Millions Boycott S. Africa Jobs to Mark Soweto Revolt

Millions of blacks refused to work today on the 12th anniversary of the Soweto uprising, which began in a schoolyard and ended six months and 1,000 deaths later.

Anti-apartheid organizers, mindful of tough state-of-emergency rules outlawing their activities and giving police sweeping powers of detention without charge, did not call for today’s strikes, instead advocating low-key observances.

But a work boycott by millions of blacks interrupted industrial production, slowed work at construction sites, shut downtown stores and emptied buses and trains, spokesmen for industry and transportation said.

Memorial Services Held

Memorial church services in Soweto and other black ghettos recalled the schoolyard revolt that exploded on June 16, 1976, in the sprawling township on Johannesburg’s fringe and spread nationwide, leaving 1,000 people dead before security forces stamped out the insurrection after six months.

Triggered by anger at enforced teaching in the Afrikaans language of South Africa’s Dutch-descended white rulers, the upheavals fired deeper black resentment over apartheid policies of racial discrimination and the exclusion of blacks from government. Of the dead, at least 100 were children younger than 17.

“This is a day of history and we cannot ignore it,” a Soweto resident who declined to be named told a reporter in the segregated township.

In Cape Town, a man carrying a hand grenade died when the device detonated in his hands and blacks riding nearly empty trains from Soweto to Johannesburg reported stoning attacks on the railroad coaches.

Police reported scattered gasoline-bomb attacks on buses and trucks in black townships near Port Elizabeth, Cape Town and Durban overnight, but the violence was not as intense today as on past anniversary dates.

Despite President Pieter W. Botha’s refusal to declare June 16 an official Soweto Day holiday, many leaders of business and industry--recognizing its symbolic importance--have deemed it an unofficial, unpaid holiday.

Work Stoppage Widespread

Widespread work stoppages were reported in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth and in smaller industrial and commercial centers.

“June 16 has been observed for a number of years and some major employers have negotiated it as a holiday,” said Vincent Brett, labor spokesman for the Assn. of Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

Mourners gathered soon after dawn today at the Soweto grave of Hector Pieterson, a 12-year-old black who was the first child shot and killed when police confronted about 15,000 protesting black pupils in 1976.