During the transition to democracy in the 1990s, South Africa was engulfed in escalating violence,
often referred to as udlame. The great majority of violence occurred in KwaZulu/Natal and in the
African townships in the Pretoria – Witwatersrand – Vereeniging area. It pitted supporters of the
African National Congress against the Inkatha Freedom Party and the security forces of the state. In
the area around Johannesburg, the IFP’s mobilisation in migrant workers’ hostels created violent rifts
between township communities and IFP aligned hostel dwellers. Many of these hostels became
known as ‘fortresses of fear’ and the areas around them became ‘no-go areas’ for anyone not aligned
to the IFP. One such hostel was KwaMadala hostel, which became notorious for its role in the
Boipatong massacre of 1992.
Based on archival research and oral history interviews, this paper examines the production of violent
subjectivities at KwaMadala hostel during the early 1990s. Many of KwaMadala’s hostel dwellers
perceived themselves to be victims of township violence who had sought refuge at KwaMadala. Even
though some of KwaMadala’s inmates had indeed been victims of violence, ample evidence confirms
that they bore the overwhelming responsibility for the violence that occurred. The perpetrator-victim
reversal, which undergirded the IFP’s discourse of being under siege, played a significant role in
constructing township communities as ‘the other’. This paper analyses the relation between symbolic
violence – in the form of hate speech, discourses of victimhood, myths and rumours – and physical,
collective violence. The paper argues that the spatiality of the hostel, and the politicization of this
discourse of victimhood, gave rise to a politics of anticipation, anxiety, and suspicion that facilitated
emerging violent practices.