Congressmen See S. Africa Squatter Camp

U.S. congressmen toured garbage-strewn streets in the Crossroads squatter camp Thursday and pledged to seek American aid for the squalid symbol of resistance to the “pass laws” that dictate where blacks can live.

Two hundred residents, fists raised in black-power salutes, greeted the American lawmakers at a hall in the shanty community outside Cape Town.

Near Durban, two explosions rocked an electrical substation, burning five white people.

Police said the blasts came about 30 minutes apart Thursday night in the Austerville mixed-race suburb, starting a small fire and blacking out hundreds of homes. Two white policemen and three white utility workers were burned, and Addington Hospital officials said one of the injured was in critical condition.

Mandela Ruling Due

In Johannesburg, black activist Winnie Mandela left the Supreme Court after a judge said he will rule next week on her attempt to overturn an order barring her from her home in the black township of Soweto outside the city.

The six-member U.S. congressional delegation was escorted through the 10-year-old Crossroads camp by the Rev. Allan Boesak, a mixed-race foe of apartheid who is president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.

“We in the United States and we members of Congress here share your concern for freedom and dignity, which are also part of our tradition in America,” said Rep. William H. Gray III, a black Democrat from Pennsylvania who leads the delegation.

Residents described shootings and maimings in government attempts to evict them from Crossroads. Rep. Peter H. Kostmayer, also a Pennsylvania Democrat, said the delegation will seek U.S. aid to the squatter camp.

About 100,000 people live in the dreary sea of tin and plastic shanties. It has become a symbol of the struggle between authorities trying to restrict black movement into areas reserved for whites and blacks who seek work and are determined to escape the tribal homelands.

The government gave up last year on sending police into Crossroads to tear down the shanties. Residents put them up again as soon as the squads left. It is still trying, however, to get the residents to move to Khayelitsha, a new black township about six miles farther from Cape Town.

Elliott Dyakophu told the Americans, “The government is still pointing guns at us, harmless as we are.”

Meet Zulu Leader

Earlier, the delegation had breakfast in Cape Town with Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, hereditary chief of South Africa’s 6 million Zulus and the country’s leading black moderate, who traveled from his headquarters in Natal province for a meeting with the congressmen.

Buthelezi, who follows a difficult path of opposing both insurgency and apartheid, cautioned the Americans: “There is no need to support the politics of violence, which will in the end annihilate democracy.”

Gray, author of an anti-apartheid bill that prompted President Reagan to announce limited sanctions against South Africa in September, said the meeting with Buthelezi was “positive and helpful.”