S. Africa Leaders Schedule Peace Talks as Killings Mount : Violence: Summit is planned for Friday. At least 40 deaths are recorded in Natal province over weekend.

Pre-election violence in Natal province continued at a bloody pitch over the weekend despite the deployment of more than 1,000 army troops and a state of emergency, and South Africa’s top political leaders agreed to hold a peace summit this Friday.

At least 40 people have been killed in political violence since Friday, when the state of emergency in Natal went into effect, giving police and army troops special powers of search, seizure and detention. Most of the victims--22 of whom were killed Saturday night and early Sunday--were supporters of the African National Congress.

In the most violent incident since the emergency was imposed, nine people--all women, girls or babies--were massacred in their village huts in an ANC stronghold outside Port Shepstone in southern Natal early Sunday by men identified by survivors as Zulu supporters of the Inkatha Freedom Party.

In another attack Sunday, gunmen armed with AK-47 rifles fired on a group of Inkatha supporters praying at an outdoor Easter service in Bhambayi, a predominantly ANC settlement outside of Durban. One woman was shot dead.

The violence is seen--notably by the ANC and the white-minority government--as an attempt to keep potential voters from going to the polls later this month to take part in what will be South Africa’s first all-race election. The ANC is expected to win, and its bitter rival, Inkatha, is boycotting the vote.

President Frederik W. de Klerk imposed the state of emergency over Natal after six weeks of intensified violence resulted in the heaviest death toll in the decade of a low-grade civil war between conservative, traditional and rural Zulus who support Inkatha and younger, more progressive and urbanized Zulus who support the ANC.

De Klerk, African National Congress President Nelson Mandela and Zulu and Inkatha leader Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi fixed the summit date Sunday when the three met at a massive outdoor Easter service for an estimated 1.5 million members of the Zion Christian Church in Moria, about 150 miles northeast of here.

The summit, also to be attended by Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini, will address ways to curb the escalating political violence, as well as a demand by Buthelezi and Zwelithini for postponement of the April 26-28 election, either nationally or in the province of Natal and its black homeland of KwaZulu.

Buthelezi is chief minister of KwaZulu, which, with nine other such apartheid-created regions, will cease to exist after the election.

Military sources said army troops patrolling areas of Natal have so far been instructed not to take advantage of their extraordinary powers under the state of emergency because De Klerk wants a bargaining chip to bring to the summit with Buthelezi and Zwelithini.

These sources said that unless the two Zulu leaders agree to instruct their supporters not to obstruct the election, De Klerk will threaten to use the emergency powers to round up Inkatha leaders suspected of fomenting the violence. Buthelezi is expected to argue that holding a vote under a state of emergency makes a mockery of the notion of a free and fair election.