Mandela’s Home Blasted by Firebomb

Police today reported that a firebomb damaged the home of Winnie Mandela, wife of black nationalist leader Nelson Mandela.

In other violence, police said, four people died in rioting near East London and a fifth man was killed when police broke up a group of youths setting up road blocks near Queenstown.

The South African Institute of Race Relations said 601 people, most of them black, have died since racial strife erupted last September, eclipsing the official death toll of 575 in the unrest triggered by the Soweto riots in 1976.

“The death toll is unprecedented in the history of apartheid,” the institute said.

State of Emergency

The figures include at least 100 people who have been killed since July 21, when Botha declared a state of emergency in 36 areas hardest hit by racial violence.

In Johannesburg, lawyer Ismael Ayob said today that a firebomb badly damaged a bedroom and workshop at Winnie Mandela’s home during the night. Police confirmed the attack but could not identify the attackers or say how much damage was caused.

Mandela’s home was extensively damaged a week ago when police drove out 30 black demonstrators who had fled to the house in Brandfort, about 220 miles south of Johannesburg.

Living in Exile

Mandela is exiled to Brandfort under a government order that forbids her to talk to reporters, leave the area without permission or be with more than one other person at a time.

Ayob said that at the time of the attack, Mandela was in Johannesburg, where she went into hiding after last week’s police raid.

Her husband, Nelson, leader of the outlawed African National Congress, was convicted in 1964 on a charge of plotting sabotage and has been in prison for 21 years.

Elsewhere in the embattled nation, gunfire and arson were reported in Duncan Village, a ghetto outside East London about 500 miles south of Johannesburg.

Police sealed off the area late Monday, but residents said gunfire went on late into the night as government buildings, houses and cars went up in flames.

In today’s violence report, police said officers fired shotguns and rifles to disperse youths who were burning and looting vehicles and buildings in the village.

‘This Barbaric Act’

“A black man was wounded,” police said. “The wounded man was thrown into a burning vehicle by his fellow arsonists and died as a result of this barbaric act.”

Police said they found the bodies of two black men and a “colored” person of mixed-race in Duncan Village today. “The circumstances of these deaths are being investigated,” a spokesman said.

Police said officers also fired into a crowd and killed one man when youths threw up street barricades at Queenstown, about 420 miles south of Johannesburg.