Tribal conflict toll put at 53

Press, 27 December 1985, Page 6

Tribal conflict toll put at 53

NZPA-Reuter Johannesburg

Five thousand rival black tribesmen clashed in a township near Durban and the police said that 53 had been killed and nine injured. The fighting between Zulus and Pondos, most of them immigrants from the neighbouring nominally independent black homeland of Transkei, began on Christmas Eve and carried on next day. The clash of 3000 Pondos and 2000 Zulus in Umbumbulu, 30km south-west of Durban appeared to be unconnected with the antiGovernment protests in some of South Africa’s black townships since February last year. The police said that they did not know what had caused the fighting between the Pondo and Zulu tribesmen at Umbumbulu.

They said that clashes between the rival tribesmen were not uncommon, but the death toll was higher than in previous fighting. The police said that the clash would be investigated. Under apartheid migrant blacks working in the white cities must leave their families behind in the impoverished rural areas. Most of the Pondos in Umbumbulu were from Transkei, but the Zulus were local to the area. “The New York Times” reported that such clashes

had arisen in the past over such issues as rights to water supplies. The traditional Pondo territory adjoins that of the Zulus and tribal fighting between the two in what is now south Africa’s Natal province has been going on for years. The political violence has > largely been free of tribal overtones among blacks, but, south of Durban there has been rivalry for years between tribal groups. On November 20 at least six blacks were killed in Malagazi township in tribal fighting by an estimated 2000 Zulus and Pondos. The rivalry dates to the nineteenth century when the Pondos, according to historical studies, withstood the incursions of Zulu forces commanded by the warrior king, Chaka. The Pondo people, far smaller in number than the Zulus, are part of the Xhosa-speaking group of South African tribes historically hostile to the six million Zulus, the nation’s biggest ethnic group. In the early nineteenth century, under Chaka, the Zulus greatly expanded the territory under their control, sending out detachments across much of southern Africa, causing migrations of other groups that remodelled the region’s tribal geography.

Pondoland was recognised by colonial authorities as a separate chieftainship until its annexation by Britain, the colonial ruler of the Cape and Natal, in 1894. Such factional fighting has sometimes been cited by the authorities in South Africa as justification for j their policies of racial separation, which are based in part on the premise that the nation’s various racial and ethnic groups cannot intermingle without conflict In previous battles between tribal groups south of Durban the factions have used a variety of weapons, including home-made firearms, to fight over limited issues, such as water rights. Such clashes sometimes flare into confrontations. In a Christmas sermon the Bishop of Johannesburg, the Rt Rev. Desmond Tutu, appealed to South Africans to work to make South Africa a more just and peaceful place. “How can we go on like this? With a state of emergency, soldiers in the townships, tear-gas and rubber bullets, people being burned, homes being petrol-bombed, people being intimidated, people being detained without trial,” he asked. “Let us work so, that Christmas 1986, unlike Christmas. 1985, will be one where all of us, black and white, will be able to say indeed God is with us.”