Censorship, Crackdown Imposed to Block Planned Uprising, Botha Says

L.A. Times Archives

Dec. 12, 1986 12 AM PT

Associated Press

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — President Pieter W. Botha said today the government imposed censorship and cracked down on revolutionaries to thwart an uprising planned for the coming days.

In an evening address on nationwide television, Botha said the measures were “aimed at the South African Communist Party/African National Congress structures that are involved in the planning, coordination and execution of revolutionary violence.”

Authorities announced the detention of two unidentified Swiss citizens on suspicion of working for the ANC, the outlawed guerrilla movement fighting to overthrow the government. Earlier, police in neighboring Swaziland said two Swiss had been abducted from their home by men in a car with South African license plates.

Police sources and witnesses in Swaziland said the kidnapers of the Swiss also killed a 15-year-old boy and wounded and abducted another black in a series of raids.

Monitoring groups reported several activists arrested around the country, including Zwelakhe Sisulu, editor of the Roman Catholic Church-funded New Nation newspaper. Sisulu, a former Nieman Fellow at Harvard, is the son of Walter Sisulu, a jailed ANC leader.

“Our security forces have, over the past 24 hours, been compelled to conduct certain preventive security measures (directed at) the terrorist alliance, which has as its aim the fomenting of revolution in our country,” Botha said in a televised address.

The South African government contends the ANC is dominated by communists. The guerrilla group says that it includes communists but contends that they are just another component of a pluralistic movement.

Botha said the press censorship rules imposed Thursday were part of the government effort to counter an ANC plan to incite revolution before and on Dec. 16, the 25th anniversary of the ANC’s first sabotage attacks in 1961, a year after it was outlawed.

Botha said the ANC “places a high premium on underground structures that have to execute this barbaric plot.”