South Africa Dooms 2 Rebels for Killing Suspected Informer

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa —  When he was killed last May, Ben Langa was a respected leader in the black community, a student organizer, a former political detainee, one of the country’s most promising poets--and apparently an informer for the South African secret police.

On Tuesday, two guerrillas of the African National Congress were sentenced to death for Langa’s murder after admitting that they had killed him on orders from the underground group’s intelligence chief.

Betrayal Charged

“I hated the man after he became a sellout to the cause,” Sipho B. Xulu, 25, testified at his trial in Pietermaritzburg, recalling how Langa had inspired him and other youths to fight South Africa’s apartheid system and how Langa had recruited him for the outlawed African National Congress.

Langa, Xulu was told, was sending misleading information to the exile headquarters of the group in Zambia, had betrayed two other members to the police and was now seen by the group as working totally for South Africa’s white-minority regime.

Neither Xulu nor Clarence (Lucky) Payi, 20, who also pleaded guilty, questioned the death sentences. “I took an oath to the African National Congress to always carry out their orders,” Payi said. “If you don’t carry out orders, then you can face a firing squad of your own.”

In sentencing both men to die by hanging, Justice J.J. Kriek said: “Not even now, after eight months in custody and with their lives at stake, is there the slightest sign of remorse. Both have said that they have no regrets about the killing.”

But what transformed Langa, an associate of the late Steve Biko in the black consciousness movement, into a police agent was never made clear at the trial, and many in the community of Georgetown where he lived outside Pietermaritzburg were as shocked by this disclosure as by his death.

Xulu and Payi returned from training abroad only a week before Langa was killed.

Louis le Grange, the minister for law and order, said later Tuesday in Johannesburg that 45 guerrillas had recently been arrested while infiltrating into South Africa from neighboring Botswana and that 27 others had been arrested while undergoing training in northern Natal province. Their intention, Le Grange said, was to “sow terror over a wide area” of Transvaal province.

He also said the government intends to continue its crackdown on the United Democratic Front, a relatively new multiracial alliance of anti-apartheid groups that has emerged as the leading opposition organization inside South Africa.

Sixteen leaders of the front and its affiliates face trial next month on charges of high treason, and Le Grange warned that the activities of others “will not be tolerated for much longer” and that criminal charges are being prepared against them.