WE MUST INFILTRATE THE TSOTSIS - SCHOOL POLITICS AND YOUTH GANGS IN SOWETO, 1968-1976

By the late 1960s, two major associative structures dominated youth cu lture in Soweto: the school and the gang. Despite secondary school exp ansion during the early 1970s, no more than a third of the teenage and adolescent population of Soweto amended school by the middle of the d ecade. Gangs, which offered a powerful alternative to schooling, attra cted a large proportion of unemployed and non-schoolgoing male adolesc ents. I While the gangs were absorbed by localised competition a polit ical culture gradually took root in Soweto's high schools. Conflict mo unted between high schools and gangs in the lend-up to the 1976 uprisi ng. It was an uprising of school students rather than 'the youth', a c ontemporary catch-all category which often obscures deep cultural divi sions. School and university-based activists, recognising the politica l potential of gangs, made some attempt to draw the gang constituency into disciplined political activity but they Mere largely unsuccessful . Gangs participated spontaneously in the uprising but the Soweto Stud ents Representative Council, in order to maintain credibility with a b roader Soweto support base, distanced itself from all gang activity an d even mounted anti-gang operations during late 1976 and 1977.