unprecedented number of strikes, including a major strike by black miners.
Moreover, the government
reported
fifty-eight incidents of sabotage
against state departments, petrol depots, power installations, and railroad
lines, and twenty-six attacks on police.P
The year 1985 was still more disturbed. School boycotts and bus boy-
cotts often led to violence. There were worker stayaways, clashes between
township residents and security forces, and attacks on black police and
councillors, Rural disturbances included resistance to a government deci-
sion to transfer an African community from the Bophuthatswana Home-
land to the KwaNdebele Homeland for political purposes. The number of
recorded insurgency attacks rose to 136, the recorded death toll in political
violence to 879. There were also 390
strikes involving 240,000
workers.
The protests continued into 1986. By that time, the formal machinery of
local government had broken down in parts of the black townships. Fear-
ing for their lives, many black councillors had resigned and informal
groups had assumed control. 22
There was also a great deal of violence among black South Africans.
Circumstances varied from place to place. In some locations, rival gangs,
brutalized by the conditions in which they lived and only loosely associ-