Millions of Blacks Strike in S. Africa : Shutdown Is 90% Effective in Some Areas; Strife Curbed, Pretoria Says

Millions of South African blacks stayed away from work Monday to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Soweto riots and to protest the current government crackdown on the anti-apartheid movement.

The general strike, the largest labor protest in the country’s history, left hundreds of mines, factories and stores across the country either closed or operating at minimal levels. It was more than 90% effective among black workers in many urban areas, a government spokesman acknowledged, but only 30% in other areas.

Eight more blacks were reported killed overnight in the country’s continuing civil strife, but the government’s information bureau maintained that only limited violence occurred during the day and that the police and army remained “in complete control” in what they described as a test of strength.

‘Day of Anarchy’

Saying that black radicals had intended to turn the anniversary into a “day of anarchy” that might have threatened the state’s security, Louis Nel, the deputy minister of information, said Monday evening: “One thing is certain--their plan was a total failure. The day was relatively calm.”

Residents in black areas, however, said that youths had briefly blocked the streets with barricades of burning tires and other debris in Soweto, outside Johannesburg, and in the black townships around Port Elizabeth on Monday night. Scattered incidents of stone-throwing and firebombings were also reported near Cape Town, Durban and East London.

But severe new restrictions, imposed Monday under sweeping powers given to police under a five-day-old state of emergency, prevented newsmen of the domestic and foreign media from visiting any black townships and kept them from describing security operations undertaken to deal with the unrest or from quoting “subversive statements” by anti-apartheid leaders.

Brig. Leon Mellet, a spokesman for the government’s information bureau, which is the sole official source of news about the civil conflict under state of emergency regulations, told a press briefing in Pretoria that “police and security forces are on standby and are positioned at every possible place where trouble could have been expected.”

Charge of Intimidation

Mellet nevertheless argued that the large proportion of blacks who stayed away from work Monday was due to “intimidation” by black militants.

Asked about the large-scale deployment of police in the country’s cities and the combat troops stationed around most of the black townships, Mellet said, “There is a strong presence of security forces on duty all over South Africa, again showing that the South African government is determined to end the unrest in the riot-torn areas.”

They will remain “as long as necessary,” Mellet added.

But he denied suggestions that the entire army and most of the country’s reserves have been mobilized to enforce the state of emergency imposed last week.

“This is not nearly what the South African government can make use of,” he declared.

In another move, the government imposed new restrictions on Winnie Mandela, wife of imprisoned African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, according to the family’s attorney, Ismail Ayob. Mandela has been ordered to be in her house in Soweto from 6 p.m. to 8 a.m. each day until Friday and to give no interviews to the press, Ayob said.

“It’s just like being back in prison again,” Mandela told the Associated Press by telephone Monday.

The state of emergency and new press restrictions drew more protests Monday from the opposition Progressive Federal Party, a white liberal organization, and from anti-apartheid leaders marking the anniversary of 1976 riots that blacks call the “Soweto uprising” and regard as a milestone in their battle for equal rights.

New Legislation Debated

“There was probably less freedom in South Africa today than in Communist Russia,” Ray Swart of the Progressive Federal Party said as Parliament, in Cape Town, debated new security legislation giving the government even more power, including authority to detain anyone without charge for up to six months.

The state of emergency and the proposed legislation are “a further ghastly chapter in the nightmare of events that are striking at the very root of our existence as a Western civilization,” Swart said.

In Johannesburg, Bishop Desmond Tutu told a mostly white congregation of 500 at a special memorial service at the Anglican cathedral that blacks remain bitter over the 1976 riots and are angry because the government banned any commemoration except church services to mark the 10th anniversary.

“They are trampling our dignity under foot and rubbing our noses in the dust,” said Tutu, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984. He thanked whites in the congregation for “vicariously enabling black people to commemorate this day.”

‘Superficial Calm’

Tutu predicted that the state of emergency would bring only “a superficial calm” and added: “No state of emergency has produced lasting peace and stability. You can never get these from the barrel of a gun.”

In Soweto, the sprawling black satellite city 10 miles southwest of Johannesburg, most residents stayed indoors. Only sparse attendance was reported at church services commemorating the start there of the black riots that claimed at least 575 lives in 11 months of intermittent violence.

“Soweto was like a graveyard,” one resident said. “This was the quietest June 16 since 1977. It has never been as quiet as this. All of Soweto seems to be in mourning.”

Tutu, who toured Soweto during the morning, said he was stopped at several roadblocks and searched twice.

Earlier Monday, a group of about 50 white Christians took 20 carloads of flowers to the outskirts of Soweto--they were not allowed to enter the township--in what was intended to be a gesture of “reconciliation and solidarity” with the ghetto’s black residents.

Crushed Flowers

According to the Associated Press, Tutu said he saw the flowers trodden underfoot at the entrance to the township.

In Cape Town, according to AP, the Rev. Allan Boesak, another prominent anti-apartheid leader, criticized the U.S. and British governments for continuing to make excuses for South Africa’s racist policies.

Recalling that President Reagan has appealed for restraint by all sides in the South African conflict, Boesak said at a church service: “For God’s sake, Mr. President, how much more restraint can we show? Who are these people walking around with shotguns and rifles? How many white children have died at our hands?”

Boesak, president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, accused Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of urging “not restraint from violence but restraint from protest against apartheid.”

In Johannesburg, where blacks normally outnumber whites on bustling downtown streets, the only civilian pedestrians were a few whites. Two-thirds of the stores were closed, and traffic was not much heavier than that of a Sunday afternoon.

In the city’s white suburbs, private guards armed with rifles and shotguns stood watch at many shopping centers and other businesses in apparent response to government reports that blacks planned to run riot through them. Parents armed themselves to stand guard at some white schools.

The independent Labor Monitoring Group estimated that at least 2 million black workers, and perhaps more than 3 million, had stayed away from work, surpassing a similar protest on May Day this year. The group said the strike was 90% to 100% effective in the industrial centers around Johannesburg and in eastern Cape province and from 60% to 80% effective in Cape Town, Durban and Pietermaritzburg.

Although the government had declared Monday “a normal working day,” many firms, including most American companies, gave their black employees the day off, and some closed in expressions of solidarity with the country’s black majority.

The general strike was originally called by the United Democratic Front and the National Forum, the two major alliances of anti-apartheid groups, the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the Council of Unions of South Africa and the National Education Crisis Committee, all of which had planned protest rallies. These, however, were banned by the government earlier this month.

Official Warning

Only “bona fide church services” were permitted under the state of emergency, government officials had warned.

Of the eight blacks who died in overnight fighting, five were “moderate blacks” murdered by “radicals” in an intensified struggle for political leadership within the black community, information bureau spokesman Mellet said. Bodies of three of the dead were found near the Crossroads squatter settlement outside Cape Town, and two others were found in the Kwandebele tribal homeland northeast of Pretoria.

The other three were killed by security forces in separate clashes near Johannesburg, Durban and the eastern Transvaal town of Nelspruit, Mellet said.

Their deaths brought to 31 the number of people killed since President Pieter W. Botha imposed the state of emergency last Thursday, giving the police virtual martial-law powers to quell unrest, which has taken more than 1,700 lives during the past two years.

Police have come under fire several times in recent days, Mellet said.

Sniper Fire Told

In the most serious incident, snipers opened fire at a police unit trying to break up a protest meeting at a mosque in the Cape Town suburb of Athlone on Sunday night, he said. Unable to spot the snipers’ positions, the police fired tear gas into the mosque and into the crowd outside to disperse it. Several people who had been at prayer service commemorating the Soweto riots said they had heard no shots and had less than a minute’s warning to leave before the tear gas was fired into the crowded mosque.

The government information bureau is now the only authorized source of news on unrest in the country, and severe new restrictions on where newsmen may go and whom they may talk to makes it impossible to verify government statements. Telephone service to most black townships in metropolitan areas was cut Sunday evening and restored only late Monday, further complicating efforts to report developments.

South African and foreign journalists were also prohibited Monday from reporting any actions of the security forces unless the information was released by the government. Television and photographic coverage of the unrest is similarly barred.

Foreign journalists were warned Monday by Nel, the deputy minister of information, not to report any “subversive statements,” which under the state of emergency range from declarations of support for the outlawed African National Congress to calls for economic sanctions against South Africa to criticism of the government and the state of emergency.

Violation of these regulations is punishable by a prison sentence of 10 years and a $8,000 fine.

Nel also objected to what he called “lambasting the government with selective reporting through emotional terminology” and warned that the government will act against foreign correspondents it believes are not reporting objectively.

According to United Press International, a spokesman for the information bureau said that Home Affairs Minister Stoffel Botha refused to reconsider an order expelling CBS News cameraman Wim de Vos.

De Vos, 39, a citizen of the Netherlands, was ordered last Friday to leave the country by tonight. The only reason given for the expulsion was that it was “in the public interest.”

A Progressive Federal Party member of Parliament, Pierre Cronje, complained Monday that press controls are so sweeping that “a bloodbath could have taken place in South Africa” during the commemoration Monday of the Soweto riots.

“Under the emergency regulations, we don’t know whether there was a bloodbath somewhere in South Africa today or not,” Cronje told Parliament.

Some newspapers left blank spaces in their columns where news of unrest would have been reported, and a local radio station began its afternoon news broadcast with a report of the sighting of a school of sardines off the coast.

The Johannesburg Star, the country’s largest daily paper, said in a front page comment, “Readers of this issue of the Star should be aware that it has in effect been censored and does not adequately reflect the situation in South Africa.”

Mellet told a press briefing that the government had decided not to release the names of the people who have been detained under the state of emergency or to announce their total numbers. About 2,000 were detained the first day, according to estimates by church groups, and that number is believed to have increased to 4,000 or more.

The police have said they will notify the families of all those detained but have acknowledged that they are working “with quite a backlog” and that some families have not yet been notified.