The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) marks 33 years since the Boipatong massacre, one of the darkest and bloodiest acts of political violence in our country’s history.
On the night of 17 June 1992, a group of approximately 300 men, armed with weapons, left the KwaMadala Hostel in Sebokeng and descended on the Joe Slovo Informal Settlement in Boipatong. Over the course of that night, they unleashed terror on defenceless residents, killing 45 people, including women, children, and the elderly, and injuring many more.
The attackers were affiliated with the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), which operated with the full knowledge and protection of the apartheid state. They entered and exited the township with military-style coordination, and reports confirmed the involvement or complicity of the apartheid police, who either stood by or actively assisted. This was not a random act of violence but a premeditated massacre meant to destabilise communities aligned to the liberation movements and sabotage negotiations toward a democratic dispensation.
Boipatong must be remembered as part of a broader campaign of terror between 1984 and 1993, when the apartheid regime used covert operations, death squads, and proxy forces to divide Black communities, crush resistance, and maintain white supremacy. Townships like Sebokeng, Sharpeville, and Boipatong became war zones, with the apartheid state arming hostel dwellers and using the IFP as a weapon against other organisations in the area.
The massacre came at a critical moment in our history. South Africa was engaged in formal negotiations under the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA, but Boipatong shattered the illusion of honest dialogue. In the aftermath of the killings, the ANC withdrew from the talks, rightly accusing the Nationalist Party government of negotiating in bad faith. It exposed the Nationalist Party government’s double game of negotiating by day and killing by night.
To this day, justice for Boipatong remains denied. While certain individuals were convicted, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission failed the victims and survivors because no senior officials in the apartheid regime, the IFP, or the security forces were held accountable. Mangosuthu Buthelezi and the IFP leadership have never fully explained their role in this and other massacres that took place across KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng in the early 1990s.
As the EFF, we honour the lives lost in Boipatong, we recommit to the unfinished struggle for justice for all victims of apartheid violence, in any form. We owe it to the victims of Boipatong.
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