Asians, Zulus Clash in Black S. Africa Towns

Angry Asians firing shotguns battled rampaging Zulu looters Friday as the death toll from four days of racial violence in black townships near Durban soared to at least 55.

In Washington, White House spokesman Larry Speakes said that South African Foreign Minister Roelof (Pik) Botha outlined a policy review being undertaken by his white minority government during a private meeting with national security adviser Robert McFarlane last week in Vienna. Botha held a second meeting with Assistant Secretary of State Chester Crocker on Friday.

Speakes said the policy review was expected to continue “for a matter of days, perhaps weeks.” There was no indication if the results would give the nation’s black majority a voice in the national government now denied to them by the government’s apartheid racial policy.

The developments came as heavily armed police cordoned off the Umlazi and Kwa-mashu townships to curb interracial violence that erupted last week after protests over the murder of Victoria Mxenge, a black civil rights attorney.

Government Blamed

Mxenge, 43, was shot to death in Umlazi on Aug. 1 by unidentified gunmen. Black radicals blamed the killing on a government “death squad.”

Some officials said the Asian-black violence flared after Asian merchants refused to close their shops and businesses to mourn Mxenges’ death.

At least 55 people--53 blacks and two Asians--have died in the four days of clashes, according to various sources. About 385 people have been injured.

Police officials said they killed 22 blacks, including one Friday in a clash between riot squads in armored cars and Zulu gangs throwing rocks and spears.

At Inanda, 13 miles northwest of Durban, Asians, claiming the government was not protecting them, fired shotguns at blacks who were looting a supermarket.

“This isn’t 1949,” one Asian gunman said, referring to the massacre of about 150 Asians by Zulus in a clash that continues to be a source of hostility between the two groups. “It’s 1985, and they won’t win this time.”

Zulus shouting “We want our country back” and “Amandla “ (power) also burned crops in the settlement, one of the few where Asians and blacks live together.

Zulu mobs also looted the former Inanda home of Indian peace activist Mohandas K. Gandhi, who left South Africa in 1914 to lead his nonviolent campaign for Indian independence. At the house--the centerpiece of a self-help community for blacks and Asians--black youths smashed pictures and tore books from shelves.

Gandhi Shrine Stormed

Black youths chanting the Zulu war cry “Usuthu” and armed with knives, scythes and sticks stormed a Gandhi shrine and confronted Asians brandishing sticks and guns.

Witnesses said security forces in Inanda, where scores of shops and houses have been looted and gutted by blacks in recent days, were limited contrasted with the massive deployment of forces around Umlazi and Kwa-mashu.

Blacks on Friday ransacked and looted a supermarket in Umlazi, 13 miles southeast of Durban. In nearby Kwa-mashu, police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at about 800 blacks who attacked a beer hall, buses and delivery trucks.

The new deaths brought to at least 530 the number of people killed in 11 months of nationwide unrest sparked by the introduction of a new constitution that failed to extend any political rights to South Africa’s black majority.