S. Africa to Lift Emergency State : Botha Says He Hopes to Defuse Strife; Makes Namibia Overture

President Pieter W. Botha announced Tuesday that a state of emergency, imposed on wide areas of South Africa more than seven months ago to curb mounting civil strife, will be lifted, probably on Friday.

Botha said he hopes the move, part of a new effort by the government to break the continuing cycle of violence here, will help to pull the country out of its prolonged crisis and lead to negotiations between whites and blacks on South Africa’s future.

“I take this step in the sincere hope that all South Africans will resolve their differences peacefully and show understanding for one another,” Botha told Parliament in Cape Town. “For its part, the government is dealing with legitimate grievances with a view to their elimination. . . . I call on all South Africans to respond positively to this appeal.”

In a second initiative, Botha said that South Africa will be ready on Aug. 1 to begin the implementation of the United Nations’ plan to bring Namibia, or South-West Africa, to independence and end his country’s administration of the territory.

Withdrawal of Cubans

But Botha said South Africa’s withdrawal from the territory, as well as its independence, depends on neighboring Angola’s agreeing to a timetable for the withdrawal of about 30,000 Cuban troops from Angola, an issue on which there has been only limited progress in the last year despite American mediation efforts.

The government’s critics in South Africa greeted the news about lifting the state of emergency with caution, saying they doubted whether conditions would change much.

In Washington, White House spokesman Larry Speakes said that lifting of the state of emergency is “one of the steps the South African government must take to create conditions . . . (for) meaningful reform and a reduction in violence.” Speakes described the initiative on Namibia as a “positive step in the negotiations to achieve Namibia’s independence . . . and, more broadly, peace in the region.”

Although Botha said that the state of emergency, which gave police virtual martial-law powers, has helped reduce the level of violence to “sporadic and isolated incidents,” a bomb exploded at police headquarters in Johannesburg only two hours before he spoke. The explosion blew a 4-by-8-foot hole in the building wall and shattered all the windows on the first five floors. Two policemen and two passers-by were slightly injured.

2 Reported Killed

Police reported that two blacks were killed in other incidents Tuesday. One man was shot to death when police fired shotguns to disperse blacks stoning government offices near Orkney, about 110 miles southwest of Johannesburg, and a youth died after being shot during a clash with police near Potchefstroom, 60 miles southwest of here. Serious incidents, including two explosions at an electrical substation near Durban, were reported at a dozen other localities around the country.

Critics of the government noted that Botha said he would propose changes to present laws to permanently grant police many of the powers that they had been given under the state of emergency. They also expressed fear that police commanders and rank-and-file constables would continue operating as if the emergency regulations were still in effect.

“We are particularly concerned that by amending existing legislation to deal with ‘incidents of unrest’ the government is going to broaden the already draconian provisions of the Internal Security Act,” the United Democratic Front, a coalition of 650 anti-apartheid groups, said in a statement. “The effect of this is that a de facto state of emergency will exist throughout our country.”

There was concern, too, that the police, rather than release many of the political activists among the 350 held under the emergency regulations, would now detain them under the country’s severe security laws, which permit indefinite detention without trial. About 8,500 people have been detained without charge since the emergency was declared July 21, and many were held several months before being released.

But business groups, which have campaigned hard both for lifting the state of emergency and an end to apartheid, praised Botha’s move as a first step toward negotiations on the country’s future. Raymond Parsons, chief executive of the Assn. of Chambers of Commerce of South Africa, said in Cape Town that he hopes the government action, which meets a key black condition for any political dialogue, will “improve the climate for further negotiations.”

Coalition Not Satisfied

But the United Democratic Front and other groups opposed to apartheid, South Africa’s system of racial separation and minority white rule, warned that more would be required to draw them into a political dialogue.

The front, whose constituent organizations have more than 2 million members, reiterated its call for the unconditional release of Nelson Mandela, the black nationalist leader, and all other political prisoners, the return of nationalist exiles, the legalization of the African National Congress and “the immediate dismantling of apartheid so that a positive climate can be created for negotiations.”

Nevertheless, there was quiet satisfaction among many black leaders Tuesday at the government’s move and the hope that it would ease tensions.

The Rev. Allan Boesak, president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and a founder of the United Democratic Front, said in Cape Town, “I am happy to see the government is at last prepared to respond to at least one of our demands . . . but I hope that it means that troops will be withdrawn from the townships, that the indemnity the police have for their actions will be ended, and that meetings of the community to discuss issues of concern will no longer be banned.”

Controls Extended

Originally imposed in 36 of South Africa’s 265 magisterial districts, including Johannesburg, the Vaal River region south of here and the Port Elizabeth industrial area, the state of emergency was later extended to Cape Town and surrounding districts that were caught up in unrest. Over the last three months, the state of emergency has been lifted in 22 districts but remains in force in 23 others, mostly around Johannesburg, Cape Town and Port Elizabeth.

Botha’s decree gave the police and army unchallengeable powers, including arrest without charge and detention without trial. They are permitted to impose curfews, to close off areas of the country, to conduct searches and seize property without warrants and to censor the press directly or by prohibiting news coverage.

Killing Rate Grew

Despite repeated government claims that the emergency powers had given police sufficient authority to reduce the level of violence, analyses by the independent South African Institute of Race Relations showed that the number of unrest-related deaths increased dramatically under the state of emergency, increasing from an average of about 1.5 a day before July 21 to more than 3.5 a day since.

More than 1,300 people, mostly blacks, have died in the civil strife here over the last 18 months, according to the institute.

Only a month ago, Louis le Grange, the minister of law and order, declared that there was still too much violence in large areas of the country to lift the state of emergency completely. But pressure has been mounting within Botha’s ruling National Party for the government to seize the initiative with bold moves that would give the political, economic and social reforms announced at the opening of Parliament a better chance of black acceptance.

The motives for the Namibian initiative were less clear. Negotiations between South Africa and Angola on Cuban troop withdrawals have been deadlocked for months despite American proposals designed to break the stalemate. Diplomats in Cape Town suggested that South Africa simply wants to shift the responsibility to Angola by agreeing, for the first time, to a specific date for the implementation of the U.N. plan for the territory’s independence.

Reaction in Windhoek, the Namibian capital, was cautious as politicians there recalled similar South African moves that led nowhere and perhaps were not intended to.

SWAPO Is Unmoved

Niko Bessinger, the secretary for foreign affairs of the South-West Africa People’s Organization, which has waged a 20-year war for Namibian independence, said President Botha’s proposal has not moved the territory “one bit closer” to implementation of the U.N. plan. “There is no room for optimism in this at all,” Bessinger said.

South Africa occupied Namibia, then a Germany colony, during World War I, and in 1920 was granted a League of Nations mandate to govern it. The mandate was revoked by the United Nations in 1966, but South Africa continued to control the territory with its population of about 1 million.