Black unrest ‘will not be tolerated’

Press, 12 July 1980, Page 9

Black unrest ‘will not be tolerated’

NZPA-Reuter Pretoria The South African Police Minister (Mr Louis le Grange) has said that renewed unrest associated with the schools boycott movement can no longer be tolerated.

In a statement issued in Pretoria he said orders pro-! hibiting pupils from gathering on school premises would in future be rigorously enforced. His statement followed incidents in the Cape Peninsula and the Eastern Cape where black students resumed a class boycott against' unequal education when the new term began this week.

So far the police have maintained a low profile towards pupils who gathered at school premises despite the fact that this was contrary to Government orders prohibiting such meetings.

“In view of the latest events, however, in which pupils at certain schools have openly abused the above concessions by holding political meetings, intimidating other scholars, damaging property and, organising unlawful action outside school premises, I have given an order that the provisions of the proclamation should be strictly applied from today to maintain the necessary law and order,” he said.. Mr le Grange assured parents of students who wanted to continue classes that their children would have police protection. “The sporadic outbreak of unrest at schools in certain areas is not approved by the large majority of the population and can no longer be tolerated,” he said.

The police used tear-gas earlier this week to disperse about 2000 students who went on a window-breaking and stone-throwing rampage iat Grahamstown near Port ! Elizabeth in Eastern Cape province. There was further trouble in Grahamstown yesterday, and a 40-year-oid black woman' was shot and killed. A police spokesman said she had not been shot by police. A police statement said 27 blacks had been arrested on charges of public violence. The schools boycott by an estimated 100,000 mainly Coloured (mixed race) students began in the Cape late last April. Black and Indian pupils later joined the protest which spread to other areas including Johannesburg and Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State.' But the worst incidents last month, coinciding with the fourth anniversary of the Soweto black student riots of 1976, occurred in the Cape where at least 30 people died in clashes with the police.