CHAPTER ONE: THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF THE LUTHULI DETACHMENT GUERRILLAS

From peaceful resistance to armed struggle: The ANC was formed in 1912 and for almost 50 years the organisation followed a strategy of non-violent resistance. 1 In 1960, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), a breakaway group from the ANC called on people to hold peaceful protests against the pass laws, which obliged African men to carry, passes. Through the mechanism of the pass laws that were part of the migrant labour system the Apartheid government, inter alia, regulated the movement of African men between the Bantustans (the rural reserves) and the towns.

On 21 March 1960 the South African Police Force (SAPF) shot at peaceful anti-pass law demonstrators, at Sharpeville in Vereeniging and Langa in Cape Town. As a result 69 people died, including eight women and ten children, and 180 people were injured. 2 After the Sharpeville and Langa shootings, on 8 April 1960 the South African government declared a State of Emergency. The ANC, the PAC and many other organisations within the liberation fold were outlawed. The government arrested, tortured and exiled many people, 90-day detentions and solitary confinement were enforced. 3 The government arrested or detained more than 11 000 people under these emergency regulations. 4

After the State of Emergency and many debates about the future or non-future of peaceful protest, individual members of the ANC adopted the armed struggle as its principal strategy. 5 To this effect a leaflet was issued on 16 December 1961 announcing the formation of the ANC's military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), meaning the Spear of the Nation. The leaflet was distributed by the MK High Command in the different cities and proclaimed the existence of MK. It stated amongst other things, Umkhonto we Sizwe will carry on the struggle for freedom and democracy by new methods, which are necessary to complement the actions of the established national liberation organisations...The people's patience is not endless. The time comes in the life of any nation when there remain only two choices: submit or fight. That time has now come 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. 6

Between 1961 and 1963 MK embarked upon a strategy of sabotage. Its cadres learnt how to make bombs and other explosive devices. Their targets were never civilian instead they were government buildings, railway lines, electrical power lines, installations and so forth. 7

Political activity in Africa

In February 1962, Nelson Mandela, Supreme Commander of MK attended the inaugural conference of the Pan-African Freedom Movement for East, Central and Southern Africa (PAFMECSA) and toured North African countries. Following on this visit, countries like Morocco, Liberia and Algeria opened its training camps to South Africans and the first ANC military training camps were established.

In 1963, the newly established OAU set up a Liberation Committee whose purpose it was to funnel assistance to the recognised liberation movements in Africa including the ANC in South Africa, Frelimo in Mozambique, the MPLA in Angola and the PAIGC in Guinea-Bissau. The South West African People's Organisation (SWAPO) and ZAPU formed a loose alliance. Resources were however limited. Most of the assistance came from the Soviet Union and its East European allies. 8

In 1964, the sabotage activities of the MK High Command ended with their arrest on Liliesleaf farm in Rivonia, Johannesburg. Members of the ANC High Command included Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Andrew Mlangeni, Govan Mbeki, Rusty Bernstein and Dennis Goldberg. The arrest of the MK High Command was a serious blow to the ANC's efforts at armed struggle. It would take some time before the ANC and its allies were able to mount a new military effort against the Apartheid State. This time the military attack would have to be planned and executed from exile.

Some members of the PAC had already been imprisoned subsequent to the Poqo 9 uprising of 1961. In 1964 the Rivonia trialists were sentenced to life imprisonment and members of the Yu Chi Chan Club 10 received sentences ranging from five to 10 years. All served their sentences on Robben Island. By the middle of the 1960s, the South African security forces had effectively crushed the internal network of the ANC and other extra-parliamentary organisations.

The environment of exile politics

By 1965, state repression had effectively destroyed the political base and military capacity of the ANC and the South African Communist Party (SACP) inside South Africa. 11 The focus of the ANC's work thus shifted to the leadership in exile and became the responsibility of particularly O.R. Tambo who became the acting President of the ANC.

This brought with it a new set of challenges, which the exiled leadership had to contend with. One, the organisation needed to maintain structures in foreign states whilst securing sources of external assistance. Two, the ANC leadership had to hold the exile movement together. Three, and most importantly the ANC needed to find new ways to direct and re-establish internal activity and support in South Africa as the repressive measures unleashed by the Apartheid government had severely affected its organisational capacity. 12

Coupled with this the development of the external wing of the ANC had four major phases. The first phase from 1960-1963 focused on the establishment of a foreign mission and devoted itself chiefly to fundraising and diplomatic efforts, as well as the establishment of a military training programme.

The second phase began with the arrest of most of the internal leadership at Liliesleaf farm in Rivonia in mid-1963 and the responsibility of leading the ANC shifted to the external mission. The period 1963-1969 was distinguished by efforts to infiltrate South Africa via Rhodesia in a joint alliance with ZAPU, which led to skirmishes with the Rhodesian security forces that were later joined by the South African security forces in the Wankie area.

The third phase was from 1970-1976 and began with the collapse of the joint ANC-ZAPU operation and ended with the accession to power of Frelimo in Mozambique and the MPLA in Angola. This together with the exodus of thousands of young people in the months following the Soweto uprisings 13 created favourable conditions for the resumption of sabotage activity in South Africa. The third phase was characterised by ANC attempts to infiltrate organisers through normal immigration channels.

In the fourth phase, from 1976 onwards, the ANC reconstituted itself as a major force in South African black politics.

This study focuses on a period during the second phase of the development of the ANC's external wing, when the organisation needed to return to South Africa and perceived armed activity within the country as the primary means to rebuild an internal political base. There was also a great wish amongst the MK soldiers who had trained in a number of foreign countries to fight the Apartheid government. 14

Resuscitating the struggle in South Africa

In the late 1960s and early 1970s South Africa was protected by a cordon sanitaire of colonial territories who themselves were engaged in counter-insurgency measures. South West Africa was under South African mandatory rule. Both Angola and Mozambique were still Portuguese territories. Whilst Rhodesia had unilaterally declared independence (UDI) from Britain in 1965, Ian Smith the Rhodesian Prime Minister was on friendly terms with his South African counterpart, John Vorster. Lesotho, Botswana and Swaziland, had all received independence by the end of 1968, but were too economically reliant on South Africa to provide a base for guerrilla warfare. 15

Whilst the ANC leadership took stock of its specific situation of needing to re-establish a base in South Africa, a solution seemed to present itself due to developments in Rhodesia. Ian Smith's UDI from Britain forced the Zimbabwean nationalist movements to rethink its strategy. ZAPU was largely based in Zambia and after UDI decided to launch its armed struggle inside Rhodesia. Although Rhodesia faced international sanctions for unilaterally declaring independence from Britain the Smith government was kept afloat mainly by the South African government in Pretoria. Meli argues that the act of UDI brought the alliance between the white minority regimes in Rhodesia and South Africa out into the open. 16

Constraints of armed struggle in the South African context

An additional constraint to reactivating internal structures was the local conditions in South Africa, which did not allow for the establishment of successful guerrilla insurgencies such as in Angola and Mozambique. In these two countries, guerrillas could base their struggles in economically self-sufficient remote rural areas. In South Africa the situation was different. There was a repressive system of control on popular mobility and political expression. This extended to the Bantustans where the old, the women and children lived on the edge of starvation and depended on the wages of the male migrant workers, who lived and worked in the cities. The Bantustans were unable to support the people who lived there, let alone insurgency groupings of guerrillas, as most of the land was not arable. 17

Analyses of rural revolution found the role of a middle peasantry as vital to the success of guerrilla movements. In South Africa there was no comparable group that could support guerrillas. Whilst in the towns, influx control and an extensive system of police informers served to inhibit political activity. Increasing security legislation and police powers were the chief intimidating factors and created a sense of fear and demoralisation amongst ordinary people. Lodge argues that these changing conditions within South Africa made the creation of relevant strategies from exile even more difficult. 18

Lodge says the ANC continued to recruit trainees from within the country and ?functioning ANC branches and Umkhonto [we Sizwe] cells must have continued the work of recruiting men for military training and dispatching them across the Botswana border'. He estimated that by 1970 the ANC had 2 000-guerrilla trainees in their camps. 19 Shubin disputes this, saying that by the middle of the 1960s the ANC was no longer able to recruit more guerrillas for training from within South Africa due to repression. The blows against the underground structures of the ANC in South Africa was so severe that recruitment and transportation of cadres for MK had ceased by the second half of the 1960s. 20

By 1965 the ANC had a total of 800 guerrilla trainees in Tanzanian camps, or undergoing military training in China, the Soviet Union or Czechoslovakia. 21 After undergoing military training in different countries the MK guerrillas returned to camps in Africa were they led isolated existences. Chris Hani notes that ?once you have trained an army, you have to deploy it. You cannot afford a moment of idleness with soldiers'. 22 Jordan says the ANC leadership experienced pressure from below to return to South Africa. 23 This great wish amongst the guerrillas to return home was expressed by Graham Morodi in this way:

This time [66-67] we were asking the leadership that now we are trained and we feel we are okay. We are commanders and we feel that we can meet the enemy anywhere. 24

The search for a route home via Mozambique

At the time of the ANC-ZAPU alliance, the liberation movements throughout Southern Africa were adopting armed struggle, as their modus operandi . In Namibia the guerrilla movement was beginning and in Mozambique and Angola it was spreading. 25

The ANC leadership struggled to successfully bring cadres back onto South African soil. In March 1967, two ANC activists were arrested in Botswana. In May 1967, a group of MK cadres headed by Josiah Jele were sent to Nyassa province in Mozambique. There the group stayed with Frelimo fighters for six weeks. When the ANC cadres attempted to move southwards towards South Africa they were ambushed and barely made it back to base. Another group spent five weeks in the Cabo Delgado province, but had to return to Tanzania. The ANC leadership concluded that it was impossible to return to South Africa via Mozambique. 26

Shubin argues that in the late 1960s a route to South Africa via Mozambique was the least feasible of all potential routes. It required a lively imagination to think this was at all possible, as the small group of cadres would have to travel through territory spanning several hundreds of kilometres, which was controlled by colonial troops. Moreover the cadres did not speak the language of the local population. In 1967 Frelimo controlled only the northern areas of Mozambique close to the Tanzanian border and could only thus assist the ANC with their travel through the northern part of Mozambique. It seemed as if the ANC had found a solution to the problem of getting their guerrillas to South Africa when they formed an alliance with ZAPU.

R. Davies ( et al ), T he struggle for South Africa: A reference guide to movements, organizations and institutions (UK, Zed Books, 1985) p. 283

T. Lodge, Black politics in South Africa since 1945 (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1986) p.210

M. Benson (ed) THE SUN WILL RISE: Statements from the dock by Southern African political prisoners (London, IDAF, 19810 p.4

H. Barrell, MK: the ANC's armed struggle (London, Penguin books, 1990) p.3

R. Davies ( et al ), T he struggle for South Africa: A reference guide to movements, organizations and institutions (UK, Zed Books, 1985) p. 283

Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) manifesto, December 1961. The decision to embark on the armed struggle was not an organisational one, but was taken by individual members of the ANC.

T. Lodge, Black politics in South Africa since 1945 (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1986) pp.235-7

Ibid. p.295

Ibid. p.241 Poqo was the name of the military wing of the PAC. The uprisings refer to their campaigns during the period 1962-3.

This was a break away leftist group from the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM) based in Cape Town.

H. Barrell, MK: the ANC's armed struggle (London, Penguin books, 1990) p.18

T. Lodge, Black politics in South Africa since 1945 (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1986) p.295

Refers to the uprising in Soweto in 1976 when students protested against Afrikaans as a medium of teaching.

Interview with James April (Cape Town, September 1990)

T. Lodge, Black politics in South Africa since 1945 (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1986) p.295

F. Meli, A history of the ANC: South Africa belongs to us (Harare, Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1988) p.162

The ANC in its document Strategy and Tactics later challenged this theory on guerrilla warfare.

T. Lodge, Black politics in South Africa since 1945 (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1986) p.296

Ibid.

V. Shubin , ANC: a view from Moscow (Bellville, Mayibuye Books, 1999) p.77

Ibid.

T. Mali, Chris Hani: the sun that set before dawn (Johannesburg, SACHED Books, 1993) p.39

Interview with Dr Pallo Jordan (Pretoria, January 1996)

Quoted in R. Molapo, ?If you get a l-i-t-t-l-e leg of a dove you are satisfied!' Oral testimonies and the politics of armed conflict in South Africa 1961-1988. (Paper presented to the MK conference 1 December 1995, Mayibuye Centre, University of the Western Cape) p.8

F. Meli, A history of the ANC: South Africa belongs to us (Harare, Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1988) p.161

V. Shubin , ANC: a view from Moscow (Bellville, Mayibuye Books, 1999) p.77

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