Family of 9 Killed in Natal; Mandela Calls for Patience : South Africa: He expects to hold a summit this week with De Klerk and Zulu leaders on pre-election violence.

Assailants posing as policemen killed a family of ANC supporters in Natal province, and Nelson Mandela warned Sunday that it will take time for the state of emergency to end the violence that threatens this month’s all-race elections.

Mandela, head of the African National Congress, said he hoped a summit this week with President Frederik W. de Klerk and Zulu leaders would dissipate tension so the emergency measures could be lifted, and Natal--which includes the volatile KwaZulu black homeland--could participate in the April 26-28 voting.

A spokesman for De Klerk said the summit would take place Friday.

The nine deaths in Port Shepstone, on Natal’s south coast, and at least nine other killings Saturday and early Sunday brought the death toll in Natal to 37 since De Klerk declared the state of emergency Thursday, police said.

The attackers in Port Shepstone identified themselves as policemen to enter a hut on Saturday night, then hacked and stabbed nine people to death, including a 5-month-old infant and two older children. The family was identified as ANC supporters, Police Lt. Col. Marzedt de Beer said.

In another incident, bullets fired from an ANC-controlled area killed one woman and injured another as they prayed on Easter Sunday at a cross set up in the streets of Bhambayi, near Durban, De Beer said.

The attacks were part of the daily violence that has racked Natal, where the ANC and the Zulu nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party have fought since 1990. Inkatha is boycotting the election.

De Klerk, in conjunction with the multiracial Transitional Executive Council helping run the country until the vote, declared the state of emergency because of the escalating political violence.

Mandela’s ANC is expected to win the election and has pledged to get rid of black homelands, including KwaZulu, which were established under the apartheid system of racial segregation.

Zulu nationalists led by Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, the Inkatha Freedom Party leader, oppose the vote, fearing an ANC victory will allow it to crush the rights of South Africa’s 7 million Zulus, most of whom live in Natal.

More than 1,000 South African soldiers have been sent to Natal to try to secure the province, especially KwaZulu, so campaigning and voting can proceed unhindered.

Mandela, who joined De Klerk and Buthelezi in kneeling together to pray for peace at an Easter service for 1 million adherents of the Zion Christian Church in Moria, in the northern Transvaal, said soldiers need time to bring violence under control.

“We shouldn’t have exaggerated or unrealistic expectations,” he said. “The security forces are busy establishing themselves, and it might take some time before they actually master the situation.”

At least 290 people died in the political strife in Zulu-dominated Natal in March, the highest monthly total in three years. Tensions deepened last Monday when at least 53 people were killed in violence linked to a march by Zulu nationalists in Johannesburg.