8 Die, Dozens Hurt as S. Africa Strikers Protest Curbs on Anti-Apartheid Groups

A surge of township violence and clashes with the police left eight blacks dead and several dozen injured Tuesday, the second day of a nationwide strike by more than 1 million black workers to protest restrictions on anti-apartheid groups.

The strike, part of a three-day protest called by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), lost a little steam Tuesday but remained widespread.

Employers said workers were slowly returning, and transport officials counted more commuters, but job attendance still ranged from 70% in Cape Town down to 30% in Pretoria, Johannesburg and Durban.

The worst violence was reported in Natal province, scene of a yearlong battle for power between two rival black factions, only one of which supported the strike. Groups of blacks were responsible for five deaths there overnight.

Unidentified gunmen killed three people, including a 7-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy, in the troubled Natal township of Kwadengezi. Police officers fired rubber bullets and tear gas there after blacks barricaded roads, the government’s Bureau for Information said.

A man died of injuries suffered Monday when a gasoline bomb was thrown into a commuter bus in Natal. A youth was killed in a rural Transvaal township when police officers opened fire on a group that had stoned officers, the government said. And a hand grenade thrown into a Soweto home early Tuesday killed an 8-year-old boy.

The police said they made more than 20 arrests, one of them after a group of blacks in Katlehong township near Johannesburg stopped a taxi van, chased the passengers away and set the vehicle on fire.

The strike is aimed at the government’s Feb. 24 restrictions on the political activities of 17 anti-apartheid groups along with COSATU, as well as proposed legislation that would restrict the unions’ right to strike.

“This protest is the most significant in the history of our country,” declared Frank Meintjies, spokesman for COSATU, the nation’s largest black labor federation. COSATU estimated that 2.5 million workers had participated in the first two days of the strike. Others put the number at 1 million to 1.5 million.

Voice of Black Protest

With the government’s clampdown on opposition groups, the country’s trade unions and churches consider themselves lone voices of protest for South Africa’s 26 million blacks, who have no vote in national affairs.

A three-day strike would be the longest nationwide protest since the government declared a state of emergency in 1986 to quell two years of anti-apartheid violence.

Police patrolled the streets of townships to ensure safe passage for blacks wishing to go to work. But in some townships the thousands of taxi vans that normally carry commuters were in short supply. So the police used large vans to ferry commuters to rail stations and bus terminals.

Putco, the largest bus company in the country, said it had more riders in some areas Tuesday, but buses in Durban and near Johannesburg were still carrying only 10% of their normal numbers.

Children and some teachers stayed home from nearly all schools in Soweto for a second day Tuesday. The nation’s seven auto assembly plants had decided to close for the three days. South Africa’s mining industry was only slightly affected by the strike.

Most pro-government newspapers attributed the large number of “stayaways” Monday and Tuesday to transport disruptions, and some of those who returned to work said they had spent the night in town rather than in the townships, where transportation was difficult to find.