South Africa If You Can't Beat Them, Ban Them

By Bruce W. Nelan/Johannesburg

If repression stifles dissent, can absolute repression smother it entirely? South African State President P.W. Botha seemed intent on testing the proposition once again last week. Since declaring a state of emergency in June 1986, the Pretoria government has virtually stamped out violent protest in black townships that for more than two years seethed with unrest. Under the 1986 proclamation, some 30,000 activists were detained, while thousands more fled into hiding. With all outdoor meetings banned and political funerals tightly restricted, even the most determined antiapartheid groups were close to paralysis.

Last week the government delivered what it hoped would be the final blow. After Botha issued a ten-page enabling decree, Minister of Law and Order Adriaan Vlok prohibited 17 leading black organizations "from carrying on or performing any activities or acts whatsoever." At the same time, he ordered the black Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the country's largest labor federation, with more than 700,000 members, to cease all political activity, including calling for boycotts, work stoppages and the release of detainees.

Among Vlok's targets were the United Democratic Front, the large antigovernment umbrella organization with more than 600 township affiliates claiming 2 million members nationwide; the Azanian People's Organization, an all-black radical group; the Detainees Parents' Support Committee; the Release Mandela Committee; and several youth and civic groups. Vlok claimed that he was taking action against those "who persist in promoting a revolutionary climate," but the decree in effect outlaws almost all extraparliamentary protest by blacks, even if it is nonviolent. Said Azhar Cachalia, the U.D.F. treasurer: "The government has declared war against all peaceful opposition to its policies." Eighteen leaders of the banned organizations were served with individual restriction orders as well. These activists included U.D.F. Co-Presidents Archie Gumede and Albertina Sisulu, whose husband Walter, a former secretary-general of the African National Congress, is serving a life sentence for sabotage and whose son Zwelakhe, a newspaper editor, has been in detention without charge for more than a year. The 18 were instructed not to participate "in any manner whatsoever" in organized political activity, not to address any meetings of more than ten people, and not to give interviews or write anything for publication.

Opposition politicians and academics in South Africa linked Vlok's announcement to this week's parliamentary by-elections in two Transvaal constituencies. Botha's ruling National Party is eager to win back at least one of the seats from the far-right Conservatives, who seized them in last May's general election and supplanted the liberal Progressive Federal Party as the official opposition in Parliament. Kragdadigheid, or a show of strength, is a standard tool in Afrikaner electioneering, and the security of South African borders and the country's white minority has long been the central plank in the National Party's political platform.

The bannings were denounced around the world as well as in South Africa, where even such reactions could be considered illegal under the decree. U.S. State Department Spokesman Charles Redman said the Administration was "appalled by the announcement," but Ronald Reagan ruled out any shift in U.S. policy toward Pretoria. At a press conference in Cape Town, Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu charged that the government intended "to smash all effective possible political opposition in the country, no matter how peaceful or lawful." Warned Tutu: "If they ((white South Africans)) don't stop this government soon, and there's not much hope that they will, we are heading for ; war." The Rev. Allan Boesak, like Tutu a founder of the U.D.F., said that "every single peaceful action we can take has now been criminalized."

Most opposition leaders agreed with Frank Chikane, general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, who warned that the decree could lead the "majority of peace-loving South Africans to see force as the only way of ending apartheid." Leaders of South Africa's ten black "homeland" states are usually not outspoken critics of the Pretoria government, but Enos Mabuza, the Chief Minister of KaNgwane, declared that those who believe in peaceful negotiations "will now find that they have no room for any argument at all against those who support violence."

Vlok's proclamation permits the newly restricted organizations to continue administrative activities, including keeping records and books up-to-date and pursuing "legal advice or legal steps." Several of the groups, including COSATU, immediately took advantage of that provision and ordered their lawyers to begin preparing courtroom efforts to have the decree declared ultra vires, or beyond the legal authority of even P.W. Botha.