Guerrillas hunted

Press, 27 May 1981, Page 8

Guerrillas hunted

NZPA-Reuter Johannesburg The" South African police kept up a big search yesterday for. black nationalists who attacked two railways and a police station. The police said yesterday that no arrests had been made after early morning bomb blasts which cut two rail lines outside Johannesburg and Durban and a grenade and gun attack on a remote police station.

The only reported injury yesterday was in a fourth incident in which a policeman was wounded in an arm and a leg when he and colleagues came under fire near the assaulted police sta-

tion 10 km from the port of East London.

The attacks occurred as South Africa entered a final week of festivities to mark Sunday's twentieth anniversary of becoming a republic.

The celebrations have come under mounting criticism from opposition groups of all races for being nonrepresentative of the majority non-white population.

There were scuffles in Johannesburg yesterday at a mass meeting t>f Witwatersrand University students supporting a lecture boycott in sympathy with those opposed to the republic celebrations. Pamphlets headed “Repub-

lie Day — why celebrate.'" were handed out and scuffles broke out when groups of students supporting the Government began waving the South African flag. A call to boycott republic celebrations has been supported by all the main Churches except the white Afrikaans denominations and has received more backing from many influential nonwhite organisations. The banned militant black movement, the African National Congress, ' issued leaflets calling for a nationwide work stoppage for the celebrations, although there has so far been no sign of any effective response.