S. Africa Townspeople, Migrants Clash; 11 Die

Eleven blacks were killed and scores more injured here Wednesday when migrant workers, armed with traditional tribal weapons, swept Tsakane in wave upon wave of attacks to avenge the deaths of two colleagues.

Forming 200-man impis, the battle unit of the Zulu tribe, and arming themselves with spears, machetes, axes, clubs and makeshift weapons of all sorts, the migrants attacked men, women and even children in fighting that began late Tuesday and lasted most of Wednesday. Cries of Bayete! --the Zulu war cry meaning “death to the enemy”--echoed through the town.

Many of the residents of Tsakane, 30 miles southeast of Johannesburg, fled to other black townships nearby or hid in outlying fields, but many of those who remained fought back, forming their own battle units, and in a force of more than 3,000 marched on the migrant workers’ barracks-like hostel and razed it with firebombs.

Police and soldiers, attempting first to restore order and later simply to contain the violence, fired volley after volley of tear gas canisters at both sides until great, acrid clouds of the gas hung over the township, mixing with the smoke from the burning homes, shops and hostels.

Gasoline-Filled Bottles

After troops had cordoned off Tsakane, the steady firing of police riot guns could be heard throughout the day, along with the intermittent muffled explosions of gasoline-filled bottles inside homes and shops in the town of more than 200,000. At nightfall, the migrant workers had been moved out of Tsakane by the government, but residents were anticipating another overnight assault.

The death toll Wednesday will probably exceed 20 as more bodies are found and some of those hospitalized die of their injuries, police said. Of the 11 deaths reported Wednesday, nine were described by police as Tsakane residents and two as migrant workers living at the hostel.

Through the haze of smoke that reached to the outskirts of the town, club-waving gangs could be seen pursuing men, women and children no older than 8 or 9 through the streets and into the surrounding fields. Many fell prey to their pursuers and were beaten mercilessly. Some of the women who were caught were seen to be raped by half a dozen men. Occasionally, the scream of a child could be heard across the fields.

A New Escalation

The fighting in Tsakane, although not directly related to the recent political and racial unrest across South Africa, was some of the bloodiest of the past year and may mark a new escalation of the widespread violence here.

It began Saturday when township youths set fire to a beer hall patronized by the migrant workers and assaulted several hostel residents, dousing one with gasoline and setting him on fire.

Hostel residents, mostly Zulus and Xhosas from rural areas living here on work contracts without their families, retaliated Sunday and Monday with attacks on houses around their hostel complex, killing three residents. Another man was killed in a confrontation with police. Two more men, migrant workers from the hostel, were stoned and beaten unconscious and then set afire Tuesday, provoking the battle Wednesday.

After a night of fighting, police arranged talks at noon Wednesday between township officials and representatives of the migrant workers in a soccer field a quarter of a mile from the smoldering hostel as heavily armed contingents from each side stood around the edge of the field, separated by police and soldiers.

Envy Residents’ Permits

Deep tensions lie beneath the clash, according to black political observers. The migrant workers, who may not bring their families to the city and must live apart for 11 months at a time, have long envied the permits that allow regular township residents to live in urban areas and to get better paying jobs here.

But the township residents, better educated and more politicized, often view the migrant workers as undercutting them in the labor market by accepting lower pay and as weakening the struggle against South Africa’s apartheid policies of racial segregation by accepting their migrant status.