S. Africa Curbs Funds for Dissident Front

Cracking down harder on the United Democratic Front, the country’s leading anti-apartheid group, the South African government Thursday barred it from receiving any foreign funds, which now constitute more than half its budget.

President Pieter W. Botha, acting under a 1974 law intended to prevent foreign control of South African political movements, declared the United Democratic Front to be an “affected organization” prohibited from receiving any money from abroad.

The government appointed a security officer to freeze the front’s accounts, inspect its finances and oversee many of its day-to-day operations to ensure compliance with the restriction.

2 Million Members

Azhar Cachalia, treasurer of the three-year-old coalition of anti-apartheid groups, told newsmen later in Johannesburg that the move brings the government within a step of formally outlawing the organization, whose 700 affiliates have more than 2 million members. As he spoke, policemen searched the organization’s offices, seizing boxes of documents.

“If the government doesn’t achieve its purpose of rendering the UDF inoperative, the next step will be to ban us,” Cachalia said. “What the government does not realize, however, is that it cannot stop our people from organizing against racism and repression and that they will continue doing so whatever the circumstances.”

Albertina Sisulu, the front’s co-president, said: “To me, the restriction is no surprise, for we have been expecting anything. From the outset, the UDF was never left alone.”

Cachalia said the ban on foreign contributions, which have proved increasingly important as the four-month-old state of emergency restricts fund-raising, will be challenged in court. The front’s lawyers, he added, do not believe that affiliates are prohibited from receiving foreign donations.

Hurt, Not Crippled

“This will certainly hurt the UDF, but not to such an extent that it will be crippled,” Cachalia said.

Botha’s move brought criticism from the political left--and praise from the far right.

“When will the government come to realize that a solution to our problems is not to be found in restrictions and coercion, but in fundamental political reform through negotiation with leaders of all sections of our people?” Colin Eglin, leader of the white opposition Progressive Federal Party, said in Cape Town.

But Jaap Marais, leader of the far-right Herstigte Nasionale Party, said the action was overdue and should be followed by a complete ban on the United Democratic Front, which he described as “just another face of the African National Congress.” The congress, outlawed in 1960, has become the principal organization fighting minority white rule here.

To many political observers, the action signaled a new willingness to crack down harder on opposition groups since the imposition of American and European economic sanctions on South Africa.

“As far as we are concerned, the sanctions legislation removed the last political inhibitions, and we can now do what we want,” a well-placed government official said Thursday.

The United Democratic Front and its affiliates were already the principal targets of the state of emergency that Botha declared on June 12 to give the police and army virtual martial-law powers to quell civil unrest.

Many Were Detained

According to the Detainees’ Parents Support Committee, a civil rights monitoring group, 75% to 80% of the 20,000 detained under the state of emergency belong to the United Democratic Front or its affiliates. All but a few members of the front’s top leadership are on trial, detained or in hiding, and most of those who are free have either just been released or were acquitted on charges of treason and terrorism at earlier trials.

The front is only the third group to be declared an “affected organization.” The others were the Christian Institute, which later was formally banned, and the National Union of Students of South Africa, which curtailed its operations after foreign funds were cut off but has continued to operate for the past decade despite the restrictions on its finances.