We Are Fighting the World - Gary Kynoch New African Histories

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must pay with his flesh” (CN). Beatings were usually administered in front of the group and there was a definite element of humiliation. “You are beaten like a child—but with melamu. You are stripped naked and beaten” (GL). Furthermore, offenders were expected to admit their culpability. “The one who broke the rules is surrounded by others and beaten with melamu. If he is ready to stop breaking the rules, it ends with a severe beating, but if he is stubborn, he might be killed” (WL). For lesser offences, transgressors were sometimes fined. If members were unable to pay the fine, their valuables were impounded and released upon payment.

      Marashea arrested on group business were entitled to legal counsel funded from the treasury. However, those who participated in criminal acts that were not sanctioned by the group were not afforded this protection. “When you were arrested we would pay for your bail or fine if you were arrested for a group fight. If you were arrested for robbery we would not pay any fine for you because that was not for the group’s purpose, it was for your own needs” (PL, Lesotho, 23–24 May 1998). Some marena forbade their members to take part in certain criminal activities and not only withheld financial assistance but punished transgressors. BM declares that there should be “no rape, robbery, or assassinations. If a member is found guilty of any of these he is severely beaten. If he is arrested by the police we do not bother ourselves about him. We let him go to jail. . . . I should point out that one morena under me in Klerksdorp is now on trial because of a taxi conflict. He broke my rule by accepting payment to engage in that conflict and we will not pay for his lawyer because he broke that rule.” These efforts to maintain discipline within each group did not apply to the association as a whole; the Marashea have a long history of infighting.

      INTERNECINE CONFLICT

      Russian gangs fought with other ethnically organized migrant groups; urbanized criminal youth, known as tsotsis; and the police. But above all, the rival factions battled each other. The rivalries that distinguished the different Marashea groups reflected regional animosities rooted in Lesotho’s history of succession disputes. “The factions of Matsieng and Ha-Molapo/Masupha reproduced and reignited the historical antagonism between the royalists of south Lesotho, follower of Moshoeshoe’s [founding king of Lesotho] heir, Letsie I, with his capital at Matsieng, and the restive collateral nobility of north Lesotho led by Moshoeshoe’s second and third sons, Molapo and Masupha, whom he installed at Peka and Thaba Bosiu, and who consistently defied or rebelled against the paramountcy.”27

      There are numerous stories as to why the split took place, ranging from fights over women to disputes over money, but it is evident that Basotho migrants carried a keen awareness of their homeland’s historical divisions. “We fought with the people of Molapo because they wanted to rule us. . . . We know that the king of Lesotho is living at Matsieng and we would not allow people from Ha-Molapo to rule us, so our quarrel started there” (DG). Oral evidence is consistent, however, that in the beginning Marashea were united: “Marashea began at Benoni. People from Lesotho were friends—there was brotherhood from Leribe to Matsieng, but we ended up separating because of women. The people from Matsieng killed a man named Lehloailane because of a woman, and the people of Molapo were furious” (BF).28 As Bonner observed, “Once this factional polarisation had taken place it quickly spread to other areas where Basotho migrants and immigrants were congregated and where the same latent rivalries were present. By the early 1950s there was scarcely a Reef township untouched by the fighting, which very often reached extraordinary intensity, involving up to a thousand combatants at any one time.”29

      These conflicts were a defining feature of Borashea, and the rivalry between Matsieng and Matsekha persists to this day. The Russian gangs in the Johannesburg area gained much notoriety in both the African and the white press because of the battles they waged across the length and breadth of the Rand from the 1950s to the 1970s. Colorful descriptions of hordes of blanketed warriors engaging in bloody disputes regularly made the headlines. Reports of train station crowds fleeing as Russian gangs joined in combat, officials and spectators scrambling to safety as opposing gangs continued their fights in the courtroom, and trials in which dozens of Russians were charged with public violence were all a result of internal rivalries.30 Russian disputes in mining districts attracted less attention because they took place in more isolated areas, away from official scrutiny, and tended to be less of a spectacle than the Rand battles. Still, fights in the Free State appeared in newspapers as well as police reports and mining correspondence.31

      A variation of the conventional rivalry seems to have existed in the early years, when conflict sometimes occurred between Russian mineworkers and township Russians, based on this occupational and spatial division, rather than strictly adhering to the Matsieng-Matsekha divide. In fact, one report traces the formal establishment of the Marashea to conflict between mineworkers and residents of Benoni location. According to this account, Basotho living in Benoni formed the original Russian gang in 1947 to prevent Basotho miners from visiting resident women.32 The testimony of a Molapo member active in Johannesburg during the 1950s indicates that in some groups little love was lost between location residents and mineworkers. PG1, who worked in the Johannesburg general post office and lived in Moroka, explains that the relationship between Russian mineworkers and township Russians “was not friendly because those people living in the mines, they were after the women. Now they have to be fucked up by [township Russians].” Presumably because of this antipathy, there were “not more than ten” mineworkers in PG1’s group, which, he reports, numbered in the hundreds. Before a 1960 battle between resident Russians and invading mineworkers, the Russians from the mines visited Naledi and left a note declaring, “Their home-boy Basothos of the township were women,”33 and vowed to return the following day. Forewarned, the local Marashea repelled the attack, killing at least two of the invaders. It is likely that such conflicts erupted on the Rand before the mid-1960s because township Russians could more readily find employment and were not as financially dependent on their mining compatriots. It is also possible that it was relatively easy for mineworkers, who had access to numerous locations throughout the Rand, to find women who were not resident in Russian-controlled areas and thus had less of a need for formal links with township Marashea. However, even in this environment, internecine conflict was characterized by clashes between Matsieng and Matsekha groups that incorporated both township dwellers and mineworkers.

      In spite of the ferocity of the fighting between rival Marashea factions, veterans draw a clear distinction between these conflicts and the battles Marashea fought with outsiders. There was a definite recreational aspect to early internecine battles as groups fought for bragging rights as Basotho. When veterans recount fights with rival groups, they describe rousing encounters. Before the battle the women would encourage the men by singing their praises and celebrations followed victories. During the week when Matsekha and Matsieng worked side by side in the mines and factories they would discuss previous battles, speak admiringly of brave and accomplished fighters, and predict victory in upcoming conflicts. “The fighting was good,” claims DB, a Matsieng veteran of the 1950s. “Although it was tough, we did not regret it because it was our choice and we enjoyed fighting.” NT, who also fought as a member of Matsieng in the 1950s, reminisced, “We were happy to fight because it was a sort of play; at that time we were not killing. When we beat you with melamu and you fell, we would leave you and chase your friends. We fought on Saturdays and Sundays; during the week we went to work because all of us were working. It was nice because it was like when Basotho boys play melamu at home.”

      Guy and Thabane have discussed this phenomenon as it applied to the Rand conflicts of the 1950s:

      Internecine fighting amongst the Ma-Rashea could possibly so weaken them that they could no longer effectively fulfill their function as defenders of the Basotho. It might leave them open to destruction by other groups—criminal or ethnic—or by the coercive arm of the state. Thus, deadly and violent as these confrontations were, there were certain devices that the Basotho factions adopted which limited the ultimate outcome—devices which they could use because there were certain assumptions that they as Basotho, could share, and which they could not share with other groups.34

      Thus, in the course of a battle when a man was wounded and helpless, his opponent might stand over him to ensure he was not killed. On some occasions defeated opponents

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