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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Inkatha's young militants: reconsidering political violence in South Africa
Author:Gibbs, TimothyISNI
Year:2017
Periodical:Africa: Journal of the International African Institute (ISSN 0001-9720)
Volume:87
Issue:2
Pages:362-386
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:townships
political violence
anti-apartheid resistance
youth
generation conflicts
External link:https://doi.org/10.1017/S0001972016001005
Abstract:South Africa's township revolts have generated much excellent research on the central role played by rebellious, urban youth. This article explores a parallel set of intergenerational conflicts that opened up in the marginal rural districts of the Natal Midlands, which were exacerbated by apartheid's forced removals of labour tenants from commercial farming districts to crowded 'Native Reserves' in the 1970s. At this time of deepening poverty, elders worried about the rising incidence of juvenile petty crime, particularly amongst the teenagers who increasingly took itinerant, seasonal labour on the commercial farms. Some of these young migrants, unable to find steady factory work at a time of mounting unemployment, also played a leading role in the illicit, sometimes criminal networks of South Africa's growing popular economy. The author shows how some of these youths were mobilized by Inkatha during the war against the African National Congress in Johannesburg, often to the revulsion of older men who abhorred their socially harmful, thuggish violence, which spiralled uncontrollably along migrant routes. Thus the political violence was often known as the 'udlame': a brutal savagery that destroys households, communities and society. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract]
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