Black local authorities have recently come under the most severe and sustained attack for many years as revitalised popular organisations have raised living conditions as a major grievance. When police opened fire on peaceful protesters in Sebokeng on 26 March it was a forceful reminder that the state's initial response to mass protest remains violent suppression. Organisations have been unbanned, but conditions for open political activity do not yet exist.
While rent boycotts have been sustained in some areas for five years, the Conference for a Democratic Future in December recognised and gave direction to the resurgence of housing protests across the country. In spite of attempts by the regime to minimise the significance of the protests it is clear that they are supported by thousands of residents in a response to years of neglect and abysmal living conditions.
There were huge marches across the country during the first three months of the year, calling for councillors to resign, for rent and service charges to be reduced and for improvements in health services, education and roads. Demands for facilities in white areas to be open to the whole population came in particular from more remote townships. Most protesters linked their demands to national calls for the lifting of the State of Emergency and removal of troops from the townships.
Actions such as rent boycotts have forced many councils to lower charges but residents have demanded that arrears accumulated over the last five years should be written off. They have also demanded that a fairer system be devised so that apartheid segregation should not lead to the black community paying higher rates for inferior services. For instance electricity is sold to the Soweto council at 9.7 cents a unit and to the Johannesburg council at 6.9 cents a unit.
In some areas protests escalated when residents were denied the right to express their grievances. Although in mid-February the Minister of Law and Order announced the possibility of relaxing laws restricting meetings, the right to march and to assemble remained an issue.
In the Eastern Cape residents resorted to consumer boycotts to press their demands. By mid-February there were boycotts in Stutterheim, Komga, Tarkastad, Barkly East and Jamestown and all the black councillors in Indwe, Stutterheim and Elliot had resigned. The longest-running boycott, in Stutterheim, was entering its fourth month. It was supported by people from Stutterheim's Mlungisi township as well as residents of outlying villages such as Kubusie.
The Stutterheim Co-ordinating Committee complained of increased police harassment as the boycott caused some white-owned businesses to close. Additional demands focused on 'starvation wages' paid locally, especially to farm and domestic workers.
Tarkastad residents launched their consumer boycott when the town council effectively prohibited a protest march by demanding a deposit of R10,000 before allowing it to take place. In Jamestown, where a march was stopped because its organisers had not received prior permission, a consumer boycott was also launched.
Violence in March in the East Rand township of Katlehong illustrated the impact of another fundamental policy of apartheid. Residential segregation frequently requires urban black workers to make long journeys from their homes to their places of work, and transport costs form a major part of the cost of living. Taxis are big business in the townships and competition is fierce. Faced with two taxi associations vying for trade in the area, Katlehong residents announced a boycott of the rival groups until peace had been established. This protest was met by violence from supporters of one group who blamed the youth for the boycott and went on the rampage, killing both teachers and students. By 9 March the death toll was 15. Residents were critical of police behaviour, saying they had been reluctant to act until the heavily-armed gangs had attacked.
A massive protest march on 7 March not only showed the police in a more active role — they shot and injured 28 demonstrators — but also highlighted the relationship between the problem of transport and other struggles in Katlehong. Estimates of attendance at the march, called by the Katlehong Civic Association, ranged between 75,000 and 100,000. Residents demanded a cut in rents and electricity charges, failing which they would launch a rent boycott.
Although the taxi rivalry was the occasion for the violence, an investigation carried out by the Witwatersrand Council of Churches into violence in a number of areas, including Katlehong, established a link with local political demands: 'The violence in these areas has been preceded by an obvious call from communities to local black authorities to relinquish their positions.'
Rent and service charges were the subject of a protest march in Sebokeng on 26 March, which sought to present residents' demands to National Party headquarters in Vereeniging. Sebokeng is one of the townships falling under the Lekoa Town Council which have sustained a rent boycott for over five years. Unpaid rent in the townships now amounts to R125 million.
Organisers of the march were refused permission to go to Vereeniging. In the words of one of them: 'We can work in Vereeniging, but we aren't allowed to march there.' Fifty thousand protesters presented their demands instead to the local police. The violent police reaction, shooting dead 11 people and injuring 450, echoed the events of 3 September 1984 when the violent dispersal of a march initiated a mass uprising in the Vaal Triangle. Eyewitnesses said police shot without warning, wounding many residents in the back as they fled.
