Reassessing transition violence: Voices from South Africa's township wars, 1990-4

Abstract

Drawing on interviews with people involved in the communal violence that traumatized Thokoza and Katlehong townships in the early 1990s, this article challenges the received wisdom regarding transition violence in South Africa. Most significantly, it transcends the dominant narrative that African National Congress (ANC) supporters in the townships were under relentless attack by state security units known as the ‘third force’, along with the co-opted impis of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). The evidence presented indicates that Inkatha was responsible for much of the violence, but that ANC-affiliated militants also conducted murderous campaigns. Some police commanders and their units initiated violence for political ends, but different police and military groups operated independently and lacked a uniform political orientation. Some favoured the IFP, some backed the ANC, while others were divided or indifferent. Thus, the narrative that casts the ANC as victims of a state-orchestrated onslaught versus the Inkatha sell-outs who opportunistically sided with the white government (and its security forces) does not accurately capture events on the ground in Thokoza and Katlehong, two of the townships most afflicted by transition violence. A more fractured, less partisan picture emerges from the voices of those who survived the township wars. IN 1990 THE NATIONAL PARTY (NP) GOVERNMENT entered into negotiations with opposition groups and liberation movements, leading to South Africa’s first non-racial elections in April 1994. Although the advent of democracy ended centuries of white political domination and repression, the four-year transition period preceding the elections witnessed the bloodiest ‘political’ violence of the apartheid era. Many areas throughout the country experienced outbreaks and/or the continuation of fighting. Parts of what is now the province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), and *Gary Kynoch (gkynoch@dal.ca) is in the History Department at Dalhousie University, Canada. I would like to thank Zodwa Radebe for her excellent work interviewing and translating, and for introducing me to former Self Defence Units. The financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada is gratefully acknowledged. African Affairs, 112/447, 283–303 doi: 10.1093/afraf/adt014 © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal African Society. All rights reserved Advance Access Publication 3 March 2013