This is a compelling study of the origins and trajectory of a legendary black uprising against Apartheid – the Alexandra Rebellion of 1986. Using insights from literature on collective action and social movements, it delves deep into the rebellion’s inner workings. It examines how residents of Alexandra – a poverty-stricken, segregated township in Johannesburg – manipulated and overturned the meanings of space, time and power in their sequestered world; how they used political theatre to convey, stage and dramatise their struggle; and how young and old residents generated differing ideologies and tactics, giving rise to a distinct form of generational politics.
Theatres of Struggle asks the reader to enter into the world of the rebels, and to confront the moral complexity and social duress they experienced as they invented new social forms and violently attacked old ones.
Belinda Bozzoli.
Theatres of Struggle and the End of Apartheid.
Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004. 208 pp.
$28.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8214-1599-3; (paper), ISBN 978-0-7486-1941-2.
Reviewed by (Department of History, Rhodes University)
Published on H-SAfrica (September, 2005)
Published on H-SAfrica (September, 2005)
An Emblematic Urban Struggle
Belinda Bozzoli's new book (under the imprint of the
University of the Witwatersrand Press) was launched at the "Townships
Now" colloquium hosted by WISER in June 2004. On that occasion the work
was hailed as a major contribution to South African historiography.
Since then it has won some recognition amongst the country's publishing
fraternity for its literary qualities. It was nominated for the Alan
Paton award for nonfiction in the competition sponsored by the Sunday Times.
This is a well-deserved accolade for a work that is not only well
written and readable, it is also in many ways at the cutting edge of
interdisciplinary scholarship in South Africa. It cements Bozzoli's
reputation as one of the country's leading exponents of historical
sociology (or should that be historical "sociography"?), for it is the
mature work of an accomplished scholar.
The title of Bozzoli's book offers few clues as to
its content. The site of the "theatre of struggle" of the book's title
was the freehold township of Alexandra, which is situated in close
proximity to some of Johannesburg's wealthy northeastern suburbs. That
Alex (as it is usually called) survived the fate of Sophiatown, the more
celebrated township that was destroyed in the mid-1950s, is remarkable
in itself. That it became a space in which one of the most violent
confrontations between (certain) residents and the security forces of
the apartheid regime during the mid-1980s is no less remarkable. The
so-called Six Day War of 1986 occurred at the height of repression
during which the government of P. W. Botha declared a state of
emergency: this accorded members of the security forces license to deal
with "unrest" without having to account for their actions whatsoever.
Alexandra was turned into a war zone. While the
security forces occupied the local stadium, which became the nerve
center of its public and clandestine operations to clamp down on
"insurrection," the terrain of the township was temporarily rendered
"ungovernable." A power vacuum was created when the police abdicated
their responsibility for the maintenance of law and order. Indeed, they
inflamed the situation further when vigilantes were let loose to wreak
havoc in the township and attacked activists--destroying their homes and
other symbolic structures such as the people's courts. The regime
eventually restored control over the contested space of the township
through military occupation and a reassertion of the police presence.
Bozzoli contends that "it is at the interface between its typicality and
its exceptionalism" that her case study "is at its most revealing of
general patterns" (p. 2). Later she states that the "story of this
particular uprising stands on its own "as emblematic of the challenges
to authority which the apartheid state experienced in the 1980s" (p.
251). Whether typical or not, the Alexandra rebellion proved to be a
significant and symbolic urban struggle which presaged the end of
apartheid.
The "Six-Day War" is contextualized in terms of the
changing role of the state in township administration rather than in the
memories of traditions of resistance held by Alexandran residents.
Bozzoli holds that the "rupturing of space and time" amounted to a break
with the past and the emergence of new styles of collective action in
1986. These included the eruption of a new kind of violence; the
concomitant emergence of the crowd; the articulation of new visions of
organization; and the emergence of public space as a crucial part of
mobilization and communication. Consequently, new forms of collective
action and violence were added to the repertoire of resistance (p. 67).
In short, Bozzoli emphasizes discontinuity and asserts that the
mobilization of residents in 1986 was unprecedented and without
precursors (p. 88). The body of this study certainly makes a strong
case in support of this argument. But I was struck by the fact that the
"ANC sanctioned memory" presented before the Truth and Reconciliation
(TRC) by certain select residents articulated a rather different
understanding of the Alexandra rebellion. This version is dubbed "the
nationalist myth of Alexandra" and is adroitly summarized by Bozzoli (p.
257). As with all such myths, it does not amount to a falsification of
reality but is an imagined version that articulates certain cherished
beliefs and values about the past. And it stresses continuities between
that perceived past and the present. So, unlike Bozzoli's historically
informed account of the rebellion, the myth stresses that as with the
bus boycotts and the squatter movements of the 1940s and 1950s, the
rebellion of the 1980s was guided by the ANC. The ANC, for its part,
represents the nation and appropriates the Alexandra rebellion as its
own. In this fashion, the story of oppression and resistance in the
township is embedded in the narrative of African nationalism.
In relating the (hi)story, Bozzoli emphasizes the
spectacular theatricality of the uprising as compared to the harsh and
mundane reality of everyday life for Alexandra residents under
apartheid. She employs theories of "dramaturgy" which "suggest that
[social] movements" present their claims to power, inspire their
followers to believe and to act "through scripting, staging, performing
and interpreting their definitions of power as a counter to the dominant
ones" (p. 11). Treating the theater as both an extended metaphor and
heuristic device, Bozzoli proceeds to explore how the actors performed,
whose scripts were followed, and who the audiences were. She is able to
demonstrate that the rebels used the spaces available to them as social
and political theaters to act out their claims to power and advance
their cause. She deftly sketches the involvement of other Alexandra
residents (as "extras") in the drama. She holds that the township
public was captivated by the theatrical imagery (p. 177). And she
details the roles of the authorities and security forces (in "supporting
roles") in the historical drama. All in all, the author manages to
articulate and sustain a coherent analysis of the Alexandra rebellion in
terms of an unfolding historical drama. However, Bozzoli's metaphor is
rather stretched and almost breaks down at the point of reception. A
wider audience was obviously not able to gain direct access to the
performance (in the same way that the historian does not have unmediated
access to the past). So how was it represented? Reports of the "Six
Day War" in the local media were screened, since the apartheid regime
was able to censor and control the dissemination of news. And, the
mainstream media and the public broadcaster succeeded in demonizing the
rebels and portraying the rebellion as being hijacked by criminal
elements. Even the international media did not have unimpeded access to
the players involved in the drama and so their reporting was rather
incomplete and one-sided. Without saturation media coverage of the
events, the spectacle of theatricality could not be conveyed
sympathetically to the outside world. So, for the rebels, Alexandra did
not actually become a stage on which their script was writ large.
Who were these rebels? Bozzoli identifies them as
the "comrades," who were mainly poorly educated and unemployed youths,
who had become alienated from adults whom they regarded as "sell-outs"
for tolerating a repressive system of control which deprived them of
citizenship in their own country. The author is well aware that they
were not a homogeneous group despite the propensity of commentators to
employ the collective noun "the youth" to define them. The cohort that
made up the ranks of the "comrades" acted independently of the civic
organizations and refused to submit themselves to the discipline of the
structures of the liberation movement and its surrogates and allies. It
was their actions, including the mob mentality induced by the
necklacing of "collaborators" and the imposition of street justice in
the people's courts, that won them notoriety. When their ranks were
infiltrated by tsotsis (gangsters) and their attempts to assert social control became a cover for criminal activities, they came to be called "comtsotsis."
Bozzoli concedes that gang influence upon the rebellion has not been
explored (p. 287 n. 7). While this might be a lacuna in her otherwise
multilayered treatment of the tensions within the community, Bozzoli
still provides a nuanced analysis of the political allegiances of the
main groupings in Alexandra. The "comrades" belonged to organizations
such as the Alexandra Youth Congress (AYCO). She terms their ideology
idealist, for it posited a utopian vision of the future where "the
people" would be able to govern themselves. She juxtaposes this with
the realist approach of the adult-based organizations, such as the
Alexandra Civic Association (ACA), which articulated a belief in
incremental change. Whereas the adult organizations established people's
courts to mediate disputes in the community, the "comrades" meted out
arbitrary street justice or allowed their sjambok (literally
"whip") courts to become a platform for personal retribution. From my
summation, it might be supposed that Bozzoli overstates the generational
cleavages at the expense of class and other differences. But she
dismisses any stark binarism with this qualification:
"Each of the two generations had experienced
different kinds of identity formation; each had recourse to distinct
sets of intellectuals, ideas, popular support and resources; and each
was to attempt to implement its own plans for the revolutionary
metamorphosis of Alexandra, sometimes in opposition to the other and
sometimes alongside or even in co-operation with it" (p. 123).
In other words, there was considerable fluidity in
the situation at the time. And while certain community leaders sought
to distance themselves from the "excesses" of the "comrades," their
denunciations were never too forthright for fear of offending the very
people who were driving the struggle against the forces of oppression.
This only became the case retrospectively.
In explaining how the "comrades" were sequestrated
from the story of the Alexandra rebellion, Bozzoli traces the impact of
the events upon popular consciousness and memory. The rebellion
remained in the spotlight for some time after 1986 on account of the
highly publicized Mayekiso treason trial, at which Bozzoli herself gave
evidence as an "expert" witness (and from which the author obtained
extensive documentation which enabled her to reconstruct the narrative
that provides the framework for her book). Along with other
sociologists, she portrayed the rebellion as a form of collective
action. The so-called sociological defence (p. 256) convinced the court
that the uprising was spontaneous and that responsible community
leaders had not conspired with the "comrades" in order to overthrow the
state. The "comrades" were effectively prosecuted in a separate but
concurrent low-profile case and so became scapegoats for the violence
perpetrated in the name of the liberation struggle. Subsequently,
during the Truth and Reconciliation (TRC) hearings devoted to the events
in Alexandra in the 1980s, the witnesses told their stories in the
framework provided by former community and current ANC leaders. This
framework was predicated upon the elision of the community and the
nation. The "comrades" were conspicuous by their absence at the TRC.
They were marginalized and their counter-memories and dissenting voices
were sidelined.
Although Bozzoli no doubt wishes to prevent her book
from perpetuating and reifying the narrative constructed by the defense
team at the Mayekiso treason trial and the TRC myth of Alexandra, she is
unlikely to be able to do so. This was brought home to me at the
launch of her book in what proved to be a telling irony. Bozzoli shared
the platform with some of those she had helped defend in the treason
trial and who have since come to be regarded as heroes of the Alexandra
rebellion precisely because their version of the past prevails in
collective memory. However, the erstwhile "comrades" were once again
conspicuous by their absence. Thus, notwithstanding Bozzoli's
commendable attempt at self-reflexive narration, the story of the
Alexandra rebellion constructed by political and cultural brokers in
post-apartheid South Africa has come to conform to the master
nationalist narrative of the liberation struggle. The past has been
mythologized while history's claim to certainty hemorrhages.