People's War: New Light on the Struggle for South Africa

By Anthea Jeffery

Twenty years have passed since South Africans were being shot or hacked or burned to death in political conflict; and the memory of the trauma has faded. Some 20 500 people were nevertheless killed between 1984 and 1994. The conventional wisdom is that they died at the hands of a state-backed Third Force, but the more accurate explanation is that they died as a result of the people's war the ANC unleashed.
As the people's war accelerated from September 1984, intimidation and political killings rapidly accelerated. At the same time, a remarkably effective propaganda campaign put the blame for violence on the National Party government and its alleged Inkatha surrogate. Sympathy for the ANC soared, while its rivals suffered crippling losses in credibility and support.
By 1993 the ANC was able to dominate the negotiating process, as well as to control the (undefeated) South African police and army and bend them to its will. By mid-1994 it had trounced its rivals and taken over government.
People's War shows the extraordinary success of this war in giving the ANC a virtual monopoly on power. It also shows, in part at least, the great cost at which this was achieved. Apart from the killings, the terror, and the destruction that marked the period from 1984 to 1994, the people's war set in motion forces that cannot easily be reversed. For violence cannot be turned off 'like a tap', as the ANC suggested, and neither can anarchy easily be converted into order.
Anthea Jeffery holds law degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand and from Cambridge, and a doctorate in human rights law from the University of London. Her previous books include The Natal Story: Sixteen years of conflict and The Truth about the Truth Commission. Both books have been acclaimed for their meticulous and objective approach, and for breaking new ground on important and contentious issues.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jonathan Ball
• Release date: Jun 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781868426362

Anthea Jeffery

Anthea Jeffery holds law degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand and from Cambridge, and a doctorate in law from the University of London. Her previous books include Business and Affirmative Action; People’s War: New Light on the Struggle for South Africa; and Chasing the Rainbow: South Africa’s Move from Mandela to Zuma. Since 1990, she has worked for the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), where she is Head of Policy Research and editor of the Institute’s policy bulletin.

Book preview

Fifteen years have passed since South Africans were being shot or hacked or burned to death in political conflict; and the memory of the trauma has faded. Some 20 500 people were nevertheless killed between 1984 and 1994. The conventional wisdom is that they died at the hands of a state-backed Third Force, but the more accurate explanation is that they died as a result of the people’s war the ANC unleashed.

As the people’s war accelerated from September 1984, intimidation and political killings rapidly accelerated. At the same time, a remarkably effective propaganda campaign put the blame for violence on the National Party government and its alleged Inkatha surrogate. Sympathy for the ANC soared, while its rivals suffered crippling losses in credibility and support.

By 1993 the ANC was able to dominate the negotiating process, as well as to control the (undefeated) South African police and army and bend them to its will. By mid-1994 it had trounced its rivals and taken over government.

Since 1994, many books have been written on South Africa’s political transition, but none deals adequately with the people’s war. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission should have covered this, but largely overlooked it.

This book shows the extraordinary success of people’s war in giving the ANC a virtual monopoly on power. It also shows, in part at least, the great cost at which this was achieved. Apart from the killings, the terror, and the destruction that marked the period from 1984 to 1994, the people’s war set in motion forces that cannot easily be reversed. For violence cannot be turned off ‘like a tap’, as the ANC suggested, and neither can anarchy easily be converted into order.

Anthea Jeffery holds law degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand and from Cambridge, and a doctorate in human rights law from the University of London. Her previous books include The Natal Story: Sixteen years of conflict and The Truth about the Truth Commission. Both books have been acclaimed for their meticulous and objective approach, and for breaking new ground on important and contentious issues.

PEOPLE’S WAR

New Light on the Struggle for South Africa

Anthea Jeffery

JONATHAN BALL PUBLISHERS

Johannesburg & Cape Town

Preface

Founded in 1929, the South African Institute of Race Relations (the Institute) played a major part in exposing the iniquities of the apartheid system. Like everyone else, we expected that the political liberalisation announced on 2 February 1990 would bring a swift end to the political violence which had flared up in 1984. The opposite happened. The average fatality rate in political violence from 1985 to 1989 had been about a thousand a year. But from early 1990 to the first all-race general election in April 1994, the killing rate tripled to more than 3 400 a year. Moreover, most of the 15 000 or more people killed in this period were not soldiers, policemen, or trained insurgents. Rather, they were ordinary people, nearly all of them black.

Having launched a monitor of political killings in the mid-1980s, we were convinced that most of the conventional explanations of the intensifying violence were inadequate at best. This book is the culmination of a series of studies dating back to the early1990s. They include The Liberal Slideaway, which explored how liberals often turned a blind eye to revolutionary violence, and The Truth about the Truth Commission, an exposé of the many flaws in the report of that body. Among the other studies of violence published by the Institute were The Natal Story, which examined the murderous conflict between the African National Congress (ANC) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), and Spotlight on Disinformation about Violence in South Africa.

Our research convinced us that the transition in 1994 from minority to majority rule was not a ‘miracle’, as often suggested, but the product of a remarkably successful strategy. With significant financial support from the Donaldson Trust – for which the Institute would like to record its thanks – my colleague Dr Anthea Jeffery has put together an account of what that strategy comprised and how it was implemented. Unlike any of the other numerous books on the transition, thus one gives full weight to the ANC’s multifaceted people’s war, showing how it brought the organisation from relative obscurity in earlier years to virtually untrammelled political power in 1994.

John Kane-Berman

Chief Executive

South African Institute of Race Relations

April 2009

Dedication

This book has been funded by the Donaldson Trust as a memorial to Marjorie Britten: 1915–1998

It is fitting that this book should commemorate the life and work of Mrs Marjorie Britten, for not only was she a prominent and dynamic figure in both the Donaldson Trust and the South African Institute of Race Relations, but she was also an enthusiastic sponsor of the book. Before she died, she urged the Donaldson Trust to commission the Institute to produce it, and she particularly wanted it to be written by Dr Anthea Jeffery, whose work she admired. She also believed that the Institute’s long years of exposing the iniquities of apartheid, together with its reputation for independent-minded and meticulous research, made it ideally suited to carry out what she considered to be a project of vital importance – so much so that she herself was actively involved in raising funds for it.

The Donaldson Trust was founded in 1936 by Colonel James Donaldson DSO mainly to sponsor development among black people. It has since provided schools, bursaries, and countless facilities in black communities. Mrs Britten served many years on the trust. Amid active work in the field and as a fundraiser, she found time to write a riveting history of the trust. Mr Benjamin Donaldson, chairman of the trust and grandson of the colonel, relied heavily on her judgement. He said, ‘She was a tower of strength who never flinched from doing or saying what she believed to be right, however unpopular that might make her.’ Up until a few months before her death on 19 April 1998, aged 83, she was still visiting trust projects in far-flung rural communities.

Mrs Britten worked at the Institute between 1968 and 1977, first as administrator and then as trusts officer. During this decade she turned Dr Ellen Hellmann’s dream of a large-scale black bursary programme into reality. A superb administrator and inspired fundraiser, Mrs Britten was able to fire potential donors with her own enthusiasm for the programme. Mr Nelson Mandela was an early recipient of an Institute bursary, and there are thousands of others who owe their present success – and their ability to contribute to the development of the new South Africa – to Mrs Britten’s pioneering work. Bursary recipients, in whom she took a personal and lifelong interest, remember her with special affection, as do colleagues and Institute employees whom she dragooned, trained, and nurtured.

After she retired from the Institute in 1978, Mrs Britten continued working on the boards of two major bursary trusts: the Robert Shapiro Trust, and the Gert and Irmgard Brusseau Trust, of which latter trust she was chairman. A founder member and first Natal president of the Black Sash, Mrs Britten was also an active member of the Democratic Party (ever since it began as the Progressive Party), and a valued member and one-time national secretary of Soroptimists International. All these organisations benefited from her hard work and political wisdom – and above all, in dark days, were heartened by her appealing spirit of gallantry and bloodymindedness.

A long-time colleague in the Donaldson Trust and Soroptimists International said of Mrs Britten: ‘Marjorie’s sense of the fitness of things, her careful use of language, her real concern for the underdog, and her impressively high standards of truth and behaviour could have made her unrestful company had these attributes not been tempered with a devilish sense of humour and total lack of side. She was wonderful company, with a keen intellect that seemed to sharpen with the years. When one failed to measure up to her standards, one was left in no doubt of it, but there was never any cruelty or malice in her strictures. She bore her own burdens uncomplainingly and expected the same from others. She was a great lady, tough and kind-hearted, downright and loyal. I, with many others, greatly miss her liberal and steadfast presence.’

Marjorie Britten left behind her a wide circle of friends – and beyond that a place of honour in the history of the Institute, of the Donaldson Trust, and of South Africa.

Jill Wentzel

MARJORIE BRITTEN 1915–1998

(Photograph courtesy of Anne Scott)

ABBREVIATIONS

ANC: African National Congress

Apla: Azanian People’s Liberation Army

AWB: Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging

Azapo: Azanian People’s Organisation

BCM: Black Consciousness Movement

BCMA: Black Consciousness Movement of Azania

Case: Community Agency for Social Enquiry

Cast: Civic Association of Southern Transvaal

CCB: Civil Cooperation Bureau

CDF: Conference for a Democratic Future

Codesa: Convention for a Democratic South Africa

Contralesa: Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa

Cosag: Concerned South Africans Group

Cosas: Congress of South African Students

Cosatu: Congress of South African Trade Unions

CP: Conservative Party

CPSA: Communist Party of South Africa

CPSU: Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Cradora: Cradock Residents’ Association

Cusa: Council of Unions of South Africa

DP: Democratic Party

FA: Freedom Alliance

Fosatu: Federation of South African Trade Unions

HRC: Human Rights Commission

HSRC: Human Sciences Research Council

ICJ: International Commission of Jurists

ICT: Institute for Contextual Theology

Idasa: Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa

IEC: Independent Electoral Commission

IFP: Inkatha Freedom Party

ISU: Internal Stability Unit

Jodac: Johannesburg Democratic Action Committee

Jorac: Joint Rent Action Committee

LAC: Leandra Action Committee

Mayo: Mamelodi Youth Organisation

MDM: Mass Democratic Movement

MK: Umkhonto we Sizwe

MPLA: Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola

NECC: National Education Crisis Committee

Nehawu: National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union

NPKF: National Peace-Keeping Force

OAU: Organisation of African Unity

OFS: Orange Free State

PAC: Pan-Africanist Congress

Parco: Port Alfred Residents’ Civic Organisation

Paso: Pan-Africanist Students’ Organisation

PFP: Progressive Federal Party

PWV: Pretoria/Witwatersrand/Vereeniging area

Renamo: Resistência Nacional Moçambicana

Saawu: South African Allied Workers’ Union

SACC: South African Council of Churches

SACP: South African Communist Party

Sactu: South African Congress of Trade Unions

SADF: South African Defence Force

Sadtu: South African Democratic Teachers’ Union

SAIRR: South African Institute of Race Relations

SAP: South African Police

Sapa: South African Press Association

Sarhwu: South African Railway and Harbour Workers’ Union

SASO: South African Students’ Organisation

Sayco: South African Youth Congress

SATS: South African Transport Services

SDU: self-defence unit

SPU: self-protection unit

SRC: Students’ Representative Council

SPCC: Soweto Parents’ Crisis Committee

SSC: State Security Council

Swapo: South West African People’s Organisation

TEC: Transitional Executive Council

TRC: Truth and Reconciliation Commission

UDF: United Democratic Front

Unita: União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola

Uwusa: United Workers’ Union of South Africa

VAT: Value-added Tax

VCA: Vaal Civic Association

VOA: Victims of Apartheid

GLOSSARY

amabutho: zulus armed with assegais

assegai: spear

askaris: ‘turned’ members of Umkhonto we Sizwe, persuaded to work for the security forces

bakkie: small truck

bantustans: black ‘homelands’ during the apartheid era

boere: literally ‘farmers’, but also a derogatory term for Afrikaners in general

bosberaad: conference

Caprivi trainees: Inkatha members trained in the Caprivi Strip in Namibia

Casspirs: armoured vehicles used by the security forces

civic associations: structures set up by the ANC alliance to take the place of black local councils

Goldstone commission: statutory commission of inquiry into violence from 1991 to 1994, chaired by Judge Richard Goldstone

impi: band of armed men

impimpi: ‘sell-out’, collaborator

indaba: conference

intelezi: traditional potion

keffiyeh: head covering made of cloth and worn by Muslims

kholwa: believers (Christians)

kitskonstabels: ‘instant’ policemen deployed in townships in the 1980s after three weeks’ training

klova: derogatory term for a rural, unsophisticated person

knobkerrie: club

kombi: minibus

lekgotla: consultation

Mbokotho: ‘the stone that crushes’, group used by ANC leaders to maintain discipline in exile camps

Mbokotho: ‘the stone that crushes’, ‘vigilante’ group established in KwaNdebele to resist coercion by youths

muti: traditional medicine

necklacing: killing by igniting a petrol-filled tyre draped round the neck of victim

otheleweni: derogatory nickname for Inkatha supporters

panga: long sharp knife

perestroika: rebuilding or restructuring

self defence units: groups of youths armed and trained by the ANC alliance

self protection units: groups of youths armed and trained by the IFP

sjambok: quirt

shebeen: township liquor outlet

‘specials’: see kitskonstabels

taxi: minibus transport used mainly by black commuters

third-force theory: belief that the security forces were instigating violence

townships: ‘black’ residential areas on the outskirts of ‘white’ towns

toyi-toyi: revolutionary dance often accompanying demonstrations by the ANC alliance

volkstaat: Afrikaner homeland

veld: open ground

verkrampte: conservative member of the National Party

verligte: enlightened (‘liberal’) member of the National Party

Wararas: township youths aligned with the UDF

witdoeke: conservative older men in the Crossroads shack settlement in Cape Town

ZimZims: township youths aligned with Azapo

Introduction

In 1961, when the African National Congress (ANC) embarked on armed struggle, racial discrimination permeated every nook and cranny of life within South Africa, stunting the lives and betraying the hopes of millions of black people. After some 15 years of National Party (NP) rule, discrimination lay ‘at the very heart’ of South African society, as John Kane-Berman (then a journalist on the Financial Mail and since 1983 the chief executive of the South African Institute of Race Relations) was later to write: ‘Discrimination… governs every facet of our lives from the cradle to the grave – and even beyond, since even our cemeteries are racially segregated. It is enforced where we live, where we work, where we play, where we learn, where we go when sick, and on the transport we use. Not only does the government condone it; it systematically pursues it, preaches it, practises it, and enforces it. It is enshrined in our Constitution, written into our laws, and enforced by the courts.’1

There was little realistic prospect that the NP government under prime minister Dr Hendrik Verwoerd would abandon the apartheid system of its own volition, for Verwoerd resisted pressures for change and saw himself as ‘the man of granite’ who would hold the race-based edifice together. The Sharpeville shootings in March 1960 had also narrowed the space for peaceful protest, as had the banning the following month of both the ANC and the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), the organisation responsible for organising the Sharpeville demonstration against the notorious pass laws.

In 1961 the government again rejected pleas by black South Africans for a national convention, underlining the futility of patient appeals for a shift in policy. In response, various political organisations began turning to violence to reinforce their demands for change. The PAC established an armed wing, Poqo, which sought to spark a general insurrection. A group of white liberals, the African Resistance Movement (ARM), embarked on a series of bomb blasts. Against this background, the ANC may have felt that it had little choice but to follow suit. Umkhonto we Sizwe, the Spear of the Nation, was formed in November 1961 and began attacks soon afterwards under a manifesto stating: ‘The time comes in the life of any nation where there remain only two choices: submit or fight. That time has come now to South Africa. We shall not submit and we have no choice but to hit back by all means within our power in defence of our people, our future, and our freedom.’2

Though apartheid injustices fostered polarisation and invited insurrection,3 the ANC’s decision to adopt armed struggle was nevertheless deeply controversial. Most Africans were devout Christians who opposed the use of violence on principle. It was also far from clear that non-violent strategies had in fact been exhausted, as the ANC asserted. According to Professor Tom Lodge of the University of the Witwatersrand, stayaways and other demonstrations had been poorly organised in the past, while protest had been used mainly to ‘underscore moral assertions’ rather than make strategic gains. In Lodge’s view, the ANC had also paid little attention to the focused and incremental advances that might still be attained via strikes, civil disobedience, and boycotts.4

In the outside world, the tide of African nationalism was running high and some 20 African states had already attained independence. Condemnation of apartheid was also growing in intensity. Nevertheless, no Western democracy was willing to assist the ANC in its armed struggle against Pretoria. By contrast, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) had already endorsed the ANC’s turn to violence and stood willing to help in its implementation.5 However, Soviet assistance was motivated by factors other than a simple desire to help end apartheid. The USSR had long been intent on expanding communist influence wherever possible and saw the wresting of control over southern Africa as part of that process. Said Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev on various occasions: ‘Our goal is to control the two treasure chests on which the West depends – the energy treasure chest of the Persian Gulf and the mineral treasure chest of central and southern Africa.’6 South Africa had particular strategic significance to Moscow, not only because of its huge mineral resources but also because of its position on the important trade and oil supply route between Europe, the Persian Gulf, and the East.7

Soviet involvement complicated the situation, generating legitimate concerns that majority rule in South Africa would quickly turn to a form of communist dictatorship, as it had in other newly-independent African states. However, it was also not true, as the government was wont to claim, that communist agitation was solely to blame for the grievances of the African majority. Those grievances were real. Moreover, the longer they remained unresolved, the more opportunity this provided for the ANC and its key ally, the South African Communist Party (SACP), to agitate and organise for the overthrow of the minority regime – and to do so with a significant measure of international support.

The ANC nevertheless faced huge obstacles in mounting its armed struggle in the 1960s and the 1970s. Following its banning in 1960, it found it difficult to maintain a presence inside the country. Despite steady infusions of money, weapons, training and other military aid from Moscow, its armed struggle had little impact. The organisation found it difficult to recruit for Umkhonto, especially after Nelson Mandela and other ANC leaders were arrested at Rivonia (Johannesburg), tried for sabotage and attempted insurrection, and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964. It also found it impossible to infiltrate trained men back in significant number, and failed to sustain its bombing campaign after the collapse of its internal leadership.

By 1976 the ANC’s voice within the country had been silenced for 16 years, while Umkhonto’s armed struggle was moribund. The ANC had largely been forgotten by black South Africans, while new political organisations were growing rapidly in strength. The first of these internal rivals was Inkatha, which stood for liberation through non-violent means and commanded a strong following in KwaZulu/Natal as well as in Soweto and other townships on the Reef. The second was the Black Consciousness (BC) movement which Steven Bantu Biko had helped to form. The BC movement aimed to raise political awareness among Africans, overcome an ingrained sense of racial inferiority among many black people, and take the lead in demanding an end to political and economic exploitation. The BC movement had particular impact on black youth, and was instrumental in sparking the Soweto revolt on 16th June 1976.

The revolt lasted for more than 18 months, and shook South Africa to its core. It revitalised the ANC, showing that internal insurrection was still possible and pushing thousands of youths into exile, where most of these youngsters were induced to join the ANC and went to swell Umkhonto’s ranks. However, the revolt also struck fear into the ANC and its Soviet mentor, for it underlined the extent to which the ANC had been upstaged by its internal rivals. Far from being able to play a vanguard role in the liberation struggle, as it had always claimed to do, the ANC had largely been eclipsed by black organisations with far more support within the country.

The USSR stepped up its assistance to the ANC and renewed its endeavours to buttress the ANC’s effectiveness. At Moscow’s behest, a senior delegation from the ANC, the SACP, and Umkhonto embarked on a visit in October 1978 to a newly unified Vietnam. The aim was to put the ANC in touch with astute Vietnamese strategists such as President Ho Chi Minh and General Vo Nguyen Giap, who had developed a formula for revolutionary ‘people’s war’ which was remarkably effective and had (as recently as 1975) proved its worth through the defeat of South Vietnam and its powerful American ally.

The importance of the ANC’s visit to Vietnam has been recognised by various commentators, including Thabo Mbeki, then South Africa’s president. Mbeki paid a state visit to Vietnam in May 2007, thereafter writing in his online Letter from the President in ANC Today that Vietnam had ‘inspired us for many decades’. He said the ANC had accepted Ho Chi Minh and Giap as its own leaders, and that it had ‘constantly sought to understand’ their views, sayings, and actions, because ‘all this was directly relevant to the victory of our own struggle’. Mbeki also recalled the ANC’s visit to Vietnam in 1978, saying the organisation had sought to ‘learn from the victorious Vietnamese struggle’ in order to ‘intensify our own struggle for liberation’.8

However, like other commentators on the 1978 visit, Mbeki brushed over the content of the lessons from Vietnam. In essence, what the ANC absorbed there was the formula for successful people’s war. Though the term ‘people’s war’ has a logic of its own, it may also appear misleading to outsiders because it does not seem to capture the wide-ranging nature of the tactics it embraces. These tactics fall within two broad categories: commonly termed the ‘political struggle’ and the ‘military struggle’ (in fact, ‘the programme of violence’ in more accurate translation from Vietnamese). Together they constitute the two arms of the pincer, the hammer and the anvil, between which adversaries are weakened or destroyed.

People’s war is strikingly different from conventional war. Its principal effort revolves around organisation (drawing large numbers of people into a range of revolutionary structures) and communication (propaganda, in a nutshell). Though it includes bomb attacks and guerrilla assaults, such tactics form a relatively insignificant portion of a much larger whole. In waging such a war, no distinction is drawn between combatants and civilians. Instead all individuals, irrespective of their political affiliation or how far removed from political involvement they might be, are regarded as potential weapons of war (hence the term, people’s war) and hence as expendable in the conflict.

In 1979 the ANC adopted the lessons from Vietnam and began implementing them with Moscow’s help. The organisation never sought to defeat the South African security forces on the battle field, for this was an impossible task. Instead, it sought to generate a level of unrest, social turmoil, and economic malaise that in time would put enormous pressure on its adversaries to sue for peace. As the people’s war intensified from September 1984, intimidation and political killings rapidly accelerated. However, as the propaganda campaign intrinsic to the people’s war took hold, the violence was repeatedly blamed on the government and its alleged Inkatha surrogate. Sympathy and respect for the ANC alliance grew, while Inkatha, in particular, suffered crippling losses in credibility and support.

The ANC’s new strategy of people’s war went far beyond the simpler ‘armed struggle’ on which it had embarked in 1961. The strategy was also a brilliant success, for it touched all bases, covered all angles, and allowed the organisation to draw advantage from almost every major incident in the transition. This was especially the case after 1990, when violence and negotiations became closely interwoven and seemed to proceed in tandem. By 1993 the ANC was able to dominate the negotiating process, as well as to control the (undefeated) South African police and army and bend them to its will. In 1994, less than two decades after it had visited Vietnam to learn the formula for people’s war, it had trounced the NP government and Inkatha and become the dominant party in a new government of national unity.

The parallels between the elements of people’s war, as implemented in Vietnam, and events in South Africa from 1980 to 1994 are remarkable. Though many differences are evident, these are essentially distinctions in degree rather than in substance. In South Vietnam, where the Saigon government was backed by the United States of America from an early stage, the conflict escalated rapidly, soon involving massive B-52 bombing raids, a vast network of underground tunnels, the killing of 10 000 village chiefs, the frequent torching of jungle groves with napalm, a number of pitched battles between heavily armed combatants, and two invasions of the South (in 1973 and 1975) by large and well-equipped armies from the North. No such developments were evident in the struggle for South Africa, where apartheid was already crumbling by the time the people’s war began, regular warfare never developed, the negotiating process began early on, and most of the people killed were African civilians living in a relatively small number of black townships and rural settlements, mainly on the Reef and in KwaZulu/Natal.

In the 15 years since the ANC came to power, many books have been published on South Africa’s political transition. However, none deals adequately with the people’s war implemented by the ANC and its allies. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) should have covered this, for the TRC was instructed by its founding legislation to provide a comprehensive account of the political killings perpetrated on all sides between 1960 and 1994. In keeping with this mandate, the commission unearthed valuable information about security force killings in the apartheid era, highlighted the many massacres perpetrated by IFP supporters, and found the people’s war implemented by the PAC a breach of international humanitarian law because it deliberately targeted civilians. However, the TRC largely overlooked the people’s war conducted by the ANC. It also paid comparatively little attention to the period after the ANC’s unbanning, when about 15 000 people died and political violence was at its most acute. The result was that the commission provided a partial report that left out more than half the relevant deaths and did as much to distort as to disclose the truth.

When the TRC finished its work, it was evident that the full story of the lessons from Vietnam and their impact on the ANC’s long-standing struggle still remained to be told. This could be done only by reconstructing past events, especially those in the crucial ten years from 1984 to 1994, when some 20 500 people were killed. This total is quite low by the standard of other transitions, including that in Vietnam itself. However, this does not make it any less important to understand the context in which these individuals died, or to examine further the ANC’s view that the war it fought was a just one, propagated by just means.

Many readers may be surprised and dismayed at what this account reveals. Many may find it hard to believe at all. This is not surprising. The outrage triggered by apartheid within the country and across the globe generated great sympathy and support for the ANC in its tough battle against Pretoria. The iconic status accorded Nelson Mandela – both before and after his release from 27 years in an apartheid prison – also generated an aura of sanctity around the ANC, clouding accurate assessment of its actions. In addition, and most importantly of all, a people’s war is primarily a war of communication. One of its main aims is to throw dust in people’s eyes: to put forward a false theory of violence which is plausible in many ways, but nevertheless subverts the truth and turns it on its head. Once this false theory has become deeply rooted in the public mind, events inconsistent with it tend to be discounted and it becomes progressively more difficult to believe that it could be mistaken and misleading.

Many people have also found great comfort in the notion of South Africa’s ‘miracle’ transition, and have little wish to question this view of events. Moreover, well over a decade has passed since people were being shot or hacked or burned to death in large numbers for political advantage. The memory of the horror has faded, the country has settled down under an ANC government with major achievements to its credit, and the economy has grown substantially for a number of years. Though growth has now faltered and various weaknesses in governance are attracting more media coverage, there is nevertheless an understandable reluctance to probe beneath the ‘miracle’ of the transition to a less palatable reality. However, every organisation has to be understood in the light of its own history. This review of the people’s war – and the way in which it brought the ANC from relative obscurity in June 1976 to largely untrammelled political power in April 1994 – is intended to deepen understanding of this vital period in the history of the country and its ruling party.

Sources used

ANC publications and Radio Freedom broadcasts were a vital source of information in seeking to reconstruct the past. Interviews with political leaders across the political spectrum, conducted mainly in the early 1990s when political violence was at its height, were another. Interviews with journalists, academics, and senior police officers, conducted also at this time, provided further insights. Court judgments cast additional light on many significant events, as did the reports of numerous (mainly judicial) commissions of inquiry. The reports of the Standing Commission on Public Violence and Intimidation chaired by Judge Richard Goldstone, and commonly known as the Goldstone commission, were another important source. A number of books and journal articles proved invaluable as well.

However, none of these sources could suffice to stitch together the story of the ANC’s people’s war, for none dealt adequately with all its major aspects. These sources had therefore to be complemented by reference to press clippings. Often these provided the best, indeed the only, source of contemporaneous information about a host of incidents. The South African Institute of Race Relations has one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of press clippings in the country. It has also long relied on press cuttings as a vital source in compiling its annual yearbook, the South Africa Survey, which is renowned across the globe for its accuracy and objectivity. At the same time, press clippings undoubtedly have limitations. They may be mistaken in key respects. They may be overtaken by subsequent events not reported with the same degree of prominence. They may overlook important incidents, especially those occurring in far-flung rural areas not easily accessible to city-based reporters. They may also fail adequately to report on a chain of relatively minor events that cumulatively help to account for a major subsequent occurrence, such as a massacre.

In South Africa, and especially as regards the people’s war, press clippings had other limitations too. As political violence accelerated in the 1990s, killings began to average close on 300 a month. This meant that neither the police nor the reporters mandated to cover political violence could unravel the circumstances surrounding many hundreds of deaths. Numerous press reports, echoing daily police ‘unrest’ reports, simply recorded, for example, that ‘the body of a man had been found in the veld with stab wounds’. Such reports were meaningless in seeking to understand events.

Emergency rule also applied for most of the period from July 1985 to June 1990 (and for some months beyond that in KwaZulu and Natal). It was often assumed that these restrictions made it impossible for newspapers to report on the role of the police and army. This was not so, for a great deal of critical coverage of the conduct of the security forces in countering unrest was nevertheless published by the press. The probable security force role in the harassment, torture, or killing of various activists was also widely canvassed in the media, even though conclusive proof of such abuses could not be provided at the time.

Press coverage was also profoundly affected by a crucial element in people’s war: the drive to shape public perceptions through the constant repetition of certain themes. This was achieved by putting forward a false theory of violence which had a certain plausibility and which pointed the blame away from the revolutionaries and towards their adversaries. Events which supported the theory were given splash coverage, while developments which contradicted it tended to be ignored or played down. The theory was also held out as the sole enlightened perspective on violence, helping it become the common wisdom. At the same time, those who challenged this perspective were generally so denigrated that few were willing to follow in their footsteps.

Among black journalists with daily exposure to events in violence-torn townships, this unofficial and unacknowledged censorship was reinforced by intimidation and coercion. Said Thami Mazwai at a seminar on ‘the new censorship for the new South Africa’ organised by the South African Institute of Race Relations in August 1990:9

Little has been said about a new type of censorship that is around in the townships and poses the most powerful threat to press freedom in this country. We have a situation in which journalists are far less exposed to arrest, detention and incarceration by the government than they used to be, but are threatened and manhandled by political activists in the townships, in the towns, and everywhere, and are being told to ‘toe the line’ or else.

Now when you are told to toe the line, you must make your stories convey a particular meaning, in other words you must be a propagandist. You must play the numbers game. If there were twenty people at a meeting, and it is not in the interests of the organisation that called the meeting for the public to be told that there were only twenty people present, you have got to add a couple of noughts, and if you don’t add those noughts then you become an enemy of the struggle… The weapon that is used is to whisper, to spread the word around that ‘so-and-so is against the struggle’. Heaven help you if you are ever cornered by youngsters: they will make you pay for being against the struggle…

A lot of us have a commitment to the struggle, but the journalist in us has always forced us to try our level best to reject and ignore the pressures, and fight against them. Some have been successful in maintaining their credibility as journalists. Unfortunately not all of us have been able to do that. As a result, what appears in the newspapers will perhaps be 40% or 50% accurate, but there is that other 50% which is made up of particular political positions, specific distortions, and an attempt to influence the readership – the public – to think in a particular way.

One black journalist, Mondli Makhanya (currently editor of South Africa’s largest newspaper, the Sunday Times) actively participated in a key aspect of the people’s war. Makhanya came from KwaMashu (Durban) and supported the ANC’s internal ally, the United Democratic Front (UDF), in the conflict with Inkatha. Writing in 1991 under a pseudonym, Makhanya described his own participation in an incident on 11th February 1990 (the day Mandela was released from prison) in which an approaching Inkatha ‘impi’ was repulsed and the IFP was then routed from a nearby shack settlement. According to Makhanya, ‘the young lions then helped themselves to radios and other valuables left behind’, before setting shacks ablaze. Makhanya himself ‘concentrated on burning shacks’, while other youths ‘finished off wounded Inkatha warriors’, one of whom had his eyes gouged out and his genitals cut off while Makhanya looked on. One injured Inkatha man was dragged down to the township and set alight, and then had rubble piled on him to prevent his escape. Wrote Makhanya: ‘To me he was not a human being – he was an enemy who deserved what he got.’ Looking back on his experience ‘as a warrior’ in Natal, Makhanya added: ‘Nauseating as it all was, I was proud to be part of it… I must also admit that I enjoyed the excitement of battle: the sight of a sea of burning shacks and desperate men running for dear life.’ Makhanya’s account suggests that his capacity for objective assessment and reporting might have been eroded via his involvement in the fighting.10

Many of the white journalists writing for the commercial or ‘alternative’ English-language press also seemed to suspend their critical faculties, preferring not to probe beneath the surface of the ANC’s perspective on the conflict. In addition, some of them – as they themselves were later to acknowledge – were closet members of the ANC (Howard Barrell);11 or the SACP (Gavin Evans);12 or had been recruited to the task of helping raise the ANC’s profile within South Africa (Alan Fine);13 or were so outraged by the iniquities of National Party rule that they thought ‘journalistic objectivity,…in the moral climate of apartheid, was tosh’ (John Carlin).14

Moreover, the various alternative newspapers established during the 1980s – particularly the Weekly Mail, New Nation, and Vrye Weekblad – were assiduous in shielding the ANC from critical scrutiny of the people’s war and constantly placing the blame for violence elsewhere. This was in keeping with what former Vrye Weekblad editor Max du Preez euphemistically described in 2006 as ‘an old tradition among progressives or the Left in South Africa to be silent on certain problems…if it were judged that speaking out would strengthen the arguments of the reactionaries or the right wing’.15 In 2007 a disillusioned Du Preez became more outspoken, writing that the ANC had ‘actively supported and encouraged journalists like myself and newspapers like New Nation, Weekly Mail, South, and Vrye Weekblad in the dark days before 1994 to operate as media guerrillas for free speech and democracy’. However, said Du Preez, the ANC’s real objective had not been to strengthen democracy, but ‘merely to undermine their enemy and advance their own cause’.16

Such admissions not only understate the important role of the alternative press in assisting the people’s war, but were also not forthcoming in the vital decade preceding April 1994. A few of the key reports on Third-Force violence published by these alternative newspapers were investigated by the Goldstone commission in the early 1990s, and were then shown to be unsubstantiated or devoid of truth. However, findings of this kind had little impact because they were generally downplayed by both the newspapers concerned and the wider press. In addition, such findings were forthcoming only after intensive and time-consuming investigation. Hence, most were released many months after the initial false allegations had been splashed over front pages under banner headlines. Moreover, accusations about the Third-Force role in violence were generally not subjected to critical scrutiny. They passed unchallenged on the whole, helping to reinforce a common wisdom which drew further strength from the fact that both Inkatha and the police were undeniably to blame for a host of attacks and fatalities.

In addition, alternative newspapers with pro-ANC coverage were not only amply endowed with overseas funding, but were also commonly depicted as providing an independent assessment of events. By contrast, when Inkatha in 1987 assumed control of a major Zulu-language newspaper, Ilanga, the publication was soon dismissed as nothing more than an Inkatha mouthpiece. Among township residents, coercion and intimidation also followed. According to Arthur Konigkramer, managing director of the newspaper, ‘shopkeepers were threatened that their shops would be burnt down if they sold Ilanga, the lives of Ilanga staff were threatened and their homes had to be protected by police, and numerous bomb threats were received at Ilanga,…while many people who were caught buying Ilanga in the townships were actually forced to eat the paper – it was stuffed into their mouths’.17

At the same time, the small white liberal community which had always opposed apartheid failed to use its influential position in the press, the universities, and civil society to question or expose the tactics intrinsic to people’s war. Though liberals rejected violence on principle and had always strongly condemned state repression, many found it difficult to take issue with revolutionary excesses for fear of having their anti-apartheid credentials questioned. The result was what Jill Wentzel, in her book The Liberal Slideaway, called the ‘twenty-to-two’ rule. Liberals concerned about necklace executions and other killings found themselves under pressure to preface any criticism with a lengthy and detailed denunciation of apartheid injustice and repression. Only after roughly twenty sentences had been devoted to this topic could two be used to condemn revolutionary violence or question how best to counter it. Wrote Wentzel: ‘It was like being made to say grace before meals. If you didn’t do it, someone or other would lecture you on how the structural violence of apartheid was the root cause of mob attacks, and how it was necessary to understand why they happened. Others would follow suit and say that the only way to end such attacks would be to end apartheid, and the discussion would go no further. And even if you did begin by saying grace, the discussion would follow the twenty-to-two rule in any case, for every single speaker would be obliged to say grace also.’18

Factors such as these profoundly influenced much of the newspaper coverage of events in the crucial decade from 1984 to 1994. However, not all reports embraced the conventional wisdom, or ignored the many events which contradicted this. A vast quantity of information relevant to the people’s war was thus published by the press, while some of the articles written at the time demonstrated significant flashes of insight. In addition, though press coverage by black journalists of incidents in townships might only have reflected 40% or 50% of what was happening there (to cite Mazwai again), it nevertheless provided sufficient examples of a wider pattern to make it possible to reconstruct events with a significant degree of accuracy. However, most of the material dealing with the people’s war was buried in brief accounts on obscure inner pages. In addition, little attempt was made to draw connections between events, and weave together a comprehensive overview.

It remains possible that some of the press reports cited in good faith in this book may turn out to be inaccurate in some respects, or even entirely wrong. If this were to transpire, however, it would not detract significantly from the overall accuracy of this account. For there is such a volume of press reports that confirm the story told that occasional errors can make little difference to the overall thrust. The story is also corroborated in crucial respects by the publications of the ANC alliance, broadcasts on Radio Freedom, the reports of various commissions of inquiry, the judgments of the courts in a number of different cases, and the personal knowledge and experience of the many experts whose views were sought.

Methodology

The story told in this book is based on all the sources identified above. However, it is also worth noting that the reconstruction of events has been based more on press reports than on the accounts of various ‘monitors of violence’. This is because the press, though often biased towards the ANC, was generally more balanced in its coverage than the monitors.

The monitors were individuals and organisations which took upon themselves the task of reviewing incidents of violence and writing regular reports on them. Almost all these monitors professed to be neutral and independent recorders of events. Many nevertheless had links to the ANC and promoted its perspective on the violence. They seemed to form part of the ANC strategy to alter perceptions by constantly blaming the conflict on a state-backed Third Force, while downplaying or omitting any mention of the people’s war. Various salient reports by different monitors of violence have nevertheless been included, but this is less to throw light on the incidence of violence than to demonstrate how public opinion was shaped and swayed.

To ensure fair treatment of the ANC, particular care has been taken to reflect the organisation’s own perspective on the violence. The words of its spokesmen are often cited verbatim, along with the viewpoints of other organisations (the South African Council of Churches, for one) that were sympathetic to the ANC, but not formally allied to it. In addition, care has been taken to include not only well known and oft-cited examples of Inkatha attacks on ANC supporters (such as the Swanieville and Boipatong massacres), but also to search out and incorporate lesser known examples of such assaults. At the same time, numerous reports detailing attacks on Inkatha and the police have been omitted because their inclusion would have made the text too long and too repetitive to sustain the interest of readers.

Terminology

The aim here has been to avoid words which, though commonly used in describing South Africa’s recent history, have acquired either negative or positive connotations and to find more neutral alternatives.

For example, it is common to describe the ANC’s multifaceted people’s war simply as ‘the struggle’. However, this is misleading because it implies a peaceful process aimed solely at the apartheid government and obscures the extent to which the ANC was also intent on destroying its black rivals. It is also common to refer to the ANC’s campaign of violence as ‘the armed struggle’. However, this is a euphemistic term which suggests that the ANC was engaged primarily in guerrilla warfare against the South African police and army, when this was not the case. Accordingly, except where quoting others, the term ‘people’s war’ has generally been used because it depicts more accurately the full range of tactics being deployed by the ANC alliance.

It is also common to refer to ANC supporters involved in the people’s war as either ‘activists’ or ‘comrades’. These terms have a positive connotation. However, they blur the fact that many of these individuals were engaged, not only in peaceful protest, but also in violent confrontation with ANC adversaries. More accurate terms would be ‘militant’ or ‘radical’. However, these carry such negative connotations that, in the interests of fairness to the ANC alliance and its supporters, the word ‘activist’ has generally been used.

Particular care has been used to avoid pejorative terms such as ‘ringleader’, except where these form part of a quotation. ‘Agit prop’ and ‘propaganda’ have also acquired negative connotations but unfortunately lack appropriate alternatives and so have been used where unavoidable – primarily in explaining their critical role in altering public perceptions and so advancing the people’s war.

The ANC has long referred to itself as ‘the movement’, a term suggesting that it commands automatic mass support as the premier political force within the country. A more neutral term – ‘organisation’– has instead been used. The ANC also commonly refers to the members of its armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, as ‘MK cadres’. Again, more neutral descriptions – ‘Umkhonto insurgents’, ‘Umkhonto operatives’, or ‘Umkhonto members’ – have instead been adopted.

Further difficulties attend the use of words such as ‘riot’ and ‘uprising’. It is common to refer to the events that shook Sebokeng (and other townships in the Vaal Triangle) in September 1984 as ‘the Vaal riots’. However, the word ‘riot’ suggests a spontaneous outburst of violence commanding widespread popular support. Yet the violence in these townships was carefully orchestrated by a small group of militants, many of whom were strangers to the Vaal, but who were able to manipulate large crowds of mainly volatile youths into following their lead. In these circumstances, ‘disturbances’ seems a more appropriate term.

Acknowledgements

My sincere thanks are due to everybody who has helped in the writing and production of this book. I would like to express particular appreciation to the Donaldson Trust which helped to fund the research, and showed much patience and understanding for the time required to complete the work. I am deeply indebted to all those who provided me with information or helped me by commenting on the text, pointing towards additional sources or suggesting necessary revisions. I would also like to thank both family and friends for their encouragement and support.

Chapter One

Resistance to Apartheid 1960 to 1977

Shootings at Sharpeville

On 21st March 1960, at Sharpeville (south of Johannesburg), the police shot dead 69 black South Africans protesting against the country’s notorious pass laws. Close on 180 people were wounded. Most of the dead and injured were shot in the back after they had begun to flee. As the news of the shootings spread, there were riots in Soweto, Cape Town, Durban, and Port Elizabeth. The National Party (NP) government declared a state of emergency and hundreds were arrested in pre-dawn swoops. On 7th April, the Unlawful Organisations Bill was hastily enacted into law. Next day, the African National Congress (ANC), formed in 1912 and generally identified as the oldest liberation movement on the continent, was banned. So too was the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), the organisation which had arranged the Sharpeville demonstration, and which had been established three years earlier by Africanists dismayed at the extent to which the ANC had fallen under the influence of the banned South African Communist Party (SACP).1

International opprobrium followed. Capital fled the country and business leaders called for urgent reforms. But Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, principal architect of the apartheid system and South Africa’s prime minister since 1958, refused to bow before the pressure. Long convinced that black South Africans would not try to rebel if they knew there was no chance of attaining concessions, Verwoerd made it clear that apartheid was an interlocking system which did not brook piecemeal change – and that he was ‘the man of granite’ who would hold the edifice together.2

By August 1960 calm had returned. Emergency rule was lifted and the last detainees were released. Plans were laid for an ‘all-in conference representative of African people’ to take place in Pietermaritzburg on 25th March 1961. The deputy president of the ANC, Nelson Mandela, was one of the main speakers at the event and used the occasion to demand a national convention, failing which a three-day general strike would be called to culminate on 31st May 1961, the day South Africa was to become a republic. But Verwoerd refused to call a convention and took massive counter-measures against the planned strike, detaining large numbers of people and staging demonstrations of military might involving tanks, armoured cars, and helicopters. The PAC also tried to foil the protest by issuing leaflets calling on people to go to work as usual. Most people ignored the stayaway call, turning the protest into a damp squib. Inadequate preparation played a major part in the failure of the stayaway, as did the government’s show of force. But many black South Africans were also now disillusioned with the protest weapon and unwilling to put jobs and pay at risk.3

However, among more militant opponents of the government, there was also a growing groundswell of anger and an increasing desire to jettison peaceful protest in favour of armed confrontation. The PAC established an armed wing called Poqo (meaning ‘alone’ in Xhosa)4 which sought to initiate an armed uprising in the small western Cape town of Paarl in 1962.i However, some 3 000 Poqo members were arrested and the insurgency quickly petered out. A number of white liberals began organising a campaign of sabotage through an organisation called the National Committee of Liberation (later renamed the African Resistance Movement) but this also soon came to an end.ii Within the ANC and the wider Congress Alliance,iii many activists began increasingly to argue that non-violent strategies had been exhausted and that the only option remaining was armed struggle. There was little acknowledgement, as Professor Tom Lodge of the University of the Witwatersrand was later to write in his book Black Politics in South Africa since 1945, that the organisation of stayaways had been inadequate and that protest had been used mainly to ‘underscore moral assertions’ rather than score strategic gains.5 There was also little public awareness that SACP leaders had already been discussing a turn to violence with senior figures in the Kremlin for some time.

Soviet interest in South Africa

The Soviet Union had been taking an interest in South Africa since 1921, when the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) was formed and immediately affiliated to the Moscow-based Communist International, the Comintern. At its sixth congress in 1928, the Comintern instructed the CPSA to concentrate on establishing in South Africa ‘an independent native republic’ which would lead the way to ‘a workers’ and peasants’ republic’. To promote this two-stage revolution, as Stephen Ellis and Tsepo Sechaba were later to record in their book, Comrades Against Apartheid,iv the CPSA was directed to ‘pay particular attention to the ANC’ and transform it into ‘a fighting nationalist revolutionary organisation against the white bourgeoisie and the British imperialists’.6

Little was achieved in the 1930s, when the CPSA was riven by internal divisions. Nor was much done in the early 1940s, when Moscow was fighting for its survival against German invasion during the Second World War. In this period, the Soviet Union also dissolved the Comintern in an endeavour to reassure Britain and its other allies that it had abandoned its ambition to spread communism as far as possible around the globe. However, by 1946 the bulk of eastern Europe, liberated from German occupation by Soviet troops in the closing phases of the war, had been confined behind an Iron Curtain policed by Soviet troops. In 1947 the Comintern was resurrected as the Cominform, and began taking active measures to encourage colonised nations to expel their oppressors. In 1948 communist-inspired insurgencies broke out in Malaya, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Burma, while in Indo-China a prominent Vietnamese communist, Ho Chi Minh, had already begun a people’s revolutionary war against French rule. The following year witnessed the victory of Mao Tse Tung and the establishment of a people’s republic in China. It was also marked by a Soviet blockade of west Berlin and a new intensity in the Cold War which had begun with the Yalta conference in 1945.7

Following Stalin’s death in March 1953, Nikita Khrushchev rose to power and adopted a policy of giving Soviet support to each and every revolt against colonialism in the Afro-Asian world. In 1956 the Soviet Union founded the Asian Solidarity Committee, soon to be re-organised and renamed the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Committee. According to Dr Vladimir Shubin, who joined the staff of this committee in March 1969 and helped advise and support the ANC over many years,v the committee had close ties to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and ‘gave political and material support to various liberation movements on the two continents…for the next three decades’. In 1957 the international department of the central committee of the CPSU was established. It divided its contacts with foreign countries into two sections. One, headed by Yury Andropov, dealt with socialist countries outside the Soviet Union. The other, headed by Boris Ponomarev, was responsible for the rest of the world.8

In 1960, a year in which 17 African countries gained independence from colonial rule, the CPSU established a special section on African countries in this international department. In the same year, it stepped up its contact with the SACP, the banned successor to the CPSA. Party chairman Yusuf Dadoo visited Moscow in July 1960, where he briefed CPSU leaders on the situation in South Africa and sought Soviet help in the international campaign to isolate South Africa. The party’s July visit was followed by another later in the year, during which the SACP delegation twice held discussions with Nuretdin Mukhitdinov, secretary of the central committee of the CPSU and a member of the party’s presidium (later renamed the politburo). The SACP was allocated $30 000 from a Soviet fund. Back home, it also began advocating a shift towards armed struggle. The political report to the SACP conference held in December 1960 said the government was preparing for ‘armed counter-revolution’ which would be difficult to oppose through non-violent passive resistance. A special resolution on ‘forms of struggle’ adopted at the conference spoke of the probability of ‘a violent people’s struggle’ in which ‘the use of organised armed forces…is a part of the tactics of the revolutionary struggle and is a necessary complement of mass political agitation’.9

In October 1961 Dadoo visited Moscow again, this time with SACP general secretary Moses Kotane. In discussions with Vitaly Korionov, deputy head of the international department, the SACP delegation described the arrangements it had made for an initial group of trainees to embark on military and political studies in China. (However, as the Sino-Soviet rift widened, China was not used again.) The delegation was invited to attend the 22nd congress of the CPSU, where a new party programme promising to build communism in one generation was adopted. After the congress, the CPSU central committee instructed Ponomarev to hold further discussions with the SACP leaders. Having agreed with the SACP that non-violent strategies would not succeed, Ponomarev (as he later reported to the CPSU central committee) ‘elucidated to the South African comrades…the Marxist-Leninist doctrine on the combination of all forms of struggle’. He also offered Soviet assistance in the training of military instructors and possibly in other ways as well. Following this meeting, the CPSU endorsed the need for armed struggle in South Africa and promised ‘certain assistance’ in the training of instructors, while Ponomarev (in Shubin’s words) became ‘the main interlocutor with SACP and ANC delegations in Moscow’ for the next 25 years.10

Back inside South Africa, however, little was generally known of the role being played by the Soviet Union. It was only many years later that Joe Slovo, a member of the SACP’s central committee and one of the party’s most accomplished strategists, identified the ANC’s shift from a policy of non-violence to one of armed struggle as ‘one of the major struggles initiated by the leadership of the SACP’.11 ANC president Chief Albert Luthuli, who had been banned by the South African government and confined to his home town of Groutville (Natal), was not party to the decision. He learnt of it only later when he was briefed by Kotane after the first attacks had already begun.12

Armed struggle begins

Umkhonto we Sizwe (Umkhonto or MK for short) was established in November 1961, a month after Dadoo’s October visit to Moscow. It formally commenced its sabotage campaign on 16th December 1961 with a bomb attack on the Durban office of the Department of Bantu Administration and Development, colloquially known as ‘BAD’. A second explosion went off at the office of the Bantu Affairs Commissioner in Johannesburg. Another 200 attacks followed over the next 18 months, many of them minor. But about a hundred were more sophisticated, involving incendiary bomb blasts at public buildings and attempts to destroy railway signalling systems. Most of the explosions were directed at property rather than at people but over 20, according to Lodge, put lives at risk. There were also 23 attacks on policemen or on people believed to be informers or collaborators.13

The