S. Africa Issues New Rules to Strengthen Press Censorship

The government reimposed strict censorship on the news media here Thursday, as opposition groups protested President Pieter W. Botha’s extension for another year of the national state of emergency.

The government, using its emergency powers, issued new regulations to override recent court decisions that had lifted press restrictions and permitted sharper criticism of South Africa’s apartheid system of racial separation and minority white rule.

The strengthened regulations, which the government’s opponents interpret as heralding an intensified crackdown on anti-apartheid groups, appeared to be aimed primarily at reinstating those measures declared invalid by the courts, at closing the many loopholes discovered by civil rights lawyers and at consolidating the vast powers assumed by the government when it proclaimed the state of emergency a year ago.

Under the regulations, the domestic and foreign news media are again prohibited from covering firsthand South Africa’s continuing civil strife, from disclosing without official permission any action by the security forces to quell the unrest and from reporting a wide variety of peaceful protests. These include consumer boycotts and rent strikes and any critical statements that the government may deem to be “subversive.”

The regulations also authorize the police to impose house arrest on the government’s opponents, to restrict their travel and to detain anyone for up to 30 days before getting permission to hold them longer, perhaps indefinitely, as a threat to state security.

Reduced Violence

Stoffel van der Merwe, the deputy minister for information, told a press conference here that the regulations, however harsh they seem, and emergency rule itself should be judged against the reduced political violence and the significant measure of calm established in most areas of the country in recent months.

The continuation of emergency rule, which gives the police and army virtual martial-law authority, was essential to safeguard this fragile stability and ultimately to permit negotiations between the government and black leaders on the sharing of political power, Van der Merwe argued.

Scores of additional political detainees were released Thursday. Van der Merwe said that the police, in connection with the extension of emergency rule, have re-examined the need for the continued detention of those held without charge. He said that many of them, some held for months, are being freed with a warning not to resume their anti-government activities.

Botha’s action in prolonging emergency rule provoked sharp criticism from the government’s opponents on the left.

Helen Suzman, the veteran civil rights campaigner and member of Parliament representing the Progressive Federal Party, said the continued state of emergency “demonstrates the government’s inability to rule without the most repressive laws.”

“Long ago,” she said, “we predicted that if laws were enacted without the consent of the mass of the people, normal measures would not be sufficient to maintain law and order. South Africa has as a result been sliding down that slippery slope toward a fully fledged police state, and emergency rule has now become a permanent feature of our lives.”

Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, the influential Zulu leader, warned that prolonging the state of emergency will undercut efforts to resolve the crisis peacefully.

“Despite the appearance of curtailed violence, the base of violence is actually being extended,” Buthelezi said. “The longer the state of emergency endures, the more difficult it is going to become to get meaningful negotiations under way.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace laureate and head of the Anglican Church in South Africa, said the yearlong state of emergency may have reduced political violence, as the government contends, but that “if you are not dealing with the basic problems, the injustice and oppression in this land, we are still playing marbles.”

He asked Christians to wear black armbands today as a sign of mourning and to ring church bells at noon to protest the state of emergency and the continued detention without trial of thousands of black political activists.

Protests Planned

Further protests are planned over the next two weeks by the United Democratic Front, a coalition of 700 anti-apartheid groups, and the 750,000-member Congress of South African Trade Unions. The two groups see themselves as likely targets of any further measures to curb the opposition.

“The government is not satisfied with the harm it has already done the nation, and we may now be headed for a permanent state of emergency,” the United Democratic Front said.

Most of the UDF’s national, regional and local leaders have either been detained by the police or are operating clandestinely. Most of its plans have been kept secret to avoid preemptive police action.

Police spokesmen said that extensive preparations have been made to handle whatever protests develop.

“We are ready for any eventuality, including strikes, boycotts and other actions,” an officer said at police headquarters in Pretoria. He said that most leaves had been canceled for the next two weeks to ensure sufficient manpower.

The government’s action also won some support. The Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut, which represents politically conservative Afrikaner businessmen, hailed the state of emergency as helping to revive the country’s economy. State-run Radio South Africa quoted unidentified black community leaders as praising emergency rule as restoring stability in their areas.

In Soweto, the black satellite city outside Johannesburg, a suspected insurgent of the African National Congress, the principal guerrilla group fighting white rule, was killed in a gunfight with the security police. A senior police officer and a constable were seriously wounded, the police said.

In Pretoria, the Foreign Ministry told a delegation from neighboring Botswana that a car bomb that killed three people in April in Gaborone, the Botswana capital, was the result of explosives hidden in the vehicle by the African National Congress in preparation for a terrorist attack in Johannesburg. Botswana officials had blamed the South African security police.