Whips, Guns Rout S. Africa Marchers : Riot Police Thwart Demonstrators Seeking Mandela’s Freedom; 6 Dead

Thousands of South Africans of all races defied the government Wednesday in demonstrations demanding the release of jailed black nationalist leader Nelson Mandela, but riot police, using tear gas, whips and shotguns, prevented them from marching on the prison where Mandela is held.

Six blacks were reported killed in Guguletu, one of Cape Town’s ghetto townships, after police opened fire with tear-gas grenades, rubber bullets and birdshot on a crowd of more than 3,000 youths seeking to join the march on Pollsmoor Prison, about 15 miles outside Cape Town.

At least 65 blacks were injured in the Guguletu clashes, according to doctors at the clinic where they were treated, and more than 40 other people were treated for injuries suffered in other confrontations with police.

Dozens of arrests were made through the day as groups of protesters--whites, Indians and mixed-race Coloreds as well as blacks--repeatedly violated South Africa’s strict ban on political demonstrations and challenged the minority white government with the threat of major civil disobedience.

Clergy, Professors Arrested

Those arrested, charged with participating in an illegal gathering, included prominent Christian and Muslim clergymen, university professors and leaders from Cape Town’s large Colored community.

Although the demonstrations were scattered around Cape Town, taken together they constituted one of the largest and most multiracial protests in recent years against apartheid, South Africa’s system of racial separation and minority white rule.

And although several ended in clashes with police, all began with the organizers’ declared intention to keep them peaceful, in contrast with the spontaneous and increasingly violent protests in the country’s black townships that have taken more than 650 lives over the past year.

The original organizer of the march on Pollsmoor Prison, the Rev. Allan Boesak, a founder of the United Democratic Front coalition of anti-apartheid groups, was detained by police Tuesday under security laws that permit indefinite detention without trial. He has been taken to Pretoria.

Student Group Outlawed

In its continuing crackdown on anti-apartheid organizations, the government Wednesday outlawed the Congress of South African Students, the largest and most active affiliate of the United Democratic Front. The order, aimed at breaking the 18-month-long boycott of black schools, makes it illegal for the group to continue to operate and for anyone to belong to it or promote its aims.

Large contingents of riot police, reinforced by combat troops, prevented the demonstrators from leaving Cape Town’s suburbs and thwarted plans for a march by more than 25,000 on Pollsmoor. But the demonstrations appear to have made Mandela’s release an issue able to unify the government’s diverse opposition.

“The mobilization of the state’s military might against unarmed marchers will not deter our people,” the march’s organizers said in a statement later Wednesday. “It will be an inspiration to our people to continue the struggle against apartheid.”

Although police barred newsmen at gunpoint from Guguletu much of the day, policemen could be seen riding through the township in armored cars, firing tear-gas shells, rubber bullets and birdshot at groups of youths, who in turn pelted them with stones and a few gasoline bombs.

Large columns of smoke hung over the township most of the day as the youths set up barricades of burning cars and tires to block the police and army vehicles from entering.

The major clash came early in the morning when a large group of youths, chanting anti-government slogans and jogging in formation, attempted to cross a bridge out of the black township to reach the staging area for the march to Pollsmoor.

There they met more than 150 policemen and soldiers in armored cars and trucks. The security forces opened fire with an arsenal of anti-riot weapons, then pursued the fleeing youths through the township streets, firing as they went.

Armored Cars Chase Youths

“They just came and declared war on us,” Robert Ndlovu, 38, a bank clerk, said as he watched the armored cars chase youths up and down the township’s glass-littered streets. “You did not have to be in the march to get shot. You just had to be black and be here.”

But the scene at Athlone, a Colored suburb where the march was to start Wednesday morning, recalled--at least at its start--many of those confrontations of the U.S. civil rights movement in the American South 25 years ago that have come to inspire anti-apartheid activists here.

Led by Christian and Muslim clergymen, more than 2,000 whites, blacks, Indians and Coloreds set off from the Hewat Training College. They had gone less than a mile when they were confronted by about 120 policemen, loading weapons and flexing their long plastic whips.

The clergy knelt in prayer while their leaders tried to negotiate with the police. The other demonstrators, many of them middle-aged men and women, stood quietly, apprehensively.

No, the police said after the talks, they could not pass.

“This gathering is illegal,” a senior officer said over a bullhorn. “You have two minutes to disperse, or action will be taken against you.”

Sang Arm in Arm

The clergymen stood, locked arms and sang the hymn “Abide With Me,” while the police--Coloreds and blacks as well as whites--were deployed.

And then the two minutes were up. Salvos of tear gas and rubber bullets were fired into the marchers, and police charged at them, their long whips lashing out across faces, backs, arms and legs, raising angry red welts and often breaking the skin.

The demonstrators broke and ran down the side streets of the middle-class neighborhood, and the clergymen, including two nuns, were arrested.

As they regrouped, many of the policemen were laughing and joking, much as members of an athletic team might do after a good game.

More tear gas was fired until it rose in a great gray cloud over the whole area, leaving even the police gasping for breath.

Many of the marchers had retreated to Hewat Training College, and a long battle of stones and tear-gas shells ensued until the school’s principal arranged a cease-fire so that most of the students could leave.

Then the police ordered newsmen to leave, tear-gassed those journalists who remained and entered the college buildings to arrest those youths who had taken refuge there. About 20 were arrested, and all appeared when they were led away to have been badly beaten, their faces streaming with blood.

9 Journalists Arrested

Nine journalists, a CBS television crew and photographers for several American and European news organizations, who had remained in the area to photograph the end of the battle, were later arrested on charges of obstructing the police and failing to obey police orders. They will be arraigned in court today.

Other confrontations occurred earlier Wednesday at Athlone’s sports stadium, where the march was to begin, at the University of Cape Town, at the University of the Western Cape and on the way to Pollsmoor Prison itself.

In each, police succeeded in preventing the demonstrators from getting much farther than a few hundred yards from where they started, although considerable force was required in some instances.

At the University of Cape Town, one march by more than 4,000 students and teachers, mostly whites, was dispersed without violence before it reached the official residence here of President Pieter W. Botha, but a later demonstration ended with students stoning police and the police firing volleys of tear gas into the campus.

Battle on Campus

A 3 1/2-hour running battle was fought by police and about 3,000 Colored and Indian students at the University of the Western Cape, whose campus was showered with tear-gas grenades and rubber bullets as police prevented students from leaving to join the march.

The government’s decision to outlaw the six-year-old Congress of South Africa Students, the largest black student group, appears aimed first of all at breaking the 18-month-long boycott of classes the group has led to demand an overhaul of South Africa’s segregated school system so that blacks will get as good an education as whites.

Acting under South Africa’s sweeping security laws, Louis le Grange, the minister of law and order, not only banned the organization, forcing it to dissolve, but made it a crime for anyone to belong to it or to “promote its aims.” The action was the first since about 30 black-consciousness groups were outlawed in 1977.

But the student group was also the most active affiliate of the United Democratic Front, which is made up of more than 650 groups opposed to apartheid, and black political observers saw it as another blow at the front, 35 of whose senior leaders have been detained in the past week and 38 of whose top officials are already facing trial on treason charges.

Miners Plan Strike

In Johannesburg, the all-black National Union of Mineworkers announced plans to strike seven gold mines owned by three companies this weekend after members rejected their pay offers of 14% to 19% increases as insufficient.

Although the union settled with two other companies, which had offered raises of up to 22%, the amount it had sought, it warned it would strike all the companies if any action was taken against its members at any of the mines.

Any prolonged miners’ strike would severely affect South Africa’s already beleaguered economy, as gold earns half the country’s foreign exchange and coal fuels its industries.