SOUTH AFRICA: THE CYCLONE IS COMING

...By the end of the day, at least thirty-one persons were dead, most of them victims of police brutality though several black members of the local administrations had been killed by the protesters...

...When the army takes over, it is tantamount to a confession that the unruly parts of the country are occupied enemy territory," observed one white newspaper, the Sunday Express...

...Botha elected as the first executive state president on September 3, 1984...

...Mozambique signed the "Nkomati Accord" with South Africa last March, in which each country guaranteed it would respect the other's sovereignty and independence...

...a halt to rent and bus-fare increases...

...Botha told white South Africans...

...By August, 800,000 students were boycotting schools to protest against the new fraud...

...Foreign Minister Pik Botha spelled out the rationale for including coloreds and Indians...

...resignation of all local town councilors...

...It is in the national interest that the white male should no longer be utilized as the only manpower source...

...Nonetheless, the new constitution went into effect, with P.W...

...Elections for the colored and Indian parliaments were scheduled for late August...

...Instead of being cowed, the people turned against the representatives of apartheid in their midst, attacking policemen and local administrators...

...The resistance came to a head in early November when South Africa's industrial heartland was paralyzed by a two-day general strike...

...In June, the nationwide campaign against participation shifted into high gear...

...But the strategy has its drawbacks...

...But today it is gathering force...

...South Africa_ THE CYCLONE IS COMING BY JENNIFER DAVIS South Africa's apartheid government is like a man who owned a house besieged by a cyclone, says a representative of the African National Congress (ANC), the black liberation organization...

...The South African government publicly acknowledged at least forty-four such incidents in 1983, and the attacks continued throughout 1984, with the ANC forces frequently melting away into the local population...

...Three months after the signing of the agreement, P.W...

...As the most industrialized country in the region and the most advanced agriculturally, South Africa was well-equipped to reassert economic control, even after Zimbabwe became independent in 1980...

...Suffering from enormous economic damage, Angola and Mozambique were driven to seek relief in early 1984...

...Seven thousand armed men, backed by heavily armored vehicles, threw a cordon around three black towns with a combined population of a quarter of a million," reported Allister Sparks of The Washington Post...

...As they moved systematically from house to house, the soldiers stained the hands of "cleared" residents with red dye to show they had been checked...

...In the face of a growing communist threat," he said, "should we not give them the right at least to have a say over their own affairs and shared say over our general affairs...

...Going much further, Tony Bloom, a prominent South African executive, called on the government to open a dialogue with the banned African National Congress...

...The Botha regime is certainly not ready to begin such a process...

...And, to be sure, the South African regime still has massive resources, the support of major foreign corporations, and such powerful Western allies as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan...

...It has been stripped of its mask of reform and aura of invincibility by unarmed but organized people, rising in the hundreds of thousands...

...In the following weeks, similar uprisings continued to erupt in the industrial regions surrounding Johannesburg...

...The state's immediate response was to shoot, and some 1,000 students were killed...

...South Africa would call off its rebel forces...

...When the homeowner closed the front door, the wind blew in the back...

...Where possible, it sought to diminish the hostility of its neighbors by promising technical and economic assistance...

...J.D...

...Botha revealed his proposal, a broad-based United Democratic Front was formed to defeat it...

...At least six black town councilors have been killed by residents...

...Many of the independent black unions have concentrated their initial efforts on building plant-based organizations with a strong shop-steward network, capable of handling immediate shop floor issues but also of recognizing the link between economic and political issues...

...Soon the army was called in to reinforce the police...

...But in the back rooms, apartheid's defenders moved rapidly to craft an overall "total strategy" to meet the crises facing white South Africa...

...By 1976, militancy had swept up black students, who protested in the hundreds of thousands against segregated education and the dismal, second-class status to which apartheid consigns them...

...Black resistance to white minority rule is as old as the first act of colonial conquest in South Africa...

...They are the cyclone...

...So the South African government decided to combine military might with economic and political pressure...

...Botha held long consultations with the leaders of Portugal, West Germany, and Great Britain...

...These councils, left largely on their own to finance their administrations, opted to produce revenues by levying higher rents...

...Almost a million workers and students joined the protest against military occupation of black townships...

...And so it attempted to establish itself at the center of a "constellation of states" in southern Africa...

...Botha, then minister of defense, recognized that military power alone could not neutralize the danger...

...P.W...

...Favorite targets were roads, railways, electricity lines, and oil and water supplies...

...It has delayed traditional repressive action—such as the detention of the constitution boycott leaders and the strike organizers—until after the events...

...The strike was reportedly 90 to 100 per cent effective in the areas around Johannesburg that contain the greatest concentrations of heavy industry and organized labor...

...The African majority would be totally excluded, and it took no mathematical whiz to see that the whites would remain firmly in control...

...The strike demands—political and economic—contained no comprehensive call for the end of apartheid, but incorporated many of the key issues over which conflict has raged in recent months: withdrawal of the army and the police from the townships...

...When he shut the windows, the roof blew off And when he tried to build a temporary covering, the walls caved in...

...Millions of protesters cannot be quelled by selective repression, and more brutal options might only isolate the regime further...

...It is an exercise not in law enforcement but in reconquest' The immediate trigger was a rent increase, imposed by local authorities and scheduled to take effect September 12...

...Despite a ban on all outdoor meetings, people met across the country at huge rallies as well as in small house meetings...

...Black union actions and mass-based demonstrations have become so effective that the South African regime finds itself at a loss to respond...

...Shortly after P.W...

...While the South African regime may be able to achieve short-run diplomatic gains with its neighbors, it cannot contain the tensions that lie at the heart of the apartheid system...

...The agreement stated that the parties would "not allow their respective territories, territorial waters, or airspace to be used as a base, thoroughfare, or in any other way" by forces seeking to overthrow the governments...

...The complete disfranchisement and exclusion from decison-making bodies compels the black man to vote with a petrol bomb," says Dr...

...Under Botha's new constitutional plan, local black-run councils are responsible for administering the segregated urban townships where black industrial workers are forced to live, crowded together in squalor and subject to constant police harassment...

...They then began knocking on doors, at two in the morning, waking the bewildered residents and searching their homes...

...Despite this rather belated effort to crush the boycott, more than 80 per cent of those eligible stayed away from the polls...

...Challenged by the protests, South Africa's white leadership seems split about how to respond...

...Increasingly, the regime is coming under fire from within its own ranks for being too repressive...

...Early in the 1970s, black workers began to challenge the terrible conditions of their employment, first in Namibia, then all across South Africa...

...African Air Force, and a rocket attack on the giant South African oil-from-coal plant, SASOL...

...But it also could play hard ball...

...Though the walls have yet to cave in on the South African regime, the wind is beginning to rustle...

...His plan for survival was simple: The national government should incorporate "coloreds" (2.7 million people of mixed race) and Indians (875,000 immigrants or descendants of immigrants from the subcontinent) into a new tricameral parliament, consisting of a white chamber with 178 members, a colored chamber with eighty-five, and an Indian chamber with forty-five...

...The continued military occupation of Namibia alone costs an estimated $500 million a year, and military expenditures had risen from 8 per cent of the budget in 1972 to 17 per cent by 1982...

...But when the government fired 6,000 workers at its oil-from-coal factory, sending them back to the barren bantustans ("homelands") on specially hired buses, and when it detained the trade-union leaders who organized the strike, the press and the business community warned loudly of the dangers such repression might bring...

...That connection was explicitly drawn in the general strike...

...South Africa also sponsored surrogates posing as dissident national movements to carry out extended campaigns of sabotage and terrorism in Angola, Mozambique, Lesotho, and Zimbabwe...

...Before the strike, the "liberal" white press was unanimous in attacking the black trade unions for resorting to political action instead of carrying out traditional trade-union functions...

...It is too early to tell whether the current gusts of rebellion will continue to blow, or whether they will subside for a while...

...In Mozambique especially, these contras engaged in a brutal war against the peasant population...

...A 1982 government report stressed the military's needs: "The South African Defense Force is mainly dependent on white males as a source of manpower...

...In 1983, the most dramatic attacks involved a car bomb explosion in which nineteen people were killed near the headquarters of the South Jennifer Davis is the executive director of the American Committee on Africa...

...As the economy sank into recession in 1982 and 1983, the strains of fighting on many fronts began to appear...

...Adapt or die," Prime Minister P.W...

...For Botha and South Africa, the trip was a triumphant return from long years as an international pariah...

...release of all political prisoners and detainees, and reinstatement of workers recently dismissed for striking...

...It withdrew locomotives from Zimbabwe, thus damaging that country's export trade, and it ended trade-preference agreements that had long been in effect...

...By late 1983, South Africa's coercive strategy had scored some successes...

...The wave of detentions is exacerbating a very delicate labor situation," said a joint statement issued by South Africa's leading business organizations...

...Mozambique would curb the African National Congress...

...This body would have statutory responsibility for all matters affecting "national security...

...Higher wages was only one of their demands, which included the right to organize trade unions, to strike, and to seek work freely...

...It shut down South Africa's massive steel and oil-from-coal works, as well as virtually all private industry...

...Rumors abound about trucks returning from the borders loaded with corpses, and draft-dodging has grown steadily among young white men...

...Since 1979, when African workers first won legal recognition as "employees," black unions have grown five times more rapidly than white unions...

...Even the Pope saw fit to receive him...

...On the same day, unarmed people took to the streets in black townships around Johannesburg...

...Virtually every black protest—be it over rent, housing, bus fares, education, pay, working conditions—takes an explicitly political form, and the level of militancy steadily increases...

...But it has displayed some curious ambivalence in its handling of the internal crises...

...Aside from its racial changes, the new constitution would centralize power in the hands of an "executive state president," who could declare martial law, and a "state security council," which the executive state president would appoint...

...Its total membership amounted to some two million...

...U Pressure at the Borders When Angola and Mozambique broke free from Portuguese colonial rule in 1975, the Republic of South Africa was confronted with a threatening situation...

...The resistance may need time to regroup...

...Casualty levels also have risen steadily, particularly on the Namibian-An-golan front...

...the much-vaunted "reform" had been rejected by the people for whom it was intended...

...Nthato Motlana, head of the Soweto Civic Association...

...Where economic pressure seemed inadequate, South Africa combined direct and indirect military intervention...

...By 1983, black union membership surpassed the 300,000 mark, and new unions were being organized in such vital sectors as the gold industry...

...It is an exercise not in law enforcement but in reconquest...

...An extraordinary feat of mobilization in the face of extensive political harassment, it reflected the intense level of popular anger and determination...

...The combination of low wages, high inflation, mass unemployment, and an unwillingness to "pay for oppression" sparked the demonstrations...

...When the army takes over, it is tantamount to a confession that the unruly parts of the country are occupied enemy territory...

...There is even an anticonscription movement, and it is supported not only by radical white students but also by significant sections of the church and respectable members of Parliament...

...Sabotage against key South African targets has become a perfected technique of the ANC's underground network...

...But the recent protests have cost the state dearly...

...Mozambique's new relationship with South Africa, which also includes economic agreements, was widely interpreted as a victory for South Africa and its military might...

...Scores of government offices, schools, and stores went up in smoke...

...The search lasted seventeen hours and resulted in 358 arrests, but in the end not one was charged with a security offense...

...On the eve of the colored election, the government cracked down on the leaders of the campaign and detained thirty-five of them, including many members of the United Democratic Front...

...Armed propaganda," as the ANC calls it, has been directed against power lines and power stations, fuel depots, railroads, police stations, and government offices...

...An ad-hoc coalition of trade unions, student groups, and community and political organizations came together in less than a week...

...In a determined effort to hold on to Namibia, it poured some 100,000 troops into the illegally occupied territory and escalated its war against neighboring Angola, which was providing the South West Africa People's Organization with valuable rear bases...

...Mozambique also felt the squeeze, as South Africa cut off exports through the port of Maputo, Mozambique's capital...

...many others have fled...

...Botha was riding high as he went on an eight-nation tour of Western Europe...

...Instead of allies on its borders who were economically dependent and politically sympathetic, South Africa suddenly had to contend with neighbors committed to building socialism and pledged to supporting the South African and Namibian liberation movements...

...More than 150 persons, some of them children, have lost their lives in the recent actions, unions have no strike funds, and the difficulties of life in the townships have been multiplied by the abandonment of all services...

...The interracial, decentralized front contained more than 600 organizations—including major churches, the independent black trade unions, and a broad spectrum of black political organizations...

...Swaziland had signed a secret nonaggression pact with Pretoria, and Lesotho had denied sanctuary to some members of the African National Congress, the black liberation organization outlawed in South Africa...