S.A. holds over 1100 under new powers

Press, 30 July 1985, Page 10

S.A. holds over 1100 under new powers

NZPA-Reuter Johannesburg South Africa is holding over 1100 detainees under tough new powers in riottorn areas and the death toll from unrest has risen to 18 since a state of emergency was imposed on July The police yesterday reported an official detention tally of 1166, and a spokesman said that the total had risen still further as security sweeps continued. South Africa has faced intense international criticism over the emergency powers, which give security forces rights of detention without trial, press censorship and curfew. France has withdrawn its Ambassador in protest. The emergency powers were imposed in areas round Johannesburg and in the eastern Cape by President P. W. Botha after 17 months of rioting had claimed more than 500 lives. The Nobel Peace Prize winner, Bishop Desmond Tutu, warned in an interview published in Paris that young blacks in South Africa appeared determined to destroy apartheid by violence and might soon reject his pacifist leadership.

The police said a black policeman was stabbed to death in New Brighton in the eastern Cape yesterday. The police later shot dead a 38-year-old black being hunted in connection with the murder after he opened fire at them, a spokesman said. The United Nations Security Council last week called for voluntary sanctions against Pretoria to protest against apartheid and the emergency powers. The Foreign Minister, Mr Pik Botha, has rejected the

call as invalid under the United Nations Charter. South African-led troops were yesterday pursuing Namibian nationalist guerrillas heading north towards Angola after a mortar attack on a town in northern Namibia (South-West Africa), a military spokesman said. A woman was seriously injured and her husband, a soldier, slightly hurt when 15 mortars fired by South West Africa People’s Organisation guerrillas crashed into Oshakati, just south of the Angolan border. South Africa, which has been battling S.W.A.P.O. for 20 years in a bloody bush war, has said it reserves the right to mount raids into Angola to protect its security, but the spokesman said there was no indication the fighters had yet crossed the border.