454 Cape Town Schools Closed : Officials Seek to Stem Violence in S. Africa

After a week of almost daily rioting, the government on Friday closed 454 schools for mixed-race Colored youths in the Cape Town area in an effort to check the growing violence here.

But the initial effect of the drastic move will be to put 360,000 Colored youths, from kindergartners to college students, on the streets that have been the battlefield for fierce clashes with police over the past week in which at least 32 people have died.

The Rev. Allan Hendrickse, chairman of the Council of Ministers in the Colored House of Representatives of South Africa’s tricameral Parliament, said the schools had become hotbeds of unrest and would remain closed “until we have ridden out this wave of unrest.”

The schools, Hendrickse said, were “meeting places for organizing protests, and more than protests--arson and violence, too.”

Carter H. Ebrahim, the Colored minister of education, said the government wants parents to assume responsibility for supervising their children and that the closure will provide time for “cooling off.”

“Hopefully, this will last only a few weeks,” he said.

Under South Africa’s apartheid system, schools are racially segregated, and those attended by whites and blacks here will not be affected by the closure, which involves half the Colored schools in western Cape province.

In Pretoria, Louis le Grange, the minister of law and order, who visited Cape Town on Thursday with Gen. Magnus Malan, the defense minister, said that the government is preparing to take firmer measures here that will bring the violence under control within a short time.

He said the government’s intention is to return the situation to normal as quickly as possible, but he refused to discuss the new steps before they are implemented.

Minor Clashes Reported

Only limited clashes between Colored youths and the police were reported here Friday following widespread rioting most of the week. Police said they had used tear gas, rubber bullets and birdshot to disperse groups of youths in half a dozen Colored townships surrounding Cape Town, but all the incidents were minor compared with the running battles of previous days. In one incident, the home of a Colored politician, Dennis de la Cruz, leader of the Democratic Workers Party, was attacked at midnight with firebombs by a group of men who were driven off by police guards. The police shot one attacker and arrested two more. De la Cruz was not at home at the time; there was only limited damage.

Police reported that eight youths had been wounded and 65 arrested on charges of public violence during the day.

In Durban, which has remained tense since riots there a month ago killed more than 70 blacks and Indians, police stormed a high school in the black township of Lamontville, outside the city, after a passing police patrol was stoned by some students. The police fired tear gas grenades, rubber bullets and birdshot at the fleeing students, some of whom jumped out second-floor windows to escape.

Funeral for 12 Blacks

The security forces will face a major test here today at a mass funeral for 12 blacks killed last week in Guguletu and other black ghetto townships outside Cape Town when police broke up a planned march on Pollsmoor Prison, where African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela is serving a life sentence for sabotage.

The Rev. Allan Boesak, a leading anti-apartheid activist from Cape Town’s Colored community, whose detention without charge last week under South Africa’s severe security laws contributed to the riots, called from his prison cell in Pretoria for calm.

“Allan said that the people should remain strong and never give up hope,” his wife, Dorothy, said Friday after returning from her first visit. “He would not want to see the loss of any more lives, and he urged the students to restrain themselves in order not to be exposed to further violence.”

Dorothy Boesak, who was allowed to see her husband for an hour at police headquarters in Pretoria, said that he appeared to be well, in good spirits and “correctly treated” although he was being held in solitary confinement, as security laws here permit.

Mandela Has Medical Tests

Mandela, 67, the symbol of blacks’ struggle against South Africa’s apartheid system of racial segregation and minority white rule, was reported to have undergone medical tests at Woodstock Hospital here Thursday for a suspected kidney ailment, raising fears for his health.

The black nationalist leader was taken to the hospital and examined by a urologist after blood was found in his urine, according to Ismail Ayob, his lawyer. He was then returned to Pollsmoor Prison outside the city.

His wife Winnie is “frantic with worry,” Ayob said, and will seek a court order that would allow him to be treated by his own physician and grant her a special visit.

There have been recurrent rumors in recent years that Mandela, jailed in 1961, is in declining health, and black leaders have repeatedly warned the government of serious repercussions should he die in prison. He appeared to be in good health, however, when his wife saw him at Pollsmoor last month on a regular visit.

3 Activists Detained

In a further crackdown on the United Democratic Front, the major coalition of anti-apartheid groups inside South Africa, the government detained three more local activists here Friday under the country’s internal security laws that permit indefinite detention without trial. Five others were detained Monday.

The government has banned a major rally planned for today by the United Democratic Front in Athlone, a Colored township that has been the focus of much of the recent unrest. A meeting of the University of Cape Town’s Voluntary Action Committee on Friday was also banned.

In Johannesburg, Murphy Morobe, the front’s acting publicity secretary, again expressed the organization’s fears that the government intends to outlaw it entirely soon. Its major affiliate, the Congress of South African Students, was outlawed last week, and 38 of its top leaders are on trial on charges of treason, and hundreds more have been detained in the past two months.

National police headquarters in Pretoria reported Friday that 928 people, mostly blacks, were still being held without charge under the state-of-emergency regulations promulgated six weeks ago by President Pieter W. Botha. The rest of the 2,674 who were initially held under the regulations have either been released or charged with a crime.