S. African Black Political Feuding Kills 10

At least 10 blacks were killed over the weekend in a sharp escalation of feuding among rival political groups, and South African black community leaders said they fear that many more will die if the fighting is not quickly halted.

Five members of groups affiliated with the United Democratic Front, the broad coalition of anti-apartheid groups, were hacked to death early Sunday at Kwamashu, a black township outside Durban, in apparent revenge for the deaths earlier of members of Inkatha, the Zulu political movement.

Tribesmen Arrive

More than 500 Zulu tribesmen arrived in Kwamashu from outlying areas late Friday, after the killing there last week of nine people, seven of them Inkatha members who were hacked to death or burned alive.

“We are at war here,” a United Democratic Front official said in Durban on Sunday night, “and it is so tragic because we are killing each other. . . . But the enmity is so deep that nobody knows how to stop this.”

In Soweto, the huge black township outside Johannesburg, three people were killed overnight in clashes between affiliates of the United Democratic Front and its black consciousness rival, the Azanian Students Movement.

In both Soweto and Durban, the fighting is rooted both in ideological differences and territorial disputes.

The United Democratic Front, which increasingly functions as the internal wing of South Africa’s outlawed African National Congress, has recently made it clear to rival groups that it will not tolerate political challenges to its leadership, particularly those that might split the black community, seeing this as only aiding the minority white government.

But neither Inkatha, with 1.1 million members, nor the Azanian People’s Organization, the principal black consciousness group, will accept what they regard as an African National Congress attempt to dictate to them.

Their differences run deep and remain strong. Like the African National Congress, the United Democratic Front is committed to a non-racial society encompassing all South Africans and is pragmatic about its character and policies after an end to apartheid.

By contrast, the Azanian People’s Organization distrusts even liberal whites and sees the future South Africa, which it calls Azania, as black-led and fully socialist.

Inkatha is notably more moderate and willing to accept a negotiated compromise that protects minority white rights and capitalism under a federal system.

Scores of blacks have died over the last year as a result of this political in-fighting , and the police maintain that since February, more blacks have been killed in this “black-on-black violence” than in clashes with government forces.

At least 37 blacks were killed last week in fighting around the giant Crossroads squatter camp outside Cape Town as rival groups fought pitched battles and set fire to each other’s shanties.

Suspected Informers

Two further deaths were reported Sunday as the result of clashes among blacks--one at Nyanga, a black township near the Crossroads settlement, and a second at Kwanobuhle, outside Uitenhage in eastern Cape province. Both men were beaten and burned to death by mobs, apparently as suspected police informers.

Meanwhile, in Zimbabwe, one of the black neighboring nations raided by South African forces last week in moves against African National Congress bases, Western diplomatic sources quoted by Reuters news agency said that two more whites, British electrical engineers R.A. Lewis and A. Parfitt, have been detained for questioning in connection with the attacks.

The two, employees of the Zimbabwe state power system, were reportedly picked up in Harare, the capital, and taken to the southern city of Bulawayo, where they are being held.