Will Escalate War, S. African Guerrillas Say

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa —  The African National Congress said Friday that with the rocket attack on South African oil installations and the mining of some rural roads this week, it was beginning a “generalized escalation” of its prolonged guerrilla war against the country’s minority white regime.

In a statement from its headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia, the congress said it plans to increase its military and its political pressure here, declaring that attacks on “enemy personnel and installations” will multiply across the country as guerrillas take the offensive after years of low-level, intermittent assaults.

The rocket attack and land mine explosions, coming after a major upsurge in urban bombings and sabotage in recent months, have greatly increased South African whites’ fears that the country is moving quickly into a racial civil war.

The rocket attack on the oil-from-coal facilities at Secunda, about 60 miles southeast of Johannesburg, and the land mines in roads around farms on the border with neighboring Zimbabwe recalled for most whites the start of black insurgencies in what was then Rhodesia, now black-ruled Zimbabwe, and in Namibia (South-West Africa), where black nationalists are still fighting a 20-year guerrilla war for the territory’s independence from South African rule.

“We have been very secure in our complacency, but that is over now,” a housewife in the area of the mine explosions commented Friday as government troops probed for mines on roads around her farmhouse. “Bad, very bad times lie ahead.”

In its statement, the African National Congress played upon such fears, suggesting that, at least initially, it would continue to emphasize the political fight against apartheid, South Africa’s system of racial segregation.

New Guerrilla Push

“The attacks by African National Congress guerrillas on enemy personnel and installations in the northern and eastern Transvaal (province) earlier this week are part of a generalized escalation of both the political and military struggle against the South African racist regime,” the statement said.

“The African National Congress vows that it will continue with the struggle to overthrow the apartheid regime and replace it with a united, non-racial, democratic and just society.”

Guerrilla units of Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), as the congress’ military wing is called, attacked the Secunda refinery complex and planted the mines along rural roads in northern Transvaal.

Meanwhile, police fought gun battles Friday in the huge squatter settlement at Crossroads, outside Cape Town, killing two black men and seriously wounding two others after police patrols were fired upon. Later, a military rifle and a large-caliber pistol were seized in a house-to-house search of the area, and about 10 people were detained for questioning as suspected guerrillas.

Attacks Increasing

Police report they are coming under gunfire and grenade attacks with growing frequency in what they see as a significant escalation in the unrest, and local commanders apparently have orders to respond by arresting those believed responsible and seizing weapons to deter others from similar attacks.

Seven more people were reported killed in the continuing violence around the country--some of it directly political, the result of the fight against apartheid and those who support it, but some also the apparent result of the growing feeling that law and order no longer applies, at least in black communities.

Five died in fighting between two rival groups of Zulu tribesmen in southern Natal province, according to police, who blamed the clash on a longstanding feud that has recently taken on political overtones.

Near Johannesburg, the badly burned body of a man whose house was set afire a week ago was found by police. A 3-year-old child was reported to have suffocated when his mother’s home near Cape Town was firebombed because she was suspected of having become a police informer.

Protest March Thwarted

A planned march through central Cape Town by several thousand blacks demanding an end to the month-old state of emergency there was thwarted when more than 2,000 of the demonstrators were put back on commuter trains by police after arriving in Cape Town.

Four of the demonstration leaders were detained without charge under the state of emergency, and 300 who slipped through police lines and started to march were driven back to the railway station with whips and put aboard outbound trains.

The annual convention, planned for Cape Town, of the National Union of South African Students was banned by police under the emergency regulations, as was the yearly conference of editors of university newspapers. The student union is the country’s principal organization for white university students.

Looking for New Sites

“We want to make it clear that both congresses will go ahead,” declared Brendan Barry, the student union’s outgoing president who said that the group is looking for other places to hold the meetings.

Police headquarters acknowledged Friday that it still holds 1,229 people detained under the security laws, including the present state of emergency. To this figure must be added 1,000-plus detainees held in Transkei, Ciskei, Bophuthatswana and other black homelands.

The African National Congress said that the planting of the land mines and the Secunda attack were carried out by “rear bases within South Africa” and not by guerrilla elements infiltrated from Zimbabwe or Swaziland, as the government has charged.

“The units are based and operate inside South Africa,” congress officials declared.

Congress officials clearly hoped that its statement would dissuade South Africa from attacking Zimbabwe or Swaziland in retaliation, as Pretoria has threatened. But South African officials reiterated their belief that the guerrillas are operating from across South African borders and stressed their readiness to send their troops in pursuit.