South Africa Black Leader Is Charged, Freed on Bail

A leading anti-apartheid activist, the Rev. Allan Boesak, was charged with subversion Friday and freed on bail three weeks after he was detained.

President Pieter W. Botha set stringent conditions for negotiations with the African National Congress, the exiled black guerrilla group whose leaders met with white businessmen week before last.

The white-minority government released Boesak, who is of mixed race, on bail of 20,000 rand ($8,000) and barred him from attending public meetings, talking to reporters or instigating boycotts.

It also ordered him to turn in his passport, report to police daily and stay in his home from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m.

Boesak, who was arraigned unexpectedly in a small Cape province town, was charged on three counts of subversion and one of organizing a banned gathering.

He was detained without charge Aug. 27, the day before he was to lead a march to Pollsmoor Prison, where former ANC leader Nelson Mandela is serving a life term on a sabotage conviction.

Boesak is president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and a leader of the United Democratic Front, South Africa’s largest anti-apartheid group.

Thirty-eight front leaders were charged with treason earlier this year.

Botha told more than 1,000 cheering members of his National Party in Pretoria that he would not meet with the ANC unless it renounces violence, breaks ties with Moscow and embraces peaceful participation in reform.

He said said opponents here and abroad are stirring up a campaign to force the government into talks with the ANC and ignoring the guerrilla group’s aim of “an eventual socialist dictatorship, with its lamentable consequences.”

The United States and other Western countries have joined white South African businessmen in urging Mandela’s release and negotiations with the ANC after a year of racial violence that has killed more than 700 people, most of them black.

The president said talks between business leaders and the ANC last week in Lusaka, Zambia, were “unwise, and disloyal” to South African soldiers fighting the guerrillas.

“Who can expect me to hold discussions with the ANC without it renouncing violence and then look a black or white parent of a child who died as a result of ANC violence in the eye?” Botha asked.

Magistrate Andre Dippenaar said the charges against Boesak involved “attempts to jeopardize the authority of the state,” including advocating withdrawal of foreign investment, which is a crime in South Africa. The charges stemmed from several meetings Boesak attended in areas around Cape Town this year, he said.

Conviction of subversion carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

Dozens of Boesak’s family members and friends went to Malmesbury, 30 miles north of Cape Town, to attend the hearing.

Boesak, 39, looked drawn and tired after his solitary confinement in Pretoria. His supporters cheered when he emerged from the courthouse.

He is a fiery, eloquent speaker, with a large following in the western Cape, and is well-known nationwide. Church groups and supporters abroad had pressed the government to either bring charges or release him.

Security laws allow indefinite detention without trial.

Boesak organized the march on Pollsmoor to demand the release of Mandela, who was sentenced to life in prison in 1964.

Police banned the march and used whips, tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse people who tried to assemble for procession. That set off weeks of fierce rioting around Cape Town in which at three dozen blacks and people of mixed race were killed.

White opposition members of Parliament said their investigation of complaints about police conduct in Cape Town revealed “a community enraged at the behavior of what could only be called savages in police uniforms.”