South Africa is continuing to detain people under state of emergency regulations but hundreds of political activists are in hiding to avoid arrest, several sources told the Tribune Sunday.
They said one of the most prominent persons arrested in the latest wave of detentions is the Rev. Francois Bill, a Presbyterian minister and member of the executive committee of the South African Council of Churches, who was picked up in the early hours of Saturday at his home in Johannesburg. The sources said his home was searched for several hours.
A number of black workers from a Johannesburg dairy, who went on strike last week to protest detention of their union leaders, also have been detained, according to well-informed sources. They said these detentions could run into several hundred.
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In other developments:
— Four bombs went off Saturday night and early Sunday morning in the Durban area, two of them hitting fuel lines and causing a spillage of oil into the Indian Ocean. There were no reported casualties.
— Troops fired tear gas into a soccer stadium in Soweto, the black township near Johannesburg, during a match on Saturday after fans had cheered one of the teams that scored a goal.
— The government announced only one person has been killed in political violence in the last 24 hours, a black male killed by a ”mob” in Soweto. This brings deaths since the state of emergency was invoked June 12 to 55 and deaths since unrest began in September, 1984, to more than 1,900.
Estimates on the number of persons in detention since the state of emergency was declared vary widely but a number of sources put the figure at around 3,000.
Opposition members of Parliament have been making a last-minute effort to read the names of detainees into the parliamentary record at Cape Town.
Statements made in Parliament are exempt from the strict censorship regulations that otherwise apply throughout the country, but opposition politicians have only until Wednesday to put details on the record before Parliament adjourns.
Members of the Progressive Federal Party, who have led the effort, have accused the government of turning South Africa into a police state and have put a number of names of detainees on the record.
The government claims that next-of-kin of all those detained have been notified, but the PFP and other sources say this is untrue. The PFP has set up a Missing Persons Bureau in Cape Town and has received calls about more than 1,000 people who are missing.
Among them are 115 students, scholars and teachers, 65 trade unionists and workers, 44 clerics and church workers, 255 political and community leaders, 12 journalists, lawyers and doctors and 534 whose occupation is unknown.
The PFP said the latest list of detainees includes several people with health problems. It said the list also includes a 17-year-old Cape Town schoolgirl, Helene Thornton, who was arrested for possessing a copy of Upfront, a magazine of the black nationalist organization United Democratic Front. Upfront is a legal publication, they said.
Those with health problems arrested, the PFP said, are Jane Coombe, who was due to have an operation for abdominal pains, Abdul Hashim, who has a heart complaint, and Kim van Deventer, who has been under treatment for severe headaches and has problems with her vision.
Some persons who were detained June 12, when the emergency began, have since been released but a number of others have been picked up, informed sources said.
Ken Andrew, a PFP member of Parliament, said security regulations were
”a perfect recipe for a police state in which legal organizations were prevented from pursuing legitimate objectives.”
Ray Swart, also of the PFP, said: ”I believe there is probably less freedom in South Africa at the present time than there is in communist Russia. Whoever dreams up these laws . . . is outdoing the people in the Kremlin when it comes to denying rights to individuals in a democratic country.”
The bombs that went off in the Durban area followed a car bombing June 14 that killed 3 women and injured 69 persons. Two bombs struck parallel fuel lines near Louis Botha Airport that feed a Shell-British Petroleum refinery, police said.
One fuel container was slightly damaged and police said some oil leaked into the Indian Ocean. Detergent to disperse the oil in the sea was flown in from Johannesburg.
Another bomb went off at a chemical plant, causing a heavy chemical spillage, and the fourth was placed in a rubbish bin in the city center, causing $2,000 damage to an antique shop.
Black sources in Soweto said army troops moved in Saturday and fired tear gas into a crowd of several thousand persons watching a soccer match in Orlando Stadium, four minutes into the match. They said the tear-gassing occurred when one team scored and the crowd shouted in elation.
People in the crowd kept their seats after they were tear-gassed and even players on the field were affected by the gassing, they said.
The sources said there has been a marked increase in patrolling in Soweto since the emergency was invoked, particularly by troops traveling in convoy. Roadblocks on streets also have been increased, they said.
The sources said patrols have been particularly heavy in the Meadowlands and Diepkloof areas of Soweto, known to Soweto residents as ”Beirut” because of the level of violence that has occurred there.
Asked if blacks have been frightened by the increased security presence, one source said, ”The people are not afraid.” He said blacks continue to go in large numbers to drinking clubs at night despite the security force presence.
One source said three members of the Soweto Parents Crisis Committee, which has been involved in trying to halt black school boycotts, were detained last week and other committee members went into hiding.
He said security forces raided a private clinic run by one member of the committee who has gone into hiding. Patients fled the clinic and it has since been closed, he said.
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A number of blacks who are hiding out to avoid arrest are reported to have gone into so-called independent homelands, where they are outside the jurisdiction of South African police and troops.
Mary Burton of Cape Town, the new president of Black Sash, a women`s human rights organization, said Sunday that at least seven members of Black Sash are in detention.
She said the government is using the Urban Areas Act, which is in the process of being repealed, to force thousands of refugees from the burned-out Crossroads squatter camp near Cape Town to move out Monday from churches and other places where they have been sheltering.
Hundreds of shanty homes in Crossroads have been destroyed in fighting among rival black groups.
”The anger of the people who have lost their homes will be very hard to control,” Burton told a Black Sash meeting in Johannesburg. She likened the disappearances of people under the emergency laws to those that occurred during the military reign of terror in Argentina, her homeland.
”The system is evil, but it can`t go on forever,” she said. ”We need to say never. We will go on fighting until we have freedom and democracy for everybody in this country.”
Several of South Africa`s retail business leaders met Saturday in Cape Town with Law and Order Minister Louis le Grange to protest detention of black union leaders.
The detentions have caused a wave of sit-down strikes by black workers that has affected 96 stores, three factories, two warehouses and one depot.
The government, in a statement, contended none of the union leaders had been detained ”purely because of their activities relating to labor matters.” The statement did not explain why activities relating to labor matters are in themselves a cause for detention.
Le Grange promised the business leaders he would look into their complaints but said law and order must take priority.