Zulu

As a boy growing up in northern Philadelphia, Thomas Bellmon spray- painted abandoned buildings for "Zulu Nation," a large, well-known gang he associated with in "a pretty rough section" of the city.Zulu Nation members were like family, who fought for each other and spray painted buildings to leave their mark, he said. "It was kind of sacred."But Mr. Bellmon soon learned the dangers of gang life. Five of his relatives ended up in prison, and his youngest brother was shot.Today, he is a Howard County Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.

The lingering effects of racism percolate through Alonzo D. LaMont Jr.'s "Zulu Fits. " Although the production directed by the playwright at Heralds of Hope Theater has some rough edges, it's a thoughtful play about how young African-Americans are literally haunted by things that happened centuries ago. "Zulu Fits" is the final play to open in this summer's Baltimore Playwrights Festival. It also marks the debut for Heralds of Hope Theater in Baltimore City's Station North arts district.

Zulu defiance of the constitutional settlement threatens to tear South Africa apart. It is a monster that the white National Party government helped create by arming and training Zulu fighters to undermine the African National Congress and by creating such spurious homelands as KwaZulu, giving power and a stake in perpetuating apartheid to black leaders there.Most of the homelands are succumbing to the fact of their own fiction, and the certainty of being taken into one South Africa after the April 26-28 election.

SCOTTBURGH, South Africa - Just after dawn, beyond the breaking waves, the ocean blackens and bubbles like a pot of boiling oil. To the untrained eye, the dark mass chugging up this Indian Ocean shoreline could be dismissed as the shadow of a passing cloud. But to the people living along South Africa's east coast of sugarcane fields and towering beach resorts, the strange sight means only one thing: The sardines have returned. Like the swallows flying every spring to Capistrano or the monarch butterflies wintering in Mexico, millions of the slim silver fish make an annual migration to the shores of South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province each June and July.

IZINGOLWENI, South Africa -- When the political leaders of South Africa squabble, the people of KwaZulu-Natal are usually the ones who die.They have been dying in this rural settlement for weeks now -- seven in one particularly grisly incident, five in another. The killings follow ancient fault lines between Zulu clans -- and those separating President Nelson Mandela's African National Congress and Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party, the party of the Zulus.And this time the killings are about the future of the Zulus' tribal chiefs.

STANGER, South Africa -- What Nelson Mandela once envisioned as a day of national reconciliation instead became a symbol of dangerous divisions yesterday among this country's 7 million Zulus.Thousands of Zulus crowded into this small town amid the sugar cane plantations of Natal, gathering at the grave of Shaka, the 19th-century warrior who founded the Zulu nation.They came even though their king, Goodwill Zwelithini, had asked them not to. They came because Mangosuthu Buthelezi, head of the Inkatha Freedom Party, said that they should.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- A growing rift between the two leading Zulu figures in South Africa reached the breaking point yesterday when King Goodwill Zwelithini cut off contact with Inkatha Freedom Party President Mangosuthu Buthelezi -- ostensibly over the minor matter of who should be allowed to issue an invitation.Mr. Buthelezi expressed indignation last month when President Nelson Mandela, Mr. Buthelezi's long-time political rival, said that he had accepted an invitation from the king to attend the Zulus' Shaka Day celebrations on Saturday.

PRETORIA, South Africa -- Goodwill Zwelithini, king of the Zulus, made the journey yesterday that so many leaders of indigenous people have made over the centuries -- to see the white rulers of his country to talk about his status.But there was one major difference in this meeting that generated a tempestuous demonstration yesterday. His meeting with South African President F. W. de Klerk was to discuss his future when black rule comes to this country after the April 27 election.King Goodwill faces the loss of some power after elections.

"Beadwork of South Africa" is one of three exhibits that open this evening at Gallery 409 in celebration of Black History Month. The show is of beadwork by the Zulu people of South Africa. The pieces are from the collection of Morelle Thornton-Dibb, who is from South Africa and now lives in Baltimore.Those who remember the recent exhibition of Ndebele beadwork at the Baltimore Museum of Art will find Zulu beadwork both similar and different. The individual Zulu pieces do not seem to be as large as the Ndebele, nor as pictorial.

DURBAN, South Africa -- The battle for Natal, which has led to an increasing amount of bloodshed in black townships over the last week, took to the streets of this coastal city yesterday with a huge, peaceful, display of support for the African National Congress (ANC).An estimated 50,000 marchers gathered here in the first of what ANC officials say will be a series of actions in response to the threats of Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party to resist violently any attempt to hold the election April 26-28 in Natal.

Fifteen eager children crouch in a half-circle at Bethel Outreach Center, part of a small, aging church school in West Baltimore. The youths toss playful glances at each other and bug their music teacher with chatter. They occasionally miss a beat. Mostly, they don't. Using their thighs to hold the instruments in place, they pound on the heads of ishiko, djembe and bougarabou drums. The drums shout back, filling the tiny room with a thunder that fuels the looks on the faces of their parents, proud that their children are members of the Kuumba Zulu Drummers.

Pat Stubbs, a native of Florida, has done just what President Clinton urges American entrepreneurs to do -- invest in a foreign land and help an isolated community. With her partner, Maggie Bryant, chairwoman of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, she has sunk $1 million into a cliff-side luxury lodge in South Africa to create an oasis of peace for high-spending tourists in the middle of Zululand. Ironically, the Isandlwana lodge overlooks a historic battlefield where two warrior nations, the Zulus and the British, shed an appalling amount of each other's blood more than a century ago. In the valley that once rang with the battle chants of the Zulus and the guns of the British, there is today only the quiet of the African vastness, broken by the occasional crack of a cowherd's whip, the low mooing of the animals, the lilt of a local songstress or the beat of an African drum.

NGQAMZANE, South Africa -- When this village's white-shirted Shooting Stars went up against the blue-clad Junior Aces from neighboring Ncekwane in the local soccer championship the other day, the players and their fans wanted a strong referee. And no one is stronger in these parts of KwaZulu-Natal than Mpiyezimtombi Mzimela, 47, the local Zulu chief, or inkosi, before whom members of his tribe often lower their heads and bend their knees in deference. "The people came to me and said, `Because this is a heavy game, we feel you are the person who should officiate in it,' " says Mzimela, who had to break up a fight between the two teams before the Shooting Stars won, 3-1. "This is part of my job -- promoting understanding and unity among my people."

WINTERTON, South Africa -- In the hands of Bonnie Ntshalintshali the clay takes on a strikingly African beauty, to be painted in vibrant African colors.It might be a complicated ceramic collage of a traditional Zulu wedding, a sculpture of Daniel in the lion's den, a decorated teapot, or a brightly plumed bird, all done with childlike simplicity but with an artistic touch.These are the trademarks of Ardmore Ceramic Studio, where Zulu potters and painters such as Ntshalintshali are attracting national and international attention with an eclectic collection of free-form art.Their work can be inspired as easily by the Bible as the jungle, by ancient myth or modernity.

What's the manliest film of all time? According to brothers Todd and Brant von Hoffmann, authors of "The von Hoffmann Bros.' Big Damn Book of Sheer Manliness," it's the movie "Spartacus." Boy, are these guys way off!Real men know the manliest film of all time is "The 300 Spartans," which features 300 tough fighting guys in some of the cutest and sexiest skirts you've ever seen in your life. "Spartacus," for heaven's sake! The 300 Spartans could have wiped out his slave army by themselves.

ELANDSKOP, South Africa -- The bright colors of the church uniforms stood out from the veld grass that has turned brown in the dryness of winter. Like bright flowers in a field, women dressed in the greens, blues, reds, purples, blacks and yellows of their denominations were waiting for a solemn ceremony.Today, those women will vote in elections to choose the local authorities in the province of KwaZulu/Natal. Yesterday they gathered to remember the thousands who have died in the political violence of the province and to beseech their God and their ancestors for peace.

NONGOMA, South Africa -- It was a day of glory revisited.The battlefields of past Zulu wars stretched far into the distance between the bronze-colored hills of Zululand, interrupted by an occasional huddle of grass-topped huts.From the direction of the royal residence, home of King Goodwill Zwelithini, came a regiment of stern-faced warriors dressed in animal skins and strips of beads.The warriors marched swiftly into an open field in a fierce display of militancy, brandishing spears, sticks and shields of leather and wood.

DURBAN, South Africa -- In the turbulent world of South African politics, Mangosuthu Buthelezi is making his last stand, and he is summoning his tribe's ancient warrior tradition to the task.Chief Buthelezi, this country's most prominent Zulu leader, is relying on the ethnic pride of the nation's Zulus to wage a life-and-death struggle with the African National Congress, which has displaced the Zulu kingdom as the most formidable black force in South Africa.Inkatha is considered a conservative black organization, which promotes free enterprise, while the ANC has a large number of communists in its ranks.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- They came by trains that had traveled all through the night, by buses that yesterday had left black townships before dawn, finally to reach the infield of a suburban horse racing track to celebrate Mass in a mixture of languages and traditions with Pope John Paul II.After drums pounded out an African rhythm and choirs sang in Zulu, the pope offered a message of peace as he celebrated the public Mass and later offered a message...

CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- Cries of "cover-up" and "murder" rang out in the South African Parliament yesterday as President Nelson Mandela came under fire for his role in the deaths of eight people outside the headquarters of the African National Congress before last year's national elections.Members of Parliament were debating Mr. Mandela's admission last week that he had ordered ANC security guards to kill if necessary in order to protect the ANC building in Johannesburg, when thousands of Zulus filled the downtown streets in an anti-election demonstration.