In 1991, discussions among the main political rivals in South Africa _ the government, the African National Congress (ANC) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) _ resulted in various peace agreements. But escalating political violence remained the most serious obstacle to the transition to a post-apartheid South Africa. The violence reached unprecedented proportions in the country's bloody history, claiming the lives of over two thousand black South Africans in fighting between ANC and IFP supporters. Despite the government's stated commitment to a negotiated settlement, credible evidence continued to emerge of brutality by the state security apparatus and its use of the IFP to undermine movement toward representative, democratic structures in South Africa.

The government continued to implement its reform process, started in February 1990. In June 1991, it abolished the Group Areas Act, which had segregated residential neighborhoods; the Land Act, which had denied blacks the right to purchase land in eighty-seven percent of the country; and the Population Registration Act, which had classified all newborn South Africans by race. President F.W. de Klerk said in Parliament on June 17, "Now everybody is free from the discouragement and denial...and from the moral dilemma caused by this legislation."

However, the prospect of continuing peaceful reform has been dimmed by the violence that has engulfed South Africa's black townships, claiming more than eleven thousand lives in bloody fighting since 1984. The killings, which started in Natal in the early 1980s and spread to the Transvaal in June 1990, assumed various forms during 1991. It initially involved random attacks by IFP members on ANC settlements, and fighting between squatters and hostel dwellers, the most deprived members of communities. A clear pattern of violence immediately before or after peace talks between the ANC, the IFP and the government became a major destabilizing factor in negotiations.

An Inkatha "impi," a group consisting of hundreds of armed IFP sympathizers, killed twenty-four ANC supporters on April 29, the day after an agreement had been reached by the ANC, the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions. The agreement called on the government to take constructive steps to address the internecine violence by May 9 or face suspension of the constitutional talks. News video footage showed hundreds of men wearing red headbands, a trademark of the IFP. Streaming past police vehicles as they left a funeral service for Moses Khumalo, the assassinated mayor of Soweto and an IFP supporter, they sang and brandished weapons before going into houses and attacking residents. The footage shows police vans twice driving past without taking action.

Three days after the May 9 deadline, at least twenty-seven ANC supporters were killed in an IFP attack in Swannieville squatter camp near Krugersdorp. Statements obtained by Lawyers for Human Rights, a leading South African human rights group, reported the involvement of one thousand men in the attack, all wearing red headbands, being escorted by white men and police vehicles. The police said that they only escorted the attacking "impi" back to their hostel, despite eyewitness testimony that some police refused to stop the attackers while other police blocked exit routes from the attack. Only six attackers were arrested, three of whom were later released.

On April 1, the government responded to the threatened suspension of negotiations by disbanding the security police and merging it with the Criminal Investigation Department. Then Law and Order Minister Adriaan Vlok's assertion that the move "will remove the police from the political playing field" was proven wrong by such incidents as the Swannieville attack the next month.

On April 18, Minister Vlok issued a ban on the carrying of dangerous weapons including pangas, axes and bush knives, which IFP members commonly carry in "potential conflict situations." But following an argument by the IFP that spears are a necessary expression of their cultural identity, spears, ceremonial battle axes and pocket knives were exempted from the ban, thus failing to meet the ANC demand for a wholesale ban.

In 1991, it became increasingly clear that the violence is a legacy of the government's residency restrictions. One element is the hostel system, in which migrant workers, predominantly IFP supporters from Natal, are housed in townships far from their families, in miserable, single-sex dormitories. In the thirty-one townships surrounding Johannesburg, there are 120 such hostels housing 200,000 people. They have increasingly been identified as sources for recruitment, weapons and ammunition. IFP members repeatedly justified their mass mobilization because of fear of losing their "homes." This insecurity, rooted in the government's strict movement and residence control of the migrant work force and past policy of forced removals, assumed an ethnic dimension and was fueled by the ANC's demand that the government abolish the hostel system. The sense of fear and insecurity is a major cause of the conflict between the impoverished residents of hostels and ANC-dominated squatter areas, where similar sentiments of insecurity exist and where "self-defense units" against hostel dwellers have been deployed. Rather than seriously addressing the deeper source of the hostel and squatter problems _ the government's policy of containing migrant workers in limited spaces at the peripheries of white cities _ the government has indicated only its intention to "upgrade" the areas.

More sophisticated attacks increased in the latter part of 1991. With growing frequency, unidentified gunmen shot commuters, mourners at funerals, and groups at political rallies. The most disturbing statistics relate to the alarming rise in hit-squad actions. At least forty-six activists were assassinated by gunmen in 1991. Although the much-criticized 1990 Harms Commission41 of inquiry into hit squads dismissed claims of their existence within the police force, the debate was reignited with the April 1991 judgment in a case involving two newspapers that are critical of the government, the Vrye Weekblad and the Weekly Mail. Lieutenant General Lothar Neetling of the security police had sued both newspapers for defamation as a result of their allegations that he had attempted to poison anti-apartheid activists. The court found that Neetling had attempted to mislead both the court and the Harms Commission, which had relied heavily on his testimony. Despite these irregularities and the hit-squad activities now linked to Neetling and the police force, the government has failed to establish another commission to investigate the hit squads.

During 1991, reliable evidence emerged corroborating earlier documentation by human rights groups and the press of police bias and involvement in the political violence. President De Klerk confirmed that in 1986 the South African Defense Force had trained a unit of 150 Zulu fighters in a camp called "Hippo" in Namibia. According to the government, they were trained for "security work and VIP protection." The fighters claim that they received training in urban and guerilla warfare and were used by Inkatha to attack ANC supporters in Natal.

Perhaps the strongest connection between the state and the IFP was the publication in July 1991 of documents revealing covert police funding to the IFP. Minister Vlok acknowledged payments of $90,000 to Inkatha and $500,000 to its trade union, United Worker Union of South Africa. In a ten-page memorandum to the chief of security police in Pretoria, dated February 13, 1990, Major Louis Botha, a senior security police officer, recommended that "a clandestine grant of R120,000 [$42,000] be made available...to show everyone that he [Gatsha Buthelezi, the IFP leader] has a strong base." The funds were used to organize a rally where Buthelezi spoke against sanctions. Only a few supporters attended, and clashes between ANC and IFP supporters broke out before and after the rally.

Addressing the causes of the violence, Black Sash, a prominent South African human rights group, noted the "overwhelming circumstantial evidence of outbreaks of violence being orchestrated; of existing conflicts being used to exacerbate the violence; of police partiality." The Independent Board of Investigation into Informal Repression, an independent monitoring group, has collected evidence of incidents of intimidation by the IFP, deliberate attacks by IFP members on squatter camps, and numerous sworn affidavits by police officers alleging police involvement with the IFP. A survey by media and monitoring groups covering the Transvaal violence from July 1990 to May 1991 held the IFP responsible for sixty-six percent of the acts of aggression and the ANC for six percent. The Human Rights Commission reported that between January and June 1991, sixty people were killed and 349 injured in police actions. In response to allegations of its involvement, the police offered categorical denials and initiated only a few prosecutions and investigations.

The killings have continued despite various peace initiatives, such as the historical cease-fire agreements between the ANC and IFP leadership on January 29 and February 18, and the subsequent establishment of a Joint Peace Implementation Committee. However, peace talks between the government and the ANC scheduled for June were suspended due to a renewed outbreak of violence. On August 19, a four-person committee was established to monitor the spending of secret government cash. The most serious attempt yet to stem the violence took the form of a peace agreement on September 14 among the ANC, the IFP and the government. The agreement, in which the parties agreed on the establishment of a Commission on Violence, includes a code of political conduct, forbids provocative statements or actions, and is intended to promote political tolerance. As a result of allegations that the police and defense force have used black groups to promote violence, the agreement includes a ban on training or providing funds, weapons or ammunition to nonsecurity-force members to carry out actions which undermine a political party. It calls on leaders to refrain from using inflammatory language and to prevent the carrying of weapons, including "cultural" spears.

Nonetheless, killings continued under circumstances suggesting government involvement. In the week preceding the September agreement, at least 135 black South Africans were killed in bloody fighting that erupted after gunmen ambushed IFP supporters and killed twenty-three people. Violence erupted simultaneously in Natal and the black townships around Cape Town. On the eve of the signing of the agreement, sixteen ANC and IFP members were killed and thirty-two injured in fighting outside Johannesburg. In the two months following the agreement, at least two hundred people died. On October 12, eighteen ANC supporters were killed by unknown assailants in an attack on a crowd marching home from the funeral of ANC member Sam Ntuli, who was assassinated in early September. In the majority of the attacks, witnesses reported seeing plainclothesmen in cars without license plates. The government's response to allegations of its involvement was, again, to issue a denial and to demand evidence to the contrary. However, the Commission on Violence, chaired by Justice Richard Goldstone, has begun to investigate the killings.

One devastating, cumulative effect of more than fifteen years of township violence is the demise of the country's black school system. Protests, vandalism of school property, and student and teacher strikes have culminated in the highest failure rate of black high-school examinations in South African history. In April, IFP supporters attacked two schools in Alexandra township, injuring numerous pupils and teachers. The IFP sees schools as "soft targets" because ANC self-defense units do not operate there. Many schools have closed down in the past few years and others have become overcrowded. The result at the end of 1990 was a thirty-six percent passing rate for blacks, as opposed to ninety-seven percent for whites.

The government continues to exert control through legislative and administrative mechanisms such as the Internal Security Act and the Public Safety Act, which have been used in the past to silence political opposition, although they were amended somewhat in 1991 by repealing or limiting the power to order house arrest, banish people to remote areas, and restrict association and movement. While no state of emergency now exists, at least seven black townships are still declared unrest areas under the Public Safety Act, giving security agents broad powers of arrest. The Internal Security Act also still provides for detention without trial for up to ten days without access to lawyers, family and the courts. The Human Rights Commission documented 176 cases of detention without trial between January and August 1991. In an agreement between the government and the ANC in August 1990, elaborate guidelines were adopted to effectuate the release of all political prisoners by April 30, 1991. According to the agreement, an offense is political depending on the facts and the circumstances of the particular case, taking into account the motive, nature and purpose of the offense. Over six months after the deadline, more than nine hundred political offenders, including six in the homeland of Bophuthatswana, continue to be detained.

The violence has also severely affected two of South Africa's four so-called independent homelands. Despite official efforts to describe the violence as "local infighting," the pattern of violence shows it to be a result of the growing tensions between supporters of the homeland authorities and opposition to the homeland system itself. The homelands system has the effect of channeling black political discontent over repressive conditions in South Africa toward the homeland political structure, and homeland authorities have seldom hesitated to suppress such dissent. From January to August 1991, security forces in Bophuthatswana killed at least five, injured nineteen, arrested 244 and detained without trial thirty-eight. In Ciskei, they killed two, injured fourteen, arrested twenty-one and detained without trial thirty-three. In both Ciskei and Bophuthatswana, a strong military presence has been maintained to suppress opposition. Although the state of emergency in Bophuthatswana was lifted in March, repression by local authorities, backed by vigilante groups, continued. Violence reached a peak in the Braklaagte area of Bophuthatswana in January with the launching of a local ANC branch, as fighting erupted between opponents and supporters of the homeland regime. Over six thousand residents were forced to flee and were not permitted to return until June. A large police camp continues to occupy the Braklaagte village. Despite its stated intention to eradicate the last vestiges of apartheid, the South African government proceeded in early November to transfer about 2.5 million acres of land, encompassing twenty-five farms, to Bophuthatswana.

Both Bophuthatswana and Ciskei have bills of rights protecting fundamental freedoms. Yet, the freedoms of expression and association are severely curtailed by both homelands' National Security Acts, modeled on South Africa's repressive Internal Security Act before it was amended in June. The Acts provide for indefinite detention without trial, declare meetings of more than twenty people unlawful unless authorized, and provide the police with indemnity against prosecution.

On October 31, Brigadier Oupa Gqozo, the military leader of Ciskei, declared a state of emergency, only a few weeks after signing the September National Peace Accord in which he committed himself to the promotion of political tolerance. Brigadier Gqozo gained power after a military coup in 1990, overthrowing the regime of Lennox Sebe. The state of emergency is the most serious in an array of measures designed to stifle opposition to Gqozo's regime. Under the emergency powers, organizations may be banned or restricted, individuals may be restricted, and businesses may be closed. The commissioner of the police may restrict media presence and prohibit distribution of printed material. The emergency also gives the police license to use violence. On October 28, 1991, Gqozo stated publicly on Radio Ciskei: "I say to the police they should hit silly people on the head because the courts take a long time while they [his opponents] continue to burn people."

Since June 26, when Gqozo launched a cultural organization, the African Democratic Movement (ADM), the government has made a concerted attempt to eliminate any form of opposition. At the launching of the ADM, Gqozo publicly stated his intention to "clean up Ciskei." One of the aims of the ADM, of which Gqozo is president, is to recruit traditional community leaders with the aim of moving local government under the direct control of the military regime. Subsequently, two ministers sympathetic to the ANC have been dismissed "for purposes of unity in the government." Radio Ciskei employees have also been dismissed, detained and harassed for providing government opponents an opportunity to air their views. Through the use of internal boards of inquiry into misdemeanors that were committed years ago, Gqozo also has attempted to remove officers in the police force who might oppose him.

The state of emergency was declared in the wake of growing friction between ANC supporters and the homeland authorities. One of the main causes of conflict is the imposition of unrepresentative, appointed "chiefs" over elected regional representatives. As resulting tension within communities escalated into violence between opposing factions and widespread destruction of homes, the state of emergency was announced, clearly as a devise to silence dissent. Community leaders were detained without any attempt to negotiate an end to the violence. Only after national and international pressure did the government lift the state of emergency on November 17.

Numerous reports of the Independent Board of Investigation into Informal Repression (IBIIR) indicate collaboration of South African security forces with homeland authorities and allied vigilante groups. The IBIIR has documented activities of a Ciskei intelligence group, International Researchers (IR), which was headed by former members of the South African Defense Force (SADF) and has been involved in hit-squad activities. IR has had close relations with Brigadier Gqozo. Although IR was officially disbanded on August 30, there are numerous reports of a continuing SADF presence in the region.

On September 4, the South African government proposed the abolition of the homelands. In a document which will be presented to an eventual constitutional convention, the government envisions a federal South Africa consisting of nine regions or states _ none a homeland. However, despite this proposal, no attempt has been made to abolish the existing legislation providing for the homelands as separate independent states. Furthermore, the government has repeatedly denied responsibility for violence in the homelands while it continues to support the homeland authorities with military and economic assistance. The government also declared that it would not intervene to revoke the state of emergency in Ciskei.