30 Killed in Day of Violence in South Africa

At least 30 people were killed Wednesday in one of the bloodiest days yet in a year and a half of civil unrest in South Africa.

Thirteen black youths were shot and killed in running battles with the police in Kwazakele, a ghetto township outside the industrial center of Port Elizabeth, where tension has been rising for the past week. Nine of the youths died in a 2 a.m. firebomb attack on a government liquor store where policemen were lying in wait.

Eleven blacks were shot to death at Winterveld, a large squatter settlement 60 miles north of the capital, Pretoria, when policemen from Bophuthatswana, a nominally independent tribal homeland, opened fire on more than 5,000 people at an anti-government rally after they refused to disperse and began throwing stones.

May Include Children

The death toll at Winterveld may be as high as 22, and it may include a number of children as well as old men and women, according to residents who counted the bodies taken away by police. At least 70 people were seriously wounded in the incident, according to Bophuthatswana police, and more than 1,000 were arrested.

The Kwazakele and Winterveld incidents made clear that South Africa’s minority white government has failed to break the country’s spiral of racial violence, either with its promises of political, economic and social reforms or with the police crackdown under the 7 1/2-month state of emergency, which was lifted three weeks ago.

Anti-government protests are intensifying again in such cities as Port Elizabeth and continuing to spread to areas, such as Bophuthatswana, that until recently had remained quiet through most of the unrest.

South Africa’s prolonged crisis is now deeper than ever, with flashpoints of conflict all over the country.

Outside Durban, another Indian Ocean port city, two black men were burned to death in separate incidents, apparently on suspicion that they were government collaborators. One man had been implicated in the death last year of a local labor union leader, according to community sources in Durban, and the other was believed to be a police informer.

The body of a small child, stabbed to death, was found at Ntuzuma, northwest of Durban, according to policemen who linked his death to the murder of the suspected informer. A second child, stabbed and seriously wounded, was also found there.

2 Youths Killed

Two black youths were shot and killed by police in the Crossroads squatter settlement outside Cape Town after they reportedly stoned a patrolling police vehicle. Two policemen were killed in the area on Tuesday, and police said they have intensified their patrols there after repeatedly coming under rifle fire in the past two days.

Another youth was shot and killed by a security guard, the police said, in a firebomb attack on a government-owned beer hall at Kagiso, near Krugersdorp, northwest of Johannesburg.

Other serious incidents occurred in Soweto, the sprawling black city outside Johannesburg, in ghetto townships east and west of here, in the Vaal River industrial region to the south, around Pretoria, near East London and elsewhere in eastern Cape province, according to police headquarters in Pretoria.

A 77-year-old white pensioner from Durban, Basil Mee, died Wednesday in East London, where he had been stoned earlier this month after losing his way and driving into Duncan Village, one of the port city’s most volatile black ghettos.

26th White to Die

Mee was the 26th white to die in nearly 19 months of violence that has claimed the lives of more than 1,400 people. About two-thirds of the victims have been blacks killed in clashes with the police, according to independent monitoring groups that have analyzed the daily casualty reports. Most of the others have been killed in political infighting among blacks, often as suspected government collaborators.

The Winterveld meeting was called, according to community leaders and local clergymen, to protest recent arrests of scores of youths from the squatter settlement by Bophuthatswana police intent on preventing South Africa’s continuing unrest from spreading to the tribal homeland. Community leaders also wanted to discuss the threat of the forced resettlement of many of Winterveld’s more than 250,000 residents to more remote areas.

According to a spokesman for the Winterveld Action Committee, more than 5,000 residents, mostly parents who had stayed home from work Wednesday morning, gathered on a local soccer field to hear Col. M.A. Molope, the district police commander. In an attempt to cool tempers, Molope promised that those arrested would be freed during the day.

Youths Stone Police

Before the meeting broke up, however, some youths threw stones at the police, who opened fire with shotguns and then pursued the fleeing crowd through the streets and even into their homes. “The police apparently just drove up and down firing at people,” a Catholic priest at Winterveld said. “They seem to have gone wild, absolutely wild.”

The police version of the incident was substantially different. Molope said he had ordered the crowd, which he said numbered more than 10,000, to disperse because it was an “illegal gathering,” and when it refused, he told his men to fire tear gas. The police began shooting, Molope said, after youths threw stones and flaming bottles of gasoline at them. About 30 such firebombs were found at the scene, he added.

Although sometimes regarded as the “model homeland,” with a fair measure of democracy and respect for human rights under its black government, Bophuthatswana has been drawn increasingly into the unrest that now sweeps all South Africa. The homeland’s president, Lucas Mangope, recently ordered a police crackdown on protests and imposed a limited state of emergency on districts of Bophuthatswana around the particularly sensitive Pretoria area.

The fighting in long-troubled Kwazakele began there and in other black townships around Port Elizabeth last week after the rally in nearby Uitenhage marking the first anniversary of the police shooting of 20 blacks at Langa.

Attacked Liquor Store

The first clashes were those now regarded as normal between rock-throwing youths and police and troops firing tear gas and birdshot. But Tuesday evening, blacks mounted a full-scale attack on the government-owned liquor store, planning to burn it out and thus deprive the local town council of its revenues.

Two men, one 20 and the other 45, were killed by shotgun fire in one of the assaults, and two more were killed later in the day as policemen and troops patrolled the township in force. Around 2 a.m., according to the police, about 100 youths armed with rocks and firebombs attacked the store again, but were ambushed by policemen who had hidden inside. Nine of the youths were killed.

The fighting continued through most of Wednesday, with youths attacking the homes of black policemen still living in the township and the stores of former members of the town council with firebombs and barrages of rocks. The police said they used shotguns and tear gas to disperse the mobs.

Banning Orders Lifted

Meanwhile, government orders banning four people from political activities, and often putting them under effective house arrest for five years at a time, have been lifted following sweeping court decisions last week requiring specific reasons for such orders.

Among those now free to rejoin the campaign against apartheid are three leading members of the United Democratic Front coalition of opposition groups, including Henry Fazzie, its regional vice president in Port Elizabeth, and Trevor Manuel and Johnny Issel, two Cape Town activists.

The fourth person freed from restrictions in the past two days is Rowley Arenstein, 67, a prominent lawyer from Durban and former secretary of the outlawed South African Communist Party, who for nearly 30 years has been in prison, under house arrest or otherwise restricted.

On Saturday, the banning order against another United Democratic Front leader, Mkhuseli Jack, president of the Port Elizabeth Youth Congress, was lifted by the Supreme Court.

The government is now considering whether to try and meet the court requirement of detailed reasons and reimpose the restrictions or drop the much-criticized practice. Seven other people remain banned, but their attorneys are examining their cases to determine whether the new rulings apply to them as well.