Justices Raise Doubts on S. Africa Emergency Rules

Emergency regulations intended to silence critics of South Africa’s white-led minority government appear likely to be ruled invalid today by a provincial Supreme Court.

Two of the three judges hearing a lawsuit challenging the legality of the regulations enforcing the month-old state of emergency said Tuesday during a hearing before the Supreme Court of Natal province in Durban that a prohibition on “subversive statements” seems to them to be far too vague to be valid.

Those regulations make it illegal, punishable by 10 years in prison, to “incite” opposition to the government or the police or army in their enforcement of the state of emergency, to “engender or aggravate feelings of hostility” toward any person or group or to “weaken or undermine confidence” in the government’s ability to quell the continuing civil strife here. The regulations apply equally to individuals, organizations and the news media in South Africa.

Justice P. W. Thirion said an ordinary news broadcast in South Africa these days might be enough in terms of the regulation to undermine public confidence and that the government’s own Information Bureau is undoubtedly violating the regulations each day in its reports on political violence around the country.

Members of Parliament from the ruling National Party appear to have violated the regulations frequently with their denunciations of opposition groups, Justice John M. Didcott added, and a husband talking to his wife at home might do the same.

Other regulations are so wide-ranging, Didcott said, that anyone could, quite innocently, get into trouble. “Nobody can be sure any more when he is committing an offense and when he is not,” he said.

Didcott remarked earlier that he found the regulations “a jumble of words” and “a lot of nonsense” that he could not “make head or tail of.”

Then, in an aside, he added, “Do you think that might be one of these ‘subversive statements?’ ”

Legal observers at the hearing took the comments as very strong indication that the three-judge panel will declare invalid the government’s ban on “subversive statements” and related sections of the emergency regulations when it rules today.

The court could go further, however, and rule that all the regulations and even the government’s declaration of a state of emergency are invalid because they were not presented to Parliament for approval last month, as required by law.

A ruling by the court would apply directly only in Natal province but could be cited as a precedent in similar lawsuits brought elsewhere in South Africa.

Ismail Mahomed, one of the country’s leading civil rights lawyers, argued on behalf of the predominantly black Metal and Allied Workers Union that the government’s failure to seek parliamentary approval of the measures within two weeks violated the law and invalidated the declaration of emergency. The National Party, in fact, prevented a full debate on the emergency.

The three judges appeared less open to that argument, partly because Parliament was adjourned 13 days after emergency rule was imposed, and less willing to deprive the government totally of emergency powers it feels are necessary to deal with the crisis here.

Rights of Detainees

But the judges did indicate in the course of the two days of arguments that they would probably rule that those detained without charge under the state of emergency are entitled to see their lawyers and to the same privileges granted prisoners awaiting trial.

The emergency regulations at present authorize the police to detain anyone indefinitely, in solitary confinement and under harsher conditions than prisoners being held for trial or those convicted of minor crimes. Between 5,000 and 8,000 people have been detained, according to civil rights groups.

Six more blacks--five men and an elderly woman--were reported killed in the continuing political violence here. The government’s Information Bureau, which under emergency regulations is the only authorized source of news on the unrest, said that all six had been murdered, most of them burned to death, by other blacks in scattered incidents around the country.

Two other men, apparently killed in a fierce gun battle, were found dead near Lesotho’s border with South Africa on Tuesday. The mysterious circumstances of their deaths prompted speculation that they might have been black nationalist guerrillas attempting to infiltrate into South Africa who were caught in an ambush that Pretoria does not want to acknowledge for diplomatic reasons.

South African police have fought a series of such battles with guerrillas of the outlawed African National Congress in recent weeks.

Black Violence Blamed

The government on Tuesday attributed the continuing high death toll, averaging nearly five people a day despite the police crackdown, to what it calls “black-on-black violence,” particularly the killing, often by burning, of political moderates in the black community.

“Radicals and so-called ‘comrades,’ actively supported by the African National Congress, have been overwhelmingly responsible for this brutal form of intimidation,” Ronelle Henning, an Information Bureau official, said in Pretoria. “It is clear that murdering people by burning the victim is a desperate reaction of radicals against the restoration of order and an attempt to gain a hold over the peace-loving majority by intimidation.

“The South African government is absolutely determined to stop this violence,” she added. “The state of emergency has as its primary objective the restoration of calm and order so that constructive reforms can be implemented. Considerable success has been achieved, and peace has been returning to the country.”

The government’s assessment, however, cannot be independently verified. Emergency regulations prohibit newsmen from any firsthand coverage of unrest, from reporting the actions of the police or army without official authorization and from quoting “subversive statements” by opposition leaders.

Students Return to Schools

Black students continued to return to school Tuesday after a prolonged midyear break and the imposition of strict regulations intended to eliminate political activists and end the schools’ role as a base for anti-government protests.

Although attendance at black schools is now over 80%, according to the Department of Education and Training, many urban high school students, especially in such militant strongholds as Soweto and Alexandra outside Johannesburg, have not re-registered for class.

Black workers who had remained away from their jobs Monday in informal strikes protesting the detention of union leaders returned on Tuesday. The only exception was the industrial center of Port Elizabeth in eastern Cape province where less than half of the work force returned at many area factories, including the General Motors and Volkswagen auto plants.