11 Die as Black Factions Battle in South Africa

Residents and migrant workers fought each other with hatchets, knives and rocks in a black township near Johannesburg, and witnesses and an official said today that at least 11 people were killed.

Charles Marx, chief director for black affairs for the area, listed 11 men killed in the fighting in Tsakane, 14 miles from Johannesburg. The fighting started Tuesday night and continued until today.

Police blamed the fighting on rivalries between tribal groups but residents denied that, saying it involved differences on how to confront white-minority rule.

Soldiers and police moved in to separate the combatants at midday. By late afternoon, soldiers aboard armored personnel carriers escorted buses that were evacuating about 3,000 migrant laborers out of the township.

Beer Hall Set Afire

The residents said the migrants, who live in men-only hostels, were angered after rioting residents set fire to a hostel beer hall last week.

In nine months of anti-apartheid rioting, younger blacks have attacked beer halls and liquor outlets as symbols of white domination.

Tsakane residents said the men living in the hostel wanted their beer hall spared. Scattered fights broke out and a man from a hostel was killed and his body set on fire over the weekend, residents said.

They said hostel-dwellers sought revenge Tuesday night, rampaging through the township and sending residents fleeing into fields. Hand-to-hand fighting went on into this morning, and at least one hostel was torched, witnesses said.

Telephone service in the area was knocked out, and broken window glass littered smoke-filled streets. The army and police sealed off the township. Some reporters slipped by.

Allied Against Residents

Police had said the unrest pitted Zulus against Xhosas, but blacks from hostels said tribesmen lived together there and were allied against Tsakane residents.

Police said that in Tsakane on Tuesday night, about 250 blacks stoned and burned two black men to death. The body of a third black man was found in another part of the township Tuesday.

Police also reported overnight violence in five black areas in eastern Cape Province and in townships around Pretoria in the country’s industrial heartland. Soldiers and police swept through two riot-torn black townships in the south outside of Port Elizabeth.

Rioting against apartheid, the system under which 5 million whites dominate and deny the vote to more than 22 million blacks, has killed more than 200 people since August.