tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/ronnie-kastrils-29014/articlesRonnie Kastrils – The Conversation2020-04-30T16:13:06Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1376702020-04-30T16:13:06Z2020-04-30T16:13:06ZDenis Goldberg: Rivonia triallist, liberation struggle stalwart, outspoken critic<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331825/original/file-20200430-42962-tluz74.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rivonia trialist Denis Goldberg speaking at a gala event in 2011 to honour the surviving members of the Rivonia Trial.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Foto24/Gallo Images/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/denis-theodore-goldberg-1933-2020">Denis Theodore Goldberg</a>, one of the stalwarts in the fight against apartheid in South Africa, has passed on at the age of 87. He was one of the two last remaining activists who were tried for sabotage in 1963-1964 along with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Ahmed Kathrada. </p>
<p>Goldberg was born into a family of communists in Woodstock, Cape Town, in 1933. His London-born parents were descended from Lithuanian Jews. His childhood home was one where people of all colours were welcome and were among his friends, very unusual in white South African homes of that generation.</p>
<p>He spent more than two decades of his life behind bars at Pretoria Central Prison at the end of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/rivonia-trial-1963-1964">Rivonia trial</a>. Because of apartheid laws he, as a white person, could not be sent to Robben Island, where all black political prisoners and his fellow triallists were sent. </p>
<h2>The revolutionary road</h2>
<p>Goldberg enrolled for a civil engineering degree at the University of Cape Town in 1950, the year the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/suppression-communism-act-no-44-1950-approved-parliament">Communist Party of South Africa</a> was banned. He participated in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/chapter-2-denis-goldberg-and-modern-youth-society-z-pallo-jordan">Modern Youth Society</a> along with other leftists, and joined the underground <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv03445/04lv03446/05lv03462.htm">South African Communist Party</a> in 1957 when it re-formed.</p>
<p>In 1953 Goldberg was organising meetings at Loyolo settlement in Simonstown, to encourage support for the planned Congress of the People in 1955. The meeting brought together the Congress Alliance, comprising the African National Congress (ANC), the South African Indian Congress, the Coloured People’s Congress, the South African Congress of Trade Unions, and the Congress of Democrats, on 25-26 June 1955. </p>
<p>The Special Branch, the political wing of the apartheid police, reported this, and the state-owned railways fired Goldberg from his job.</p>
<p>The meeting culminated in the adoption of the <a href="http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/HIST/freedomchart/freedomch.html">Freedom Charter</a>, which became the congress movement’s blueprint for a free, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-legacy-of-south-africas-freedom-charter-60-years-later-43647">non-racial South Africa</a>.</p>
<p>Goldberg was also active in this decade in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-african-congress-democrats-cod">Congress of Democrats</a>, a leftist organisation affiliated with the ANC, whose membership was in those years restricted to Africans.</p>
<p>In 1960 he participated in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/anti-pass-campaigns-1960">anti-pass protests</a>. Then, all black people were required to carry identity documents that controlled their movements. The document was derisively known as the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pass-laws-south-africa-1800-1994"><em>dompas</em></a> (dumb pass). </p>
<p>He was detained without trial for four months under the state of emergency, as was his mother. This resulted in his being fired from his job working on constructing the Athlone power station.</p>
<p>When the apartheid regime banned the ANC and the rival Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) in 1960, Goldberg was one of the founders of uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the ANC, planning an armed rebellion. Goldberg helped organise the first MK training camp inside South Africa, and was MK’s technical officer.</p>
<p>On 11 July 1963 the Special Branch raided Liliesleaf farm outside Johannesburg and detained him, along with Walter Sisulu and other top ANC leaders. After months of detention, the state charged him and others with sabotage. Mandela, already serving a jail sentence for leaving the country without a passport, was added to the accused. This started the famous Rivonia trial.</p>
<p>It remains a matter of speculation why the accused were charged with sabotage and not high treason. The probable reason is that under the then new Sabotage Act, steered through parliament by Balthazar Johannes Vorster, minister of police, any accused were guilty until proven innocent. This made it easier for prosecutors to jail those who came before the courts.</p>
<p>Eight accused were sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964. At 31 years of age Goldberg was the youngest. Apartheid segregated prisoners. Goldberg was sent to jail in Pretoria, while his fellow accused were all flown to Cape Town for transport to Robben Island prison.</p>
<h2>Prison, and after</h2>
<p>Political prisoners were treated vindictively. Goldberg was denied any visitors for four years. He was allowed to send and receive only one letter, not exceeding 500 words, per six months. But many of the letters from his wife, Esme Bodenstein, were not handed to him. </p>
<p>It was only in 1980 that political prisoners were allowed to read newspapers.</p>
<p>In 1974 Goldberg took on the task of caring for Bram Fischer, the communist party leader and their former defence lawyer, when he was dying of cancer in the row of cells.</p>
<p>In 1985 Goldberg was released. He flew to visit his daughter in Israel; and then lived with his wife in London. After his wife passed away in 2000, he returned to South Africa in 2002 with his second wife, Edelgard. Ronnie Kasrils, then minister of water affairs and forestry, hired him as special advisor for two years.</p>
<p>Goldberg used his prestige to <a href="https://www.capetalk.co.za/articles/258300/we-made-a-mistake-anc-stalwart">speak out</a> against the corruption that peaked during Jacob Zuma’s decade as president. As one of the idealists who worked for the ANC before it came into office in 1994, corruption and state capture was repugnant to his generation.</p>
<p>In retirement, Goldberg launched fund-raising for the Denis Goldberg House of Hope in Hout Bay, a suburb of Cape Town. His House of Hope would offer opportunities in art and music to local disadvantaged children.</p>
<p>Retirement added to all the honours he received. In 2019 the ANC awarded him its highest decoration, the Isithwalandwe. He was awarded four honorary doctorates, from Medunsa (now Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University), Heriot-Watt University (Scotland), the University of Cape Town, and Cape Peninsula University of Technology.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/andrew-mokete-mlangeni">Andrew Mlangeni</a> is now the sole survivor of the Rivonia trial.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137670/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Gottschalk is an ANC member, but writes this obituary in his professional capacity as a political scientist.</span></em></p>Goldberg was the youngest Rivonia triallist. Segregated prisons meant he was sent to Pretoria, while his fellow accused were incarcerated on Robben Island.Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/842392017-09-25T16:59:13Z2017-09-25T16:59:13ZWho’s keeping an eye on South Africa’s spies? Nobody, and that’s the problem<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187185/original/file-20170922-15786-1fe7g2a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Africa's intelligence services continue to have more in common with their apartheid-era counterparts 23 years into democracy.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Once again South Africa’s intelligence services are embroiled in controversy, apparently involved in dirty tricks and criminal activity. </p>
<p>New evidence of this has come to light against the backdrop of the presidential succession race in the governing African National Congress (ANC). One of the contenders, deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa, has been smeared in an apparent <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2017-09-02-intelligence-resources-hacked-my-email-ramaphosa/">covert operation</a>. It seems that those responsible had access to intelligence resources. In another recent case the country’s minister of police Fikile Mbalula was targeted in an <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.za/2017/08/28/project-wonder-an-offensive-in-the-full-scale-intelligence-war_a_23188176/">undercover plot</a>. </p>
<p>Since 1994 the intelligence services have been embroiled in many <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2011-10-14-secret-state">scandals</a>. But because they operate secretly and with minimal oversight, South Africans will probably never know exactly what they are up to.</p>
<p>What is known – from revelations, leaks and investigations over the past 20 years – is that the intelligence services have not been adequately transformed since South Africa’s transition to democracy. The services have more in common with their apartheid-era predecessors than with the principles of the country’s democratic constitution.</p>
<p>This alarming state of affairs was exposed in a <a href="http://www.r2k.org.za/wp-content/uploads/Matthews-Commission-Report-10-Sept-2008.doc">report</a> based on an inquiry into the intelligence services in 2006-2008. The inquiry, known as the Matthews Commission, was established by then intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils after the domestic intelligence agency was <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/the-man-who-watches-over-sas-spies-256764">caught spying illegally</a> on senior ANC members and other politicians.</p>
<p>The commission produced a 300-page report that revealed the various ways in which the intelligence services were failing to comply with the constitution and legislation. The report also included numerous recommendations to ensure compliance.</p>
<p>The public release of the report was potentially a watershed moment. It shone a glaring spotlight on the normally dark corridors of the secret world of intelligence operations and offered a rare opportunity to clean out the rot. But the cabinet and parliament <a href="http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/1693">buried the report</a>. This inflicted lasting damage on South Africa’s constitutional democracy.</p>
<h2>What’s gone wrong</h2>
<p>The intelligence scandals that have plagued post-apartheid South Africa are symptoms of a distressing lack of transformation, which is due to five factors.</p>
<p>First, the intelligence services are closely aligned to the ruling party and enmeshed in its factional politics. The constitution insists that the services must be <a href="https://www.gov.za/documents/constitution-republic-south-africa-1996-chapter-11-security-services#198">politically non-partisan</a>. But the executive and the ANC constantly <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2014-03-27-spooks-vet-anc-candidates">blur the boundary</a> between the party and the state.</p>
<p>This malaise is reinforced by the enduring affinity between ANC politicians and intelligence officers who were comrades during the liberation struggle. </p>
<p>It’s also relevant that the minister of intelligence and the heads of the services are <a href="https://www.gov.za/documents/constitution-republic-south-africa-1996-chapter-11-security-services#209">appointed</a> by the President. These appointments appear to be based on <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2011-04-08-spooks-back-to-their-old-tricks">personal loyalty</a> to him rather than on professional integrity and loyalty to the constitution.</p>
<p>The second reason for the lack of transformation is that the intelligence services have a culture of disregard for the law. The Matthews Commission was shocked to discover that the head of the National Intelligence Coordinating Committee believed that intelligence officers could legitimately “bend the rules” when confronted by serious security threats.</p>
<p>“Bending the rules” is a euphemism for breaking the law. Even if it is well intentioned, the problem is obvious. Disrespect for the law inevitably creates an environment in which misconduct flourishes. It also inevitably leads to intelligence officers lying to their minister and to parliament about breaking the law.</p>
<p>Third, the intelligence services are shrouded in excessive secrecy. They obviously need to keep certain matters secret, such as lawful investigations and the names of undercover agents. But the South African intelligence community is <a href="http://epapers.bham.ac.uk/1528/1/Nathan_-2009-_LightingupIntelligence.pdf">vastly less transparent</a> than its counterparts in many other democratic countries.</p>
<p>Higher levels of secrecy lead to less public scrutiny and a greater risk of abuse of power.</p>
<p>Fourth, the intelligence oversight bodies lack the stomach to do their job. The <a href="http://www.oigi.gov.za/">Office of the Inspector-General of Intelligence</a> is empowered by exemplary <a href="http://www.oigi.gov.za/Legislation/IntelServicesOversightAct40of1994.pdf">legislation</a>. The office has all the authority and powers it needs to conduct thorough investigations into alleged misconduct by the intelligence services. Sadly, it is scared to exercise these powers.</p>
<p>The office’s <a href="http://www.oigi.gov.za/">website</a> asserts that “confidentially is the overriding principle” governing the work of the inspector-general and her staff. This reflects a deeply flawed understanding of the role of statutory oversight bodies. The overriding principle ought to be accountability – that is, the accountability of both the inspector-general and the intelligence services to parliament and the public.</p>
<p>The website itself is a perfect example of non-accountability and lack of transparency. It doesn’t provide any information about any investigation conducted by the inspector-general since 2008. It merely includes a list of media reports, the most recent dated 2010.</p>
<p>The joint parliamentary oversight committee on intelligence also has substantial authority and powers to deal decisively with intelligence mischief. But it too resembles a bunch of sheep guarding a pack of wolves.</p>
<p>The only entities that have made a serious attempt to hold the intelligence services accountable are non-governmental organizations. The most notable has been the <a href="http://www.r2k.org.za/2017/04/20/download-r2ks-activist-guide-to-rica-state-surveillance-in-sa/">Right to Know Campaign</a>.</p>
<p>Finally, the experience of South Africa confirms a general lesson from newly democratic countries: the security services will be transformed if, and to the extent that, the executive wants them to be.</p>
<p>If the executive is not committed to transformation, the security services will be loyal to the president and the ruling party. They will not be loyal to citizens and the constitution. And they then pose a severe threat to democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84239/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laurie Nathan has received grants from the National Research Foundation and the governments of the United Kingdom, Norway, Finland, Belgium and Switzerland. He was a member of the Matthews Commission of Inquiry into the Intelligence Services and has written extensively on intelligence reform.</span></em></p>South Africa’s intelligence services operate secretly and with minimal oversight. So citizens will probably never know exactly what they are up to.Laurie Nathan, Professor, International Mediation, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/835392017-09-06T18:51:21Z2017-09-06T18:51:21ZCyril Ramaphosa’s leaked emails: echoes of apartheid-era dirty tricks<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184880/original/file-20170906-9871-19somya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A routine smear. This is the view of the overwhelming majority of commentators and analysts about last weekend’s <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/news/ramaphosa-in-womanising-e-mail-shock-11056138">“revelations”</a> in the <em>Sunday Independent</em> that Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa was a serial womaniser.</p>
<p>The commentariat can expect more such smears. They will come against more than one candidate running for the presidency of the governing ANC - and subsequently of the country. It’s not hard to predict that this slapstick routine will continue all the way to voting at the <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/54th-national-conference">ANC’s national conference</a> in December.</p>
<p>This was at least the second anti-Ramaphosa smear, following an earlier damp squib that alleged that he <a href="https://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/1612116/malema-alleges-ramaphosa-is-the-worse-member-who-beat-his-wife/">abused his ex-wife</a>, a claim she firmly <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/08/16/ramaphosa-s-ex-wife-abuse-claims-seek-to-prevent-him-from-becoming-president">refuted</a>.</p>
<p>Ramaphosa has alleged that rogue elements in the country’s intelligence services hacked into his private emails and doctored them before handing them to the newspaper <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2017-09-02-intelligence-resources-hacked-my-email-ramaphosa/">to smear him</a>. This, he said, was intended to scupper his campaign to become president of the governing ANC and the country. He predicted that it would get worse ahead of the governing party’s elective conference.</p>
<p>Ramaphosa is in a virtual <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/news/2017-07-22-poll-has-ramaphosa-beating-dlamini-zuma/">two-horse race</a> with former head of the African Union, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, for the presidency of the ANC. Her former husband President Jacob Zuma has <a href="https://www.enca.com/south-africa/dlamini-zuma-indicates-she-is-ready-for-presidency">endorsed her</a> as his preferred successor.</p>
<p>ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe has since urged factions within the governing party to desist from using state resources to <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2017-09-05-keep-state-resources-out-of-party-wars-says-mantashe/">discredit</a> those competing for the presidency.</p>
<h2>Then and now</h2>
<p>Several dimensions of this are worth unpacking. </p>
<p>Police states, unlike democracies, by definition abuse their secret services to spy on peaceful, lawful opponents. But to find a case where the secret services are also abused to spy on factions and rivals within the governing party, one has to go back all the way to the 1960s.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-hendrik-van-den-bergh-1246509.html">General Hendrik van den Bergh</a>, who set up the Bureau for State Security <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/south-african-bureau-state-security-boss-established">(BOSS)</a>, to spy on the apartheid regime’s leftist and liberal opponents, also founded the <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=gmzFBQAAQBAJ&pg=PT60&lpg=PT60&dq=republican+intelligence+services&source=bl&ots=aFTKywMWyA&sig=2MqkJSQe8ANrKKoPaLIdqlsMW1k&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi4h4bdpY7WAhUEvBQKHTfQCOYQ6AEIRzAE#v=onepage&q=republican%20intelligence%20services&f=false">Republikeinse Intelligensie Diens</a> to spy on the then governing National Party’s right-wing faction. These <em>verkramptes</em> (conservatives) broke away in 1969 to form the <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv03445/04lv03446/05lv03472.htm">Herstigte Nasionale Party</a>. </p>
<p>It’s painful to make comparisons between the apartheid police state and post-apartheid South Africa’s Westminster-style democracy. But secret service abuse of phone tapping and letter opening leaves analysts no choice.</p>
<p>While it’s now over a decade since a horrified former Intelligence minister <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ronald-ronnie-kasrils">Ronnie Kasrils</a> discovered that some of his subordinates and phone tappers in the National Intelligence Service (NIS) strayed beyond their brief. They <a href="http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/771.1">took opposite sides</a> in the <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/mbeki-zuma-fight-it-out-in-damaging-anc-race-379445">acrimonious split</a> between President Thabo Mbeki and his fired deputy Jacob Zuma.</p>
<p>What we now seem to have again are rival cliques within the <a href="http://www.ssa.gov.za/AboutUs.aspx">State Security Agency</a>. Each clique sucks up to a rival politician. One clique made available a selection of Ramaphosa’s emails for others to doctor and leak to the <em>Sunday Independent</em>. Another, different clique, was presumably involved in the earlier <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/gupta-leakscom-everything-you-ever-need-to-know-about-guptaleaks-in-one-place-20170721">Gupta email cache</a>. The <a href="http://ewn.co.za/Topic/Gupta-leaks">“#Guptaleaks”</a> exposed the extent of the alleged corrupt relationship between the powerful <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2016-03-24-00-the-gupta-owned-state-enterprises">Gupta family</a> and state officials, parastatals, as well as its influence on Zuma’s government. </p>
<p>A second dimension of the latest smear against Ramaphosa is equally fascinating. The smear organisers, no doubt after some debate between themselves, made the deliberate choice that their smear should be leaked to the <em>Sunday Independent</em> – instead of to <a href="http://www.thenewage.co.za/"><em>The New Age</em></a> and <a href="http://www.ann7.com/">ANN7</a>. The later was established by Zuma’s friends, the Guptas. With their television station, <em>The New Age</em> are at the heart of <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/download-the-full-state-of-capture-pdf-20161102">state capture </a> allegations and rabidly pro-Zuma and his faction. </p>
<p>This must reflect the spooks’ considered judgement that <em>The New Age</em> and ANN7 are so completely tainted as Gupta business outlets as to be discredited. So, their smear’s only chances of credibility lay with placing their bait in some alternative media go-between. It does help that Steven Motale, the editor of the <em>Sunday Independent</em>, who wrote the story on the leaked emails, is also perceived to be in the pro-Zuma camp, having written an impassioned <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/opinion/letter-im-sorry-president-zuma-1899205">open letter</a> in 2015 expressing his regret that he was part of a “sinister” campaign against the president. </p>
<p>Motale also praised ordinary members of the ANC members who “consistently supported Zuma despite the sustained barrage of propaganda against him”. He followed it with another this year in which he condemns former Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan as being an impediment to Zuma’s idea of <a href="https://blackopinion.co.za/2017/03/27/steve-motale-writes-open-letter-president-zuma/">radical economic transformation</a>.</p>
<p>Presumably this leaking and smearing will continue. There will always be one media outlet desperate enough for an exclusive scoop from the secret services. That, also, has not changed since the apartheid decades. Remember <em>The Star</em> newspaper alleging that thorn in the apartheid government’s side, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/joe-slovo">Joe Slovo</a>, who was general secretary of the South African Communist Party during the liberation struggle, <a href="http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft4p3006kc&chunk.id=d0e5784&toc.depth=1&brand=ucpress">killed his activist wife</a> Ruth First? That was of course a total fabrication by the apartheid regime’s agents.</p>
<p>Here in 2017 though, democracy relies on a politically savvy public of informed voters who will respond to smears not with credulity, but amusement, cartoons, and sarcasm.</p>
<h2>Campaigns, slates and splits</h2>
<p>The remaining months of the formal ANC election campaign between now and the party’s <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/54th-national-conference">national elective conference in December</a> recall to mind Helen Zille’s comment when she suddenly sprung her <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/news/zille-resigns-as-da-leader-1843970">surprise resignation</a> as national leader of the main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA). She commented that any internal DA campaigning longer than a few brief weeks would <a href="http://www.knysnakeep.org/helen-zilles-resignation-explanation/">harm her party</a>.</p>
<p>By contrast, ANC internal campaigning resembles primary years in the United States, stretching over pretty much at least 12 months. The ANC needs to develop mechanisms to manage this without splits - such as those that led to the formation of the <a href="http://udm.org.za/history/">United Democratic Movement</a>, the <a href="http://www.congressofthepeople.org.za/content/page/History-of-cope">Congress of the People</a>, and <a href="http://www.effonline.org/">Economic Freedom Fighters</a> - in its past.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/ramaphosa-pleads-for-one-anc-slate-20170512">“Slates”</a> have plagued ANC politics during its 2007 and 2012 conferences. With the slate system, delegates to the national conferences are lobbied to vote for a prescribed list (or slate) of candidates linked to a specific presidential candidate. Such a list then automatically becomes the party’s highest decision making body, its national executive committee.</p>
<p>One solution is for the ANC to change its voting procedures for its national and provincial executive committees. This will ensure that the maximum number of candidates any delegate may vote for should be significantly less than the number of seats contested. This would ensure that while the winning slate still wins, the losing slate gets some representation. So it is neither purged nor splits off to form yet another breakaway party.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83539/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Gottschalk is a member of the ANC, but writes this analysis in his professional capacity as a political scientist.</span></em></p>South Africa’s Deputy President, Cyril Ramaphosa, claims the intelligence services are being used to discredit him and prevent him becoming the country’s next leader.Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/620552016-07-10T16:45:11Z2016-07-10T16:45:11ZSouth Africa’s armed struggle: where the ANC’s ineptitude was a virtue<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129425/original/image-20160705-789-1g1bpyg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former members of the ANC's armed wing perform the toyi-toyi dance in support of then ailing former President Nelson Mandela.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Thomas Mukoya </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Whatever the virtues of South Africa’s governing African National Congress (<a href="http://www.anc.org.za/">ANC</a>) – we are assured it still has a few – it was never any good at armed struggle. And no more comprehensive support for that judgment has been assembled than the valuable new book, “<a href="http://penguinbooks.co.za/book/umkhonto-we-sizwe-anc%E2%80%99s-armed-struggle/9781770228412">Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle</a>”, by the University of Pretoria’s Thula Simpson.</p>
<p>South Africans can be grateful for this ineptitude. It may even count among the ANC’s greater virtues. For, had the ANC been militarily more capable, millions of South Africans might now be living in hell-holes of war such as those we see in Syria.</p>
<p>Instead, the ANC had the political imagination to reach an accommodation with apartheid’s masters who were, militarily, more powerful than it would ever be. The outcome was thus not a revolution in South Africa – although there have been far-reaching changes. Rather, both concluded they had more to gain from compromise than further confrontation.</p>
<h2>People’s power trumps armed struggle</h2>
<p>Armed struggle played a subsidiary – but, I will suggest below, an oddly important – role in this negotiated outcome. But the tactics deployed inside the country that were most decisive against apartheid were those that did not involve organised violence. They were the tactics in which ordinary people involved themselves, including strikes, boycotts and marches, and developing a vision of a different South Africa.</p>
<p>Underlying these nonviolent tactics was an insight that had become obscured during the setbacks the ANC and others suffered after the birth of the organisation’s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), in 1961. The insight, only recovered in the early 1970s, was that any ruler can rule only for as long as those he rules allow him to rule. </p>
<p>Put another way, South Africans became increasingly aware that the claim of their primary slogan, “<a href="http://www.amandladevelopment.org/pages/learn_01.html"><em>Amandla! Ngawethu!</em></a>” (“Power is ours!”), was true. The power to decide the fate of the country was, indeed, theirs. Each man, woman and child possessed that power in some degree. And he or she didn’t need to carry a gun to be an agent of change.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129377/original/image-20160705-820-1tqv95m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129377/original/image-20160705-820-1tqv95m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129377/original/image-20160705-820-1tqv95m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129377/original/image-20160705-820-1tqv95m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129377/original/image-20160705-820-1tqv95m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129377/original/image-20160705-820-1tqv95m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129377/original/image-20160705-820-1tqv95m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former Umkhonto we Sizwe commander Siphiwe Nyanda went on to head South Africa’s military.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/siphiwe-nyanda">Siphiwe Nyanda</a>, probably the most effective field commander in MK, put it differently this year. The ANC, Nyanda said, might have been at the forefront of the struggle, but the people of South Africa had “<a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/politics/2016/03/31/veteran-still-leads-the-charge">liberated themselves</a>”.</p>
<h2>A rich historical collection</h2>
<p>These are my own conclusions, re-asserted with considerably more confidence after reading Simpson’s book. They are not his. Rather, Simpson is careful to reserve his own judgment, preferring to tell his readers the story and leaving it to them to reach their own conclusions about the role of armed struggle in South Africa. In doing so, he has given us what is undoubtedly the richest collection of incident and claim assembled about MK.</p>
<p>Most of the book consists of accounts of attacks, firefights, bombings, the capture of fighters, disputes within the ANC and MK, and cruelties on both sides. The accounts are drawn from, among others, interviews with MK fighters, court records and other scholars.</p>
<p>Each account is usually no more than a page long. And Simpson writes each in the historic present tense. This style puts the reader inside the situation being described, which enhances the drama and readability. It will please the scholar looking for more empirical detail and others, adult or child, who want to know how things happened.</p>
<p>Here is a snippet from his account of the night attack by South African special forces on the headquarters of MK’s special operations unit in Matola, Mozambique, in January 1981. Some South African soldiers had managed to slip into the special operations compound and rounded up some MK people. The noise attracted others’ attention:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sipho Thobela gets up and looks out the window. He sees his comrades lined up as if by a firing squad. He goes to fetch his AK [AK-47 assault rifle]. From the house’s balcony, Thobela opens fire on the men in the yard, upon which they start shooting at their captives as well as back at the house. The first captive they hit is Montso Mokgabudi, the commander (p276).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This attack was a heavy blow for MK. A group of gifted young commanders from the post-1976 generation was lost. It was they who had executed the attacks on, among others, the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/sasol-plant-under-attack">Natref and Sasol 1 and 2</a> oil-from-coal plants eight months earlier.</p>
<h2>Success in failure</h2>
<p>The preface to the book states that MK’s armed struggle was “the longest sustained insurgency in South African history”. That billing – though useful in marketing – may be a little misleading. There have been few “sustained insurgencies” in South Africa, let alone long ones.</p>
<p>It is also moot to ask how “sustained” MK’s armed struggle was, even in its own terms. For ten of MK’s 30 years of existence – from 1966 to 1975 – there was no armed struggle inside South Africa. The <a href="http://www.sadet.co.za/docs/rtd/vol1/sadet1_chap12.pdf">Wankie and Sipolilo campaigns</a> in which MK was involved in then-Rhodesia in 1967-68 were aberrant adventures that failed. And from 1976 to 1990, armed struggle spluttered on at very low levels of intensity.</p>
<p>MK’s significance may, paradoxically, lie in its failure – in the ANC’s inability to persuade most South Africans that armed struggle was a plausible way to achieve regime change. I say this as someone who wrote scores of Aesopian newspaper articles and distributed thousands of ANC underground leaflets trying to convince South Africans that it was!</p>
<p>I long to hear Simpson, after all this work, argue a judgment on this and related questions.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129376/original/image-20160705-814-il6bh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129376/original/image-20160705-814-il6bh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129376/original/image-20160705-814-il6bh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129376/original/image-20160705-814-il6bh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129376/original/image-20160705-814-il6bh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129376/original/image-20160705-814-il6bh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129376/original/image-20160705-814-il6bh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
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<h2>Daring to struggle</h2>
<p>The best tribute I’ve heard to MK’s contribution came from <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ronald-ronnie-kasrils">Ronnie Kasrils</a> in early 1990. The ANC had recently been <a href="https://global.britannica.com/topic/African-National-Congress">unbanned</a>. Kasrils was on the run inside South Africa after apartheid intelligence had uncovered <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/members-anc-and-sacp-are-detained-due-operation-vula">Operation Vula</a>, which they saw as an act of bad faith by the ANC and in which he was number three.</p>
<p>My former commander, Kasrils was willing to be interviewed for my <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02712/05lv02713.htm">doctoral research</a> on ANC operational strategy. At one clandestine meeting at Zoo Lake in Johannesburg, talking off tape, I asked if he could explain how the ANC was commanding such apparent authority among democrats inside the country even though its domestic organisation was at the time, we both knew, pitifully weak. How was it that the ANC looked likely eventually to lead a united front of democrats in negotiations?</p>
<p>Kasrils referred me to <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/oliver-reginald-tambo">Oliver Tambo’s</a> words in a speech in Venezuela seven years earlier. Tambo had been accepting, on Nelson Mandela’s behalf, the <a href="http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=26456&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html">Simón Bolívar Award</a>, named after the South American revolutionary. Tambo had told his audience of how the ANC and Mandela had “<a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/statement-oliver-tambo-accepting-simon-bolivar-award-behalf-nelson-mandela">dared to struggle</a>”.</p>
<p>I recall Kasrils saying:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Our armed struggle, whatever its limitations, has shown that. We’ve dared. Say what they will, no other organisation can match it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That, to my mind, is what MK fighters’ blood, courage and daring bought. It was an important part of the price that the ANC paid to have the authority it needed to lead a broad front of democratic South Africans into negotiations that produced the minimum necessary condition – the institutions of formal democracy – to shape a free society. It was only a necessary condition that those fighters helped achieve, not a sufficient one – but it was priceless all the same.</p>
<p><em>“<a href="http://penguinbooks.co.za/book/umkhonto-we-sizwe-anc%E2%80%99s-armed-struggle/9781770228412">Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle</a>”, written by Thula Simpson, is published by Penguin Books South Africa.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62055/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Howard Barrell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Armed struggle played a subsidiary role in the ANC’s fight against apartheid in South Africa. The tactics that were most decisive in securing freedom were those that didn’t involve organised violence.Howard Barrell, Senior Lecturer at the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.