Peace Takes a Beating in Black South Africa : At risk is all the hard-won international support

The worsening political and tribal violence between followers of the African National Congress and the Zulu-based Inkatha movement jeopardizes internal negotiations for a democratic nonracial government in South Africa.

The vicious fighting between Zulus and Xhosas also threatens to undermine hard-won international support for the speedy dismantling of apartheid.

The brutal conflicts also embolden those white South Africans who view the unbanning of the ANC as a mistake and who wrongly insist that black South Africans, given equality, would feud violently.

To keep the violence from spreading, Nelson Mandela, deputy president of the ANC, must meet, it bears repeating, with his chief rival, Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, a Zulu chief and head of Inkatha, who is determined to prove himself Mandela’s equal.

Buthelezi, a former ANC member, has demanded this meeting many times, but on his terms and turf. Mandela has refused in deference to ANC members who have lost family members in the fierce fighting in Natal, and who resent Buthelezi’s opposition to anti-apartheid sanctions and his past cooperation with the white minority government. But every day Mandela refuses to meet, more black South Africans die.

Political rivalries inspired the original fighting between supporters of Inkatha and backers of the ANC in Natal, the base of Buthelezi, who was appointed by the white minority government to head KwaZulu, the Zulu homeland. The original battles pitted Zulu against Zulu. In three years, the carnage has claimed 4,000 lives.

The most recent fighting spread to the poor and congested black suburbs near Johannesburg. In less than two weeks it has left 500 dead and an estimated 1,500 injured. In the townships, the conflicts have intensified into tribal battles and revenge matches between Zulus, primarily poor, migrant workers who live in crowded, male-only hostels, and Xhosas, who live in the black residential sections.

The white South Africans who decry this tribal fighting should also be challenging the government, which encouraged the tribal hostilities by setting up separate tribal “homelands” and forceably requiring millions of blacks to settle in those “independent” rural areas.

South African President Frederik W. de Klerk should also answer questions about the impartiality of his police. The ANC has charged the police are aiding Inkatha. Human rights advocates make the same charges.

The South African Council of Churches, for instance, asks how thousands of Inkatha men armed with spears, knives, axes and other weapons can get past police officers? De Klerk insists that the police are operating impartially. But he must guarantee that.

The longer the pitched battles rage, the less chance Mandela, Buthelezi or any other black leader will have to stop the internal bloodshed, or the hemorrhage in international support for a new South Africa.