South Africa: City Under Siege

The 120,000 residents of the black township of Sebokeng, 50 miles south of Johannesburg, awoke last Tuesday morning to find themselves under siege. For several hours, a force of 7,000 army troops and police filled the streets as the police conducted house-to-house searches. Hundreds of residents were arrested on a variety of charges. It was the largest peacetime security sweep in South Africa’s history and the first time the army has supported the police in such an operation.

After searching cars, police plastered stickers on windshields reading TRUST ME. I AM YOUR FRIEND. To Sebokeng residents, it seemed otherwise. Unrest has sputtered in South Africa’s black townships for the past two months over rent increases in government-owned housing. The underlying grievance, however, is the absence of any constitutional reform for the country’s blacks, who represent 73% of the population, even though the relatively small Indian and mixed-race groups were granted nominal representation in government this year. Defending the Sebokeng siege, Law and Order Minister Louis Le Grange declared that it had been aimed at “criminal and revolutionary elements.”