2 Die as Crowd Battles S. Africa Police, Troops : Scores Hurt at Rally as 25,000 Protest Plan for ‘Independent’ Homeland

Thousands of black villagers fought running battles with South African police and troops Wednesday to protest government plans to declare their tribal homeland “independent” and no longer part of South Africa.

At least two people were reported killed and scores injured as security forces fired buckshot, rubber bullets and tear-gas grenades to disperse a rally of 25,000 villagers.

All live in Kwandebele, the tribal homeland that the government wants to declare independent in December.

Angry youths counterattacked against the police and soldiers with stones and firebombs, according to witnesses, and began burning the stores and homes of Kwandebele officials. The officials were told to seek refuge with their families at the nearest police station or army encampment.

Retaliation Firebombing

At nightfall, members of a pro-government black vigilante group known as the Imbokhotho fire bombed the homes of local activists in retaliation.

By then, Kwandebele, an impoverished rural area of about 25 villages 80 miles northeast of Pretoria, the capital, had been surrounded by heavily armed police officers and troops. The authorities hoped to contain the mounting violence until the arrival of reinforcements that would enable them to occupy all the villages in the region.

The disturbances, which began Tuesday with the funeral for the victim of earlier unrest in Kwandebele and a rally protesting his death, reflect the spread of anti-apartheid protests to once-quiet rural areas over the last five months.

Prince James Mahlangu, head of the local Ndzunda Madhoka Tribal Authority, said by telephone that “we the chiefs and our people are in revolt against this attempt to force us into so-called independence, and the government should understand that we will fight rather than submit.”

Seen as Phony Move

According to Mahlangu, most of Kwandebele’s 180,000 people, nearly half of whom are not Ndebeles but members of other tribal groups, oppose the independence move, “because it is phony and because we will lose what little freedom we have when (Chief Minister Simon) Skosana becomes president.”

“Life in South Africa under apartheid is bad, bad, bad, but it would be even worse under Skosana if Kwandebele were independent,” he said. “The barbaric Imbokhotho, who beat people and murder them at will, have given us a taste of what things would be like.”

The rebellion appears to have begun with the abduction by the Imbokhotho last month of a number of student activists and the death of the father of one of them after he went to the vigilantes’ headquarters to protest. He was beaten to death, and his mutilated body dumped outside his home.

The rallies have demanded that Skosana disband the Imbokhotho, that plans for independence be dropped and that local officials who have supported the move resign.

30 Dead in Protests

Fierce objections have also come from the 120,000 people of Moutse, an adjacent district that is being added to Kwandebele to give it a larger population and a sounder economic foundation before it becomes independent Dec. 11. Most Moutse residents are not Ndebeles but Pedis, who speak a different language and have different social and cultural traditions. Nearly 30 people have died in protests there against the district’s incorporation into Kwandebele.

Four of South Africa’s 10 tribal homelands, or Bantustans, received independence earlier from the minority white government in Pretoria, but none has been recognized by any other country. Although the homelands, a key element of the apartheid system of racial separation and minority white rule, are widely regarded as failures, Pretoria insists not only that they stand as “accomplished facts” but also that it cannot renege on its promise of independence if local leaders choose it.

Widespread unrest was reported around the country Wednesday, with mobs stoning cars, hijacking trucks, setting fire to dozens of homes, schools and stores and clashing with police in 22 other areas. Only one person, a black man whose charred body was found near Cathcart in eastern Cape province, was killed, according to police headquarters in Pretoria.

In Cape Town, meanwhile, members of a special Commonwealth commission made up of “eminent persons” from seven countries continued their discussions with South African government officials on ways to end the violence here, to abolish apartheid and to open political negotiations between whites and blacks on the country’s future.

The group is expected to put a series of proposals to President Pieter W. Botha this week and possibly to Nelson Mandela, the imprisoned leader of the African National Congress, the principal group fighting white rule here.