Won’t End Struggle, Apartheid Foes Vow : Groups Hold First National Rallies in a Year of Emergency Rule

Anti-apartheid groups on Tuesday reaffirmed their determination to continue their struggle against South Africa’s white-led minority government despite the extension of the tough state of emergency here.

In their first nationwide series of political rallies in a year, the groups marked the June 16 anniversary of the 1976 Soweto student uprising with calls to action that showed their militancy undiminished by the government’s yearlong crackdown.

“If the government doesn’t yield to the demands of the people, they will free themselves,” Albertina Sisulu, president of the United Democratic Front, a coalition of 700 anti-apartheid groups, said as she placed flowers on the grave of Hector Peterson, the first youth killed by police in 1976.

“Despite the repression of the state of emergency, our resolve is stronger than ever. We warn them that this is the beginning of the end.”

Frank Meintjies, a top official of the 700,000-member Congress of South African Trade Unions, told a rally in downtown Johannesburg that black workers, once reluctant to place political issues ahead of wages and other economic concerns, are now ready to assume leadership of the anti-apartheid struggle and to give it the full backing of organized labor.

“With the state of emergency, the government has put itself in a no-win situation,” Meintjies declared. “The more they repress us, the more unorganized people we draw into our ranks; the more they repress us, the greater our determination.”

His warning was underscored by a protest strike by more than 1.5 million black workers, whose action shut down many factories, shops and offices in the country’s major industrial centers. The independent Labor Monitoring Unit estimated that 70% of blacks stayed away from work, and it described the strike as probably the biggest yet by black workers.

‘Defense Units’

Rapu Molekane, general secretary of the South African Youth Congress, called on residents of Soweto and the country’s other black ghettos to strengthen their neighborhood organizations, known as street committees, and to establish “defense units” to protect their communities from the police and army.

“We have a right to defend ourselves,” Molekane said in a fiery speech at a rally in the impoverished White City section of Soweto, the black satellite city outside Johannesburg. “We must move to make Soweto a no-go area that the police cannot enter.”

Yet, the day appeared to have passed peacefully. Soweto and most other black townships were quiet, with little of the tension that has marked the June 16 anniversary in past years. Only a few isolated incidents of unrest, when police used tear gas to disperse groups of chanting youths after the rallies, were reported nationwide.

Security, however, had been greatly strengthened. Large numbers of police and troops were on patrol throughout the day, military helicopters kept a constant watch overhead and traffic had to pass through numerous checkpoints and roadblocks.

But the government, apparently wanting to show that its much-criticized state of emergency has restored a significant measure of calm to the country, did not ban any of the protest meetings, as it has generally done over the past year. The security forces showed a restraint that even drew praise at several of the rallies, and anti-apartheid groups stressed the need for “discipline and dignity” during and after the meetings.

The charred body of a 30-year-old black was found Tuesday on the rail line between Soweto and Johannesburg, but police said they were uncertain whether his death resulted from political unrest or from gang warfare in the section of Soweto where he lived.

The observance of what blacks now call “national youth day” was centered in the Johannesburg area, where the 1976 student protests began against government efforts to enforce teaching in Afrikaans, the language of the Dutch-descended Afrikaners who dominate the government.

More than 90% of black workers stayed home in the area, according to the Labor Monitoring Unit and employers’ organizations. In Pretoria, the capital, an estimated 80% did not go to work, and in the industrial centers of Port Elizabeth, Uitenhage and East London in eastern Cape province, more than 90% took part in the protest strike.

But the proportion was only about 40% in Natal province, where Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi’s moderate and predominantly Zulu Inkatha movement is strong, and in Cape Town, where mixed-race Coloreds predominate.

Attendance at the rallies and church services, even in Soweto, was only a third to half that of previous years, however, and many said that others had not come for fear of violence.

Meintjies, speaking for the Congress of South African Trade Unions, called for even greater unity among anti-apartheid groups and stressed organized labor’s readiness to take the lead in confronting the government despite increasing attacks on the federation for its political activities.

Although militant black youths had led the way in 1976 and again during the unrest of the past three years, black workers were the “real force for change,” Meintjies argued, because only they, when fully organized, would have sufficient power to “dislodge this racist regime.”

Molekane, an increasingly influential figure in black politics, also stressed the need for unity, for mass organization and for the involvement of all in the street committees established in most black communities over the past year and a half in order to step up anti-apartheid activities despite the state of emergency.

Black Officials Targeted

In addition to urging the formation of “defense units” to combat the security forces and pro-government vigilantes, Molekane urged youths to take the lead in “isolating” black policemen, soldiers, local officials and others seen as collaborators.

“Do not talk with them, do not mix with their children, do not let them in your shops,” he said. “If you allow an informer in, you are aiding and abetting apartheid. We must isolate these people. Only if they resign and march step by step with us in the struggle can we accept them.”

Molekane, like many other leaders who spoke at Tuesday’s rallies, has been in hiding for a year to avoid detention under the state of emergency, but as he spoke to a packed church hall here, he seemed even more determined than before to step up the struggle against apartheid, South Africa’s system of racial separation and white minority rule.

“We need to involve each and every youth on every street, in every block and intensify the struggle for peace, freedom and liberty,” he said, describing the three-month-old South African Youth Congress as the successor of the outlawed African National Congress’ youth league. “When we achieve this, we will be able to fly the (ANC’s) green, gold and black flag, to see the face of Nelson Mandela and to listen to Oliver Tambo speak.”

Mandela, the ANC’s imprisoned leader, is serving a life sentence for sabotage after being convicted in 1964 of attempting to overthrow the government. Tambo, the ANC president, leads the organization from its exile headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia.

Tambo, in a message broadcast over Radio Freedom to South Africa, said that opposition to the government of President Pieter W. Botha is mounting and has not been reduced by the yearlong state of emergency.

Johannesburg bureau assistant Michael Cadman contributed to this article.