2nd Massacre in a Week Kills 30 in South Africa : Rampage: Zulus from hostel invade nearby black township. New wave of political violence is feared.

In the second major massacre in a week, a Zulu army of more than 200 men cut a swath through this township late Saturday and early Sunday, setting fire to passing cars and gunning down residents in their homes.

By dawn Sunday, 30 people in an African National Congress stronghold of Tembisa were dead, including 5-month-old Bathando Ngabayena and his parents, who were executed by men in white headbands who burst into their bedroom and opened fire.

The Zulu invaders came from migrant worker hostels a mile away, where most people support the ANC’s longtime political rival, the Inkatha Freedom Party. On Sunday afternoon, 14 other blacks died in similar clashes between hostel dwellers and township residents in Tokhoza, about 20 miles away.

The weekend attacks suggest that a new wave of political violence has taken hold in the bloodstained country, further unraveling the fabric of this society and renewing pressure to speed up the progress of negotiations on a multiracial government. Last week, an attack on a multiracial Cape Town church claimed 12 lives.

“Words and condemnations of violence are no longer enough,” said President Frederik W. de Klerk, who expressed “horror and outrage” at the killings in Tembisa, about 10 miles northeast of Johannesburg. Political leaders “cannot stand idly by while people who claim to be their followers commit atrocities,” he added.

In this township, numbed by political violence that human rights groups say has claimed 9,300 lives countrywide in the past three years, the weekend massacre generated more astonishment than anger.

“Why would anyone do this to us?” asked Peter Montja, 35, whose house was attacked by the Zulu mob. Nelson Dangazele, who spent the night in a field to avoid the attackers, answered, “We’ll never know.”

Some here were plotting revenge. A young ANC supporter with an AK-47 rifle in his hand stood guard on streets blockaded with stones, frowning at passing cars. The ground still was littered with broken knobkerries, sticks with enlarged, rounded tops that are traditionally used by Zulus.

“We now must destroy all these hostels,” said Vusi Nkosi, 22, a friend of Mxolisi and Nokwanda Ngabayena, who died with their young son. “These were not politicians,” he said of his friends. “These were just innocent people.”

The recent escalation of political violence in South Africa has yet to halt the negotiations process. And De Klerk vowed that no amount of violence would postpone elections set for next April. “We will not give a veto to a very small, vociferous minority,” he said.

But the killing has raised questions about the ability of South Africa’s national police force to keep the country from slipping into anarchy during the upcoming election campaign.

Political violence takes many shapes in South Africa these days, from attacks by right-wing extremists to battles between rival black taxi operators to wars of revenge between blacks divided by cultural, geographical, economic and political differences.

The recent trouble in Tembisa began brewing on Saturday afternoon. A young Zulu man was caught in the township, accused of spying and killed by an ANC “self-defense unit.” When word got back to the hostels, in an Inkatha enclave, a revenge attack was planned.

“They were just so furious,” said Grace Ndaba, who runs a grocery store in the Inkatha area. “And then the shooting started.”

Animosity between ANC-supporting residents from various ethnic groups and Inkatha-supporting Zulus in the hostels has divided this township, like others near Johannesburg. Zulus are afraid to enter the township, and non-Zulus in the township are afraid to go near the hostels.

A rail line and four-lane road divide Tembisa’s hostels from the rest of the township. And “anybody who crosses that bridge (over the railroad track) becomes a target,” said Amos, afraid to give his last name.

Petros Mbokazi, one of four local Zulu leaders, said reports of the Zulu man’s death had angered his followers. “This boy who they burned was a soft somebody”--a threat to no one, Mbokazi said. “When you hear something like that, obviously you get angry. And these people (ANC supporters) always give us trouble.”

Township residents agreed that the death of the Zulu man probably triggered the attack. But ANC officials contended that the trouble started when the Toasters Gang, based in one of the hostels, launched an attack on residents of the Umthambeka neighborhood. (The gang got its name from its initiation rite--each member must have executed someone by the “necklace” method, in which a burning tire is placed around the victim’s neck.)

When the gang was repelled by residents, the ANC said, it regrouped and launched the attack with other hostel residents.

The resulting Zulu invasion was quick and powerful, police said. Ten vehicles were burned and dozens of homes were attacked. Police said 30 people, in addition to the first Zulu casualty, were killed; the ANC placed the death toll at 35.

“They just went on a rampage,” said Capt. Wikus Weber, a police spokesman. “They stormed in and anyone who got in their way was just shot and killed.”

Some witnesses said they saw police vehicles helping the attackers, but police deny any involvement. The authorities raided two Tembisa hostels Sunday morning. Three men were arrested, and fewer than half a dozen weapons were confiscated.

The ANC contends that the Tembisa attack was “part of a carefully orchestrated pattern of violence and killings” designed to prevent the advent of a multiracial government. “Those who instigate these killings want to unleash a race war in South Africa,” the ANC said in a statement Sunday.

But the spark for much of the township violence has been something more basic--revenge.

“I heard these attackers saying they would come again,” said Jafta Maponyane, whose house was damaged. “We are very worried. We have no way to defend ourselves.”