Blacks Stop Working to Mourn, Hold Protest : South Africa: Service for seven of the 515 who died in township fighting draws thousands. Tutu blames the police for the internecine killing.

Heeding a call from the African National Congress, tens of thousands of blacks joined a one-day work stoppage Monday to protest recent internecine fighting in Johannesburg townships and to mourn the 515 dead.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in an emotional address delivered over seven coffins in Soweto, said police had triggered the violence by siding against the ANC.

“There are those who . . . don’t want us to have our freedom,” Tutu said, “so they have made us fight one another. Everywhere you go and ask what has happened, the people say, ‘The police killed us.’ (The police) say that the cause of violence in our townships is tribalism. I say it is a lie.”

At this, the crowd of more than 5,000 mourners in Jabulani Stadium rose to its feet and cheered.

“We say we need a new police force, a police force which will be accepted by the people,” Tutu said, adding that he and other church leaders would take that message to President Frederik W. de Klerk today.

Police and army units, acting under broad emergency powers granted last Friday, appeared to have clamped down on the fighting by Monday. The 27 townships affected were calm, and no more deaths were reported, a police spokesman said.

A statement from police headquarters called the allegations of favoritism “malicious, propagandistic lies.” It would be to the benefit of all concerned, the statement said, “if those who falsely accuse the police rather direct their efforts to finding solutions for ending the conflict.”

Most analysts see elements of tribal and political rivalry in the townships war, in which Zulu supporters of Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party are pitted against supporters of the ANC, most of whom are Xhosa.

For years, the ANC has accused the police in Natal province, Buthelezi’s home base, of siding with Inkatha, a movement recognized by the government, and against supporters of the ANC, which, until February, was banned. As chief minister of the self-governing Kwazulu homeland, Buthelezi also heads a police force.

Meanwhile, ANC leader Nelson Mandela, in Norway for a conference, told reporters in Oslo that the South African government “has either lost control of the police, or the police are doing what the government wants them to do.”

Inkatha youth leader Themba Khoza countered that the police were trying so hard to disprove the ANC’s allegations that “we have had situations where the police are practically helping the ANC to attack Inkatha.”

Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini appealed for peace, calling on Zulus in the Johannesburg townships to abandon their weapons.

“Let the (Zulu) nation not be diverted from its historic role of constantly using its power base for the establishment of a race-free, multiparty democracy,” he said at a ceremony in Natal honoring the birthplace of Buthelezi, his nephew.

In police raids in the townships over the weekend, 10 people were arrested and piles of weapons were confiscated. The emergency security laws imposed in the 27 townships Friday give police and soldiers unlimited powers to arrest, detain and search without warrants.

The government has counted more than 11,000 acts of violence this year, about 3,000 fewer than in all of 1986, the bloodiest year in South African history.

The “worker stayaway” Monday disrupted Johannesburg businesses that rely on black labor from the townships. In Soweto, where 126 people have been killed since Aug. 13, the streets were deserted and businesses were closed. Trains to and from the township of 2.2 million people ran mostly empty.

Heavily armed black soldiers watched over the mass funeral at which Tutu spoke. It was also attended by Walter Sisulu and other ANC leaders, among them Mandela’s wife, Winnie, recently appointed head of the ANC’s social welfare department. She wore a camouflage jacket and military-style beret.

Tutu led the crowd of mourners in chanting, “I am proud to be black!” and “We will all be free!”