Witdoeke

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The Witdoeke , also wit doeke , was a paramilitary organized vigilante group of black residents in the townships around Cape Town during the apartheid period in South Africa . The Afrikaans name means "white scarves" and referred to the white scarves that the relatives wore on their heads or arms as identification marks.

The Witdoeke originated in the mid-1980s and was mainly active in the townships of Crossroads , Nyanga and Gugulethu . Its members participated in the forcible evacuation of settlements that the state authorities considered illegal. They were partially supported and equipped by the South African army and the country's police , because they were politically conservative and thus directed against the activities of the African National Congress and the United Democratic Front . The main opponents of the Witdoeke were especially radical young people who sympathized with these anti-apartheid organizations and were referred to as comrades (comrades). The state security forces failed to end or prevent these clashes between the various black groups.

In a scene from his novel Age of Iron, which was first published in 1990, the South African Nobel Prize for Literature J. M. Coetzee describes how the white protagonist witnesses acts of violence by the Witdoeke.

literature

  • Witdoeke. In: Gwyneth Williams, Brian Hackland: The Dictionary of Contemporary Politics of Southern Africa. Routledge, London 1988, ISBN 0-41-500245-1 , p. 309
  • Arnord H. Isaacs: Crossroads: The Rise and Fall of a Squatter Movement in Cape Town, South Africa. In: Frans Johan Schuurman, AL van Naerssen: Urban Social Movements in the Third World. Routledge, London and New York 1989, ISBN 0-41-500919-7 , pp. 105–123 (for the role of Witdoeke see in particular pp. 114–116)