S. Africa Blacks Light Candles Against Apartheid

Blacks switched off lights and lit candles Tuesday night in a mass gesture of opposition to apartheid, despite new government rules that forbid most peaceful protests.

Two newspapers, one serving the huge township of Soweto outside Johannesburg, were barred from publishing appeals promoting the Dec. 16-26 “Christmas against the Emergency” campaign.

Restrictions imposed last week under the six-month-old nationwide emergency ban statements advocating the consumer boycotts that were intended to be the heart of the Christmas campaign.

Protest organizers asked blacks to use only candlelight between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. Tuesday.

A Soweto resident said the only lights he could see at 7:30 p.m. were street lamps. Another said that bars in his neighborhood, which usually operate long after midnight, heeded the call to close by 8 p.m.

Tuesday also was the anniversary of two opposing historical milestones: the defeat of the Zulus by white settlers in 1838 and the start of the guerrilla war against white rule in 1961.

Marks Settlers’ Victory

Government officials presided at ceremonies around the country for the Day of the Vow, a national holiday marking the settlers’ victory at Blood River in Natal province over an army of Zulu warriors.

There were no known events commemorating the first sabotage attacks by the outlawed African National Congress on the same day 25 years ago, nor were there reports of serious politically related violence.

Security operations during the day could not be reported under emergency press restrictions.

Censorship rules ban or restrict reporting about unrest, security force actions, treatment of people detained without charge under the emergency, most forms of peaceful protest and a broad range of statements the government considers subversive.

Residents of Soweto said the township of 2 million people seemed quiet. They said special services were conducted at some churches to pray for detainees and mark the start of the Christmas protest.

Pray for Peace, Justice

Several hundred whites and some blacks gathered at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Johannesburg for an evening service. They lit candles, prayed for peace and justice and ended by singing “Nkosi Sikelel’i Africa” (God Bless Africa), anthem of the anti-apartheid movement.

The Day of the Vow is a cultural focal point for Afrikaners, the whites of Dutch descent who control the ruling National Party.

Piet Clase, minister of education for whites, told a ceremony in the Orange Free State that the day marks “the victory of Christian values in South Africa over a radical heathenism,” not the defeat of one race by another.

“We do not regard ourselves as the chosen people,” he said, declaring that all races “form part of this subcontinent and we shall have to give each other a place here.”

On Monday, authorities barred the independent anti-apartheid Weekly Mail and the Sowetan, a daily for blacks, from publishing appeals by 13 groups for a range of protests in coming days.

Among those was the “Christmas Against the Emergency” sponsored by the United Democratic Front, the largest coalition against South Africa’s official apartheid system of race discrimination.

The United Democratic Front protest was to have included a boycott of white-owned stores, lighting candles in windows Tuesday evening and Christmas Eve, displaying support for detainees and other measures.

Urging Boycotts Banned

Advocacy of consumer boycotts and reports on them are forbidden under the new restrictions. The Weekly Mail and Sowetan had carried statements from the United Democratic Front and affiliated groups promoting other aspects of the Christmas campaign.

“Something like this is aimed just as much at those organizations as at the press,” Weekly Mail editor Anton Harber said. “It’s wrong to see them as media curbs, they are information curbs, curbs on the activities of these organizations.”