Zulus Kill 30 Tribal Foes in South Africa

Zulu warriors, in a vengeful continuation of their bitter feud with Pondo tribesmen, attacked a Pondo settlement south of Durban on Thursday, killing at least 30 people and razing almost the entire shantytown.

Armed with spears, machetes, war clubs and homemade guns, the Zulus, estimated to number more than 1,000, drove the Pondos out of the Kwamakhuta section of Umbogintwini, just south of the Durban airport on the Indian Ocean coast, and then burned to the ground most of the hillside settlement’s 4,000 shacks.

The Pondos, who had beaten the Zulus decisively in a series of battles in the area during Christmas week when 63 were killed, were outnumbered 2-to-1 on Thursday and had to flee for their lives into the Umbumbulu hills, according to police and eyewitness accounts.

Police said that by nightfall they had recovered the bodies of 29 men and one woman, mostly Pondos, and that bodies still hidden by the dense bush could bring the full death toll to as high as 50. Hospital spokesmen put the number of seriously injured at nearly 100.

Police Arrest 480

Heavily armed riot police managed to separate the warring tribesmen about noon Thursday after a night of fierce fighting. They arrested more than 480 tribesmen and disarmed several hundred more, filling several trucks with their weapons.

A counterattack by the Pondos, who have called for assistance from fellow tribesmen, is now expected in what could become open tribal warfare around Durban, South Africa’s third largest city.

Police units in the area were reinforced late Thursday to maintain the fragile cease-fire, but medical workers and newsmen at Umbogintwini said that it probably would take large numbers of troops to halt the fighting if it started again.

“What we saw here at Kwamakhuta is only a glimpse of the carnage that would come with a tribal war,” a medical missionary said, asking not to be identified by name. “Thousands, literally thousands, would die if this conflict swept across the region, and those deaths would deepen the feud so that it lasted another hundred years or more.”

Compete for Jobs, Land

The causes for the bitter feud are complex. The underlying reason, according to South African social scientists, is economic competition--for jobs, for land, for water and other natural resources--that has been sharpened by the country’s severe recession.

Historically, however, the Zulus and Xhosa-speaking tribes like the Pondos have been political rivals, with the Xhosas, who now number about 5 million, fiercely resisting the domination of the Zulus, South Africa’s largest ethnic group, numbering 6 million.

Ordered to Leave

After the Christmas week clashes, the local Zulu chief ordered Pondos, most of whom had come north from the impoverished Transkei region to look for work in Durban, to leave the area--or be driven from it.

“This is Zulu land, and those who are not Zulus must leave,” Chief Bhekizetha Makhanya declared. “If they do not, their bodies will become food for the hyenas.”

The Pondos, however, defied Makhanya, and renewed fighting had been expected.

Over the last two months, about 140 people have been killed in the Pondo-Zulu feuding around Durban, according to police, and the fighting has spread to the hostels of several gold mines and to Johannesburg’s black suburbs of Soweto and Alexandra.

In Durban itself, police opened fire with shotguns Thursday to disperse a group of several hundred blacks marching to a railway and bus station near the center of the city and singing anti-government “freedom songs” after a political rally. Two men were wounded and three arrested, according to police headquarters in Pretoria.