ROANOKE TIMES 

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

DATE: MONDAY, April 25, 1994                   TAG: 9404250098
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA                                LENGTH: Medium

S. AFRICAN BOMB KILLS 9

A car bomb exploded in downtown Johannesburg on Sunday, killing at least nine people, damaging the African National Congress headquarters and terrorizing South Africans just two days before the first all-race election.

No one claimed responsibility for the blast, which wounded about 100 people. Suspicions fell on white For updated information, call InfoLine and enter code 2026. extremists fearful that the election will usher in black-majority rule.

Police later received a report of a second bomb in a car parked only blocks away, but it turned out to be a false alarm.

Political leaders from several parties appealed for calm.

"I don't want you to concentrate on the violent action of those people who want to disrupt the process," ANC President Nelson Mandela said at a huge rally in Durban that culminated his campaign for the nation's highest office.

"We're going to deal with those people. We have made fantastic progress, despite criminals and murderers."

The ANC was expected to win the election, the first in South African history to include the black majority. Right-wing extremists opposed to black majority rule have threatened drastic action.

The white-led government, expected to share power with the ANC in the next administration, said it was resolved to go ahead with the three days of voting, beginning Tuesday.

"There is no possibility that radical minorities will be allowed to frustrate the will of the vast majority of the South African people," President F.W. de Klerk said. "All they will achieve will be to add to the unnecessary suffering of innocent citizens who have already suffered enough."

One of those killed was an ANC provincial legislature candidate, Susan Keane, who was driving to the ANC regional office when the bomb went off. The other victims were pedestrians.

A spokesman for the militant right-wing Afrikaner Resistance Movement denied the group was involved.

The blast, the biggest ever to hit Johannesburg, renewed fears of raging violence during the election - fears that had been quelled by the last-minute decision of the Zulu nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party to take part in the vote. Inkatha's decision left only right-wing extremists boycotting the ballot.

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