Violence in a Time of Liberation

Murder and Ethnicity at a South African Gold Mine, 1994

Donald L. Donham

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9780822348535
  9780822348412
• eBook ISBN:
  9780822393412
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

How can we account for the apparent increase in ethnic violence across the globe? Donald L. Donham develops a methodology for understanding violence that shows why this question needs to be recast. He examines an incident that occurred at a South African gold mine at the moment of the 1994 elections that brought apartheid to a close. Black workers ganged up on the Zulus among them, killing two and injuring many more. While nearly everyone came to characterize the conflict as "ethnic," Donham argues that heightened ethnic identity was more an outcome of the violence than its cause. Based on his careful reconstruction of events, he contends that the violence was not motivated by hatred of an ethnic other. It emerged, rather, in ironic ways, as capitalist managers gave up apartheid tactics and as black union activists took up strategies that departed from their stated values. National liberation, as it actually occurred, was gritty, contradictory, and incomplete. Given unusual access to the mine, Donham comes to this conclusion based on participant observation, review of extensive records, and interviews conducted over the course of a decade. Violence in a Time of Liberation is a kind of murder mystery that reveals not only who did it but also the ways that narratives of violence, taken up by various media, create ethnic violence after the fact.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Groups at Cinderella in 1994
• Local Timeline in Relation to National Liberation
• Introduction
• 1. Picturing a South African Gold Mine
• Photo gallery by Santu Mofokeng
• 2. White Stories
• 3. Ways of Dying
• 4. Good Friday at Cinderella
• 5. Freeing Workers and Erasing History
• 6. Unionization from Above
• 7. Motives for Murder
• 8. The Aftermath: “They Were Enjoying Our Freedom”
• Conclusion
• Postscript: Doing Fieldwork at the End of Apartheid
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index