The slaughter began with an incident all too familiar in South Africa's seething black urban townships. Returning from a Sunday drinking session in a local shebeen, or pub, a noisy group of Xhosa migrant workers from the grim, single-sex hostels of Tokoza township clashed with a crowd of Zulu rivals. Insults were traded, weapons brandished. When the dust settled, a man lay dead. Some said the victim was a Zulu killed by Xhosas, others a Xhosa killed by Zulus. In the end it hardly mattered: the murder unleashed tribal-based animosities that date back centuries and have claimed 4,000 people over the...
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