South Africa Orders Times Reporter to Leave by Dec. 31

The government today refused to renew the work permit of Los Angeles Times correspondent Michael Parks and told him to leave the country by Dec. 31.

The Department of Home Affairs declined to give a reason for the action.

A U.S. diplomat in Pretoria, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said American officials in Washington and Pretoria were discussing the matter with South African representatives. The diplomat said Parks was appealing the decision.

Parks, 43, has been in South Africa for 2 1/2 years. His previous posts included Peking, Hong Kong, Cairo, Beirut, Moscow and Saigon.

He declined comment publicly on the matter today, saying: “If there are any problems, I will discuss them with the Department of Foreign Affairs, Home Affairs and the Bureau for Information.”

Alvin Shuster, the foreign editor of The Times, said in Los Angeles that the decision was being appealed.

Earlier this year, after the June 12 declaration of a state of emergency, four foreign reporters were ordered out of the country: Newsweek correspondent Richard Manning, CBS News cameraman Vim de Vos, West German television reporter Heinrich Buettgen and Dan Sagir, who reported for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and Israeli army radio.

Under state of emergency regulations, reporters are not allowed to describe security force actions or publish the names of detainees without government permission, and may not publish statements considered subversive.

In a related development, representatives of South Africa’s newspaper publishers met today with a high-level Cabinet committee to discuss the government’s efforts to impose tighter controls on the press.

President Pieter W. Botha announced last week that the media’s self-policing system needed “pepping up.” Botha said the National Press Union, which includes executives of the four main newspaper groups, agreed that South Africa faced “a many-pronged but well-coordinated revolutionary onslaught.”