Abstract:
On 5 August 1985, the violence which had already led to a
State of Emergency in much of South Africa exploded in Natal,
leaving more than seventy people dead and thousands injured and
homeless in the course of a week and raising the spectre in some
areas of a repetition of the anti-Indian riots of 1949.
In 1985 at least half the dead were shot by the police, and
it would be foolish to see the disturbance in simple racial
terms. Political differences between the newly formed United
Democratic Front and the Zulu cultural movement, Inkatha, and
sheer economic deprivation which led to the looting of African as
well as Indian traders, warn against any simple equation of the
violence with racially motivated anti-Indian sentiment per se.
