Tutu’s Wife Arrested at Protest Rally : 200 Other Women Jailed in March on Capital Punishment

Police today arrested the wife of Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu and about 200 other women protesting capital punishment and the detention of children. Security forces also fired shotguns in clashes with students.

Three of the students were wounded by police shotgun fire, and hundreds fled clouds of tear gas in Cape Town’s mixed-race suburbs of Athlone and Mitchell’s Plain.

“I’m very proud,” Tutu said after hearing that his wife, Leah, and about 200 other women were arrested in central Cape Town when they tried to march to the British Embassy to deliver a message about capital punishment and the detention of children.

‘Have Shown Us Up’

“The women have shown us up. They have shown us how to organize these things,” Tutu said.

Those arrested also included Dorothy Boesak, wife of World Alliance of Reformed Churches leader Allan Boesak, and Dorothy Zihlangu, 67, chairwoman of the Federation of South African Women.

Police said the women would be charged with participating in an illegal gathering.

Club-wielding police sealed off the area around Greenmarket Square and bundled the women into police trucks when they ignored an order to disperse because of an emergency rule ban on open-air protests.

“We wanted to ask British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to intercede with the South African government to stop the hanging of our people and the detention of our children,” said Mary Barton, president of the anti-apartheid Black Sash organization, who was among those arrested.

South Africa ranks third to Iran and Iraq in the use of capital punishment and has detained more than 30,000 people, many of them children, without charges for up to three years since 1986.

Onlookers Boo Police

Close to 2,000 onlookers booed police and applauded the women with shouts of “Viva African National Congress,” referring to the outlawed guerrilla group fighting white rule.

Riot police backed by armored personnel carriers and a low-flying helicopter clashed with students who burned car tire barricades outside four schools in Athlone and Mitchell’s Plain.

Three students were wounded, one apparently seriously, when police fired at youths inside West Ridge High School, where they searched classrooms and arrested six youngsters.

A Reuters reporter saw a doctor treat one boy on a stretcher for multiple pellet wounds in the head, back, arms and buttocks.