The South African government is sending more senior police officers to Kwazulu Natal province to help in the investigation of new killings there.

At least twenty-five people have been killed over the past few days.

Police have blamed the violence on family feuds over land and property.

Such disputes, they say, are often exacerbated by rival political loyalties and the return of men from cities during the Christmas period.

More than twenty-thousand people were killed in Kwazulu-Natal in the last decade of apartheid, and the BBC Johannesburg correspondent says enmity between political groups remains close to the surface.