South Africa Declarations of Defiance

By JANICE C. SIMPSON

More than 40,000 people packed the soccer stadium in Mamelodi, a black township outside Pretoria, to attend a funeral rally for twelve blacks killed during a clash with police three weeks ago. Diplomats from the U.S. and ten other Western countries were among those who had come to pay their respects to the dead, including a two-month-old baby who suffocated from tear-gas fumes. While police looked on from a hill above the stadium, the mourners sang freedom songs, waved the black, green and gold flag of the outlawed African National Congress and cheered speeches by both white and black antiapartheid activists.

Most of the mourners had gone home by the time a gold-colored BMW drove up to the stadium. But the remaining 8,000 or so people quickly recognized the woman who emerged from the car, and they escorted her into the stadium shouting, "Winnie! Winnie! Mother of the nation!" To their surprise and pleasure, Winnie Mandela, wife of jailed A.N.C. Leader Nelson Mandela, addressed the crowd. "This is our country," she told them. "As you have had to bury our children today, so shall the blood of these heroes be avenged."

With that, Mandela, 51, defied the government restriction that has forbidden her to speak in public for nearly 25 years. A leading antiapartheid activist in her own right, Mandela has endured arrests and solitary confinement. She was banished eight years ago to Brandfort, a remote area of the Orange Free State. But since her home was firebombed by unidentified arsonists in August, she has become increasingly defiant, leaving Brandfort without permission, traveling throughout the country and meeting with the press.

So far, Pretoria has seemed reluctant to move against her. But last week's speech represented perhaps her boldest act, and could prompt the government to retaliate. Two days after her speech, Mandela, reportedly suffering from exhaustion and the recurrence of a minor heart problem, was admitted to a private nursing home. It seemed unlikely that the government would act before she was released.

The sort of defiance that Mandela displayed seemed to be in the air last week. The newly formed Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) also flouted the government by calling on foreign-based companies to divest themselves of South African holdings. "While Western companies argue that this will bring suffering to blacks, COSATU says that black people have been suffering since 1652, when the Boers first came to this country," said Elijah Barayi, president of the group. It was one of the most radical calls to action made publicly by the head of a legally recognized black organization since the A.N.C. was outlawed in 1960.

Black unions have been legal in South Africa only since 1979. At first they restricted their activities to work-related issues, and their efforts met with varying success. Last year 40,000 black miners staged their first legal strike and won wage and benefit increases from South Africa's mining companies, which have generally been receptive to reforms. In September, however, the miners' union was forced to suspend a strike after only three days when less conciliatory mine operators threatened to dismiss the strikers and evict them from company-owned housing.

Over the past year, however, as violent unrest in the country has increased, members have pressed the unions to become more overtly political. COSATU, the result of four years of painstaking negotiations among the leading black unions, is the most powerful manifestation of this burgeoning political consciousness. Although the new solidarity is still fragile, the giant federation of 34 multiracial unions claims some 450,000 members in the country's most vital industries and clearly has the potential to be a major force in South African affairs. Its leaders have already openly committed themselves to an activist role in the antiapartheid struggle. "We are no longer going to be passive," said Barayi. "COSATU is going to govern this country."

The federation's ambitious agenda includes the call for foreign divestment and nationalization of major industries, the release of Nelson Mandela, the withdrawal of government troops from the black townships and the abolition of the pass laws. Barayi said the federation would lead a campaign for blacks to burn their passbooks publicly if the law is not revoked within six months. That threat prompted grim reminders of the last widespread protest against the & pass laws, which ended with the deaths of 67 people after police opened fire on a demonstration in the black township of Sharpeville in 1960. The A.N.C., which had initiated the campaign, was outlawed at the same time.

The Reagan Administration applauded the formation of the federation but frowned on its support for divestment. "We agree that pass laws and apartheid ought to be dismantled," said a State Department spokesman, "but we strongly disagree with the call for divestiture." Officially, the South African government adopted a cautious attitude toward the new superunion. Indeed, declaring that the "revolutionary climate in South Africa is fast losing momentum," State President P.W. Botha lifted the five-month-old state of emergency in eight of the 38 areas where it had been imposed. Those areas were mostly rural settlements and had been for the most part untouched by racial unrest, which has claimed more than 900 victims this year. Privately, officials made it clear that unless COSATU leaders control their radicalism, they too could be subjected to detentions and other restrictions.

With reporting by Peter Hawthorne/ Johannesburg