Persistent Collective Violence and Early Warning Systems: The Case of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Abstract

One of the little known specifics of the democratic transition in South Africa during 1990-1994 is its system of early warning about political violence. The strong role that grassroots organizations played in monitoring affected communities and suspected perpetrators set it apart from systems that are driven primarily by academics, although academics were important for the analysis of the violence reports collected by the popular movement and for formulating warnings on trends and hot zones that the transitional government as well as the media actively demanded. This article describes the mechanisms of early warning and analyzes data from the province of KwaZulu-Natal, where high levels of political violence continued for much longer than in the rest of the country. Using regression techniques, we show that the violent behavior of the main political antagonists changed significantly after the April 1994 national elections. Also, the violence followed different causative patterns in the various subregions. Profiles derived in 1994 and 1995 informed the government's decision to postpone regional elections in KwaZulu-Natal three times before they could be held in June 1996 in a climate of relative tranquillity.