2 Die as Clash Disrupts Key Meeting on Anti-Apartheid Strategy in South Africa

DURBAN, South Africa â€”  Two men were killed and 20 injured here Saturday in a fierce street battle between rival black political groups at the start of a crucial conference on black strategy to confront South Africa’s apartheid system of racial separation and minority white rule.

The two dead and most of the injured were among the 80 members of Inkatha, the predominantly Zulu political movement led by Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi. Armed with spears and clubs, they attacked about 300 delegates to a national conference on black education here this weekend as they ate lunch outside a church hall in suburban Durban.

The delegates, most of whom belong to organizations affiliated with the United Democratic Front, were ready for the fight--bricks and stones had been gathered, lead pipes and wooden staves were also stacked--and they immediately counterattacked, driving the Zulus off after 10 minutes of fighting in which several gunshots were fired.

One of the victims was shot to death, according to police, and the other, wounded with a heavy blow from an ax, was set alight with a gasoline-soaked burning tire on him.

Many Delegates Flee

Scores of delegates to the conference fled into the surrounding white suburban neighborhood as the warning cry was heard, “The Zulus are coming, the Zulus are coming!�

The clash and earlier incidents disrupted the conference and forced organizers to telescope it into a long, overnight session. At the same time, the bitter feuding dramatized the deep divisions among South Africa’s 25 million blacks on how to force an end to apartheid.

Called to discuss the black school crisis, a pivotal issue in South Africa’s continuing civil unrest, the conference will in large part determine the strategy of the black resistance movement for the coming year.

The 1,700 participants in the National Education Crisis Committee’s conference will decide whether the country’s black students remain in school or resume their boycott of classes in an attempt to force further concessions from the government. That decision, in turn, will determine the level and scope of black-white confrontation here.

Could be ‘Breakthrough’

The conference will be “one of the most important events in the life of our country,� the Rev. C.F. Beyers Naude, general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, told delegates at the opening of the meeting. The conference could prove to be “the breakthrough after decades of oppression and repression,� he said.

But Naude, a respected white churchman, called on blacks to put aside their “differences of a minor, secondary importance� in the fight against apartheid. And he called upon whites to “take a clear step and make a break� with the country’s system of racial subjugation.

“When so many had been oppressed for so long and at so many levels, the rising tide of expectations of freedom reaches a momentum when all obstacles are swept away by it,� Naude said, “and this conference could turn out to be such an event.�

Zwelakhe Sisulu, son of an imprisoned African National Congress leader, Walter Sisulu, called for careful review of both the strategy and the tactics against apartheid, considering not only the possible renewal of the class boycott by students but also such measures as general strikes by black workers and new black consumer boycotts of white merchants.

Although the government had met some of the black demands, such as the lifting earlier this month of the state of emergency here, there had been little movement on others, Sisulu said,despite a deadline of March 31 set at an earlier conference in late December.

Only ‘Steps Sideways’

“All the steps the government has taken have been steps sideways, not forward,� Sisulu complained.

The outstanding black demands include removal of troops from the country’s black townships, release of detained students, legalization of the Congress of South African Students, outlawed seven months ago, reinstatement of militant black teachers fired from their jobs and the establishment of elected student councils.

The conference is likely to set new demands and new deadlines in resolutions to be approved at its all-night session and published today.

About 80,000 black students have already quit classes. More than 200,000 were out of school late last year before a combined meeting of parents, teachers, community leaders and students called for a return, and two or three times that number would probably heed a call to return to the streets where they would confront the security forces.

Thus the underlying questions to be debated by the education conference concern the strategy and direction of the whole anti-apartheid movement in the coming months, Sisulusaid. He urged greater unity among blacks in confronting the minority white regime.

Militants Withdraw

Most of the black consciousness groups withdrew from the National Educational Crisis Committee on Saturday, charging that it had been seriously compromised when it entered into negotiations with the government rather than opposing it across the board.

Saths Cooper, president of the militant Azanian People’s Organization and chairman of the National Forum, said his groups plan a general strike in May, school boycotts, a mass refusal to pay rents and other protests aimed at “securing an abdication of power by the present regime . . . not negotiations about this and that, improvements in our conditions of servitude, as it were.�

The forum called first for a general strike May 1-4, and then for a series of protests June 16-26 to mark the 10th anniversary of the Soweto riots against apartheid.

Will Evaluate Results

Cooper said this campaign would be “one of the last attempts� by blacks to use nonviolent strategies in their opposition to apartheid, and that the National Forum would hold another conference in six months to evaluate the results. “What emerged very clearly in ourmeetings was that the government is making it impossible for any nonviolent political activity,� Cooper said. “The National Forum did not commit itself to a position of remaining nonviolent and it left to its constituents a decision on this question.�

The clashes with Inkatha were another matter: The Zulu organization regards Durban and Natal province as its territory and has long resisted attempts by other black political groups to establish themselves here.

A third death was reported by police in unrelated developments Saturday. The partly burned body of a black man was found near Fort Beaufort in Cape province, police said, but they gave no further details. In Soweto, outside Johannesburg, police exchanged gunfire with three men armed with rifles among mourners marching to a cemetery there. Police said they wounded two of the men, but other mourners dragged them to safety.