S. African Strife Hits Port City : 6 Die Near Durban, a Relatively Quiet Area for Past Year

At least six people, including a 15-month-old girl, have been killed in the first large-scale rioting near the South African port city of Durban in a year of sustained civil strife.

Four blacks were killed during running street battles between police and thousands of rioting youths in two of Durban’s black townships, according to police reports. The death toll in the fighting, which continued through Wednesday, may rise as more bodies are found in debris overnight.

Another man, a member of Durban’s large Indian community, died from injuries suffered when his car was stoned and burned Tuesday night in a black township, and the baby girl was burned to death when her family’s house was set ablaze during the rioting.

First Asian Victim

The Indian victim, Gobin Singh, 45, is believed to be the first Asian killed among the approximately 500 reported victims of the year’s violence.

The trouble near Durban stems from the assassination last week of Victoria Mxenge, a prominent black civil rights lawyer who was killed by four black men who shot her in the head and split her skull with an ax.

Students, blaming the minority white regime for the murder, began protests Monday, according to reliable black sources in Durban, and went on the rampage Tuesday night, after one of their leaders was shot and killed by a policeman whose house had been set afire.

Throughout Wednesday, police battled to contain the rioting in Kwamashu, north of Durban, and Umlazi, south of the city, as youths surged through the two densely populated black townships--burning government offices, looting stores, stoning cars, trucks and buses and setting many of them afire, and launching firebomb attacks on police patrols.

Escalation of Force

Volleys of tear-gas grenades and rubber bullets were repeatedly fired to disperse the youths, according to police, and eventually birdshot and live ammunition were used as well when the violence continued. Combat troops in armored cars surrounded both townships Wednesday morning to ensure that the rioting did not spread and then moved in to reinforce the embattled police.

“This was more like a war than a riot,” a black physician in Umlazi said later, asking not to be quoted by name. “I had casualties--men, women, but mostly children--covering every inch of my clinic floor, and they kept coming faster than I could treat them. The shooting and the explosions and the shouting were horrific. The air was so full of smoke and tear gas that we could hardly breathe. There was blood everywhere.”

Durban, 350 miles southeast of Johannesburg, has been largely free of unrest during the last year, and the city is not among the 36 magisterial districts in which a state of emergency was declared 18 days ago to give the police and army greater powers to deal with disturbances.

Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, leader of the powerful Zulu people and chief minister of the Zulu tribal homeland, which has jurisdiction over the two townships, blamed his political rivals for the trouble. He accused them of “using children, thugs and the unemployed as their tools to create the impression that what we see happening is political action by blacks.”

Buthelezi, whose strong leadership had been a central factor in keeping Durban quiet, warned that he would not tolerate any unrest.

“We blacks have for generations resented being terrorized by those who oppress us,” he said, “and there is no way in which we are going to accept being terrorized by other blacks, aided and abetted by misguided children and by these thugs.”

Asian families continued fleeing the area Wednesday as black youths looted their stores, burned their houses and stoned their cars. Amichand Rajbansi, the chief minister of the Indian House of Delegates in South Africa’s tricameral Parliament and himself the target of a hand-grenade attack Sunday night, also called on the police to take stronger action against the rioting and took charge of securing safe haven for his people.

597 Now Released

Scattered unrest, marked by arson, stone-throwing and school boycotts, was reported in a dozen other areas of the country by national police headquarters in Pretoria. Police said that 1,459 people have now been detained without charges under the emergency regulations and that 597 have been released, leaving 862 still being held.

The South African government, meanwhile, reveled in what it took as President Reagan’s praise for the way it has been handling the civil unrest here.

“Ronald Reagan has done it again,” the state-guided South African Broadcasting Corp. said in a radio commentary reflecting government views.

“Just when South Africans must have begun to feel that every leader in the Western world was determined to see no justification whatsoever in the state of emergency . . . the President . . . stepped in and broke the farce.”

Reagan, questioned by newsmen at the White House on Monday about the the unrest and the state of emergency here, said, “I think we have to recognize sometimes when actions are taken in an effort to curb violence.”

‘No More Dependable Ally’

“For a democratic reformist, South Africa has no more dependable ally in the Western world than the President of the United States,” the radio commentary said.

President Pieter W. Botha on Wednesday pledged to continue the country’s political, economic and social reforms, but at a gradual pace not affected by either the unrest or by international pressure.

Visiting a tribal homeland, Kwandebele in the northeast, Botha said: “In spite of this hysterical outcry (over the unrest and state of emergency), we will continue on the road of orderly development--constitutional, social and economic. We will follow the road of justice. . . . No other country can tell us what to do. Only we in South Africa can solve our problems.”

Over the last week, government officials have begun to hint that many of the reforms announced in preliminary form by Botha early this year will be put into effect shortly in a further effort to end the unrest and open a political dialogue with the country’s black majority.

Mandela’s Wife in Hiding

In other developments Wednesday, Winnie Mandela, the wife of imprisoned African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, went into hiding in the wake of a police raid on her home in Brandfort, the remote small town in the Orange Free State to which she has been exiled by the government.

After visiting the house with her, Ismail Ayob, her lawyer, said he felt that she would be in serious danger if she remained there, as required by the government, and thus had taken her to “a secret place of safety.” Mrs. Mandela, who had been in Johannesburg during the raid, went home briefly and then returned here.

Police on Tuesday said they had arrested 30 people, including Mrs. Mandela’s sister, in the raid on the house and found seven gasoline-filled bottles with paper wicks to be used as firebombs there. Ayob said the house was still full of tear-gas fumes, that doors had been ripped from their hinges and furniture smashed and that blood was on the walls and floor.