S. Africans Fear Brutal Prophecy in Massacre

The scene inside St. James Church suggested a hopeful new South Africa--a white woman and a colored (mixed-race) man singing a joyous duet, “More Than Wonderful,” to a packed congregation of whites and coloreds.

But that lovely moment was shattered by the brutal face of another South Africa. As the pair sang, five heavily armed black men burst into the Cape Town church, tossing two hand grenades into the pews and spraying the hallowed halls with gunfire.

The death toll in the Sunday night attack rose to 12 on Monday, with 27 parishioners still in hospitals. A country that has endured years of senseless violence was stunned by what it saw as new depths of barbarism.

“Those people came into our church,” said one of the survivors, Cheslyn Weber, an 18-year-old colored man stifling tears. “I don’t think they had a heart, to walk into a place of worship and kill us.”

It was the single worst attack in a white neighborhood in at least a decade, and many whites as well as blacks feared that it was only the beginning of a bloody transition to black-majority rule. Certainly, it raised the political temperature as the country took its first steps toward multiracial democracy.

The law and order minister, Hernus Kriel, laid a bouquet of roses Monday in the church hall, amid abandoned shoes, dark pools of blood and scorched carpeting.

“We have to go forward and find a political solution for the problems of this country,” Kriel said, though his voice lacked conviction. He added: “But if this is the new South Africa, nobody will want to stay here. The new South Africa will have to be different.”

Even as police launched a nationwide search for the killers, and posted an $80,000 reward, black and white leaders in Johannesburg pressed ahead with their negotiations, unveiling the first draft of a constitution that will form the basis for the first multiracial democracy in the country’s history.

“We condemn it (the church massacre) in the strongest terms, but we will not allow those who want to derail the negotiating process to succeed,” said Cyril Ramaphosa, chief negotiator for the African National Congress.

Earlier, the ANC had said the attack was “a shameless desecration of a place of prayer and worship.” And it blamed “dark forces determined to wreck all efforts to build peace and democracy in our country.”

President Frederik W. de Klerk, who visited the scene of the attack and survivors in Cape Town hospitals Monday, pledged to arrest those responsible for “this horrifying incident.”

“This government, and a government of national unity, must continue to deal with the vociferous minority who are working against the interests of the overwhelming majority,” De Klerk said.

The new constitutional blueprint, supported by both the white-minority government and its opponents in the ANC, faced other obstacles Monday. Negotiators postponed debate for two days in hopes of wooing Zulu chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party and the right-wing white Conservative Party back to the table.

Inkatha and the Conservative Party have boycotted the talks, demanding that the principle of “sufficient consensus,” which is used to decide matters in the forum, be clarified. Under that undefined principle, agreement by the two most powerful negotiators, the ANC and the government, has been sufficient to approve proposals in the past.

The date for the country’s first multiracial election--April 27, 1994--was approved by “sufficient consensus,” even though both Inkatha and the Conservatives opposed it.

The draft of the new constitution goes a considerable way toward meeting Inkatha’s demand for a guarantee of regional autonomy in a new South Africa. It calls for a two-tier national legislature, with a lower chamber of 400 representatives chosen by proportional representation in national elections and an upper chamber with 10 senators from each region.

The blueprint also calls for regional legislatures. But it would not allow regions to have their own police forces, as Buthelezi now has in the KwaZulu homeland in Natal province. And it would disband KwaZulu and other homeland administrations during the campaign leading up to the first elections.

The Conservatives’ demands will be more difficult to meet. They are asking for a loose federation of states, similar to the European Community, in which each state would have full autonomy from South Africa’s central government.

ANC and government negotiators say the only way for Inkatha and the Conservatives to press their demands is at the negotiating table. “It is only here that their concerns can best be addressed,” Ramaphosa said.

But negotiations were overshadowed Monday by the church attack in Cape Town and by continuing violence in the black townships near Johannesburg, which claimed 46 lives over the weekend.

News of the church massacre gripped the country, renewing white fears and reminding blacks of the powerful forces still arrayed against their desire for a democratic say in their country.

Political analysts said the attack was unlikely to increase right-wing white activity, but they predicted it would further undermine confidence in the country.

“The voices of despair will be enormously strengthened by this,” said Robert Schrire, a professor of political studies at the University of Cape Town. “And I think that despair is more dangerous than the anger.”

The attack occurred in Kenilworth, a middle-class white suburb of Cape Town, in an Anglican church that, while predominantly white, has many colored members.

The gunmen burst into the church from a side door late in the service, firing indiscriminately into the crowd, witnesses said. The two hand grenades exploded, killing and maiming white and colored worshipers. Minutes later, the attackers were gone.

Police said they did not know who was responsible for the attack.