12 - Between the battle lines
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2021
Summary
As was seen in Namibia, a key element of the apartheid regime's efforts to hold onto power was to foment distrust and violence between those fighting for liberation. In KwaZulu and Natal, that included channelling resources, including money, weapons and information to Inkatha, through state agents and the KwaZulu homeland police.
Among the grantees who were able to see the Inkatha-state-UDF/COSATU conflict from within the walls of besieged homes in warring communities, were Robin and Mary Hutt, church workers from Toxteth, Liverpool. When they arrived in Pietermaritzburg, in 1990, they were briefed by Peter Kerchhoff and his colleagues at PACSA. They met both victims and protagonists in the ‘Seven-Day War’, and helped with food parcels for the displaced people. They saw the many colours of a conflict the media dutifully labelled ‘black-on-black violence’ and that even activists in other parts of the country simply blamed on ‘those Zulus’.
Robin and Mary wrote:
We learned of the multifarious strands woven in to the violence in Natal – Inkatha's policy of enforced enrolment and UDF reaction to it, the settling of old scores, criminality and protection racketeering, deliberate provocation of unrest by elements within the Police and Security Forces. There were many echoes of Ulster as we listened to the stories. As we arrived in March more people had been killed in Natal than in Beirut and in the 20 years of troubles in Ireland, even though the rest of South Africa did not seem to know it, let alone the rest of the world.
Songs of hope, symbols of solidarity
Afrika!
Afrika!
Abantwana baseAfrika bafel’isizwe
Sizomkhulula uMandela
Sizomkhumbula uLuthuli
Africa!
Africa!
Children of Africa are dying for their country
We are going to free Mandela
We will remember Luthuli.
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- The Secret ThreadPersonal Journeys Beyond Apartheid, pp. 175 - 183Publisher: University of South AfricaPrint publication year: 2018
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