TRC Final Report

Volume 3

Chapter 5

Subsection 2

Socio-political features

9 Five features distinguish the political and social terrain of both Western and Northern Cape from the rest of the country:

a a distinct formulation of apartheid policy declaring the Cape a ‘coloured labour preference area’;

b a unique demographic profile with a coloured majority and an African minority;

c extreme social and spatial engineering through the Group Areas Act;

d significant divisions amongst Africans between rural migrants and urban residents;

e an historical diversity of political groupings and ideological approaches.

10 As elsewhere in the country, organisations and protests were silenced in the 1960s. The 1970s saw the emergence of the South African Students’ Organisation (SASO) and associated Black Consciousness activity amongst African and coloured students alike in the Western Cape. The 1976 revolt and the 1980s’ school protests showed unprecedented militancy amongst coloured people and solidarity with Africans, with a high number of deaths and injuries.

11 Specific issues such as the red meat strike, the Fattis and Monis strike and the bus and school boycotts provided the impetus for organisational development and the focus for organisational activities from the early 1980s. Many such organisations made up the core of affiliates for the United Democratic Front (UDF), launched in Cape Town in 1983, giving momentum to the explosion of resistance in the Western Cape in the latter half of 1985. Both protest and repression became violent, and affected coloured as well as African areas. During 1986 the violence was focused on the tension between pro-government squatter leaders and those aligned to the liberation movements. In 1989 the Western Cape played a leading role in the Defiance Campaign and initiated support for the hunger-striking detainees and prisoners, leading to increased repression.

12 After the unbanning of organisations in 1990, local communities, particularly in Khayelitsha, the Boland and the Northern Cape, began protests against conservative local authorities. Shadowy ‘balaclava’ gangs, renegade self-defence units (SDUs) and warring taxi groupings left a trail of killings in the African areas.