Intergenerational and Urban-Rural Cleavages

Traditional Zulus who have a reconstructed memory of a precolonial independent kingdom are deeply offended by the young comrades’ rejection and denial of this identity. In the view of traditional Zulu leaders, the younger generation’s attitudes threaten the established cultural hierarchy. Thus King Goodwill Zwelithini complained: “Everything Zulu is being ridiculed. Our cultures are now being torn apart…the Hlobane violence was triggered off by Cosatu members who stated that when Dr. Nelson Mandela was released, my uncle the Chief Minister [Buthelezi] and I would be his cook and waiter respectively” (Front File, September 1990). Perceiving his traditional constituency to be withering away, the aristocratic leader invokes resistance in the name of history: at a meeting in Ulundi he told Zulu chiefs that their ancestors would turn in their graves if they saw how the strapping Amakhosi (elite corps) and their warriors were fleeing before ANC children. “The Amakhosi of Kwa Zulu must now stand firm because any retreat is the first step towards a rout” (Front File, September 1990).

The call for cultural revival is heeded by the most deprived among the Zulu people in search of responses to their humiliation. The invocation of a mythical past and images of pride and success in battle offers a source of dignity and identity to the rural poor, the hostel dwellers, and unemployed migrants. In their predicament, tribal identification carries with it a badge of honor.

In this context, citing the power struggle between the ANC and Inkatha supplies only a superficial explanation of the political violence. To be sure, the threat of isolation by the emerging NP-ANC alliance triggered Inkatha to play the tribal card. But similar frustrations exist on the other side, and the conflicts between youthful ANC supporters and traditionalists among Xhosa squatters follow a similar pattern.

In Cape Town, for example, a vicious war between two black taxi organizations reflected the conflict between two patronage groups, each claiming allegiance to the ANC. The heightened competition for scarce ranks and an outdated permit system that favored newcomers over old-timers represented a local variation of clientelism among a deprived Xhosa group, a situation that had been played out among Zulu speakers in Natal many times before. Members of the older taxi association, Lagunya, who were confined to intratownship routes, wanted their share of the more lucrative city traffic, which the newer Webta association had pirated and monopolized. But longtime residents and their civic organizations resent the more recently arrived “outsiders” and the competing patronage system of “town councilors” in the expanding Khayelitsha shack settlements. Police partiality toward Webta drivers further inflamed the conflict, resulting in a level of mutual distrust that even Cape Town city council–sponsored mediation and peace efforts could not break. The long-simmering conflict has cost several dozen lives, including that of the widely respected civic leader Michael Mapongwana, who was assassinated, as well as two million rand in damage.

In Cape Town it is neither tribal animosity nor political ideology that has caused such deep rifts and violence among the deprived. As Tony Karon has rightly stressed: “The legacy of Apartheid has created an urban context in which hundreds of thousands of desperately poor people compete for the allocation of scarce resources.” Another example in a somewhat different arena illustrates a similar outcome.

In April 1991 residents of Katlehong squatter camps clashed when people from Holomisa Park attacked inhabitants of Mandela Park, both strongholds of the ANC. At the center of the dispute were stolen portable toilets that the Mandela Park squatters had tried to reclaim from the other side. Mandela Park is a long-established community, with running water and roads. Its ethnically mixed residents were accused by the homogeneous Pondo settlement of harboring hostile Zulus. While all squatters had lived in peace before, competition over the toilets quickly escalated into tribal suspicions. Rival political strategies heightened intracommunal frustrations, and Chris Hani barely succeeded in calming the residents by reminding the crowd that the ANC was a home for all ethnic groups.

Strikes and mass protests enforced through intimidation by overzealous youth constitute another trigger for violence. In December 1990, at the Mandelaville squatter camp near Bekkersdal, youth belonging to the ANC-aligned Bekkersdal youth congress wanted to stop pupils in the area from writing end-of-year examinations. The Azapo-aligned Azanian Students’ Movement and the Azanian Youth Organisation rejected the move, and the ensuing fighting left a trail of death and destruction (Star, December 20, 1990).

The leadership on all sides has lost control over some local segments that act in their name, and gangs exploit the insecurity and political confusion. The killing of thirty-seven mourners at the wake of a murdered ANC leader in Sebokeng in January 1991 had its origins in a dispute between the ANC and a local gang whose activities included rape, theft, and murder. When local ANC chairman Christoffel Nangalembe called for an end to gang terror and reported to the police that the gang had AK-47 rifles, he was kidnapped and strangled to death by local gang members. The organizers of the wake for Nangalembe requested police protection for the mourners, but the police failed to provide it. Accusations of police connivance with the gang in the massacre of ANC activists are widely believed in the township.

Urban-rural tensions in the townships are marked by generational, cultural, and political differences. The predominant urban black identity emerged from a mixture of traditional elements and rural customs, the street wisdom of survival in the townships and in the modern workplace, and the consumerist aspirations of secular Western society. This politicized, individualistic urban culture defines itself in sharp contrast to the ethos of the rural inhabitants and migrants, who are considered illiterate, unsophisticated country bumpkins. In the status hierarchy of the townships, the people with rural ties are often scorned as ignorant ancestor-worshippers who don’t speak English and practice a social life of tribalism and witchcraft. The denial of ethnicity and rejection of most cultural traditions by urban blacks reflect not only the government’s attempts to manipulate ethnic differences but also an arrogant predilection to associate rural customs with false consciousness.

The ANC leadership embodies the urban views of those who have left tribalism behind and now wear suits and ties. At most they may stage tribal traditions as ceremonial events, which they attend with amused smugness in much the same way as some urbane Westerners enjoy folk dances. The ANC’s internationalism and cosmopolitan universalism jars with the attitudes of the traditional African rural population. For many of them, the ANC appears as an elitist urban group whose leadership speaks English and looks down upon the ethnic customs of the peasants.

Many people in the rural communities and the migrant hostels deeply resent the political activism of the urban-based youth as a subversion of the traditional order in which children obey and politics is left to the elders. For the older generation, youthful activism is an ungrateful waste of the educational opportunities for which the parents sacrificed so much. On the other hand, youth accuse their parents of having compromised themselves with the system. This generational conflict has torn apart many families and pitted communities against each other, particularly in the semiurban settlements surrounding Pietermaritzburg, where rural and urban values clash directly under conditions of dire poverty.

In some parts of Natal, in the Durban townships of Lamontville and Chesterville, for example, youthful activism also has greater space because the area has traditionally been one of freehold settlements not under the jurisdiction of the KwaZulu Bantustan authorities. Their potential incorporation into KwaZulu was particularly resented by the residents in the 1980s. In Durban, in contrast to black life in Johannesburg or Cape Town, KwaZulu reaches right into the suburbs, and the rural and urban exist side by side throughout much of Natal. Since KwaZulu never applied influx-control measures, unplanned squatting on the outskirts of cities was common, while the rural newcomers found a much more regulated and planned environment in Cape Town or Johannesburg.

The late conquest of Natal compared with other parts of South Africa meant that the traditional economy remains more intact there than elsewhere. The failure of employers to hire Africans as supervisors and middle managers also impeded African upward mobility in Natal. Although the majority of homesteaders in rural Zululand are dependent on remittances from migrants in Johannesburg, fewer families have moved out permanently, and the majority of migrants consider the rural area their home, to which they periodically return and plan to retire. Together with the reconstructed and revitalized memory of more successfully organized resistance against colonial conquest under powerful kings, a more traditional way of life has survived among segments of Zulu speakers. Both their self-definition as proud warriors as well as their objective differentiation in attitudes and geographical movements form the background to the clashes in the cities.

There is some empirical evidence that political and historical views among Xhosa and Zulu-speaking students in Soweto differ significantly. M. Roth found that Xhosa speakers tended to view apartheid more frequently as a result of capitalism but also agreed with the statement that “the country belongs to all the people equally.”^[16] Zulu speakers disagreed more frequently with the statement “People who came to our country three hundred years ago cannot be called settlers”; they thought that it did matter whether whites or blacks came to South Africa first. In short, the ANC’s vision of nonracial sharing is more firmly held among Xhosa speakers, while Zulu-speaking students in Soweto, the majority of whom are by no means Inkatha supporters, tend to view South Africa more in nationalist terms. That the Zulu-speaking students’ vision resembles the Africanist PAC outlook more than the liberal inclusive ANC view makes the white conservative support for Zulu cultural revival particularly ironic.