Predawn Raid

LESOTHO Predawn Raid South Africa's blanket invasion

At 1 o'clock in the morning a full moon shone over Maseru (pop. 75,000), capital of the tiny African kingdom of Lesotho, a mountainous enclave within South Africa. Most of the residents had gone to bed, except for a few night owls playing the slot machines and roulette wheels of Maseru's two casinos. Suddenly the staccato of gunfire rocked the night. Lesotho had been invaded.

During the next hour, 100 South African commandos who had crept across the border only a few hundred yards away fanned out along the streets, seeking out targets. Meeting no opposition from Lesotho's tiny 2,000-man paramilitary force, they blasted their way through at least a dozen homes. By morning the body count was 42; of the dead, 30 were believed to be members of the African National Congress (A.N.C.), a black nationalist organization dedicated to overthrowing the white minority government of South Africa. The remaining victims were Lesotho residents, including five women and two children. Their mission accomplished, the South African troops returned home.

In a dawn announcement in Pretoria, General Constand Viljoen, chief of the South African Defense Force, explained that the raid, unofficially named "Operation Blanket," had been a pre-emptive strike against A.N.C. militants who had come to Lesotho over the past few months. According to Viljoen, the A.N.C. members were planning attacks in South Africa against political leaders in the black "homelands" of Transkei and Ciskei. South African defense officials displayed a rocket launcher, rifles and some grenades of Communist-bloc origin that they said had been captured in the raid.

An A.N.C. spokesman in Zimbabwe denied the South African charges and denounced the invasion as a "coldblooded massacre." Charging that the A.N.C. members killed were political refugees, not terrorists, Lesotho's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Charles D. Molapo, labeled the attack "murder" and asked for an urgent meeting of the U.N. Security Council. Given the landlocked country's economic dependence on South Africa, however, the raid was not likely to lead to a break in relations with Pretoria.

Joining the chorus of international protest, the Reagan Administration deplored the attack and called for a settlement in southern Africa "through peaceful negotiation." That goal seems out of reach: South Africa clearly intended its show of force to be a message to other southern African states harboring A.N.C. militants, like Zimbabwe and Mozambique, that it is prepared to strike again if necessary.

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