Very often, when we talk about the history of the liberation movement, metropolitan places like Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town are given primary importance. Secondary places don’t receive the same kind of attention, even though they were very significant in the development of resistance movements. 

This is especially the case for the Vaal and its townships (including Evaton, Sharpeville and Sebokeng), which operate in the shadow of Johannesburg and Soweto. It’s very important to give significance to areas like the Vaal Triangle in our understanding of the development of the liberation movement. 

This is especially crucial on the 40th anniversary of the Vaal uprising this year. We should use these moments to reflect on the importance of history and what we can learn from it today. 

A history of struggle

The Vaal area has a long history of radical struggle that goes back to the late 1920s, into the 1940s and 50s, the 1970s and then, of course, the road to the Vaal uprising in September 1984. The Vaal was an important industrial area that developed from the late 19th century through coal mining and then from the 1930s as an important site of heavy industrial growth, mainly because of the government’s import substitution policy. In the aftermath of the establishment in the early 1940s of Iscor in Vanderbijlpark, the region became a hub of the steel sector, which had a ripple effect on the rest of the region. By the 1940s and 1950s it had become an important site, not only of the industrial economy, but also of the development of the Black working class. 

The locations and townships of the Vaal were, at different times, key centres of Black resistance. For example, Evaton was established in the early 20th century and was a freehold location with very large plots owned by its Black residents. In the 1930s, the property owners of Evaton organised themselves into independent local committees through which they tried to establish autonomous local governing structures. A few years before that, in the old location of Vereeniging, known as the Top location, the Communist Party had a stronghold and organised demonstrations against what were called the pickup vans. 

So the Vaal region has a long tradition of radical and independent struggles, in which questions of the land and working-class autonomy, as well as the creation of different organisations, have featured. Following the Sofasonke movement in Orlando, there were significant squatter movements in Evaton. This developed, as elsewhere in the PWV (now known as Gauteng), when the Black working class grew numerically because of industrialisation, and there was not enough land or housing for Black people. In the 1940s and 1950s, Evaton became an important site of radical politics. 

The massacre of anti-pass protesters in Sharpeville in 1960 entrenched that township’s position in the history of Black resistance. In fact, Evaton was better organised and had larger numbers of protesters on the same day. This was due to its longer history of resistance and the recent bus boycott, which was led by a new generation of young radical Black activists. Many of them were educated, including at universities, and became part of the ideological debates within the ANC. Some of them left the ANC to join the PAC. It was these young people, in their late teens and early 20s, who organised and led the marches in Sharpeville, Evaton, Boipatong and Bophelong. 

We must see the Vaal uprising as part of a longer tradition of radical politics. So, when we think about the emergence of radical politics today when we despair about the absence of movements and the difficulties, we must remember that there were previous moments like this, but the working class, poor people, drew on their histories to reimagine and develop new politics. 

New organisations of students, communities and labour

From the late 1960s, with the emergence of black consciousness and led by the South African Student Organisation, new student and youth organisations developed in various parts of the country. Some of these were not part of national organisations but became spaces of political conscientisation. One such organisation in the early 1970s was the Sharpeville Youth Club. From about 1972 / 1973, it organised youth in the township on a social basis, but over time became more political. Importantly, throughout the 1970s, young people were attracted to black consciousness.

State repression in 1976 and 1977 struck heavy blows against black consciousness organisations. But in the Vaal, as was the case elsewhere in the country, from 1979 there emerged new locally-based organisations, as well as significant national organisations: Azanian People’s Organisation (Azapo), Azanian Student Organisation, and the Congress of South African Students (Cosas). 

Unlike in the early 1960s, state repression failed in the late 1970s to crush the mood of resistance. The Vaal Civic Association was one of the first of a new generation of civic organisations to be established. 

This reconstitution of civic and student organisations, and other political movements, laid the foundation upon which the very successful liberation struggle inside the country was built. The post-1976 period was also important because the uprisings posed a serious challenge to the apartheid state, which responded with a combination of reform and repression. 

Material conditions were deteriorating

What was significant in relation to the Vaal Triangle and other African townships was that in 1977, the state created a succession of different local government structures: first, the Community Councils, which replaced Urban Bantu Councils in 1977. 

Then, in 1983 the government introduced the Black Local Authorities (BLAs) that, like their predecessors, had limited power but were burdened with the responsibility to raise funds, to build housing and develop the townships. Unlike the white towns, which had significant secondary and tertiary economic sectors, African townships were seriously under-developed and had limited sources of income generation. 

As a result, the BLA in the Vaal, and in Sebokeng in particular, turned to rents in order to generate revenue. In fact, the Sebokeng Council made the serious error of imposing a sharp increase in rents for this purpose.

The uprising

The reconstitution of civic and student organisations, and other political movements, laid the foundation upon which the very successful liberation struggle inside the country was built.

In September 1984, the Vaal Civic Association, with the support of other movements, mobilised against the rent increases. They marched through the township on 3 September 1984. The police intervened violently to stop the march, leading to deaths and injuries, and many arrests. As was the case in Soweto in 1976, young people confronted the state in many ways. They organised student and youth movements, but also early on, some in Sebokeng organised themselves into informal military structures. The presence of ANC underground operatives in the Vaal Civic Association facilitated connections with the ANC underground, particularly linked to Botswana. 

So, the Vaal uprising in September 1984 was an immediate response to the rent increases. But the work of the Vaal Civic Association pointed to a long-term deterioration of livelihoods and living conditions in the township: overcrowding and the decline of infrastructure and services had become the norm. Furthermore, residents were hit hard by the economic recession in the early 1980s, which led to widespread retrenchments. Industrial regions such as the Vaal and the East Rand were particularly badly affected. 

What is significant about the September uprising as well is that, within the short space of two months (between early September and November), political resistance experienced rapid transformation. The country would never be the same. Notwithstanding the repression of the uprising in September, Fosatu, Cosas, and civic organisations organised solidarity with the people in Sebokeng. In October, there were attempts in Soweto to organise a stay-away. 

The Vaal uprising triggered solidarity action in Soweto and other parts of the PWV. At the time, students, mainly but not exclusively under the leadership of Cosas, had organised a sustained boycott, demanding SRCs, an end to corporal punishment and to sexual harassment. 

The worker-student-youth alliance

This is significant because the Vaal in particular, and then the East Rand (known today as Ekurhuleni), were important sites of trade unionism, especially unions affiliated to Fosatu, such as the Metal and Allied Workers Union (Mawu) and the Chemical Workers Industrial Union (CWIU). 

The post-1976 period was also important because the uprisings posed a serious challenge to the apartheid state, which responded with a combination of reform and repression.

The focal point of the uprising then moved to Ekurhuleni, where the unions,  Cosas and civic organisations (such as the East Rand People’s Organisation led by Sam Ntuli) had a significant presence. Alexandra was also important because there was a strong Mawu tradition. Moses Mayekiso, who lived in Alex, was a key organiser for Mawu in Wynberg and in the East Rand, where he worked closely with  Chris Dlamini, who later became the president of Cosatu. 

Cosas also spread like wildfire across the country. From mid-October 1984, the students, under the leadership of Cosas, started to reach out to the leadership of Fosatu, particularly Chris Dlamini, whose daughter was a student activist. Nyami Booi and Cosas leaders in the region approached Chris Dlamini and Moses Mayekiso to win union support for the student’s demands. A committee was established, consisting of Fosatu and Cosas leaders, which called for a regional stay away on November 5 and 6. Close to a million workers and students came out on strike and brought the industrial heartland of the country to a complete standstill. 

What this regional general strike demonstrated absolutely clearly was that power rested with workers, students and youth. 

This was arguably the high point of worker and youth alliance in the history of South Africa. In my view, the regional general strike of November 5 and 6 was the turning point in South African history. Once the Black working class demonstrated its power and capacity to strike serious blows against the economy, sections of the capitalist class quickly drew the conclusion that their continued support would threaten capitalism itself. They could see the writing was on the wall. The Black working class was well organised and able to mobilise hundreds of thousands of people, not only in the PWV but also nationally. 

So when we think of the Vaal uprising, we must understand it not only in terms of its achievements in Sebokeng and the surrounding townships, but also that it triggered the most significant joint mass action by workers and students/youth. The foundations for such joint action were laid by students and workers in 1976 in Soweto and in subsequent years in the Cape, with the Fattis and Monis strike and the Wilson Rowntree and Red Meat boycotts.

These are the histories of resistance that should become part of the process of rebuilding our contemporary movements.

Noor Nieftagodien is the Head of the History Workshop at Wits University.