SAIRR Today: Implementing People's War - 13th November 2009
When former state president FW de Klerk in February 1990 unbanned the African National Congress (ANC) and its allies, he believed he was laying the foundation for a process of ‘good faith’ negotiations in which all parties would be committed to peace, mutual compromise for the common good, and respect for agreements reached. But, the ANC never had any intention of regarding negotiations in the same way. Instead it saw constitutional talks as nothing more than an additional ‘terrain of struggle’: an adjunct to the people’s war it had been implementing since the Sebokeng unrest in September 1984. The ANC’s strategy was a variant on the Trojan Horse one, for it used its professed commitment to peace to secure the legal return of its armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, thus bypassing the difficulties it had always faced in infiltrating its insurgents illegally. It then refused to disarm or demobilise Umkhonto, instead using its combatants to step up the people’s war in all its aspects. The ANC’s persistence with its people’s war in the early 1990s – at a time when De Klerk had already thrown open the door to a non-racial South Africa and repealed all major apartheid laws – cost a further 15 000 lives, three times the number killed in the first five years of the people’s war. Almost all those killed were neither policemen, soldiers, nor insurgents, but rather ordinary civilians, most of them black. In this address, delivered in Johannesburg on 10th November 2009, Anthea Jeffery summarises some of the key points from her book People’s War: New Light on the Struggle for South Africa, recently published by Jonathan Ball.
Many
people are likely to be surprised and dismayed at what I have to say,
and many may find it hard to believe at all. This is not surprising.
The outrage triggered by apartheid generated great sympathy for the
African National Congress (ANC), while the iconic status accorded
Nelson Mandela on his release from prison also generated an aura of
sanctity around the organisation. Moreover, a people’s war is primarily
a war of communication. One of its main aims is to throw dust in
people’s eyes by putting forward a false theory of violence which is
plausible in many ways but nevertheless subverts the truth. Once that
false theory has become deeply rooted, it is very difficult to believe
it could be wrong.
Many
people have also found an understandable comfort in the notion of South
Africa’s ‘miracle’ transition and have little wish to probe beneath
that to a less palatable reality. But every organisation, including the
ANC, has to be understood in the light of its own history. The
People’s War book is thus intended to deepen understanding both
of the ruling party and of the country’s political transition. The book
itself is comprehensive, giving details of the people’s war in every
year of its implementation. In this brief overview, by contrast, I can
only touch on some key points.
In
1961, when the banned ANC embarked on its simpler strategy of armed
struggle, the National Party (NP) government had been in power for
almost 15 years and racial discrimination permeated every nook and
cranny of life within South Africa, stunting the lives and betraying
the hopes of millions of black people. The prime minister, Dr Hendrik
Verwoerd, was intent on ratcheting up apartheid restrictions and it was
unlikely that his government would ever embark on reform.
.
The
ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (Umkhonto), began by focusing on
sabotage attacks, though some of these did put lives at risk. In 1963
the Mayibuye document signalled the ANC’s intention to shift to
guerrilla war. However, such a war never got off the ground. This was
partly because Mandela and other internal leaders were arrested and
imprisoned. But it was mainly because the ANC, even with substantial
Soviet help, was unable to infiltrate trained Umkhonto insurgents back
into the country in significant number.
By
1974, it seemed, as ANC president Oliver Tambo had earlier said, that
‘the guns of MK had been silenced for all time’. Inside the country,
the banned ANC had largely been forgotten. Outside South Africa, the
organisation was almost moribund. Without Soviet support, it would not
have survived at all. But Soviet financial aid had nevertheless been
reduced by two thirds from what it had been ten years before, for
Moscow also recognised the ANC’s ineffectiveness.
Back
in South Africa, 1975 saw the establishment of Inkatha by Chief
Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Inkatha disagreed with the ANC’s principal
strategies of armed struggle and economic sanctions and sought to end
apartheid by other non-violent means. It soon commanded substantial
support, making it an important internal rival to the ANC.
The
following year, 1976, saw the start of the Soweto revolt, fuelled by
the rise of the Black Consciousness (BC) movement inside the country.
The upsurge lasted 18 months and shook South Africa to its core, even
though the student activists were ultimately no match for the state.
The revolt had great impact on the ANC, for it showed that internal
insurrection was still possible. However, it also demonstrated that the
ANC was in grave danger of being eclipsed inside the country. For BC
continued to command significant support, while Inkatha’s membership
doubled and then doubled again as people mourned the youngsters gunned
down during the revolt and reassessed the cost of fruitless
confrontation with the state.
It
was against this background that a senior delegation from the ANC and
SACP went to Vietnam in 1978 to learn the formula for people’s war.
This formula was soon adopted in the form of The Green Book: Lessons
from Vietnam, while the ANC alliance began implementing what it had
learned.
The
theory of people’s war, as developed and applied in Vietnam, has many
different elements, and I can only touch on some of them here. Not all
were fully applied in South Africa, for the Vietnam war was fought at a
much higher level of intensity, marked by B52 bombing raids, the
killing of 10 000 village chiefs, and a number of pitched battles
between heavily armed conventional forces. No such developments were
evident in the struggle for South Africa, where apartheid was already
crumbling by the time the people’s war began, conventional warfare
never developed, the negotiating process began early on, and violence
was concentrated in a relatively small number of contested areas,
mainly in KwaZulu-Natal and on the Reef.
A
people’s war, as the term suggests, revolves around the use of
people as weapons of war. As many people as possible must
be drawn into the war, whether by joining organisations allied to the
insurgents, or taking part in demonstrations, or helping with the
propaganda campaign, or taking part in violent attacks. In addition,
all individuals within the arena of conflict – including those who
support the insurgents – are regarded as expendable in the waging of
the war, in the same way as arms and ammunition are expendable in a
conventional conflict. It also means that children are just as
expendable as adults and that there is no bar against using children
either as combatants or as targets for attack. As a combatant, a child
may be more willing to take risks, and as a victim of violence the
child has much greater value in subsequent propaganda and
mobilisation.
A
further essential principle of people’s war is that ‘political
struggles’, in the form of boycotts, demonstrations, stayaways and
strikes, must always be combined with ‘military struggles’. These armed
actions include attacks on the police and army, but also go far beyond
that. For the aim is to use violence to drive out local councillors,
create an atmosphere of terror, and weaken or destroy political rivals.
This last objective is particularly important, for it gives the
insurgent organisation the hegemony required to implement the further
stages of its revolution.
Political and military struggles are equally
important and must always proceed in tandem. Together they constitute
the two arms of the pincer, the hammer and the anvil. The political
struggle gives cover to the military struggle, for without the
political ferment the violence would seem too brutal to be condoned. At
the same time, the military struggle gives impetus to the political
struggle, for voluntary participation in boycotts and other campaigns
may not be sufficiently widespread or sustained over time without the
use of intimidation and terror to give a further boost to mass
participation.
As
the people’s war intensifies, the insurgents’ main aim is to destroy
authority and generate a climate of anarchy, or ‘ungovernability’.
Their further objectives are to hobble the economy, increase poverty,
and create such a degree of social pathology that people become
desperate for a return to normality at almost any price.
As
the ferment builds, propaganda is essential to shield the insurgents
from blame for what is happening. Propaganda is thus the most important
part of the political struggle, for it turns the truth on its head by
blaming the insurgents’ political rivals for the violence, the anarchy,
and the increased economic suffering. Sympathy for the insurgent
movement is fostered, while its rivals are likely to suffer crippling
losses in credibility and support.
People’s war proceeds through stages. In its
preliminary phases, the aim is simply to create secret cells, form
organisations, and advertise the insurgent movement via bomb attacks.
Thereafter, people’s war proceeds through its first (defensive) and
second (mobile warfare) stages to the third stage, the beginning of the
end. The strategy recognises that the end can come about either through
a general insurrection (the rough road) or through negotiations (the
smooth road), or though a combination of both.
The
third stage is thus marked by great efforts to intensify all aspects of
the people’s war. For increased ferment and violence might succeed in
unleashing insurrection, while increased ferment and violence will in
any event weaken opponents, making it easier for the insurgents to
triumph in negotiations. Part of the aim in the third stage is thus to
delay substantive negotiations for a significant period: until
insurrection has been achieved (or has been ruled out as
impracticable); or until adversaries have been weakened enough for
talks to proceed on the insurgents’ terms. The insurgents will also try
to set immovable deadlines for the talks because these, supplemented
by persistent acts of violence, will encourage the making of
concessions opponents would otherwise resist.
This, very much in a nutshell, is what the ANC
learnt from its visit to Vietnam. From the ANC’s perspective, it
mattered little that the situation in South Africa was very different
from that pertaining in Vietnam, for the formula for people’s war could
be applied in many different circumstances. What counted were the
various factors on which the ANC could build in applying the lessons
from Vietnam. These included a powerful sense of grievance within South
Africa against racist misrule, strong international condemnation of
apartheid, an evident willingness among black youth to embark on
confrontation with the state, and the fact that Umkhonto had been
strengthened by an influx of new recruits following the Soweto
revolt.
In
South Africa, the early phases of people’s war culminated in the
formation of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in 1983. The front was
formed at ANC behest and had little popular support in many areas,
particularly KwaZulu/Natal. Many of its affiliates comprised little
more than narrow groups of activists, though some of them, such as the
Congress of South African Students (Cosas), had major constituencies.
ANC control over the UDF, though understandably denied at the time, was
total: for, as Jeremy Seekings has recorded in his book on the UDF, 24
out of the 25 people on the UDF’s national executive committee were
formal or informal members of the ANC political
underground.
The
people’s war began on 3rd September 1984 with a surge of violence in
Sebokeng and other townships in the Vaal Triangle which lasted a month
and cost the lives of four local councillors along with 60 other
people. The conventional view is that the demonstrations on
3rd September were initially peaceful, turning violent only
after the police had opened fire, in a replay of the start of the
Soweto revolt. But the upsurge in the Vaal was different.
According to the judgment in the Delmas
treason trial – which was later overturned on a legal technicality, not
for any flaw in its findings of fact – the violence in the Vaal was
carefully pre-planned. Roads in five townships were comprehensively
barricaded well in advance, while stones, bricks, and sometimes
containers with petrol were placed near the homes of councillors who
later suffered attack. The pattern of violence in at least four of the
Vaal townships was also very similar, while it was at roughly 8am that
attacks in many of these areas began: '
that the
situation in the Vaal exploded’, as a policeman in a spotter aircraft
later testified.
The judgment also accepted the testimony of a senior policeman who
had been in charge both in the Vaal townships and in Soweto in 1976.
According to this evidence, there were significant differences between
the two uprisings. In the Vaal, attacks had been carefully aimed at
specific targets and the crowd had shown a strong determination,
attacking councillors repeatedly in many instances. This was different
from what had happened in Soweto, ‘where anything in the way of
the mob had been attacked’. Moreover ‘in the Vaal, barricades were
erected the previous night, whereas in Soweto that happened only after
the riots started’. Furthermore, in the Vaal, ‘the leaders and
instigators of the various mobs of rioters often wore UDF and Cosas
T-shirts’ - all ‘nice, new, and clean’ - and ‘as soon as the attack was
under way the leaders wearing the UDF T-shirts would melt into the
crowd and disappear’.
Around 10am, as attacks intensified, the
police resorted to sharp ammunition, killing and injuring a number of
people as they sought to put an end to rioting. Local and international
condemnation was severe, especially as the police were accused of
having provoked the violence through their harsh repression. The
government found itself in a cleft stick; on the one hand, it had a
duty to protect life and property; on the other, its legitimacy was
already so tarnished by apartheid that it could not afford the
condemnation police action had evoked.
In
November 1984 the South African Communist Party (SACP) held its
6th congress near Moscow, where it recognised that the
Sebokeng upheavals spelt the end of white rule. This made it
particularly urgent for the SACP to consolidate its control over the
ANC before the transition took place. This was achieved at the ANC’s
national conference in Kabwe (Zambia) in June 1985, where the ANC’s
national executive committee was opened to people of all races,
allowing Joe Slovo and other SACP leaders to reinforce their dominance
over the ANC. The relationship between the two organisations was summed
up by SACP general secretary Chris Hani in 1991 when he said: ‘We in
the Communist Party have…built the ANC. We have made the ANC what it is
today and the ANC is our organisation.’
By
the end of 1989, some 5 500 people had been killed in political
violence, some 700 of them by the necklace method. Black local
government had been profoundly weakened, facilitating the establishment
of street committees and people’s courts which had brought terror to a
number of townships. Azapo leaders and supporters had been
attacked, and some of them had been necklaced. Inkatha had suffered
particular attack, especially after conflict began in the
Pietermaritzburg area in 1987 and then spread to Durban. Inkatha had
also fought back, sometimes viciously, and the death toll in Natal had
risen to some 2 400 in two years.
The
propaganda campaign vital to the success of the people’s war had also
done its work. Inkatha had been demonised for unleashing violence
through its ‘warlords’ and its ‘vigilantes’. The government and the
police had been equally condemned, especially for imposing emergency
rule and resorting (so it was rightly suspected) to the extrajudicial
execution of Matthew Goniwe and other activists. Sympathy and support
for the ANC had soared, resulting in both economic sanctions against
South Africa and a flood of foreign money into the coffers of the
UDF.
Following the formation of the Congress of
South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) in 1985, strikes in 1987 had
reached unprecedented levels, reinforced by the necklacing of
non-strikers. Operation Vula had begun in 1988 and was succeeding in
infiltrating large quantities of arms, stepping up internal training
for militants, and giving increased direction to the UDF in
implementing the people’s war.
However, a stalemate had also arisen. The
ANC’s push for insurrection in 1986 had failed, while the government
had restored control in contested townships through emergency rule. But
the government also knew that it could not end the people’s war, that
it could not maintain emergency rule indefinitely, and that apartheid,
in any event, had failed and could neither be justified nor sustained.
This realisation, coupled with the fall of the Berlin Wall, were vital
factors persuading state president F W de Klerk to embark in February
1990 on negotiations for a new South Africa.
In
addition, the government, for some years before then, had already begun
reaching out to the ANC in secret talks. It found itself much
reassured, for the ANC successfully conveyed the message that it was
full of reasonable men, with whom the government could do business.
Thabo Mbeki and in time Mandela were particularly important
here.
However, the ANC, in keeping with the lessons
from Vietnam, was also determined that negotiations should take place
on its own terms. It thus orchestrated widespread rejection of the
government’s pre-condition for talks: that the ANC must first renounce
violence. Simultaneously, it generated local and global support
for its own pre-conditions. These included the unbanning of all
organisations, an end to emergency rule, the removal of troops from
townships, the release of detainees, and the return of
exiles.
These demands, though reasonable and broadly
supported, were also calculated to make it easier for the ANC to step
up the people’s war during the negotiations process. For the ANC had no
intention of ending the people’s war when negotiations began. Rather it
planned to use the talks as an ‘additional terrain’ in its
multi-faceted political struggle. At the same time, it planned to
intensify military struggles as well. It also knew it would be much
easier to achieve an upsurge in mass action and political violence when
at least 13 000 of its armed and trained Umkhonto combatants were back
inside the country.
The
ANC’s strategy, in short, was a variant on the Trojan Horse one. By
professing a commitment to peace, the ANC could secure the legal return
of Umkhonto as part of the negotiations process. This would bypass the
great difficulty the organisation had always faced in infiltrating its
insurgents illegally.Moreover, having got Umkhonto back inside South
Africa, the ANC then refused to disband or disarm its armed
wing.
Propaganda, as ever, was vital to conceal the
truth. Hence, as Umkhonto combatants returned and violence began to
surge, so the ANC and its supporters increasingly blamed the killings
on a sinister Third Force, comprising elements within the police and
the IFP. De Klerk was implicated too, for the constant accusation made
was that the state president had a ‘dual strategy’ of talking peace
while using the Third Force to wage a low-level war against the
ANC.
This
propaganda campaign soon had huge impact. This was partly because the
same message came from so many quarters – not only from the ANC and its
many allied organisations but also from journalists and monitors of
violence who professed political independence yet consistently endorsed
the ANC’s perspective. But much of the impact came from the role of
Mandela, who quickly became the ANC’s most important propagandist. He
repeatedly used his iconic status to accuse De Klerk of ‘fuelling…the
killing of innocent people’, and to charge Buthelezi with being the
state president’s willing surrogate. Mandela’s accusations gave
enormous credibility to the Third-Force theory. The upshot was that De
Klerk and Buthelezi were further discredited, while sympathy for the
ANC rose yet again.
Judge Richard Goldstone and his commission of
inquiry – which had been established in 1991 to investigate political
violence—had such wide powers of investigation that he should have been
able to cut through the propaganda and get to the truth. Instead, in a
manner reminiscent of his recent controversial report on the Gaza
conflict, Goldstone seemed willing, at crucial junctures, to accept the
untested allegations of the ANC as established fact; ignore relevant
evidence about the role of Umkhonto in violence; and overlook the ANC’s
determination to persist with people’s war in the negotiations
period.
This
was particularly evident in Goldstone’s report on violence in
KwaZulu/Natal in 1992. KwaZulu/Natal was the epicentre of ANC/IFP
conflict and the bulk of political killings were happening there.
Recent massacres in the region included the Patheni massacre in the
Richmond area in August 1992 and the Folweni killings in southern
KwaZulu/Natal two months later.
In
the Patheni massacre, an induna (headman) named Fana Nzimande
was approached at his homestead by five black men wearing brown
army-type uniforms and balaclavas and claiming to be from the SAP
firearms unit. Nzimande was instructed to produce the two G-3 rifles
issued to him by the KwaZulu administration for his protection.
Nzimande duly found the guns and handed them over. Once he had been
disarmed, the induna, his wife, and their six children were
ordered to line up against a wall of his kraal. The family were then
gunned down, as if by firing squad. All were killed, save for two of
Nzimande’s daughters, who were seriously injured.
The
Folweni massacre in October 1992 also involved gunmen dressed in
army-type uniforms who attacked the home of a known IFP supporter where
people had gathered for an initiation ceremony for a young girl. The
attackers surrounded the venue and opened fire with AK-47 rifles. This
time, 22 people were killed while 33 were injured.
The
police testified to the Goldstone commission that Umkhonto combatants,
some of whom were based in the Transkei, had been involved in both
these massacres. They gave examples of a number of attacks perpetrated
by ANC members dressed in security force uniforms. The police also
testified that the ANC was ‘waging an aggressive war’ on the IFP ‘by
military means’ in the region, while the IFP was ‘disadvantaged in its
resistance to the ANC’s onslaught [because it] lacked the quantity and
sophistication of the weaponry available to the
ANC’.
However, instead of probing these submissions
and providing reasoned arguments for rejecting or supporting them,
Goldstone seemed simply to ignore them. He also made no comment on an
IFP submission describing the killing of some 240 Inkatha leaders since
1985. Instead, Goldstone seemed willing to accept at face value an ANC
statement that it was no longer involved in violence. In addition,
Goldstone’s recommendations were either naive (that Child Welfare
should help promote political tolerance) or else implicitly endorsed
the ANC perspective and singled out the IFP for blame. Proper
investigation and a balanced report by Goldstone could have done much
to reveal the truth and help put an end to conflict, but this was not
forthcoming.
Meanwhile, in keeping with the lessons from
Vietnam, for the first three years after the ANC’s unbanning – while
the death toll soared, the economy stuttered, and mass action increased
– virtually no multilateral negotiations took place at all. Such talks
began in earnest only after the killing of Chris Hani in April 1993,
when a further surge in violence pressurised the government into
agreeing to the ANC’s demand for an election date. This was then set at
27th April 1994. Once this immovable deadline was in place,
the pressure on the government and other parties to the talks rapidly
increased. For negotiators had to agree on an interim constitution and
other aspect of the transition well before this date, even if it meant
making concessions which might otherwise have been
opposed.
The
upshot was what Slovo called ‘a famous victory’ in negotiations, the
ANC scoring ‘16 out of 16’ on what it had intended to achieve. Among
its many gains, three were particularly important. First, a
Transitional Executive Council (TEC) would be appointed and given
extensive powers for a number of months before the election took place.
Second, provided the ANC won a sufficient proportion of the vote in the
election, power would be strongly centralised in its hands under the
interim constitution. Third, the constituent assembly elected via the
April poll would be free to make important changes to the final
Constitution, which in turn would make it easier for the ANC to pursue
its further revolutionary objectives.
After the setting of the election date, the
country also moved into pre-election mode, a vital stage during which
ANC rivals were to be comprehensively weakened and discredited.
Violence surged even more, especially on the Reef and in KwaZulu/Natal.
The death toll among IFP leaders and supporters went steadily up, while
IFP members were driven out of their township homes and also out of
various hostels. On the east Rand, in particular, they became virtual
prisoners inside the few hostels they were able to retain. To gain some
understanding of what that meant in practice, consider this report in
the Weekly Mail & Guardian in August 1993:
Toilet paper, mealie meal, soap, cigarettes
and chocolate may seem harmless items – but last week it took three
Nyala armoured police vehicles to get them into Katlehong’s Mazibuko
and Buyafuthi hostels... The two hostels are completely cut off from
the outside world. Many inmates have not left the hostels for days or
weeks... The state of siege experienced by inmates of Mazibuko is both
physical and psychological… Razor wire surrounds the compound; most of
the [hostel] windows have been shot out. The stench of urine and
uncollected refuse permeates the shabby building; its corridors are
dark and oppressive...
‘Tell them they must let the trains run,’ says
one Mazibuko inmate. ‘If not, we have to take taxis to get to work and
then they attack us easily.’… All the surrounding shops are closed –
but even if they were open the hostel dwellers would not hazard the
walk. ‘We would be shot’, they say matter of factly.
At
the same time as the IFP was suffering this kind of attack, drive-by
shootings, train killings, and other massacres on the east Rand for
which the IFP was blamed (and was sometimes undoubtedly responsible)
bred enormous fear and anger and turned many ANC supporters into
refugees as well. This lent credibility to ANC propaganda that
Buthelezi was ‘seeking to rise to power on the corpses of black
people’. No accusation could have been more damaging.
This
allegation was also given further force by the Wadeville massacre in
Germiston on 8th September 1993, which was later described
by the Sunday Times as ‘a classic textbook military ambush’. The
attack was perpetrated during the evening rush hour by gunmen operating
in two groups. The first group of about six men suddenly opened fire
with handguns on commuters queuing for taxis at Lantern Road in
Wadeville. As the gunfire cracked out, six people were shot dead and
the commuters fled down the street with the gunmen close behind them
and firing all the way. When they reached the intersection with a cross
road, the commuters dived behind a sheltering wall and cowered there in
a frantic bid to escape the gunmen chasing them. But they found no
sanctuary there. For the second and larger group of gunmen had already
taken up position in this cross road and the people sheltering behind
the wall were now within easy range of their AK-47 rifles. Wrote the
Sunday Times: ‘The commuters ran headlong into a killing zone
under the muzzles of the second group... At least 12 of the victims
died there, nine tumbled into a heap against the wall they had hoped
would shelter them from the first group of attackers…’
Twenty-five people were killed in the massacre
and another 25 were injured. The ANC blamed the IFP for the killings
and so too did many in the media, prompting further fury at Inkatha.
The ANC also used the killings to demand the speedy installation of the
TEC, saying the massacre showed that the government was unable to
protect black lives. Hence, only a new peacekeeping force (made up
largely of Umkhonto combatants and soldiers from homeland armies allied
to the ANC) could be trusted to undertake this task. The ANC thus drew
substantial advantage from the massacre, while the IFP – despite the
lack of proof of its culpability – was further demonised.
In
the four months before the April 1994 poll, some 1 500 people were
killed in political violence. Yet the Independent Electoral Commission
(IEC), international observers, and many others continually asserted
that a free and fair election could nevertheless be held. Buthelezi
objected, asking how this could be achieved when ‘people were being
shot for belonging to the wrong political party’. But Buthelezi had
been so thoroughly discredited for his alleged brinkmanship and
belligerence that this was largely disregarded.
The
1994 election was so chaotic that no accurate result could be computed.
In the end, the ANC was accorded some 63% of the vote. This was
consistent with what some opinion polls had said, but it was also out
of keeping with various other opinion polls putting ANC support at less
than 50%. Only a free and fair election could have provided an accurate
gauge of the ANC’s electoral strength – but this the April poll had no
prospect of providing.
The
upsurge of violence that began in February 1990 and lasted until a few
days before the April election cost the lives of some 15 000 people,
three times the number killed in the first five years of the people’s
war. Yet, in the early 1990s, when political killings reached these
unprecedented heights, the door to a non-racial democracy had already
been thrown open by De Klerk and all major apartheid laws (other than
the constitution, which had to be renegotiated) had already been
repealed.
The
upsurge was, however, consistent with the requirements of people’s war
in this third stage. It was also consistent with the ANC’s declared
‘dual strategy’ of talking peace while waging war. However, such has
been the power of ANC propaganda that the probable part of Umkhonto in
the violence has consistently been overlooked. Yet the ANC was also the
only political organisation which not only had the means and the motive
to unleash violence on innocent civilians, but which also drew
substantial benefit from the killings, using them to put pressure on
negotiators, stigmatise its opponents, buttress its support, and attain
the hegemony that it had always sought.
In
the 15 years since April 1994, the story of how the ANC came to power
has never properly been told. Few South Africans know about the visit
to Vietnam in 1978, or what the ANC learnt there. The People’s
War book seeks to unravel the diverse strands of the strategy and
show its impact on the political transition. The book makes clear the
great success of the Vietnamese formula in giving the ANC a virtual
monopoly on power. But it also reveals the great cost at which that
domination was achieved. Apart from the killings, the terror, and the
destruction that marked the ten years of the people’s war, the strategy
set in motion political and social forces that cannot easily be
reversed. For violence cannot be turned off ‘like a tap’, as ANC
propaganda suggested, and neither can anarchy easily be converted into
order.
If
nothing else, the people’s war has played a major part in South
Africa’s plague of violent crime, for it turned policemen into targets
of attack, loosened moral constraints, drew youngsters into heinous
acts of violence, and flooded the country with illegal weapons, many of
which remain in circulation.
*Dr
Jeffery is Head of Special Research at the South African Institute of
Race Relations.
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