S. Africa Blacks Now Strive to Overthrow White Rule

The protests that have kept many of South Africa’s black ghettos in flames for a year and a half are now starting to focus on the overthrow of white rule.

What was largely a spontaneous outpouring of anger within the country’s black communities has in recent weeks been directed increasingly toward whites, whose cars, businesses and homes are being attacked with growing frequency.

Last year, black youths tried to fight the police with stones and sometimes firebombs. Now, guerrillas trained by the outlawed African National Congress and armed with guns, grenades, rockets and mines are beginning to bring their war to urban areas.

Black policemen and local officials seen as collaborators continue to be targets for rioters, but a range of government institutions from post offices to police stations, many in white areas, are also being hit with bombs. It is an offensive apparently meant to give whites the feeling that they are under siege.

The strife continues to spread, with three or four people killed each day on the average.

Last week, the government lifted a state of emergency imposed in July to give the police broader powers to curb unrest around Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth and, later, Cape Town. Yet, rioting spread last week to other towns--some in remote farming areas, some around gold and coal mines, areas that had been largely free of trouble.

Although most incidents are small, many white South Africans have grown fearful.

In the last three months, 18 whites have been killed in riots, bombings or clashes with black guerrillas, compared with six in the preceding year. Although this is a small fraction of the more than 1,300 people who have died in the unrest since it began in September, 1984, whites see their deaths as the start of a racial civil war.

Armed vigilante groups are being formed in many parts of the country to protect white neighborhoods. Guards with rifles and shotguns ride public buses in Pretoria, the capital, and school buses in some troubled areas around Johannesburg. And an extreme right-wing political organization is recruiting members for what amounts to a private army.

Nearly 30 people were killed in the past week, including seven suspected African National Congress guerrillas shot to death in a gun battle outside Cape Town. And a bomb blew a large hole in police headquarters here.

New Legislation Promised

But President Pieter W. Botha, in lifting the state of emergency, said the measure has reduced the violence to “sporadic and isolated incidents.” He added that the government will soon introduce legislation to give the police stronger powers, such as those they had under the state of emergency, to deal with any further unrest.

Botha also renewed his appeal to moderate blacks to participate in a political dialogue on the country’s future. Imposition of the state of emergency, along with the heavy police and military presence that it brought to black townships and the indefinite detention without charges of hundreds of black activists, had made any sort of negotiations impossible.

The state of emergency also left Botha and his National Party open to criticism at home and abroad that they were able to govern only through what amounted to martial law.

Political Costs Too High

“The state of emergency was not as effective as the government had hoped,” a senior National Party member of Parliament said in Cape Town, asking not to be quoted by name. “The political costs of shifting it around the country, imposing it on new areas as the unrest shifted, were too high. Concern was growing, too, about the abuse of their powers by the police.

“And the whole reform effort, which requires a dialogue between whites and blacks, was going nowhere. After all, who wants to negotiate with a gun to his head? So (the president) lifted the state of emergency . . . with the hope that this will break the cycle of violence and counterviolence we seem to be caught in.”

In this analysis, shared by many white political observers here, Botha is engaged in an almost desperate gamble that his overture will succeed in drawing some black moderates into enough of a dialogue to persuade their communities that negotiations will pay off faster than violence.

Black leaders, however, view the lifting of the state of emergency as a government retreat and a significant, albeit limited, victory.

Political Solution Needed

The Rev. Frank Chikane, a top official of the United Democratic Front, the broad coalition of anti-apartheid groups, said that Botha has been shown that South Africa’s problems require “a political, not a military solution.”

“Our problems cannot be solved by guns,” Chikane said recently at a mass funeral for 17 riot victims in Alexandra township. “There is no way, just no way, that the Botha regime can continue ruling this country. . . . As long as we are here, they will not rule peacefully . . . because the peace they talk about is oppression in peace, oppression without resistance, and the people in the (black) townships across this country are determined to resist and are prepared to die doing so if it is necessary.”

This resolve, increasingly evident among many of South Africa’s urban blacks, has changed the character of the country’s racial strife in five key ways in recent months:

--Black attacks on white civilians have become almost daily occurrences. No longer are the violence, destruction and casualties confined to the black townships. Whites are coming to realize that the security forces cannot prevent their spread, that they will be at risk even in their own homes.

For some, this translates into pressure on the government to accelerate the pace of reforms, to “give more, much more, before it is too late and they want everything,” as a suburban Cape Town matron said. For others, however, it means that the government has not been tough enough and is endangering the country with its attempts at compromise.

--Despite the success of the police crackdown under the state of emergency in many places, black protests have continued to spread. The pattern typically has been a minor incident, perhaps a traffic accident, a community protest over it, and then tough police measures to suppress it, giving militants a better issue around which to organize local residents for strikes, consumer boycotts and other actions.

Black Radicalization

“The radicalization of the black communities in outlying areas has been spurred by government actions and the police in the past three months,” a field worker for the South African Council of Churches remarked. “Many blacks who have always been quite conservative are now as militant as any you find in the big cities.”

--Many of the black and Colored (mixed race) townships around Port Elizabeth and Cape Town are quiet now because community leaders there have been able to impose a strong measure of discipline on local youths with a pledge that the community as a whole will now confront the government, not just the youths.

Similarly, black students went back to school in January, ending class boycotts that had continued on and off for two years, on a commitment from community leaders to take firm action if the government does not meet their demands by the end of this month.

Some black townships, particularly around Port Elizabeth, are now run by “people’s governments,” made up of street committees and other local groups allied with the United Democratic Front and no longer by the discredited town councils. The African National Congress is widely believed to be fostering this movement, creating “urban base areas” for itself.

--Blacks, who four months ago had few weapons aside from rocks and gasoline-filled bottles, have begun shooting regularly at police patrols in the townships and using grenades to attack the homes of black policemen and local officials.

Infiltrating Urban Areas

Louis le Grange, the law and order minister, told Parliament last month that the African National Congress has begun infiltrating guerrillas into urban areas in substantial numbers. Other blacks, he said, have undergone military training in South Africa and neighboring countries and returned to their homes, where they were provided with arms from caches established earlier.

In recent days, the police killed seven blacks, suspected African National Congress guerrillas, in Guguletu, outside Cape Town, using handguns but also heavier weapons. There have been similar gunfights in the last six weeks in Port Elizabeth, East London and Soweto. In Mamelodi, outside Pretoria, the rear wheels of a police armored personnel carrier were blown off by a landmine, and caches of similar mines have been found in East London and eastern Cape province.

--Alarmed by these developments, particularly the black attacks on white civilians, many whites are starting to shoot at any sign of trouble, and the police warned earlier this month that they would not tolerate vigilante groups taking over the role of the security forces.

“You can’t defend yourself with a catapult (slingshot), and we whites do need to defend ourselves,” Eugene Terre’Blanche, the leader of the extreme right-wing Afrikaner Resistance Movement, said in explaining the reason for the recent establishment of the group’s new Sentry militia. “Our people already have their own guns, and they know how to use them.”

Half a dozen incidents also have been reported over the last month in which whites riding in cars and pickup trucks have shot at blacks, wounding at least eight. In one instance, whites attacked a black on a main road and, after beating him, set him on fire. He was burned severely but did not die.

Backlash Is Main Worry

Members of the Botha Cabinet are warning privately that this armed white backlash is the most worrisome development, for only a few serious incidents could quickly propel the country into a racial conflict that the security forces could not contain.

With the lifting of the state of emergency and the release from detention of many key black leaders who had been held for seven months and longer, the United Democratic Front and other anti-apartheid groups are expected to reassess their strategy and modify their tactics.

“The kids have done their job and they have done it well,” Mike Beea, president of the Alexandra Civic Assn., said.

“They have put us on the offensive against the regime and in some ways even given us just a little bit of an edge. . . . What we need now are discipline and unity to make the most of this. I can’t say yet what we will do--there may be new mass actions, perhaps new school boycotts, a consumer boycott, a general strike even--but the goal is not more of these so-called reforms but ending apartheid and bringing this government down.”