S. Africa Fires 16,000 Rail Strikers; 6 Die in Clashes

Police shot to death six blacks during street battles in Johannesburg on Wednesday after South Africa’s state-run railroad fired more than 16,000 striking workers.

The clashes, some of the worst in recent months, heightened tensions once again in the black townships around Johannesburg, and union officials warned that further violence may follow as blacks react to the deaths.

“To the people, this looks like war--a calculated police attack upon them,” Murphy Morobe, spokesman for the United Democratic Front coalition of anti-apartheid groups, said later. “The murderous action of the police has now set the stage for an even greater confrontation.”

But President Pieter W. Botha, speaking at the university town of Stellenbosch, north of Cape Town, said Wednesday evening that South Africa is facing an increased threat of civil unrest, and he called for greater support for the ruling National Party in confronting the outlawed African National Congress and the South African Communist Party.

“South Africa is standing in the front line of the international war against terrorism,” Botha declared, speaking of the increased political violence, “and we are experiencing a total onslaught against us, a total strategy that includes both military and propaganda campaigns and an effort to disrupt our economy.”

The first clash in Johannesburg occurred about noon Wednesday outside a union hall in Germiston, an eastern suburb, according to both official and union accounts, when police opened fire while dispersing a meeting of more than 1,000 members of the striking South African Railways and Harbor Workers Union.

Three men were killed and “a number” were wounded, according to the government’s Bureau for Information in Pretoria, which said the police were attacked with knives and stones. Dozens of arrests were made.

The second clash followed when about 60 strikers, angered by news of the Germiston incident, left the headquarters of the Congress of South African Trade Unions in downtown Johannesburg to go by train to Germiston, about 12 miles away.

Stopped by Riot Police

But they were stopped by riot police outside Doornfontein Station, one of several railway stations in the city, and they refused to disperse when ordered, according to the Bureau for Information.

Police said they fired tear gas and were then attacked with knives, machetes, axes, clubs and other weapons. Three policemen were seriously injured, they said.

Riot police then opened fire “to save the lives of the men attacked,” Lt. Pierre Louw said later. Three were shot to death and five others were wounded, according to Louw.

But union officials said later that the actual death toll was five blacks. Witnesses spoke of seeing “many, many bodies” lying on the street after the clash and reported at least four dead. A police major also died of his wounds, these sources said, although police said he was hospitalized in critical condition.

The police, pursuing some of those who fled from the railroad station, then surrounded the union headquarters, bringing in hundreds of troops as reinforcements as they laid siege to the 11-story building and sealed off most of the area.

Sharpshooters Watched

About 5 p.m., police ordered those in the union headquarters to leave the building, and they arrested several hundred people, taking them to police headquarters by the truckload as sharpshooters watched from adjoining buildings.

Michael Roussos, a spokesman for the Railway and Harbor Workers, said later that police had gone from floor to floor and room to room in search of those suspected of participating in the march to Doornfontein Station and had done considerable damage.

About 10 journalists, waiting for a union press conference, were among those arrested, but all were later released. Police seized most of the film and videotapes made at the scene under emergency regulations that prohibit journalists from providing any but official accounts of civil unrest in South Africa.

Earlier Wednesday, police fired volleys of tear gas to disperse a march of several hundred residents of Soweto, the sprawling black ghetto outside Johannesburg, when they marched on municipal offices there to protest the eviction of families that have refused to pay rent and utility charges for the past year as part of a general rent strike.

Negotiations between the Soweto Civic Assn. and local officials had broken down, and pamphlets were circulated calling for a three-day general strike by residents.

Buses, Taxis Stoned

Buses and taxis were stoned when some workers attempted to defy the strike call, and employers in Johannesburg reported that about half their workers had stayed away Wednesday.

Elsewhere, 24,000 black miners went on strike at two gold mines west of Johannesburg to protest layoffs of about 2,300 workers there.

The street fighting in and around Johannesburg was the worst in the city since the government imposed a nationwide state of emergency last June 12 to quell the mounting protests against apartheid, South Africa’s system of racial separation and white minority rule.

After several months of an uneasy but gradually increasing calm in the black ghetto townships outside Johannesburg, the violence came as a shock, occurring at midday in commercial and warehouse districts in the city and one of its main industrial suburbs.

“The intention is to crush the railway workers’ strike and to use as much force as they possibly can . . . to smash it,” Jay Naidoo, general secretary of the 700,000-member Congress of South African Trade Unions, told newsmen later. “The attack was unprovoked and uncalled for.”

Set Wednesday Deadline

South African Transport Services had set Wednesday morning as the deadline for striking rail workers--estimated by the government to number 18,000 and by the union to total more than 22,000--to return to work or lose their jobs.

Dirk Buekes, a railways spokesman, said about 2,000 had returned to work and that those still on strike were regarded as having “terminated their services.” He said the transport services would begin moving them out of their hostels today.

The Railways and Harbor Workers Union has been seeking official recognition in place of an in-house union, but the government has refused to deal with it, calling it an agent of the African National Congress because of its affiliation with the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the United Democratic Front.

The strike began March 13 when railways management fined a driver the equivalent of $40 for turning in $20.20 in receipts a day late.

Johannesburg bureau assistant Michael Cadman contributed to this article.