COLUMN ONE : Living on a Prayer in S. Africa : Fervent praying is the only defense against the terror that grips hundreds of thousands of blacks living beneath the smokestacks of the country’s Vaal Triangle.

Bedtime in Sebokeng. The coal smoke has blown away, leaving a rusty glow on the horizon and stars burning crisply in the chilly air overhead.

Behind a gate and thick curtains, Alfred and Glorious Boyi and their daughter Cynthia kneel on the bare concrete floor of their kitchen. A single white candle lights the tiny room warmed by a coal-fire stove. Somewhere outside, dogs are barking. A distant gunshot cracks.

“Thank you, Lord,” Alfred begins, speaking Xhosa, “for keeping us through this day. We pray that you will keep us through this night, under the shadow of darkness. Keep us until we see the sun rise again.”

That fervent prayer is the Boyi family’s only defense against the terror that grips hundreds of thousands of blacks living beneath the smokestacks of the Vaal Triangle, in the troubled townships of Sebokeng, Sharpeville and Boipatong.

Trapped within township boundaries drawn by apartheid and enforced by poverty, they are surrounded by potential enemies. One night, the attackers are the Zulus from migrant worker hostels on the township edge who support the Inkatha Freedom Party and hate the African National Congress. Another night, they are ANC-supporting youths looking for revenge. The attackers might be police officers, who can’t seem to protect anyone, and--many believe--help Inkatha. Or they could be tsotsis , criminals who thrive in the political chaos.

Only a few weeks ago, Zulu marauders from an Inkatha hostel killed more than 40 men, women and children in a night of bloodletting at Boipatong, prompting the ANC to break off constitutional talks with the government. And, half a world away, the U.N. Security Council was moved to send a special envoy to study the violence.

The Boipatong massacre spawned the world’s outrage. But Sebokeng, Boipatong’s neighbor, has been shaken by even more violence: In the last two years, 150 people have been killed in seven massacres here. Hundreds more have died, in twos and threes and fours.

Alfred Boyi is not a political man. But, at night in Sebokeng, that doesn’t help him much. The innocent and the guilty, the young and the old, the police and the pastors, the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party, the Xhosa and the Zulu, the Sotho and the Venda are all at risk here.

Boyi, a 52-year-old father of six, is an ordinary black South African, part of the silent millions who greatly outnumber the polished politicians, the Zulu migrant workers with their easily insulted ethnic pride and even the young ANC “comrades” with their appetite for revenge.

Boyi spends his days in Vereeniging, a conservative white city where a young Frederik W. de Klerk set up his first law practice three decades ago. Boyi works in a small main street shop, installing curtains. He earns 60 rand, about $25, a day.

Late every afternoon, Boyi leaves the peaceful confines of Vereeniging for Sebokeng. Shortly after 5 p.m. the other day, he zipped a dark jacket over his sweater, walked to a taxi stand and squeezed onto a crowded minibus, one of the “black taxis” that clog the arteries linking white and black South Africa.

The 15-mile commute took him past vast fields burned brown by the dry winter. A giant iron and steel factory loomed in the distance. Off to the left, coal-smoke clouds hung over Sharpeville and Boipatong townships.

The taxi arrived in Sebokeng at 6 p.m. The road widened to four lanes and the traffic, suddenly thick, slowed to a crawl in the gathering darkness. Hundreds of pedestrians streamed past. At a service station, three men warmed their hands over a wood fire next to a gasoline pump.

The taxi turned off the main road and stopped at a row of boulders strung across the street. The crude roadblock had been erected by neighborhood youth to keep the police and would-be attackers out--and the residents in.

The taxi accelerated through a narrow opening, and, four roadblocks later, Boyi alighted in Zone 12 Extension. He walked along dirt roads to his four-room home, unlocked the iron gate to a small yard and entered through the steel kitchen door in back.

Glorious Boyi, a stout 48-year-old in a red wool beret, was preparing a dinner of gristly meat, cabbage and squash on the stove. A white candle in a tin holder cast tall, human shadows on the walls.

Their neighborhood has no electricity; rent boycotts and violence have kept electricians out. Boyi doesn’t have a telephone, either. Three applications for a phone have been turned down. Telephone trucks are often hijacked in the township, and a few technicians have been killed.

Of all the townships in South Africa today, Sebokeng may well be the single most dangerous for visitors--and for its residents.

In fact, the wave of violence that has claimed more than 7,000 lives nationwide had its beginnings here, in July, 1990, five months after President De Klerk legalized the ANC and began to dismantle apartheid.

The ANC’s political rival, Inkatha, wanted to extend its influence beyond its traditional base among the Zulus in faraway Natal province. So it began a recruiting drive in Sebokeng.

Sebokeng, an ANC stronghold, is home to Sotho, Xhosa and Zulu people. Inkatha’s support base is the impoverished hostels on the township periphery, where Zulu migrant workers from rural Natal eye the relative prosperity of their urban neighbors with envy.

Inkatha launched its membership drive with a rally at the local soccer stadium. That night, 19 township residents were killed. A day later, 30 more were slain. More recently, 45 people were killed at a nighttime wake for an ANC member. An attack on a tavern in May claimed 13 lives.

No one has ever been convicted in the massacres here. Seven Inkatha supporters recently were acquitted of attacking the wake. ANC attorneys had been unable to persuade witnesses to testify, so great was the fear of Inkatha retribution.

“People get away with murder here,” Boyi said. “As easy as anything.”

The June 17 attack in Boipatong was the last straw.

Alfred Boyi forfeited a day’s pay to attend the mass funeral in Boipatong.

“It was heartache that sent me there,” he explained. “Little children were killed. Old people. I wanted to mourn them, not to listen to political speeches.”

But the anger was palpable that day, as 20,000 blacks packed onto a dusty soccer field. ANC leaders called for a boycott of stores in the white towns of the Vaal Triangle and they ordered a two-day strike, hoping that the injured businesses would pressure the white government to end the bloodshed.

The youth of Sebokeng, hardened by the violence, were impatient. They took it upon themselves to protect their neighborhoods, creating “defense committees.” Now they call themselves ANC “comrades” and mimic the idolized guerrillas of the ANC’s now-suspended army, Umkhonto we Sizwe, or Spear of the Nation.

Since the Boipatong massacre, the comrades have regularly patrolled the township streets, stopping and searching vehicles at the stone roadblocks. And they have used whips on township residents foolish enough to ignore the consumer boycott and periodic strikes.

The true perpetrators of the violence have long since disappeared. But the taste for revenge is strong among the youth. So they have burned the cars of passing motorists. And they look for scapegoats, relying on the old targets of anti-apartheid guerrillas--police officers, township councilors and alleged snitches.

The hapless are judged guilty in terrifying proceedings that last just minutes.

A few nights ago, not far from the Boyis’ home, youths at a roadblock robbed a former black mayor of Sebokeng of a pistol, and when he protested, they burned him alive with a tire around his neck, leaving a scorched spot in the veld as a warning to his neighbors. Those “necklace” executions, popular with militant township youth in the mid-1980s, have been resurrected here.

As Alfred and Glorious Boyi sat in their home recently, they weren’t sure whom they feared more: the hostel-dwelling Zulus who stage indiscriminate attacks in the township, the police who may be helping them, the comrades at the roadblocks or the ordinary criminals.

“It’s hard to sleep at night,” Glorious Boyi said. “You hear a passing car, and you are nervous already.”

The Boyis accept boycotts and worker strikes as a fact of life in the township. But they aren’t sure it’s worth the cost. “It makes the state pay attention,” Alfred Boyi said. “But it also hurts the economy, and it hurts the workers.”

They have no choice but to join the protests. Taxis that dare to travel the roads during strikes often are set ablaze. So the streets are empty. And few are willing to risk their lives on a trip to the city.

“Everybody knows that if you go to work, you will get sjamboked, “ Boyi said, referring to the sjambok whips used by the comrades. “So you live with it.”

Boyi’s employer, Haroon Desai, used to ferry his workers to Vereeniging and back. But no more. “It’s quite risky to go in there,” Desai said. Like most employers in the Vaal Triangle, Desai has a “no work, no pay” policy. “What can I do?” he said. “I have a business to run.”

But it is hard on Alfred Boyi, who still has at home two daughters and a son; they are ages 9, 13 and 20.

“I only wish they would notify us ahead of time about these strikes,” he said. “Then we could budget for it.” Added his wife: “When my husband is not working, these are very hard times.”

After dinner, the Boyis used to go to church, a 45-minute walk through the township. But, lately, they have quit attending. “We had to stop,” Glorious Boyi said. “People were being found dead everywhere.”

So they spend their evenings around the stove in the kitchen, wearing their sweaters and jackets, as the Southern Hemisphere winter drives temperatures in the other three rooms into the 30s. Sometimes they read from the Bible. With a recent visitor, though, they discussed politics.

As a young man, Alfred Boyi was a member of the Pan-Africanist Congress, a militant organization then stronger than the ANC. When the PAC planned a passbook protest at nearby Sharpeville in April, 1960, Boyi, a 20-year-old grocery store delivery man, was there, his face pressed against the fence that surrounded the police station.

The crowd intended to surrender their passbooks, which the government used to control the movement of blacks. When the police opened fire on the protesters, Boyi knelt on the ground. Behind him, 69 men, women and children were killed, shot in the back as they fled.

“I couldn’t live with what I saw,” Boyi said, his smooth face wincing at the memory of the Sharpeville massacre. “I had nightmares. And then I decided to stay away from politics.” (The passbooks were outlawed 25 years later.)

Today, Boyi and his wife sympathize with the ANC. And they believe the government is using its allies in Inkatha to foster violence and undermine support for the ANC.

“Even a blind man can see that it’s not the ANC that is causing these problems,” he said. “I hate to say it, because I like my government and I respect De Klerk. But what we see tells us that the government knows something about this violence. De Klerk may not know what he’s carrying in his own pocket, in his own Cabinet.”

As a result, even political moderates like Boyi have lost faith in the national police force. “Years back, I could run to a policeman and he would do something,” Boyi said. “But today I keep my distance. I don’t feel he can protect me.”

Boyi’s daughter, Cynthia, 20, once dreamed of becoming a policewoman. “I would still love to be one,” she said. “But I’m afraid that the comrades will burn me.”

More than 100 officers, most of them black, have been assassinated so far this year. Now, Cynthia wants to be a nurse.

At 11 p.m., Alfred Boyi went into the yard to tie up the dog and check the lock on the gate. Back inside, he read to the family from the Old Testament. Then they sang “The Old Rugged Cross,” knelt to pray and went to bed.

Shortly after 4 a.m., Cynthia awoke and went into the kitchen to light the stove. Alfred was up two hours later.

Outside, it was 7 a.m. and still dark. A thick layer of coal smoke scratched his throat as he walked to the paved road and caught a taxi for Vereeniging.

The taxi weaved silently back through the rock barricades. At the edge of the township, the taxi escaped the smoke. The sky was clear. And another hard day in South Africa was dawning.