S. Africa, Hit by Sanctions, Will Expel Mozambicans

The South African government, in its first reprisal against a black-ruled neighbor for backing international sanctions against it, said Wednesday that it will expel more than 68,000 Mozambique workers.

The action, which has broad political and social ramifications here and in Mozambique, appears to herald South Africa’s long-threatened campaign of “countersanctions.” Further steps against Zimbabwe and Zambia and perhaps the United States, Western Europe and Japan are expected.

The South African announcement in Pretoria late Wednesday said simply that Mozambique workers will no longer be admitted to the country and that those now here, mostly miners, will be repatriated at the end of their contracts, which generally run for 14 months.

The official reason cited by the government is Mozambique’s support of the outlawed African National Congress, the principal group fighting minority white rule here.

Pretoria said it was responding to “the activities of the African National Congress and South African Communist Party, which are responsible for the continuing deteriorating security situation on (Mozambique’s) common border with South Africa and which, according to information in possession of the South African government, as confirmed by recent incidents, are still operating from Mozambique.”

Six South African soldiers were wounded this week when their armored vehicle, traveling on a dirt road near the Mozambique border, detonated a land mine, the latest in a series of such explosions in border areas.

But it is widely believed here that an additional motivation for targeting Mozambique and moving against its workers here, who are Mozambique’s principal source of foreign exchange, is that country’s endorsement of U.S. and European Communities’ sanctions against South Africa.

Gen. Magnus Malan, the South African defense minister, warned Mozambique on Tuesday that it faces retaliatory military strikes unless African National Congress guerrillas, who are believed responsible for the mines, are quickly rounded up, expelled and prevented from carrying out more cross-border attacks.

Referring to Mozambique President Samora Machel’s equivocal position on ANC activities, Malan said: “If he allows a Moscow-inspired revolutionary war against South Africa, he must be prepared to take the responsibility for what happens. If he chooses terrorism and revolution, he will clash head-on with the government of South Africa.”

No Guarantee of Immunity

Deputy Foreign Minister Ron Miller, amplifying Malan’s remarks, said Wednesday that the Nkomati Accord, a nonaggression pact signed by Mozambique and South Africa in March, 1984, is “not a guarantee (of) immunity from South Africa’s reaction” to suspected cross-border operations by ANC guerrillas.

“If Mozambique is allowing its territory to be used by the ANC,” Miller said, “it will have to run the risk of strong reaction from South Africa in an attempt to defend itself from the ANC. If Mozambique chooses the path of peace and rejects the ANC, South Africa will be prepared to continue to honor the Nkomati Accord.”

But the government’s move to expel some of the most experienced and valued of the country’s black miners drew immediate protests from both the South African Chamber of Mines, which represents the country’s major mines, and from the all-black, 300,000-member National Union of Mineworkers, which called the step politically “desperate” and economically “disruptive.”

“This action is purely part of an attempt to defend apartheid in the wake of concerted international pressure against the regime,” the union said in a statement, “and it is not a solution to the South African question and to peace in the subcontinent.”

Hopes for Negotiations

And the Chamber of Mines, expressing its “regrets” that the crackdown had “been found necessary,” said it hopes that Pretoria will open negotiations soon with Maputo to restore normal contacts.

South Africa’s expulsion of Mozambique workers could have even greater impact on that impoverished and war-torn country than a military strike on suspected African National Congress bases there. Western diplomats said Pretoria’s intention apparently is to do Maputo the maximum harm at minimum political cost internationally.

The loss of the workers’ earnings, depriving Mozambique of its main source of foreign exchange aside from international assistance, will seriously undermine an economy where so little of real worth is produced that its money has ceased to have any real value.

Each of the 51,700 miners supports a dozen family members, on average, in one of Africa’s drought-stricken and most impoverished countries, and the loss of their jobs means that perhaps 625,000 people, who have been well fed until now, will go on famine relief.

The return of so many jobless miners, moreover, could increase the political pressure on Machel’s government to come to further agreements with South Africa and thus reduce the international demands on Pretoria for sweeping changes here.

A commentary today on state-run Radio South Africa accused Mozambique of permitting a recent resurgence of ANC activities there, including “at least 23 terrorist attacks in South Africa that were masterminded in Mozambique” despite the Nkomati Accord, which required an ANC withdrawal from Mozambique.

Charges by Mozambique

For its part, Mozambique charged Wednesday that South Africa had never honored the Nkomati Accord, continuing to support the right-wing Mozambique National Resistance in its 10-year guerrilla campaign against the Maputo government. The South African threat of retaliation is “an attempt by Pretoria to evade its responsibility for the non-implementation of the accord,” a senior official said in Maputo.

President Pieter W. Botha had warned South Africa’s neighbors a year ago, however, that his government might expel all 1.3 million migrant workers in the event of international economic sanctions on his country, and other officials had repeated the warning.

Pretoria has declared more recently that its neighbors, particularly proponents of sanctions such as Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe, would be the first to suffer from whatever international measures were imposed on South Africa. Last week, it said it would not only stop its purchases of American grain and other agricultural products but also halt transshipment of any U.S. grain, much of it famine relief, through South Africa to its neighbors.

In the country’s continuing civil unrest, police prevented students at the University of the Witwatersrand from holding an anti-apartheid rally, and a tense face-off between several hundred students and 50 policemen, armed with shotguns, rifles and whips, ensued on the school campus before both sides agreed to back down and withdraw. The planned meeting had been banned as a threat to law and order, the police said.