Rock-Throwing Students Protest Soweto Violence

Rock-throwing students clashed with police today at the University of Witwatersrand after a meeting called to protest violence in the black township of Soweto in which at least 21 people were killed and 98 injured.

One police cameraman reportedly was cut by thrown rocks.

Students were protesting the Soweto riots. They began throwing stones at cars and a police film crew, witnesses said, and police responded with tear gas.

A white dental student who was trying to drive away from the scene was mobbed and bumped into one protester, the South African Press Assn. reported. Students hit the car with their fists and the driver jumped out and fired a shot into the air.

The dental student then sped away as stones were thrown at his car. The news agency said no one was injured by the car or the shot. (In South Africa, it is common for whites to carry guns in their cars.)

Riot squads formed lines along Jan Smuts Avenue, a main thoroughfare through the city, to keep crowds of students from marching from the campus. Police vans and other cars were pelted with stones, the press agency reported.

Witwatersrand is officially a white university, although some blacks are allowed to attend.

Soweto was reported quiet today. Although the state Bureau for Information said 21 people died in the rioting there--20 blacks killed by security forces and a black counselor slain by other blacks--anti-apartheid leaders put the death toll as high as 30.

“This was one of the darkest days in our history,” said the Rev. Frank Chikane, deputy president of the Soweto Civic Assn.