Apartheid Foes Stage S. African Beach Protest

As hundreds of police watched from the sidelines, 5,000 mostly black South African protesters and their families defied the law Sunday by crowding onto two whites-only beaches in Durban, wading in the Indian Ocean and playing beach games.

The generally peaceful protest, part of a month-old nationwide campaign by black activists to break apartheid laws and restrictions on political dissent, contrasted sharply with clashes in Cape Town in recent days, in which police used force to disperse crowds and briefly arrested more than 1,000 people.

“The police were obliged to show restraint,” said Farouk Meer, a Durban leader of the Mass Democratic Movement, the loose affiliation of anti-apartheid groups that has organized the defiance campaign.

Organizers called the protest “a resounding success.” Added Meer: “There’s a long road ahead of us, and we cannot turn back.”

Police said that 48 people were arrested for holding an unlawful meeting as the demonstrators began the march from a mixed-race beach to South and Addington beaches, among the few beaches still designated for whites only by the Durban City Council. Those activists were released. But 10 other protesters chased down and arrested for unfurling a flag of the outlawed African National Congress, the principal guerrilla group fighting Pretoria, were still in custody late Sunday.

Although the police were armed with shotguns and had water cannons standing by for riot control, they apparently were under orders to cautiously oversee Sunday’s protest after recent police clashes with activists elsewhere in the country made world headlines and sparked renewed criticism of South Africa’s white minority-led government.

The government has been especially embarrassed by the beach protests, which have highlighted the remaining vestiges of apartheid even as acting President Frederik W. de Klerk has been telling international leaders that apartheid is dead.

Two weeks ago, for example, police used dogs, whips, tear gas and low-flying helicopters to chase away black demonstrators trying to picnic at two whites-only beaches near Cape Town. Since then, a member of De Klerk’s Cabinet has said that “chasing people off beaches was a mistake.”

The defiance campaign has intensified since it was launched Aug. 2, with sick blacks seeking medical care at whites-only hospitals. Police have broken up many marches and protests across the country and detained several dozen Mass Democratic Movement leaders without charge under emergency regulations.

The government claims the demonstrators are trying to stir up violence and disrupt Wednesday’s parliamentary elections, which exclude the 26 million blacks who make up a majority of South Africa’s population. But anti-apartheid leaders say the civil disobedience campaign, while timed to coincide with the elections, was designed as a peaceful protest against racist and repressive laws.

Defiance campaign leaders have vowed to continue their protests this week and have called for workers nationwide to stay home on Tuesday and Wednesday.

On Sunday, several dozen right-wing whites, some carrying whips and wearing “Whites Only” T-shirts, yelled racial epithets at demonstrators parading along segregated stretches of the country’s most heavily used beachfront. (Most of the shore has been opened to all races in recent years.)

A few white men, speaking in Afrikaans, urged police to “shoot them dead,” and police said that one white was arrested after assaulting a white woman carrying a banner reading “Jesus Is Alive” and pushing a black reporter down a stairway.

White lifeguards remained on duty at the beach during the protest and blacks and whites swam together in the water. After two hours, police announced that the protest was illegal and the demonstrators began leaving.