5 Die as Thousands Riot in S. Africa

Thousands of black residents of the sprawling Crossroads squatter settlement outside Cape Town rioted for more than 12 hours Monday to protest government plans to move them from the shantytown to a new district farther from the city.

Five blacks were killed, police reported Monday night, and a doctor at the settlement’s clinic said more than 60 were injured, many seriously, in South Africa’s worst racial violence in three months.

More unrest was reported in the black townships around Johannesburg and the coastal industrial centers of Port Elizabeth and Durban after weekend clashes between blacks and police that left three more dead.

Fear of New Violence

The government of President Pieter W. Botha, who has launched potentially far-reaching political reforms in the last month in the hope of meeting some black demands, is now worried that the country is entering another spiral of escalating violence. Nearly 200 people died during a five-month period of violence last year.

Tension is running high in urban black townships across the country. More and more workers are being laid off by South Africa’s recession-hit industries. Black high school students, angered by what they see as government failure to honor promises made last year on educational problems, are resuming boycotts of classes. And issues such as higher rents, forced resettlement and the establishment of new police forces for the black townships seem to be multiplying.

The violence at Crossroads, 12 miles southeast of Cape Town, stemmed from fears of the 65,000 residents that the government was planning to begin resettling them this week to a new community, Khayelitsha, despite repeated pledges that they would not be forced to move, at least for the present.

Anticipating a confrontation, Crossroads community leaders asked workers to stay home to ensure a strong and united front. When buses, trucks and taxis arrived early Monday to take workers to their jobs in Cape Town, angry youths hurled stones and firebombs at them.

The fighting quickly spread out of Crossroads and up and down the highways that surround it, with youths setting up barricades of stones, logs, burning tires and wrecked autos. Police fired volleys of tear gas, rubber bullets and later birdshot at the crowds of black protesters, whose numbers were put by officials on the scene at “upwards of 15,000.”

Clashes continued between youths and police until after nightfall, and a police spokesman in Cape Town described the situation Monday evening as “very, very tense but presently under control.”

Meanwhile, the government tried to refute widespread rumors that Crossroads residents would be moved to Khayelitsha, the new settlement intended for blacks about 20 miles from Cape Town. Gerrit Viljoen, minister for cooperation and development, who oversees black affairs, denied “in the strongest terms” that any major resettlement is imminent and repeated his pledge that the government will use persuasion rather than force.

Begun Decade Ago

Crossroads was formed about 10 years ago when the wives of blacks working in Cape Town began setting up tents and shacks outside the city in order to be with their husbands. Under South Africa’s apartheid regulations, workers’ wives and children were confined to rural tribal homelands.

The government has repeatedly tried to move the settlement and has repeatedly promised residents better housing if they will leave. Khayelitsha has two-room, concrete-block houses that can be expanded, but it is farther from Cape Town, the rent is higher and the facilities are few.