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About 50 blacks armed with axes and sticks then began marching from the headquarters building of the Congress of South African Trade Unions to the nearby Doornfontein railroad station. Police tried to disperse them, then teargassed them. The marchers attacked the officers with knives, clubs and machetes, according to police. The police answered by opening fire, killing three protesters and wounding five more, and then followed a trail of blood back to the union headquarters and besieged the building. Finally the police broke in and arrested 400 people inside.
In another railroad clash, in Germiston east of Johannesburg, police killed three more union demonstrators. The police said they were attacked by workers wielding knives and throwing stones; union leaders insisted the police had stormed into the crowd with whips.
In Soweto, anonymous pamphlets called for a three-day general work stoppage to protest municipal police actions against rent-strikers. Thousands stayed home from jobs and school, some out of fear. Black militants stoned buses until all bus and taxi service between Soweto and Johannesburg temporarily shut down.
The violence was not limited to Johannesburg. In Umlazi, a black township outside the Indian Ocean port of Durban, riot police hunting suspected terrorists surrounded a house and ordered the occupants to leave the building. One man came out shooting, officials said, but police gunfire drove him back inside. Another man opened fire from a window and was shot dead. Police flung hand grenades into the house and set it afire. Inside the ruins they found two corpses and a cache of AK-47 assault rifles.
The government blamed all this violence on agents of the A.N.C. and publicly warned Zambia and other countries along South Africa's northern border to stop providing them with aid. On Saturday, South African commandos attacked the Zambian town of Livingstone, blowing up two buildings and killing five people who Pretoria claimed were A.N.C. guerrillas.
Violence has become commonplace in South Africa as more and more blacks have concluded that they have no other way to protest against the apartheid government. And although Botha at his campaign rallies cries defiance and declares he will never compromise on racial segregation in government, housing and education, many embattled Afrikaners know that change is inevitable. "People are really concerned about the choices they must make," says one senior campaign staffer. "Angst is an Afrikaner growth industry."
How do ordinary Afrikaners look at the difficult choices confronting them? Listen to some of them:
-- Frederik van Zyl, a successful building contractor: "I don't want blacks to take over South Africa, but I don't like the way that people treat the blacks either. I pay my boys well, and they like working for me. But hell, % man, I wouldn't want to live next door to them. Still, when I go to football matches at Rand Stadium, I realize how many of them there are and that we have to make a deal with them in order to survive."
-- Jan van Rensburg, a railroad worker who helps in a soup kitchen that provides 300 meals a day for the Afrikaner poor: "I haven't made up my mind. I am not happy with any party or any policy in South Africa. I don't agree completely with anything that is being offered. I can't change overnight."