S. Africa Black Students Return to School

Black children returned to school by the hundreds of thousands Wednesday in what the government and community leaders hope will be the end to more than two years of class boycotts that have fueled civil unrest and threatened to produce a “lost generation” of uneducated black youths.

In contrast with often violent anti-government protests of militant youths, whose slogan has been “liberation before education,” registration was “completely normal” and without incident, according to government spokesmen. Enrollment in urban black schools is expected to surpass 1.8 million, a slight increase over last year’s figure, by the end of next week.

“The turnout for registration at schools throughout the country was exceptionally good, and there was no disruption anywhere,” Job Schoeman, chief liaison officer of the Department of Education and Training, said in Pretoria. “We are very optimistic now that education will return to normal this year.”

Some older high school students did not re-register immediately on Wednesday, but many explained that they intend to return to class this month and are simply waiting to make sure the prolonged boycotts are over before actually enrolling.

‘Back to Class to Learn’

“We went out together, and we should go back together,” an 18-year-old student activist at Orlando High School said, asking not to be quoted by name. “But make no mistake--we are going back. . . . The boycotts were an appropriate tactic for a time, but the correct strategy now, for a whole lot of reasons, is to go back to class and to learn.”

The student boycotts have involved as many as 300,000 youths at a time, and frequently over the last 2 1/2 years, attendance has been zero at many black high schools around Johannesburg, Pretoria, Port Elizabeth, East London and other major cities.

The reported return to school of the vast majority of black youths represents a victory for both the government, which had failed to break the class boycotts by the most politicized older students, and for a wide range of black community leaders who have insisted, despite criticism from radical youths, that there must be “education for liberation.”

“Indications are that most children are eager to see schooling assume its proper place,” the country’s largest-selling black newspaper, the Sowetan, said in a back-to-school editorial. This reflected the strong conviction in the black community that prolonging the school protests would, as one prominent activist put it, amount to “political as well as cultural suicide, ensuring that if we achieve liberation, there will be no blacks able to run this place.”

Urged by Religious Leaders

Under South Africa’s state of emergency, newsmen are prohibited from covering firsthand any “unrest” or police action to deal with it, and they are forbidden to report such incidents without official authorization. They are also barred from reporting the extent to which school boycotts or other nonviolent protests may be succeeding, how they are organized or the reasons for them. This story has been written to comply with these and other restrictions on the domestic and foreign news media here.

The return to school was proposed by religious leaders last month and then strongly endorsed by such anti-apartheid groups as the United Democratic Front, the Azanian People’s Organization, the National Education Crisis Committee and the Congress of South African Trade Unions--a rare display of black political unity.

For the government, the return to school will probably decrease the often bloody confrontations between black youths and the police and army and thus further reduce the level of political violence, now about a third of what it was before the imposition, on June 12, of a national state of emergency.

At the same time, the government hopes that many of the most militant black youths will again come under the discipline of their parents, teachers and other adults whose politics might be less radical and whose impatience for immediate change less acute.

Wants Schools Depoliticized

“It is essential that education should be depoliticized and that schools should never be allowed to turn into political battlefields,” said Jaap Strydom, the deputy director general of the Department of Education and Training.

Ten days ago, President Pieter W. Botha gave school officials sweeping powers to operate the black education system by decree, authorizing them to open and close schools on their own authority, to admit or bar students, to make regulations that have the force of law and to punish--with up to two years in prison--anyone who violates those regulations.

The only exception to the often jubilant return to school was around the industrial city of Port Elizabeth, a major center of black protests where the government had closed 61 schools last year because of little or no attendance and extensive riot damage.

Discussions are under way with parents on the reopening of those schools, Schoeman said, with the government requiring that they accept responsibility for their smooth and safe operation after months of disruption by militant black youths. With such agreements, they could reopen as early as Jan. 19, Schoeman said. The reopening of 12 other schools, mostly around Johannesburg, also depends on such negotiations.

145 Children Reported Held

In the country’s continuing unrest, 145 children under the age of 18 were reported to have been detained by the police without charge last month under regulations that permit them to be held indefinitely without trial. The Detainees’ Parents Support Committee, a civil rights monitoring group, said Wednesday that the overall number of detentions had increased in December, apparently as part of an overall crackdown.

In Pretoria, the Ministry of Law and Order reported the arrest of a black man in connection with the killing of two white policemen two weeks ago when a suspected African National Congress guerrilla escaped while being taken to jail in northern Transvaal province near South Africa’s border with Zimbabwe.