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Special Report Transcript Episode 20, Section 5, Time 32:47In South Africa of today there’s a clear line between gangster and vigilante or civic action. Gangs destroy communities and groups like Pahad in Cape Town want to rebuild them. But in the shadowy history of the 1980s some gangs and vigilante groups were seen to be cut from the same cloth. They were simply mabangalala, vigilantes; right wing and mercenary groups from within the black community who tailored their activities to suit the repressive agenda of the South African government. Notes: Video footage of gang posing with weapons References select each tab to search for references TRC Final ReportUDF–Peacemaker clashes: Uitenhage, 1985–86 233 Uitenhage and its townships, KwaNobuhle and Langa, are a short distance from Port Elizabeth. Uitenhage is an important centre for the motor industry in South Africa, and the unions that organised in this sector had a strong influence on the ... Vigilantes in Ciskei 260 Over the years, the Ciskei authorities used vigilantes on several occasions. Haysom records the first use of vigilantes in Ciskei as being during 1974, when the vigilantes known as the ‘Green Berets’, who were members of the ruling Ciskei National Independence Party ... Vigilantes 121 In Grahamstown in 1980, some parents opposed to the school boycotts formed a vigilante group called the Peacemakers. On 14 May, Peacemakers member Mthantiso Alfred Soya [EC0437/96ALB] was attacked with pangas and stoned to death by youths in the grounds of a Grahamstown school, ... The Killing of Philemon Khanyile Chesterville community leader Philemon Khanyile was stoned and burnt to death in his car by an angry crowd of residents when he attended the funeral of Mr Harrison Dube. The crowd had been led to believe that he was a police informer. Khanyile was a member of ... 162 Former ANC leader Sifiso Nkabinde of Richmond also gained notoriety as a warlord for the considerable power he wielded in the area after he led a violent and successful campaign to defeat Inkatha opponents. He soon became a leading ANC figure in the province, though tainted by allegations of ... Contra-mobilisation 137 The early 1980s saw a steady increase in groups of vigilantes who used terror to quell the growing revolt among rural youth against the old order. By and large, vigilantism was closely allied to the South African government’s institution of homeland administrations and ... Deaths in custody 118 Numerous reports of torture and deaths in detention were received, particularly from the Newcastle area. Newcastle was an MK gateway to Swaziland and Mozambique and the Security Branch intensified its operations in Newcastle in an attempt to obstruct the movement of ... Resistance and revolutionary groupings 85 In this period, security trials relating to organisational activities outnumbered those relating to violent action by resistance movements. People were tried for community and labour mobilisation, membership of the banned resistance movements, ... 170 When David Ntombela of Mncane in Vulindlela became the induna of KwaMncane, the money he collected from people for a ‘co-operative store’ allegedly went into building his own store. Ntombela became known for spearheading attacks against UDF supporters who had begun to infiltrate the ... Resistance and revolutionary groupings Sabotage attacks 55 The national sabotage campaign launched by MK in the 1960s was felt in the Orange Free State during this period. A series of explosions, mostly in and around Bloemfontein, caused considerable damage to key installations and various ... ■ 1983–1989 Historical overview 67 This period saw the emergence of several youth and civic organisations, many of which were affiliated to the United Democratic Front (UDF), formed in 1983. AZAPO and student organisations such as COSAS were particularly active in organised protests ... Contra-mobilisation and vigilantes 117 In 1984, councils and councillors became targets of opposition and sometimes violent attack by militant youths in Orange Free State townships. The UDF and its affiliates began to demand that councillors resign from and reject the system, which they saw as a ... ■ 1990–1994 Historical overview 152 Conditions in the Orange Free State remained highly charged in the early 1990s. The Commission received reports of ongoing police brutality in the province in relation to public gatherings and demonstrations. Reports of torture and deaths in custody were ... Contra-mobilisation 169 Police continued to act in a heavy-handed manner during public protests against local councils and councillors. On 19 April 1990, residents marched through the township at Viljoenskroon to demand the resignation of councillors. The police ordered them to disperse; they ... The case of Jonas Mathe In 1993, on a farm called Lambertina at Clocolan, an ANC member Jonas Matli Mathe was shot and injured by police because he was calling himself ‘Mandela’. The victim was taken to hospital but is today confined to a wheelchair, paralysed and mentally disturbed as a ... Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB) covert operations 235 The Western Cape saw at least four CCB operations under the direction of its Western Cape regional manager Abraham ‘Slang’ van Zyl, a former member of the Brixton Murder and Robbery Unit. The CCB appears to have used both conscious and ... Taxi violence and vigilante activity 441 Conflict in the taxi industry has been the subject of many reports, commissions of inquiry and research projects and will not be covered in detail here. The social cost of the conflicts in the region was enormous. Major Louis van Brackel of the Violent ... Anonymous violence: ‘balaclavas’ 363 From 1991, political violence in Khayelitsha, and to a lesser extent in Nyanga, was marked by anonymous so-called ‘balaclava gangs’ – groups of masked men who performed ruthless killings and arson attacks, targeting individual homes and families or ... ■ 1990–1994 Overview 323 The 1990s saw a fairly extensive upsurge of violations in the region – although not remotely approaching the levels of violence in other regions. An estimate of deaths from newspapers and Commission sources suggests that there were around 200 politically related ... 1980–1981 school boycotts 92 After the founding of the Congress of South African Students (COSAS) and the Azanian Student’s Organisation (AZASO) in 1979, school protests became more organisationally directed. Across the country, up to 100 000 children in coloured and African schools and ... |
