Ten women, children, die in Natal homestead attack
Ten women, children, die in Natal homestead attack
DURBAN, South Africa (AFP): Ten women and children were massacred near Port Shepstone, police said yesterday, in what appeared to be the second Zulu nationalist attack the same day against ANC enclaves in Natal.
Most other parts of the violence-wracked province, meanwhile, continued to enjoy relative calm under the state of emergency rule proclaimed by President Frederik de Klerk on Thursday.
Lt. Dawood Kaider, a police spokesman in Port Shepstone, about 100 kilometers (63 miles) south of here, said all the victims of the Saturday night massacre were female, their ages ranging from five months to 70 years.
All belonged to the Mzelemu family, Kaider said, and all had been hacked to death at their kraal in the Kulu section of Murchison, near Port Shepstone.
He said a group of armed men arrived at the homestead of the pro-ANC family, "identified themselves as South African police and demanded entry from the occupants."
"When entry was refused," Kaider said, "they broke down the door and began firing shots;" when police arrived on the scene yesterday, they found one woman hacked to death inside the house and "the others scattered all around, most of them chopped in the head."
It was the second incident in Natal attributed to Zulu nationalist attacks against ANC enclaves.
Five people were killed early Saturday in Bhekuzulu, near Estcourt, in the Natal midlands, when gunmen set fire to a tribal village and shot two dead before spraying the congregation in a nearby church with automatic weapons fire, killing three and wounding 11.
Other parts of Natal, including this Indian Ocean port city, were relatively calm yesterday, despite reports of 11 other deaths in the region overnight.
The latest killings bring to more than 40 the total number of people killed in KwaZulu-Natal since de Klerk proclaimed a state of emergency Thursday night, according to a tally by the public SABC radio.
Nothing
During a visit in the early hours to the flashpoint township of Bhambayi, near Durban, ANC "comrades" who spent the night patrolling armed with spears, machetes and battleaxes shrugged off as "nothing" gunfire that shattered the pre-dawn calm.
"No one was hit," a youth told AFP from his lookout, the rooftop of a burned-out shop on the divide between the ANC and Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) sections of the violence-torn township just north of Durban.
"It's nothing," he said. "This was a quiet night. Things are okay."
The rag-tag band of ANC youths armed with an assortment of home-made weapons -- all banned under the emergency rules -- said they wanted peace after 18 months of fighting with their Zulu nationalist IFP rivals, but were certain the fighting would continue.
One "comrade" said many of those living in the IFP section of Bhambayi had returned to rural areas north of Durban for the long Easter weekend.
"On Tuesday, when the Inkatha people return, we'll see trouble again," he said.
"As long as the soldiers are here, we can relax," another said, referring to the state of emergency in KwaZulu-Natal, where pro-ANC Zulus who want to participate in the April 26-28 election are fighting anti-poll militants of the IFP.
But although the ANC has welcomed the military presence -- low-key as it is -- the IFP has denounced it, saying it is designed to crush opposition to the election.