CALCUTTA: The African National Congress (ANC) leader Nelson Mandela said here Thursday that special death squads of the racist regime of his country had killed about 5,000 people in Transvaal and Natal provinces in the last three months.
Mandela, who was speaking at a mass reception in this eastern Indian Marxist stronghold in his honour, said while nearly 4,000 died in the Natal province, 1,000 more were killed in Transvaal, he said and cautioned that such actions were ‘likely to delay a peaceful settlement’ in South Africa.
He said the highly trained death squads, raised by the South African security forces, national intelligence service, military intelligence and other govt agencies, were prowling the townships and shooting men, women and children without any provocation.
What is even more serious is the failure of the South African govt to take these incidents seriously and to deal with these elements who have now decided to murder and slaughter the people.
“The whites are saying that this is violence between one section of the blacks and the other and that this is essentially a tribal affair.
“There may have been some cases of Black violence during the last four years but today itis no longer the case, Mandela said.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 26, 1990
