
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, January 1, 1994                   TAG: 9401010028
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA                                LENGTH: Medium

S. AFRICA SHAKEN BY ATTACK

Shocked by a shooting spree that killed four and wounded five, black and white leaders on Friday called for the nation to make sure violence will not prevent the end of apartheid.

Two militant black groups claimed responsibility for the Thursday night attack in which black gunmen opened fire at a pub popular with university students in a liberal, mostly white section of Cape Town.

The attack heightened fears that violence, which has claimed thousands of lives in recent years, will intensify as groups opposed to political reforms try to disrupt the nation's first multiracial election April 27.

It darkened the hopes raised by Nelson Mandela and President F.W. de Klerk, who flew to Oslo just weeks ago to receive the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to end South Africa's longstanding racial conflict.

"I'm just very deeply shocked, really shattered, because somehow one was thinking that this kind of carnage was a thing of the past," said Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who won the 1984 Nobel Prize for his peace efforts.

De Klerk called the attack "barbaric" and urged South Africans to "stand united" in condemning such violence.

Mandela's African National Congress, the nation's leading black group and the expected winner of the April vote, said such "acts of naked terrorism" only helped those trying to block free and fair elections.

It also said the political violence that kills people in black townships every day should get the same attention as Thursday's attack, in which most of the dead and wounded were white.

There were 20 to 50 people in the Heidelberg bar and restaurant when several attackers wearing civilian clothes burst in, witnesses and police said. A rifle grenade shot in first failed to explode, and the gunmen then opened fire.

The attack killed three women and a man and injured five people.

The South African Press Association received telephone calls from men claiming responsibility for the attack on behalf of the Azanian People's Liberation Army and the Azanian National Liberation Army.

Keywords:
FATALITY

by CNB