S. Africa Arrests Activist, Bans Rally in Move to Quell Campaign

The South African authorities, moving to crack down on a two-week-old civil disobedience campaign as it gathers steam nationwide, arrested a key anti-apartheid leader Friday and banned a rally that had been called for Sunday to draw attention to unjust laws.

Mohammed Valli Moosa, a chief organizer of the Mass Democratic Movement and its “defiance campaign,” was questioned for an hour and then taken into custody by plainclothes officers at his office near downtown Johannesburg. Police said he is being held under emergency regulations, which allow the government to indefinitely detain, without charge, any activist it considers a threat to public safety.

The arrest of Valli Moosa, 35, and the banning of the rally in Cape Town followed days of threats from the government, which has accused Valli Moosa and others of trying to violently disrupt the Sept. 6 general elections, which exclude the country’s black majority.

Acting President Frederik W. de Klerk vowed this week to deal swiftly with those who threaten public safety, adding that he hoped it would not be necessary to place “great numbers of people into custody.”

Friday’s actions marked the first major efforts by the government to stop the defiance campaign, which began with several hundred blacks seeking medical care at whites-only hospitals Aug. 2.

Since then, some of the hundreds of activists living under “restriction orders,” which prevent them from participating in politics and often amount to house arrest, have defied those orders. At least four activists were charged this week with violating their restrictions.

Anglican Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu, who was to address the Sunday rally, said the police decision to ban it was “inflammatory and dangerous.”

Valli Moosa is acting secretary general of the giant United Democratic Front (UDF) anti-apartheid coalition, which is among two dozen political organizations that have been heavily restricted since last year. He escaped after more than a year in detention and was one of three activists who found refuge last year in the American Consulate in Johannesburg, leaving after six weeks when Pretoria agreed not to detain or restrict them.

Meanwhile, police fired shotguns and used plastic whips Friday to break up a crowd of several hundred black workers protesting a lockout at a pie-making plant in Johannesburg, and the company said 17 were injured. The lockout was imposed after a wage dispute.

And a judge sentenced Trevor Tutu, son of Archbishop Tutu, to 18 months in prison for making a false bomb threat at Johannesburg’s international airport. Tutu, who said he would appeal, has said he was courting arrest as part of a publicity stunt for his advertising agency.