COLUMN ONE : On Patrol With Police in Soweto : Riot officers in armored vehicles have brought a fragile peace to black townships with a curfew and roadblocks. They have drawn criticism and won some unexpected friends.

With the night curfew only minutes old, an armor-plated police Casspir rumbled out of its barbed-wire encampment for duty in the largest and most violent black township in South Africa.

Maj. Steve Olivier and his riot officers hunkered down in the darkened vehicle, scanning the lights of Soweto through narrow, bullet-proof windows scarred by the gunfire and rocks of previous patrols.

It was an end-of-month Friday, payday for the laborers, and usually a night of revelry and even mayhem in this township of 2.5 million. But the only sound this night was the rhythmic hum of the Casspir’s tires on asphalt.

“Seems to be a quiet evening,” Olivier said. “But anything can happen in Soweto.”

Fifty-five minutes later, it did. The walkie-talkie in Olivier’s hand crackled to life. A mob of 100 had gathered in Orlando East, a politically volatile ghetto.

The white policeman at the wheel shifted into high gear and steered for the trouble. A second Casspir fell into line, and on their way, their headlights flashed momentarily on a low wall. Written there in large black letters were the words: “No to Curfew.”

So began a tour of duty with the men enforcing the South African government’s week-old curfew--the controversial right jab of Operation Iron Fist, the effort to quell the spasm of black fighting that has left 760 dead in townships near Johannesburg since mid-August.

Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress have strongly criticized the 9 p.m.-to-4 a.m. curfew, imposed in seven black townships, and the 24-hour roadblocks at township entrances.

They say the crackdown has suspended the civil rights of millions of innocent blacks while completely ignoring right-wing whites, who the ANC believes have been secretly inciting the fighting.

Whatever the cost to normal township life, the curfew has helped bring a quick end to the fighting and sent crime rates plummeting. And among many residents terrorized by eight weeks of urban warfare, the fragile new peace is welcome.

“Most of us don’t like the police, but we want them to protect us,” said Stanley Nguina, 24, a computer programmer in Soweto. “This dying business must come to an end. And this curfew keeps us alive. For now.”

A senior black political activist said that while some of his colleagues have publicly denounced the curfew, “when they come home, they thank God that the Zulus won’t be coming.”

The fighting has been primarily between migrant workers who support the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party and township residents who support the rival ANC.

“We haven’t had a good night’s sleep for weeks,” said the activist, who asked not to be identified. “Finally, I can sleep in peace.”

As commander of Soweto’s riot squad, Maj. Olivier’s job is to keep that peace by sweeping humanity off the township streets. And the other evening he sent five Casspirs and about 50 black and white police officers into the night to help him do it.

Since the factional fighting began in August, the police have been reluctant to patrol in ordinary police cars and trucks--”soft” vehicles, they call them. The township’s junkyards are filled with the carcasses of police cars that were strafed with automatic weapons fire and gutted by Molotov cocktails.

Instead, the police prefer a “hard vehicle” such as the Casspir, a 12-foot-tall personnel carrier with armor plating and a high, V-shaped underbody to diffuse the shock of land mines and navigate roads blockaded with stones and burning tires.

Olivier, a trim, sandy-haired officer with 26 years experience in counterinsurgency work, climbed aboard Casspir No. 59405-R with three white and two black police officers and a small battery of armaments.

The white officers carried pistols, strapped to their hips in blue canvas holsters. The black officers gripped Mosberg pump-action shotguns loaded with birdshot for crowd control. A dozen rubber bullets, each as thick as a man’s wrist, were slung around the ample belly of a white warrant officer.

And somewhere on board was “a bit of gas,” Olivier said--tear gas.

“But we don’t usually use gas at night,” Olivier said, “because you can’t tell which way it’s blowing. Sometimes you drive into it and the next thing you know you can’t see where you’re going.”

The curfew forbids anyone to be on the streets of Soweto without a letter from an employer or an explanation that the police will buy.

“We’re not concerned about the law-abiding citizen,” Olivier said. “If he’s got a reasonable story we let him go. Mostly, we’re looking out for the trouble-makers.”

The two black officers seemed unconcerned about possible attacks, though. They sat at the back of the heavily fortified vehicle with the door wide open, shouting to youngsters on the curbs.

“Hamba lala, “ they said. Go and sleep.

The dispatcher’s report of a gathering in Orlando East was the evening’s first hint of trouble.

Since the curfew was imposed Sept. 25, police have broken up several gatherings in Soweto, apparently organized by young ANC supporters who have vowed to defy the restrictions.

At 10 p.m., the Casspirs came upon about 50 young protesters, some carrying cardboard signs bearing the words: “Forward With Operation Vula.”

Vula is a 3-year-old ANC plan, recently uncovered by the police, to set up an underground military network to overthrow the government. The ANC says the operation is no longer active.

Some of the demonstrators held their ground at first, but the sight of armed police leaping out of the Casspirs sent them scurrying.

The sounds of police shouting and dogs barking filled the night air as the officers gave chase through small, fenced yards and dark alleys. Residents peeked from behind thin curtains as police returned with three young men and a woman.

Each suspect was pummeled with questions in Afrikaans, English and Zulu, the lingua franca of Soweto. One youth and the woman gave their addresses and were freed with Olivier’s admonition: “You go home and sleep. If I catch you on the roads again. . . . “ The sentence went unfinished.

But the two other youngsters refused to give an address and were arrested. Olivier was sure they were the ringleaders.

“You know when you look at a guy,” said Olivier, who once fought black insurgents trying to topple the white-minority government in what is now Zimbabwe. “It’s a sixth sense.”

Soweto is the historical home of black political activism and resistance in South Africa. Mandela and other key leaders of the ANC, black labor unions and the more radical Pan-Africanist Congress live here, and it was the birthplace of the 1976 student uprising.

But Soweto has multiple identities. The black bedroom community, about 15 miles from Johannesburg’s leafy white suburbs, has a population nearly as large as Chicago’s living in an amalgam of squatter shacks and worker barracks, matchbox houses and pricey brick homes.

The people of Soweto live with a rate of violent crime far higher than most American cities. On a typical Friday night, the police record 10 murders, 25 attempted murders, and 30 armed robberies.

However, last Friday, the first weekend night of the curfew, the police logbook showed one murder, seven attempted murders and 14 armed robberies.

“This is the quietest Friday night in at least seven years,” said an ambulance driver who stopped at a cafe for a sandwich.

One of the eerily quiet spots was the Merafe hostel, a sprawling single-story dormitory for thousands of migrant workers and ringed by a double layer of razor wire.

There, only a few weeks ago, Olivier had walked into the center of 2,000 Zulu residents armed with spears and machetes to stop them from launching a counterattack on nearby residents.

“What are you going to do?” Olivier recalled asking the Zulu leader.

“We’re going to get those guys who’ve attacked us,” the leader responded.

“No, you’re not,” Olivier said, “because if you do I will stop you.”

The Zulus decided against the attack, but it was a close call.

“You can’t show the Zulu that you’re frightened,” Olivier said. “They’re tough, man.”

The ANC contends that the recent fighting among blacks has been exacerbated if not encouraged by police who side with the ANC’s nemesis, the Inkatha Freedom Party.

Olivier rejected the charge with an expletive.

“We never took sides,” he said emphatically. “But when we would tell the Inkatha people to go back to their hostels, they did it. The other (ANC) guys . . . it’s a bit more difficult.”

ANC supporters and police have been at odds in the townships for more than three decades, and the enmity has not been easy to erase.

“They were our enemies for years, you know, and now things are supposed to be OK,” Olivier said, shaking his head. “But you still find terrorists, whether they are from the ANC or some other group.”

Black police still are a frequent target of anti-apartheid activists, who consider them traitors to the cause of black liberation. Dozens of black police have been killed or their homes firebombed over the years.

Slightly more than half the 80,000 men and women in the national police force are black, and they are stationed in integrated units in white as well as black areas. But few blacks are officers. (A men’s room in Soweto’s Protea police station, the riot unit headquarters, carries the hand-lettered warning in Afrikaans: “Blanke Offisiere Alleenlik” --white officers only.)

The black police most despised in the township are the “special constables.” Those “instant cops,” as they also are called, undergo shorter training than ordinary police and usually work in riot units where they are armed but supervised. Few have the high school diploma required of regular police recruits.

Lucky, a 27-year-old special constable in Olivier’s unit, said he joined the police because “I wanted to help my people.” But he and his colleague Moketsi, another special constable, admit that they are not popular in Soweto, their home township.

“Sometimes when I’m asleep and I hear a noise outside, I think they might be attacking,” Moketsi said. Lucky said he frequently sleeps in the police barracks, surrounded by well-guarded fences. The pair asked that their last names not be disclosed, for fear of retribution from their neighbors.

The new curfew appears to have won friends as well as enemies for the riot police, however. Four women working in a closed cafe waved to a passing Casspir and flashed the thumbs-up sign. And some parents and spouses say they welcome, at least for now, the early closing time forced on Soweto’s taverns.

“This is the way of the policeman in South Africa,” Olivier said. “You get abuse, that’s for sure. But you get people who greet you, too.”

After midnight, Olivier’s unit parked outside the 2,500-bed Baragwanath Hospital, where dozens of knife and gunshot victims typically lie on stretchers awaiting treatment and patients inside are forced to sleep on the floors for lack of beds.

But that night a row of empty stretchers was sitting outside the emergency room and, inside, more than 500 beds were empty.

Asked when she had last seen that many spare beds, hospital spokeswoman Annette Clear said: “In the history of Baragwanath? Never.”