September 2, 1985

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.''