Editor Assails Detention of Black Reporter

The editor of Johannesburg’s influential Business Day newspaper Tuesday condemned the detention of a black reporter as a violation of democracy.

“The detention of reporter Sipho Ngcobo in terms of a fascist provision of the law . . . emphasizes and confirms the character of the regime that has seized him,” editor Ken Owen said in a front-page editorial.

“South Africa groans under a government that has abandoned the tenets of justice as it has violated the procedures of democracy,” he said.

Notebooks Taken Away

The newspaper said that Ngcobo was detained without charge Monday. Officers searched his desk and took away notebooks. They refused to allow him to consult a lawyer and would not let senior editors speak to him before he was taken away.

They refused to tell Ngcobo or newspaper editors why he was being detained.

Owen said that Ngcobo’s reporting of township politics had given readers “a unique and illuminating view of township affairs.

“His detention puts out their eyes and increases their uncertainty,” he said.

Considerable Latitude

Although the harsh language of the Business Day editorial appeared to defy the government’s three-week-old crackdown on the press, the new regulations still leave considerable latitude for criticism of the regime outside the current state of emergency, including comments on such routine police actions as detentions under the country’s security laws.

Ngcobo, 32, was a reporter on the leftist Rand Daily Mail until it was closed in April last year. He worked as a part-time reporter for United Press International until he joined Business Day earlier this year.

He is among an estimated 22,000 people who have been detained without charge or trial since President Pieter W. Botha imposed the state of emergency June 12.