Anne Eveleth hit the deck with hundreds of others as bullets flew at Umlazi’s King Zwelithini Stadium on Monday
The deadly crackle of gunfire punctured the air as tens of thousands of African National Congress and Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) supporters thronged the stands of Umlazi’s King Zwelithini Stadium for a Cosatu Worker’s Day rally last Monday afternoon.
Crowds of people hit the deck and others poured out on to the Mangosuthu Buthelezi highway following the sounds of the bullets. Rally participants formed a human wall on the embankment surrounding the stadium searching the surrounding hills for their attackers.
The alliance’s biggest rally in KwaZulu/Natal since last year’s general election had come under attack. Hundreds of people stood overlooking the Unit 17 men’s hostel on an adjacent hilltop, the Inkatha Freedom Party’s biggest stronghold in the township, marked unmistakably by rows of rust-brick houses. Residents meeting there since the morning had not dispersed, and police reported using rubber bullets and tear gas to prevent a group of 500 IFP supporters marching to the rally.
Undeterred, President Nelson Mandela joined Cosatu President John Gomomo and other alliance leaders on the podium, as police and army personnel searched nearby houses and shacks while security vehicles careened through the streets searching frantically for the assailants. As more shots sent his supporters ducking behind rows of buses outside, Mandela departed from his speech to let loose perhaps the most militant remark of his presidency: “(Inkatha) should know it is (central government) who is giving them money and they are using the money against my government … should they continue, I’m going to withdraw the money.”
A week earlier in the same stadium, IFP leader and Home Affairs Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi had urged his supporters in the province to “rise and resist the central
Feelings of deja vu washed over those who had witnessed the tense stand-off between the two groups in the same place a little over a year ago. Groups of activists outside prepared to march defiantly toward the hostel, but were talked out of it by peace monitors. Each subsequent burst of intermittent gunfire raised the already high tensions on the ground, but Mandela continued speaking.
As Helena Slovo accepted an award on behalf of her late husband, Joe, pillars of black smoke billowed ominously over the embankment from a row of houses torched across the road. More shots rang out, each volley closer than the one before, as Mandela and Mbongeni Ngema led the crowd in a farewell chorus of liberation songs.
On the embankment behind him, three people fell to the ground. Thousands of others sought safety amid the chaos in their buses. The singing continued as groups of people carried their fallen comrades into the stadium. Rescue workers rushed to the aid of a youth whose head and shoulders oozed blood. He struggled to breathe as rescue workers connected him to an oxygen mask and sucked blood from his mouth with a plastic tube.
A man with an unidentified gunshot wound writhed in pain next to him; another stumbled in with a bullet graze across his stomach. ANC marshalls radioed for help, while provincial leaders briefed the press on other casualties outside. The rally was over and Mandela finally agreed to go. A police Nyala escorted him to his helicopter as police blockaded the main exit route past the hostel. Buses joined the interminable queue on the alternative route through an ANC stronghold, where residents lined the road delivering buckets of water to the passengers.
Inside the stadium, rescue workers fought for the life of the most serious victim as they waited for an ambulance after he was deemed “too unstable” for transport in the rescue helicopter which had landed on the field. Moments after paramedics covered him in an aluminium blanket, three shots fired into the stadium sent rescue workers, marshalls and journalists diving for cover behind nearby vehicles.
ANC leaders drew their guns and scanned the surrounding landscape for gunmen. Two figures stood in front of a row of houses directly overlooking the back of the stadium. The squatter camp next to the stadium was now deserted. Hundreds of hostel residents continued their vigil from the adjacent hill as the lucky ones made their way to safety.
Police later tallied six injuries and one abduction for the day. Six houses were burned and a seventh person was injured at midnight on the day which revived memories of what was once called the “killing fields” of South Africa. The local election countdown had begun.