Abahlali baseMjondolo secretary-general Thapelo Mohapi has warned that growing anti-migrant mobilisation in KwaZulu-Natal risks escalating into broader ethnic violence, drawing parallels with the political conflicts that devastated parts of the province in the late 1980s and early 1990s.A
I grew up in Bhambayi in Inanda, to the north of Durban.
In 1993 more than two hundred people were killed in political violence between Inkatha and the ANC. In 1990, when I was eight, two friends of my father who were visiting from Lesotho were murdered. My brothers and I saw the bodies. In that same year my family moved me to Matatiele in the Eastern Cape so that I would not be forced into anti-ANC marches.
We were not told that the war between Inkatha and the ANC was about ideological differences. We were told that it was a war between amaZulu and amaXhosa. As Basotho my family lived under constant suspicion. That suspicion never fully went away. In 2015, my cousins from Matatiele were visiting me when the xenophobic attacks that would kill at least seven people and displace thousands began. The police banged on the door of my shack and demanded to see our IDs after hearing us speaking Sesotho. The ANC has often told amaMpondo in Durban that they must ‘go back to the Eastern Cape’.
