S. Africa Closes 454 Schools; Mandela Reportedly Ailing : Parents Urged to Stop Youths From Rioting

Cape Town Authorities closed 454 schools for 360,000 mixed-race children today and questions arose over the health of imprisoned black leader Nelson Mandela.

Authorities said they decided to close more than half the 904 schools for children of mixed race--designated as “Colored” under the white minority government policy of apartheid--because they were breeding grounds for racial unrest.

Carter Ebrahim, minister of education and culture in the chamber of Parliament for the mixed-race minority, said “disruptive actions and intimidation of pupils by an organized minority” jeopardized student safety.

Ebrahim also closed teachers’ training colleges and technical schools. He asked parents to persuade children to stop the rioting so schools could reopen, but set no reopening date.

Mandela, imprisoned for life since a 1964 conviction for planning sabotage, was examined by a urologist at a hospital Thursday, the prisons service said without giving details. Hospital sources said Mandela was treated under guard for a possible kidney infection and then returned to prison.

‘Frantic With Worry’

Lawyer Ismail Ayob, representing Mandela’s wife, Winnie, said she was “frantic with worry” and wanted her husband examined by a family doctor.

Ayob said he would seek a court order on Monday or earlier for Mandela, 67, to be checked by an independent doctor.

In the Indian Ocean port city of Durban, 680 miles from Cape Town, riot patrols used birdshot, rubber bullets, tear gas and whips today against crowds of rock-throwing youths in renewed unrest, police said.

Near Cape Town, police guards drove off attackers who tried to firebomb the home of a mixed-race member of Parliament as sporadic rioting persisted Thursday night and today, mainly rock-throwing at passing cars.

Seventy-six people were arrested in the rioting, where police battled youths in seven mixed-race townships, police headquarters at Pretoria said. No new deaths were reported.

In a year of turmoil over apartheid, South Africa’s racial segregation system, more than 650 people have been killed.

Law and Order Minister Louis le Grange said today he planned new measures to quell the 10 days of violence around Cape Town. He visited the area Thursday with Defense Minister Magnus Malan.

The Rev. Allan Boesak, an anti-apartheid leader detained without charge under security laws last week, appealed to youths “to restrain themselves in order not to be exposed to further violence,” said Boesak’s wife, Dorothy.

She visited him at police headquarters in Pretoria and said he was being treated well but kept in solitary confinement.