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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Community Resistance and Collective Violence: The Port Elizabeth Defiance Campaign and the 1952 New Brighton Riots |
Author: | Baines, Gary |
Year: | 1996 |
Periodical: | South African Historical Journal |
Issue: | 34 |
Period: | May |
Pages: | 39-76 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | rebellions 1952 townships Politics and Government History and Exploration Ethnic and Race Relations Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Law, Human Rights and Violence |
External link: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02582479608671864 |
Abstract: | The outbreak of violence in New Brighton township, Port Elizabeth, South Africa, on 18 October 1952 brought the Defiance Campaign, which was launched by the ANC earlier that year, to a premature halt in this city. This article examines the connection between the campaign of organized resistance and the spontaneous violence in New Brighton. It also explores the connection between social conditions and the subculture of street violence evident in postwar New Brighton, and whether or not this climate contributed to the riots. A description of the social conditions and subcultures of violence in New Brighton in the period 1945-1952, an overview of the Defiance Campaign in Port Elizabeth and the course of the riots in New Brighton, and an analysis of the explanations and consequences of the riots lead to the conclusion that the relationship between the organized resistance and spontaneous violence was entirely coincidental. The people involved in the Defiance Campaign were committed to discipline and nonviolence, while those involved in the riots exploited the disorder to further their own criminal ends. The government tried to portray them as one and the same and it could do so because the dividing line between community resistance and collective violence is sometimes a thin one. Notes, ref. |