Origins and Meanings

The word "tsotsi" means a black urban criminal, a street thug or gang member in the vernacular of black townships in South Africa. Its origin is possibly a corruption of the Sesotho word "tsotsa" meaning to dress flashily, zoot suits being originally associated with tsotsis. A male is called a tsotsi and a female tsotsi is called a noasisa.

Tsotsis are usually part of the urban youth gang society that grew up on the streets of the ghetto. Their history goes back to the famous youth gangs of the 1930s in the Soweto township area outside Johannesburg. Former South African president, Nelson Mandela, in his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, recalls them as part of the crowded township life in Johannesburg of the 1940's.

'As so often happens in desperately poor places, the worst elements came to the fore,' writes Mandela. 'Life was cheap; the gun and the knife ruled at night. Gangsters - known as tsotsis - carrying flick-knives or switchblades were plentiful and prominent; in those days they emulated American movie stars and wore fedoras and double-breasted suits and wide, colourful ties.'

There were the zoot-suited, big-time tsotsis and small-time, wide-boy tsotsis. In the 50's and 60's the big-timers often had Asians or Whites behind them and did large-scale crimes, and the small-time ones were amateurs, often boys who didn't go to school and young men who didn't care to work a regular job or could not find work.

Today the word is used more generally as a name for displaced young criminals. Whereas in the past the word Tsotsi tended to conjure up a glamorous gangster image, today the word is more usually associated with younger street gangs whose lives are often far from glamorous.

But one thing hasn't changed: Most Tsotsis still come from underprivileged backgrounds. As the Drum magazine investigative journalist Henry Nxumalo wrote in the 1950's: "They are made every day on the Reef" (around Johannesburg, a place also known as the Golden City.) "It is true that when a young boy takes the wrong turning it is partly his own fault; but the amount of crime in a city varies with the well-being or poverty of the mass of its citizens. With the grinding poverty and the sea of squalor that surrounds the 'Golden City', it is not difficult to understand the rest. There is a struggle for existence, and the individual intends to survive."

Under the apartheid rule of the Nationalist Party (1948 to 1994), pass laws restricting black movement were introduced in 1952. Blacks had to have a pass permitting them to live and work in certain areas. Having no pass or the wrong pass was a criminal offence.

As Nxumalo wrote: "No education, no work, or no pass - that means that a young man must live by night and not by day - and that makes criminals. Able men are frustrated by the lack of opportunity in their lives: soon they find that they can make more money by crime than by honest means." And so a tsotsi is born.

Although the ANC (African National Congress), PAC (Pan African Congress), ANC Youth Movement and Black Consciousness Movement tried to draw the volatile township tsotsi gang movement into disciplined political activities, they ultimately failed.

Tsotsis talk Tsotsi-Taal, or Isicamtho, the South African township slang which is made up of Afrikaans and a mixture of all other local vernacular languages like Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana and Sotho. The South African Concise Oxford Dictionary describes it as "an Afrikaans-influenced township patois…typically spoken in Gauteng" (formerly the Reef area). Tsotsi-Taal has increasingly been incorporated into daily conversation through music, radio and general communication. Consequently, most people who live in South Africa understand at least some Tsotsi-Taal.