The spectre of renewed civil war in the troubled province of KwaZulu-Natal haunted South Africa last night after the assassination of the third-ranking leader of the United Democratic Movement and, in what appeared to be a reprisal, the massacre of 11 African National Congress supporters.
The UDM leader, Mr Sifiso Nkabinde, was fatally injured when he was struck down by a hail of bullets as he left a general store in the troubled town of Richmond in KwaZulu-Natal on Saturday. He was rushed to hospital in the provincial capital of Pietermartizburg but died soon afterwards.
Later that night gunmen opened fired on people attending a wake in the ANC stronghold of Ndadeni on the outskirts of the Richmond. Eleven people were killed, five men and six women. The victims included two elderly women, one aged 60 and another aged 78.
Yesterday, as if to emphasise the volatility of the situation, an ANC convoy was ambushed by gunmen in the centre of Richmond, within earshot of the joint operations centre established by police after Saturday's blood-letting. A shootout ensued as ANC bodyguards returned fire.
Members of the convoy - who escaped uninjured - included two high-ranking provincial leaders of the ANC, Mr Bheki Cele and Mr Zweli Mkhize.
"The situation is out of control," a shaken Mr Cele said afterwards.
President Nelson Mandela yesterday signalled his concern about the latest episode of violence in the province when he cancelled a scheduled trip to Uganda. Mr Mandela blamed the resurgence of violence on a "Third Force" intent on destabilising the province ahead of South Africa's pending election by stirring up enmity between the rival political forces.
Now an established phrase in the country's political lexicon, the "Third Force" is presumed to consist of renegade and reactionary members of the security forces intent on weakening and discrediting the ANC and its allies.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission found little evidence of "a centrally directed, coherent and formally constituted `Third Force' ", but concluded that a network of security and ex-security force operatives "facilitated and engaged in violence" between 1960 and May 1994, when an ANC-led government replaced the last National Party government of Mr F.W. de Klerk.
A former ANC "warlord", Mr Nkabinde joined the UDM after his expulsion from the ANC on charges of being a police agent. Following his acquittal on 16 charges of murder in May last year, he was elected national secretary of the UDM, the fledgling opposition party founded by Gen Bantu Holomisa, another expelled ANC leader, and Mr Roelf Meyer, a former secretary-general of the National Party.
Situated in the midlands of KwaZulu-Natal, Richmond has long witnessed bloody battles between rival political forces, initially between the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party and, after Mr Nkabinde's expulsion from the ANC, between the ANC and Nkabinde loyalists.
Mr Nkabinde was the 104th person to die in political violence in Richmond since his acquittal last May. The sending in of police and army reinforcements had brought the situation under control until Mr Nkabinde's assassination at the weekend.
His death at the hands of assassins fulfilled his own prediction. "I know exactly how I'm going to die," he said six years ago. "I will be shot dead. That's the bonus of being a politician in South Africa."