One of the many paradoxical features of the ‘new’ South Africa has been the virtual disappearance of the political violence associated with the Inkatha Freedom Party and its founder and leader, Chief Gatsha Mangosuthu Buthelezi, since the 1994 elections. Widely described in the media as ‘black on black violence’ and ascribed by many a pundit to deepseated ethnic or tribal conflict, the violence, at least in its political guise, seems to have vanished almost unnoticed by those who were most inclined to proclaim its innate propensity. If, in the ten years prior to the elections, the questions were why the violence and what are its implications for democracy in South Africa, the question now is how and why has that violence come to such a remarkable end? What, if anything, can the strange death of ethnic violence tell us about the way in which ‘ethnic diversity can become part of the democratization process and be accommodated within democratic institutions’? Has the ‘imprint’ left by this process furthered or hindered democratic processes?

The answer to these questions encompasses and illuminates in part at least three broad themes addressed in this volume: (i) the ways in which ethnicities are constituted and transformed through confrontation or struggles over the organization of political community, power and resources in colonial and post-colonial state formation; (ii) the imprints of ethnicity on nation-state building and politics, state-society relations, and popular perceptions of the interrelationship of class and communal differences; and (iii) the challenges posed to the search for more legitimate, inclusive and democratic forms of governance.

Historical Context

In a world awash with violent ‘ethnic’ conflict, it is already difficult to recall the intensity of the violence in South Africa in the decade before the 1994 elections, the threat to the peace process it posed and how close to civil war and anarchy South Africa seemed. ‘Blood Set to Flow as Zulus Talk War’ screamed the Sunday Times headlines in December 1993.