South African Restrictions on Activist Ruled Invalid

The South African government suffered a major legal setback Saturday in its efforts to silence critics of apartheid when a Supreme Court judge here ruled that an order banning a leading anti-apartheid activist from politics was invalid.

Justice J.F.J. van Rensburg held that Louis le Grange, the minister of law and order, had failed to give sufficient reasons two weeks ago when he barred Mkhuseli Jack, 28, president of the Port Elizabeth Youth Congress, from all political activity and sharply restricted his movements until 1991.

“This is a major, major victory,” Jack said as he tore up the invalidated orders in front of more than 1,000 cheering supporters. “I am glad that Louis le Grange has been exposed for his abuse of the security laws.”

The decision is expected to apply to another prominent Port Elizabeth activist, Henry Fazzie, regional vice president of the United Democratic Front, a coalition of anti-apartheid groups. Fazzie was served with similar banning orders at the same time that Jack was.

Other Appeals Likely

Lawyers said that further appeals are now likely on behalf of some of the 10 other people whose activities are limited and who are often under effective house arrest because of such government restrictions.

In the banning orders, Le Grange had said only that Jack and Fazzie “promote activities that endanger the maintenance of law and order.”

He refused pleas from members of the Port Elizabeth business community and local members of Parliament to reconsider his action.

“These two would not hesitate to burn you in your beds,” he told a group of local businessmen, several of whom had had the black leaders as guests in their homes. “If you only knew what I knew. . . .”

But Le Grange refused to tell anyone, including the court, what he claimed to know that justified the banning orders, and South African courts have now held several times that such a refusal violates the country’s security laws.

C.W. Mouton, a government attorney, said that Le Grange now might decide to reissue the orders, adhering to court requirements to provide detailed reasons. But local officials and businessmen said they hope that no further action would be taken against Jack, a key figure in an embryonic black-white dialogue here.

“This is a tremendous victory for justice,” said Judy Chalmers, chairman of the regional branch of Black Sash, a civil rights monitoring group. “One can consider this as a victory for all South Africans. . . .”

The Reagan Administration and European governments had expressed concern at the bannings of Jack and Fazzie at a moment when they were in the midst of negotiations with Port Elizabeth’s white community on economic, social and perhaps political changes here.

The court decision was the third in a week overruling the government’s use of security laws against the anti-apartheid opposition. In the earlier cases, the courts invalidated preventive detention orders against anti-apartheid activists, who under the the severe law may be held indefinitely solely on security police allegations that they might in the future jeopardize the country’s security.

Plans Boycott Call

Jack, who led a successful black consumer boycott of white Port Elizabeth merchants last year, said Saturday: “I will call a consumer boycott on April 1 and will demand the release of (imprisoned black nationalist leader) Nelson Mandela. I know the economy will be so crippled that the government will have to respond.”

Four more blacks were reported killed Saturday in South Africa’s civil unrest.

A man and a woman were burned to death in the eastern Cape province town of Adelaide, apparently as suspected government collaborators. Police arrested nine people and charged them with murder. Another woman died when her home was burned down in Blue Water in the eastern Cape. And police headquarters in Pretoria said that a police patrol shot and killed a man who attacked them with a firebomb at Kanyamanzane in eastern Transvaal province.

In Durban, fire-bombers set faculty offices at the University of Natal ablaze, causing an estimated $500,000 damage.