'We are fighting the world': A history of the Marashea gangs in South Africa, 1947--1999

This dissertation explores the history of the predominantly Basotho migrant criminal society known as the Marashea or Russians, which has been active in South Africa since the 1940s. The testimony of current and former gang members collected in Lesotho and in South African townships and shack settlements provides the basis for the thesis. The central organising principal of this study is to account for the Marashea's ability to survive, and even flourish, throughout the apartheid era. To accomplish this task, I explore how identity formation, gender relations, economic opportunism, collective violence, and political manoeuvring contributed to the long-term integrity of the different factions of the Marashea. There were three pillars to the Marashea's success: its economic relationship with mineworkers, its control of migrant women, and its non-adversarial stance towards the apartheid state.;The survival strategies of the Marashea raise questions concerning scholars' insistence on labelling the coping mechanisms of the colonised as ‘resistance’ or ‘collaboration.’ The range of strategies and tactics employed by the different gangs demonstrates that the categories of resistor and collaborator do not accurately describe the Marashea. The gangs were not guided by political loyalties or antagonisms. Their interactions with South African government forces and supporters of the liberation movements were overwhelmingly motivated by self-interest and self-preservation. So, although their actions encompassed both ‘resistance’ and ‘collaboration,’ the Marashea gangs' core survival philosophy would be better classified as negotiation. The gangs negotiated the terrain of apartheid South Africa and developed strategies that best served their needs.;The history of the Marashea illustrates the autonomy of African organisations during an era in which the bureaucratic and coercive arm of the apartheid state supposedly extended into all areas of African life. Despite the best efforts of the National Party to extend its control over urban Africans, the Marashea constructed a vibrant and powerful subculture that existed outside of white control and played an important role in the lives of thousands of Basotho and South Africans. Russian activities had significant repercussions for migrant women, mineworkers and residents in squatter camps and locations. They also influenced the political developments of the 1980s and 1990s as many of the gangs co-operated with the police and mining authorities to resist the initiatives of the African National Congress (ANC) and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). This examination of how the various Marashea gangs ordered life in the townships and informal settlements, and engaged with the state, ANC and NUM supporters, and competing organisations, provides a better understanding of the social and political relationships that emerged in apartheid South Africa.