Consular Official, 5 Other Blacks Slain in South Africa

PRETORIA, South Africa —  A consular official from the Ciskei black homeland and a black woman were shot dead Friday and four more blacks were killed in attacks by other blacks, police said.

Police headquarters said Maeutuzeli Jacobs, Ciskei’s consul general in the central city of Bloemfontein, and a black woman were found dead near Aliwal North, on the road to Ciskei on the Indian Ocean coast. Their car was missing. Police declined to speculate on a motive or say if it may have been a political assassination.

At least three blacks died near Nelspruit, in the Kangwane homeland, police said, when a crowd seized seven men, tied them up, poured gasoline on them and set them afire. One was hospitalized and three were missing after the incident.

The charred remains of another black woman were found in Langa township, near Port Elizabeth.

House Firebombed

Also on Friday, the home of leading black South African businessman Sam Motsuenyane was burned in a predawn firebomb attack, nine days after his wife was arrested for leading a protest over police detention of black youths. Three other homes were damaged in similar raids in the same community.

Motsuenyane is president of the National African Federated Chamber of Commerce, representing most black businesses in the country. His luxury four-bedroom home stood in contrast to the squalid shanties and mud-brick houses in Winterveld, a vast squatter area near Pretoria in the nominally independent black homeland of Bophuthatswana.

Winterveld is where police shot dead at least 11 black protesters at a March 26 rally at a soccer stadium. Motsuenyane’s wife, Joslyn, was one of a four-member community delegation appointed to negotiate with police at that gathering.

Bophuthatswana police said at the time that they fired when the crowd of thousands refused to disperse and attacked police with firebombs and rocks.

Residents Dispute Police

Residents called a news conference Friday in Pretoria to dispute that version. They said no attack was made against police before the shooting began. Tshini Mulondo, a member of the Winterveld Crisis Committee anti-apartheid group, said dozens of people were missing, and the death toll could reach 40 or 50 when all the victims were accounted for.

Mulondo said Friday’s firebomb victims were lifelong foes of South Africa’s system of race segregation.