Clashes Mar De Klerk’s Apartheid Timetable

As President Frederik W. de Klerk presented Parliament with the first broad outline of his plans to scrap apartheid laws, South African police opened fire Thursday on blacks protesting poor living conditions in a rural township hundreds of miles away, killing four youths.

The police action in Rammulotsi township, 120 miles south of Johannesburg, came only a day after De Klerk had appointed a judge to investigate police killings of 17 black demonstrators in Sebokeng township. And it threatened to undermine De Klerk’s attempts to lure the African National Congress into negotiations for a new constitution.

ANC leaders had temporarily suspended preliminary talks with the government after the clashes with police in Sebokeng last month, and the anti-apartheid organization agreed to reschedule the meeting only when De Klerk promised to thoroughly investigate those shootings.

Those violent clashes between police and protesters, the most severe since De Klerk opened up black political expression in the country in February, suggested the presence of rogue, right-wing elements in the national police force who are opposed to reform, anti-apartheid leaders said.

Capt. Ruben Bloomberg, police spokesman in Pretoria, confirmed Thursday’s deaths but said police had opened fire with rubber bullets and shotguns to defend themselves against a stone-throwing mob. He added that the crowd had been given two warnings to disperse.

In his speech to Parliament, De Klerk said his government has a broad mandate to repeal discriminatory legislation, and he offered the most detailed look yet at his timetable for dismantling apartheid.

The president urged right-wing whites to “stop fighting history” and join him in his reform efforts.

De Klerk repeated a promise that the Separate Amenities Act, which allows municipalities to segregate public facilities such as parks and meeting halls, would be repealed during this session of Parliament.

The Group Areas Act, which creates separate residential neighborhoods for whites, Indians, people of mixed-race and Africans, will be replaced “in an orderly manner,” De Klerk said. The substitute legislation would require the support of Parliament’s white, Indian and mixed-race Colored chambers.

Such replacement legislation could be introduced next year, De Klerk said, and in the meantime the government would continue to expand the number of so-called “free settlement areas.”