Suddenly, a New 'Zulu War'

"Just like the old days," muttered a grizzled Zulu elder in Johannesburg's Soweto. Standing in a dusty street one day last week, he recalled with a mixture of admiration and apprehension the legendary days of the 19th century wars against the whites by South Africa's largest and fiercest tribe (see box below). This time, however, the target of the angry Zulus in Soweto was the black militants--the student leaders and other activists who were leading a three-day boycott to prevent Soweto's 250,000-member black labor force from going to work in Johannesburg, 15 miles away.

For two days and nights last week, Zulu impis (war parties), armed with spears, sticks, knives and knobkerries, the traditional Zulu clubs, were on the warpath once again, turning Soweto (pop. 1 million) into a city of terror. Forming an extended battle line in the manner of the Zulu warriors of old, they surged through the township chanting "Bulala! Bulala!" (Kill! Kill!). Thousands of blacks, particularly the young, attempted to flee. Many camped out in front of police stations seeking protection against the marauding Zulus. An African priest described how a 16-year-old schoolboy was chased into his church by a band of Zulus who dragged the boy from the priest's arms and clubbed him to death. Before the fighting was over, 35 had been killed and perhaps 200 injured by mob violence and police gunfire.

It all started early in the week when Soweto's young militants, in an effort to sustain the black demonstrations against racial discrimination, called on all Soweto workers to stay home from their jobs in Johannesburg for three days. With leaflets, with placards, with shouted threats, they warned everyone to support the strike or pay the consequences. "Give our regards to your white masters," one worker on his way to Johannesburg was told. "We'll be waiting for you tonight." On the first day, about 40% of Soweto's work force stayed home.

But striking is risky in recession-ridden South Africa. Black unemployment is running at 20%. Conspicuous among the Soweto residents who refused to strike were the migrant males, many of them Zulu tribesmen, who live in dormitory-like hostels and send most of their earnings to their families in the tribal homelands far away. The migrants were little impressed by either the young activists' efforts to organize political demonstrations or the government's recent concessions to black militancy, like the decision to allow Soweto residents to purchase outright more than half of the township's houses (for about $1,500 apiece). They were there simply to work and be left alone. When the activists began to threaten them for refusing to strike, threw a couple of Zulu workers off a train and actually set fire to one of the Zulu hostels, the migrant workers erupted in fury--and Soweto's "Zulu war" was on.

Avenged Grievances. Suddenly the battle of Soweto was transformed from a black-white conflict into a fight between blacks--and government officials were not at all displeased. Indeed there were some charges that they helped provoke the change. Several black reporters said they heard police officers exhorting Zulus to "go out and kill" their enemies, but one police chief branded this "an infamous lie." At the least, some Soweto residents said, the police watched from their antiriot Hippo vehicles without taking action as the Zulu warriors scoured the streets and burst into homes in search of what they called "cheeky children." lames Kruger, South Africa's tough Minister of Justice, denied this. "The Zulus have been harassed and have banded together to defend themselves and their property, which they have every right to do," he declared. "People are entitled to protect themselves against physical intimidation." For their part, the Zulus appeared to be seizing the opportunity to avenge old grievances. In the melee, they raped several local women and tried to force scores of girls into their hostels.

Typical of the week's victims was a widow, Mary Ndhovu, the mother of five children, who used to run a fleet of three taxis left to her by her husband. One cab was hijacked and burned out by black youths at the beginning of the Soweto disturbances in June. Last week, fearful of breaking the boycott, she kept her remaining taxis at home. But at midweek a youth, fleeing a Zulu gang, ran through the garden of her home. The enraged Zulus, thinking she had given him refuge, kicked down her front door, smashed her furniture and windows, and then hacked and smashed her two cabs parked outside. "This is the end," she said. "Between the Zulu mobs, the students, the tsotsis [hoodlums] and the police, who never come to help us, there is no place here for law-abiding people."

Later in the week, other residents in Soweto formed their own vigilante groups to protect themselves. Police, at first delighted by the Zulu backlash, were belatedly ordered to move in and separate the black combatants. Police admitted killing 14 of the week's victims and wounding dozens of the others with small-size buckshot--a tactic ordered by Justice Minister Kruger to keep the death toll down.

By week's end the boycott was over, but thousands of blacks were still staying home to guard their property against arson and looting. "You are well out of that mess," a black policeman told a white reporter who tried to enter Soweto. "They have all lost their minds."

In the safety of "white" Johannesburg, employers declared that the boycott had been largely ineffective. No vital services had been disrupted, and only about a third of the Soweto work force had stayed home for all three days. Some employers considered docking the pay of absentees, but others urged their colleagues not to retaliate in any way. "A money-earning black is a happy black," counseled one executive. "Deprive him of livelihood, and you lose a potential ally when the crunch comes."

Similarly, some whites exulted that the anti-white thrust of the black activists in Soweto had been blunted by the Zulu warriors. Others knew better. "Sooner or later they'll get back to confronting the white Establishment," observed a white businessman in Johannesburg. "When they do, it will be much worse than before. Right now the problem is tribal, but in the long run it's strictly racial." He concluded by citing the statistic that no white man in South Africa ever needs to be told: the country has 18 million blacks and only 4 million whites.

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