S Africa arrests third suspect in Rattray murder

JOHANNESBURG, Feb 16 (Reuters) South African police have arrested a third suspect in the murder of historian David Rattray, whose death last month threw a new spotlight on the country's sky-high rates of violent crime.

Police spokeswoman Phindile Radebe said today the man was detained yesterday night at his home in Nquthu in KwaZulu-Natal province, not far from the lodge where Rattray was gunned down by intruders on Jan 26.

''He has not been charged yet, and at this stage we do not know where or when he will appear in court,'' Radebe said today.

The murder of the 48-year-old Rattray, a friend of Britain's Prince Charles who was famous for his oral accounts of fighting between British troops and Zulu warriors in the 19th century, provoked a new outcry in a country with some of the highest rates of violent crime in the world.

On February 5, Fethe Nkwanyana, 23, was sentenced to 25 years in jail by Judge Jan Hugo in the Pietermaritzburg High Court after pleading guilty to the crime.

A second suspect, Simphiwe Ndlovu, 25, has had his case postponed pending a bail application, according to the South African Press Association.

Admirers have praised Rattray for boosting interest in KwaZulu-Natal's history, including a famous 1879 battle at Isandlwana, where more than 20,000 Zulu warriors routed British troops in one of Britain's worst military defeats.

Rattray was about to finish a new history book of the Anglo-Zulu conflict and was regarded as a world authority on the Zulu martial tradition.

His death has spurred fresh and often angry debate over South Africa's crime problem, culminating in Defence Minister Mosioua Lekota last week accusing white South Africans of racism, saying many whites were fleeing the country's black government instead of its crime levels.

REUTERS PDM PM1912