TIME: Almanac 1995

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ TIME: Almanac 1995 / TIME Almanac 1995.iso / time / 081693 / 08169918.000 < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1994-03-25 | 5.8 KB | 120 lines

<text id=93TT0213> <title> Aug. 16, 1993: Voting with Their Guns </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993 Aug. 16, 1993 Overturning The Reagan Era </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> SOUTH AFRICA, Page 33 Voting with Their Guns </hdr> <body> An orgy of violence threatens free and fair elections, but no one knows how to stop it By MARGUERITE MICHAELS--With reporting by Peter Hawthorne/Cape Town No matter that South Africa is finally on the road to one-man, one-democracy. The killing goes on with renewed fury. Armed with guns, spears, hatchets and knives, more than 200 men stormed from two Zulu workers' hostels last week and ran onto a four-lane highway, torching taxis and littering the asphalt with bodies. Sweeping up a hill in Tembisa township, they spent the night in a frenzy of burning and slaughter. Among the 33 dead was a five-month-old baby, riddled with bullets while still in his mother's arms. At first it was just another massacre to a South Africa numbed by daily violence. But in the space of five days, 140 people were shot, stoned, burned or hacked to death in three black townships near Johannesburg. People fled their homes, train and bus service was suspended after gunmen opened fire on a commuter line, and soldiers were sent into the shantytowns to help police patrol the tense streets. The latest spasm of bloodletting was a horrifying reminder of the violent nature of South Africa in transition, bringing warnings of anarchy and civil war to come. Since the formal announcement last month that the country's first all-race elections would take place next April, the death toll in the townships has reached 700, the worst in three years. Unless the bloodshed can be brought under control, many doubt that South Africa can carry through as scheduled its promise of free and fair elections. Both President F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela, leader of the African National Congress, vowed that something must be done to curb the warfare--but could not agree on what that should be. At a rally of 7,000 supporters in the Johannesburg township of Katlehong, Mandela tried to calm his faction with pleas for discipline and tolerance. While he accused the police of complicity in the attacks, he admitted that some members of the A.N.C. were "killing innocent people." When he called for peace and reconciliation with black rivals of the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party, the crowd hissed and booed. "No!" they shouted back. "We want guns!" De Klerk's answer to the violence was a vigorous show of force. He sent 2,000 security forces into the townships in armored vehicles, mounted with heavy-caliber machine guns, that were driven through the barricades erected by young militants. A house-to-house search for weapons ended in gunfire when police discovered a cache in a funeral cortege. In a battle with armed mourners, three people were killed by police bullets. "We will not hesitate to respond with full force against anyone who fires at us," said police spokesman Lieut. General Johan Swart. When Mandela and De Klerk met later in a four-hour crisis session, the talk was politely described as "acrimonious." Mandela condemned the heavy deployment of troops, claiming that security forces, particularly the police, were fomenting the trouble in order to sabotage the transition to majority rule--a belief widely held in the black townships. But De Klerk was adamant that the military would continue the crackdown until the situation had "stabilized." Many politicians despair of this ever really happening. The trouble in Tembisa may have begun with Zulu gang killings, but it was quickly turned into a broad-scale assault of Inkatha supporters vs. the A.N.C. De Klerk blamed the trouble on "ultra-radicals" bent on destabilizing the country, but the bitter black political struggle goes far deeper. Behind the unrest is the daunting economic legacy of decades of apartheid. Unemployment among South Africa's 28 million blacks is nearly 50% and still growing. Almost two-thirds are illiterate. More than half of black students drop out of neglected schools that are close to total collapse. An estimated 3 million young blacks make up a "lost generation" of the virtually unemployable. Setting fire to the discontent are slum living conditions, street-gang feuds, unfulfilled expectations and political frustration. Driven by desperation, poor blacks seem to fear that the economic pie is too small to share, even in gold-and-diamond-rich South Africa. Now that a new division of the spoils is coming in the impending elections, black factions are positioning themselves to secure their share, and the result is a ceaseless spiral of violence. Few see any end in sight: a survey by the South African Human Sciences Research Council reported that 1 of 2 blacks expects violence during the April voting, 14% say they will not vote, out of fear for their lives, and 2% say they will actively provoke election violence. The escalating bloodshed has prompted a search for new ways to keep the peace. Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu is calling on the world community to send in independent troops, but U.N. intervention has few supporters. Mandela argues instead for the creation of a multiparty security corps that would include the South African police, members of the armed wings of political parties and black-homeland forces. If an agreement could be reached as to who would run such a force, military experts say it would take at least three months to set up. At the present rate of the killing, 3,000 more lives could be lost. </body> </article> </text>