Bomb blast part of ‘uprising’

Press, 31 May 1985, Page 6

Bomb blast part of ‘uprising’

NZPA-AP Johannesburg The main guerrilla group fighting apartheid claimed responsibility yesterday for bombing a South African Army medical office in Johannesburg and killing a policeman in the north of the country. The African National Congress said . from its offices in Lusaka, Zambia, that the bomb and the death of the policeman were part of “the uprising presently engulfing the whole country.”

Seventeen people were wounded in the bombing. The military said that it would not move its medical administration offices from an office tower that for the most part houses civilian tenants. A spokesman said the move would be too expensive. Building managers and realtors have become edgy

about leasing office space to the Government, the military in particular. Most Government offices are scattered among civilian office complexes.

Four of the wounded were Army personnel. The rest were civilians. The policeman was shot on Tuesday in a black homeland northwest of Pretoria. The South African Institute of Race Relations, which monitors racial incidents, says that more than 370 people have been killed in anti-apartheid rioting since late August.

Guerrillas of the A.N.C. have turned from occasionally bombing non-civilian targets to hitting those where civilians work alongside the police, soldiers, and other Government workers. Oliver Tambo, the insurgents’ leader, said last year in Gaborone, Botswana, that

he regretted some civilians would have to die. The group’s worst attack was made in May, 1983, when an A.N.C. car-bomb killed 19 people and wounded more

than 200 on a crowded Pretoria street.

In Parliament yesterday, the Defence Minister, General Magnus Malan, denied Angolan allegations that a South African commando unit had been sent into northern Angola to sabotage an oil plant partly owned by the United States.

General Malan said the patrol was spying on the A.N.C. and other guerrillas opposed to South Africa. Angolan forces killed two commandos and captured a third, who announced at a news conference in the Angolan capital of Luanda that he had been ordered to blow up the facilities, which are 49 per cent owned by the Gulf Oil Corporation and 51 per cent owned by Angola’s Marxist Government.

Dr Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, leader of the Opposition Progressive Federal

Party, told General Malan across the parliamentary floor: “At a time when we should be giving as much ammunition to our supporters in countering the disinvestment campaign, we are seen to reinforce the image of a regional destabiliser.” General Malan said that the military’s top uniformed officer, General Constand Viljoen, would retire on October 31 after 33 years of service. General Viljoen would be replaced by Lieu-tenant-General Jannie Geldenhuys, head of the Army.

In South-West Africa, the disputed territory administered by South Africa since World War I, also known as Namibia, authorities said two civilians were killed and one was wounded when the vehicle in which they were riding struck a landmine.