South Africa The Wind Rises in Welkom

The sunny garden city of Welkom is having trouble living up to its name. Situated in the Orange Free State gold-mining belt, the town of 54,000 whites and 150,000 blacks had long managed to keep a relatively peaceful if wary distance from the murderous political events that plagued other parts of South Africa. But with the release of Nelson Mandela, the legalization of the African National Congress and President F.W. de Klerk's reform initiatives, racial tensions are rippling across Welkom like an evil wind.

The ominous force behind the tensions is a white right-wing organization of self-styled commandos, the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging, or Afrikaner Resistance Movement. Dressed in khaki uniforms, members wear a swastika-like insignia, salute Nazi-style and warn of a "holy war" if De Klerk succeeds in carrying out his program. The A.W.B. has launched a campaign of intimidation against Welkom's blacks and has been accused of nighttime beatings. In early May, when armed squads began strutting in the streets during the day, the civic association in Welkom's black township of Thabong declared a consumer boycott. Suddenly white-owned shops were deserted, and losses mounted to about $400,000 a day.

That did not deter Eugene Terre Blanche, leader of the A.W.B., from staging a military drill of 300 of his "officers," whose job, he said, will be to establish countrywide commando groups to oppose a black government. When Law and Order Minister Adriaan Vlok arrived on a fact-finding trip, he met a heavily armed A.W.B. contingent outside the Welkom police station. Its Land Rover carried a bumper sticker reading IF GUNS ARE OUTLAWED, HOW CAN WE SHOOT LIBERALS? "There is no force in this world," says Terre Blanche, "that will stop ((Afrikaners)) from defending themselves." Vlok has given no sign that the government plans to disarm the A.W.B.

In hard-core right-wing areas like Welkom and rural Transvaal, whites have reacted with shock, anger and fear to De Klerk's reforms. Just last week the government opened segregated public hospitals to all races, a further erosion of the crumbling laws of separation. Changes like these have prompted die-hard whites to organize a militant defense against what they see as a threatened black -- and communist -- takeover of the country.

What troubles blacks is that De Klerk has made no real effort to curb the steady rise of these groups. Terre Blanche claims "tens of thousands" of supporters, though the real number is probably far fewer. De Klerk insists . that "a small band of extremists" will not succeed in derailing his plans for reform.

Last week, after two whites were killed in a clash between demonstrating black workers and white security officials at a nearby gold mine, Vlok sent extra police and a military backup into Welkom, saying that vigilante action was "unnecessary." Black South Africans can only hope that the A.W.B. is listening.