In 1993 South African state president, F.W. de Klerk, and African National Congress (ANC) leader, Nelson Mandela, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize ‘for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime’. Both men deserved credit for entering negotiations leading to the April 1994 elections that formally ended racial rule. However, apartheid did not enjoy a ‘peaceful termination’. The four years of the transition era preceding the elections were the bloodiest of the entire apartheid period with an estimated 14,000 deaths attributed to politically related violence. The primary divide in these conflicts pitted ANC supporters against those of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), with state security forces also figuring prominently. This work is the first book-length study devoted to the fighting that plagued black residential areas in South Africa's industrial core surrounding Johannesburg, an area known as the Rand (shorthand for Witwatersrand) or the Reef (because of the gold-bearing reefs that sustained the local mining industry for decades).

Over the course of the transition period and in its immediate aftermath, an enduring narrative emerged which attributed the bulk of the violence to a joint state security force and IFP onslaught against ANC supporters. I argue that this standard account is mired in the conventional binaries that defined South African struggle history. The governing National Party (NP) and its black proxies assume the ‘oppressor’ role, while those associated with the ANC and the liberation struggle are accorded the mantle of ‘resisters’. The oppressor–resister dyad simplified the myriad contestations of the apartheid period and, given the seismic political shifts of the transition era, is especially problematic when applied to the conflicts of the early 1990s. In February 1990, de Klerk announced the unbanning of opposition parties including the ANC, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP), released Nelson Mandela from prison, and committed his government to negotiations with its foremost adversary. Some form of democratic elections in which black South Africans would play a pivotal role were clearly on the horizon, and political competition intensified as the three major parties – NP, ANC and IFP – manoeuvred for advantage throughout the transition period. These changing political dynamics were crucial in shaping the conflicts that raged through many black townships – urban areas set aside for African settlement.