S. Africans Mark Bloody Anniversaries : Violence: Right-wing whites, militant Zulus and ANC members celebrate separate past victories.

In emotional ceremonies that dramatized South Africa’s deep ethnic and racial divides, right-wing whites, militant Zulus and Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress celebrated opposing holidays Thursday to honor a series of anniversaries soaked in the nation’s blood.

The three factions in the bitter battle for political power here massed separately at monuments, fields and stadiums to mark their respective military exploits--and to mobilize supporters for violence yet to come.

The threats were loudest among 12,000 or so white Afrikaners, descendants of early European settlers who gathered by a huge sandstone monolith outside Pretoria to commemorate the 1838 Battle of Blood River, when several hundred whites with guns slaughtered thousands of spear-carrying Zulus.

The annual rally for Afrikaner nationalism had added significance, because it may be the last. The black-led government that is expected to win the nation’s first democratic elections next April 27 is unlikely to maintain a national holiday that celebrates an Afrikaner massacre of blacks.

“We are the rightful owners of this country,” Eugene TerreBlanche, the burly, bearded chief of the far-right Afrikaner Resistance Movement, which affects Nazi-like symbols and policies, insisted in an interview. “We are the people who brought civilization to South Africa.”

The elections, which will allow the black majority to vote for the first time, are “illegal,” TerreBlanche declared. “It will create circumstances where war and revolution are sure to follow.”

Far-right leaders had warned that the anniversary would trigger an armed revolt in support of their demands for an autonomous white state. But although many in the all-white crowd wore brown shirts or black storm trooper garb--and sported pistols, knives, shotguns and ammo belts--the day passed quietly.

“We can’t live in the past,” said Charles Wosthuizen, 43, who sat in the grassy, sun-dappled bowl as speaker after speaker invoked God, the Boer nation and the Afrikaans language to whip up resistance to black rule. “I think it’s time to accept reality.”

White extremist violence has surged recently. In the most vicious incident, police said, a group of whites wearing commando fatigues forced two cars to stop near Johannesburg, ordered the passengers to run and then opened fire. Three blacks were killed, including an 11-year-old boy, and four were wounded. One of the injured reportedly had his ears cut off.

Polls show that only a small fraction of Afrikaners--about two-thirds of the 5 million whites--would move to a white homeland, much less fight for one. “You have to realize the right wing is not a cohesive force,” said Harold Pakendorf, a political analyst.

The contrast could not have been sharper in Soweto, the giant black township outside Johannesburg. About 10,000 people, nearly all black, cheered and danced as Mandela reviewed the guerrilla army he founded 32 years ago to fight the Afrikaners and their hated apartheid laws with car bombs, sabotage and assassinations.

This, too, was a goodby, since the Spear of the Nation army of the African National Congress marched for its final parade. The estimated 12,000 black troops will be integrated in coming months into a new national defense and police force. The ANC army will cease to exist after the election.

Mandela, who like the other veterans wore new camouflage fatigues and a cap issued for the occasion, pleaded with his soldiers for a “spirit of tolerance and national reconciliation.” But he warned that right wingers “are coalescing into a potential source of internal destabilization and conflict.”

Watching in the crowd, uniformed veteran Percy Maklobo, 39, said he had spent 13 years in exile and he was not worried about the right wing. “Those are the last kicks of a dying horse,” he said.

The new era may also begin without Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini and his followers. About 10,000 Zulus, many dressed in animal skins and carrying hide shields and sharp spears, gathered Thursday at the Natal battlefield where Zulus annihilated 1,600 British troops on Dec. 16, 1879, in one of the worst defeats of the British Empire.

Speaking on a hillside dotted with the white headstones of British soldiers, the king vowed defiance of the new constitution and the elections, saying the ANC was trying to destroy his kingdom the way the Zulus had destroyed the British.