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Whether or not the police opened fire without provocation, the very suspicion that they had done so was enough to inflame passions. "The whole area is like a tinderbox," said Opposition M.P. Dr. Alex Boraine in describing the Eastern Cape. "Almost without exception, every day of the week somebody is being killed somewhere. The majority of whites have no idea how endemic violence is in this country. Neither does the government." Others were even harsher. "The Eastern Cape can best be viewed as Gestapo country," charged John Dugard, law professor at Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand. "The President has no control of the police, and they are allowed to do what they like."
The spiraling distrust between blacks and the authorities was emphasized by the government in its attempts to dramatize how some blacks had set upon others. That image was something of an oversimplification. In many townships, the local police force, though usually commanded by white officers, is composed almost entirely of blacks, some from distant regions and hostile tribes. Among the men who opened fire at Uitenhage, for example, were Zulus from Natal province, whom the predominantly Xhosa people of the Eastern Cape have traditionally regarded as enemies. These age-old animosities have served to aggravate friction. "If there were a riot in Soweto tomorrow," said a Johannesburg security consultant, "black police units would be in the front line and would probably open fire on crowds even sooner than would whites."
The other great split in the black community, an economic one, has widened as South Africa's financial situation has deteriorated. Thanks to some of the government's modest reforms in recent years, more and more black businessmen have entered the middle class, striking up deals with white entrepreneurs, buying 99-year leases on their homes and even hiring strong-arm thugs for security purposes. At the same time, many of their township neighbors have been pitched deeper and deeper into poverty. With unemployment on the rise and the general sales tax doubling to 12% over the past year, the gap between relatively comfortable and impoverished blacks has widened. "The problem here is that some people are just going down and down and some are going up and up," said James Thabane, a black clerk who lives in Sharpeville. "There is real hatred here. Sometimes I think that blacks are their own worst enemies --all the whites have to do is let them tear themselves apart."