Anti-Apartheid Sessions Barred in Cape Town

Using their sweeping powers under the state of emergency imposed on the Cape Town area last week, South African police officials Monday banned all meetings of 102 anti-apartheid groups in one of the biggest crackdowns on the government’s opposition.

In other regulations, which have the force of law and carry penalties of up to 10 years’ imprisonment, the police ordered all schoolchildren to be in class or at home during school hours and prohibited any activities by school organizations.

The measures, some of the toughest introduced anywhere since the state of emergency was first proclaimed in 36 districts of the nation 100 days ago, are intended to restore order quickly to the riot-torn Colored (mixed-race) suburbs around Cape Town. More than 70 people have been killed there in the last two months.

“The banning of meetings once again indicates the brutal arrogance of the state,” said a spokesman for the United Democratic Front, a coalition of groups opposed to South Africa’s apartheid system and minority white rule.

Most of the organizations whose meetings have been banned are affiliated with the front, which claims about 650 constituent groups with about 2 million members.

Five more people died, meanwhile, in the unrest around Cape Town and in eastern Cape province on Monday and late Sunday, according to reports from police headquarters in Pretoria and from local accounts.

Unrest was reported in downtown Johannesburg, in Soweto, the black city outside Johannesburg, and in a number of small towns in Cape province.

A 17-year-old mixed-race youth was shot and killed by a white farmer who fired his shotgun at youths stoning his truck in Hanover Park, a mixed-race suburb of Cape Town, while he was on the way to deliver vegetables to market.

Earlier, the burned body of a mixed-race man was found in Salt River, also outside Cape Town, and that of a black man at Kwazakele, near Port Elizabeth.