In maintaining their identity, the Tembu people ‘developed their own interpretation of the classic territorial organization of the Zulu, i.e. the king,…the chiefs,…the local chiefs,…the headmen….the land, the whole country, that is divided into regions' where ‘everybody is loyal to the king' (Clegg 1982, 8) (or government), but at the same time there is tension and opposition between different groups. The arrival of the white settlers in the midlands resulted in a sudden land shortage. Many families had to leave land that now belonged to a farmer. Those who could stay had to pay all kinds of taxes resulting in migrant workers who would work for six months a year on the farm and six in the cities as miners or industrial workers.

Meanwhile, compounds and hostels were established to house these migrant workers in Durban and Johannesburg. These hostels were located around the gold mines, heavy industries, railways, timber- and dockyards. Urban ‘home-boy' networks of workers from the same rural districts were formed as a re-organization of rural social order and workers of the same network would be drinking companions, belong to the same burial society and be in the same dance team (McClure 2003, 8). Johnny Clegg argues that the stick-fighting rituals were no longer able to contain the violence of the opposition between districts and that dance competitions were a new cultural solution to this violence. Commercial enterprises encouraged dances and company teams, giving their workers money for costumes and time off from work to rehearse (Clegg 1982, 10). Bred of creativity in the midst of diversity, the gumboot dance was at once an expression of joy and resistance.

Typically there are six to eight dancers in a team, arranged in a straight line, with one leader who calls out a series of dance sequences, or introduces the next sequence with a short solo pattern demonstration. The realities of working in the mines and living in the mine compounds (such as the nostalgia for home) are reflected in the names of the dance sequences which include words and concepts like ‘dayinja' (danger), ‘abelungu' (white people) or ‘amaphoyisa' (police), ‘bulala' (destroy, murder), ‘Gobek' (go back), GwazamaZulu (stab the Zulu), ‘skhula numtwana' (the child is still growing), and ‘shiyalekhaya' (abandoned at home) (Muller 1999, 101 – 103). The words are often in Fanakalo, which roughly translated means ‘do as I do', a language which developed in the mines to allow workers and bosses of different races and tribes to communicate. Fanakalo is a linguistic manifestation of the polarisation between authority and subservience, consisting entirely of a set of commands and responses (McClure 2003, 12).

In its contemporary context, Gumboot dancing embodies the ‘simultaneous presence in a single performance of ancestral beliefs and dance style, Hollywood cowboy and tap dance films, nineteenth- century Anglo-American minstrel performance, industrial labour relations, European folk music, mission Christianity and ethnic tensions' (Muller 1999, 92). In a way, just like the invisible district boundaries that lay below the new land divisions, Gumboot dancing happens at an intersection of all kinds of cultural ‘districts' superimposed on the old and is characterized by its humorous and frequently satirical engagement with everyday realities. One can also find many references to militaristic or fighting references and a main feature of the impact of Gumboot dance is the group as a unit of social interaction. The dancers' bodies are loose and free, but the sounds and rhythms are precise and tight.