South Africa Shooting Spree

Blacks endure a day of death

It was one of the bloodiest 24-hour periods since the recent round of violent racial unrest began in September 1984, and it pushed the total number of deaths to more than 1,300. At least 30 blacks were killed in confrontations with police, marking a sharp increase in the rate of killings just three weeks after State President P.W. Botha lifted a state of emergency, declaring that such incidents had diminished. (

Most of the deaths occurred during two fusillades by police. The worst confrontation took place on a soccer field in the nominally independent Bophuthatswana homeland, north of Pretoria, where more...

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