S. African exile injured in car blast; Pretoria hit

MAPUTO, Mozambique A prominent white South African exile, lawyerand writer Albie Sachs, was fighting for his life in a Maputohospital Thursday after his car blew up when he unlocked the door.

The blast destroyed the car, and shattered every window on theblock in the central Maputo district of Polana.

The Mozambique News Agency blamed the South African governmentfor the murder attempt. Pretoria denied responsibility.

Sachs, who is in his 50s, is a well-known figure in Maputo,where he works in the Mozambican Justice Ministry. He left SouthAfrica in the 1960s after a period of detention that generated hisbook The Prison Diary of Albie Sachs.

He is a member of the main South African undergroundanti-apartheid movement, the African National Congress.

Sachs is the second leading South African intellectual to suffera bomb attack in Maputo. In August, 1982, South African academicRuth First, who was director of research at the African studiescenter in Maputo University, was killed by a parcel bomb sent to heroffice. That attack was attributed to agents of the South Africangovernment.

Thursday's blast followed last week's assassination of DulcieSeptember, an ANC representative in Paris.

Diplomatic sources here said they believe South Africa islaunching a concerted effort to eliminate ANC members in Westerncapitals and southern African countries.

In a statement read on the main evening news on state-controlledtelevision in South Africa, Foreign Minister Roelof F. Botha said hisgovernment could "not accept responsibility for the conflict" inMozambique and "certainly not for the violent actions emanating fromthis."