S. African Zulu Chief Sees Start of Black Civil War

Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, one of South Africa’s most powerful black leaders, said Tuesday that the killing of the wife of a key supporter shows that a civil war has begun among the country’s blacks.

Buthelezi, chief minister of the autonomous Kwazulu tribal homeland and a key moderate in black politics, expressed shock at what he called the “cold-blooded murder” of Evelyn Sabelo, wife of Winnington Sabelo, a member of the Kwazulu legislature.

Buthelezi warned that the “upward spiraling of black-on-black violence,” increasingly the major feature of the country’s continuing civil unrest, will now be even more difficult to stop.

Evelyn Sabelo, 44, was killed and her three children were injured when their home outside Durban was attacked Friday night. Gunmen sprayed the house with automatic rifle fire and hurled a hand grenade through a window. Her husband was not home at the time.

2 Groups Feuding

Officials of Inkatha, the predominantly Zulu political movement led by Buthelezi, had earlier blamed the killing on guerrillas of the African National Congress, with which Inkatha has been feuding for several years. Sabelo is a prominent member of Inkatha’s Central Committee and has opposed the extension of ANC influence in the Durban area.

“This indicates the lengths to which those who wish to make this country ungovernable will go in brutality and hideousness,” Buthelezi said in a statement, referring to the avowed ANC strategy to make South Africa “ungovernable” as a step toward ending apartheid, the system of racial separation and minority white rule here.

“The black civil war I warned about has now materialized. I cannot see what can break the spiral of this violence in the light of the reluctance of those who have opted for violence to talk to us. I fear it seems that the only language we can expect in the circumstances is that of the gun, grenades and bombs.”

In a clear warning to the African National Congress of possible Inkatha retaliation, Buthelezi said, “It is un-African for women and children to be targets in a war, and I am concerned about the extent to which this kind of crime will brutalize those who are at the receiving end.”

100 Killed in 3 Years

Inkatha says that about 100 of its officials and members have been killed over the past three years in a bitter feud with the ANC and the United Democratic Front, a coalition of 650 anti-apartheid groups largely aligned with the outlawed ANC. Another Inkatha Central Committee member was assassinated by gunmen at his home late last year, and the leader of the Inkatha women’s brigade narrowly escaped a similar attack several months ago.

The United Democratic Front accuses Inkatha of mounting vigilante attacks, allegedly in cooperation with the police, on its officials around Durban in an apparent effort to drive them from the region. The unsolved killing last year of one of its most prominent members, Victoria Mxenge, led to a week of rioting in which more than 70 people were killed.

The attack on Sabelo, a controversial politician who has led Inkatha’s struggle with the United Democratic Front and vowed to “wipe out all UDF supporters and troublemakers from Umlazi,” appeared to stem from an attempt 10 days ago to kill Kwenza Mlaba, a Durban civil rights lawyer and founder of the United Democratic Front there. Mlaba was shot six times by gunmen but survived.

The clashes between supporters of the two groups have been so frequent that they long ago became a political feud, with each side able to argue that the other was responsible and that it was retaliating for attacks on its members.