(2 of 4)
As the anti-apartheid protest swelled, the black South African churchman who helped inspire it took possession of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize. Clad in a red cassock and wearing a gold pectoral cross, South African Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu accepted the Nobel committee's $181,000 cash award and 7.2-oz. gold medal in Norway's University of Oslo Aula. Shortly before the ceremony, Tutu, who a week earlier had declared in Washington that U.S. policy toward South Africa was "immoral, evil and totally un-Christian," was forced along with other dignitaries to evacuate the Oslo hall for 65 minutes after police received a bomb threat. No explosives were found. At the traditional Nobel laureate's lecture the next day, Tutu lashed out at his government's racial policies, noting that "blacks are systematically stripped of their South African citizenship and are being turned into aliens in the land of their birth." Said he: "This is apartheid's final solution, like the solution the Nazis had for the Jews in Hitler's Aryan madness."
While the Reagan Administration may have yielded a bit in the face of growing opposition to "constructive engagement," South Africa has not moved an inch. In Pretoria, Foreign Minister Roelof ("Pik") Botha restated his government's defiance of outside pressure. "South Africa will not allow itself to be dictated to by foreign elements, especially protesters and radical actions of pressure groups overseas," he declared. Said Executive President P.W. Botha: "South Africa will make its own decisions."
In what appeared to be a minor concession, the Pretoria government last week released five of eleven black leaders who were detained without charges in the past three months. The remaining six, however, are expected to be charged under the country's Internal Security Act with subversion, treason or promotion of an unlawful organization. The maximum penalty: a life sentence or death. In a further indication of its tough mood, the government last week arrested two of three anti-apartheid activists as they left the British consulate in Durban after seeking sanctuary in the building for 91 days. They are expected to be charged in the same fashion.
The latest crackdown comes during South Africa's most violent civil unrest in eight years. The upheaval began with August's elections for a new tricameral Parliament, which for the first time gives a limited voice in the central government to the country's 2.8 million people of mixed race and 850,000 Indians. The 4.7 million whites still have the final say on all important matters and, of course, blacks remain totally unrepresented. Riots later swept the economically depressed black townships to the south and east of Johannesburg. Then came a Transvaal labor stoppage: 800,000 black workers took part; 6,000 of them were fired. In the past 14 weeks, as a result of the unrest, 163 people have been killed and hundreds injured, most by security forces. So far this year, 1,093 people have been detained in South Africa, vs. 453 in 1983, and only eleven have been convicted of any crime. The latest round of repression has led to an uneasy calm, broken occasionally by isolated bombing and rock-throwing incidents.