South Africa to Lift State of Emergency

CAPE TOWN, South Africa--President P.W. Botha announced that the 195-day-old state of emergency imposed to fight anti-apartheid turmoil in South Africa probably would be lifted by Friday.

His announcement yesterday was praised by the United States and was given a cautious welcome from some South African liberals. But it provoked expressions of concern from the largest anti-apartheid grouping, the United Democratic Front, that the emergency would be supplanted by repressive legislation.

Botha also made a new offer of statehood for Namibia, proposing an August 1 target date for starting moves toward the territory's independence. He made it conditional on a withdrawal of Cuban troops from neighboring Angola.

Police reported two Blacks were killed by security officers. They said police shotgun fire killed a man in the western Transvaal province and a youth died of injuries suffered when police quelled a riot in Potchefstroom, southwest of Johannesburg.

They also reported that two whites were seriously hurt when their car was stoned in the south of the country.

Botha made his announcements to a packed parliamentary chamber in the country's legislative capital.

He claimed the level of violence had dropped sufficiently to enable him to issue a proclamation, "most probably this coming Friday," to lift the state of emergency.

But critics of the system of racial segregation that keeps power in the hands of South Africa's white minority said they could not readily explain the timing of Botha's announcement. They insisted that the level of violence had not dropped.

The emergency, imposed July 21 on 30 urban and rural districts and subsequently lifted from seven, gives police and troops sweeping powers to use guns against rioters and detain suspects indefinitely without trial. It has been widely condemned abroad, and its removal is a primary demand of anti-apartheid activists.

Botha also said Parliament would be asked to review existing laws in case new ones were needed to help "protect lives and property effectively."

The United Democratic Front, a multiracial coalition of anti-apartheid groups, said lifting the emergency would be an "acknowledgment that the emergency has failed to suppress the desire of our people to be free."

But the organization expressed concern at Botha's mention of new laws, saying, "The government is going to broaden the already Draconian provisions of the Internal Security Act. The effect of this is that a de facto state of emergency will exist throughout our country."

The 70-year-old Afrikaner president offered to implement a U.N. resolution granting independence to Namibia if the Cubans left Angola. Namibia, or South-West Africa, is under South African administration and is a target of guerrillas operating from Angola.

Botha said Namibia's 1 million people "have waited long enough for independence," a delay he claimed "cannot be laid at South Africa's door."

His promise to lift the state of emergency won praise from one of his most implacable foes, Member of Parliament Helen Suzman of the Progressive Federal Party.

Mrs. Suzman told The Associated Press she was delighted because she assumed it meant the release of detainees.

She said the emergency had done nothing to calm the 18-month state of unrest, and warned that "unless an attempt is made to get to the roots of the unrest, we will have an ongoing, endemic state of violence in this country."

In Johannesburg, police said an explosion in the main police station at John Vorster Square injured two officers and South African radio said two civilians also were wounded.

Police refused to say if it was a bomb, but reported the blast went off in a third-story toilet, blowing a hole in an outer wall. It occurred just before noon.