From the 25-31st March 1990, the luscious valley where the Msunduzi River meanders became “the valley of death” during what came to be known as the Seven-day War. This period of bloodshed saw the death of over 100 people and the displacement of over 20000 people in the space of a week. The communities of the greater edenvale valley, Caluza, Imbali, Gezubuso, KwaShange, KwaMnyandu, Ashdown and many others were torn apart by political violence and fueds between the African National Congress (ANC) associated United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). It is said the spark that lit the war was the stoning of a bus ferrying IFP supporters back from a rally by UDF supporters. The IFP held the ANC responsible for the violence while the ANC blamed the IFP for being used as proxies by the apartheid government’s security forces in fighting against the ANC. It is not mine to pontificate on the causes of the war and who the aggressors and victims were. Mine is to reflect on the legacies surrounding one of Pietermartizburg’s most brutal episodes of violence.
To explain the causes of the violence of the late 1980s and early 1990s that had gripped, not only the Pietermaritzburg, but the entire country, many explanations were given and one that became prominent was the idea of a “Third Force.” Some have explained the third force as a nexus of South African Defence Force (SADF) and South African Police (SAP) units who were experienced in covert warfare operations, which were coordinated through the government structures right from national down to the local level. SAP units like Koevoet, C1 based in Vlakplaas and commanded by Eugene De Cock, are examples of the ways in which the apartheid government used clandestine operations to incite violence in Black communities in the country and the frontline states which harboured ANC and uMkhonto WeSizwe (MK) bases. Within the SADF, Military Intelligence, the Special Forces and Battalion 32 were also used by the apartheid government in clandestine operations smuggling arms, training of Kwa Zulu Police and supplying arms to IFP. Operation Omarion comes to mind in this regard.
The Seven-day war was preceded by the Trust Feed Massacre of 1988, where the Joint Management Committee, a government structure, coordinated an operation that killed 11 people and wounded 4 in village near New Hanover. The Trust Feed Massacre was evidence of the state coordination of violence for political reasons within the context of Kwa Zulu-Natal. When remembering the Seven-day war, it cannot be remembered in isolation of the systemic nature of violence that the apartheid government fuelled during the 1980s and 90s in pursuance of its policy of “total onslaught.”
The state sponsored covert units of the SADF and SAP used complex networks of criminals, front-companies and other means smuggle arms for the use of brewing violence in townships across South Africa and destabilizing the neighbouring states that were supporting the ANC. This took place at a time when the MK was drastically increasing the deployment of its forces into communities across the country in its rolling out of its programme to render the country ungovernable, also known as the People’s War. While the
State was rolling out its total onslaught, the ANC and UDF rolling out the People’s war, Black political organisations, ANC, IFP and the Azanian People’s Organisation were engaged in violent contestations in townships across South Africa. All these factors further darkened the cloud of political violence that hung over South Africa. The legacies of the flooding of communities with massive arms caches, the rampant corruption within the police and military and the use of violence as a political instrument for eliminating opponents, which emerged in the early 1990s still plague South Africa and KZN.
We may well ask the question “what became the fate of all the arms and the vigilante elements that the apartheid state, MK and IFP that were in use during those days?” Given the current statistics of murder and crime in communities across Kwa Zulu Natal it does not seem much like a fairy tale to think that those arms continue to terrorise communities through murders, high jackings and other violent crimes. The unaddressed memories of the past can unlock new ways of understanding the endemic violence that plagues our communities.
In remembering the Seven-day war, we cast our memory back to the communities of Pietermaritzburg that were ravaged by violence as well as the many massacres like Boipatong, Bhisho, Sebokeng, the East Rand and many other that followed the Seven-day war. This is a costly reminder that the dawn of democracy was birthed by the death of 15000 people between 1984-1993. Our transition to democracy was not the bloodless coup that many claim it to be.
The trauma experienced by those who were directly affected by the Seven Day war is that of a lifetime. Such traumas call on communities to collectively gather the fragments of their lives that were shattered by the experiences of war and to re-member our communities into life-giving and thriving spaces. Remembering stories of our past allows us to interpret our current realities in different ways, while also shaping the kind of future we are to create for our communities. Such actions of re-membering offer us opportunities of reconciling ourselves with our past.
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