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LEAD: THE NEWSPAPER BILLBOARD I sighted on my last drive to Johannesburg's Jan Smuts Airport bore the message ''Evicted U.S. Newsman Regarded as Hostile.'' I was, in fact, being expelled by a Government that no longer wished me to chronicle its country's internal struggle. But hostile? Had I been hostile to South Africa in my three years as chief of The Times's bureau in Johannesburg, then surely that last ride along the freeway would have been laden with relief. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

JUNE 16, 1976, IS WOVEN INTO THE SOUL OF BLACK protest in South Africa. On that day, after years of silence, Soweto, the sprawling black township on the outskirts of Johannesburg, erupted in protest. The agony and bloodletting that followed spread to black townships throughout the country, and by the time it was over the following year, more than 570 lives had been lost. So, too, had the sense of an immutable, white-run South Africa. Ten years later, South Africa is again at war with itself. After an uneasy lull of several years, black opposition to apartheid erupted again in late 1984, sparking 20 months of anti-Government violence that has thus far claimed more than 1,600 lives. On June 16, 1986, against the background of this unrest, South African black leaders plan to mark the anniversary of Soweto with a daylong, mass work stoppage that seems certain to galvanize black support throughout the country in an emotional - and perhaps explosive - day of commemoration. At the forefront of this observance will be two major anti-apartheid organizations, the United Democratic Front and National Education Crisis Committee. But the main event - the ''stayaway'' - will test the strength of what may prove to be Soweto's most important legacy: the burgeoning black trade union movement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

FOR ALL HIS INFLUENCE, NEL-son Mandela is all but invisible. Since August 1962, the man most black South Africans look up to as their leader has been out of view - imprisoned for leading the banned African National Congress in its armed resistance to the apartheid system. During his confinement, Mandela's fame has grown into legend, assuming an almost mythical importance in the litanies of the nation's defiance. Yet he is visited regularly only by his family, and he remains unseen by his millions of supporters. Mandela was born in 1918, the eldest son of a chief in what is now the nominally independent homeland called Transkei. Trained as a lawyer, he joined the African National Congress in 1944, and was a leader of the congress's nonviolent campaigns against apartheid during the 1950's. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

LUCAS, AGED 14, NEEDED NO ENCOURagement to talk about his ambitions. ''When I am 18,'' he said, ''I will go to become a cadre in Lusaka. Then, instead of stones, I will have a bazooka.'' He used a profanity to describe the police who patrol near his home in Cradock, the township with South Africa's most stubborn black resistance, in the restive eastern Cape. When he saw the police, he said, he felt an urge to kill, which would be much easier with a bazooka than with rocks. ''When I see that thing,'' he said, referring to the armored police vehicle, ''I just want to get the bazooka and kill. Yes, I will be a cadre.'' A little over a year ago, Lucas, son of a railway worker, was just one more schoolboy in one more miserable South African township whose family was often divided by the father's absences at work for days or weeks at a time. But in that year, a year of school boycotts and violence and a year in which a constitutional revision formally excluded blacks from any possibility of sharing power, something has changed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

From an artist's street in Rome to the pull of the African bush, correspondents of The Times report on some memorable discoveries. THE BUSH: AFRICA'S CRADLE For those born in its great reaches, the first impressions might be the sound of corn being pounded, dimly heard through a wall of mud below a roof of straw; or chickens scratching in smooth-swept dirt; or the smoke of a cooking fire composed of three logs, arranged like spokes without a rim, that rarely goes out. The bush is Africa's cradle, derided by some city dwellers born in its embrace, yet sought out for respite in home villages warm with family and roots. It is the setting for Hemingways and Ruarks and those in quest of wild animals with gun or camera. For those who can afford it, a safari in Kenya or Zimbabwe or Zambia might be an occasion for opulence transposed to remote, hidden places. But for those who seek its joys without guides or the protection of organized camps and many retainers, the bush has its own harsh rules that dictate caution amid excitements, and careful planning to cope with its capriciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recounts the author's memory of returning to Langstrath Valley, England after thirty years, to find that the area's pristine beauty had not changed. Bringing along his daughter, who was the same age as he had been when he'd first visited; More.

LEAD: BY THE EMERALD rush of the Habur River, on the Turkish frontier, the Iraqi armies of Saddam Hussein raised their banners in late August to signal their victory over the Kurds. But the message of triumph went much further than that. Throughout the eight years of Baghdad's war with Iran, guerrillas from Iraq's Kurdish minority had stubbornly resisted the Baghdad regime's successive campaigns to crush a revolt that had spanned almost seven decades. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recommends six bars from around the world. Descriptions of decor, ambience, specialty drinks, clientele and prices; Bars mentioned, including Mark's Bar in New York City, the Metropole in Moscow and the Fifth Floor in London; Other locations including Hong Kong, San Francisco and Rio De Janeiro; Opinion that great bars come in every possible guise.

Looks at the pastime of people-watching. Observance of visitors to New York's Museum of Modern Art (MOMA); Comparison of past Romans going to the circus with present day tourist visits to Rome, Italy; Sights at a Rio de Janeiro beach in Brazil; Others.