S. Africa May Strike Again, Botha Warns

President Pieter W. Botha on Tuesday strongly defended South Africa’s raids on alleged guerrilla facilities of the African National Congress in three neighboring countries and declared that his troops will strike again “when the occasion demands.”

“The smugglers of terrorist arms into our country and the murderers of innocent people must be hunted down,” Botha told the South African Parliament in Cape Town. “We will not tolerate terrorists hiding in other countries with the intent to perpetrate crimes against the people in our country.”

Botha Defiant, Unyielding

Defiant and unyielding despite the widespread condemnation of Monday’s raids on Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe, Botha displayed a renewed determination to destroy the outlawed African National Congress, the principal guerrilla organization fighting minority white rule here, even if this brings South Africa into conflict with the international community.

He brushed aside the apparent political costs of the raids: lost credibility for his domestic reforms, diminished economic confidence, increased hostility from South Africa’s neighbors, the greater possibility of international sanctions. The country’s security overrode all other considerations, he said.

“I take full responsibility for the actions of our security forces, and I congratulate them,” Botha said. “I assure the country that we will do it again when the occasion demands.”

Students protesting against the raids clashed with police in Johannesburg, Cape Town and the Natal provincial capital of Pietermaritzburg. National police headquarters in Pretoria reported a sharp upsurge in incidents of civil strife in black townships around the country Tuesday in apparent reaction to the attacks.

The South African rand declined sharply on the foreign exchange market and was saved from what might have become a precipitous 20% drop by $100 million in massive emergency support from the South African Reserve Bank.

Business Day, a Johannesburg financial newspaper, said the raids will further reduce investor confidence and speed capital flight from South Africa.

“The political failure is obvious to all,” it said in an editorial. “More worrisome is the implicit failure of the security forces within the (country’s) borders, forcing them to seek politically sensitive targets farther afield.”

International criticism of Pretoria continued to grow Tuesday, with formal protests coming from more than a dozen Western countries. The U.N. Security Council prepared for a debate that will bring new calls for mandatory sanctions against South Africa.

Support Pledged

Foreign ministers of Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe joined colleagues from other “front-line states” in the region, who oppose South African policy, at a meeting in Harare on Tuesday to pledge greater support for the African National Congress. They declared they will not be intimidated by the South African attacks.

The six front-line states--the others are Angola, Mozambique and Tanzania--plan to hold a summit meeting soon to discuss a strategy to counter the “increased South African threat.”

Charles W. Freeman Jr., the senior U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for Africa, warned at the end of a short visit here Tuesday that the raids have done “great damage” to American and other efforts to promote peaceful change in South Africa and stability in the region.

Freeman said the United States, which with Britain has opposed broad sanctions against South Africa, was now consulting with its allies about what action to take.

“We stand with Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe in our sense of outrage that these attacks occurred,” Freeman said before leaving for Zambia.

Administration Criticized

African National Congress spokesman Tom Sebina, speaking in Lusaka, said the group will step up its sabotage campaign against South Africa in retaliation for the raids. He criticized the Reagan Administration for not applying enough pressure on the white government to reform South Africa’s political and social system.

Newspapers in Zambia expressed similar criticism of the government of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who condemned the raids Tuesday but repeated her previous position that sanctions against South Africa would be counterproductive.

The governments of Australia, China, Japan and the Soviet Union denounced the raids one day after the United States and Canada did so.

But President Botha, speaking to the cheers of his own National Party, rejected all criticism of the raids, saying that Pretoria had repeatedly warned neighboring countries that it would not tolerate African National Congress offices, camps and other facilities on their territory and would retaliate if guerrillas crossed their frontiers with South Africa.

“There can be no question about the fact that South Africa has exhausted all peaceful remedies that have been at its disposal,” he asserted, “and its approach to this matter has been more than reasonable.”

Botha cited the recent U.S. raid on Libyan military and intelligence installations and earlier Israeli attacks on offices and camps of the Palestine Liberation Organization to justify South Africa’s action as one of “self-defense” against increasing attacks here by African National Congress guerrillas.

“We will fight international terrorism in precisely the same way as other Western countries, despite the sanctimonious protests of that guardian of international terrorist movements, the United Nations,” Botha said.

3 Deaths Reported

South African forces mounted a series of raids Monday morning on alleged rebel facilities in or near the capitals of Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe, killing three people and wounding a dozen others. Pretoria’s aim, clearly, was to deal a heavy blow to the African National Congress itself and to warn neighboring governments of the danger they face in helping the black nationalist movement.

But the actual damage done to the African National Congress appears to have been minimal. The apartments the South African commandos attacked near Gaborone, Botswana, were largely empty.

They hit a U.N. refugee camp outside Lusaka, Zambia, not the nearby rebel compound that was their target. In Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, they blew up the local office of the African National Congress and a suburban house where arms were apparently stored, but Zimbabwe’s intelligence service warned officials of the rebel group in time to avoid capture or injury.

None of those killed or wounded was South African or a member of the African National Congress.

These results, when measured against the political costs of the raid, have sharpened domestic criticism of the government’s action.

‘Major Blunder’ Seen

In opening the emergency debate in South Africa’s Parliament, Colin Eglin, leader of the liberal white opposition Progressive Federal Party, described the raids as a “major political blunder.”

“Any short-term advantage the government may have achieved in the security field will undoubtedly be offset by the damage it will have done to South Africa in the field of international relations,” Eglin said.

“These raids, whatever they were intended to achieve, will take South Africa yet another step down the road of violence and counter-violence along which we have been moving at gathering speed. The government has stated it wants to get the process of negotiation going in South Africa. Does it really think the raids will help? I fear they will not.”

Support From Rightists

But Botha did win the support of two political groups on the far right, the Conservative Party and the Herstigte Nasionale Party, both usually harsh critics of his government, which called for continued strikes against the African National Congress wherever its members could be found.

Meanwhile, 12 more persons died Tuesday in the country’s continuing civil strife, according to police headquarters in Pretoria.

Six black men, all members of a conservative, pro-government vigilante group near Durban, were killed, either beaten or hacked to death with axes, in a clash with black militants with whom they have been feuding for nine months. Their deaths could bring major clashes similar to those in which 70 persons were killed last August.

4 Bodies Found

Four more charred bodies were found in the Crossroads squatter settlement outside Cape Town on Tuesday, bringing to 18 the number of people killed in fighting there between black militants known as the “Comrades” and a conservative group called the “Fathers” for control of the area.

Police, who appeared to be supporting the Fathers and its allies, moved to separate the combatants Tuesday, bringing several hundred reinforcements into the area and putting them between the rival groups. At nightfall, police said that the violence had subsided substantially and the situation was under control.

Hundreds of shacks have been demolished during the three days of fighting in the shantytown.