Holiday Attack a Symptom of S. Africa Tension

SHOBASHOBANE, South Africa — The killers came 600 to 1,000 strong, marching for miles over steep hills and down lush valleys, beating cowhide shields and waving traditional Zulu spears and knobbed clubs, as well as modern assault rifles and two-way radios.

And when they arrived on Christmas morning, the women ululated and cheered as the men advanced in a formation that dates to Shaka, the legendary 19th-century Zulu chief: The main war party launched a frontal assault, while two flanking prongs quickly encircled the village and cut off escape routes.

“It’s what Zulus call the horns-of-the-bull attack,” Supt. Jeff Cromhout, head of the police riot squad, explained beside a charred hut in the now-deserted hamlet. “It’s very quick and very effective.”

It was also very deadly. By the time the massacre ended Monday, 17 people, including an infant, had been hacked or shot to death. Up to 20 people were wounded, and another 20 were missing. Eighty-seven huts and homes were in flames, others trashed and looted.

The slaughter was the worst single case of political violence since South Africa’s founding democratic election in April 1994. And it grimly highlighted the most intractable problem facing President Nelson Mandela’s fledgling government as it tries to consolidate control over this fractious nation of 41 million.

All the victims were supporters of Mandela’s African National Congress, the dominant party in government. The local ANC leader was not only killed, he alone was disemboweled. Survivors insist the attackers were from the rival Inkatha Freedom Party, which is widely accused of using terror tactics to retain power in KwaZulu-Natal province.

The clash between the parties is fundamental. The ANC wants a centralized government and elected structures at all levels. But Inkatha leader Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi wants autonomy for his province and preservation of tribal powers granted under apartheid. He has pulled his party from the Constitutional Assembly, which is writing a new constitution.

Until the crisis is solved, the bitter bloodletting is unlikely to stop.

Survivor’s Tale

Shobashobane survivor Mavis Nyawose, for example, said Inkatha partisans set fire to her thatch-roofed hut and chased her down a hill until she fell in a pond. They then hacked at her with machetes.

“There were four men chopping my head,” the 40-year-old woman explained as she unwrapped a bandage to show at least 10 deep gashes, now laced with stitches, on her neck and head. Her right hand and arm, cut and broken when she tried to fend off the blows, were in a cast.

She survived by playing dead, even when the men rifled her pockets and stole her savings--about $57. “They said: ‘Leave her, leave the dog. The dog is dead,’ ” she recalled.

She and about 80 other survivors now have taken refuge at the Anglican Church in Port Shepstone, about 25 miles away on the Indian Ocean coast. As children played near a jumbled heap of salvaged pots and clothes, Victor Ngwazi said his brother, Nelson, was shot to death during the attack.

“We went to the police station,” Ngwazi recalled. “The Inkatha members were in front shooting at us. So we went to the bush to hide. And for three hours we run up and down the hills, and they shoot at us.”

Local police concede that they watched, but did not try to stop, the killers as they rampaged from hut to hut in the emerald hills and verdant cane fields here.

“I can’t say why no arrests were made,” said Sgt. Denis Meyer, the regional police spokesman. “It happens a lot like that.”

It’s not the only reason local police are widely seen as backing Inkatha in the rural villages and urban slums of KwaZulu-Natal, home to most of the estimated 9 million Zulus, the country’s largest ethnic group.

‘Why Didn’t Police Act?’

Survivors say that a day before the Shobashobane slaughter, police raided ANC huts to disarm the occupants. Police say they were searching for an accused murderer, not weapons.

But Mary de Haas, an anthropologist and independent peace monitor, fears direct police complicity in the carnage. She said she called the local police post twice in vain to demand patrols in the holiday period.

“Why didn’t the police act?” she asked angrily. “Because too many are still white and right-wing. They think they should just let the blacks fight it out.”

Political violence is hardly new here. More than 1,100 people were killed this year, including about 750 in KwaZulu-Natal, according to the independent Human Rights Committee. But that’s a sharp drop from preelection political violence, when hundreds of people were killed each month.

One reason is that military troops have helped patrol flash points since the election. About 400 army and police reinforcements were sent to the area around Shobashobane after the massacre, and Deputy President Thabo Mbeki announced the creation of a special strike force to investigate the failure of police intelligence, and to find and prosecute the killers.

“Clearly [the attack] was very well-planned and very well-executed,” Mbeki told reporters.

Why it happened is less clear. The area has been tense since January, when reputed Inkatha warriors attacked the local ANC leader. He survived, but eight family members were killed. After the funeral, about 30 ANC youths stayed behind to establish a beachhead in Inkatha-dominated territory.

“They’ve been virtually besieged ever since,” De Haas said. “It’s a deliberate attempt to wipe out the ANC, to consolidate Inkatha’s territorial base, to step up resistance to the central government.”

Over several months, leaders from both sides met to negotiate as snipers took aim from nearby hills, raiding parties torched homes, guerrillas fought skirmishes in the valleys and residents fled the area in terror.

Normal Life Impossible

Normal life was impossible for the 200 or so ANC supporters who remained. On Dec. 20, for example, an Inkatha mob began stoning eight ANC women who had gone Christmas shopping at a nearby market. Police fired rubber bullets to stop the riot and took the shoppers home in armored vehicles.

But why Christmas Day? And why was the impi, as the traditional Zulu war column is called, so large?

One reason is that tens of thousands of Zulus were home for the holidays after months of living in grim single-sex barracks and working in distant gold mines and factories. Another is that two other massacres occurred nearby only weeks before.

On Dec. 15, 10 people, including a 4-month-old infant, were gunned down in an Inkatha-aligned village near Paddock. Three days later, eight women and children were shot or burned to death in an ANC area outside Margate. Scores more have since been killed in other incidents.

But revenge is rarely the only trigger here. Ancient conflicts among many of the 136 Zulu clans, as well as power struggles by rival chiefs and warlords, often compound the political battle between the ANC and Inkatha.

“It’s not just political,” said Capt. Kim van Niekerk, the military spokeswoman in the province. “There are always other reasons.”

Gavin Woods, an Inkatha member of Parliament, agreed. “These communities have long memories. They can recall tribal issues that go back a decade or two, and include conflicts over water or cattle or anything. So tempers get raised far out of proportion to the original incident.”

The Rev. Dan Chetty, a Port Shepstone minister active in local peace efforts, also blames the sudden clash of modern democracy with a feudal structure in which traditional chiefs, usually loyal to Inkatha, own land and control nearly all aspects of village life.

“These two systems are totally incompatible,” Chetty said. “A tribal system demands total fealty to the chief. And democracy means you have young people who feel they can move in or out, or hold public meetings, without permission from the chief. These are real tensions that arise from the new democracy.”

Pressure Will Rise

The pressure is expected to rise next year as both sides jockey for position before local elections scheduled for May 29. Most of the rest of the country voted Nov. 1, but voting was delayed here and in several other areas after provincial governments said they were not adequately prepared.

Police and political leaders on both sides now fear more retaliatory attacks.

“We are obviously returning to a phase of violence that we thought we had passed,” said Ravi Pillay, regional ANC chairman. “From our side, it’s going to be very difficult to tell our people now to stick to the path of peace.”

Sipho Ngcobo, the regional Inkatha secretary, blamed the ANC for the attack. “I strongly condemn anyone who says any member of Inkatha took part in this attack,” he said, although he conceded that nearly every community for miles around is controlled by Inkatha.

Ngcobo also denied detailed accounts from survivors who say he took part in the killing. “Whenever there is trouble, they blame me,” he said.

About 150 heavily armed soldiers and police, backed by 11 armored vehicles, searched Thursday for more corpses or survivors in the tall grass and rubble at Shobashobane.

But the soldiers found nothing except a squealing pig and a few scrawny dogs. For now, at least, the ANC is gone.