Zulu Chief Threatens to Skip Peace Talks After Raid

Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi threatened Sunday to pull out of crucial South African peace talks as his group said that it is ready to send 100,000 fighters into strife-torn Soweto.

More than 1,500 people have been killed around Johannesburg in the past nine months, many of them in the Soweto township, in fighting between the mainly Zulu Inkatha and Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress.

Police said Sunday that 23 bodies had been found from weekend violence, raising the toll from a week of black factional fighting to more than 120. Nineteen of the deaths occurred in Soweto.

Buthelezi said he reserved the right to drop out of peace talks after police, backed by the army, raided Zulu migrant workers’ hostels near Johannesburg on Saturday in search of weapons. The ANC had requested the raids.

In a speech in Bekkersdaal township west of Johannesburg, Buthelezi said: “I will not be held responsible for the ire of the Zulus if they continue to be abused in this way. It is intolerable. The Zulus will not stand for this kind of treatment.”

He added: “I announce today that I am reserving my position about whether or not I attend the summit conference on the violence, which the State President (Frederik W. de Klerk) has called for.”

Meanwhile, Inkatha central committee member Musa Myeni said his group’s paramilitary force would be sent into Soweto unless the ANC stops factional fighting there within seven days.

“You won’t identify them. They won’t wear any uniform. But they are going to look around,” he said.

However, Buthelezi said he was unaware of the plan to send men into Soweto. “I would think that it would be a dangerous thing to do in the present tension,” he said.

De Klerk has invited Buthelezi and Mandela to a three-way summit May 24-25 in Cape Town to pave the way for a political settlement between the country’s whites and its black majority.