On the eve of South Africa's historic vote, a crackdown in Natal

by Eric Ransdell 

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        Ephraim Dlamini enters the tiny living room, covered in the blood of his dead brother. The house in Edendale township in Natal's Midlands belongs to regional African National Congress leader Harry Gwala. The shaken Dlamini reports to Gwala that he was conducting a voter-education workshop in a nearby rural schoolhouse when three carloads of gunmen burst in and opened fire. Two people were killed instantly and scores were injured, many by diving through glass windows to get away. His brother died in the car on the way to the hospital. Says Dlamini, suddenly noticing that the bullet wound in his left arm has started to bleed again: "We just want to vote."  

        In the rolling green hillsides of South Africa's Natal province and on the dusty back streets of its black townships, the talk is of bloodshed, not ballots. Last month's death toll of about 300 was the highest ever in the 10 year civil war that has raged between supporters of Nelson Mandela's ANC and Zulu chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party in the Zulu-dominated province. Last week, in a bid to stop the carnage and ensure free elections on April 27, State President F.W. de Klerk declared a state of emergency in Natal. Yet fears are rife that the military clampdown may only escalate the conflict. As Buthelezi bluntly told U.S. News last week: "If they are being deployed to force the will of the ANC ... on the people, then it will be seen as an invasion."   

        The issue is South Africa's historic first all-race election. Buthelezi's decision last month to boycott the vote and calls by his nephew King Goodwill Zwelethini for an autonomous Zulu state have led to an explosion of violence and intimidation in Natal. According to local peace monitors, attacks on voter education workshops, party canvassers and campaign rallies have effectively disenfranchised millions of potential Zulu voters, particularly in the has started to bleed again: "We just want to vote."   

        In the rolling green hillsides of South Africa's Natal province and on the dusty back streets of its black townships, the talk is of bloodshed, not ballots. Last month's death toll of about 300 was the highest ever in the 10 year civil war that has raged between supporters of Nelson Mandela's ANC and Zulu chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party in the Zulu-dominated province. Last week, in a bid to stop the carnage and ensure free elections on April 27, State President F.W. de Klerk declared a state of emergency in Natal. Yet fears are rife that the military clampdown may only escalate the conflict. As Buthelezi bluntly told U.S. News last week: "If they are being deployed to force the will of the ANC ... on the people, then it will be seen as an invasion."   

        The issue is South Africa's historic first all-race election. Buthelezi's decision last month to boycott the vote and calls by his nephew King Goodwill Zwelethini for an autonomous Zulu state have led to an explosion of violence and intimidation in Natal. According to local peace monitors, attacks on voter education workshops, party canvassers and campaign rallies have effectively disenfranchised millions of potential Zulu voters, particularly in the  In the rolling green hillsides of South Africa's Natal province and on the dusty back streets of its black townships, the talk is of bloodshed, not ballots. Last month's death toll of about 300 was the highest ever in the 10 year civil war that has raged between supporters of Nelson Mandela's ANC and Zulu chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party in the Zulu-dominated province. Last week, in a bid to stop the carnage and ensure free elections on April 27, State President F.W. de Klerk declared a state of emergency in Natal. Yet fears are rife that the military clampdown may only escalate the conflict. As Buthelezi bluntly told U.S. News last week: "If they are being deployed to force the will of the ANC ... on the people, then it will be seen as an invasion."   

        The issue is South Africa's historic first all-race election. Buthelezi's decision last month to boycott the vote and calls by his nephew King Goodwill Zwelethini for an autonomous Zulu state have led to an explosion of violence and intimidation in Natal. According to local peace monitors, attacks on voter education workshops, party canvassers and campaign rallies have effectively disenfranchised millions of potential Zulu voters, particularly in the nominally independent KwaZulu homeland where Buthelezi is chief minister. As one voter-education worker says: "Basically, people are saying, `I can't put my life on the line for the vote.'"   

        Yet by applying a military solution to a political conflict de Klerk runs the risk of his forces becoming yet another combatant in Natal's civil war. Buthelezi's Inkatha supporters, whose boycott has brought the election process to a grinding halt in most of the province, view deployment of the South African Defense Force as further proof of an anti-Zulu alliance between de Klerk's National Party and Mandela's ANC. But if they fail to suppress Inkatha, security forces may be accused by ANC supporters of harboring lingering sympathies for the Zulu-based movement, which held more moderate views under apartheid.   

        A leaders' summit is supposed to bring Mandela, de Klerk, Buthelezi and Zwelethini together this week. "Political persuasion and security measures must go hand in hand," says Mandela, who backed the government crackdown in Natal. But earlier efforts to sway Buthelezi, who demands more regional powers and a constitutionally entrenched position for the Zulu king, have produced no results. A panel of international mediators including former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Britain's Lord Carrington is planning to go to South Africa in an effort to resolve outstanding constitutional issues.   

        If the impasse continues, the conflict may spread to the black townships of Johannesburg, where tension between IFP-supporting hostel residents (story, Page 38) and the surrounding communities has been boiling since last week's march by Zulu royalists left 53 dead in the city's central business district. Weakened by budget cuts, manpower reductions and low morale, top SADF generals have warned de Klerk that he cannot count on even half of white reservists to report for duty if the security situation spins out of control. An explosion of violence in both Natal and the greater Johannesburg area could precipitate such a crisis. "Then," says one defense analyst, "you've got a police force and military that are overwhelmed and great pressure to suspend the election."   

        But de Klerk may have had no choice. A senior source from the Independent Electoral Commission told U.S. News that April 6 is the latest date possible for the body charged with overseeing the country's first multiracial elections to begin setting up its infrastructure in Natal if it is to meet the April 27 deadline. The only alternative would be to agree to Buthelezi's demands for postponing the elections in Natal. But with polls showing that a majority in the province back the ANC, that could lead to an equally nightmarish scenario. As ANC hard-liner Gwala warns: "There will be total anarchy, you'll see more tires on the road, more roadblocks, more clashes, some businesses burnt down, the townships becoming totally uncontrollable and the wheels of industry grinding to a standstill in this province."   

        Under the state of emergency, citizens will forfeit many of their legal rights so they can exercise their democratic right to vote. Members of the South African Police and SADF have been given drastic powers of arrest without warrant, search and seizure and detention without trial for up to 30 days. Political rallies, marches and meetings can be banned in the interest of public safety. Those powers will not be granted to the new National Peacekeeping Force, whose membership is dominated by former ANC guerrillas. And Buthelezi's 3,500-member KwaZulu Police could be confined to barracks.   

        The greatest potential for conflict could come when the SADF attempts to close down six IFP training camps located throughout the province where thousands are believed to have received military training from white right-wingers. Analysts say that these Five- Rand Brigades, named after Buthelezi's call last year for KwaZulu citizens to contribute 5 rand ($1.40) toward the military training of IFP Self-Protection Units, are responsible for much of the recent violence in Natal.   

        Both the ANC and the IFP are known to have access to AK-47 assault rifles, but lately police, violence monitors and journalists have noted an increase in heavier weaponry including hand grenades, R-5 machine guns and long-range sniper's rifles on display at IFP rallies. "They used to come at us with handguns and before that sticks," says Blade Nzimande, an ANC spokesman. "What is very clear now is that their armory has increased and become more sophisticated, which poses very big problems for us in terms of matching their firepower."   

        Even senior intelligence sources are unsure of the extent of the IFP's arsenal. One indication came last week when an elderly Zulu man appeared at the offices of a Durban law firm and asked to make a statement. He recounted a scene he had witnessed the previous night at the rural tribal offices of his IFP-supporting chief. According to his statement, more crates of weapons were offloaded than he could count. Also removed from the trucks, he said, were iron washtubs filled with thousands of rounds of ammunition.   

        If the crackdown serves to escalate the conflict, many of the weapons used against the South African Police and SADF could be those that were originally supplied to Inkatha by rogue elements within the security establishment. Late last month a commission of inquiry found that senior police officials had supplied weapons and military training to Inkatha supporters and anti-ANC hit squads operating inside the KwaZulu Police. One of the three generals implicated in the report, Lt. Gen. Basie Smit, was No. 2 in South Africa's national police force before his suspension from duty and had risen to pre eminence during a long career in Natal, where he was nicknamed "Mr. Clean." Another accused general was previously in charge of investigating reports of a "Third Force" that was believed to be fomenting black-on-black violence.   

        Most now fear the worst. Enoch Nzuza, a labor organizer in the northern Natal town of Empangeni, has survived at least seven attempts on his life in the past three years. His family still lives in a rural village where at least 20 people from two families have been murdered for supporting the ANC. Three weeks ago, his younger brother was shot in the neck during a predawn attack. "It won't work. We've already lived under a state of emergency and it didn't stop people from dying, houses from being burnt," says Nzuza, who sleeps in a different location every night. "We know the police around here, we know the IFP and we don't see them changing." But something will have to change if South Africa's post-apartheid dream is to stay on course.