7 South African Blacks Killed in Feuding : Bands of Migrant Workers and Residents Clash in Shantytown

Seven blacks were killed in clashes here late Sunday and early Monday as a persistent and bitter feud between local residents and migrant workers erupted again into murderous tit-for-tat attacks.

Three men were killed in one incident when a group of Zulu migrant workers attacked a house where they believed a group of young black militants, known as the Comrades, was meeting. While some of the migrant workers shot at the house with pistols, others hacked at those fleeing with machetes, the government’s Bureau of Information said.

Twelve people, including three women, were seriously injured in the episode, and several people told reporters that the gathering was a birthday party for a 2-year-old girl and not a political meeting, as the government said.

The bodies of four men, all apparently migrant workers, were later found by police outside a local hostel where they were living--probably the victims of a reprisal raid by the Comrades.

Earlier Deaths

Three other people were reported killed as the feud flared earlier in the weekend in the Meadowlands sector of Soweto, a sprawling black ghetto southwest of Johannesburg. Unconfirmed accounts put the total deaths in five days of clashes at 14.

“This has been a real battleground,” said one resident of a squalid “transit camp”--a shantytown of people waiting for houses--that was caught in the middle of the bloodshed. “We don’t know how many died, but we could see both sides dragging off their dead and wounded so it has probably been lots.”

Armed with guns, machetes, clubs, iron bars and steel pipes, the rival groups fought, repeatedly attacking and counterattacking in groups of 200 and more, in the streets of Meadowlands and the area around the nearby Mzimhlope hostel, residents said.

In hours of the evening, migrant workers, mostly Zulu warriors, would sweep out of the hostel to attack the homes of suspected militants in Meadowlands, the residents said. In the morning, as the workers left Mzimhlope, and again in the afternoon, as they returned to the hostel, local youths went on the attack.

Armed Patrols

Many houses and some nearby squatters’ shacks were burned in the fighting, according to residents, and dozens of families continued to flee the area on Monday. Armed police and army units were patrolling the area Monday night to halt the violence.

Further unrest was reported in Sharpeville, a black township about 60 miles south of Johannesburg, where residents marched on local government offices to protest the weekend evictions of several families that refused to pay their rent and utility charges as part of a two-year-old, community-wide rent strike.

According to local press reports, one person was killed and three others were wounded when municipal police fired on the marchers, and the local hospital reported that 12 persons were admitted with serious injuries. But the government Information Bureau said it could only confirm the use of tear gas to disperse the crowds and had no reports of casualties.

In 1960, police killed 69 blacks and wounded scores of others in Sharpeville when they opened fire on a mass protest against laws requiring blacks to get government permits to live and work in urban areas.

Clashes 2 Years Ago

In September, 1984, police again fired upon Sharpeville’s protesting residents, angered this time by increased rents for government-owned houses, and those clashes set off the civil unrest that has since swept the country.

The fighting between the Meadowlands residents and the Mzimhlope migrant workers reflects the complexity of black politics in South Africa.

On a purely political level, the residents and the workers are rivals: Mostly Zulus, the migrants are loyal to Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, the Zulu leader, and belong to his moderate Inkatha political movement, which draws most of its strength from Zulu tribal areas in Natal province. But Meadowlands residents are mainly members of the United Democratic Front, a coalition of anti-apartheid groups with an estimated two million members, and most of them support the outlawed African National Congress, which is anathema to Buthelezi.

But other economic and social factors are also important.

As unemployment increases among blacks (now at least 40% in Soweto, more than 60% in other regions), local residents see the migrant workers accepting markedly lower pay and thus taking jobs away from them.

Crowded Rooms

The migrant workers, who live without their families in rooms that house eight or more men, are also blamed for much of the crime in the area.

The fighting between Meadowlands residents and the migrant workers goes back a decade to the 1976 Soweto uprising, when thousands of angry black youths began 11 months of protests against their inferior school system. The Mzimhlope migrant workers, wanting to halt the rioting that was then costing them several days’ wages each week, attacked the radicals and stopped only when Buthelezi commanded them to do so and came personally to restore order here.