2 Black Policemen Killed, 4 Hurt in S. Africa

Two black policemen were killed and four others were wounded in a new wave of attacks by black radicals on members of South Africa’s security forces, the government’s Bureau for Information reported Sunday.

One of the slain men, a controversial “special constable” recruited three months ago to fight the radicals but given only a few weeks of paramilitary training, was stabbed to death at his home in Nyanga, a black ghetto outside Cape Town.

A second policeman was killed in Somerset East, a town in eastern Cape province. A government spokesman said that he was also stabbed to death and that other circumstances of his death were “still very unclear.”

Four policemen were seriously wounded in three other incidents, the Bureau for Information added, reporting what appeared to be an upsurge in attacks on South African security forces but refusing to provide additional details.

Nearly 50 Killed

The bureau noted, however, that “incidents of stone throwing and gasoline-bomb attacks took place throughout the country” over the weekend. It also reported that two limpet mines exploded outside an apartment building where a dozen members of the Soweto City Council, driven from their homes in that black satellite city outside Johannesburg by angry residents three months ago, had taken refuge. No one was injured, the bureau said.

Black policemen and local officials have been among the principal targets of radicals during more than two years of anti-apartheid protests here, and nearly 50 have been reported killed.

Most black policemen moved out of their own communities long ago and are living in tents around police barracks or in heavily guarded compounds.

Guerrillas from the African National Congress, the principal group fighting white minority rule here, appear now to be “hunting” them in a concerted campaign against black members of the security forces, including municipal policemen and the new “special constables” recruited for riot duty.

Shot Between Eyes

Another person was reported killed as a result of political feuding within the black community.

The body of Fana Mhlongo, 15, abducted in an attack two weeks ago on the home of an official of the radical black consciousness Azanian People’s Organization, was found in a government mortuary in Soweto, according to the group’s officials. The boy had been shot between the eyes, they said.

The Azanian People’s Organization had called upon the rival United Democratic Front, an alliance of 650 anti-apartheid groups, to disavow the attacks on its officials and reject violence as a way of resolving political differences between black groups. The front, which sees black consciousness groups as splitting the anti-apartheid movement, has refused so far to respond.

Decoy Charge

In another development, Johannesburg’s Sunday Star asserted in an extensive report that an 11-year-old black boy, killed Nov. 5, was shot by white policemen using a bus as a decoy to attract stone-throwing youths. Buses are frequently stoned in Soweto, and they became even more frequent targets after fares were increased at the beginning of November.

Quoting witnesses and a variety of other sources, the newspaper said that police took the bus from its depot and drove it up and down Soweto’s main streets until they opened fire on a group of boys, killing one and wounding five.

Elsewhere, the Rev. T. C. Farisani, dean of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in its northern South African diocese, was detained by security police in Venda, a nominally independent tribal homeland, after returning from meetings with leaders of the African National Congress and other anti-apartheid groups in neighboring countries. Two Dutch physicians, detained with him early Saturday, were released Sunday afternoon.