De Klerk Fires or Suspends 23 in Military

President Frederik W. de Klerk acknowledged Saturday for the first time that senior members of South Africa’s security forces had engaged in illegal activities--probably including assassination--against political targets, and he took disciplinary action against almost two dozen officers.

“I’m shocked and disappointed, but I’m also resolute,” the president said in disclosing preliminary findings of an internal probe he ordered last month following independent revelations of wrongdoing in the defense and military intelligence apparatus.

“I have always said that if there is a sore, I want to cut it out right down to the bone, and I think we are finally on our way to doing so,” he added.

De Klerk announced that he was either suspending or forcibly retiring 23 officers, including two generals and four brigadier generals, and said further disciplinary action and possible criminal prosecution would follow, pending the completion of the probe.

He neither named the individuals involved nor disclosed any details about their alleged wrongdoing, but said such information would be made public within weeks. He also said no Cabinet officials were implicated and that top government officials had been unaware of the alleged activities. Rather, he said, a “limited” number of military personnel had systematically misled their civilian superiors.

De Klerk did say that the wrongdoing included “activities which could lead to the conclusion that political murders had occurred.” Anti-apartheid activists have for years maintained that the security forces have systematically engaged in political killings of people ranging from anti-apartheid leaders to everyday township residents.

In admitting that his government’s most severe and persistent critics have been at least partly right about security force abuses, De Klerk is thought to have given new thrust to negotiations aimed at replacing white-minority rule with a non-racial political order.

“I think it’s clear the show is really on the road, and we’re going to see a lot more action on the negotiations front in the next few months,” a Western diplomat said.

The announcement was welcomed by the U.N. observer mission here, but it was dismissed as “not nearly enough” by the African National Congress, South Africa’s largest anti-apartheid group. The white, far-right Conservative Party decried De Klerk’s actions as a “witch hunt.”

The wildly disparate reactions reflect a society undergoing a tortuous political passage and deeply divided over its military, which whites tend regard as a bulwark against anarchy and blacks see as an agent of oppression.