roots of violence On Febuary 2nd 1990, President de Klerk of South Africa proclaimed that the season of violence had come to an end. It was something which belonged to the past. Today, just eight months later, there is more violence in South Africa than ever before.
The cause of the current battles in the townships of the Transvaal is casily identified. The Chief Minister of the Zulu "homeland', Mangosuthu Buthelezi, has extended his struggle against the ANC-led Liberation movement from Natal, where it had already caused hundreds of deaths, to the industrial heartland of South Africa around Johannesburg.
His aim: to pole-axe the negotiations between the ANC leadership and the Pretoria regime; to win himself a place at the conference table, and a leading role in the government of a post-apartheid South Africa.
Buthelezi is an ambitious man and completely unscrupulous about the way he pursues his ambitions. In the years when Nelson Mandela was in gaol, and the ANC, PAC, Black Conciousness and other organisations were banned, the Zulu-based Inkatha movement was the only black organisation with a mass base legally existing.
The South African establishment as well as overseas powers tried to make full use of this situation to bolster his position. He frequently appeared on television in South Africa, Britain, the United States and elsewhere. He negotiated with big business, visited and was visited by foreign politicians, and set up Page 4
UPDATE
Inkatha's attacks have now spread to the townships representatives in the major capitals of the world.
In July this year, he was the principal speaker at a conference in London organised by the Tory think-tank, the Centre for Political Studies, billed as a conference on Britain and South Africa. It was opened with an introduction by William Waldegrave, Minister at the Foreign Office. One of the speakers at this conference, Bruce Anderson of the Sunday Telegraph complained that the Chief was not violent cough in response to the violence of the ANC.
For years Buthelezi has been a particular favourite of Margaret Thatcher and a frequent guest at 10 Downing Street and Chequers. She frequently used him to counter the ANC's claim to represent the great majority of blacks in South Africa. The six million Zulus were, after all, the biggest "tribe. She took little notice of opinion polls which showed that Buthelezi did not enjoy majority support even among the Zulus, maintaining himself in power by totalitarian brutality.
Because Inkatha is almost wholly Zulu-based, the current wave of fighting in the townships has been ascribed to "inter-tribal" rivalries. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the industrialised urban areas of South Africa there has been "inter-tribal" mixture for more than a century.
When, in the heyday of Verwoerdian apartheid, the government tried to segregate the inhabitants of the demolished
Sophiatown into distinct "tribal zones in Soweto - Xhosa, Zulu or Sotho, most of them had no idea to which they were supposed to belong. In Natal there have been as many Zulu victims of Buthelezi's impis as others.
The battle is a political one. Chief Buthelezi is the champion of private enterprise, an opponent of sanctions. He is hungry for power. He has openly threatened to 'shoot his way into the negotiation chamber.
While most objective ob servers are quite emphatic that it is Buthelezi and Inkatha who unleashed the wave of violence that has left more than 500 dead in the Transvaal townships, it is also clear that the ANC leadership was unable to control its own fol lowers. The result was complete anarchy, further complicated by the fact that the police openly sided with the Inkatha bands.
Even the govemment noW seems to have recognised this, and it is the army not the police, which has been sent to the townships to restore order. Inexplicably, in the midst of all this, Nelson Mandela has once again gone for a trip overseas - at a time when resolute leadership is desperately needed.
No one who knows the history of South Africa will be surprised at this latest manifestation of violence. Since white men first set foot in the country, black people have been kept in subjection by whites through violence. Apartheid is only the grossest expression of this. As a result, for
both blacks and whites, violence has become a way of life.
If apartheid fertilises the endemic violence, this has been furthered by massive unemployment, acute economic crisis and the under-education of blacks in the segregated schools. The continuing bulldozing of squatter homes, leaving families homeless and hopeless, has also fuelled the embers of violence.
There are more than 5 million umemployed in South Africa. But with the rural areas unable to provide a basic level of subsistence, there is an ever-growing movement into the towns and cities, where there are no jobs and no homes. The consequence is a growing crime wave.
Black violence - which makes the headlines - is parallelled by increasing violence from rightwing whites. A Latin Americam pattern of vigilantes is emerging. Violence is openly threatened by the Conservative Party and practised by the AWB and other far-right groups.
Despite the ANC leadership's attempt to arrive at a peacful and orderly end to apartheid, the portents are that we will witness an increase in violence. Even if some sort of political solution is hammered out, the huge economic disparity between the small group of whites and the huge majority of blacks will remain. This festering sore can only be cured by lancing.
Charlie van Gelderen SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 27, October 1990