Monday, Sep. 17, 1984

Season of Black Rage

By William E. Smith

Bombs and riots greet the new constitution

It was supposed to be a time of ceremony and celebration, as South Africa admitted nonwhite members to its national Parliament and prepared to swear into office its first executive State President, Prime Minister Pieter W. Botha, who now becomes head of both state and government. Instead the week will be remembered for the worst wave of violence to sweep the country in eight years. It was an ominous welcome to the new "reform" constitution, which grants a measure of political power to South Africa's Indian and so-called colored, or mixed-race, minorities but none whatever to the blacks, who make up 73% of the nation's population.

On the very day that the country's new constitution went into effect, rioting broke out in several black residential areas outside Johannesburg, the country's largest city. A major site of the trouble was Sharpeville, the township where in 1960 South African police fired machine guns into a crowd of peaceful demonstrators, killing 69 blacks. This time, angry crowds set buildings on fire and threw stones at police in troop carriers, while air force helicopters hovered overhead. After police had moved in with tear gas and attack dogs, they found a scene of death and devastation. Four blacks had been strangled, apparently at random, by rampaging youths. Police also found the body of Sharpeville's black deputy mayor, Sam Dlamini, who had been hacked to death on the front steps of his home. Police suspected that he might have been murdered simply because he represented authority. By week's end at least 31 people had been killed in all of the troubled black townships, and 300 had been injured.

As in the case of the 1976 rioting in Soweto and other black areas, in which about 500 people were killed, the immediate cause of last week's troubles was not explicitly racial. The government had recently announced an increase in rents and electricity rates in the black townships, enraging local residents, who complain that they are already hard pressed. But other, more specifically political motives may also have been involved. In Evaton township, for instance, 45 Indian shops and houses were burned to the ground, leading to speculation that blacks were furious about Indian participation in the recent parliamentary elections. As it happened, fewer than 20% of the country's registered Indian voters and only 30% of the mixed-race voters had even bothered to go to the polls.

Last week's unrest was not restricted to the black townships. A bomb ripped through the Johannesburg offices of the Department of Internal Affairs, injuring four people. It was the latest in a series of terrorist acts that have afflicted the city since June 15, the eve of the anniversary of the Soweto riots. Two days later another explosion hit an electrical substation 65 miles to the northwest of the city. At almost the same time, police discovered a powerful limpet mine, made of plastic explosives, that had been placed in the building that houses the Rand Supreme Court in downtown Johannesburg. Bomb-disposal experts carried the device to the lawn outside the building, where it was detonated, blowing out plate-glass windows and buckling leaded glass in one courtroom.

With reporting by Marsh Clark