South Africa Trouble from Belowground

By William E. Smith

South Africa's gold and coal mines are in the best of times harsh places where thousands of blacks live in crowded hostels far removed from their homes and families. The mines were closed to journalists last week as a long-threatened strike, the largest in South Africa's history, began. But the walkout was scarcely three days old before stories of trouble started to spread.

At the Blinkpan colliery, police arrested five miners in connection with the strangulation of a black worker who defied the strike call. At the Harmony mine, owners fired 74 miners who were said to have damaged the underground telephone system and harassed other workers. At an Anglo-American Corp. plant east of Johannesburg, police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to evict 300 protesters. Later in the week, police fired birdshot at strikers at an Optimum coal mine, injuring at least 27 miners.

About half the nation's 550,000 black mineworkers walked off their jobs, and at least a third of the mines were seriously affected. The basic issue was money: a demand by the National Union of Mineworkers for an across-the-board 30% increase, compared with hikes of 15% to 23% granted by the Chamber of Mines, which represents the six largest employers. Until now, according to the union, the average black worker has made $170 a month, while employers claimed the figure was $274. Both sides agreed that the average black miner earns only about one-fifth as much as the average white miner.

While the country fretted over the continuing strike, State President P.W. Botha announced that parliamentary elections scheduled for 1989 would be postponed until 1992. The move was presumably aimed at giving Botha a chance to press ahead with what he regards as his reform program before having to face another challenge from far-right opponents.

At the same time, Botha unleashed a strong attack on the 61 white moderates who last month flew to Dakar, Senegal, for talks with leaders of the banned African National Congress. "Let Dakar be a lesson to all South Africans," thundered Botha in Parliament. "A leopard never changes its spots." In the future, he warned, the government will maintain tighter control over the issuance and renewal of passports and will set up a commission to look into the activities and funding of organizations like the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa, the antiapartheid group that planned the trip to Dakar.

The government's hostility to the 75-year-old A.N.C. stems in part from that organization's attempts to undermine the apartheid system through a campaign of sporadic terrorism. Now there is increasing evidence that Pretoria is engaged in a campaign of retaliation against the A.N.C.'s leadership. Last month Cassius Make, a member of the A.N.C.'s national executive council who was visiting Swaziland, was gunned down by assassins. According to A.N.C. officials, Make was the eighth congress member or sympathizer to be killed in Swaziland this year; an additional six have been abducted to South Africa. In the most bizarre incident of all, two Zimbabweans and two Britons recently arrested in London were alleged to be agents planning to kidnap A.N.C. officials and smuggle them back to South Africa in packing crates.

With reporting by Bruce W. Nelan/Johannesburg