Inkatha supporters again defy army with display of weapons

OPEN DEFIANCE of South Africa's two-week-old state of emergency was on display again yesterday as 30,000 supporters of Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party turned the centre of the northern Natal town of Vryheid into a sea of knobkerries, shields and sticks.

A large security force contingent, including at least 150 South African Defence Force troops and a dozen armoured cars and tanks, tried but failed to convince the marchers to lay down their 'traditional weapons' before heading into town to present a memorandum entitled 'Heed the IFP's warning'. Colonel Steve Naude said that when the police attempted to disarm the crowd, they were 'booed away'.

The memorandum, presented at police headquarters, was a repetition of a statement released at a demonstration at Empangeni on 5 April, when the ban on traditional weapons imposed by President F W de Klerk's 31 March state of emergency in Natal was first ignored. It said that unless Inkatha's demands were accepted for reform of the 1993 interim constitution, postponement of the 26-28 April general elections, greater regional powers and acceptance of King Goodwill Zwelithini's call for an autonomous Zulu monarchy, 'there can be no peace in this country.'

As the crowd packed into the centre of town under the watch of two helicopters flying overhead and dozens of armed police and troops, a chorus began singing 'Buthelezi will rule this country' and thousands of people clapped in unison.

'Will you be ruled by Nelson Mandela?' Jurie Mentz, 68, who defected from the ruling National Party to Inkatha in January last year, asked the crowd in Zulu. The response was a thunderous 'No'.

Mr Mentz said Mr Mandela's African National Congress and President de Klerk's ruling National Party had underestimated the supporters of Chief Buthelezi, whom he described as 'a man of courage'. Violence would be started by the government, he argued, and said that if there was 'pressure to force the Zulus to go in a direction they do not want to, there will be civil war'.

At least 200 people have died in Natal since the declaration of the state of emergency and the decision to dispatch the South African Defence Force into the province and the KwaZulu 'homeland' it surrounds. On Monday seven workers who were distributing pamphlets of the Transitional Executive Council urging people to vote for 'a better South Africa' were hacked and burnt to death in Ndwedwe, north of Durban. Men armed with AK-47 assault rifles and 9mm pistols shot dead five people during an attack on homes in Manzamnyama, near Empangeni, in northern Natal on Tuesday night, police said. An ANC spokesman, Zipho Mkhize, said members of the family worked at the ANC offices in Empangeni.

Inkatha officials said they had not organised the rally at Vryheid and that it was a spontaneous expression of Zulu support for their king. The master of ceremonies, however, was Inkatha Youth Brigade spokesman Zenzele Phakathi, who read the memorandum to the mainly peaceful crowd.

The level of intimidation involved in bringing the crowd to the rally in Vryheid, which is Afrikaans for 'freedom', was apparent in shops on Church Street, in the centre of the town, where black workers begged their white bosses to close the businesses so that they could attend the march. 'If we do not show up at the meeting, they will come to our homes tonight,' said one woman. 'They will say we did not respect the King and Chief Buthelezi.'

ANC officials in Vryheid said they had given their members permission to purchase Inkatha party cards so that they would not be killed or harassed on house-to- house visits by IFP militants and at informal IFP roadblocks set up at night in the surrounding black townships.