Foes of S. Africa’s Emergency Rule Win First Legal Victory as Detainee Is Freed

Government opponents won their first legal victory Monday against South Africa’s state of emergency when a judge ordered a political detainee to be freed and declared that police actions are subject to court review even under the emergency decrees.

Civil rights lawyers plan to bring similar cases in other courts in an effort to place some legal restrictions on actions by the police and army, which were given virtual martial-law powers, as well as immunity from prosecution, under the state of emergency. A Roman Catholic convent in Cape Town is already seeking release of a nun detained at a weekend funeral.

Judge R. J. Goldstone ruled in the Johannesburg division of the provincial Supreme Court that, even under emergency rule, police must be able to justify such actions as detention without charge. More broadly, he ruled that the government cannot put the security forces beyond the reach of the courts.

TV Sound Man Detained

The detainee, Theophilus Mashiani, a television sound man for Worldwide Television News, was been arrested in his girlfriend’s room during a 3 a.m. raid on a university dormitory June 15. But Goldstone found in a precedent-setting judgment that the police could not have legitimately concluded that he was “a threat to the maintenance of public order.”

In Durban, the government suffered another major legal setback when the provincial Supreme Court in Natal ruled that 10 people accused of complicity in a series of bombings over the last three years could not be denied bail simply by government order and were entitled to a full hearing on their bail application.

Both rulings can be appealed, but the government has given no indication that it will appeal either.

In another case to be heard today in Durban, the Metal and Allied Workers Union, many of whose officials have been detained, will ask the court to overrule an emergency regulation banning publication of “subversive statements” on grounds that the definition of subversive is too broad and vague.

33 Organizations Restricted

Despite these legal challenges, the police, using the emergency powers, further restricted political activities Monday by prohibiting 33 anti-apartheid organizations and labor unions from holding any meetings in the Johannesburg area.

Gideon P. Laubscher, the police commander in Soweto, the black satellite city outside Johannesburg, gave no reason for the ban, which applies to any gathering that the groups might organize, but it follows a similar order issued in Cape Town to silence anti-apartheid organizations there.

The affected groups include the United Democratic Front, a coalition of anti-apartheid organizations, the black-consciousness Azanian People’s Organization, the two main black labor union confederations, the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the Council of Unions of South Africa and several major black unions, including the National Union of Mineworkers. The order also applies to all student councils at schools and universities in the area.

10 More Deaths Reported

Ten more people, including a white construction foreman, were reported killed in the country’s continuing civil strife, according to government reports.

Five blacks were found burned to death in a house in Kwazakele, one of the black ghetto townships outside Port Elizabeth on the Indian Ocean coast. Gasoline-soaked tires apparently had been used to set two of the bodies on fire, according to the government information bureau. It appeared to be an attack by black militants on suspected police informers or others seen as cooperating with the white-led minority government.

The white construction foreman was later shot and fatally wounded in Kwazakele while dropping off laborers working to upgrade the township’s streets. A black gunman fired three shots at point-blank range with a revolver at Petrus J. Fourie, 53, witnesses told police.

Fourie’s murder was one of the relatively few direct attacks on white civilians in the nearly two years of civil disorder. There was no apparent motive for the killing, a police spokesman said. Of the more than 2,000 people killed in the unrest, about 35 have been white, most of them killed by land mines or bomb explosions.

Suspected Guerrillas Slain

Three more suspected guerrillas of the African National Congress were shot and killed, according to the government’s information bureau, in a skirmish Sunday afternoon near Empangeni, about 100 miles north of Durban, on the Indian Ocean coast. A fourth man was arrested. Police said they seized three AK-47 assault rifles, eight hand grenades, two small mines as well as detonators and timing devices for other explosives.

Police have reported several such clashes around the country in the past month as the African National Congress, the main group fighting white rule, has stepped up its attacks following the imposition of emergency rule.

On Saturday, three black gunmen, presumed to be ANC guerrillas, reportedly attacked local policemen patrolling two black townships southeast of Johannesburg, killing 5 people and wounding 12 others. Two of the gunmen were killed in a later gun battle, but the third escaped.

A black man was killed near Nelspruit in eastern Transvaal, according to the information bureau, when security forces opened fire on a mob stoning a patrol.

Sole Information Source

Under the state of emergency, declared June 12, the government bureau has become the sole authorized source of information on the country’s civil strife. Reporters are largely unable to verify its reports because of government restrictions barring firsthand coverage of unrest and independent accounts of police and army actions.

Strikes and other work stoppages begun last week by the National Union of Mineworkers to protest the detention without charge of a number of their officials, including a union vice president, continued to spread Monday and now include an estimated 15,000 miners at five gold, coal and diamond mining complexes.

Although union members at the historic diamond mines around Kimberly began returning to work Monday after talks with De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd., work stoppages spread to gold and coal mines owned by Anglo American Corp. and the General Mining Union Corp.

15 Miners Killed

Fifteen miners were reported killed in factional fighting over the weekend between different ethnic groups, Sotho-speaking Basutos and Xhosas, at a gold mine near Welkom, 120 miles southwest of here. Both management and union officials said the fighting was not related to the protest actions.

Leaders of the Congress of South African Trade Unions met secretly Monday to discuss protest actions, including a possible one-day general strike next week, if union leaders are not released from detention. There was no word on the outcome of their discussions.

The government, meanwhile, confirmed that the last restrictions on Winnie Mandela, wife of the imprisoned African National Congress leader Nelson R. Mandela, have been lifted after several court cases in March that effectively invalidated orders preventing her from living in Soweto.

Her name did not appear last week on the government’s annual list of persons who may not be quoted in the South African press. Capt. Henry Beck, spokesman for Minister of Law and Order Louis le Grange, said, “I can confirm that all restrictions on Mrs. Mandela have been lifted.”