South Africa Turmoil in the Streets

By William E. Smith.

Spreading like a brush fire out of control, the violence that has racked South Africa for the past two months last week engulfed areas that had previously been relatively untouched. Outside Cape Town, police and soldiers brutally smashed an effort by antiapartheid forces to hold a mass protest march. The police used shotguns, rubber bullets, whips and tear gas, and were assaulted in turn by rocks, bottles and homemade gasoline bombs. Angry mobs blocked main highways with barricades of burning tires, mattresses and even barbed wire. At least 32 people were killed in the week's disturbances, most of them by police shotgun fire, bringing to 160 the number who have died since the state of emergency was declared in many black townships. The death toll from political violence over the past year now stands at more than 650.

As the situation in South Africa steadily grew more dangerous, and inevitably began to damage the country's economy, the government of State President P.W. Botha seemed embarked on a course of heavy-handedness and overkill. So quickly has the situation deteriorated that a senior Washington official was led to remark caustically last week that the Botha government has demonstrated a pronounced tendency "to shoot itself in the foot."

The government has reacted to even the mildest episodes of unrest by calling out legions of police. After responding to the worldwide condemnation of apartheid by hinting that genuine reform was on the way, it abruptly reversed itself in Botha's blunt reaffirmation of the present system. It fought a school boycott in the black township of Soweto two weeks ago by arresting more than 700 black youngsters, many of them no more than eight or ten years old. Last week, when Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu's son Trevor, 29, expressed his indignation that a nine-year-old was being brought before a magistrate for participating in the school boycott, the authorities claimed that the younger Tutu had uttered an obscenity and slapped a 14-day detention order on him. When the Rev. Allan Boesak, president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and one of the country's most outspoken opponents of apartheid, vowed that he would go through with the plan to stage a peaceful demonstration to demand the release of Black Politician Nelson Mandela, he was arrested under a law that permits the authorities to hold him indefinitely. Mandela, a principal leader of the African National Congress (A.N.C.), has been in prison for more than 20 years. In a further crackdown, the government outlawed the country's largest organization of black secondary school pupils, the Congress of South African Students. The group is an affiliate of the United Democratic Front (U.D.F.), the multiracial antiapartheid organization that has been at the center of the current protests.

By using overwhelming force, the government was able to control the situation in the black townships, though it failed to stamp out the rioting. But the signs were growing that Pretoria is coming under increasing pressure from abroad. On Tuesday the government suspended all currency and stock-market trading until this week. That move followed a disastrous drop in the value of the South African rand, which was worth $1.29 in 1980, 80 cents in early 1984, and last week hit an all-time low of 35 cents. Another critical factor has been the refusal of many American and European banks to renew loans to South African borrowers. Last week the governor of South Africa's central bank, Gerhard de Kock, flew to Europe and the U.S. to try to convince bankers that South Africa remains a sound investment. But his efforts were made more difficult by the crescendo of unrest at home. The black National Union of Mineworkers was threatening to call a strike at several gold mines this week, which would deal a further blow to the country's troubled economy and create yet another area of potential strife.

Indeed, the Botha government is receiving precious little encouragement from any quarter. Though Ronald Reagan had recently described it as a "reformist" regime, Washington issued several critical statements last week concerning Pretoria's actions. For the first time, the U.S. explicitly urged South Africa to permit the A.N.C. to take part in any discussions between the government and black leaders on the country's future. In one of the strongest comments yet made on the current situation by a Reagan Administration official, State Department Spokesman Charles Redman declared: "Banning individuals and organizations from political activity is one of the most odious practices of the South African government. It offends the democratic values of free speech and assembly, and it accentuates the anger and frustration felt by all opponents of apartheid. The South African government's contention that it upholds Western values is belied by such actions. A society can never effectively come to terms with its problems by repressing dissent."

That, nonetheless, is precisely what was happening in South Africa last week. From almost the moment the protest march was announced, it seemed likely that the organizers would be arrested and that the police would use all necessary force to stop the demonstration. Even more than the conciliatory Bishop Tutu, Boesak has angered the government with his combative oratory, his calls for divestiture and his references to the ruling Afrikaners as the "spiritual children of Adolf Hitler"--a very sensitive point, since many Afrikaners supported Nazi Germany in World War II. Vowing to proceed with the demonstration, Boesak insisted last week, "They will try to frighten us with the possibility of unleashing the enormous force of the government and the violence we have seen before. Yet the march is going ahead." On Tuesday afternoon Boesak, a founder of the U.D.F. and a member of the "colored" community (the official term for South Africans of mixed race), was arrested at a roadblock near his home outside Cape Town and was flown to a prison in Pretoria.

Before dawn on Wednesday, the day of the scheduled march, police and military armored vehicles moved into position. They surrounded Athlone stadium, where the marchers were supposed to assemble, as well as the nearby black townships of Guguletu and Nyanga, and they blocked access to Pollsmoor prison, where Mandela is currently held. The march never took place, but there were abortive attempts at demonstrations in several places, as well as hit-and-run battles with police and widespread rioting in the townships. Several thousand marchers, led by clergymen, headed down Kromboom Road toward the prison. The police charged the procession, forcing the marchers to break and run. A group of clergymen and nuns refused to leave the scene and were arrested. Students at the University of Cape Town tried to march on the nearby Groote Schuur estate, which contains the official residence of President Botha, but they too were turned back. Later in the day, when it was clear that the march in Cape Town could not succeed, Boesak's wife Dorothy appeared at a press conference and read from a scroll that the demonstrators had hoped to deliver to the imprisoned Mandela. "When our recognized leaders are in jail," it said, "there can only be rebellion in the streets."

Exactly how much effect the political unrest has had on the stability of the country is hard to judge, but the economic impact has been considerable. Given the state of unrest, many foreign bankers seem determined not to renew loans as they mature. This is particularly serious because so much of the debt is short-term; according to various estimates, about two-thirds of South Africa's total foreign debt of some $17 billion will mature within a year. In the past, the banks simply rolled these borrowings over, in the fashion of a charge account. The government's immediate response to the loan problem was to suspend trading on foreign exchange and stock markets in South Africa. Further emergency measures are expected shortly.

But there is a growing realization that financial remedies alone are not enough. Said Business Week, the national financial newspaper: "The brutal fact is that there are no economic or non-political measures we can take to change the situation. The quantum leap necessary now to ensure future prosperity and the ultimate survival of whites is entirely political." Recognizing this fact, four organizations representing much of South Africa's industry urged the government to take steps to end political instability, including bringing blacks into the political system. In a long statement, the business groups responded to the suspension of trading by warning the government that it cannot solve its problems "by retreating into economic isolationism and a controlled economy."

Bad as things were already, they will probably get worse this week if, as expected, tens of thousands of black miners go on strike. In recent negotiations, some of the mining companies have come close to agreeing to the black union's demand for an across-the-board 22% wage increase, while others have not. At week's end a strike was due to begin Sunday night at five gold mines and two coal mines employing a total of 60,000 black miners. In the past such walkouts have led to the firing of large numbers of striking workers.

And that, in turn, would mean more violence and more crackdowns, an ominous prospect given the country's current mood. Referring to the harshness with which the police stopped the protest march in Cape Town last Wednesday, the Rev. Cristiaan Beyers Naude, an Afrikaner who is general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, called the action "a clear indication of the government's hysteria in the face of peaceful protest." He continued, "My deep concern is that if not even peaceful protest of this kind is permissible, what then remains?"

With reporting by Bruce W. Nelan/Johannesburg