United Democratic Front

A top official of South Africa's largest anti-apartheid group has been seized by the government after operating underground for about two years, members of the movement said. They said that Mohammed Valli, acting general secretary of the multiracial United Democratic Front, was detained in Johannesburg under the government's emergency powers. Valli has held the post since his predecessor, Popo Molefe, was arrested on treason charges with 21 other activists in 1985.

The United Democratic Front, a mass opposition group that led the anti-apartheid fight during much of the 1980s, dissolved Sunday after eight years in operation. About 2,000 people gathered at the Rocklands Civic Center outside Cape Town for a ceremony ending the front, which claimed hundreds of affiliates and more than 1 million members at its peak.

The United Democratic Front, South Africa's largest coalition of anti-apartheid groups, launched a new campaign here Sunday for the release of jailed black nationalist leader Nelson Mandela, warning the government that until he is free there will be no peace in this strife-torn country. Albertina Sisulu, one of the front's national presidents, said Mandela's release is now the No.

Boris N. Yeltsin, the Russian populist leader, stepped up his attacks on Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev on Saturday, calling Gorbachev's commitment to further political and economic reforms "a lie" and promising a full-scale fight for greater regional autonomy.

President Pieter W. Botha on Friday blamed the mounting unrest in South Africa on the United Democratic Front, the country's largest anti-apartheid group, and accused it of trying to foment a revolution here. Recent violence has brought "a drastic escalation of the revolutionary climate" in the country, Botha told Parliament, and the government now fears countrywide disturbances as part of a strategy to make South Africa "ungovernable."

Twelve of South Africa's leading opponents of apartheid were acquitted Monday of charges of high treason and subversion in a major political setback for the minority white government. Judge John A. Milne handed down the acquittal after the prosecution dropped the charges in the midst of the defendants' trial.

The government Saturday continued its roundup of leading anti-apartheid activists, detaining at least 27 officials of the United Democratic Front, and warned that a planned protest march this week on the prison where African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela is held would be turned back by force, if necessary.

Three black South African policemen were among six people arrested in the mysterious weekend massacre of 13 members of a moderate black political group, police headquarters in Pretoria said Monday. The victims, all members of Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi's 1.2-million-member Inkatha movement, were killed in an attack on the house where they were staying in KwaShange, a black township outside Pietermaritzburg, about 300 miles southeast of Johannesburg in Natal province.

A 2-year-old boy was shot to death in his mother's arms and six other people also died as fighting resumed between rival black groups around the South African city of Pietermaritzburg, police reported Monday.

After almost daily clashes between rival black political groups around the South African city of Pietermaritzburg, police are moving heavily armed reinforcements into the area in an effort to end the violence that has taken the lives of more than 250 people in the last four months. Lt. Gen.

Five South African activists were freed from detention without trial Friday as the government began implementing its part of a deal to end a prison hunger strike. Restrictions were imposed on one of them, Trevor Manuel, 32, a founder and regional leader of the United Democratic Front. He was told to report to police twice a day and was restricted to his home every night, a lawyer said.

I am left unspeakably angry and horrified upon learning of the convictions in South Africa of four leaders of the United Democratic Front on charges of treason (Part I, Nov. 19). Only a government which grants no civil rights to a majority of its people under its constitution could consider nonviolent protests against that constitution to be treason. The logic by which peaceful protest becomes treason is the logic of terrorism. The South African government is emboldened to commit ever more arrogant attacks against the human rights of its black majority by the reluctance of the United States to treat South Africa as the terrorist state that it is. A government which has no moral or legal basis for claiming the allegiance of a majority of its people, but rules only through the threat and application of coercive physical force, has no claim to be called anything but a terrorist state.

President Pieter W. Botha has expressed disappointment with the response of the black majority to his initiative for a dialogue to chart the future of South Africa. But the absence of dialogue is a response to his own deliberate policy of continuing to imprison those who are essential to the process of negotiation. Now he has made matters worse, if not impossible, by banning virtually every political voice of blacks seeking a peaceful solution to the nation's problems.

A 2-year-old boy was shot to death in his mother's arms and six other people also died as fighting resumed between rival black groups around the South African city of Pietermaritzburg, police reported Monday.

After almost daily clashes between rival black political groups around the South African city of Pietermaritzburg, police are moving heavily armed reinforcements into the area in an effort to end the violence that has taken the lives of more than 250 people in the last four months. Lt. Gen.

Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, whose Inkatha political movement has been fighting for supremacy in South Africa's Natal province, denounced Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Tuesday as a hypocrite for calling for peace while supporting the rival United Democratic Front and the outlawed African National Congress.

Five South African activists were freed from detention without trial Friday as the government began implementing its part of a deal to end a prison hunger strike. Restrictions were imposed on one of them, Trevor Manuel, 32, a founder and regional leader of the United Democratic Front. He was told to report to police twice a day and was restricted to his home every night, a lawyer said.

Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, whose Inkatha political movement has been fighting for supremacy in South Africa's Natal province, denounced Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Tuesday as a hypocrite for calling for peace while supporting the rival United Democratic Front and the outlawed African National Congress.

Three black South African policemen were among six people arrested in the mysterious weekend massacre of 13 members of a moderate black political group, police headquarters in Pretoria said Monday. The victims, all members of Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi's 1.2-million-member Inkatha movement, were killed in an attack on the house where they were staying in KwaShange, a black township outside Pietermaritzburg, about 300 miles southeast of Johannesburg in Natal province.

A government ban on foreign contributions to the United Democratic Front, South Africa's largest anti-apartheid group, was lifted Friday by a provincial Supreme Court judge. The organization said it will immediately resume fund-raising abroad to finance new campaigns.