13 Killed in Worst S. Africa Violence Since Emergency

At least 13 blacks were shot and killed by police late Tuesday in Soweto, the sprawling black satellite city outside Johannesburg, in a night of fierce rioting set off when authorities tried to evict rent strikers from their homes.

The rioting was the worst since President Pieter W. Botha declared a national state of emergency on June 12, giving the police and army virtual martial law powers to quell South Africa’s continuing political violence.

According to the government’s information bureau, seven of those killed in Soweto on Tuesday night died when police opened fire with rifles and shotguns on a crowd of more than 300 after four policemen were seriously wounded by a hand grenade as they attempted to dismantle a roadblock. Sixty-one other blacks were wounded in the 10 p.m. clash, the bureau said.

Four more blacks were killed and one was wounded three hours later when police fired on about 80 blacks who had set up a roadblock and were stopping traffic, the bureau said.

Officials at Baragwanath Hospital, which serves Soweto, said that two more men died there and that more than 80 persons were treated overnight for gunshot wounds.

Police and hospital sources estimated that the final death toll could be more than 20. The information bureau said it could not yet confirm reports that two policemen were killed in the clashes.

The clashes continued Wednesday morning according to local clergymen, who said they had seen the bodies of four more youths who had been killed in the fighting. Residents expected further trouble with students boycotting classes today throughout Soweto.

The trouble began Tuesday evening when Soweto authorities attempted to evict several families in Soweto’s impoverished White City section for failing to pay their rent and utility bills. Hundreds of other residents poured into the streets, stoning Soweto officials and police, who used tear gas and shotguns to disperse the crowds.

Eight Month Strike

Local activists, enforcing the eight-month-old rent strike, then set up dozens of barricades in the White City and adjacent areas of Soweto to prevent police and troops from moving into the area. They also went door to door waking up residents to mount an all-night “defense action.”

Gunfire was heard throughout the night, according to residents in many sections of Soweto, which has a population of nearly 2 million, and heavily armed police and military units were dispatched to the area to reinforce security forces there.

Black community leaders had long warned that serious trouble would result from any attempt by authorities to evict families for refusing to pay their rent, and young activists in Soweto and other black townships had made extensive plans for “defense actions” if an attempt were made.

Hundreds of thousands of black families across the country have refused to pay rent and utility bills for most of this year in an anti-government protest, and the government says it is now owed more than $80 million and lacks funds to maintain basic services in the ghetto townships.