three and wounding many more."! Mandela then suspended all talks with
the government, and fighting escalated in KwaZulu and Natal, where both
sides committed atrocities. The ANC was running a campaign of "rolling
mass action," which culminated in August when several million workers
went on strike and Mandela led fifty thousand followers though the streets
of Pretoria to the government buildings. But that was not enough for the
ANC radicals, who believed that events justified their demands for a re-
sumed armed struggle. They managed to persuade a majority of the ANC'S
executive committee to campaign to bring down the governments of three
Homelands-the
Ciskei, Bophuthatswana, and KwaZulu-starting
with
the Ciskei. On September 7, Ronnie Kasrils, a former chief of intelligence
of the guerrilla forces and member of the Vula operation, led seventythou-
sand marchers from Kingwilliamstown to nearby Bisho,the Ciskeicapital;
but the Ciskei police opened fire and routed them, killing twenty-eight.
Mandela, who had consented to the project with reluctance, then called a
halt to mass action and reprimanded Kasrils.44
Bythat time, South Africa verged on anarchy. As bloodshed mounted,
the economy slumped, Western governments pressured all parties to co-