What was going on when I was born?

After decades of little action, the Federal Government, industry and organized medicine have begun a new attack on the problem of medical malpractice and incompetence. Although the vast majority of American doctors are considered competent, there have been complaints since the states began licensing physicians a century ago that no one was policing the medical profession adequately. Critics contended that the small minority of doctors who were incompetent, malevolent or infirm often were being allowed to continue treating patients, harming or killing uncounted numbers of them. Those complaints persist. At the same time, concerns over the rising expense of American medical care, estimated at more than $1 billion a day, have forced new attention on the problem because medical incompetence can be terribly expensive.

Leaning forward from the end of the space shuttle's mechanical arm, like the figurehead on the prow of an old sailing ship, Dr. James D. van Hoften today gave the rewired Leasat 3 satellite a vigorous shove and sent it spinning away with a new chance at a useful life in higher orbit. ''There that bad boy goes,'' the astronaut said as he watched the departing 15,000-pound satellite, sunlight glinting off the solar cells that cover its exterior. The successful redeployment of the communications satellite came at the end of the second space walk in two days by Dr. van Hoften and Dr. William F. Fisher of the space shuttle Discovery. They spent four and a half hours outside the cabin today, completing the repairs begun in an arduous seven-hour operation Saturday.

MBlack workers at seven mines tonight began a strike over pay that is expected to involve 60,000 of the country's 550,000 black mine employees. The leaders of their union, the National Union of Mine Workers, have said they fear employers will try to break the strike. The union has warned of a wider stoppage if that happens. #2 White Men Killed In another development, the police said two white men had been killed and two wounded when blacks returning from a funeral on Saturday night in a black township near East London attacked the men with knives and set their car ablaze.

The South African Government tonight announced a four-month freeze on repayments of principal on the country's foreign debt. Payments of interest on the loans will be permitted. At the same time, the Government said it was reintroducing exchange controls to stem the flow of foreign currency out of the country. The announcement, from a nation long used to depicting itself as economically robust and among the most creditworthy in the world, deepened a sense of crisis after a year of violence in the nation's black townships. The violence has claimed more than 650 lives and has forced the imposition of a state of emergency in some areas. The financial measures, Finance Minister Barend du Plessis said in a statement, would also discourage disinvestment from this racially divided land because investors would not be able to export the proceeds from selling their holdings here.

Anti-Government rebels appear to have opened a new battlefront in the central part of Nicaragua, where eight months ago the war was something local residents only read about in newspapers. Residents of the region, Boaco and Chontales Provinces, said Sandinista helicopters periodically bombard rebel positions in the rugged hills around their villages. They said squads of the United States-supported insurgents, known as contras, had descended on several villages, where they killed or kidnapped local Sandinista leaders and military recruiters and convened political meetings for residents. ''Nobody really knows where the contras are,'' said a shopkeeper in La Libertad, where the Sandinista Army maintains a sizable force backed by armor and heavy artillery. ''But I think we're surrounded.''

Hurricane Elena intensified dangerously today, unpredictably doubling back and once again bearing down on the Gulf Coast east of New Orleans with winds up to 125 miles an hour. The storm rolled up the coast of northwest Florida tonight, battering towns from Apalachicola to Fort Walton Beach with winds exceeding 74 miles an hour. As the eye passed off the coast of Panama City, high winds were reported to be causing power failures as far west as Pensacola. By changing course the hurricane, which has been weaving across the Gulf of Mexico since Thursday, menaced many of the same people who had been given an all-clear late Friday. Hundreds of thousands of people were again forced to flee inland.

The Reagan Administration has developed new rules for enforcing the Voting Rights Act that would make it more difficult for black and Hispanic people and other minority groups to challenge state and local election laws as discriminatory. The rules define the standards that the Justice Department uses in deciding whether to approve changes in local election laws and procedures. Under the law, certain states and counties with a history of discrimination must obtain approval from the department or the Federal District Court here before they put into effect any change in local election laws. Initiator Bears the Burden The proposed new rules say that in certain cases, the person or group opposing a change in local election law will bear the burden of proving that it results in discrimination. Under current rules, local officials must prove that voting laws are not discriminatory. In addition, the new rules would permit changes that make minority groups worse off if the Justice Department concludes that such ''retrogression'' is unavoidable.

The pastor of a West Side Roman Catholic church told his parishioners yesterday that he was ''saddened'' by their opposition to the establishment of a shelter for AIDS patients because ''the weakest of our community need help, and we were unable to offer that help.'' In homilies delivered in English and in Spanish at Sunday morning masses, the pastor, the Rev. Kenneth J. Smith, told parishioners at the Holy Name of Jesus Church that he understood their concerns. But ''as a priest who has been preaching the Gospel for many years, I am somewhat saddened,'' he said, by ''the attitude of rejection.'' He told worshipers it was the obligation of all sincere Christians ''to look within ourselves to change our hearts.''

When the Japanese delegation arrived by boat for the 9 A.M. ceremony aboard the battleship Missouri 40 years ago today, chattering spectators jammed every space on the forward decks and in the ship's superstructure. For some, only a glimpse could be had of the table, covered with green baize, on which the surrender documents waited to be signed. Sailors from the ship's crew, in dress whites, straddled the barrels of the Missouri's 16-inch guns. All chatter ceased as the Japanese appeared at the head of the gangway.

In a sturdy stone building across the street from the Imperial Palace moat, one must ride up five stories and then walk down a long corridor to find the office from which Gen. Douglas MacArthur once presided over Japan. It is not an especially elegant room, nor one that speaks of power. But it does whisper money, as might be expected inside the head offices of a major insurance company, Dai-ichi Mutual Life. The room has inlaid wood floors and soft pictures of fishing boats hanging from the paneled walls. In one corner is the general's old green chair, long faded. His desk, simple and scratched, sits in the center.

The East German leader, Erich Honecker, met for an hour here today with Franz Josef Strauss, the conservative Bavarian Premier. The meeting was another indication that neither East nor West Germany intended to allow a spreading espionage scandal to disrupt relations. Mr. Strauss, who flew to East Germany today by private plane, also visited the annual Leipzig trade fair. The fair is regarded as an opportunity for East and West German political and economic leaders to meet, and the tone of the meetings from year to year is considered an indication of relations between the Germanys.

The stepson of Andrei D. Sakharov, the Soviet physicist and human rights advocate, has begun a hunger strike to protest what he says has been Reagan Administration inaction in winning freedom for his father. Alexsey Semyonov, the son from a previous marriage of Yelena G. Bonner, Dr. Sakharov's wife, began the hunger strike on Friday near the Soviet Embassy here. He asserted today that the ''Reagan Administration is only paying lip service to human rights abuses in the Soviet Union'' and that it had not tried hard enough to win Dr. Sakharov's release.