witdoeke

English

From Afrikaans wit (“white”) + doek (“cloth”), referring to the strips of white cloth members wore on their heads or arms.

witdoeke pl (plural only)

(historical) Members of conservative black vigilante groups in the South African provinces of the Cape and Orange Free State in the 1980s.
- 1990, J. M. Coetzee, Age of Iron, London: Secker & Warburg, Part III, p. 83:
  ‘They were shooting again yesterday. They were giving guns to the witdoeke and the witdoeke were shooting.’
- 1998, Truth and Reconciliation Commission Final Report, Volume 3, Chapter 5, Subsection 29,^[1]
  After the witdoeke attacks of May and June 1986, thousands of refugees were forced to live in schools and churches. Refugees were arrested from these centres and tortured to make them confess to a range of public violence crimes. […] It is notable that few if any witdoeke were arrested or charged.