South Africa Instigated Attack, Mandela Says

Black nationalist leader Winnie Mandela accused the South African government Thursday of instigating the attack by blacks who pelted her with garbage outside a Cape Town courthouse this week.

Mandela said the government is seeking to discredit her and the anti-apartheid movement and that it will probably escalate such incidents to create the impression of political divisions within the black community.

South Africa’s white-led minority government wants people here and abroad to believe that most of the political violence here results from black political rivals fighting each other, Mandela told reporters at her home in Soweto, the black satellite city outside Johannesburg.

On Wednesday, about 200 angry blacks threw garbage, sand and soft drink cans at Mandela outside the Supreme Court building in Cape Town, where she had gone to attend a pre-sentencing hearing for Lindi Mangaliso, a friend who was convicted last month of hiring two men to kill her husband in 1984.

Attack Shocks Blacks

The attack shocked blacks. Mandela is revered as the wife of imprisoned African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela and is highly respected as an activist in her own right.

“This incident was obviously orchestrated by the system,” Mandela said, describing the crowd as “hooligans,” although it was made up mostly of women. “It was the same crowd of people who take advantage of peaceful demonstrations to make it appear that we have this so-called ‘black-on-black’ violence--that is, the element used by the state.”

The government Bureau for Information rejected the charge.

“Mrs. Mandela’s allegation is entirely predictable in that there is no more logical entity than the South African government to blame for troubles of her own making,” the bureau said in Pretoria. “Regarding the substance of her allegation, it is beyond any serious comment.”

Mandela stood her ground during the attack, although she was struck several times by rubbish and was jeered by the crowd for supporting Mangaliso and told that “the wife of our leader should not be supporting the murderer Lindi Mangaliso.”

Mangaliso testified that she had hired two thugs to kill her husband, a wealthy businessman, after he had been repeatedly unfaithful, had beaten her often and then said he intended to divorce her.

Mandela, however, told reporters that Mangaliso was an old friend “whose family has made tremendous sacrifices in the struggle for liberation.”

“We don’t desert members of the family when they are charged with capital crimes,” Mandela said, adding that she will return to Cape Town to give Mangaliso moral support when she is sentenced.

Noting increased detentions recently of anti-apartheid activists, including a number of white radicals, Mandela predicted a new crackdown.

“The government has made no secret of the fact that they have declared war,” she said, “so what we see today is possibly the beginning of very difficult times.”

Meanwhile, officials of the United Democratic Front, a coalition of 700 anti-apartheid groups, denounced as a forgery a letter, purportedly on its stationery, urging supporters to hunt down and kill members of the Azanian People’s Organization, a rival group that has clashed frequently with Democratic Front affiliates.

“The aim of this pamphlet quite clearly is to exacerbate the conflict in our communities, in fact to promote violence in our communities,” said Azhar Cachalia, the UDF’s national treasurer.

Police Ban Services

In another development, police banned weekend memorial services for Dr. Fabian Ribeiro and his wife, both prominent anti-apartheid activists, who were slain by two masked gunmen this week outside their home in Mamelodi, one of the black ghettos on the outskirts of Pretoria.

The Star newspaper reported Thursday that its reporters traced one of the cars that witnesses said the killers used. The car was registered to a former intelligence official of white-ruled Rhodesia who now is a “security consultant” in Pretoria.