Protests in Cape Town Draw Thousands

More than 20,000 mourners, many chanting “power to the people,” attended peaceful funerals in black and mixed-race townships here Saturday for people killed in clashes with the police.

Later in the day, strife broke out among several racial groups.

Anticipating violent protest in the aftermath of Friday’s execution of African National Congress member Benjamin Moloisi, 31, the police in Crossroads, a sprawling squatter camp outside Cape Town, had set up roadblocks and sealed off the area. However, they stayed away from funeral-procession routes, and no violence was reported Saturday morning.

A service for Abdul-Karim Fridie, 30, a Muslim who was gunned down outside a mosque in the mixed-race township of Athlone on Thursday, attracted 12,000 people who packed a local stadium and walked five miles to the cemetery.

The largely Muslim crowd shouted “Allahu akbar” (God is great), and speakers denounced the police as murderers.

In the township of Hazendal, 10,000 mourners for three dead youths packed a church while others jammed an adjoining hall. Police stayed away, and the three were buried without incident.

The youths--Michael Miranda, 11; Shaun Magmoed, 15, and Jonathan Claasen, 18, were killed Tuesday when police, hidden in boxes in an unmarked truck, opened fire on a crowd throwing stones.

Later Saturday, individual white violence and black rebellion were reported around the southern city.

South African radio said a white man killed a black stoning his truck. Witnesses in another incident saw youths attempting to loot and burn a white-owned supermarket as they shouted defiance at police. The broadcast said the white opened fire on rioters who threw a brick through his windshield, injuring him and his father.

Earlier, a Reuters correspondent saw officials of the United Democratic Front anti-apartheid coalition struggle to restrain youths after a rally in Hanover Park, an area zoned for Coloreds.

Scores of youths lighted fires, smashed windows and tried to break into a warehouse belonging to a major supermarket chain. Some children ran around with boxes of shotgun cartridges, an indication of the escalation of unrest in the township.

President Pieter W. Botha warned Friday that he would take tough action to put down unrest. He spoke as hundreds of black mourners leaving a memorial service for Moloisi went on a rampage through downtown Johannesburg. The execution was protested widely. In Paris early Saturday, a bomb wrecked the offices of the French airline UTA near the Madeleine church. There were no known casualties. The leftist group Direct Action took responsibility and said the attack was in reprisal for the hanging of Moloisi. The line’s routes include South Africa.