Revolt in the townships, 1984-87

By the mid-1980s, South Africa was in ferment with increasing violence and protest from the grassroots often uncontrolled by any central organisations.

The United Democratic Front

In August 1983, 575 organisations founded the United Democratic Front (UDF) whose aim was to co-ordinate internal opposition. Its ultimate goal was a new South African government based on the tenets of the Freedom Charter. As part of this it sought the abandonment of the Bantustans, where many of its activities took place. The UDF came to be seen as the internal wing of the ANC.

Protest strategies

Support for the UDF may have been as high as 2 million. Many felt they were responding to Oliver Tambo’s exhortation to make South Africa ungovernable.

  • It was particularly supported by the Indian Congresses and Congress of South African Trades Unions (COSATU). The number of strikes proliferated - and the number of days lost grew from 1,000,000 in 1986 to 6,000,000 in 1987.

  • It organised marches, protests and demonstrations throughout South Africa. Local groups such as the Port Elizabeth Black Civic Organisation were affiliated and organised protests against poor housing and lack of electric supplies under its banner.

  • In 1983 and 1984 it campaigned to get a million signatures for a mass petition against the proposed new constitution and black local government.

Black local government

As part of Prime Minister Botha’s constitutional reforms, black Africans were given responsibility for the governance of townships. This led to huge problems because those choosing to participate were seen as collaborators and targeted by mobs. They also had to raise revenue by rent increases, which led to more unrest. Not surprisingly very few black Africans took part in the local councils.

Grassroots organisation

The UDF began a programme of ‘People’s Organs, People’s Power’, using local organisations to plan such activities as rent strikes and local courts to oversee communities. Indeed by 1989 rent arrears had grown to half a billion Rand. In 1983-84, Ciskei workers boycotted the buses taking them to work in the city of East London.

The advantage of these activities for the UDF was that there was no obvious national figures to arrest or ban: although in 1987 the UDF was banned, and many members were arrested, its activities continued - because there was no central organisation for the security forces to target.

The problem was that UDF-sponsored organisations were unable to stem a growing rate of violence.

Communal violence

Violence was getting beyond anyone’s control. In 1984, in violent demonstrations against rent increases in the Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging area, 175 people were killed. Many of the local court descended into violence, with alleged malefactors being lynched or ‘necklaced’. In 1985 alone over 800 people were killed as a result of political activity.

One concern was that different groups of Africans were turning on each other. In particular the Zulu group Inkhata emerged, claiming to be a national liberation group but increasingly responsible for black-on-black violence.

There had long been hostility between migrant workers who lived without their families in barrack-hostels and residents of the townships who favoured the ANC. In the 1980s this enmity escalated, particularly in Natal between supporters of the ANC and Inkhata. Because the latter tended to support the government more, they often had covert assistance from the security forces in their attacks on alleged supporters of the ANC.

Many feared that South Africa was descending into civil war. The townships in particular seemed unc