Wave of burning sweeps S.A.

Press, 21 July 1976, Page 9

Wave of burning sweeps S.A.

NZPA-Reuter

Johannesburg

A wave of arson swept South Africa at the weekend. a school, a college, and a court being the principal targets.

Two buildings at an African teacher-training college near Alice, Cape province, were destroyed. College officials estimate the damage at $25,000.

The college is not far from the African Fort Hare University, the scene of violent demonstrations on Sunday, where policemen used teargas against demonstrating students who had set fire to campus buildings with a Molotov cocktail. Five students were arrested at Fort Hare yesterday. The police suspect students of starting the fire at the training college. The arsonists also struck at Kempton Park Court a few miles north-east of Johannesburg. The building Was badly damaged.

Arsonists also destroyed a Roman Catholic Church school at Alexandra, an African township of 60,000 people, a few miles north of Johannesburg. Firemen prevented it from spreading to the church next door.

On Friday a restaurant for whites near Alexandra was burned by Africans who had told the owner to offer the same facilities to both blacks and whites.

The South African Government yesterday refused to confirm reports that the Prime Minister (Mr Vorster') would hoid a second round of talks with the United

States Secretary of State (Dr Henry Kissinger) within six weeks.

A Foreign Affairs department statement dismissed the reports as pure speculation. The “Rand Daily Mail” quoted unnamed sources as saying that arrangements were made for the meeting last week. Mr Vorster and Dr Kissinger held talks last month in West Germany on the crisis in southern Africa.

A spokesman did confirm that the South African Ambassador to the United States and the United Nations (Mr R. F. Pik Botha) had been meeting Mr Vorster and the Foreign Affairs Minister (Mr HHgard Mnller) ih Pretoria. But he described these talks as normal consultations.

Mr Botha recently had a meeting in Washington with Dr Kissinger. The spokesman said that he reported to the South African leader on these discussions. Mr Botha is due to. return to Washington this week. In New York, Zambia’s United Nations mission has received instructions to ask for an urgent meeting of the Security Council to discuss South African “aggression” against Zambia. Zambia alleges that South Africa attacked a town in its western province near South African-controlled Namibia ‘(South-West Africa), last

week and that 22 Zambians were killed.

South Africa has denied launching an attack into Zambia. South Africa’s defence headquarters in Pretoria announced yesterday that a white South African soldier and two nationalist guerrillas have been killed in clashes near the border between Namibia and Angola. The defence statement said Rifleman Andries Johannes Blaauw, aged 21, had been killed at the week-end in “a skirmish with terrorists” in Ovambo, an area adjoining the border. It did not say whether the two guerrillas had been killed in the same clash, but said that South African forces had launched ah attack against a guerrilla base and had captured arms and ammunition.