Word: zulu
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...striking is risky in recession-ridden South Africa. Black unemployment is running at 20%. Conspicuous among the Soweto residents who refused to strike were the migrant males, many of them Zulu tribesmen, who live in dormitory-like hostels and send most of their earnings to their families in the tribal homelands far away. The migrants were little impressed by either the young activists' efforts to organize political demonstrations or the government's recent concessions to black militancy, like the decision to allow Soweto residents to purchase outright more than half of the township's houses (for about...
...provoke the change. Several black reporters said they heard police officers exhorting Zulus to "go out and kill" their enemies, but one police chief branded this "an infamous lie." At the least, some Soweto residents said, the police watched from their antiriot Hippo vehicles without taking action as the Zulu warriors scoured the streets and burst into homes in search of what they called "cheeky children." lames Kruger, South Africa's tough Minister of Justice, denied this. "The Zulus have been harassed and have banded together to defend themselves and their property, which they have every right...
...three taxis left to her by her husband. One cab was hijacked and burned out by black youths at the beginning of the Soweto disturbances in June. Last week, fearful of breaking the boycott, she kept her remaining taxis at home. But at midweek a youth, fleeing a Zulu gang, ran through the garden of her home. The enraged Zulus, thinking she had given him refuge, kicked down her front door, smashed her furniture and windows, and then hacked and smashed her two cabs parked outside. "This is the end," she said. "Between the Zulu mobs, the students, the tsotsis...
Later in the week, other residents in Soweto formed their own vigilante groups to protect themselves. Police, at first delighted by the Zulu backlash, were belatedly ordered to move in and separate the black combatants. Police admitted killing 14 of the week's victims and wounding dozens of the others with small-size buckshot-a tactic ordered by Justice Minister Kruger to keep the death toll down...
Similarly, some whites exulted that the anti-white thrust of the black activists in Soweto had been blunted by the Zulu warriors. Others knew better. "Sooner or later they'll get back to confronting the white Establishment," observed a white businessman in Johannesburg. "When they do, it will be much worse than before. Right now the problem is tribal, but in the long run it's strictly racial." He concluded by citing the statistic that no white man in South Africa ever needs to be told: the country has 18 million blacks and only 4 million whites...