Fire Destroys South African Clinic Founded by Winnie Mandela

A clinic founded by black activist Winnie Mandela was destroyed by fire Thursday in a small town where she lived in internal exile for eight years. Police said arson was suspected.

Mandela, wife of jailed African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, told reporters she believes the fire was set in retaliation for two car bombings Wednesday. The government has blamed ANC guerrillas for the blasts, which killed three white policemen and injured 15 people outside a Johannesburg courthouse.

The clinic is in the black section of Brandfort, a town in Orange Free State about 200 miles south-southwest of Johannesburg. Mandela was ordered to live there--banished in South African usage--from 1977 to 1985 because of her anti-apartheid activities.

She returned to her home in Soweto, near Johannesburg, in early 1986. Friends said she went to Brandfort on Thursday after learning about the fire.

Police said the clinic “was apparently set alight by unknown persons.”

Damaged in 1985

In August, 1985, Mandela’s house in Brandfort and the adjacent clinic were damaged in a firebomb attack that she blamed on security police.

The African National Congress, the main guerrilla group fighting to end white-minority domination and apartheid in South Africa, said Thursday that it does not know who was responsible for Wednesday’s car bombings.

Tom Sebina, chief spokesman at the ANC’s headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia, said the organization was not informed about the blasts by its units in South Africa, as would usually happen if the ANC was responsible.

“There is a possibility that it was an ANC operation, no more than that,” Sebina said. “In any case, this tendency by the racist regime to blame the ANC for everything happening in the country is just a trick to divert the world from the real issue of apartheid.”

Blames ANC

Police Commissioner Johan Coetzee said his staff has information that the African National Congress carried out the bombings “as a commemorative act” to mark the fourth anniversary of a car bombing in Pretoria that killed 19 people and injured more than 230.

“Explosions of this nature are theater intended to make people despondent about the future of the country, to portray that investment is unwise,” Coetzee said.

The car bombs exploded about one minute apart in a street outside the Johannesburg magistrates court.

Police said they are investigating the possibility that the second and more powerful blast was set off by remote control when officers arrived in response to the first explosion.