Hundreds Flee More Carnage in South Africa

Hundreds of black families abandoned hope for peace here Thursday after another night of carnage and quietly lugged their possessions out of the dusty squatter camp they call Phola Park, or “place of rest.”

Shopping carts and wheelbarrows piled high with belongings were guided down the bumpy paths past corpses left from the night before. Sooty sheets of corrugated metal from nearly 800 burned shacks groaned in the wind.

“The attackers are coming back,” said Lena Khumalo, 81, who balanced a large basket of dishes on her head. “We must leave now.”

On Thursday, as the death toll from a month of factional fighting in Johannesburg townships soared to more than 750, many South Africans worried that the country was on the brink of uncontrollable urban war.

In the latest violence, the police said, at least 26 blacks were killed and more than 100 injured Thursday evening when six black youths shot and stabbed passengers on a crowded Johannesburg commuter train.

Passengers leaped from windows of the moving train as the attackers opened fire, and victims were found along a stretch of three railway stations east of Johannesburg. The train was headed toward southeastern townships, including Tokoza and neighboring Katlehong.

A motive for the attack was not known, but a police spokesman said it was thought to be related to the internecine war. Similar gang shootings of black commuters and pedestrians in Johannesburg earlier this week took three lives.

The seams of black society appeared frayed almost beyond repair in Tokoza and other townships Thursday after another week of the fighting, which has pitted migrant Zulu workers in the Inkatha Freedom Party against non-Zulu residents supporting the African National Congress.

Authorities cut power to Tokoza and Katlehong on Thursday in a dispute over a 4-year-old rent boycott, and community activists said the move could exacerbate the already volatile situation. A freshly painted slogan on a Tokoza wall characterized the atmosphere. It said: “Viva Beirut.”

The peace process recently undertaken with such promise by the government and the ANC seemed particularly endangered by the bloodshed. And among Tokoza residents, confidence in the ability of the police or even black ANC leaders to stop the violence appears to have been eroded.

Witnesses to attacks Tuesday and Wednesday nights in Phola Park spoke of heavily armed Zulu invaders in red headbands being assisted by a dozen or more white men the residents believe to have been police.

Young ANC supporters said they needed weapons, not words of reconciliation, from leaders such as Nelson Mandela.

“They should arm the people and suspend the negotiation process,” said Prince Mhlambi, 22. “How are we to protect ourselves?”

Mhlambi spoke proudly of Phola Park’s “strong defense committee,” which he predicted “might also kill some police tonight.”

Mandela, the ANC deputy president, told President Frederik W. de Klerk this week that his supporters’ demand for weapons to defend themselves “will be difficult to resist” if the violence continues to escalate. The ANC announced Thursday that it has called an emergency meeting of the organization’s national executive committee for next Tuesday to discuss the violence.

ANC supporters have not been the only victims of the violence, however, and Inkatha leaders say their supporters are only defending themselves.

Twenty-five Zulu migrant workers were hacked to death this week in Tembisa, and dozens of worker hostels, home to thousands of Zulus, have been attacked and gutted by fire in recent weeks.

In the hours before the Zulus advanced on Phola Park on Wednesday, ANC supporters stopped a black taxi driver on a nearby road and posed questions in Zulu. The driver, not knowing whether the mob was Inkatha or ANC, answered in Zulu and was beaten to death as reporters watched.

The ANC and Inkatha blame each other for the trouble. But the ANC also has blamed right-wing elements of the police, who the ANC says are trying to sow discord among blacks and undermine the peace process.

Whatever the cause, hospital wards and refugee centers are overflowing. And the living quarters of black South Africans, already in desperately short supply, are steadily being destroyed.

The current wave of township violence began Aug. 13 in Phola Park, a 5-year-old squatter settlement on the edge of Tokoza. Its 35,000 residents have neither running water nor electricity.

Although the residents come from various ethnic backgrounds, many are Xhosas, like Mandela, and that link with the ANC has made them a target of Inkatha-supporting Zulus. In the past month there have been six attacks on the squatter camp. About 350 shacks were burned down Tuesday night and 400 Wednesday night. All but a few hundred of the inhabitants have fled.