We Are Fighting the World
NEW AFRICAN HISTORIES SERIES
Series editors: Jean Allman and Allen Isaacman
David William Cohen and E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, The Risks of Knowledge: Investigations into the Death of the Hon. Minister John Robert Ouko in Kenya, 1990
Belinda Bozzoli, Theatres of Struggle and the End of Apartheid
Gary Kynoch, We Are Fighting the World: A History of the Marashea Gangs in South Africa, 1947–1999
We Are Fighting the World
A History of the Marashea Gangs in South Africa, 1947–1999
Gary Kynoch
OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS
ATHENS
UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU-NATAL PRESS
PIETERMARITZBURG, SOUTH AFRICA
Ohio University Press
The Ridges, Building 19
Athens, Ohio 45701
University of KwaZulu-Natal Press
Private Bag X01, Scottsville, 3209
South Africa
Email: [email protected]
© 2005 by Ohio University Press
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved
Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 5 4 3 2 1
Maps by Wendy Job
Part of chapter 1 appeared as “From the Ninevites to the Hard Livings Gang: Township Gangsters and Urban Violence in Twentieth-Century South Africa” in African Studies 58, no. 1 (1999): 55–85 and is reprinted by permission.
Part of chapter 3 appeared in “A Man among Men: Gender, Identity, and Power in South Africa’s Marashea Gangs” in Gender and History 13, no. 2 (2001): 249–72 and is reprinted by permission.
Part of chapter 4 appeared in “Politics and Violence in the Russian Zone: Conflict in Newclare South, 1950–1957” in Journal of African History 41, no. 2 (2000): 267–90 and is reprinted by permission.
Part of chapter 5 appeared in “Marashea on the Mines: Economic, Social and Criminal Networks on the South African Gold Fields, 1947-1999” in Journal of Southern African Studies 26, no. 1 (2000): 79–103 and is reprinted by permission.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kynoch, Gary.
We are fighting the world : a history of the Marashea gangs in South Africa, 1947–1999 / Gary Kynoch.
p. cm.—(New African histories series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8214-1615-4 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 0-8214-1616-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Gangs—South Africa—History. I. Title. II. Series.
HV6439.S6K96 2005
364.1'06'60973—dc22
2004021754
University of KwaZulu-Natal Press ISBN 1-86914-072-9
Contents
Chapter 1Urban Violence in South Africa
Chapter 2The Anatomy of the Marashea
Chapter 3Making a Living: Survival in South Africa
Chapter 4Urban Battlegrounds
Chapter 5Marashea on the Mines: The Expansion Era
Chapter 6Vigilantism, “Political” Violence, and the End of Apartheid
Epilogue The Future of the Marashea
AppendixMarashea Interview List
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
Witwatersrand townships, present day
Preface
THIS BOOK IS THE FIRST attempt to write a comprehensive history of an African criminal society known as the Marashea, or “Russians,” from its inception in the 1940s to the present.1 It covers the formation of the association in the townships and mining compounds of the Witwatersrand, the massive street battles of the 1950s, and the government’s forced removal schemes that dispersed the Russians from some of their urban strongholds during this same period.2 These original groups of Marashea drew their strength from Basotho migrants who worked and lived on the Johannesburg area mines, as well as those who resided in the townships and were employed in the city.3 The gold-mining industry’s expansion into the far West Rand and Free State during the 1950s and 1960s, coupled with the Aliens Control Act of 1963 (which made it illegal for the vast majority of Basotho migrants to work in South Africa outside the agricultural and mining sectors), resulted in a Marashea migration that shifted Russian power from the Rand to the townships and informal settlements surrounding the emerging gold mines. The Marashea remains a powerful force in many of South Africa’s gold mining areas.
Newspapers and archival documents proved to be valuable source materials but are limited in the range of issues they address. Police, mining, and township officials tended to focus on the disruption to order that Russian activities caused, and the Marashea came to public notice almost exclusively as a result of their involvement in violence. Newspapers intended for white readership rarely mentioned Marashea because, except for the most spectacular instances of violence, their activities did not impinge on the white world. African newspapers reported on collective violence, robberies, and court appearances and typically condemned the gangs as primitive tribal thugs. This was the public face of the Marashea.
Archival sources were useful in providing government and mining officials’ views of the Marashea, as well as supplying dates, casualty figures, and arrest records for specific events. In the archival records, the Marashea appear as a nuisance in the townships and mines—because of their involvement in street battles, faction fights, murders, and robberies—but not as a political threat to the state. Instead, they are depicted as tribal Africans untainted by communist or other revolutionary ideology, with no grievances against whites and no political agenda. Mining officials expressed occasional concern over Russian violence that threatened to disrupt mining operations, but the gangs did not challenge white authority on the mines. White commentators sometimes characterized the Marashea as murderous thugs