2017: PRETORIA WEST RACIAL BATTLE BETWEEN BLACKS & WHITES

13th Oct 2019

In 2017, in Pretoria West, the ANC moved 200 blacks into some houses they had repossed from white owners. These blacks were moved into a lower class, poor white suburb and the blacks were causing crime. This resulted in the only front clash between blacks and whites that I know of in South Africa. The whites decided to toyi toyi. They formed quite a large crowd and they began to blockade a main road in Pretoria West. They threw rocks all over the road and started burning tyres. This was late in the evening.
The blacks and whites fought each other with their fists and they were throwing rocks at each other. Large numbers of Police came. The whites called for Reinforcements from other parts of Pretoria and even Johannesburg – but none came, despite promising to come.

The animosity was most intense on a Friday evening I think. But it carried on for more than one day.

I think a white man was killed. People were hurt. The whites claimed, to me, that they might have killed a black. I don’t really think it was true.

The whites put such pressure on blacks, that most of the blacks packed up and left within a week.

I went to Pretoria West a day or so later, and I spoke to the people who were involved. I walked with them to the scenes of the racial fighting and I took many photographs of it. I questioned them at length.

However, once the blacks were gone, they hit back with an intense crime wave on the suburb which lasted about a year. The whites, being quite poor, had no armed response service so they had to patrol the streets themselves. The Police also never helped them. They had to catch the black criminals, physically themselves. They took them to the Police station and many times the Police would let them go. Eventually after about a year, the crime wave died down and the area is peaceful now.