JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- About 20 women stripped to the waist despite chilly mid-winter temperatures Thursday to protest the demolition of their illegally built squatter shacks in Johannesburg's black satellite township of Soweto.
On South Africa's political front, meanwhile, a leading black alliance, the conservative Inkatha, announced plans to transform from a Zulu cultural movement into a political party. The move appeared to be an attempt to challenge black nationalist Nelson Mandela's rival African National Congress.
During the demonstration against the demolition in Soweto township, youths flung stones before being dispersed by police firing tear gas. Some 20 women also stripped to the waist despite the 59-degree weather.
'You take my home, you take my clothes also,' squatter Thandeka Nxumalo, 38, shouted at the workers, throwing an item of underwear at one of the trucks used to raze the flimsy structures.
But the women's protest failed to stop demolition crews flattening some 60 shacks in the Dobsonville squatter camp and the workers only cast glances at the shouting and chanting protesters.
The crews took less than two hours to level the rickety shanties, erected without permission on land zoned for permanent low-cost housing.
Police Wednesday had clashed with illegal squatters in Thokoza township, east of Johannesburg, leaving a number of officers hurt by thrown rocks and at least one resident dead.
Authorities and squatters regularly clash around South Africa's major cities over settlements that spring up overnight as rural blacks flock to cities where apartheid laws forbid races to share residential areas.
South Africa also has suffered internecine black violence. Inkatha and ANC supporters since 1986 have been locked in a bloody conflict in strife-torn Natal province at a cost of more than 3,000 lives, and the ANC's legalization in February spread the fight into the political arena.
Inkatha President Mongosuthu told reporters Thursday the New Inkatha will be a non-racial, national, democratic party and plans to compete in 'forthcoming free, universal suffrage, multi-party elections.'
The party movement will be launched this weekend, he said.
The Zulu leader warned that the socialist ANC is playing a 'dangerous game' by trying to establish itself as the 'sole' black political force.
'Inkatha will not be crushed. It will not be eradicated or become a co-opted and ANC-controlled organization,' Buthelezi said in a sideswipe against the movement that accuses him of being a government stooge and instigating internecine black violence.
Buthelezi claims to represent most of the nation's 6 million largely Natal-based Zulus as chief of the nominally self-governing territory of KwaZulu. But he is accused by the ANC of being too close to Pretoria for opposing trade sanctions aimed at punishing white minority rule and also of fanning the Natal violence to consolidate his position.
Buthelezi said Thursday Inkatha will strive for peace because it has 'the most to lose in the politics of violence.'
He and Mandela, the ANC's deputy president and de facto leader, have made public calls for an end to the Natal conflict. But, citing pressure from their own sides or alleging intransigence from the other, the two leaders have never personally met to discuss the issue.
President Frederik de Klerk on June 8 lifted a four-year state of emergency in three of the country's four provinces as part of his racial reform program launched February, but he maintained the regulations in Natal, saying the high level of violence necessitated special police and army powers.
