguns and rubber bullets in the second day of turmoil there. More than 600 people have been killed, nearly all of them black, in a year of rioting against white rule.

Authorities confirmed the arrests of five leading opponents of apartheid from the Durban area, but did not confirm reports that seven others were picked up in Cape Town.

The five arrested, all members of the United Democratic Front anti-apartheid coalition, were identified as Dr. Farouk Meer, Billy Nair and Yunus Mohamed, who are classified as Asians, and blacks Noziswe Madlala and Themba Nxumalo.

Police Brigadier Jan Coetzee said the children in Soweto were arrested for violating rules against loitering outside schools under the state of emergency. He said he regretted the arrest of children under 10, and had ordered that it not be done again.

Intercession by Tutu

“I was playing with the ball inside the schoolyard, and the ball went out into the street,” said an 11-year-old boy. “I went to get the ball and they took me away.”

The boy was freed after the intercession by Tutu, the black Anglican bishop of Johannesburg who won the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize.

Armored personnel carriers descended on Soweto schools Thursday and early Friday, rounding up children near deserted schools and those hanging around outside school grounds. Armored riot vehicles packed with children were seen unloading them at police stations.

Coetzee is in charge of police in Soweto, the black city of 1.5 million outside Johannesburg that has been a center of black activism in the uprising against apartheid, the set of race laws that guarantees privilege to South Africa’s 5 million whites and denies rights to its 24 million blacks.

He had been quoted as saying on Thursday: “We are cracking down. We are going to bring the schools situation in Soweto back to normal.”

Emergency Imposed

The government says boycotting students become mobs that stone cars and clash with police and the army units that have occupied Soweto and other townships for weeks under the emergency imposed July 21.

President Pieter W. Botha made clear to a political meeting Friday night that he does not plan to dismantle apartheid.

“Reform does not come overnight,” he said. “A real stability and development cannot be achieved by the stroke of a pen. We shall not be stampeded into a situation of panic by irresponsible elements for opportunistic reasons. We shall not be forced to sell out our proud heritage we built up over decades.”

Departing from his text, Botha said the government’s previous appeals for negotiation had been interpreted by some as a sign of weakness, but “attempts to make us a pushover will prove to be a march of folly for our enemies.”

Mass March Planned

The Rev. Allan Boesak, a leader of the anti-apartheid movement, said in Cape Town that a mass march will be made Wednesday to Pollsmoor Prison, where African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela is serving a life sentence. Mandela, regarded as the most important black leader in South Africa, was jailed in 1964 for plotting sabotage.

Boesak told a news conference Mandela’s release is “seen by us an essential prerequisite to a meaningful solution in South Africa,” and is “the vital verification of fundamental change in South Africa.”

Outdoor marches and rallies have been illegal since 1976, when the last major wave of rioting to sweep the country began in Soweto, and it appeared unlikely the government would allow such a protest.

“We are confident that the march will be a peaceful, nonviolent and a disciplined demonstration, and we call on the authorities not to provoke our people with an armed presence,” Boesak said.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Charles E. Redman said the United States regrets the continuing violence and lack of progress toward a peaceful solution. He asked Botha’s government to “clarify its intentions and to initiate negotiations with the various communities ... on an agenda leading to an ending of apartheid and a political system based on consent of all South Africans.”