De Klerk Tours Soweto; Unrest Kills 36

President Frederik W. de Klerk, the first white leader to promise blacks a vote in their country’s future, paid a surprise visit to Soweto on Tuesday. He drew friendly crowds and even a serenade of “Viva Comrade De Klerk!”

“Everywhere, I felt a tremendous reservoir of good will, which promises only good for the future,” De Klerk told reporters after touring a hospital, a school, a business center and a home in the township of 2.2 million people on the outskirts of Johannesburg.

But, he added: “My overwhelming impression was that there is so much which needs to be done.”

As De Klerk spoke, fighting between black factions erupted anew in three nearby townships. Police said that 36 people were shot or hacked to death Monday night and Tuesday.

Witnesses said some of those deaths were caused by troops shooting into a crowd in Sebokeng, scene of the bloodiest violence. A photographer for the Sowetan newspaper told the South African Press Assn. of seeing soldiers firing on spectators, even though many of them waved and called out: “We are not fighting!”

“They (soldiers) exercised no caution whatsoever,” Nelson Mandela, the African National Congress deputy president, said after a visit to Sebokeng. Mandela said many witnesses there told him that soldiers called in to help restore order had opened fire on a crowd of several thousand.

“They were dealing with people’s lives that they didn’t care about, and that’s why there’s been such carnage,” Mandela said. The ANC leader met with Law and Order Minister Adriaan Vlok late Tuesday, but neither would say what was discussed.

The army said it was investigating the incident. A police spokesman would confirm only that “shots were fired” after soldiers were called to assist police officers in Sebokeng.

It was in Sebokeng last March that policemen opened fire on black demonstrators. Five people were killed and more than 200 were wounded in those shootings, which an independent judicial inquiry, in a report released Saturday, called unwarranted. The inquiry report recommended that the government consider prosecuting some police officers involved in that incident.

Police officers made 150 arrests in the violence Monday and Tuesday, the most since the bloodletting began there on Aug. 13. Among those held was Themba Khoza, Transvaal chairman of the Inkatha Youth Brigade, who was accused of illegal possession of arms. Khoza was the first ranking Inkatha member detained in more than three weeks of township violence between supporters of Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party and backers of Mandela’s ANC.

Much of the fighting has centered on worker hostels, or dormitories, where men who have arrived recently in search of work live 10 and 20 to a room.

De Klerk appeared taken aback by the squalor Tuesday as he briefly toured a Soweto hostel that had been a scene of violence weeks earlier. The odor of urine was strong inside; the ground was muddy and garbage was piled high outside.