Nine South African Political Refugees Slain; Lesotho Blames Pretoria

Nine South African political refugees, most of them members of the outlawed African National Congress, were shot to death early Friday in Maseru, the capital of Lesotho. The government of Lesotho said the killers were South African army commandos, but South Africa denied it.

Seven blacks--four women and three men--were killed at a party about 1 a.m. in a Maseru suburb, according to Lesotho government spokesmen, and two people--a white woman and her mixed-race husband--were shot in their beds a mile away. Their sleeping nine-month-old baby was unharmed.

Six of the victims were members of the African National Congress, which is waging a guerrilla war against South Africa’s minority white government, and all, including Jacqueline Quinn, a white schoolteacher from Cape Town, were described as refugees from South Africa’s apartheid system.

Speaking Afrikaans

The Lesotho government said the killers, a squad of whites with blackened faces, wearing dark green uniforms, speaking Afrikaans and armed with silencer-fitted 9-millimeter pistols, were South African commandos who fled back across the Caledon River into South Africa after burning their cars. One of the victims said he had been shot by the “Boers,” that is, South Africans, Lesotho added.

But the Pretoria government disclaimed any involvement. “We categorically deny these allegations,” Commandant John Rolt, a South African military spokesman, said. “We were not involved in any way.”

Later, however, South Africa’s state security council warned Lesotho and other neighboring black-ruled countries that if they allow the African National Congress and other anti-apartheid groups to operate from their territory, they will become targets in Pretoria’s campaign against terrorists.

‘Pay a Heavy Price’

“The governments of these countries must once again be informed of the South African government’s grave concern at the increased terrorist activities for their territory, and be made to realize that if this menace is allowed to continue, all the peoples of southern Africa will pay a heavy price,” the state security council said after a special meeting in Cape Town presided over by President Pieter W. Botha.

Many South Africans, white as well as black, viewed the Maseru raid as retribution for the deaths of six whites, four of them children, among two families vacationing on a game ranch, who were killed last Sunday in a land mine explosion near the border with Zimbabwe. The African National Congress said from its headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia, that its guerrillas planted the mine.

But a man saying he represented the Lesotho Liberation Army, which is fighting to oust Lesotho’s Prime Minister Leabua Jonathan, called the South African Press Assn. to claim responsibility for the Maseru shootings, asserting that most of the victims had been supporters of Jonathan.

This claim was immediately dismissed by the Lesotho government as a South African attempt to avoid responsibility for the killings, and Lesotho officials said Pretoria had actually threatened in a message Wednesday to strike at suspected African National Congress guerrillas within Lesotho if the Maseru government did not act first.

Eight Escape Killers

At least eight people escaped the killers in Maseru by jumping out of windows and hiding in closets, witnesses told newsmen in the Lesotho capital. The survivors said they had been lured into a trap by a man, suspected now of being a South African agent, who invited a large group of politically active exiles to a party in western Maseru less than half a mile from the South African border. About 1 a.m., the raiders burst through both front and back doors of the house, firing as they entered, according to the survivors.

The shootings Friday followed the killing 10 days ago of seven Lesotho citizens in the southeast of the country. Lesotho also blamed those deaths on South Africa, which in turn suggested that they resulted from the continuing conflict between the Jonathan government and the Lesotho Liberation Army, which has had support from Pretoria.

Lesotho, a tiny, mountainous kingdom of 1.5 million Basutho tribesmen, is totally surrounded by South Africa and is economically dependent on it, with about half its national income generated by migrant laborers who work in South Africa, particularly as gold miners.

Haven for Refugees

But Lesotho has taken in thousands of South African refugees over the years--about 11,000 live there now, mostly in the capital--and Pretoria has frequently accused Maseru of harboring guerrillas from the African National Congress, a charge now denied by Lesotho. In December, 1982, South African commandos raided the Lesotho capital, killing 42, most of them South African refugees, in a strike at the African National Congress offices there.

South Africa’s relations with its other black-ruled neighbors have become increasingly strained in recent weeks, and fears are growing that Pretoria is planning a series of attacks on them.

“It is clear that terrorist elements continue to operate from within Zimbabwe, Botswana, Mozambique, Zambia, Lesotho and Swaziland despite repeated representations based on irrefutable evidence,” the state security council said in an unusual statement that underlined the importance of its Cape Town meeting.

“The South African government has a duty to protect the country’s boundaries and the security of its citizens by all appropriate means,” the council added.

Following the series of seven land mine explosions near the Limpopo River, which separates South Africa from Zimbabwe, Pretoria warned that it would strike if Zimbabwe allowed its territory to be used by guerrillas.