South Africa Sends Troops to Restore Order in Ciskei : Black homelands: A coup leads to rioting and looting. The new leader asks for help, says Pretoria ‘has left them behind.’

South Africa dispatched troops Monday to restore order in the black homeland of Ciskei, where a popular military coup d’etat has touched off two days of widespread looting and rioting in the streets.

Mobs moved through townships in the nominally independent homeland, burning shopping centers, government offices and houses and stealing everything from television sets to washing machines. Dozens were reported injured.

The 37-year-old coup leader, Army Brig. Gen. Oupa Gqozo, requested South African assistance to put down the unrest. He urged calm in an address to tens of thousands of people at Independence Stadium in the capital, Bisho.

“We are looking for a new future,” Gqozo said, speaking beneath the flag of the African National Congress, the primary guerrilla group fighting white minority-led rule in South Africa.

The overthrow of President-for-Life Lennox Sebe, 63, who was on a trade mission to the Far East, and the spontaneous street celebrations that turned into rioting reflect sharply mounting tensions in South Africa’s black homelands system.

Sweeping reforms in neighboring South Africa and indications that a negotiated settlement with the black majority is near have prompted many homeland residents to begin a strong drive to relinquish their nominal independence and rejoin South Africa.

Gqozo said the people of Ciskei “are in tears because Pretoria has left them behind,” and he promised to welcome the ANC and other anti-apartheid organizations into the homeland.

But rulers such as Sebe in Ciskei and Lucas Mangope in Bophuthatswana, who have held onto near dictatorial power and privilege with South African economic and military support, have opposed reincorporation.

Mangope argues that the “new South Africa” envisioned by South Africa President Frederik W. de Klerk will have to take into account their independence, and he has said his homeland “will still be independent in 100 years.”

“There’s still a lot of fighting that’s going to happen in the homelands, particularly in the next few months,” predicted Gary van Staden, a senior researcher at the South African Institute for International Affairs. “We mustn’t underestimate the power of those people who have benefited from this corrupt system.”

Sebe was one of several authoritarian homeland leaders who have worked closely with Pretoria and helped suppress anti-apartheid activists. But increasing numbers of young activists in the homelands see the system as a veiled attempt to restrict blacks to the most isolated and undeveloped parts of the country.

The coup in Ciskei on Sunday was first greeted by jubilant crowds, but the mood turned sour when mobs set upon houses owned by Sebe and his family. The trouble quickly spread to a general looting of grocery stores, furniture stores and other businesses.

Gqozo urged citizens Monday to return to school and work, and he promised to maintain law and order.

The chiefs of the Ciskei defense force and army were placed under arrest, and Gqozo said a four-man committee of the Ciskei Council of State had assumed control of the homeland. He said the coup was supported by the majority of Ciskei residents who were fed up with corruption, nepotism and state-supported violence under Sebe.

“The homelands are falling apart, unable to contain the accelerating rate of political change,” the Weekly Mail, an anti-apartheid newspaper, said in a recent editorial. “Rising expectations for re-incorporation in South Africa and long-running resentment against poverty have led to strikes, demonstrations and political violence.”

The rule of conservative tribal chiefs in the homelands began to falter in 1987 when Gen. Bantu Holomisa, then 32, seized power in Transkei. Holomisa has made overtures to the ANC and other anti-apartheid groups and has promised to put the question of Transkei’s continuing independence before his citizens in a referendum.

Although the South African government has acknowledged that the homeland policy was a mistake, De Klerk has declined to dismantle it.

BACKGROUND

South Africa’s 14-year-old homelands policy was designed to force blacks into ethnic homelands, thereby depriving them of their South African citizenship. More than 11 million of South Africa’s 27 million blacks live in 10 homelands, which cover 13% of the country’s land area. Four of those homelands--Ciskei, Transkei, Bophuthatswana and Venda--have been declared independent states, but most of the world refuses to recognize their sovereignty. Pretoria spends more than $1 billion annually supporting the homeland governments, but poverty remains endemic because the land is rugged, there are few industries and many homeland leaders are corrupt.