A Crackdown on Violence

By Jill Smolowe

The other shoe dropped with a loud thud last week in South Africa. After eleven months of mounting black violence, Executive President P.W. Botha declared a state of emergency in 36 riot-torn cities and towns, most of them in the Eastern Cape or near Johannesburg. It was South Africa's first declared emergency in 25 years and gave police expanded powers to make arrests, detain suspects indefinitely, impose curfews and restrict press reporting. The announcement last Saturday upstaged a dramatic funeral in the Eastern Cape. Some 25,000 black mourners converged on the town of Cradock from hundreds of miles around to pay their last respects to four slain black activists. But the prayers were interrupted by defiant pledges to resist the new measures. "The state will not stop us from declaring our own state of emergency," warned Black Activist Stone Sizani.

Botha's announcement hardly came as a surprise. The violence in recent weeks has bred more violence. Almost every day has seen reports of townships in upheaval, and bloody confrontations between blacks and armed police have become chillingly routine. Last week, as the total number of black deaths since September passed 450, the political brush fires spread to a place with an ominously familiar name: Soweto.

The unrest in the country's largest black township (pop. an estimated 1.2 million) began on Wednesday. Hundreds of students stormed aboard six municipal buses and demanded to be taken to a magistrates court where 105 black youths were being charged with holding an illegal demonstration at the home of Edward Kunene, Soweto's mayor. The students sang and chanted outside the courthouse until mounted police cleared the area with tear gas and rubber bullets. About 500 of the protesters were arrested but then released after the bus company declined to press hijacking charges. The students soon joined thousands of other Sowetans in an orgy of violence that included the fire bombing of Kunene's house, the looting of stores and an attack on a bus carrying American, British and West German tourists that resulted in one injury. At week's end the rioting had subsided, leaving a death toll of one. But those who remembered the Soweto uprising of 1976, which triggered 16 months of nationwide riots, feared that the troubles might signal more turbulence ahead.

The latest cycle of South African violence began last August with demonstrations against a new constitution that gives Indians and Coloreds (people of mixed race) representation in a new tricameral parliament. But blacks, who represent 70% of the population, continued to be excluded. The turmoil came to a head in March when police gunned down 19 black demonstrators near Uitenhage in the Eastern Cape. For a while the violence subsided, only to resume last month as anger grew over the slow pace of racial reforms and a recession in which thousands of blacks have lost their jobs.

Such civil unrest is nothing new to South Africa and its people. In 1960 the murder by security forces of 69 blacks touched off weeks of rioting in the township of Sharpeville. In 1976, after a Soweto student demonstration, disturbances claimed 575 lives throughout the country before the government cracked down with bannings and arrests. Government officials and scholars suggest, however, that the current situation is potentially more explosive. While the 1976 unrest involved mostly schoolchildren, they say, the current disorders are directed primarily by adults belonging to organizations and unions that are determined to dismantle South Africa's policy of racial separation, or apartheid. Underlying much of the seemingly random violence that has pitted black against black as well as black against white is a goal promoted by the outlawed African National Congress: to make the black townships "ungovernable" by the white minority. "This is not at all like '76," warns an official in Pretoria, the capital. "It is much worse."

In their efforts to challenge white rule, myriad black political groups are now achieving a small measure of coordination. In recent weeks, for instance, tens of thousands of black students from more than 130 black schools in 17 townships have boycotted classes primarily to protest the inferior education they are receiving. Much of the current violence, however, is directed at blacks who are suspected of collaborating with white authorities. Since the flare-up of violence last August, the homes of 360 black policemen have been destroyed. Several respected black leaders, including Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu of Johannesburg, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, have called for a halt to the fighting among blacks, but their appeals have fallen on deaf ears.

While whites remain largely untouched by the black protests (since August there have been only two white deaths), there are signs that white cities may soon feel the heat as well. The fighting spread last week to western Cape Province, where three whites were injured in stone-throwing incidents in the black townships. In the black enclaves surrounding Port Elizabeth, residents launched a boycott of white-run shops. Black shoppers who ignored the boycott risked attack. According to local newspapers, a black woman who had bought eggs had them broken on her head, while a man with a new suit had it cut to pieces. By week's end sales had dwindled to almost zero in some stores. The mayor of Port Elizabeth, calling the situation urgent, appealed to the Pretoria government for help.

The boycott was part of the preparations for the burial last Saturday of four black activists, including Matthew Goniwe, a schoolteacher in his 30s who was widely considered one of South Africa's most effective political organizers. The circumstances surrounding the deaths of the men remain a mystery. On June 27, Goniwe and his three friends had attended a small meeting of the United Democratic Front, a broad-based coalition of more than 600 antiapartheid groups, at a private house in Port Elizabeth. Before beginning the 120-mile drive home to Cradock, the four men told the gathering that they would not stop their car for anyone except uniformed police. The next day, police found the car parked in dry brush off the highway. Later they found the burned and mutilated remains of the four men.

The brutal deaths tripped off a heated exchange between black leaders and government officials. The U.D.F. charged that Goniwe was the latest victim of right-wing death squads that, perhaps with government approval, have been responsible for the disappearance of 27 U.D.F. members since March and the deaths of six, including Goniwe and his three companions. The government promptly denied the charge, and suggested that Goniwe and his companions may have been the victims of "the internecine power struggle between opposing radical organizations."

As the investigation got under way, the Port Elizabeth police hinted to the local press that the Azanian People's Organization, or Azapo, a militant group which excludes whites, may have been behind Goniwe's slaying. But both Azapo and the U.D.F. have rejected that theory. Derrick Swartz, a U.D.F. leader in the Eastern Cape, pointed out that given Goniwe's determination not to stop the car, an Azapo hit squad would have had to force the vehicle off the road. The car, however, showed no damage that might indicate a chase or a struggle.

Sensitive to charges of official complicity in the four murders, the Port Elizabeth police have launched an investigation, and the government has offered a $500 reward for information on the killers. But black residents are skeptical that justice will be served. Last week they took matters into their own hands and initiated the boycott of white stores. The boycott committee also drew up a list of demands that included the return of three other U.D.F. leaders, who disappeared on May 8, and the withdrawal of government security forces from the townships.

Botha's crackdown, however, suggests that those demands will not be met anytime soon. Indeed, if history is an accurate guide, South Africa's blacks may be in for tough tunes. In 1960 and 1977, in the wake of the Sharpeville and Soweto uprisings, the government halted the orgy of violence by arresting antiapartheid leaders and outlawing most opposition organizations. In both instances, the silencing of black leaders ended the crisis. Whether the new crackdown will have a similar effect remains to be seen. Last week the Financial Mail, a Johannesburg newsweekly, ran a cover story titled "The Townships at War." The cover illustration of rising flames included a quotation from a poem by W.B. Yeats: "Things fall apart; The centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world." South Africans could not help wondering if that was a comment or a prediction. --By Jill Smolowe. Reported by Bruce W. Nelan/Johannesburg

With reporting by Reported by Bruce W. Nelan/Johannesburg