Rebels Vow to Retaliate for 20 Soweto Killings

A leader of the African National Congress threatened Friday to retaliate for the death of 20 people shot and killed by police this week in the black township of Soweto.

Black opposition leaders warned police Friday not to interfere with a planned mass burial for the 20 blacks, and a white opposition legislator demanded an independent inquiry into the killings.

“Our people must learn how to disarm the enemy marauding our townships and turn their guns against them,” the Zimbabwe news agency ZIANA quoted Alfred Nzo, secretary general of the African National Congress, as saying in Harare, Zimbabwe.

Nzo called the killings a “heinous crime” and promised the ANC would “answer back.” The African National Congress is the main black guerrilla group fighting to establish black majority rule in South Africa.

Mass Funeral

In Johannesburg, black opposition leaders said a mass funeral for the dead, which authorities have the power to ban, would probably be held next weekend.

“We demand from the authorities that our people be allowed to conduct a mass funeral, which shall be held in absolute dignity,” said Murphy Morobe, an official of the United Democratic Front, the nation’s largest legal opposition group.

Mass burials for victims of South Africa’s violence have often turned into violent demonstrations against the white-led government, and under the nation’s state of emergency, regional police have the power to limit their size.

The death toll from the clashes Tuesday night between security forces and blacks in the black township outside Johannesburg was among the highest nationwide since a wave of racial violence erupted two years ago. The government said 20 blacks were shot to death by police and one black councilor was hacked to death by a mob during the clashes.

Calls for Inquiry

White legislator Helen Suzman on Friday toured White City, the area of Soweto where Tuesday’s fighting erupted during a rent dispute, and called for an independent inquiry into the shootings by a supreme court judge.

“An independent inquiry is absolutely essential--not an internal police inquiry,” Suzman, a leader of the opposition Progressive Federal Party, told reporters after the tour.

Deputy Information Minister Louis Nel said Thursday that a formal inquiry into the violence would begin “as soon as possible” to determine “what really happened in Soweto in the past few days.”

Nel said the killings began when activists threw a grenade at a police patrol, wounding four officers. Residents said the violence began as a protest against eviction of people defaulting on rent payments in the township.