BLOOD FEUD : Just as South Africa Seems on the Verge of Creating a Democracy, a Black Civil War Threatens to Overwhelm It

THE REV. DANNY CHETTY’S SMALL PICKUP SLOWS to a crawl as he reaches a hilltop butcher shop, torched only a few days earlier. The shop’s blackened skeleton marks the last outpost of the African National Congress and the beginning of the frontier controlled by the Inkatha Freedom Party.

Then, the small pastor, a 32-year-old Indian whose resistance to apartheid has landed him twice in jail, speaks in a voice suddenly edged with worry.

“From here on,” Chetty says, “we’re in Inkatha territory.” Then he presses on, descending a steep road of packed dirt into the thick, green valley.

It is late morning, cool and moist. A fresh breeze sweeps off the Indian Ocean, clearly visible in the distance. But the road is empty. None of the usual choking dust kicked up by cars and taxis. No African women walking to market or children playing. The only signs of life are anxious black faces drawn to their front windows by the whine of the passing pickup.

Chetty has close ties to the ANC, South Africa’s primary black liberation movement. Today he is on a dangerous errand in the local war between the ANC and Inkatha, a rival movement centered among the Zulus, South Africa’s largest ethnic group.

He is going to an Inkatha funeral to invite the area’s chief to a peace meeting. Chetty had tried to coax other ministers to go along, but a journalist is his only passenger. Even for a man of God, Chetty explains, “this is no-man’s land.”

Rounding a bend, Chetty comes upon 50 Inkatha men sitting on both sides of the road. As the truck passes, their weapons shimmer in the reedy grass: assegais , or spears, hammered to sharp points with rocks; crude machetes as long as an arm; knobkerries, clubs topped with carved balls the size of alarge fists. Like guards at a gate, the men stare at the truck until it disappears.

A few minutes later, Chetty spots a woman walking alone on the road, a pumpkin balanced on her head. He stops to ask directions, and she climbs into the back. She is going to the funeral, too. The pumpkin is for the grieving family.

When Chetty reaches the single-room church, deep in the valley, a hundred singing mourners already have packed the pews. The dirt floor is covered with white straw, and someone holds a red, green and gold Inkatha flag. Outside, a dozen men take turns with a pickax, chopping a grave from a rocky slope.

High on the hilltop, policemen watch the proceedings through binoculars.

Syvion Ndwalane, the church’s 43-year-old priest, lies in a shiny stinkwood casket beneath the candles of his pulpit. The manner of death is written on his face: a blackened puncture on his forehead, from a bullet fired at close range, and a thick slash from forehead to chin, drawn by a sharp knife.

It had happened a week earlier. Ndwalane was riding in a taxi-van that was stopped by ANC-supporting youngsters as it headed for Port Shepstone, the main white town five miles away. The priest was dragged out and murdered, the 15th casualty in the area in less than two weeks.

To the ANC, Syvion Ndwalane (pronounced “in-dwah-LA-nee”) was a ruthless Inkatha warlord who was trying to drive ANC leader Nelson Mandela’s supporters out of territory that had been controlled by his clan for decades. But to the mourners, Ndwalane was a defender of peace, an archbishop in the Zion Christian Church and a respected community leader.

Now the local chief is speaking of peace to the grieving and the angry in the church, saying they must “cool down their hearts.” Laudable though his message is, it is too late. Syvion Ndwalane’s death already has been avenged somewhere in the killing fields near Port Shepstone.

Just as South Africa begins to create, for the first time, a democratic home for all its citizens, a blood bath threatens to drown it. Many South Africans now worry that they are following the rest of Africa into continual civil strife.

The damage may already be irreversible. A culture of violence, death and political intolerance is growing, and neither dismantling apartheid nor granting blacks the vote seems powerful enough to arrest it. No less a figure than President Frederik W. de Klerk, probably the most optimistic man in the country, recently admitted that he fears that the next step may be a civil war.

SOUTH AFRICA HAS BEEN A VIOLENT COUNTRY for more than two centuries. Bloody expansionism by the famed Zulu leader Shaka created the Zulu nation, which was slaughtered by a British colonial army that went on to defeat the crusty Dutch-descended white Afrikaner settlers in the Boer War. Since the colonialists have left, the Afrikaners have brutally put down many black uprisings, and tens of thousands have died.

Today the national murder rate is one of the highest in the world--five times higher than that of the United States. Poverty and racial resentment drive black bandits to regularly prey on elderly white couples in their farmhouses and motorists in their cars, leaving no witnesses. White extremists frustrated by government reforms find an outlet in occasionally slaying blacks at random. Police open fire on black protesters in broad daylight and rarely lose a day of pay.

But the most virulent strain of violence has pitted black man against black man. A 4-year-old civil war between ANC- and Inkatha-supporting Zulus in Natal province has claimed more than 4,000 lives. Last year it spread to the crowded black ghettos encircling Johannesburg, 350 miles west, where 1,500 now have died.

An end to the conflict seemed possible earlier this year, on January 29. After months of refusing to meet its rival, the ANC sent Mandela, its deputy president, to sign a peace treaty with Inkatha leader Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi in Buthelezi’s home, Natal.

Thousands of copies of the accord, printed in English and Zulu, were distributed throughout Natal. Posters announcing “Leaders Make Peace” offered audiocassettes of the moment.

But the killing continued as if no one was listening.

Soon Mandela and Buthelezi were sniping at each other again. Buthelezi, a bearded 62-year-old Zulu prince who is as much at home in buckskin as in Spencer suits, blamed the ANC for the bloodshed and complained of “petulant” late-night telephone calls from Mandela. Mandela, the 72-year-old symbol of black freedom who was released in February, 1990, after 27 years in jail, blamed Inkatha for initiating the trouble and the police for colluding with Inkatha. The government blamed the ANC for creating the climate of violence years before with its now-suspended guerrilla war.

As everyone pointed fingers at each other, the death toll mounted. More than 600 people have been killed since the peace pact was signed, from the six people hacked to death by ANC supporters in Natal the day after the treaty was signed, to the 27 people killed several weeks ago in a pre-dawn Inkatha raid on a Johannesburg squatter camp.

The obvious question--What is causing it?--has no simple answer. It is, to be sure, a battle between the ANC and Inkatha for the political soul of South Africa’s 28 million black people.

That fight dates to 1975, when Buthelezi founded Inkatha. The ANC and Inkatha have disagreed strongly about the best way to end apartheid. While the ANC supports sanctions and guerrilla war, Inkatha opposes both, seeing more promise in negotiations.

When the ANC was legalized last year and hailed as South Africa’s government-in-waiting, Buthelezi became incensed. The outspoken Zulu chief, who was frequently consulted by President De Klerk and considered the black leader most palatable to whites, felt his enemies in the ANC were trying to edge him out of his rightful place as a major player in the country’s future.

So, he stepped up Inkatha’s recruiting drive and opened offices in Johannesburg townships, traditional bastions of ANC support. Within weeks, the war in Natal had spread to Johannesburg, where it primarily pitted migrant Zulu workers from Natal against non-Zulus.

The fighting has political roots, but it also is an African version of the Hatfields and McCoys; inter-clan rivalry, revenge and revenge again. It is about tribal customs and those who reject the traditions of their forefathers. But it also is about criminals who feed on anarchy and about the frustrations of a people who have been oppressed, forced at gunpoint to live in squalid conditions and denied any taste of democracy.

And it is about a society where people know they can get away with murder. Of the 4,000 deaths in Natal, lawyers have counted fewer than 20 successful murder prosecutions.

Syvion Ndwalane was one of more than 50 people killed during March in attacks in the black settlements around Port Shepstone, a Natal coastal community two hours’ drive south of Durban.

The violence had begun suddenly and dragged on into April, flaring and pausing without warning. Bands of warriors roamed the villages, swarming their enemies, and then returned to hilltops to eye each other warily. Women and children fled their homes and returned several days later, only to run away again at the next sound of gunfire. A close look at what happened in Port Shepstone shows how deeply the roots of violence grow in South Africa. It is the story of how people professing to support two time-honored values--African tradition and Western democracy--can destroy a community.

Port Shepstone looks like a small, sunny seaside city in California. About 6,500 whites live in neighborhoods of brick homes and shade trees, and most supervise black laborers in small factories that bottle beer, process sugar cane and stitch clothing. New cars glide on smooth roads, and nearly every office has a fax machine.

Nearby, though, more than 30,000 blacks live in thatch or cinder-block homes. Their rural villages are scattered across hillsides and valleys, connected by a maze of narrow dirt paths. Half the able-bodied men are unemployed, and few homes have running water or electricity or telephones.

The first sparks there appeared five weeks after Mandela and Buthelezi had declared peace.

MARCH 3: The telephone rang in the home of ANC branch chairman Siyabonga Cwele (“CHWELL-aye”) on Sunday morning. The caller said middle-aged Inkatha impis , or warriors, were attacking young ANC supporters, who call themselves “comrades,” in a nearby village.

Cwele, a well-to-do black doctor, drove to the scene with police officers. On a hilltop, he and a handful of the local ANC comrades met the Rev. Syvion Ndwalane and his half-dozen impis. The comrades were armed with sticks and knives; the impis had spears and a rifle.

They agreed on a cease fire, and Cwele left. But as the impis streamed down the hill toward their homes they clashed with more than a dozen ANC comrades hiding in the bush. Minutes later, two comrades were mortally wounded.

On a hilltop nearby, Inkatha impis showed up at a general store run by John Nyawose (“nya-WO-say”), a 59-year-old businessman and one of Cwele’s local ANC leaders.

Nyawose and the local Inkatha headman, one of Ndwalane’s brothers, had had several arguments over ANC meetings at the school next door. Inkatha thought the ANC was planning attacks. A few weeks earlier, the Inkatha headman had warned John Nyawose that if trouble broke out, Nyawose would be “first on the list.”

Now there was trouble, and Nyawose saw the headman and half a dozen armed impis climbing the hill toward his store. He hid in the ceiling, holding a revolver, and watched as they questioned and threatened his wife, Elizabeth.

Then they carried food, radios and other goods out of the store. Nyawose decided not to risk a fight. Instead, he watched as the business he had built from scratch was cleaned out.

After the men left, the Nyawoses decided that John would take the three children, all under 10 years old, and flee. Knowing that men were the main targets, 42-year-old Elizabeth stayed behind to watch their household goods.

MARCH 4: The military maneuvers of comrades and impis had begun, and the valleys were emptying. Hundreds of people were sleeping in the bush, trying to sort the sound of marauders from the chatter of insects. Once-bustling villages were eerily quiet. Cosmos Msimango, 18, and several dozen ANC comrades, a few as young as 11, and all carrying sticks, knives or stones, were walking down a dirt road when they stumbled into the path of a group of Inkatha impis.

Gunshots rang out, and one comrade fell. Groaning in pain, he was dragged to cover, but the impis kept coming. The comrades ran, leaving their friend to die alone. They assumed he would be carved up for witches’ potions and muti , which they believe protects their opponents in battle .

Msimango recounted the story later outside the Good Hope Supermarket, where he and 30 barefoot young refugees in ragged shirts were eating canned food from the Red Cross.

Theirs is a generation without education, jobs, money or hope. Their schools, facing shortages of books and funds in the best of times, have been closed by the fighting. For them, violence offers a role to play in society, and the excitement of battle is a drug they still can afford.

Most of the boys had pulled themselves together as “self-defense units” and drawn up hit lists of their enemies. They had carved spears and made their own gasoline bombs and rifles of gutter pipe and wire. All they figured they needed now was some help from the ANC army, Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), the one that had waged 30 years of war against apartheid.

“All we need is two guns,” said Msimango, a tall, slender youngster smoking half a cigarette offered by a younger boy. “Then we can face them.” He shaped his hand into a pistol, looked down into the valley and shook his finger with two shots at imaginary impis .

Msimango and his friends dreamed of the next battle. Killing and dying didn’t worry them much.

“The person who dies is a hero,” Msimango explained. “That must be better than living like this.”

MARCH 6: Afraid that the Inkatha impis would return, Elizabeth Nyawose left her house and the store. She hitched a ride into Port Shepstone, where a relief group took her to a local Catholic church.

But she still didn’t feel safe. Two Inkatha men came to the church looking for her and her husband. They were turned away but returned at night, peering through windows into the church room where Nyawose and several dozen women and children were sleeping.

“These people are after my husband,” she said. She was worried about her children. “I don’t know whether they are still alive or not.”

Nyawose had reported the attack on the family store to the police and identified her attackers. But, fearing her family was still in danger, she declined to press charges. In fact, the police had found few survivors or witnesses willing to testify against their attackers in any cases.

Meanwhile, people injured in the fighting crowded into Murchison Hospital, on a paved road overlooking the embattled valleys. Dr. Terry Gilpin, the medical superintendent, said they were arriving “with huge, gaping wounds. It just makes you want to get your hands on the people who do that kind of thing.”

Only a few of the patients had strong Inkatha or ANC ties. “So many are just caught between the hammer and the anvil,” Gilpin said. “They want to get on with life, but they are stuck on one side or the other.”

Albert and Medrina Ngcobela (“in-ko-BAY-la”) were such people. They lived a few miles from the hospital, in a typical enclave where power had changed from Inkatha to the ANC and back to Inkatha--all in a matter of months.

The Ngcobelas were poor, “very poor somebodies,” said the proprietor of the Kwatata Trading Company, where Medrina Ngcobela sometimes sold vegetables to support her family.

Albert Ngcobela, who was 46, hadn’t been able to find work in months, and he spent most of his time tending his garden and watching the three children.

Although he was willing to join whichever organization first came to the door, he and his wife both thought that neutrality was best. They would find that it wasn’t enough.

MARCH 7: At dawn, an elderly ANC supporter was found hanging from a tree next to his house. Or at least that was what the comrades had heard.

Expecting more trouble, the police set up “strong points” on hilltops, deploying 150 black and white policemen and 200 white soldiers into the region.

Syvion Ndwalane boarded a taxi-van near his church that morning and headed for Port Shepstone, where he regularly prayed with prison inmates. He had to have known the journey was risky. Although his village was under Inkatha control, it was encircled by the comrades’ domain.

The taxi was passing through one of those areas when it ran into a roadblock manned by the ANC. They told the driver they were looking for Ndwalanes. Syvion was spotted, dragged out and murdered in front of horrified passengers.

Syvion was wanted by the comrades as a leader of Inkatha’s warriors, but also because of his family name. The comrades and the Ndwalane clan had a bloody history.

Syvion’s nephew, Chief Aaron Ndwalane, 35, had been the most powerful man in the area for several years, and he used his power to reward those who supported Inkatha. Chief Ndwalane had parceled out land, sat as a judge in the tribal court and overseen a team of village headmen, or indunas , many Ndwalanes included.

When the ANC was finally legalized, young supporters began to rebel against the traditional leaders, using Molotov cocktails and homemade rifles in a bid to impose “democracy.” But the Ndwalanes had retaliated, breaking up ANC meetings and, the ANC claimed, forcing people to join Inkatha.

“Tribal structures cannot be removed so easily,” explained Archie Khumalo, a field worker with Inkatha’s think tank, the Inkatha Institute, and friend of the Ndwalanes. “The old people know very well they can’t be ruled by children. We want to be free, but we won’t forget where we come from.”

Then, in May, 1990, police had stopped the chiefs’s van and found four shotguns, a homemade rifle and four gasoline bombs. He said they were for self-defense, but he was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison.

With the chief gone, the ANC youth had taken control. But they turned out to be as bad as the Inkatha crowd. Without the permission of Cwele or any other ANC official, the youth ran their own kangaroo courts. Then they stoned or burned to death a dozen men and women they suspected of being witches.

With tensions mounting, the police had called a local peace meeting earlier this year. At the meeting, the ANC complained about recent shipments of army rifles to the Ndwalanes. The police said the guns were licensed to protect tribal property.

The ANC’s Cwele had met Syvion Ndwalane for the first time that day, and the doctor had been surprised to learn Ndwalane was a preacher.

“He sure didn’t use the language of a pastor,” Cwele remembered. “He was a very harsh person.”

MARCH 8: Now Syvion Ndwalane was dead, and Cwele was worried about his own life. Anonymous callers warned the 32-year-old ANC leader that he was on Inkatha’s hit list.

Cwele turned his Port Shepstone practice over to a colleague and began watching his back. He traveled around town in his old Mercedes-Benz, often with one or two comrades.

His pregnant wife, Sheryl, and their two small children moved in with friends. “I’m afraid they are going to burn down our home,” Sheryl Cwele said. Her baby was due any day.

At an empty beachfront restaurant in Port Shepstone, the doctor seemed nervous and frequently looked at the door. How long before things return to normal? he was asked.

“I’ll call you if I’m still alive,” he said.

MARCH 14: At dusk, Albert Ngcobela, that “very poor somebody,” walked to the trading center to buy some groceries. Neighbors later remembered hearing him argue with two men in the dark. The men asked if Ngcobela was Inkatha or ANC. He said he hadn’t joined either side.

The next morning Ngcobela’s body was found about 100 yards from his home. He had been struck on the head with a hammer, and his forehead and neck had been slashed. Neighbors sprinkled the blood on the path with dirt to keep the flies away.

The store proprietor didn’t remember seeing Ngcobela that night. Perhaps he hadn’t made it that far, she said. But, she added in a whisper, “please don’t name me. Buthelezi has agents everywhere. They will find us.”

As Ngcobela’s body was wheeled into Dove’s Funeral Home, the body of his cousin, killed by unknown assassins a week earlier, was leaving in a casket for his funeral.

Ngcobela’s sister, Agrineth, knew Inkatha was to blame. Nevertheless, she and her husband decided to join Inkatha. It cost 5 rand, or about $2, which they considered a sound investment in their survival.

“If we want to stay in our house, we have to have their card,” Agrineth said.

Inkatha support is almost entirely in Natal, and it claims a membership of 2 million of South Africa’s 7 million Zulus, or about one-eighth of its black people. The ANC is a multi-ethnic organization with many Zulu members, although the ANC leadership is dominated by Xhosas, such as Mandela, a fact that many Inkatha members resent.

While the ANC has fewer paid members than Inkatha, independent public opinion polls say that 40% to 60% of blacks would support the ANC in an election, while only 1% would support Inkatha. Inkatha says the results are unscientific and biased, but the polls suggest that many Zulus in Natal, especially those employed in the homeland of kwaZulu that Buthelezi runs, feel obligated to join.

MARCH 15: Elizabeth Nyawose, whose husband had escaped Inkatha by hiding above his store ceiling, left the safety of the church to search for her family. She found them at a relative’s home. When John Nyawose saw his wife, his face broke into a broad smile.

“I was so worried,” he said. “I thought I’d lost her.” Elizabeth silently wiped away a tear.

After Inkatha had raided his store, Nyawose had spent a week in the bush with his three children. Then he returned to his own house to retrieve a few sofas and cooking utensils.

Now reunited, the Nyawoses had to make a decision. Should they wait for the fighting to end or move far away to begin a new life? They didn’t have much time.

“There are people here who want to get me,” Nyawose said. “I’m scared of everybody.”

But all he had was the store. “I must sell that shop and build another business,” he said. “If you have a painting job for me, I’d be grateful.”

MARCH 16: Syvion Ndwalane’s gravediggers dug deeply into the soil beside his church, but it was slow going. One mourner saw it as a sign. “The father is saying, I’m not going. I want to stay here awhile longer,” he told the congregation.

The village headman, Syvion’s uncle, stepped to the pulpit. A tall, muscular man in his late 50s, he was wearing a pair of blue overalls and an unhappy expression.

“The body is cold, but his spirit will live,” said the headman, himself on the hit lists of many ANC comrades. “The spirit of the Ndwalanes has not died.”

Chief Calalabakubo Khawula (“kaw-WOO-la”), the most powerful tribal leader in southern Natal, was the honored guest. ANC leaders claimed that the 6-foot, 300-pound chief was a warlord, personally responsible for the deaths of many. But on the day of the funeral, Chief Khawula said angry mourners “mustn’t try to kill another man because they are crying for Ndwalane. If that happens, this thing will never be finished.”

Later, in a whispered conversation near the casket, the chief accepted Danny Chetty’s invitation to an ANC-Inkatha peace meeting the next day in Port Shepstone.

“The history of apartheid has created these warlords on both sides,” Chetty reflected as he drove out of the Ndwalane valley. “It’s that history of oppression. Now there are some new freedoms. But, on the ground, the hardships remain. If anything, they are worse.

“Black people are dying all the time. You feel so helpless. It makes you angry with God.”

MARCH 17: The peace meeting began Sunday afternoon at St. Katherine’s Anglican Church, a stone edifice that overlooks Port Shepstone’s tidy downtown. Khawula led a delegation of 12, and Cwele of eight.

The men first wrangled over chairmanship of the meeting, finally agreeing to allow Khawula and Cwele to share the duties. After several hours, both sides could only agree to exchange telephone numbers and meet again within two weeks.

“They always shake hands and depart friendly,” said police Capt. Herman Fourie, the Port Shepstone station commander who has chaired many such meetings. “But I don’t think all the people outside listen to them.”

The captain turned out to be right. The follow-up meeting never happened, and leaders of the ANC and Inkatha admitted privately that they were powerless to stop the killing.

“If you kill my brother and I know you did it, and you are still around, I know I must kill you. That’s not political,” explained 30-year-old Archie Khumalo, part of Inkatha’s delegation.

The ANC, from Mandela to Cwele, blamed the violence on the government, saying the police armed Inkatha and looked the other way when impis attacked comrades. Their evidence was circumstantial--the government had the tools to stop the violence and also the most to gain politically if blacks continued to fight each other.

“We don’t condone any violence,” Cwele said. “But it’s difficult to tell people not to go out and fight when they know who is orchestrating these deaths and nothing is done.”

South Africa’s national police force lost dozens of its officers in the long fight against ANC guerrillas. And the police had grown fond of Inkatha, which opposed violence against the state.

Police now contend they are impartial, but they have found it difficult to embrace their old enemies. Law and Order Minister Adriaan Vlok recently went so far as to blame the factional fighting on the ANC’s guerrilla past. And that message has been received by the cops on the beat.

“The police are trying to project an image that they are changing toward us,” Cwele said. “But they haven’t, and Inkatha is taking advantage of that.”

Police officers in Port Shepstone, though, blamed most of the fighting on intolerance among blacks and on ordinary crime, which has flourished alongside the political violence.

The police admitted that the proliferation of weapons has made the situation worse, but they have been reluctant to accede to the ANC’s demand that everyone be disarmed.

“You see a man standing in front of his house, facing a possible attack. Who’s going to be so foolish as to disarm him?” Capt. Fourie asked.

Col. Ben Theunissen, the district police commissioner, offered another scenario. “Imagine you and I arrive on the scene and find 150 angry people standing with axes and guns and what have you,” he said. “How the hell are you going to do something? You’re going to kill your policemen if you try that.”

MARCH 18: In the absence of evidence of attacks, rumors fed the furnace. The ANC said Inkatha killed children in a nursery school. Inkatha said the ANC was throwing bodies off cliffs.

It had gotten to the point that the sound of a whistle or a horn, the Inkatha battle cries, would, by itself, reignite the conflict.

“I can go out now and blow a trumpet,” complained Theunissen, the police colonel, “and I guarantee you I’ll have a fight in half an hour.”

APRIL 3: People slowly began to return to their homes, Danny Chetty went back to his pastoral work and Chief Khawula to his seat in the kwaZulu homeland, Parliament. Sheryl Cwele, the ANC leader’s wife, gave birth to a healthy baby boy and went home.

John and Elizabeth Nyawose quietly moved to Durban.

Police said they had arrested several ANC comrades in Syvion Ndwalane’s death. But no one had been arrested for killing Albert Ngcobela or most of the other victims.

Meanwhile, right-wing white extremists staged a rally in Port Shepstone. A speaker warned several hundred whites that they would soon be nothing more than “a hamburger patty” between warring blacks. Be prepared to fight, he said. Most whites ignored him, as they have ignored the bloodshed all along.

“Most of us have grown used to it,” explained Jurgens Steyn, the town clerk. “There has always been black faction fighting. It’s part of their culture.”

As he spoke, Steyn pressed a switch on his office wall. A few minutes later, an elderly black woman in an apron appeared at the door.

“Two cups of tea, please,” Steyn said.

APRIL 13: Rumors started up again. Inkatha conducted a meeting to elect a new headman, and ANC comrades thought it was a war meeting in disguise.

Then, comrades kidnaped an Inkatha official. Impis , armed with everything from sticks to rifles, prepared to launch a search for their leader. The comrades, carrying machetes and pistols, gathered to defend their territory.

Police and soldiers took up positions between the two. Asked what was happening, a white soldier shrugged.

“It’s the ANC and Inkatha fighting today,” he said.

Police vehicles carried leaders of the two groups to a meeting, during which both sides agreed to send their warriors home. That truce lasted two days, until the kidnaped Inkatha official’s body turned up.

APRIL 15: The daily police “Unrest Report,” a holdover from the anti-government riots of the 1980s, reported the results:

“In the last 24 hours, four men were killed when a group of blacks attacked another group of blacks with firearms near Port Shepstone on Sunday. Deaths were caused by stabbings and the use of sharp instruments. In another incident, a further three bodies were found, a motor vehicle destroyed and two houses gutted. . . .”

A few newspapers ran a short item, for the record.