The grisly outcome was predictable. The 60,000 African National Congress supporters who marched to the border of South Africa's so-called independent homeland of Ciskei were not unexpected. The chanting A.N.C. demonstrators had vowed to storm the capital, Bisho, and unseat the military government of Brigadier Oupa Gqozo. When they broke through a gap in a razor-wire fence at the border, trigger-happy troops of the Ciskei army began shooting directly into the crowd. After two prolonged bursts of gunfire, 28 people lay dead in pools of blood; another 400 were wounded, either by gunfire or in the stampede that followed.
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