Lehlohonolo Kennedy Mahlatsi
Johannesburg - This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Boipatong Massacre in Sharpeville in the Vaal area. Boipatong is a Sesotho word meaning “Place of Hiding”. It is popularly known as “Tshirela” in Sedibeng/Vaal and surrounding areas.
On the night of June 17, 1992, a gang of armed warlords crept out of the infamous Kwamadala Hostel near Boipatong and in an orgy of slaughter hacked, stabbed, and killed 38 people in their homes.
Among the dead were a 9-month-old baby, a child of 4, and 24 women, one of them pregnant. The Boipatong massacre has been widely recognised as a crucial moment in South Africa’s negotiated transition.
Kwamadala was owned by ISCOR and became a hub for a range of Vaal fugitives, many not employed by ISCOR, some with criminal backgrounds, all having to show Inkatha Freedom Party allegiance. One of them was Victor “Khethisi” Kheswa, also known as the “Vaal Monster”.
The hostel quickly gained infamy as a springboard for violence. Numerous submissions to ISCOR and the South African Police (SAP) branded its occupants as “enemies of peace”, responsible for intimidation, abduction, assault, rape and murder. This demonstrated how apartheid state and capital have collaborated in dislodging the liberation forces and destabilising our townships during the dying years of apartheid.
At a rally the following day, Nelson Mandela was confronted with banners reading “Mandela, give us guns” and “Victory through battle not talk”. The crowd was also chanting “O ikentse konyana na wa bona setjhaba se ya fela” - “You are acting like a lamb while the enemy is killing our people”. He responded, “Mr De Klerk and his regime bear full responsibility for the violence in the country and in these townships in particular”.
The regime had not moved to quell political violence, particularly rife in Vaal townships, even though it had the capacity to. In time-honoured fashion, police had maintained minimal presence, abdicating their duties of keeping order, allowing a massacre to pass through Boipatong unhindered.
There was an immediate recognition that this massacre was distinctive, not only because of its large scale. Local residents were convinced that it was the work of the security forces, and there is circumstantial evidence that it was indeed the work of one or other of the covert units.
Above all it took place at a time when negotiations were suspended, a year after the murder of ANC leader Ernest Sotsu’s wife, daughter and grandson in Boipatong by the same gang in June 1991, on the day after the anniversary of the 1976 Soweto rising.
The apartheid regime and its military intelligence used many dirty tricks to cling to power. The Operation Thunderstorm was aimed at wreaking havoc in the country and blaming the ANC for creating such a situation of uncertainty that black people will accept anything that would bring an end to violence. The ANC would therefore be forced to accept Operation Springbok - an entrenched coalition with other parties. Such a government would be unable to fundamentally alter the status quo.
In July 1991, the Mail & Guardian and the British Guardian newspaper simultaneously revealed the “Inkatha gate” scandal which highlighted the existence of a secret police project for funding Inkatha. Many people lost their lives in violence between 1990 and 1994, more than at any other period of the liberation struggle to overthrow apartheid.
Hence the history of this period may be considered not only as the moment at which visionary leadership and reason triumphed over violence, but also as that in which the war for South Africa, previously fought most ferociously outside the country’s borders, now enveloped South Africa itself. During this period the apartheid regime intensified its low intensity warfare from the killing fields of KZN, to the train massacres in Gauteng, to the Boipatong massacre, to the Bisho massacre and assassination of Chris Hani.
There was overwhelming evidence, growing by the day, that elements in state structures have engaged both directly and indirectly in violence. However, the view of the conflict as having been driven by ethnic factors has also been strongly criticised.
The Western media, always too ready to accept simplistic explanations out of Africa, swallowed and regurgitated the white minority regime propaganda line that this “black-on-black” violence was just another African tribal conflict by people who had traditionally been at one another’s throats - the implication being that South Africa needed continued white-minority rule to prevent its black population from self-destructing.
As the struggle had grown and reached unprecedented levels of intensity, the apartheid regime, faced with the irresistible advance of the masses, decided to hire black vigilantes and black impis, to fight, murder and die in its defence.
Hence the so-called black-on-black violence, an expression which was a distortion of reality. It was of course part of the apartheid survival strategy that the slave master should hire slaves to save him from the revolts of the enslaved.
The Boipatong Massacre is broadly viewed as evidence of a third force, comprising elements within the state security working covertly and illegally to undermine the ANC and its allies. Vigilante groups started making their appearance in several parts of the country in the mid-1980s, the most prominent and sustained of these groups being elements, primarily “warlords”, from within Inkatha. Inkatha-supporting vigilantes bear the prime responsibility for the spread of vigilantism in Natal during the 1980s and in the Transvaal during the 1990s.
In his memorandum to FW de Klerk on 26 June, 1992, the then ANC president Nelson Mandela wrote the following:
“The Boipatong massacre on the 17th June, 1992 is but a tragic culmination of policies and practices followed by the NP government. In this instance the wilful negligence on the part of the South African Police in relation to the KwaMadala hostel is extensively documented….This basic failure by you and your government induces you to perceive the political rivalry between the Inkatha Freedom Party and the ANC as the central cause of the violence…..Once more you consciously turn a blind eye to the fact that your government used millions of rands of taxpayers’ money to foster such rivalry. The Inkathagate scandal stands as proof of your complicity and bias in this regard. Your rendering military training to IFF members at a number of bases is also abundant proof of your involvement.”
Cyril Ramaphosa and Joe Slovo toured Boipatong for three hours on 18 June, 1992. Afterwards, Slovo exclaimed, “We have just been through a war zone. People have been murdered in their beds, not by people in uniform, but we have absolutely no doubt that those who sent them wore police uniforms“. When white policemen in Casspirs escorted assegai and panga-wielding IFP hostel-dwellers into Boipatong informal settlement on a killing spree, the regime claimed that it was ”black-on-black violence“.
The role of the apartheid regime in destabilisation has been one of failure, omission and neglect. It had failed to use its security forces to put a stop to the violence, something they had the duty and the capacity to do. The regime was pursuing a twin-track strategy. This strategy involves negotiating with opponents, and at the same time embarking on destabilisation of liberation forces.
Dr Lehlohonolo Kennedy Mahlatsi is SACP Free State PEC Member. He writes in his personal capacity.