ANTI-SOCIAL BANDITS Juvenile Delinquency and the Tsotsi Ydut~ Gang Subculture on the Witwatersrand 1935-1960
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ANTI-SOCIAL BANDITS Juvenile Delinquency and the Tsotsi YDut~ Gang Subculture on the Witwatersrand 1935-1960 .~. ,__ __ . _. ......""."1 Clive Glaser A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Arts, U~iversity of the Witwatersrand, for the degree of Master of Ar-ts , Johannesburg 1990 I ,.Jt~cla!'e that this d t s se r-t a t iox i': 'n},' .I_JHnt unaided 'Work. I t is be ing subm i tted for the <1.....~ c e./J (" ~1aster of Arts in the UnLve r-sity of the \;',i t.wat.e r-s r-an- :.11: "lnesburg. It has not been submitted before for ,<l"'~' !t::1~. '.:"~ or examination in any other university_ Clive Leonard ~l~ser Thirtieth August, 1990. ACKNOWL~DGEMENTa This thesis would not have been possible without the inspiration and guidance of Phil Bonner .and Peter Delius thrQughout my academi~ career. I am also indebted to all my informants who gaVe up valuable time to speak to me; they asked for nothing in return but an honest account of the past. Don Mattera and Queeneth Ndaba not only mede tim£ to talk bu~ kindly helped me in generating other contacts ~nd setting up interviews. One of my most generous and informat i v e contac t s , StEmley Hotjuwadi, sad Ly died this year. ~ would like to thank Tom Ledge, Gail Gerhar*, David Goodhew, EdWin Ritchken, Fran Buntman and, es~eciallY$ Steve Lebele f~r giving me access to recordIngs or transcriptions of interviews which they conducted jor their own research. In addition, I am grataful to my entire History Masters class f'o ,: providing a supportative and st LmuLet Lng wor-l; environment; the staff of the William Culle;n Library for their friendline_s and efficiency; and my parents fur helping with proofreading. For assisting me financially during my years of research I owe thanks to the University of the Witwatersrand {through i:.heir Senior Bursaries} and the Human Sciences rtesearcn. Council. If you are an anthroplogist who is interested in .location life, especia.lly where there are so many itrect fights during the weekends, s.t.udv "bo 1"sotsi" and you'll get enough information to write a thesis that will excite . many un, -ra i ties into honouring you with degrees !! - "Hr J.D.N," of Benoni, f!fl:J1.tn \0.'9...;:' 1.d R~Aders' Forum 7 April 1945. In r.he context of fa.mily instability, inadequate schooling, mas:sive youth unemployment and severe residential overcrowding, juvenile delinquency became rampant in Witwatersrand townships during the 1930s. By the mid 1940s the I'tsotsis", a criminal, male-dominated youth gang subculture with its Owi.~.distinctively urban .::;t;.rle,ritual and language, had entrenched itself among s ur+ian Laed township communities. Tsotsis angrily rej\ c~e& both he gemon l.c wh lte middle class values and ·':.heat'Jfl.rently acquiescent culture of their parents. Tsotsi style, which drew he:;vily on American. cinema imagery, expressed a denial of cultural consensus in urban society. Tsotsi gangs preyed materially off township residents and distanced themselves from political activity or community affairs. However, ar-ound 1959-60 tsotsis were attracted to the radical, machismo, aggress:ivaly anti-establishment politics of the Pan-Africanist Congress. The subculture dissolved during the 19'Os as a result of police crackdowns, expanded state schooling and improved employment opportunities for urban yout~h. CONTENT~ It~TRODUCTION ~ , ~ " II> t.J • .. • .. .. .. • 1 CHAPTER ONE "The i.r- Playgrounds are the Streets": The Socio- economic Context of Juvenile Delinquency on the Witwatersrand 1935-1960 ..•... 18 CHAPTER TiYO The Ri se of the "Bo-Tsots i ": The Origins, Definition and Structures of the Tsatsi Subculture ....• I ••• , ••••••• " • • •• • • • •• • •• •• ••• •• • 77 CHAPTER THREE Anti-Social Bandits: Culture, Hegemony and the Tsotsi Subculture on the Witwatersrand during the 1940s and 1950s •.'••,••• I... 112 CHAPTER FOUR The Mark of Zarro: Sexuality and~ender Relations in the Teotsi Subcultur~ an tile Witlvatersrand .t................................ 162 CHAPTER FIVE "When are they Going to Fight'?": Tsotsis Youth Politics and the PAC .... •....•..... ..•.... 198 CONCLUSION •••••••••••••••.•••. , ••.•••••••••••• ,.. 231 BIBLIOGRAPHY •••••••••••. I •••••• e • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 239 INTRODUCTION During the late 1930s a distinctive youth gang subculture emerged amongst the permanently urbanised black population of the Witwatersrand. The ~ubculture arose against a backdrop of massive youth unemployment, grossly inadequate schooling and recreation facilities, unstable family units and severe overcrowding in the townships. Male youths took to the streets and developed e !lcity slicker" style with its own distinctive codes of dressing, language, leisure activity and criminality. Dur-Lng the t~ar years the gangs became a common feature of South African township life. In the early 1940s these gangsters became known as "tsots:i.s'!. The word originally described a style of narrow-bottomed trousers which became part.LcuLaz-Ly popular amongst the bl.ack ur-ban youth during the 19405. Gradually t.he connotation of the word ~roadened to incorporate an entire ~outh gang subculture. Tsotsi gangs became a nation-wide phenomenon in the urban areas of South Africa. In fact, it would appear that during the 1940s and 1950s the majority of permanently urbanised black youths in South Africa1s key 1 ur-ban conglomerate, the Wit'vatersrand, were involved, to a lesser or greater extent. in tsotsi Aangs. South African administrative records, newspapers, autobiographies and works of fiction are cluttered with referendes, direct or oblique, to the tsotsi phenomenon. Yet, despite the prevalence of tsotsi gangs and the prominence of the tsotsis in the ~lack urban experience, no systematic s t udv of the tsotsi subculture has been attempted in South African historiography to date. Tsotsis have been treated persistently as a parasitic lumpenproletarian element peripheral to the processes of industrialisation and black urbanisation. The onLy t.ext which deals directly with the tsotsi phenomenon is C.V. Bothma's 1951 Masters thesis for Pretoria University.(l) Bothmafs thesis, although essentially a linguistic study of t..,;ot.sitaalhasJ a vseful descriptive section on subcultural style. In addition, Bothma attempted to explain the social context of African youth gang formation in a fairly senssit t ve way. Nevertheless, ss E!. broader subcultural st udy the thesis is altogether inadequate. First, Bothma's work was contemporary and sociological rather than historical which makes it a useful historical resource but limits its analytical scope ; the study is ultimately r-at her- static and, written while thL subculture was only star ~ng to peak in terms of prevalence, lacks an historically distanced overview. Second, Bothma's study is limited to Pretoria which in itself is a legitimate focus but leaves the far 2 I. more important urban centre of the Witwatersrand unexplored. It w"' ~n the Rand that the subculture reached its most pawerfu. ~~pression and where subcultural role models were generated. Third, Bothma's study, while \ ',I providing useful empirical data, lacks any serious analysis of subcultural style and fails to explore the crucial class, generation and gender specific elements of the subcul tul'e. Findly, and here again Bothma' s work is severely Limited by its contemporaneity, he dismisses tsotsis as apolitical without serious analysis or qualification. The study, of course, chronologically precedes the more overt pollticisation of tsotsi youth towards the end of the 1950s. Although there are nu other direct studies of the tsotsi subculture, part of the foundation for such a study has been established within South African scholarship, There are four areas of scholarship which either touch obliquely on the tsotsi subculture or provide useful clues in establishing a methodological framework for such a study. First, there is a growing body of literature which hiehlights g~nt.~ration.as a social cleavage and a tool of' analysis. Second , some work has been done on the Ls sue of juveni 1 e del il'1.gtl.enc"yon the Witwatersrand Ci .:tringthe 1930s, 19408 and 1950s. Third, the distinctive tsotsi language, ,tsotsitaal, has been the focus of Ia. number of local linguistic studies. Fourth, several pieces focusing on African resistance politics during the 1950s and early 3 1960s have dr-awn attention to urban African youth as a political constituency. Generation as an analytic tool emerged in the discipline of social anthroplogy rather than history. Social anthropologists have shown that generat.iona.lhierarchy is a key concept in understanding the power structure of "pre- capitalist" societies.(2) Age hierarchies were based on elders controlling the system of bridewealth and, by extension, the pOInt of marriage and labour reproduction. In 1970 rona and Phi I ip H<l;srerJ in a more historical study still based technically within the discipline of social an thr-opLogy , explored yout.h initiation in "Red" Xhosa society. (3 ) They ahowed how young men were givan a great deal of freedom and were allowed to explo~e their sexuality in fairly autonomous youth groups while simultaneously being socialised into accepting traditional values and hierarchies. They also showed how youth initiation was adapted to the syst~m of migrancy in the twentieth century. In the same anthology La Fontein described an extraordinarily prevalent youth gang phenomenon which had emerged in Kinshasa during the early days of Zairean indepencience.(4) However, her article is largely empirical and fails to problematise generation or analyse the gangs in subcultural terms. 111. the 1980s South African revisionist historians been influenced by this anthropological approach. For example, Peter Delius and William Beinart ~ave incorporated ~ generational analysis in explaining patterns of migrancy in the Pedi and Pondo societies respectively.(5) While pointing to the historical significance of generational cleavage in these African societies, youth remains a peripheral concern in their work. More recently, youth and generation have moved closer to the ('entre stage in a number of historical and sociological texto.