4 White Guerrillas Seized, S. Africa Says : Pretoria Links Suspects to Banned ANC, Finds Weapons Cache

Four white African National Congress guerrillas were arrested and a weapons cache, described as the largest ever uncovered in South Africa, was confiscated during a pre-dawn raid at a farmhouse, police said Wednesday.

The guerrillas, three men and a woman, reportedly formed a “highly specialized terror unit.” Among the arms seized was a surface-to-air missile as well as land mines, hand grenades, Soviet-made assault rifles and machine guns and handguns with silencers, a police spokesman said.

Adriaan Vlok, the minister of law and order, said: “This is further tangible proof that the real character and nature of the ANC is a violent terrorist organization. Their aim is one thing--the death and mutilation of innocent people, regardless of race or color.”

For 28 years the ANC, outlawed in South Africa, has been fighting a guerrilla war against the white minority-led government. ANC officials say their policy is to attack primarily government and economic targets, although they concede that civilian casualties have been unavoidable.

Police Credit a Tip

The police said a tip from an ANC member led them to the farm, in rugged countryside about 10 miles west of Pretoria.

Although the four arrested were not identified by name, authorities said the three men were South African. Vlok described one of them as a former reporter with the defunct anti-apartheid newspaper Rand Daily Mail and another as a leader of the National Union of South African Students, a predominantly white anti-apartheid organization.

Papers confiscated in the house contained the addresses of senior officers in the army and police, Vlok said, but the government did not link the group with any specific attacks or sabotage.

The South African Press Assn., quoting security sources, said the group had considered using the missile early in April against a police helicopter at the Rand Show, a major trade fair in Johannesburg. But it said the plan was aborted because innocent people might have been injured.

Whites Joining ANC

Whites have long been active in South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement, although their numbers in the predominantly black ANC have traditionally been small. However, ANC officials say, there has been a steady stream of white recruits recently. They estimate that as many as 1,000 whites are members.

At least several dozen white ANC members have been jailed for terrorist acts. Policemen are still searching for the Afrikaner son of a prominent university professor who they say was responsible for a bomb outside a police station near Johannesburg that killed three people and injured 20 others in March.

Although the government imposed a state of emergency two years ago, ANC guerrilla attacks have increased. In 1986 and 1987, according to figures compiled by Natal University researchers, the ANC was responsible for 391 guerrilla actions--more than the group carried out in the preceding 10 years.

Attacks Continue

The pace of the attacks has continued this year. More than 10 policemen have been killed in ambushes presumably carried out by the ANC. On Tuesday, a hand grenade thrown through the window of a black policeman’s home near Pretoria killed a 1-year-old girl.

But attacks against the ANC have also increased. In the last six weeks, the ANC’s Paris representative, Dulcie September, was shot to death by a person the police described as a professional killer. A 35-pound bomb was defused at the ANC’s office in Brussels and a white ANC member in Mozambique was maimed by a car bomb.

South Africa denied responsibility for those incidents but acknowledged that its security forces attacked a house in neighboring Botswana in March, killing four people it believed to be ANC insurgents.