Leaders Defied : Grass Roots Urge Peace in S. Africa

White South African businessmen, politicians, theologians and students want to talk with the black guerrilla leaders of the outlawed African National Congress, despite government accusations of disloyalty and betrayal.

Every Monday and Friday in riot-torn Cape Town, thousands of whites, blacks and Coloreds (people of mixed race) wear little yellow ribbons in their hair, pin them to their clothes or tie them to their briefcases to call for peace in their troubled land and to demonstrate solidarity with one another.

In Soweto, the black satellite city of nearly 2 million people outside Johannesburg, civic and youth leaders agreed over the weekend to “declare war on the hooligans and thugs who are trying to hijack the struggle against apartheid and preying on the community.”

‘Not Pay a Cent’

And in Johannesburg last week, Marion Crawford, 43, who is a marketing research analyst and the mother of two teen-agers, went to jail for 10 days rather than pay a $40 fine for employing a black maid who did not have the necessary government permits to work and live in an area designated for whites. “I will not pay a cent to support this iniquitous system,” Crawford declared.

Impatient with their leaders, particularly President Pieter W. Botha and his ruling National Party, ordinary South Africans are trying to make themselves heard. They are taking action with urgent calls for sweeping reforms, with political initiatives unthinkable a year ago, with peaceful protests and civil disobedience--and with pleas for peace and reconciliation that they hope will end the continuing civil unrest.

A feeling is spreading across South Africa that the people themselves must act before the country is plunged into a racial civil war. Some are simply looking for a way to say, “Enough is enough!” but many more are now asking, “What can I do?”

Their initiatives are startling in a political culture in which leaders are assumed to know best, the government is believed to be anointed by God and a petition for a new traffic light brings public recriminations.

Moral Right vs. Legality

“I find myself having to choose between what is morally right and what is legal,” Crawford said as she was convicted of violating South Africa’s “pass laws.”

The government itself has acknowledged that these laws, which are intended to limit the numbers of blacks in urban areas, are discriminatory and harsh and has announced that it is considering their repeal.

“For me, it would be morally wrong and indefensible to comply with this law,” Crawford said. “I believe all laws that discriminate on the basis of race or color should be abolished--taken off the statute books, should not exist. I am not alone in wanting to see the end of this and other iniquitous laws. . . . I love my country, and I don’t want to see it destroyed.”

Embarrassed by the attention Crawford drew, the government decided to release her today, four days early, because of time “earned for good behavior.”

Many other whites undoubtedly share her feelings about apartheid, South Africa’s system of racial separation and minority white rule, but until now only a few--mostly clergymen, liberal politicians and social crusaders--were willing to take so bold a stand.

Over the weekend, 22 other middle-aged, middle-class women, 19 of them white and three of them Roman Catholic nuns, gathered outside Soweto’s Moroka police station in a silent demonstration. They were protesting against apartheid, against the three-month-old state of emergency that establishes what amounts to martial law in the affected black areas and against the conscription of more young white men into the army to enforce apartheid.

Illegal Gathering

They were arrested on charges of taking part in an illegal gathering for handing out a leaflet that said:

“We come in peace. We are here in solidarity with women in the (black) townships. . . . We are here in peace, love and hope. We believe that the sons of Africa should not fight one another. Black and white youth are being brutalized by the conflict in our society, a conflict born out of the apartheid system.”

The women, wearing white smocks bearing protest slogans, were carried into the police station after they refused to leave and were held until 2 a.m. Sunday before being released on bail. They were arraigned Monday in Soweto, and the case was postponed until late November. If convicted, they could be sentenced to up to three years, though they are more likely to be fined.

More worrisome to the government than these protests, which it regards as quixotic, have been the efforts by white business leaders, by the liberal opposition Progressive Federal Party, by students from the top Afrikaner university and, last week, by seven prominent theologians of the Dutch Reformed Church to open a political dialogue with the African National Congress.

‘Cheap Political Publicity’

Botha called the businessmen disloyal. He suggested that the Progressive Federal Party was trying “for some cheap political publicity,” and he revoked the passports of the Stellenbosch University students to prevent them from going to Lusaka, Zambia, where the guerrilla congress has its headquarters.

Botha, an increasingly embattled leader criticized for inflexibility even within his own party, has said such meetings amount to “defiance of the state’s authority.” They only serve, he said, to enhance the prestige of a guerrilla organization that the government blames for much of the current unrest as well as for more than 80 terrorist attacks this year.

On Monday, the government threatened to block the trip by the clerics, who belong to Botha’s own church, and thus to risk even greater criticism--and ridicule--than it suffered when it barred the students from leaving.

“The Gospel teaches us to love our enemies, but how can you if you don’t even want to talk to him?” said the Rev. Nico Smith, a white clergyman who gave up a prestigious university professorship to minister to a black congregation in Mamelodi, a black ghetto township outside Pretoria, the capital.

Philip Vester, 22, an electrical engineering student at Stellenbosch and the president of its student representative council, said Sunday: “South Africans must realize that the necessary political discussion no longer centers on debates on who has how many representatives in the parliamentary system. . . . Today’s political struggle is one in which whites have to orient themselves and come to terms with the ideals and expectations of black politics.

“We were not going to, nor indeed could we, ‘negotiate’ with the African National Congress, but intended merely to enter into a dialogue with fellow South Africans who at the moment enjoy no political rights in South Africa.”

The other major political initiative under way is an attempt to establish a “convention alliance” by the Progressive Federal Party, the Zulu political movement Inkatha, led by Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, and a broad cross-section of liberal white businessmen, professionals, academics, journalists and a scattering of blacks, Coloreds and Indians.

The “convention” would be a national constitutional convention, preceded by other meetings to thrash out a new multiracial political system for South Africa. The “alliance” is intended to draw in virtually all those opposed to apartheid as well as the “broad masses,” in Buthelezi’s words.

However, only one meeting has been held, and the alliance has drawn considerable black criticism that may doom it from the outset.

Left-of-Center Alliance

Another alliance, calling itself Concerned Citizens, has been established by Black Sash, a liberal, predominantly white women’s group that monitors human rights. It aims to bring together such left-of-center organizations as the Progressive Federal Party, the Johannesburg Democratic Action Committee, the National Union of Students of South Africa and the Detainees’ Parents Support Committee.

“There is an extraordinary amount of anxiety across a broad spectrum of South African life today,” Ethel Walt, a spokesman for the new alliance, said, explaining that its intent is to “give ordinary people a voice.”

Other, less overtly political movements are flourishing, although their founders acknowledge that it is difficult to translate the broad support they receive into political change.

Let South Africa Speak, a group begun by several Cape Town businessmen, has been distributing more than 10,000 copies of its manifesto each week for nearly two months--most of them to individuals writing for a copy. It has persuaded many, mostly in the Cape Town area, to drive with their headlights on each Monday and Friday and to wear or carry a bit of yellow ribbon or yarn those days to symbolize their desire for peace.

‘Want to Know One Another’

In the words of the group’s manifesto: “We, the overwhelming majority of black, brown and white South Africans, want to know one another, to work with one another, to respect one another and to protect one another. We want to be able to greet one another on the street--and not be dragged down in the gutter by further oppression, violence, arson and murder.

“We want a fair hearing for all who claim to be leaders. We want them never to tell us to take up arms against one another and always to be committed to finding together a path which all of us can follow with dignity and joy.”

Similar petitions have been circulated, mostly among whites, by the editor of the South African edition of Cosmopolitan magazine, by a top businessman and by a “very ordinary white South Africa housewife”--all calling for an end to apartheid, racial discrimination and a new political system based on equality.

Earlier this month, hundreds of thousands of South Africans, blacks as well as whites, gathered at prayer meetings and special church services as part of an ecumenical “national initiative for reconciliation,” but there has been no follow-up so far.

Blacks Hesitant to Join

Blacks have been hesitant to join these movements. They see most such efforts as operating largely “within the system” and aimed at reforming apartheid rather than abolishing it. They also question the motives of whites, who generally are perceived as trying to preserve their position and privileges and prevent a total revolution.

Finally, blacks explain that they are caught in a political vise, with radical youths on one side pushing them against the equally tough security forces.

Among blacks, as a result, the biggest “people’s peace movement” is aimed not at the government--it already is the target of virtually all the protests in the black community--but at restoring a measure of normality after more than a year of sustained civil unrest in which most of the 775 victims have been black or Colored.

In Soweto, civic leaders and members of the Soweto Youth Congress and Azanian Students Movement came together last week in a call for law and order in the sprawling ghetto in the wake of widespread street assaults, robberies, extortion, rapes and murders.

‘Suffered in Silence’

The struggle against apartheid is being “hijacked” by hooligans and thugs, the groups said. The Sowetan, the local black newspaper, commented, “Scores of residents have suffered in silence while gangs of youths posing as liberation fighters trampled on their dignity.”

The youth groups plan to put their members in trouble spots as marshals to enforce discipline and protect residents in a campaign similar to the one that restored order to Soweto in 1977 after nearly a year of unrest.

Another type of citizens’ group is also springing up: vigilantes. Formed to protect white commercial and residential areas from the now-frequent attacks by black and Colored youths, the vigilante organizations are arming themselves and establishing paramilitary command structures and patrols in their neighborhoods.

“We will not stand for another attack,” the leader of the newly formed Kraaifontein Civil Unit told a local newspaper outside Cape Town. “Anyone who tries to throw another firebomb in Kraaifontein will wind up dead. . . . It’s sad it came to this, but we cannot rely on the government today, either to protect or to make peace.”