Threat to shut black schools

Press, 19 August 1977, Page 6

Threat to shut black schools

|NZPA-Reuter Johannesburg; A South African Govern-( ment Minister has threatened to close 40 schools in the black township of Soweto because students have been boycotting them for weeks in protest against the education system for blacks. Mr Michiel Botha, Minister for Bantu (black) Administration and Development, issued the warning after discussions with the Justice Minister (Mr James Kruger), who has already threatened I a hard line if students con'tinue their boycott. i “For a considerable time the normal schools programme has been disrupted in certain schools in Soweto, and no worth-while instruction has been taking place at these schools,” Mr Botha said. i

The national riot police chief, General David Kriel, • said 36 students had been arrested at Soweto schools jon Wednesday, and most would be charged with incitement to violence. His men arrested about 130 youths at schools in the township on Tuesday. Dr Nthato Motlana, chairman of a committee of 10 prominent Sowetans, told (foreign journalists at a press 'conference that the police (would be responsible if the 'schools of Soweto were Iclosed. Dr Motlana said he had spent last week-end trying ,to persuade the police to 'keep away from schools in | the township so that members of the Soweto Students’ Representative Council could i persuade students to return Ito their classes after a long boycott.

“The response we got to this request for a low profile was two lots of police raids,” he said.

Dr Motlana said he had spoken to schoolteachers about the raids, and “what they told me about the methods the police used was quite unbelievable."

He said the principal of Soweto’s West High School had described “how a young boy hung on to his 'waist while the cops clobbered him all over the head and dogs savaged him. All his clothes were in tatters, and the boy was crying ‘Please speak for me. Tell them to stop’.’’

Dr Motlana said the Soweto headmaster had described how children at his school “were trying to scale the high fence, and dogs brought them down.” ! “In 18 months, two years, old men like me will have been removed and control and chairmanship of such organisations (as the committe of 10) will have passed to younger men who may not accept what we are offering them now,” Dr Mot’ lana added. “This is my fear, We are offering the Government a chance, an opportunity they should not refuse," Dr Motlana said. The Government has so far rejected talks with the “Committee of Ten” on Soweto’s future because the committee is not an elected body. Asked to confirm Dr Motlana's statement that the police were continuing their raids on schools in Soweto, Brigadier Jan Visser, of the riot police, said: “This man talks nonsense. It is irrelevant what Dr Motlana says.”