South Africa Frees Activist Black Editor : International Union Chiefs Arrive to Show Support for Detainees

Zwelakhe Sisulu, one of the nation’s most prominent black activists, was released today after more than three weeks in detention under the national state of emergency.

Out of the thousands believed detained, Sisulu, editor of The New Nation newspaper, is the only detainee the government confirmed it had in custody.

His father is Walter Sisulu, a former African National Congress leader now jailed in Pollsmoor Prison with Nelson Mandela, also an ANC leader, on charges of sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the government.

“When I was taken away, I was told the paper would be closed down,” Sisulu said at a news conference in his lawyer’s office. “I was surprised to learn today that the paper was actually being published.

“It’s a great relief to be out,” he said. “I wish it will be a precedent for others.”

Show of Solidarity

American, British and West German labor leaders, in a show of solidarity with South Africa’s black unions, arrived today to seek the release of hundreds of detained union officials.

Lane Kirkland, president of the American labor confederation AFL-CIO, said the delegation from the Brussels-based International Confederation of Free Trade Unions will also try to visit some union leaders in prison.

“I trust that we can certainly make it clear to our brothers and sisters in the trade union groups we are seeing that we stand solidly with them in their efforts to secure their trade union rights,” he said at a news conference.

The 83-million-member international labor group has called for economic sanctions against South Africa. Today’s visit was the second by a delegation from the confederation in less than a year.

In Soweto, Johannesburg’s black township, Mandela’s wife, Winnie, met with the media on her husband’s 68th birthday. It is the 24th straight birthday he has spent behind bars.

Deprived of Family Life

She fasted for the day, as she does each year. She told reporters: “We have had nothing to rejoice about. It’s always been a reminder that we’ve never had a family life.”

She said she visited her husband twice in the last week at Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town.

The Bureau for Information today reported three more deaths, which brought the total during the state of emergency to 158.

In one of the incidents, the bureau said, 150 people attacked a five-man security force patrol in Soweto with stones and homemade weapons. The officers fired tear gas, which did not succeed in dispersing the crowd, the bureau said, then fired their guns, killing a black teen-ager and seriously wounding a black man.

The other two deaths were cases of blacks killing blacks, the bureau said.