As South Africa gears up for general elections in April, there are fears that violence could return to Kwazulu-Natal province, after 10 years of relative calm. The province is one of the most politically volatile in the country. It is one of only two provinces where the ruling African National Congress is not virtually assured of victory. And there is a long history of violence between supporters of the ANC and the mainly Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party.
One resident of this town, Thandi Madondo, has a permanent reminder of the troubled history of Kwazulu-Natal. As she speaks, her right hand gently massages the stump of her left arm, severed halfway between her shoulder and elbow.
In 1986, she says, someone threw a hand grenade into her home. The blast ripped off her left arm. She was 12 years old.
A few months later, the attackers came back and set fire to her house. Her brother was badly burned all over his body. She remembers his flesh sticking to the blanket he had been sleeping under.
Twice, Ms. Madondo and her family moved. Twice, they were followed and burned out of their home. Finally, seeking safety, they moved to Tongaat, a small coastal town north of Durban, surrounded by sugarcane fields.
She says the family moved here to escape. She says the attackers wanted to kill her mother because she was an activist for the African National Congress, the ANC.
Ms. Madondo believes the man who threw the grenade that blew off her arm was a member of the ANC's main rival in this province, the Inkatha Freedom Party.
The two parties were bitter enemies during the apartheid era, and their history of violence is legendary.
But in the 10 years since the end of apartheid, there has been an uneasy truce, on both the provincial and national levels. The two parties have shared power, with an Inkatha man as Kwazulu-Natal provincial governor and the party's leader, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, as national Minister of Home Affairs.
Political analyst Claude Kabembe of the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa says both parties have traditionally had fairly equal support in the province, which makes it hard for one to govern without the other.
"If we have a close race between the IFP and the ANC, it is very difficult for one party to just govern that province because it might create violence," he said. "If there is a very huge margin of difference between the two parties, it's possible that we might see one party governing that province. But I expect the race to be close, and if it's close I expect the two parties to go into alliance."
The alliance has largely kept the peace, but analysts fear it is unraveling as the elections approach. Both parties want to win outright control of Kwazulu-Natal. In order to do so, they are increasingly attacking each other - mostly with words, but not always.
There have been several nasty incidents already, including a clash in Tongaat a few weeks ago, not far from where Thandi Madondo lives.
Speaking through a scratchy microphone at a Durban campaign rally, South African President Thabo Mbeki of the ANC tells voters he has ordered the police to adopt a zero-tolerance policy on campaign violence - no matter who is behind it.
"Next time any political party or individual tries to block any registered organization from campaigning, please arrest them immediately," he said. "We've had absolutely enough of this misbehavior, and particularly in this province. Too many people in this province died in the 1980s and the 1990s. We do not want a repetition of that."
ANC leaders say the violence in this election cycle has been almost entirely one-sided, with Inkatha responsible for it. Inkatha leaders strongly deny that, saying both sides have caused trouble. Inkatha Freedom Party spokesman Musa Zondi also says the news media tend to paint every incident that happens in Kwazulu-Natal as inter-party violence, when in fact not everything is political.
"When they see people in a brawl after people got drunk, after visiting a bar, because they are in Kwazulu-Natal, they must be IFP and ANC," he said.
The rivalry between the two parties means that Kwazulu-Natal is, in some ways, a more advanced democracy than much of the rest of the country, where the ANC enjoys more than 60 percent support. Analysts predict the ruling party will not face a real challenge nationally for another generation. But in Kwazulu-Natal, it is already happening.
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