Violent Holiday Boycott Divides S. Africa Blacks

Young black militants, pressing the latest tactic in the anti-apartheid drive here, have declared a highly controversial “black Christmas” for the families living in Soweto and the other ghetto townships around Johannesburg.

Blacks, the local consumer boycott committees have decreed, are not to do their Christmas shopping in white-owned stores, are not to hold the usual pop music concerts, choir competitions, beauty contests and community festivals and are not to have big holiday celebrations even at home.

One aim is to force white merchants, who had been hoping for a good Christmas season, to support the call by blacks for an end to the five-month-old state of emergency and for the withdrawal of white troops from the black townships.

An equally important goal appears to be the mobilization of ordinary black workers under the leadership of the militant black youths--not simply in this campaign but in a broader series of protests planned for the coming year.

The black Christmas campaign, however, is proving deeply divisive within the black community. More and more residents of Soweto are asking who the campaign leaders are, what their strategy is and why blacks seem to be suffering more than the white targets of the consumer boycott.

Anger is also growing over the widespread use of force and intimidation by the youths who enforce the consumer boycott by gathering at bus stops, train stations and other entrances to the townships to inspect the parcels of those returning from Johannesburg, Pretoria and other cities.

Goods bought at white stores are seized, according to Soweto residents, and the purchasers are frequently beaten by the youths, mostly students in their teens. Stories are told of a week’s food being thrown into the dirt, of women being made to drink cooking oil and eat bars of soap that they bought in town, of men being stripped of their new suits and then watching them shredded by razors.

Gangs of youths broke up a music festival last weekend, contending that it violated the black Christmas campaign, and then forced the cancellation of several other programs, including the annual Miss Black South Africa competition. Owners of Soweto’s shabeens , the speakeasies that are the center of much of the black satellite city’s social life, have been told by other youths to shut down for the holiday season, but some have arranged to make “donations to the struggle” instead.

And a number of men and women were assaulted late last week and their heads shaved. “They said Nelson Mandela (the black nationalist leader) will spend Christmas in jail with his head shaven and so our heads should be shaven, too,” said one Soweto woman who managed to escape “without being scalped.”

Week’s Toll

Five blacks were killed last week in the Johannesburg area as a result of efforts to enforce the boycott. Two were shot and killed in clashes with police attempting to prevent youths from molesting returning commuters, and the bodies of three others, reportedly the victims of black vigilantes hired by local black politicians whose stores are also being boycotted, were found near Krugersdorp, a town northwest of Johannesburg.

Rumors are widespread that two women were burned to death after being caught with goods purchased at white stores in Pretoria, but police were not able to confirm their deaths.

The police and army, saying they are attempting to protect those returning from the city, have deployed large numbers of security troops through the townships as commuters return from work in the cities. They have clashed repeatedly with the groups of youths, armed with clubs and stones, who surround the railway stations, bus stops and taxi stands and line the roads in the hope of catching those who do not observe the boycott.

The violence, the widespread resentment of the black Christmas campaign and its shadowy origins led the black-edited newspaper, the Sowetan, last week to question the effectiveness of this and similar protests and to ask whether its organizers “are leading the people in the direction they want to go or not.”

“The people who sincerely believe in the consumer boycott should win the rest of the community over to their side,” the paper said in an editorial. “If they cannot get them to their side without using violence, then the call (for a black Christmas) should be dropped. It is not the voice of the people making the call.”

Jabu Ngwenya, the spokesman for the Soweto Consumer Boycott Committee and its only identified member, commented: “It’s not our intention to drag people kicking and screaming toward independence. We would be happier if they willingly became involved in the struggle.

‘Overexuberance’ Regretted

“We apologize for the overexuberance of some of our cadres when monitoring the boycott,” Ngwenya said. He added that they had been instructed to be “polite but insistent” in carrying out inspections to make certain that goods were purchased at white-owned stores before seizing them and then to arrange for their distribution to the poor.

Similar orders went out in Pretoria’s four black townships after complaints there of violence on the part of the teen-age “boycott marshals” who greet every bus, train and taxi returning from the city.

But more important to many black activists here are the questions of who the boycott organizers are, what their strategy is and what real following they have.

Ngwenya--who associates say was detained late last week by the police, an action the authorities deny--is the only identified member of the consumer boycott committee, and in some townships not even one member of the committee is known.

About 30, Ngwenya has been treasurer of the Release Mandela Committee, a group campaigning for freedom for Nelson Mandela, who is serving a life sentence for treason and sabotage, and other prisoners. Ngwenya joined the anti-apartheid fight in the mid-1970s and is still regarded as a newcomer among black activists.

He declined for “security reasons” to identify any other committee members but acknowledged that there were no public meetings or consultations with broader community groups before the black Christmas campaign was launched.

Objectives Listed

Questioned by black journalists about the committee’s goals, Ngwenya said the primary intent is to put pressure on the government through white businessmen to end the state of emergency, to pull the army out of the townships, to free political detainees and to halt increases in bus fares.

“They have to be forced to participate actively in efforts to bring about change,” he said, complaining that white businessmen have been talking about reform but not acting to support it.

Earlier this year, consumer boycotts in other areas--notably Port Elizabeth, East London and many of the small towns of eastern Cape province--succeeded in winning business support for black demands and even some action on them by the government.

But the Witwatersrand region, which includes Johannesburg, Pretoria and the towns east and west of them, is far more complex politically, economically and socially, and getting a consensus for a consumer boycott, particularly one as controversial as black Christmas, is far more difficult.

Efforts earlier this year to organize consumer boycotts in the Johannesburg area collapsed within two or three weeks, and last year’s call for a black Christmas, a protest tactic first mounted in 1976 amid that year’s bloody Soweto uprising, went largely unheeded.

A protest campaign likely to fail, veteran black activists believe, should not be launched because it will diminish the strength and credibility of the anti-apartheid movement and make it more difficult to organize effective campaigns in the future.

This also reflects negatively, older black activists feel, on blacks’ political maturity--an important issue in South Africa, where full political rights are a major black demand, and one that is frequently rebuffed by whites, who say that blacks are not ready for such a role.

Violent Quality

And a campaign that must be enforced through widespread intimidation, coercion and violence will turn many blacks against the anti-apartheid struggle, according to veteran activists, who fear that this is already happening with the current boycott.

“We have heard stories of kids forcing adults to eat raw meat and beating them for breaking the consumer boycott,” said Vusi Khanyile of the Soweto Parents Crisis Committee, “and we agree these actions do nothing to advance the liberation struggle.

“We blame it on the state of emergency, which has suppressed the real youth leaders and destroyed the community structures that could deal with these problems.”

George Wauchope, vice president of the black-consciousness Azanian People’s Organization, was even blunter: “There is an unruly, thuggish element in the townships exploiting the current unrest, and this type of person is not politically motivated.”

Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Anglican bishop of Johannesburg, who won the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, gave the boycott qualified support last week.

“Previously, the state of emergency did not affect too many people in the white community,” he said. “Now, they are becoming aware that we are one nation and our futures are intertwined.”

Spokesmen for the white business community in Johannesburg acknowledge some effect from the boycott but argue that other factors--a general economic recession, black unemployment, inflation and reduced year-end bonuses--are also responsible for the lower sales. At individual stores that cater to blacks, however, managers say that sales have dropped 80% to 90% since the boycott began.