S. Africa Arrests Activists, Warns Against March

The government Saturday continued its roundup of leading anti-apartheid activists, detaining at least 27 officials of the United Democratic Front, and warned that a planned protest march this week on the prison where African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela is held would be turned back by force, if necessary.

Louis le Grange, the minister of law and order, said in a statement that a march on Pollsmoor Prison outside Cape Town would constitute “an illegal gathering,” prohibited by law, and that “the police will take stern action” against such a demonstration.

But the Rev. Allan Boesak, president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and a patron of the United Democratic Front coalition of anti-apartheid groups, declared his determination to proceed with the march Wednesday to force a showdown with the government. He predicted a turnout as high as 20,000.

‘We Shall March’

Boesak said in Cape Town on Saturday: “Thousands of us will march on Pollsmoor Prison . . . to demand the release of Nelson Mandela, first of all, and to demonstrate, secondly, that our anger can no longer be contained--suppressed, in fact--by all these laws and regulations that place a higher priority on tidy streets than on people’s lives. Le Grange or not, we shall march.”

The South African security police, meanwhile, reported the arrests of 27 officials of the United Democratic Front and its affiliates in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg in what front officials charged was an effort to disrupt the Pollsmoor march. It is also the latest step in a government campaign to destroy the organization, the opponents charged.

“The crackdown is yet another sign that the government is incapable of handling peaceful protest,” Boesak said. “It is another sign of political desperation, another sign of moral disintegration, another sign that its days are numbered.”

Among those arrested Friday and overnight Saturday were Dr. Farouk Meer, acting president of the front; Billy Nair, the front’s Natal province head; Christmas T. Tinto, the front’s Cape Town head; Yunus Mohammed, the front’s Durban secretary, and Father Sydney Luckett, director of the Anglican Church’s board of social responsibility.

In addition to other front officials in Cape Town and Durban, the police said Saturday that they detained student leaders, labor union organizers, local newspaper reporters and civic and women’s association officials, all under South Africa’s strict internal security laws. The laws authorize people to be detained for questioning indefinitely without charge and to be held in solitary confinement.

In a telephone interview, Boesak accused the police of trying to disrupt the march, which he sees as the start of a national campaign of civil disobedience, and of attempting to break the organizational strength of the two-year-old United Democratic Front. The front has 650 affiliates with a total membership of 2 million.

“The detentions will not stop (the march), and they will not stop the United Democratic Front,” Boesak said. “The UDF can call on an army of volunteers. Is the government ready to detain them all, to put them all on trial?”

The government has already put 38 of the front’s leaders on trial on charges of high treason, detained perhaps 600 leaders of local affiliates under the five-week-old state of emergency and forced thousands of others into hiding to avoid arrest.

Repression Called Futile

Murpheson Morobe, one of the few front officials still free, said here Saturday that “history has shown that brutal repression has only served to intensify resistance and strengthen people’s hatred toward the system.”

The latest detentions, Morobe said, suggest that the government is close to outlawing the front, which has become the major organization in the country opposing South Africa’s system of racial segregation and white rule.

Brian Bishop, vice chairman of the South African Civil Rights League, commented, “The government invariably arrests moderate leaders at times like this, removing them from the (black) townships where their leadership is so necessary, and the result inevitably is further violence.”

The government also came under attack from Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, chief minister of the Zulu tribal homeland and president of Inkatha, the Zulu political movement with 1.1 million members. Buthelezi said that Pretoria’s recent statements on political reform show that it has become paralyzed with fear.

Whites’ Stand Assailed

“It is the weak who are belligerent,” Buthelezi said, referring to the recent combative speeches of President Pieter W. Botha, “and it is the whites who are afraid to give us a little finger lest we shake their hands in friendship.

“They don’t know how to live in friendship with their fellow black South Africans. They feel much more comfortable behind barbed wire patrolled by dogs and Sten guns. They don’t know how to live with us in their suburbs, and they feel more at ease when they crowd us into austere townships and poverty ridden ghettos.”

The hardening of Buthelezi’s position on negotiations for a new political system is a major setback for the government. The Zulu leader now insists that Mandela be released as a condition for any talks, as well as a government statement declaring that apartheid will be ended, meaning there is little chance that any black leader will talk with Pretoria before Mandela is freed.

In the continuing unrest, more than 20 incidents were reported Saturday from a dozen cities and towns, including Soweto outside Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth and Pietermaritzburg.

Zulus Attack Mourners

Police said that one man died after trying to set fire to a house at Khayelitsha, a new black township outside Cape Town. They said he was pursued, caught and beaten to death by five other blacks, who were later arrested. Police said they were uncertain about the motive for the attempted arson but believe it was politically inspired.

Violence was also reported at the funeral in Durban’s Umlazi township for eight blacks, all members of the United Democratic Front, who were killed there in rioting two weeks ago that left more than 70 dead. Some of those being buried Saturday were reportedly killed in factional clashes between Zulus and supporters of the United Democratic Front.

More than 300 Zulu warriors, armed with spears, clubs, machetes and shields and chanting a traditional tribal war cry, attacked the 8,000 mourners at the conclusion of the service. Most of the mourners escaped in waiting vehicles, but about 100 people left behind were badly beaten, according to local reporters who were present.

Police reported that they are holding 1,038 people under the five-week-old state of emergency, which permits detention without charge, but have now freed 1,102 others.