When apartheid ended, everybody expected political and ethnic conflict to erupt, all the more so that political violence between the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) which built its political mobilization at least partly on Zulu ethnic identity and the African National Congress (ANC) was at the highest during this period (1990--1994) in KwaZulu Natal and that the transition to democracy was negotiated between parties which were demanding strong group protection (i.e. in terms of language, political veto, etc.). Some were even threatening war (i.e. the Afrikaner Volksfront, the PAC, and AZAPO) should their claims not be accommodated. However, after pervasive political violence during the late apartheid years which were deeply marked by racial and ethnic cleavages (most notably in KwaZulu-Natal), violence along ethnic and racial lines appears to have diminished, virtually to have disappeared in South Africa since its democratic self-governing transition in the early 1990s while criminal violence has reached very high levels, amongst the highest in the world in fact.;This thesis will explores the relative decrease in political and ethnic violence in a global context dominated by the rise of identity politics and identity based conflict. Secondly, it will look at the passage from political violence to criminal violence, which, while being both infra and supra ethnic, is very much organized and collective, e.g. gangsterism and vigilantism. Isn't such violence in fact political and expressing discontentment towards state policies by those excluded from such policies, i.e. the poor? Furthermore, aren't such non-civil organizations or institutions providing meaning and identity to their members, and therefore expressing an atypical form of identity politics?
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