Inkatha Organization

Rival factions waged running gun battles in the streets of two black townships, pushing the nationwide death toll to at least 125 in four days of savage fighting, officials said Tuesday. Worst-hit were Tokoza and Katlehong, a pair of dusty, impoverished townships southeast of Johannesburg that have regularly erupted into urban warfare in recent years.

Nelson Mandela, concluding a six-week, 14-country tour of North America, Europe and Africa, returned home Wednesday on his 72nd birthday, promising to meet with President Frederik W. de Klerk within days to discuss a new round of peace talks. "We with the African National Congress are very keen" to clear the remaining obstacles to formal negotiations, Mandela told an airport news conference.

President Frederik W. de Klerk, meeting a key demand of the African National Congress, lifted the four-year state of emergency in strife-torn Natal province on Thursday and declared the way clear for constitutional negotiations. With his action, the president also met one of the five conditions necessary for lifting American economic sanctions against Pretoria. Only two conditions remain: the freeing of political prisoners and the repeal of all apartheid legislation.

Nelson Mandela and Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, the country's two most prominent black leaders, are scheduled to meet Friday to discuss ways of ending a township war between their supporters that has claimed nearly 800 lives near Johannesburg since mid-August. But the landmark meeting is no sure thing. The African National Congress is angered by Buthelezi's recent reference to its members as "murderers and hypocrites."

Just five weeks ago, the march toward power-sharing negotiations in South Africa was stopped by revelations that President Frederik W. de Klerk's government had made covert payments to the Inkatha movement, rival of the African National Congress. Now the heat of that scandal has died away, and movement toward constitutional talks has resumed even more vigorously than before.

In their first historic round of peace talks, the African National Congress, the Inkatha Freedom Party and the government agreed here Saturday to draw up a plan to end the bloody internecine conflict and "work for peace in South Africa as a supreme priority." The initiative was the first, tentative sign of progress toward ending the escalating black factional war, which stands as the biggest obstacle to launching negotiations for a new constitution and voting rights for the black majority.

Gunmen ambushed two buses on a road in strife-torn Natal province, killing 14 people and injuring 29 in the worst case of black factional violence since rival groups struck a peace accord last month, police said Monday. Related internecine battles at a nearby black township between groups wielding hatchets and knives killed three people overnight, police said.

The African National Congress threatened Friday to suspend talks with the government on May 9 unless President Frederik W. de Klerk fires his police and army ministers and takes steps to restore peace in strife-torn townships. The hard-line ultimatum, contained in an open letter to De Klerk from the ANC's national executive committee, was the most serious threat yet to hopes of early negotiations for a new South African constitution.

Nelson Mandela said his African National Congress is forming its own defense forces in black townships because the government has failed to stop factional fighting. Mandela did not say where the units would be set up or whether they would be armed. The move is a challenge to the government and the rival Inkatha Freedom Party, both of which have warned that setting up defense units would incite further violence between black factions.

The militant Pan-Africanist Congress stalked out of multi-party talks with the government and other black groups Saturday, saying it would ask its supporters whether it should continue participating in preparations for constitutional negotiations.