More black unrest despite crackdown

Press, 1 November 1977, Page 8

More black unrest despite crackdown

NZPA-Reuter Johannesburg

Black unrest in South Africa continued over the week-end despite widespread arrests in the wake of the recent Government crackdown on black and white protest, the police have said.

In week-end incidents, the police shot and wounded one black man during repeated stone-throwing in New Brighton township near Port Elizabeth on the south coast, a police spokesman said. In the nearby township of Kwazakela blacks attacked the house of a black policeman who opened fire with a revolver, wounding one man. Police cars and buses were stoned in other incidents in I the area, police said. General David Kriel, the riot police chief, said, “A very large number of arrests have been made” in the past two weeks, but would not give any figure. Unofficial estimates say that at least 100 blacks, mostly students, have been arrested in the

follow-up to the ' big swoop 10 days ago. General Kriel said that those arrested were “intimidators, rioters, arsonists, and stone-throwers.”

The two-day clash along the Angola border between South African troops and guerrillas of the South-West Africa People’s Organisation that claimed at least 66 lives was the biggest battle of the hitherto low-key guerrilla war in the region, South African military sources have said.

Defence headquarters in Pretoria said at the weekend that five South Africans died and at least 61 guerrillas were confirmed killed.

The statement said that fighting raged “backwards and forwards across the (Angola) border.” It was the first time South African forces have admitted fighting inside Angola since they withdrew their troops in March last year after supporting anti-

Government Angolan movements in the civil war.

S.W.A.P.O. is seeking to overthrow South African rule in Namibia (South-West Africa). Its guerrillas operate from bases just inside neighbouring Angola.

In London, a S.W.A.F.O. spokesman, confirming the intensity of the clash, said it marked the beginning of an intense offensive by 5.W.A.P.0.”

The fighting took place wholly inside Namibia, in the region of the town of Ondangua, which lies about 55km from the border, said Mr Peter Katjavivi, S.W.A.P.O. secretary for information.

He disputed the casualty figures given by the South Africans, but admitted that “a number of S.W.A.P.O. men had been killed.” He put South African deaths in “double figures.”

“We cannot be precise because we did not stop to count.” he said.