S. Africa Arrests Boesak Before Protest March : Apartheid Foes Vow to Demonstrate Anyway; Government Halts Stock and Currency Trade

The Rev. Allan Boesak, one of South Africa’s leading foes of apartheid, was arrested by police here Tuesday on the eve of a mass march that he planned to lead on Pollsmoor Prison, where black nationalist leader Nelson Mandela is serving a life sentence.

Later in the day, the increasingly embattled minority white regime of President Pieter W. Botha suspended all trading on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and foreign currency markets until next Monday after the South African rand hit a new low of 35.50 U.S. cents.

The government move--unprecedented for South Africa, which prides itself on the stability of its economy--indicated to bankers here and in Johannesburg that the country wants to reschedule its $17-billion foreign debt and has been having trouble doing so because of the sustained unrest and political pressure on its bankers in the United States and Western Europe.

Warned of ‘Stern Action’

Boesak, president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and a founder of the United Democratic Front coalition of anti-apartheid groups, was detained under the country’s severe security laws, which authorize indefinite detention in solitary confinement without trial.

His arrest followed a warning by the government that it would take “stern action” to prevent the march on Pollsmoor, about 15 miles outside Cape Town.

But Boesak’s attorney, Essa Moosa, said Tuesday evening that despite the cleric’s detention, the march will take place as planned. The demonstration could turn into a major confrontation between anti-apartheid activists and the police.

“It is the people’s march, not Dr. Boesak’s march, and it will go ahead,” Moosa said, adding that “in organizational terms alone, it was impossible to call off the march at this point.”

Brig. Gert Odendaal, the Cape Town police commissioner, ordered the Colored, or mixed-race, suburb of Athlone, starting point for the march, sealed off within a three-mile radius between 6 a.m. and midnight today.

Police, reinforced by combat troops, were already manning roadblocks around the city to turn back would-be marchers, who by Tuesday evening had begun arriving by bus and convoys of cars from around the country.

Boesak had predicted that as many as 20,000 people would converge this morning on Pollsmoor, where Mandela, the leader of the outlawed African National Congress, is serving a life sentence after his 1964 conviction on charges of sabotage.

Council Deplores Arrest

The South African Council of Churches, of which Boesak is a senior vice president, deplored his arrest and warned, “This detention can only intensify bitterness and may indeed generate violence as its direct result.

“We must appeal to all concerned that they be calm and not respond to this with any acts of anger,” the council said.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Charles Redman said the U.S. government has formally protested Boesak’s arrest, adding, “We believe the detention of Rev. Boesak and other leaders can only exacerbate the current cycle of polarization and tension.”

Boesak, 39, is a Colored and a top official of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church, a segregated Dutch Reformed denomination for Coloreds. He was detained Tuesday afternoon at a police roadblock in Belleville South, a Cape Town suburb, that had been set up to turn back the busloads of protesters and to prevent demonstrating students from the University of the Western Cape and the University of Cape Town from moving in.

Louis le Grange, the minister of law and order, had warned over the weekend that the march would violate South Africa’s security laws and declared, “No illegal gathering will be tolerated, and the police will take stern action in this regard.”

Boesak, in a fiery speech to a packed rally here Monday night, had replied that he intended to proceed with the march, making it the largest and boldest act in a new campaign of civil disobedience.

‘Declare Our Opposition’

He wanted no confrontation with either the police or the state, Boesak said. “We simply want to declare our opposition to the political system of South Africa in a peaceful manner.”

In addition to calling for Mandela’s release, Boesak said, the march is intended to demonstrate to the government that “violence and intimidation are not going to turn our people around any more.”

“We have a vision of a new country beyond Botha and apartheid,” he said. “We have entered a new phase in the struggle for liberation in this country.”

Tension was high in the Cape Town area throughout the day. Demonstrating students from the University of the Western Cape were fired upon with tear gas when police sought to contain their protest on the campus.

The outlying black township of Guguletu, the scene of repeated clashes with police over the past two weeks, was sealed off for much of the day after youths there stoned cars and trucks. Student boycotts of classes continued in several black and Colored suburbs, including Mitchell’s Plain, one of the largest Colored townships.

Boesak’s detention brought to at least 35 the number of senior leaders of the United Democratic Front arrested under the internal security laws since Friday, when Boesak announced plans for the march and promised that it would “turn the country upside down.”

The Rev. Mcebisi Xundu, a politically active Anglican priest in Durban, was also detained Tuesday.

38 Face Treason Trial

With 38 of the front’s other top officials facing trial on charges of high treason and hundreds of local leaders detained under the partial state of emergency imposed last month, the front with its 650 affiliates is fighting for its life.

The government’s actions were sharply criticized by Helen Suzman, the law-and-order spokesman for the white liberal opposition Progressive Federal Party, who said that “if the march were allowed to go ahead, the protesters would arrive at the prison, deliver their petition and disperse if left alone.”

“But this government cannot stand being defied,” she continued, “and it will even create a violent situation to stop a peaceful protest.”

The announcement by Finance Minister Barend du Plessis that dealings of the stock and currency markets are being suspended until Monday described the steps as necessary so that South Africa “can meet all its international obligations.” This led bankers to conclude that the government now will seek easier repayment terms for its outstanding loans, which have ballooned in terms of the South African currency in recent months as the rand has declined.

Worth one U.S. dollar about three years ago, the South African rand was worth only 35.50 cents on Tuesday, and most of that value has been lost in the last year because of what Du Plessis described as “abnormal pressures” that have arisen primarily from the civil unrest, not from economic factors.

Exchange Controls Possible

Bankers saw hints in the brief, three-paragraph statement that exchange controls will be tightened to stem the panicky outflow of capital, both foreign and domestic, that has been growing as the unrest of the last year has intensified and spread around the country.

Another likely move, they thought, would be import controls, again a measure intended to conserve precious foreign exchange.

Amid tight security, President Botha on Tuesday paid a surprise visit to Zwide, one of the long-troubled black townships outside the industrial center of Port Elizabeth in eastern Cape province, an area under emergency rule, in an effort to rally local black leaders to support him.

“The security forces are in full control,” he told a group of town councilors, most of whom have been threatened with death if they do not quit their posts. “But we must continue with the state of emergency to enable the forces of normality, of good will, to overcome these problems. We are progressing in this direction.”

Police headquarters in Pretoria on Tuesday reported scattered incidents of unrest around the country over the previous 24 hours, including several arson attacks on schools and government offices and the dispersal of “rioting mobs” by police using tear-gas grenades, rubber bullets and birdshot. No deaths and only limited injuries and arrests were reported.

Police spokesmen said these reports of unrest, which have been given three times a day in recent weeks, will now be given only once a day. The change, they said, resulted from the reduction in number of incidents to report and not from a desire to minimize the unrest by reporting less of it.