South Africa

By William R. Doerner

No institution in South Africa's black townships has been more severely disrupted in recent years than the school system. Many blacks began keeping their children out of the segregated, state-run classrooms when the current troubles began in September 1984. The state of emergency declared last June only fueled the boycott. Of the 1.7 million school-age black children in urban areas, some 250,000 dropped out last year alone. Classes that continued to meet were often chaotic, and some black militants began offering alternative instruction, called "people's education," which provided little more than revolutionary rhetoric.

Last week State President P.W. Botha took strong action to shore up the country's quickly deteriorating network of black schools. He announced a new set of regulations designed to restore order to the schoolhouse -- and to crush rampant dissent within it. The emergency decree empowers the director general of the Department of Education and Training to set rules governing almost everything touching school life, including whether students can wear T shirts emblazoned with political slogans.

Under the guidelines, Pretoria will be able to regulate the movements of students to prevent fraternization with militants, and to close the schools to nonstudent groups. With new authority to disallow politically objectionable classroom materials, the department is certain to shut down, by police action if necessary, "people's education" classes, which had apparently helped provoke Botha's decree.

The success of the plan may depend on another factor: whether the government will reopen at least 50 black schools (out of a total of more than 7,000) that it has closed as a result of the black boycott or racial turmoil. In recent weeks a black-led movement has grown up favoring an end to the long "stayaway." Reason: many parents fear the boycott is permanently ^ crippling any hope for their children to receive a decent education. Among the groups urging a return to classroom normality: the United Democratic Front, the country's largest antiapartheid organization. A U.D.F. spokesman declared last week that ending the boycott would "help the struggle for a democratic education system in the long term."

Some black educators, like Thomas Khambule, a former Soweto high school principal, believe the new education decree will only lead to more confrontation, boycott or no. "The Department of Education has declared a state of war," he said. "Our children are being sentenced to eternal ignorance." The department was noncommittal on the prospects of reopening the schools this week for the new term. That, said a spokesman, "depends on the reaction of parents and the community."

Only days after the new school regulations were announced, Botha declared that he will set a date later this year for a general election for the country's 2.3 million white voters. Political analysts saw the move as an attempt by Botha to win a new mandate for the ruling National Party in the face of the mounting black revolt and international isolation. In the eyes of Botha's right-wing constituents especially, get-tough measures like the school regulations are precisely what is needed to bring South Africa's racial unrest under control.

With reporting by Peter Hawthorne/Johannesburg