Years of fighting in KZN ensured that ANC–IFP relations were steeped in hostility when political campaigning on the Rand began following Mandela's release from prison in February 1990. This division operated along pre-existing fault lines as many Zulu migrant labourers – the IFP's natural constituency on the Reef – had been alienated by the militancy of liberation politics in the workplace and the townships. To preserve and expand their authority, both the ANC and the IFP sanctioned violence and armed their supporters. Some state security forces actively assisted the IFP, far fewer supported the ANC, and the rest proved incapable of stopping the violence. Urban Africans had experienced the burden of oppressive policing long before the 1980s insurrections, but the role of the police in suppressing these protests brought them into direct confrontation with youthful ANC supporters. This history rendered it next to impossible for the police to be accepted (or, often, to act) as impartial arbiters in the 1990s ANC–IFP violence. Initial skirmishes sparked cycles of revenge that drew in ever greater numbers of people. The massive civil conflicts that ensued provided fertile terrain for armed groups of all descriptions to advance their agendas, sometimes in line with the main political contenders and sometimes independent of party interests.

Township histories

The war on the Reef began in 1990, but Johannesburg's black townships had experienced different forms of state, criminal and vigilante violence for decades. These segregated urban spaces were adjacent to, but physically apart from, white cities and towns.They contained a mixture of government housing projects, backyard shacks, squatter camps and municipal hostels built for migrant workers. Successive white governments prioritised racial control over crime prevention in black communities, and state violence was most glaringly apparent in the ubiquitous pass and liquor raids that traumatised generations of township residents. To make matters worse, the widespread poverty and marginalisation inevitably produced a criminal element whose violence greatly contributed to the insecurity of township life. In the absence of state protection, many township communities organised initiatives that utilised violence to deter crime and punish suspects.

The direct precursor of transition-era violence occurred during the latter half of the 1980s. In response to the state's 1983 reforms, which allowed increased participation by the Coloured and Indian minorities but still excluded the African majority from parliamentary politics, the ANC called on its supporters within South Africa to make the country ungovernable.