South Africa: A Crackdown on Violence

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.