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-...