Tutu, Youths Tear-Gassed in S. Africa : Archbishop Trying to Persuade Children Not to Join Protest

South African police fired tear gas at Archbishop Desmond Tutu and several hundred children without warning outside a church today after he had persuaded the youngsters to stop an anti-apartheid protest, witnesses said.

“They fired tear gas right at us. There was no warning,” said Jakes Gerwel, rector of the mixed-race University of the Western Cape who was with Tutu.

“It was totally unprovoked and unreasonable,” he said.

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning clergyman walked through the clouds of tear gas and told a policeman: “You can’t tear gas them. They haven’t done anything.”

“I don’t care,” the policeman replied, according to witnesses.

Gerwel said Tutu had gone to the Holy Cross church in the black township of Guguletu near Cape Town after hearing that schoolchildren were planning a demonstration in support of a 3-week-old national campaign of anti-apartheid defiance.

After talking to police, Tutu persuaded the children to leave the church and go home.

“I believe it was a genuine agreement. They were going to leave quietly,” Gerwel said.

Police fired the tear gas when Tutu and the children left the church, Gerwel said.

Police, using tear gas and rubber bullets, also broke up a demonstration by several thousand staff and students at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town.

Police Open Fire

The police opened fire when the demonstrators approached the gates of the university adjoining a main road.

Police drove on to the campus, firing gas and rubber bullets at demonstrators who repeatedly tried to regroup.

At least three university staff, wearing their academic gowns, were bundled into police vans. A photographer was arrested.

Gerwel negotiated with police, who agreed not to take further action if students dispersed, which they did.

Today’s protests were part of a campaign that in the Cape Town area has caused the most sustained political unrest since a nationwide uprising was suppressed two years ago.

In Cape Town’s mixed-race suburb of Athlone, police fired dozens of tear gas rounds at students backing the defiance campaign. The students had set up numerous barricades.

The defiance campaign, started this month by the Mass Democratic Movement, is aimed against Pretoria’s race policies and next month’s segregated parliamentary elections that exclude South Africa’s black majority.

The campaign has run into increasingly tough police action. Scores of activists have been arrested under 3-year-old emergency rules that allow detention without trial.