Army troops patrolled this violence-plagued region Wednesday after talks collapsed among political parties whose rivalry is blamed for 23 killings this month.
Talks among the rival African National Congress, the Inkatha Freedom Party and the United Democratic Movement broke down after the ANC walked out in a dispute over who would chair the meeting.
Soldiers patrolled in armored vehicles around Richmond, in KwaZulu-Natal province. They were the first of hundreds of security forces the government planned to dispatch. About 10,000 people were killed in the province in the last years of apartheid and the runup to the 1994 elections.
Also Wednesday, the United Democratic Movement accused police of breaking into a store owned by Sifiso Nkabinde, the party’s national secretary, and shooting at his home adjacent to the store. Nobody was hurt.
The new round of violence came after Nkabinde was named as an informant for apartheid-era security forces and expelled as local ANC chairman. He later joined the rival United Democratic Movement, a new party. Nkabinde earlier this year was acquitted of killing 16 people.
