S. Africa Court Overturns Protest Curbs : Ruling by Provincial Judge Another Legal Setback for Botha

In another politically embarrassing legal setback for South African President Pieter W. Botha, a provincial Supreme Court justice on Tuesday declared invalid regulations that prohibit many anti-government protests that are considered subversive under the national state of emergency.

Justice R. N. Leon ruled in Durban, in Natal province, that despite the state of emergency, the police do not have the authority to define as subversive--and thus illegal--whatever they choose. He also ruled that they may not prohibit campaigns seeking the release of political detainees.

The government, which contends that it needs virtual martial-law powers to cope with continuing civil unrest, said it will appeal Leon’s decision in what could become a landmark case on freedom of speech in South Africa.

Two other Natal judges, generally regarded as the country’s most liberal, ruled Friday in Pietermaritzburg that key emergency regulations restricting press reporting of the civil unrest were invalid. The government will also appeal this decision.

With whites-only parliamentary elections only a week away, on May 6, Botha might issue new regulations, written to comply with the courts’ objections, in order to overcome the humiliation of being told again by the courts that his government has acted unlawfully in cracking down on dissent.

Justice Leon said in his ruling that Botha may not give the police the power to define what political statements or acts are subversive under the state of emergency. He then ruled that tough regulations, imposed in December to curtail even peaceful anti-apartheid protests, were invalid from the outset.

He similarly overturned regulations, promulgated earlier this month by Gen. Johan Coetzee, the national police commissioner, that sought to end the campaign to free political detainees. The government said last week that on April 15, it was holding without charge more than 4,200 people under the state of emergency, which was declared last June 12.

Rules Still in Force

Leon’s ruling is immediately effective only in Natal province, but judges elsewhere are obliged under South African legal practice to “take cognizance of it,” as a local lawyer put it. The government takes the position that pending an appeal, it will regard the questioned regulations as remaining in force.

If upheld, the decision will restore much of the legal latitude that anti-apartheid groups had, despite the state of emergency, to protest South Africa’s system of racial separation and minority white rule, as well as protest the emergency rule itself.

In Cape Town, meanwhile, university students clashed for a second day with the police, protesting South Africa’s weekend raid on what the government called facilities of the outlawed African National Congress in Zambia.

In Johannesburg, two railroad cars were set on fire Monday and another Tuesday after the government’s dismissal of 20,000 black railway workers as the result of a seven-week strike. More than 60 coaches were burned earlier this month, and the police shot and killed six blacks, presumed to be strikers, in two clashes last week.

In another development, a judicial inquiry into advertisements calling for the legalization of the African National Congress, the principal guerrilla group fighting minority rule here, found Tuesday that the ads had been financed by Chris Ball, managing director of Barclays National Bank, the country’s largest.

Justice George G. A. Munnik, president of the Cape provincial Supreme Court, concluded that Ball, despite his repeated denials, had advanced the equivalent of $50,000 to a Johannesburg businessman in early January, knowing that the money would be used to pay for full-page ads placed by the United Democratic Front and other anti-apartheid groups to mark the ANC’s 75th anniversary.

Botha appointed Munnik, an old friend, to investigate what has become known in pro-government newspapers as the “Chris Ball affair” after Ball denied Botha’s charges in Parliament that he had advanced money to pay for the controversial ads.