Boipatong Massacre

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The Boipatong massacre was a massacre that took place in 1992 in Boipatong, a township near Vanderbijlpark in what was then the Transvaal Province . 46 residents, mostly supporters of the African National Congress (ANC), were killed. The massacre interrupted the negotiation process to end apartheid .

history

From 1990 talks between the ANC and the South African government about an end to apartheid had taken place. The aim of this Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) was to create a new constitution that would lead to free elections. At the same time, civil war-like fighting broke out in numerous townships between supporters of the ANC and the Zulu- dominated Inkatha . The fighting was fueled at the expense of the ANC by the “Third Force”, behind which the security authorities of the old apartheid regime stood. Boipatong and the neighboring township of Sebokeng had already experienced numerous acts of violence in the two years before the massacre.

On June 17, 1992, around 300 men, followers of the Inkatha, from the KwaMadala Hostel in the township of Sebokeng entered the informal settlement of Joe Slovo in the township of Boipatong, about a kilometer away , and immediately killed 15 hut dwellers, most of them women and children. In the course of these unrest, a total of 46 people (according to other sources, 48 ​​people) died after one week as a result of direct violence and the serious injuries inflicted on them. The police found “traditional weapons” such as spears, sharpened poles and self-made machetes during their raid on the hostel . The attack also caused considerable property damage to residential buildings in this township. As an immediate reaction to this event, the population of many townships in the Vaal Triangle region began to call for the destruction of the KwaMadala Hostel and for ISCOR , which owned the workers' hostel, to provide compensation for the damage to the building and the burial costs for the surviving dependents of the victims.

aftermath

On the following days, numerous celebrities, especially politicians, visited the site of the massacre. On June 18, it was Joe Slovo , chairman of the South African Communist Party , and ANC general secretary Cyril Ramaphosa . They named de Klerk as the person responsible. Archbishop Desmond Tutu was present the following day , before President Frederik Willem de Klerk visited the site on June 20 . When the crowd present acted hostile, he did not leave his car contrary to plan. After de Klerk left, the police shot a man. When bystanders tried to rescue him, the police shot again. The same day, ANC politician Winnie Mandela also appeared . On June 21, opposition leader Nelson Mandela traveled to the scene with Cyril Ramaphosa. On June 23, 1992 the National Executive Committee of the ANC decided to end the negotiations because of the massacre and the suspected involvement of the government.

Nelson Mandela turned to the United Nations with a request to find ways and means of countering the generally deteriorating social situation in South Africa. The event led to a generalized debate about the domestic political situation. Cyril Ramaphosa called on the government to end its "campaign of terror against the people and the democracy movement" by:

  • Termination of all covert operations (including the Civil Cooperation Bureau ), including hit squads ,
  • Disarmament, dissolution and the prohibition of all special forces operations, as well as the expulsion of foreign soldiers,
  • Suspension and prosecution of all security officers and employees ( Vlakplaas and others) involved in the riots, and
  • to ensure that all repression measures in the “non-independent” and “independent” homelands are to be ended immediately.

The UN Security Council condemned the massacre on July 16, 1992 in resolution 765. It called on the government to end the violence and bring the perpetrators to justice. Former US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance was sent to South Africa as special envoy from July 21st to 31st.

The Goldstone Commission , established in 1991 to investigate illegal government activity, was tasked with investigating the massacre. The main culprit was the British criminologist Peter AJ Waddington. Chairman Richard Goldstone found no police or army interference in his July 22, 1992 report.

On 7 September 1992 occurred in the former Homeland Ciskei the Bisho massacre with 29 dead, also mostly ANC supporters. As a result, the negotiation process got going again; free elections took place in April 1994 .

In 1993, numerous Inkatha supporters were arrested and sentenced to prison terms for the Boipatong massacre.

Further work-up

During the negotiations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which dealt with the 1998 massacre, the police found complicity. Journalist Rian Malan criticized this in 1999 as not being backed by the facts. In 2000, the TRC Amnesty Committee ruled differently from the TRC that the police authorities were not to blame, but that the act should be seen as an act of revenge on previous acts of violence. Amnesty was granted to 16 detainees who had applied .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e The Boipatong Massacre at sahistory.org.za , accessed on March 23, 2016
  2. ↑ a b Attorneys Nicholls, Cambanis, Koopasammy, Pillay: The Commission of Inquiry regarding the prevention of public violence and intimidation. Memorandum on the Boipatong massacre at historicalpapers.wits.ac.za (PDF), accessed on March 24, 2016
  3. ↑ a b c SAIRR : Race Relations Survey 1992/93 . Johannesburg 1993, pp. 461-463
  4. ↑ SAIRR: Survey 1992/93 . 1993, p. 462
  5. ↑ Text of Resolution at refworld.org (English), accessed on 23 March 2016
  6. ↑ Chronicle 1992 at nelsonmandela.org (English), accessed on March 24, 2016
  7. ↑ a b c The Boipatong massacre revisited. nelsonmandela.org, accessed March 23, 2016
  8. ↑ Report 1999 at nelsonmandela.org (English), accessed on March 23, 2016