S.A. violence death toll put at nearly 1000

Press, 14 December 1985, Page 11

S.A. violence death toll put at nearly 1000

NZPA-Reuter Johannesburg Nearly 1000 people have died since the latest black protest violence erupted in South Africa in February, 1984,, the independent Institute of Race Relations says. The institute, funded mainly by private subscriptions, said that its estimate of the death toll erred on the conservative side because it had reported only confirmed cases. Including the latest death, reported on Thursday, the institute says that 992

people have died since February 13, 1984, when Emma Sathekge, aged 15, was knocked down by a police vehicle and killed during a school protest at Pretoria’s Atteridgeville township. Nearly half of the victims — 483 — have died in the five months since emergency rule was imposed on Johannesburg and the east-

ern Cape. Since then the state of emergency has been extended to the western Cape and lifted from a few areas on the outskirts of the origi-

nal emergency zones. Only eight of the victims have been whites. Most of the dead blacks were killed in clashes with the police. But an increasingly large minority have been singled out in the racially zoned townships as collaborators with white rule who were killed by radicals. The killing of these “sellouts,” often by gruesome methods, began in September, 1984, when protests against rent rises planned by the black local council

sparked riots in townships in the Vaal Triangle, south of Johannesburg.

Councillors were killed and the police clashed with township people in the first serious outbreak of the rioting, arson, and looting that have since become commonplace. The institute blames widespread black discontent over life under apartheid for much of the unrest. Unemployment, unofficially estimated at around 20 per cent among blacks, is another main factor.