2 Black Tribal Leaders Plead for Feud’s End

South Africa’s white government and two black homeland leaders jointly pleaded for peace today after feuding black factions killed nearly 400 people and wounded over 1,500 in weeklong battles.

Conservative Zulu chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi met President Frederik W. de Klerk and later urged his followers to lay down their arms and end the ferocious conflict between his supporters and rivals from Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress.

The peace plea--after two hours of talks between Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha, Law and Order Minister Adriaan Vlok, Transkei homeland military chief Bantu Holomisa, who is a prominent Xhosa leader, and Buthelezi--increased pressure on Mandela to meet Buthelezi for peace talks.

Mandela, who discussed the violence last week with De Klerk, was not at the meeting.

Police today counted a total of 395 dead around Johannesburg with the discovery of 16 bodies in Tembisa and Kwathema townships after fighting Monday and during the night between Zulu migrant workers supporting Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party and mainly Xhosa people who follow the ANC.

The ANC so far has rejected a meeting, accusing Buthelezi of starting the fighting to force his way into constitutional discussions between the white government and black opposition.

At least 4,000 people have been killed in a three-year power struggle between Inkatha and the ANC in the eastern province of Natal. Fighting spread to the townships of South Africa’s industrial heartland last week.

The ANC says Buthelezi does not merit a place alongside other opposition groups because he collaborated with apartheid through the homeland system--Buthelezi is chief minister of the Kwazulu tribal homeland--and commands insufficient national support for a say in the creation of a democratic black-ruled country.