BY GREG ROSENBERG

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The leadership of the African National Congress is continuing to press for a political solution to the internecine violence wracking KwaZulu-Natal. This South African province, adjacent to the Indian Ocean on the country's eastern flank, has seen up to 20,000 deaths over the past decade in political violence.

Most of the violent assaults have been carried out by supporters of the Inkatha Freedom Party, headed by Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who was head of the KwaZulu bantustan during the apartheid regime. Buthelezi is today minister for home affairs in South Africa's coalition government. Inkatha officials have increasingly voiced calls for provincial autonomy.

"The Inkatha Freedom Party is not interested in secession," ANC leader Thabo Mbeki, who is also one of the country's deputy presidents, told participants at a February 24 conference in Durban. "It is interested in creating a political system which will ensure that a small minority keeps power and uses that power for its personal interests."

On March 15, at the urging of South African president Nelson Mandela, a meeting was held between Buthelezi, Zulu king Goodwill Zwelithini, Mandela, and 2,000 Zulu traditional leaders, appointed headmen, and their aides at the king's palace outside Nongoma.

The meeting was planned as a prelude to an imbizo, a conference of the Zulu people at which grievances can be aired. In early April, Zwelithini issued a suggested program for the proposed imbizo. The imbizo had been called at Mandela's urging to bring about a halt to fighting throughout the province.

Heated exchanges broke out at the March 15 meeting. At one point some Inkatha supporters began jeering Mandela during his remarks.

`Speak the truth'
"I am not afraid to speak the truth, no matter where I am," Mandela responded. "You can shout until you are blue in the face, I am going to lay down...the riot act for everybody in this country if you are killing innocent people....

"What is happening in this province is that members of the ANC are killing members of the IFP. Members of the IFP are killing members of the ANC. That is what must be stopped," said Mandela.

Following Mandela's remarks some of the chiefs voiced grievances, particularly about the shooting of eight Inkatha supporters who had marched on the ANC headquarters at Shell House in Johannesburg in March 1994.

Buthelezi reiterated his call for "autonomy," criticized the ANC for the Shell House incident, and complained that revenge was being taken against Inkatha in the trial of former apartheid general Magnus Malan. Inkatha's deputy secretary general Zakhele Khumalo is one of the accused.

Afterward, Mandela said he was pleased the conference had taken place. "Despite the discordance, one thing came out clearly: people were beginning to think. I don't get discouraged when we meet obstacles. The overwhelming majority of people in KwaZulu-Natal are for peace."

He added, "We must stop the slaughter. The only way of doing so is to call the Zulu nation together and to sort out our problems, in particular their complaints against the president and the government."

On March 22, a band of men wielding assault rifles and pistols slaughtered 11 people in the rural KwaZulu-Natal town of Donnybrook. All those killed were ANC supporters. Some 2,000 mourners attended the Donnybrook funeral, which was addressed by ANC leader Steve Tshwete. "Inkatha has to be disarmed whether Buthelezi likes it or not," he told the audience.

Malan trial opens
Meanwhile, on April 3 , five members of the ultrarightist Afrikaner Resistance Movement, whose leader is Eugene Terre Blanche, were sentenced to 26 years in prison for murdering 20 people in a 1994 bombing campaign aimed at disrupting South Africa's first one-person, one-vote elections that year. The bombings began three days before the election when the rightists set off a car bomb outside a Johannesburg hotel, killing nine people.

In early March the murder trial of former apartheid defense minister Magnus Malan and 19 others opened in Durban. Trial testimony has already begun to paint a vivid picture of the crisis facing the white minority regime in its final years, and the brutal steps it took in the attempt to hold on to power.

A December 1985 military intelligence report pointed to the importance of building up Buthelezi politically and militarily. "If the Charterists [ANC] succeed in neutralizing Inkatha, it is unlikely that the other groups will be able to withstand the pressure against them. The end result of this will be that the government will only have the whites as a bastion against the revolutionary onslaught on the Republic of South Africa," the report said.

A sizeable group heckled Malan as he arrived at the court. "Down with Malan, down!" they shouted in Zulu. "They have caught the big fish," shouted one demonstrator to cheers from the rest of the crowd.

Malan and his co-accused have pleaded not guilty.

On March 12, two survivors of the 1987 Kwamakutha massacre described the events in which an Inkatha hit squad murdered 13 people. Siwela Tusini told the court how she and her husband had lain on the floor while gunmen executed five of their children in an adjoining room.

The chief prosecution witness to date has been former South African Defense Force intelligence officer Major J.B. Opperman, who has turned state's evidence and is in a witness protection program. Opperman has provided extensive details of the chain of command, from the State Security Council on down.

Among other things, Opperman has testified that 206 Inkatha members were sent to a secret South African military camp in what was then South West Africa and is now independent Namibia.

He said the camp also trained recruits from Angola's counterrevolutionary UNITA, and Mozambique's RENAMO. He detailed their training in use of various assault rifles, grenades, explosives, and land mines.  
 
 
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