20 Reported Hurt in Bomb Blast Near Pretoria Market

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — A bomb exploded between two parked cars outside a crowded supermarket in a white Pretoria neighborhood Friday, wounding 20 people, the government said.

A witness saw two women with severely injured legs, and wounded people sprawled on the sidewalk, the South African Press Assn. said.

It was the second urban bombing in two days and the 12th since a nationwide state of emergency was imposed June 12.

In a protest of detentions of union leaders under the emergency, about 10,000 black miners walked off their jobs or staged slowdowns. The miners halted production at four diamond mines and disrupted some shifts at Free State Consolidated Gold Mines, the world’s biggest producer.

The late-afternoon bombing in Pretoria’s Silverton district damaged five cars and shattered windows, hurling shards of glass through the air. The government’s Bureau for Information said the bomb was in a plastic bag that had been dumped between two parked cars. The government said the victims were nine whites, 10 blacks and one person of mixed race.

President Pieter W. Botha’s government has blamed the outlawed African National Congress guerrilla movement for the bombings, which have killed three people and wounded more than 100 in five cities--Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Queenstown and Pretoria. Most of the victims have been white.

3 More Blacks Killed

The information bureau said three more blacks were killed, bringing to 100 the number of deaths related to anti-apartheid protest and violence officially reported under the emergency. The bureau said one of the three was shot dead by police firing on stone-throwing blacks in Port Elizabeth’s Kwazekele black township and the others were burned to death, apparently by other blacks.

Fifteen more deaths have been reported by authorities in tribal homelands.

De Beers, the nation’s largest producer of diamonds, said a strike by 1,950 men shut four mines near Kimberly in northern Cape province that provide about 4% of its output.

Marcel Golding, spokesman for the black National Union of Mineworkers, said 8,000 miners had joined slowdowns since Thursday at Free State Consolidated, which employs more than 50,000 miners.

Chairman Julian Thomson of De Beers sent a message to Louis le Grange, law and order minister, appealing for the releases of union leaders.

Detained union leaders include the president of the nation’s largest labor federation, the Congress of Trade Unions of South Africa, who also is the vice president of the 250,000-member National Union of Mineworkers, which represents nearly half this mineral-rich country’s miners.

To Protest Detentions

The union congress decided this week, at a secret meeting of leaders still out of jail, to launch increasingly disruptive action to protest the detentions.

Stringent press regulations forbid identifying detainees by name and reporting most details of protests, or calls for protests, against the emergency. They also prohibit publication of “subversive statements,” which are defined only vaguely.

Monitoring groups say more than 220 senior union officials have been jailed without charge under the emergency.

The Detainees’ Parents Support Committee, a multiracial monitoring group, said Friday it has a list of 1,890 known detainees, but believes about 5,000 people are being held. The largest previous estimate was about 3,000.

Officials of the Bureau for Information, who have been reporting a sharp decrease in anti-apartheid and related violence, said unrest incidents averaged 44 a day in the past week--down 60% from May.

It was the first time the bureau had given the number of incidents, which range from killings through serious clashes between young blacks and police to minor scuffles. Spokesman Kobus Neethling said the trend demonstrated “much greater control and stability throughout the country.”

About 1,900 people have been killed since anti-apartheid violence began in September, 1984.