U.S. Firms Assail S. Africa Over Handling of Unrest, Urge End to Emergency

American companies operating in South Africa on Wednesday sharply criticized the government’s handling of the continuing unrest, accused the police of contributing to the violence and called for an immediate end to the partial state of emergency that has put many black townships under virtual martial law.

The American Chamber of Commerce, in one of the most forceful statements yet by businessmen here, called for an end to emergency rule as a first step toward broader reforms. It also urged the white-minority government to open a dialogue with the country’s black majority and to undertake reforms that recognize black political rights.

“We wish to stress at this stage that without effective cooperation in a secure and stable environment, there can be no hope for negotiation to take place with black leadership,” the chamber warned.

“The current continued unrest is in many instances worsened by the lack of disciplined action by the security forces, particularly by the South African police,” the statement also said.

Critics Accuse Police

The government’s critics, including liberal white opposition members of Parliament, have repeatedly accused the police of using excessive force to combat the unrest. Charges of torture in police custody have also been common but rarely proved in court.

About 950 people, most of them black, have been killed during the civil unrest here since September, 1984. Nearly half of those have died since the state of emergency was imposed nearly five months ago.

The most urgent reform issues, the chamber said, are a single educational system, which would bring the immediate upgrading of black schools, and the end of the hated “pass laws” and other measures to prevent blacks from moving to urban areas to work and live.

Above all, there must be “meaningful participation of blacks in government through the development of a recognized mechanism of dialogue,” the chamber said, reiterating a call it made in March for black involvement at all levels of government, including full representation in Parliament and the Cabinet.

There was no immediate comment from the government, most of whose members went on a month’s vacation last week.

Withdrawals Suggested

If the government fails to adopt major reforms and continues the state of emergency, foreign companies that have remained here, despite pressure to pull out, might begin withdrawing, the chamber suggested.

“Should the state of emergency continue, we feel the potential for the destruction of the (political and economic) framework of South Africa will limit international involvement, increase unemployment and delay meaningful reform,” said the American business group, which has about 300 member firms that are subsidiaries, affiliates or major trading partners of U.S. companies.

The chamber, many of whose members are under mounting pressure to pull out of South Africa because of apartheid, felt that a new statement was necessary because “the situation remains in the same status quo, if it is not actually worsening,” the organization’s executive director, Ken Mason, explained.

Last month, the 186 U.S. companies that adhere to the Sullivan Principles pledging fair labor practices and equal employment opportunities here, sent a telex to President Pieter W. Botha, urging his personal intervention to end the prolonged crisis in black education that has kept hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren out of class most of this year. The companies then followed it up with a 15-page memorandum to three Cabinet members and an offer to help.

Botha Reported Angered

Botha was reportedly furious with the American businessmen, angered both by their intrusion into domestic politics and by their release of the message to the press. The Cabinet ministers replied this week that the government was already doing many of the things they suggested.

The American firms, as a group, are well behind liberal South African businessmen who have emerged over the past year as the government’s strongest, most persistent and most effective critics within the white community after decades of profitable acquiescence in apartheid’s effects, if not its ideology.

In a major move to make their influence felt, the top executives of more than 50 of the largest American companies operating here, led by General Motors Chairman Roger B. Smith and Burroughs Corp. Chairman W. Michael Blumenthal, formed the U.S. Corporate Council on South Africa two months ago. It will press the government for bolder and faster reforms.

Council leaders met a month ago in London with top South African executives to draw up a joint action program, and the American Chamber of Commerce declaration may be one of the agreed steps. The American participants reportedly included Smith, Blumenthal, John S. Reed, chairman of Citibank, and Rawleigh Warner Jr., chairman of Mobil Corp., all of whose companies are active in South Africa.

Meanwhile, one man was killed overnight Wednesday in the continuing civil unrest, according to police. A badly charred body, apparently that of a suspected government collaborator, was found in a black township near Port Elizabeth in eastern Cape province; he was the sixth such victim of black-against-black violence this week.

Police reported further incidents of arson, stone-throwing and intimidation around Cape Town, in the black townships near Durban, at Mamelodi outside Pretoria and in Soweto near Johannesburg. A task force of 800 police and troops swept through a section of Guguletu, one of the black ghettos outside Cape Town, in the fifth of a series of “cleanup and crime prevention” drives but arrested only eight people in the daylong operation.