Blacks, South Africa Police Clash After Funeral

The mass funeral for 11 blacks killed by police in recent anti-apartheid protests erupted into another fierce battle here Saturday in South Africa’s continuing cycle of violence.

As they left the funeral in Guguletu, a black township outside Cape Town, some youths among the 5,000 mourners stoned policemen and soldiers deployed throughout the township, and the security forces fired back with tear gas, rubber bullets and birdshot.

The fighting intensified as the youths hurled firebombs at the armored cars of the policemen and soldiers--one moving car was reportedly hit six times in less than a block before escaping--and the security forces began firing military rifles and shotguns loaded with buckshot at the rioters.

The clashes quickly spread to neighboring Nyanga, another black ghetto, and by nightfall the area, less than 10 miles from the center of Cape Town, was another battlefield in the war between South Africa’s minority white regime and the country’s black majority.

Muzzle Flashes Everywhere

The muzzle flashes of police shotguns and army rifles could be seen throughout the two townships. Quickly erected barricades of tires, old furniture and scrap wood blazed away. The thickening clouds of smoke and tear gas all but obscured the sunset.

According to early, incomplete casualty figures from the police, one person was killed in the fighting, but the wounded began arriving later at the non-government clinic in the nearby Crossroads squatter settlement.

“One of the worst clashes yet,” a doctor there said. “One of the very worst.”

At least 34 people, all blacks or Coloreds (those of mixed race), have been killed in the unrest here since the police prevented thousands of blacks, Coloreds, Indians and whites from marching on Pollsmoor Prison 10 days ago to demand that Nelson Mandela, the African National Congress leader, be freed.

Boy, Girl Killed

Police reported earlier Saturday that a boy and a girl had been shot to death late Friday at Mdantsane, a black township near East London in the nominally independent Xhosa tribal homeland of Ciskei, where unrest has spread in the past month.

The 14-year-old girl was killed when police surrounded an anti-government rally and, when youths began to stone them, opened fire, a Ciskei police spokesman said.

The boy, also in his early teens, was fatally wounded by a Ciskei police lieutenant whose house was being attacked with stones and firebombs by 150 youths, the spokesman said.

In New Brighton, a black township outside Port Elizabeth in eastern Cape province, a 20-year-old black was shot and killed by police, who said he was attempting to intimidate others and force them to join a continuing black boycott of white stores there.

In Cape Town, a 22-year-old Colored man was shot and killed by a white motorist who told police that about 15 Colored youths had attacked him and a companion with stones, sticks and knives when they stopped Friday night in the Colored suburb of Ravensmead, the scene of earlier unrest. Police said the white may be charged with homicide.

And in downtown Cape Town on Friday night, a white businessman visiting from Johannesburg shot and killed a Colored man who, he told police, had tried to rob him with a knife. The businessman also wounded one of two alleged accomplices.

Although police are treating this case as an attempted robbery, a senior police officer here commented Saturday, “You cannot deny there is a racial angle--and it is an unfortunate result of all this violence.

Many Carry Weapons

“We do not want to see everyone carrying weapons and using them at the first provocation because people are going to get hurt, get killed,” he continued. “Yet we cannot tell people they have no right to protect themselves, their families and their property--because they do. And, we cannot tell people they should not be frightened . . . when they see riots all around them. Incidents like these are going to become common, I’m afraid, and will grow if the unrest is not ended quickly.”

On Wednesday, Colored youths attacked an outlying white suburb, bombarding about 10 houses with stones and firebombs, before residents drove them off with pistol and shotgun fire. A similar attack occurred outside East London the same night. A third incident, unconfirmed by police, was reported here Friday.

Alarmed by the prospects that heavily armed vigilante groups might try to defend their suburbs and to “contain” the spreading unrest, police are now trying to play down the interracial attacks.

More trouble is likely Monday when more than 360,000 Colored and Indian students are locked out of their schools in a government bid to quell the continuing unrest around Cape Town by preventing youths from holding their protest rallies on school grounds.

Saturday’s daylong funeral on the soccer field at Guguletu reflected the growing anger and militancy of blacks here.

‘Give Us AK-47s’

“Death to the South African Defense Forces,” one banner at the funeral said, and another, addressed to Oliver Tambo, president of the outlawed African National Congress, proclaimed, “Tambo, We Are Ready--Give Us Guns, Give Us AK-47s.”

Another banner was that of the Congress of South African Students, outlawed 10 days ago, and beneath it was the slogan, “You Cannot Ban an Idea.”

Everywhere, there were placards declaring, “Nelson Mandela Is Our Leader.” The caskets were placed beneath a large portrait of Mandela, and each was draped with the black, green and gold colors of the African National Congress.

The mood was one of anger--all but one of the victims were under 20 years old, and one, who suffocated when tear gas was fired into her home by police, was only two months old. But the funeral might have ended peacefully, as have those of other victims of the unrest here, if the mourners had not been confronted with a government show of force in the form of more than 30 armored cars as they left the cemetery.

“Botha’s government is not a government,” one of the funeral speakers, Sister Mary Bernard Mncube, told the mourners, referring to President Pieter W. Botha’s administration. “We who have gathered here are the government, (for) we constitute the majority. We are not afraid any longer. We are coming.”

Police and soldiers had sealed off Guguletu early Saturday morning, turning away everyone but residents, searching all cars as they entered and sweeping through the township to expel all journalists, although a few black reporters were allowed to remain.

“You people just add to all this trouble, and I would just lock you up or shoot you if I had my way,” a sergeant-major said as he wrote out a notice forbidding this reporter from entering Guguletu or other black townships nearby on pain of six months’ imprisonment. “What happens here is no concern of yours.”