Political Strife Kills 10 a Day in S. Africa

An average of 10 people have died each day this year in political violence, making 1990 the deadliest year in South Africa since widespread unrest erupted six years ago, researchers said Monday.

In a sign of the increasing bloodshed, the bodies of 19 men who had been hacked and shot were found Monday scattered across a field in the black township of Zonkwezizwe, outside Johannesburg. Police said they did not know the motive for the slayings.

Twenty-one other people died in unrest-related attacks over the weekend, including two white police officers and a black man ambushed in a township on the east coast Monday, officials said.

The independent South African Institute of Race Relations said 3,038 people had been killed in political unrest since Jan. 1, or about 10 each day. That was about three times the daily death rate for the same period last year, the institute said.

“1990 alone already accounts for more than a third of all the people killed in political violence over this six-year period” since September, 1984, the report said.

Rioting broke out Sept. 3, 1984, in black townships near Johannesburg during a work stoppage to protest rent increases. The unrest spread to other areas of the country as blacks began rising up against apartheid policies.

Unlike the early years of racial unrest, when security forces caused most deaths, today’s victims are usually blacks killed by other blacks, the institute said.

It said the spillover of black factional fighting from Natal Province to the Johannesburg area accounted for much of the 1990 increase in deaths.

Some township residents said Zonkwezizwe had been hit by factional unrest, but the motive for the slayings of the 19 men found there Monday was unclear. Police said there was no report of fighting in Zonkwezizwe during the weekend, and patrols did not detect any trouble Sunday night, when the slayings apparently occurred.