The Soweto Uprising: A Soul-Cry of Rage

"The whites of South Africa understand the mentality of the black man."

-Prime Minister John Vorster

The humiliations of everyday life for the 18 million blacks in white-ruled South Africa make a mockery of that boast. Some events make the very realities of repression stand out in particularly bold relief. One was Sharpeville: in 1960, police broke up a rioting mob of blacks in this Johannesburg suburb by firing pointblank into the crowd, killing 69 and wounding 186. Last week South Africa suffered a second Sharpeville. Its name was Soweto.

Virtually on the eve of Prime Minister Vorster's flight to West Germany for a meeting with Secretary of State Kissinger, the racial tensions that seethe just beneath the surface of South African life exploded in Soweto, a ramshackle, overcrowded satellite town for blacks on the outskirts of Johannesburg. In three bitter days and nights of wild rioting and skirmishes between club-wielding, stone-throwing blacks and heavily armed police, at least 100 people were killed and more than 1,000 were injured; only a handful of the victims were white. The turmoil spread to at least seven other segregated black townships surrounding South Africa's largest industrial city. At week's end the violence subsided, although police remained on guard in Soweto and other neighboring townships.

Soweto was a chilling reminder to South African whites that they live as an extraordinarily privileged minority in a society that not only postulates second-class citizenship for blacks, but has codified repression, separatism and inequality into the law of the land -the hated system known as apartheid (apartness, pronounced a-part-hate). The violence was also a sharp blow to the prestige and image of shrewd, burly John Vorster, South Africa's powerful Prime Minister for the past decade.

Last week's rioting made it clear that South Africa, as well as neighboring white-ruled Rhodesia, must sooner or later -preferably sooner -adjust to ever growing black demands for justice and equality. In Washington, Kissinger expressed his regrets at the outbreak of violence, and said that he would explicitly spell out American opposition to apartheid at his meetings with the South African leader. "I'm not meeting with Vorster to make concessions or to lend approval of the system of government. I'm meeting to see if South Africa is willing to contribute to a moderate and peaceful evolution of events in southern Africa. The question I want to explore is whether South Africa is prepared to separate its own future from Rhodesia and Namibia [the Pretoria-ruled territory, also known as South West Africa, that wants independence]."

It was, most observers agreed, coincidence that black unrest exploded just as Vorster was about to display himself on the world scene as a statesman of segregation. South African black leaders pointed out that they had been warning the Pretoria government for months that unrest in Soweto had the potential of leading to another Sharpeville.

Minor Import. What triggered the rioting was an issue that clearly was of minor import to the government, yet had great symbolic importance in the ghetto. In 1974 the Pretoria Government Education Department ruled that students in Soweto's schools -about 250 of them serve at least 200,000 pupils in triple shifts -must take some subjects in Afrikaans, the Dutch-based language that, along with English, is one of the two official languages for white South Africa. What particularly angered the students was that blacks in tribal areas were allowed to opt for classes in either tongue, as well as in African languages. Most of them chose English; Afrikaans, for blacks, is not only the primary language of the government, the civil service and the hated police, but is also, as one Soweto teacher put it, "a symbol of our oppression. The issue has become a symbol of resistance among our youth to white authority."

To protest the language decree, groups of high school students last Wednesday attempted to organize a rally at Orlando Stadium, Soweto's main sports arena. As the placard-waving students -perhaps 10,000 strong -approached the stadium, they were blocked by a contingent of black police, led by white officers. Trying to disperse the students, the police used tear gas and then fired into the air. Only then -acting in self-defense, police officials insisted -did the troopers fire directly into the rampaging mob; one 13-year-old black boy was killed and several people were wounded.

Some witnesses claimed that police had provoked the conflict. A black reporter for the Johannesburg Star saw a police officer pick up a stone and hurl it into the crowd. Then, he said, "some students began picking up stones. Shouting 'Amandhla [power],' they moved haltingly toward the police. A black police sergeant was explaining to a group of parents that there would be no trouble, that the children weren't fighting, when an officer opened fire."

One Soweto resident, Langa Skosana, was caught in the crossfire of police bullets and stones hurled by the rioting students. "It was the most terrifying moment of my life," he said later. "The police opened direct fire. It is terrifying to watch a gun being aimed at you. I turned and ran. Had I lain on the ground the students would have trampled me."

The demonstrators scattered. Many headed for the township's administration building, setting fire to vehicles along the way, attacking any white official they saw. One of them was clubbed to death after being dragged bodily from his car. According to a black reporter who witnessed the scene: "He swerved to avoid knocking down any of the crowd. A huge rock was thrown through the windscreen. Students dragged him out of the car by his hair, then they used sticks and stones and everything to beat him to death." Yet even in the midst of racial hatred, there were countless individual acts of courage and kindness. One white township official spent the first night of the troubles in the home of a black family, who sheltered him and then smuggled him to safety next morning. A South African television cameraman-reporter team escaped injury when five blacks bundled them into a car and drove away from an angry mob.

Out of Control. Reinforced by antiriot squads and attack-dog units, police sealed off the township; army helicopters flew over Soweto dropping tear-gas canisters on the crowd. By this time, though, the students were out of control; scores of cars and at least one beer truck were set afire; libraries and even health clinics were stoned. As darkness fell, adults joined the youths in looting stores. The death total for the day was estimated at 25; some of the victims, police said, were killed by what they called "freelance vandals," which could well be true, since Soweto has one of the highest murder rates in the world.

Dozens of buses were stoned and set afire next morning as the rioting continued, even though 1,500 heavily armed police and auxiliary recruits were on guard in Soweto. Vandalism, looting and random fires caused at least $2.5 million worth of damage. Gradually, the unrest spread to Kagiso, Tembisa and other neighboring townships, forcing police to call for reinforcements from Pretoria. As fears rose that the rioters might break out of police cordons and attack white suburbs, Minister of Police James Kruger invoked a section of the country's Riotous Assemblies Act that forbids all outdoor gatherings without official permission. By Week's end blacks -angered by the mindless vandalism -turned on the rioters. Residents of one township beat off a gang that tried to wreck a beer hall.

Exactly how and why a student protest became a killer riot may not be known until the conclusion of an elaborate inquiry that will be carried out by Justice Petrus Cillie, Judge President of the Transvaal. But already last week, South Africans -white and black alike -were seeking to interpret the soul-cry of rage that came from Soweto. Some whites saw in the violence a nightmarish vision of South Africa's future if the government ever eases its rigid rule over the blacks. There were demands that Parliament enact emergency legislation to prevent a recurrence of the trouble -demands that Vorster will surely reject, if only because the country's existing laws seem strong enough.

Far more whites, though, saw Soweto as a warning that the artificial and unfair structure of South African society cannot be long endured. White students at Witwatersrand University -not widely known as a hotbed of youthful leftism -held demonstrations of their own in sympathy for the Soweto scholars; some of the university protesters wore placards saying WHY SHOOT CHILDREN? THEY ARE THE FUTURE and BLACK EDUCATION KILLS. In Parliament, the leader of the small opposition Progressive Party, Colin Eglin, accused the government's African administrators of "arrogance, indifference and rank incompetence." Eglin also demanded the appointment of a multiracial commission to "consider the social, economic and political reforms that are essential if we are to avoid conflict and live in peace in South Africa."

Warning Signs. Outside Parliament, some South African leaders were even more emphatic. Said Alex Boraine, a Progressive-Reform M.P. and former president of the predominantly black Methodist Church of South Africa: "For years now the warning signs have been flashing for all to see. The tragedy is that they have been dismissed as the workings of a few agitators or political activists, or as rumblings that could easily be contained. I desire peace for South Africa, but there can be no peace without justice." Added Professor Erich Leistner, deputy director of Pretoria's Africa Institute, an African-affairs study organization: "Sharpeville marked the first major self-assertion of black nationalism against white supremacy in South Africa. Last week's tragic events will probably go down in history as the beginning of an era where whites no longer hold exclusive control over political power in our country."

Vorster did not seem to agree. In a special statement to Parliament, he argued that the outbreak of violence had "not been spontaneous" and had been planned "to bring about a polarization between black and white in South Africa." Once the country's tough "Top Cop," Vorster said that he had "instructed the police to take action, irrespective of persons, against anyone disrupting law and order." In his statement, which was taped and later broadcast nationwide on radio and television, the Prime Minister insisted that "there is definitely no reason for any panic. This government will not be intimidated."

The shadow of Soweto will clearly hang over the Prime Minister's talks with Kissinger -one of those awkward summits that West German officials, in retrospect, probably wish could have been held elsewhere. Responding to threats of embarrassingly massive protests against Vorster and his government's apartheid policies, the Bonn government last week shifted the proposed site of the meeting from Hamburg to southern Bavaria. Kissinger and his 100-member retinue will be ensconced at the Hotel Sonnenhof in the picturesque village of Grafenau (pop. 4,000), deep in the Bayerischer Wald and about 13 miles from the Czechoslovak border. Vorster's entourage will be provided rooms in another Hotel Sonnenhof, in the equally colorful village of Bodenmais, about 30 miles away. The Secretary and the Prime Minister will shuttle between the villages, either by car or helicopter.

The summit was an outgrowth of Kissinger's recent tour of Black Africa. He became convinced that the Vorster government was the key to any peaceful solution in the region, a point also made by several of the black leaders he talked with. Vorster, who recently met with Prime Minister Ian Smith, had planned to be a surrogate envoy for Rhodesia. He intended to warn Kissinger that as long as force and black terrorism are being used against the white-controlled regime, the Smith government will fight on to the bitter end.

White Hands. The Soweto riots almost certainly will reduce Vorster's leverage potential to bring a recalcitrant Rhodesia around to acceptance of black majority rule. Smith can now raise South Africa's own racial troubles in defense of his determination to keep power in "civilized" (meaning white) hands. He can also point out that despite guerrilla attacks, Rhodesia's own black townships remain free of the violence that wracked Soweto. Beyond that, Vorster presumably will be subject to pressure from conservative whites to keep a firm hold on the blacks.

Kissinger, for his part, wants to avoid an all-out racial war in Rhodesia, which might force South African military intervention to prevent the slaughter of the country's 278,000 whites. The Secretary recognizes the unique role that Vorster and his people can still play on the continent: in his Lusaka speech last April, he told a predominantly black audience that white South Africans "are not colonialists" and that "historically they are African people." At the Bavarian summit, Kissinger will urge Vorster to surrender jurisdiction over Namibia and proclaim a timetable, "acceptable to the world community," for greater self-determination for blacks in South Africa itself. In light of the Soweto tragedy, it would seem likely that this particular message will come through to Vorster -very loud and very clear.

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