Chanting Zulus March in Johannesburg

Thousands of spear-waving Zulus marched through Johannesburg on Saturday, chanting hatred for Nelson Mandela on a day marked by displays of black disunity in South Africa.

Leaders of Mandela’s African National Congress and the radical Pan-Africanist Congress addressed rival rallies to mark the 1960 killing by police of 69 blacks in Sharpeville township.

Loyalists of the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party paraded through South Africa’s biggest city demanding that Mandela disband the ANC’s Spear of the Nation armed wing.

“Kill a (police) sergeant and castrate the Xhosas,” were among chants that echoed through Johannesburg’s streets. Mandela belongs to the Xhosa ethnic group.

Helmeted troops in combat gear and riot police flanked the Zulus as they jogged past glittering skyscrapers, pouring abuse on Mandela and Chris Hani, leader of the ANC’s armed wing.

“No one can stop the Zulus, we are not afraid of anyone,” they sang. Men, some in traditional ostrich feathers and leopard skins, performed prancing war dances. The march was billed by organizers as a protest against township violence.

In Sharpeville, 30 miles south of Johannesburg, Pan-Africanist Congress leader Clarence Makwetu accused the ANC of betraying the black majority by negotiating political reforms with the white minority government of President Frederik W. de Klerk.

He said De Klerk fomented violence in a divide-and-rule plan to maintain white domination. “De Klerk is not prepared to stop the violence because it is in his interests,” Makwetu said.

ANC deputy president Walter Sisulu told an ANC rally that De Klerk’s big victory in a white referendum on reform last Tuesday means there is no longer any obstacle to installing an interim multiracial government by June and an elected constituent assembly, to draw up a new constitution, by the end of the year.

“De Klerk will have a real election in December and then he’ll know what a landslide is,” said ANC Secretary General Cyril Ramaphosa.

At a Sharpeville Day rally in Cape Town, Mandela reiterated that an ANC government would not carry out large-scale dismissals of white civil servants after coming to power.

Inkatha, a rival of both the ANC and Pan-Africanist Congress for loyalty of the black majority, organized the Johannesburg march to protest what it called ANC violence against its members during political unrest that has taken 11,000 lives since 1984.