No More Cheeks Left to Turn

By John John Borrell

In the struggle against apartheid, an eye for an eye

Just three days after a bomb blast killed 18 people on a crowded sidewalk in Pretoria, a dozen South African jet fighters were skimming low over Maputo, capital of neighboring Mozambique. After loosing a barrage of rocket, cannon and machine-gun fire at private residences and a jam factory in a suburb of the port city, the Impala fighters peeled off westward and headed home.

The foray lasted only a few minutes, but Pretoria claimed that more than 60 people were killed, including 41 members of the outlawed African National Congress (A.N.C.), the black nationalist movement that last week belatedly admitted responsibility for the Pretoria bombing. Mozambique officials, however, reported that only six died in the raid over Maputo, five of them civilians. Correspondents who flew into Mozambique to view the aftermath of the air strike generally agreed. But they also came across black South African refugees, some of whom were apparently A.N.C. members. Said one angry survivor: "They shot us in South Africa, and they are still shooting us here."

For South Africa, the raid marked the first time its Impalas had been used to raid suspected A.N.C. strongholds. For the A.N.C., the Pretoria bomb blast that provoked the raid seemed to signal the start of an ugly new phase in its struggle against apartheid, South Africa's official policy of racial discrimination.

In more than 80 acts of sabotage since 1981, the A.N.C. has caused millions of dollars in damage but only eight deaths. The Pretoria bombing, however, which took place in a crowded commercial district at the end of the workday, seemed designed to cause as many casualties as possible. "The Southern Africa conflict has just moved up a ratchet," said Peter Vale of the respected South African Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg. Said the Rev. Desmond Tutu, the black Anglican bishop of Johannesburg: "One act merely provokes another, and we are probably getting into a spiral of violence we cannot stop."

Changing tactics abruptly is nothing new for the A.N.C. Founded in 1912 by a group of urban blacks to "defend Africans against repression," the organization started off seeking change through reform rather than revolution. After scant progress, the A.N.C. several years later began encouraging strikes and boycotts by black workers. It also organized demonstrations against discriminatory laws, particularly the requirement that blacks carry passes. During one such protest at Sharpeville near Johannesburg in 1960, police opened fire on the demonstrators, killing 69 and wounding more than 100. The A.N.C. and the rival Pan Africanist Congress (P.A.C.), which organized the protest, were banned and went underground. The A.N.C.'s militant wing, known as Umkhonto We Sizwe (Zulu for Spear of the Nation) began to undertake increasingly bold acts of sabotage.

Today the A.N.C. is headed by Nelson Mandela, 65, a charismatic lawyer whose long imprisonment and declining health have in recent years made him little more than a figurehead. The group's real leader is Oliver Tambo, 65, who fled South Africa at the time of Mandela's arrest. A mild-mannered former teacher and lawyer, Tambo wears the dark suits of a jurist rather than the military fatigues favored by other black nationalist leaders. Under his direction, the A.N.C. has recovered from a decade of disarray that followed Mandela's 1964 conviction on terrorism charges. Tambo, whose head quarters are in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, has built a force estimated at 6,000 men and women trained as saboteurs and urban terrorists. They are kept in countries such as Tanzania and Angola until dispatched in small numbers for a specific sabotage operation. The A.N.C. receives financial support, training and weapons from East bloc and African governments and the World Council of Churches, and its guerrillas have been trained in countries as far apart as Angola and East Germany. In addition, the A.N.C. has thousands of clandestine members inside South Africa.

A number of less militant groups also vie for the attention of South African blacks, but a 1981 poll by the Johannesburg Star found that nearly as many blacks endorsed the A.N.C. as all other antiapartheid groups combined. Tambo insists that armed struggle is the only way of ending apartheid. "Never again are our people going to do all the bleeding," he said in Nairobi after the Pretoria bomb blast. "We have offered the other cheek so many times that there is no cheek left to turn."

The government of Prime Minister Pieter W. Botha has demonstrated its refusal to turn the other cheek as well. In a pre-emptive strike against an A.N.C. buildup, South African commandos last December crossed into Maseru, capital of the tiny in dependent state of Lesotho, and killed more than 40 people who Pretoria said were A.N.C. supporters. A year earlier, South African forces retaliated against A.N.C. saboteurs and claimed to have killed 30 A.N.C. guerrillas in a raid on a suburb of Maputo. In addition, South African agents outside the country have infiltrated antia partheid organizations close to the A.N.C. Several A.N.C. leaders have been assassinated, at least one by a letter bomb.

To discourage neighboring African states from harboring A.N.C. guerrillas, Pretoria gives clandestine support to antigovernment groups in Lesotho and Mozambique. South Africa's frequent air and ground strikes against Namibian nationalists operating from Angola are also intended as a demonstration of what might befall any black neighboring country openly supporting the A.N.C. Frequent attacks by the South Africa-backed Mozambique resistance movement on Zimbabwe's oil pipeline constantly remind Zimbabwe of its vulnerability.

Despite its economic and military might, however, South Africa remains vulnerable to sabotage and urban terrorism. Just six days after the Pretoria blast there was another bomb explosion in Bloemfontein, 250 miles south of Johannesburg. There were no fatalities this time. Still, it appeared that the A.N.C. had once again breached white South African defenses. -- -- By John John Borrell. Reported by Peter Hawthorne/Maputo

With reporting by Peter Hawthorne/Maputo This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.