S. Africa Police Breeak Up March With Whips, Guns : Thousands Defy Law in Protests

Thousands of South Africans of all races defied the law today by marching to demand freedom for jailed black leader Nelson Mandela, but police broke up the processions with whips, tear gas and rubber bullets.

Another march to the residence of President Pieter W. Botha was halted peacefully by a police order.

The protests were the largest show of multiracial opposition to apartheid, the white-minority government’s racial separation policies, in a year of persistent black rioting in which more than 620 people have been killed.

It was impossible to immediately obtain an accurate casualty toll or the number of people arrested.

Among those taken into custody were seven white academics and clergymen who witnesses said were staging a peaceful protest outside Pollsmoor Prison, where Mandela, president of the outlawed African National Congress, is serving a life term on a conviction of plotting sabotage.

CBS News Crew Arrested

A three-man crew filming for CBS News was arrested in Cape Town’s mixed-race suburb of Athlone and was to be charged with disobeying police, CBS colleagues in Johannesburg said.

Police fought running battles through the afternoon with some of the 2,000 students and others who had tried to march from Hewat Teachers College in Athlone to Mandela’s prison 15 miles away. By mid-afternoon, police, still lobbing tear gas canisters, pursued hundreds of students into an auditorium at the college, witnesses said.

At 10 a.m., police with whips and night sticks broke up an earlier march winding from Athlone toward Pollsmoor Prison. Some in the crowd suffered bruises, but it was not clear whether there were any serious injuries.

“It’s trying to keep the sea from the beach,” said the Rev. Jan de Waal, a white minister of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church, who was trying to negotiate between the police and demonstrators.

About 15 demonstrators, including half a dozen clergymen, were taken into custody.

3rd March Halted Peacefully

Police peacefully halted a third march from the mostly white University of Cape Town before the protesters, about 3,500 mainly white students and lecturers, could reach Botha’s official residence.

On Tuesday, police arrested mixed-race clergyman Allan Boesak, who had called for the march to Pollsmoor. He is a leading opponent of apartheid, the laws under which 5 million whites deny the vote to 24 million blacks.

In another strike at anti-apartheid groups, the government announced today that it has banned the Congress of South African Students, the nationwide alliance that maintains chapters in most black high schools. The student group, which organized the 18-month boycott of black schools to demand better black education, is the largest organization in the anti-apartheid United Democratic Front.

Members Can’t Be Quoted

The ban means that the group cannot legally exist and that its members cannot be quoted publicly.

The order to ban the student group drew denunciation today from the Reagan Administration, which also urged Pretoria to stop using repression to cope with the growing racial unrest.