South Africa Roar of the Lions

By Guy D. Garcia

The slaughter began with an incident all too familiar in South Africa's seething black urban townships. Returning from a Sunday drinking session in a local shebeen, or pub, a noisy group of Xhosa migrant workers from the grim, single-sex hostels of Tokoza township clashed with a crowd of Zulu rivals. Insults were traded, weapons brandished. When the dust settled, a man lay dead. Some said the victim was a Zulu killed by Xhosas, others a Xhosa killed by Zulus. In the end it hardly mattered: the murder unleashed tribal-based animosities that date back centuries and have claimed 4,000 people over the past three years.

The conflagration of factional fighting last week went on for six days. It left at least 200 people dead and hundreds wounded -- in one week, more black civilians died than the African National Congress's guerrilla campaign killed in 30 years. As the bloodletting raged, the A.N.C. found itself standing side by side with the government of President F.W. de Klerk in desperately trying to bring peace to the strife-torn townships.

In the Tokoza, Katlehong and Vosloorus sections around Johannesburg, roving bands of Zulus set houses on fire and attacked fleeing residents with guns, spears and butcher knives. Whole villages fled in terror as Zulu impis went on the warpath, kicking up dust with their traditional war dances and waving sticks, pangas and stabbing spears. Some victims were doused with gasoline and set aflame; others were hacked to death with axes. As the carnage spread to Soweto, at least 35 people died. Police tore down barricades of burning tires and debris and used tear gas and armored vehicles to keep the warring factions apart.

The bloody outbreak is a setback for Nelson Mandela and the A.N.C., which only two weeks earlier had announced that it was suspending its 29 years of armed struggle against the government. Complicating matters further is the political dimension of the tribal warfare, which is linked to a long-standing feud between Mandela's A.N.C. and the Inkatha movement led by Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Chief Minister of Kwazulu, the tribal homeland of the country's 7 million Zulus. While Inkatha leaders have publicly deplored the killings, the violence is considered a sign of the Zulus' frustration over De Klerk's failure to include them in negotiations for a new constitution.

The political face-off between the A.N.C. and the mostly Zulu Inkatha membership has long threatened to break the black majority apart. Buthelezi, who was once an active member of the A.N.C.'s Youth League, persistently condemned the outlawed congress for its policy of violence and has always maintained that his 1.5 million-member Inkatha movement is more representative of South Africa's blacks. From its outposts in exile, the A.N.C. called Buthelezi a puppet of the South African government and a traitor to the black cause and threatened to have him assassinated.

Tensions between the two groups have grown even worse since last February, when the government released Mandela, a Xhosa from the Transkei, from prison and legalized the A.N.C. Mandela had agreed to talk with Buthelezi but then abruptly canceled the meeting. When young A.N.C. radicals began to assert ^ themselves in the townships, many of the older, traditionalist Zulus decided it was time to teach the upstarts a lesson. "When they began calling us Zulu donkeys, we reminded them that all Xhosas are dogs," said a Tokoza hostel dweller. "Now they know that the Zulu donkeys are lions."

Mandela and De Klerk held an urgent, unscheduled meeting in Pretoria to discuss ways to stanch the bloodletting and agreed that the rival black organizations should establish joint committees in the townships to cooperate with police in implementing a cease-fire. Next day Mandela met with Law and Order Minister Adriaan Vlok in Soweto, where both men made an appeal for calm and agreed to set up a "peace forum" composed of police, A.N.C. and Inkatha representatives.

Violence also surfaced at the other end of the political spectrum. In Vryheid in northern Natal, a tear-gas bomb believed to have been thrown by right-wing extremists went off in a meeting hall where De Klerk was about to address a crowd of whites. Undaunted, De Klerk moved the meeting outside and reaffirmed that there was "no turning back" from his policy of seeking a new social order.

Nevertheless the incident was a sobering reminder of political divisions within De Klerk's camp and the likelihood that conservatives will not hesitate to use intertribal warfare as an excuse to slow or halt reforms. More damaging perhaps is the effect the riots could have on the credibility of Mandela, who may find it harder to convince nervous whites that any political deals struck with the A.N.C. would be respected by all black South Africans.

By week's end a relative calm was restored through most of the country, yet it was clear that the peace would only be temporary without a binding truce between Mandela and Buthelezi. Agreeing that no solution could be found "without the involvement" of his rivals, Mandela said perhaps he and Buthelezi could address peace rallies together. But, he added, "there have been many complicating factors." When both sides count the final cost of this week's encounters, the numbers of dead and the cries for vengeance will certainly further slow progress along the painful road to abolishing apartheid.

With reporting by Peter Hawthorne/Cape Town