Violence In South Africa -- Clash Seen Rooted In Political Goals, Not Ancient Rivalry

SOWETO, South Africa - Like most inhabitants of the vast, urban melting pot of Soweto, Wilson and Isabel Zitha have fond, if not particularly strong, emotional feelings about their ancient cultural heritages.

So when Zulus began battling Xhosas in the streets outside their modest home recently, Wilson, who is Xhosa, and Isabel, who is Zulu, looked on in stunned silence. And Isabel began to feel ashamed of her own roots.

``How can I say I am Zulu? People are starting to hate us,'' she said. ``We try to tell them that not all Zulus are like that.''

The recent outbreak of internecine fighting here has been a painful reminder that ethnic identity, once nurtured by white missionaries and later by white rulers, remains a dangerous and easily manipulated force in South Africa.

And, despite the proliferation of marriages and friendships among South Africa's 10 black ethnic groups, ethnic animosity can be kindled by reasons as old as war itself - struggles over power and limited resources.

``We are all used to living together in peace, but we still have people who don't trust other (black) nations,'' said Wilson Zitha, 51.

That distrust is one of the many obstacles that South Africa faces in its quest for a racially harmonious future.

South Africa today is one of the most ethnically diverse countries on the continent. Not one of its major languages is spoken by a majority of its people.

Of the 29 million blacks in South Africa, about 7 million speak Zulu, 6 million Xhosa, 3 million Northern Sotho, 3 million Tswana, 2 million Southern Sotho, and the remainder use tongues ranging from Shangaan to Venda. The 2.5 million white Afrikaners and most of the 3 million mixed-race people in the cape speak Afrikaans.

But, over the last century, the black and white tribes of South Africa, especially in urban areas, have begun to embrace one another's languages. And more than three-fourths of all South Africans speak at least two, and often three or four, languages.

Both the battle between Zulus and Xhosas near Johannesburg, in which more than 500 people have been killed in less than three weeks, and the 3-year-old conflict among Zulu-speaking people in Natal province that has killed nearly 4,000 appear linked to historic ethnic rivalries.

But most analysts believe that those conflicts were started and fueled by political and economic differences under white oppression rather than any ages-old tribal nationalism.

``These are not prehistoric or preordained enmities,'' said Patrick Harries, a historian at the University of Cape Town. ``They are very much modern conflicts over wealth and over power.''

Although prehistoric people were living here nearly 2 million years ago, the direct ancestors of today's black South Africans arrived more recently. They migrated from other parts of Africa about 2,000 years ago - still about 1,600 years before the first white settlers landed in Cape Town. The largest group of those migrating Africans was the Nguni (ancestors of the Zulus), Xhosa (pronounced KO-saw) and Swazi people.

None of those and other ethnic groups were the monolithic kingdom reported by European missionaries and colonizers, historians say. Instead, each comprised hundreds of autonomous chiefdoms, speaking different dialects of the same language and often fighting over land, food and cattle.

South Africa's first and only centralized African kingdom was born in the early 1800s under King Shaka Zulu.

Shaka built a disciplined army and, using highly advanced military tactics, conquered 50 major clans and hundreds of smaller ones, reducing many clans to poverty in his quest to build a mighty Zulu nation. The period was known as the ``mfecane,'' a Zulu word meaning ``time of the `hammering.' ''

In the 1870s, the British army defeated the Zulus, exiling the king and ending that African military dynasty.

South African historians have recently begun to believe that the stories told of the powerful Zulu nation were a romanticized version of history. They say that Shaka's kingdom never encompassed more than 100,000 subjects and that many thousands of Zulus sided with the British army.

The modern-day black factional fighting in South Africa has pitted Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi and his Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party against the African National Congress of Nelson Mandela.

Buthelezi and his uncle, King Goodwill Zwelithini, are direct descendants of Shaka. Buthelezi broke away from the ANC in the mid-1970s, over the ANC's guerrilla war against Pretoria, and formed Inkatha. Today Inkatha claims about 1.8 million members, or about a fourth of the country's Zulu speakers, and it recently opened its ranks to all South Africans.

Mandela is a Xhosa from the royal house of the Thembu, and many of the ANC's leaders also are Xhosas. But the ANC also has wide support among Zulus and for years it was led by a Zulu, Chief Albert Lutuli, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1960.

Both ANC and Inkatha leaders deny that the current trouble in Soweto and other townships near Johannesburg has roots in Xhosa-Zulu animosity.

``We have never declared war on each other, not in the past and not even now,'' Zwelithini said. ``Our people are victims of the misguided political ambitions of some of our subjects.''

The ANC and Inkatha blame each other's political ambitions for the trouble. Inkatha says that the ANC is trying to undermine Buthelezi and Inkatha as the country begins negotiations for a new constitution. The ANC counters that Inkatha is using Zulu nationalism to whip up anger toward the Xhosa-led ANC because it fears that it is losing political strength.

But both blame the white-led government for encouraging ethnic rivalries.

The first attempts at black unity - and the efforts by whites to thwart it - began in earnest in the 1920s with the opening of South Africa's gold mines. Tens of thousands of Africans moved to the mines and the cities, and African chiefs saw their power over village life dwindle.

That trend worried the British colonialists. The British War Office warned that a collapse of black societies could open the way ``for the fusion of the hitherto antagonistic tribes'' which it said would be ``a far greater danger to the white community than any of the present tribes.''

The British made many attempts to prop up black tribal leaders, and in the 1960s and 1970s the Afrikaner government took up the cause. It created a system of self-governing black ``homelands,'' appointing traditional chiefs as rulers and withdrawing South African citizenship from millions of blacks.

Many blacks were granted permission to work in the white cities, where they lived in satellite townships divided into ethnic neighborhoods. But the law still considered them homeland residents, and thousands who came to the cities in search of work were arrested and taken back to the homelands.

Many black leaders, including the then-outlawed ANC, vehemently fought the government's actions. Other black leaders, such as Buthelezi, accepted positions in the homelands, arguing that some black autonomy was better than none.

The homelands system fostered ethnic rivalries by forcing millions of Africans onto remote, unproductive land.

``It's a situation where the economic cake is always too small,'' said John Wright, a historian at the University of Natal. ``And under those conditions, people can be mobilized by politicians to regard other people as their `traditional enemies' in fighting for a slice of that cake.''

Still, ethnic identity has a powerful hold on members of South Africa's various tribes.

Cultural identity ``gives a black person dignity,'' said Collet Mangesi, 49, an insurance clerk and Xhosa. ``If you don't have any tradition, any culture, then you cease to be a person.''