Some ANC Leaders Among 40 Seized in S. Africa

About 40 people, including African National Congress regional leaders, struggled with police officers while being arrested during a demonstration Thursday against human rights violations.

No injuries were reported in the four cities where marches were held.

Factional fighting continued to rage, however, in black townships. Four people were killed as policemen fired tear gas to separate rival Xhosa and Zulu war bands that fought running clashes and burned houses.

The ANC and President Frederik W. de Klerk said the factions will meet to try to halt violence that has killed more than 500 people, but they gave no date.

The human rights marches were held in Cape Town; Vereeniging, near Johannesburg; Bloemfontein, to the south, and the Gazankulu homeland in the northern Transvaal.

In Cape Town, about 40 people marched on the South African Transport Services’ Culemborg building, which they charge is a police torture center.

Cheryl Carolus, a regional ANC leader and a South African Communist Party leader, called Culemborg “the one place where the most consistent stories and allegations of torture of our people have taken place.”

Carolus and other protesters were shoved into a police van outside the building. Also arrested was Trevor Manuel, regional coordinator of the ANC, who struggled with police officers before being forced into the van.

The ANC-organized demonstration was to protest the continued detention of ANC members under the Internal Security Act, which permits indefinite detention with no access to lawyers in cases involving state security.

Thousands of students from the Sebokeng black township also marched in Vereeniging, calling for improved schools and education. In Bloemfontein, thousands of ANC supporters marched to the security police office to hand over a list of demands, including an end to indefinite detentions and release of Mac Maharaj, an ANC leader.