Gunmen Massacre 12 Blacks in S. Africa : 7 Children Among Victims; Infighting of Rival Groups Blamed

Twelve blacks, including seven children, were killed early Wednesday, according to police, when gunmen burst into their home near Durban and opened fire with automatic rifles. The massacre was one of the bloodiest incidents in 2 1/2 years of political violence here.

With rapid bursts of gunfire, an unidentified assault team attacked the home of a factory worker about 2:30 a.m. in the black township of Kwamakhutha near the Indian Ocean resort of Amanzimtoti, south of Durban, killing or wounding everyone inside.

The gunmen, armed with AK-47 military rifles, then went to a backyard hut, according to police, where they killed five sleeping children, ages 3 to 7.

Only a 10-year-old boy escaped. He was awakened by the gunfire and hid in a wardrobe, the police said. In addition to the 12 dead, two people--a 10-year-old girl and a 34-year-old woman--were critically injured.

The massacre, one of the worst incidents since the government imposed a national state of emergency seven months ago, apparently stemmed from infighting among rival black political groups. There was fear that it will trigger further clashes in the Durban area.

Officials of the United Democratic Front, the country’s largest coalition of anti-apartheid groups, accused members of the predominantly Zulu political movement Inkatha of attacking the home of Willie Ntuli, 50, the father of one of its youth leaders, in revenge for recent killings of Inkatha supporters around Amanzimtoti.

But Vincent Ntuli, 21, a leader of the Kwamakhutha Youth League, had been in hiding for more than a week after threats against his family and was not home when the attackers came, neighbors said. When he returned to the bullet-riddled, blood-spattered house Wednesday afternoon, he was taken into custody by police, according to friends.

‘Internecine Clashes’

“All of our information--from eyewitness accounts by neighbors to the threats the Ntulis received earlier--points to an Inkatha hit squad as the murderers,” Joseph Gumbi, a United Democratic Front official, said in Durban. “What’s even more damning is that Inkatha does not even deny responsibility for what really is an utterly horrifying crime.”

Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, leader of Inkatha and chief minister of the Zulu tribal homeland, Kwazulu, said in a statement that the deaths were “probably a continuation of the internecine clashes” in which four or five people a month have been killed recently.

Buthelezi said he was “shocked by the dimensions that the violence . . . is assuming,” but he warned that there could be further clashes because of what he called hostility toward Inkatha by the United Democratic Front and the African National Congress abroad.

The clashes began outside Durban with a weeklong battle in which more than 70 people were killed in August, 1985, after the killing of a woman lawyer and United Democratic Front activist. The latest victims have included a member of the Kwazulu legislative assembly and several other Inkatha organizers in Kwamakhutha.

“Inkatha members have only been involved in self-defense and retaliation,” Buthelezi said, “and I can have absolutely no control over this as long as my followers continue to be attacked by the UDF-ANC alliance.”

Buthelezi said the African National Congress and the United Democratic Front are working to neutralize him and Inkatha. Both groups criticize him for his willingness to work within the tribal homeland structures created by the white minority government in Pretoria. Yet he is also an outspoken critic of apartheid, differing with his rivals on how to oppose it.

Over the weekend, Buthelezi told the Inkatha central committee, according to local press reports, that there is no place in the movement for cowards and that Inkatha members will no longer tolerate attacks on them.

“If that was not incitement to act, I don’t know what is,” said Archie J. Gumede, national co-president of the United Democratic Front. “This (incident) is in keeping with the policy of the organization to show that it is not an organization of cowards.

Spokesmen for both the police and the government’s Bureau for Information in Pretoria initially blamed the killings on “suspected terrorists,” suggesting that the African National Congress, the principal guerrilla group fighting continued white minority rule here, had carried out the attack. Later they said this possibility still “could not be ruled out.”

Under South Africa’s state of emergency, newsmen are prohibited from firsthand coverage of any unrest and may not report incidents of political violence or police and army actions to deal with it without official permission. The regulations also forbid publication of what the government construes to be “subversive statements.” This article has been written to comply with the South African regulations.