The hostel wars in apartheid South Africa: rumour, violence and the discourse of victimhood

Abstract

ABSTRACT During the transition to democracy in the 1990s, South Africa was engulfed in escalating violence. The majority of the violence occurred in KwaZulu and Natal and the African townships in the Pretoria – Witwatersrand – Vereeniging area. It pitted supporters of the African National Congress against the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). In the area around Johannesburg, the IFP’s mobilisation in workers’ hostels created violent rifts between township communities and IFP aligned hostel dwellers. Based on life history interviews and archival research, this article explores what mobilised hostel dwellers into violent action. The article argues that rumours of threat and expulsion led to the politicisation of ethnic identities and the strengthening of ethnic solidarities. The expulsion of Zulu-speaking hostel dwellers from Sebokeng hostel in July 1990, and the destruction of two hostels in the East Rand, triggered fears among hostel dwellers that their lives and their place in the city were at risk. It paved the way for a discourse of victimhood that framed violence against township communities as ‘defensive’, in an attempt to reverse the status of perpetrators and victims. These fears were further exacerbated and manipulated by IFP propaganda and their espousal of Zulu ethnic nationalism.