Briton Wary on S. Africa Peace Talks : Foreign Secretary Uncertain Whether Pretoria Has Courage

British Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe said today that he remains unsure whether the South African government has the courage to start peace negotiations with the country’s black majority.

Asked whether South Africa is prepared to abandon apartheid, Howe said he has yet to reach a conclusion.

“The question is whether the courage can be summoned up to make what would be a difficult decision, of course, but it is the key decision, for which many people are pressing,” he said.

Howe said the South African people “passionately want to see change brought about by peaceful means, by persuasion and dialogue. . . . The key is really in the hands of the South African government.”

Also today, the Bureau for Information said eight blacks died in violence in the last 24 hours.

Slayings in Cape Province

Five blacks were burned or shot to death by other blacks in eastern Cape province, the bureau said.

Near the town of Adelaide in the western Cape, about 300 blacks attacked a security force police patrol and shot one officer to death, the bureau reported. The security forces returned the fire and killed an attacker, it said.

In Sebokeng, south of Johannesburg, a patrol shot to death a black man in a crowd attacking a black councilor’s house, the bureau said.

The latest reported deaths brought to 188 the number of people killed in political violence since the government imposed a nationwide state of emergency June 12.

Howe, avoided by most South African black activists, conferred for an hour in separate meetings with black homeland leaders Enos Mabuza and Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, chief of 7 million Zulus.

Sees Peril to Economy

Buthelezi said he told Howe that foreign economic sanctions against South Africa would destroy the economy that will someday be inherited by a democratic government.

But Mabuza, the only homeland leader on good terms with the outlawed African National Congress, refused to condemn sanctions, saying the focus should be on the dismantling of apartheid, the system of racial separation under which 5 million whites dominate 24 million voteless blacks.