tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/umkhonto-we-sizwe-29011/articlesUmkhonto we Sizwe – The Conversation2024-02-20T13:14:07Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2187462024-02-20T13:14:07Z2024-02-20T13:14:07ZWomen in South Africa’s armed struggle: new book records history at first hand<p>South Africa’s young democracy was a culmination of years of sweat, blood and revolution against the apartheid regime. In the early 1960s, after decades of “<a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/1960-1966-genesis-armed-struggle">non-violence</a>” as a policy of resistance, the African National Congress (ANC) and Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) formed military wings to take the fight to the apartheid regime. </p>
<p>Based on the living record and popular discourse, it would be easy to assume that the struggle against apartheid was almost entirely the domain of men. But women played a crucial role – one which is only really coming to light today.</p>
<p>In her book <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Guerrillas-and-Combative-Mothers-Women-and-the-Armed-Struggle-in-South/Magadla/p/book/9781032597249">Guerrillas and Combative Mothers</a>, political and international studies academic <a href="https://www.ru.ac.za/politicalinternationalstudies/people/academic/profsiphokazimagadlahod/">Siphokazi Magadla</a> uses life history interviews to offer firsthand insights into women’s participation in the armed struggle against apartheid in South Africa from 1961 until 1994. She also examines the texture of their lives in the new South Africa after demobilisation.</p>
<p>Magadla interviewed women who fought with the ANC’s military wing, uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK); the PAC’s military wing, the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (Apla), formerly known as Poqo; and the paramilitary self-defence units in black urban residential areas. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573453/original/file-20240205-15-bk6g7c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573453/original/file-20240205-15-bk6g7c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=955&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573453/original/file-20240205-15-bk6g7c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=955&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573453/original/file-20240205-15-bk6g7c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=955&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573453/original/file-20240205-15-bk6g7c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1200&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573453/original/file-20240205-15-bk6g7c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1200&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573453/original/file-20240205-15-bk6g7c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1200&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UKZN Press</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a sociologist interested in gender and sexuality, I was keen to read this book for the gendered experiences of liberation struggles. I read it alongside <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/Guns_and_Guerilla_Girls/dK1borNjTBMC?hl=en&gbpv=1">other studies</a> about <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/The_Front_Line_Runs_Through_Every_Woman/foMvd3m6KDQC?hl=en&gbpv=0">women in southern African liberation wars</a>. </p>
<p>Much of the prevalent discourse about women’s wartime participation tends to centre on one question: why do revolutions and wars fail women? This discourse tends to, for example, heavily examine women’s experiences of sexual violence and victimisation in wars. It excludes their agency and contribution to wars. </p>
<p>But Magadla’s book, as well as the feminist analyses I read to complement it, widens the lens. She wants to know why women joined the armed struggle. How did women use or play with femininity and womanhood to optimise military effectiveness? How can women’s participation broaden our understanding of combat beyond direct physical fighting? And, lastly, how do women view their involvement in the revolutions that result? </p>
<h2>Broadening the definition of combat</h2>
<p>Some may argue that the women profiled by Magadla were not combatants. Few of them engaged in direct combat; that is, physical fighting on the battlefront. But the author urges us to widen the definition of combat. </p>
<p>Citing the South African political activist and academic <a href="https://raymondsuttner.com/about/">Raymond Suttner</a>, Magadla argues that apartheid was a war with no battlefront. Instead it occupied all corners of society. It was fought in homes, schools and churches. Women guerrillas put themselves at risk in different ways and relied on creative approaches to get close to potential targets. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.parliament.gov.za/person-details/231">Thandi Modise</a>, who has served in South Africa’s parliament since 1994 and is currently the minister of defence and military veterans, is one of the women profiled in the book. She tells of carrying a handbag from which protruded a pair of knitting needles – an absolutely ordinary, nonthreatening sight – while she observed potential military targets. </p>
<p>On the rare occasions that women’s wartime participation is recognised in the wider discourse, they tend to be shown as armed revolutionaries who are, simultaneously, feminist icons. Images abound of these women soldiers toting AK47s, ready to shoot, or carrying rifles – and babies on their backs.</p>
<p>Magadla weaves in accounts throughout the book to disrupt this popular narrative. After all, it potentially erases those women who carried neither AK47s nor babies on their backs during the war for liberation. Some women hid bullets inside tampons to bring into the country for the war while others carried explosives in their purses. Some spent endless hours watching and testing for potential dangers and weaknesses in the apartheid military’s defences.</p>
<p>One example is <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275874041_The_Road_to_Democracy_South_Africans_telling_their_stories_-_Nondwe_Mankahla">Nondwe Mankahla</a>, who, while working as a distributor for the New Age newspaper, simultaneously couriered bomb equipment for political activists Govan Mbeki and Raymond Mhlaba. </p>
<h2>Soldiers, not ‘she soldiers’</h2>
<p>Throughout the book, Magadla refuses to pigeonhole the participants. She recognises that their experiences vary and analyses how the women of MK negotiated its culture of patriarchy in a way that highlights the women’s agency without romanticising their struggles. </p>
<p>Women in MK were known as “flowers of the nation” or as <em>umzana</em> (a small home) of the organisation. Some of the women found the labels, <em>umzana</em> in particular, endearing. Others felt that they diminished women’s roles. Similarly, they resisted qualifiers such as “she comrades” and “she soldiers”.</p>
<p>But they did not want to erase their femininity. Some aspects of the patriarchal culture worked to the advantage of women both inside the organisation and in their encounters with the apartheid security police during operations. Women combatants could easily manipulate their femininity to defy the guerrilla image contained in <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2019-05-27-00-the-knitting-needles-guerrilla/">government propaganda</a>.</p>
<p>During the 1980s MK staged <a href="https://www.news24.com/News24/Secret-world-of-Operation-Vula-20040331">Operation Vula</a>, a mission to bring exiled leaders back into the country. <a href="https://www.ru.ac.za/latestnews/womanveteransreflectontheirrolesinsouthafricasarmedstruggle.html">Busisiwe Jacqueline ‘Totsie’ Memela</a> successfully smuggled anti-apartheid activists Mac Maharaj and Siphiwe Nyanda into South Africa from Swaziland (Eswatini). Magadla attributes her success to a combination of her military training and dynamic use of femininity: Memela dressed as a Swati woman while observing the border around the clock. </p>
<h2>A work of theorising</h2>
<p>Guerrillas and Combative Mothers is more than just a project to name the women who dedicated their lives to liberating South Africa. It also presents different ways of theorising. It raises an interesting methodological question about seeing the limits of verbal language and the utility of silence when <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0011392104045377">dealing with traumatic events</a>. How do we analyse silence when the people’s wounds have not healed and therefore their lips remain sealed? </p>
<p>However, while Magadla’s argument is sophisticated, the language doesn’t “sweat”, <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/95923/the-language-must-not-sweat">to quote Toni Morrison</a>. It remains simple and accessible to all audiences.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218746/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thoko Sipungu 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>The interviews in this book offer firsthand insights into women’s participation in the armed struggle against apartheid.Thoko Sipungu, Lecturer in Sociology, Rhodes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2219002024-01-27T06:07:13Z2024-01-27T06:07:13ZJacob Zuma, the monster South Africa’s ruling ANC created, continues to haunt it<p>Former South African president Jacob Zuma is <a href="https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=23cde356c2361300JmltdHM9MTcwNTg4MTYwMCZpZ3VpZD0zMGZhN2Y5OS00MWYwLTYxYjctMjZmMS02Y2ZlNDAxMDYwYmYmaW5zaWQ9NTI0Ng&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=3&fclid=30fa7f99-41f0-61b7-26f1-6cfe401060bf&psq=uMhkonto&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc2FiY25ld3MuY29tL3NhYmNuZXdzL3p1bWEtdXJnZXMtc291dGgtYWZyaWNhbnMtdG8tdm90ZS1mb3ItbmV3bHktZm9ybWVkLXVta2hvbnRvLXdlc2l6d2Uv&ntb=1">endorsing</a> the uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Party, the latest rival to the governing African National Congress (ANC) for the <a href="https://www.eisa.org/election-calendar/">upcoming national elections</a>. By doing so, he not only challenges the ANC politically, but also claims its heritage.</p>
<p>The new party – which media reports say is <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/news/politics/2024-01-07-zuma-exposed-as-brains-behind-establishment-of-mk-party/">Zuma’s brainchild</a> – uses the name of the ANC’s former military wing. The party’s launch coincided with the 62nd anniversary of the real <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk">uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK)</a>, formed on <a href="https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=04fd21d4aee3a8f1JmltdHM9MTcwNTg4MTYwMCZpZ3VpZD0zMGZhN2Y5OS00MWYwLTYxYjctMjZmMS02Y2ZlNDAxMDYwYmYmaW5zaWQ9NTI3Mw&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=3&fclid=30fa7f99-41f0-61b7-26f1-6cfe401060bf&psq=uMhkonto&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc2FoaXN0b3J5Lm9yZy56YS9hcnRpY2xlL3Vta2hvbnRvLXdlc2l6d2UtbWs&ntb=1">16 December 1961</a> to fight the apartheid government. </p>
<p>Zuma could not have been more daring. Yet the ANC obfuscates, criticising him instead of acting decisively and expelling him. Meantime, he actively campaigns to unseat it. Why?</p>
<p>I have studied and written extensively about the politics of the ANC and its alliance partners – the Congress of South African Trade Unions (<a href="http://www.cosatu.org.za/">Cosatu</a>) and the South African Communist Party (<a href="https://www.sacp.org.za/">SACP</a>). I was also one of the editors of the <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/the-zuma-administration">book</a> The Zuma Administration: Critical Challenges. </p>
<p>In my view, the reason the ANC is cagey about taking him on, is because the party tied itself in knots <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/0fc7bb4c-b027-11e3-b0d0-00144feab7de">defending Zuma’s bad behaviour</a> in the past. The ANC created the Zuma problem. The party and its <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03161.htm">alliance partners</a> abetted his kleptocracy and facilitated his <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/">capture of the state</a>. They created Zuma as a <a href="https://www.rusi.org/publication/jacob-zuma-after-battle-polokwane">populist with a penchant for rabble-rousing</a>. Now they are paralysed and can’t act against him.</p>
<p>The ANC also <a href="https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=ce02ce879565061cJmltdHM9MTcwNTg4MTYwMCZpZ3VpZD0zMGZhN2Y5OS00MWYwLTYxYjctMjZmMS02Y2ZlNDAxMDYwYmYmaW5zaWQ9NTE3NA&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=3&fclid=30fa7f99-41f0-61b7-26f1-6cfe401060bf&psq=support+for+zuma&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuY2l0aXplbi5jby56YS9uZXdzL3NvdXRoLWFmcmljYS9wb2xpdGljcy9hbmMtd29udC1hY3QtYWdhaW5zdC16dW1hLWZvci1ub3ctcmVwb3J0Lw&ntb=1">fears</a> that if it expelled him, he could portray himself as a victim.</p>
<p>Decisive action against him would require the party to face up to its own demons. It would be exposed as having enabled him. </p>
<p>The ANC’s reluctance to take him on or fire him is rooted in the events of 2005. Then South African president Thabo Mbeki <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/president-thabo-mbeki-sacks-deputy-president-jacob-zuma">fired Zuma as his deputy</a> after the latter was mired in corruption allegations. Zuma’s use of this to build a case that he was a victim still haunts the ANC. It fears a repeat so close to the 2024 elections. </p>
<p>Zuma’s political pursuits now depend on a new party whose electoral strength is yet to be tested. It pales in comparison with the support he got in the past. </p>
<p>My arguments is that the political cost of not expelling him – in terms of lost votes – is greater than the cost of expelling him. By not acting against him, the ANC is failing to “renew” itself as it has <a href="https://renewal.anc1912.org.za/">promised</a> to do. This makes the party look weak and may cost it electoral support.</p>
<h2>Zuma and the ANC</h2>
<p>The ANC knew Zuma was likely to turn out this way, from as early as 1997, when it elected him deputy president to Thabo Mbeki, paving his way to the highest office in the land.</p>
<p>South African author and journalist Mark Gevisser <a href="https://www.everand.com/book/641542878/Thabo-Mbeki-The-Dream-Deferred">writes</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Mbeki and those around him began to worry that Zuma possessed a dangerous combination of unhealthy ambition and poor judgment.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>They were right.</p>
<p>Because of this fear, he was at first not considered for the position of deputy president. Instead, Mbeki offered the position to Inkatha Freedom Party leader <a href="https://theconversation.com/mangosuthu-buthelezi-was-a-man-of-immense-political-talent-and-contradictions-181081">Mangosuthu Buthelezi</a>. However, through Zuma’s machination, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00344890902944387">this was foiled</a>. He eventually became the deputy president. But he was bitter that he had been initially overlooked for the position.</p>
<p>During <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/the-zuma-administration">Mbeki’s presidency</a>, relations between the ANC and its <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03161.htm">alliance partners</a> became frosty. </p>
<p>The contestation was around the Mbeki government’s free market economic policies, which Cosatu and the SACP <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/04d23130-a8dc-11dc-ad9e-0000779fd2ac">condemned</a> as a neo-liberal agenda that deviated from the ANC’s aim of <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv02039/04lv02103/05lv02120/06lv02126.htm">socio-economic transformation and empowerment</a> of those previously marginalised when it came to power in 1994.</p>
<p>Zuma exploited this to position himself as the centre around which <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2010-09-03-coalition-of-the-wounded-turn-on-zuma/">those allegedly wounded by Mbeki</a> could coalesce.</p>
<h2>The rise of Zuma the populist</h2>
<p>In Zuma, the <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/the-zuma-administration">alliance</a> saw someone who could represent its ideological position in the country’s policy choices. Yet, he was part of the ANC leadership that adopted Mbeki’s economic strategy and was never known to espouse leftist politics. To their dismay, he proved not to be their <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2017-04-20-replacing-mbeki-with-zuma-did-not-solve-our-problems-nzimande/">ideological ally in office</a>.</p>
<p>Later the same year Zuma was <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-a-decade-on-a-new-book-on-zumas-rape-trial-has-finally-hit-home-85262">accused of raping</a> the daughter of a friend. He was acquitted but was tainted as immoral.</p>
<p>This alone should have disqualified him from any leadership position. But it did not matter to his allies, who ensured he became the president of the ANC <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2007-12-18-zuma-is-new-anc-president/">in 2007</a>, and that of the country <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/jacob-zuma-presidency-2009-2017-march">in 2009</a>. He was, to the alliance, an <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232871908_Understanding_the_'Zuma_Tsunami'">unstoppable tsunami</a>.</p>
<p>The ANC bashed the judiciary as counter-revolutionary for unfavourable judgments against Zuma. The party claimed his prosecution was political persecution <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27756284?seq=2">at Mbeki’s behest</a>. Then ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema declared they were prepared to <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/we-will-kill-for-zuma-404646">kill and die for Zuma</a>. </p>
<h2>Leading with impunity</h2>
<p>Zuma’s eventual ascendancy to the presidency of the country in 2009 was <a href="https://www.alterinter.org/?Working-class-politics-or-populism-the-meaning-of-Zuma-for-the-left-in-SA">hailed,</a> by the alliance left – Cosatu and the SACP, as</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a victory against the neo-liberal orthodoxy of Mbeki.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Zuma did not deliver on this expectation. Yet he continued to enjoy the support of the tripartite alliance. </p>
<p>He went on to <a href="https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=905b9cd41887a59aJmltdHM9MTcwNTg4MTYwMCZpZ3VpZD0zMGZhN2Y5OS00MWYwLTYxYjctMjZmMS02Y2ZlNDAxMDYwYmYmaW5zaWQ9NTE5NQ&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=3&fclid=30fa7f99-41f0-61b7-26f1-6cfe401060bf&psq=betrayal+of+the+promise+report&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly9wYXJpLm9yZy56YS93cC1jb250ZW50L3VwbG9hZHMvMjAxNy8wNS9CZXRyYXlhbC1vZi10aGUtUHJvbWlzZS0yNTA1MjAxNy5wZGY&ntb=1">subvert</a> the criminal justice system to avert prosecution for his corruption charges. </p>
<p>The judiciary <a href="https://theconversation.com/are-judges-in-south-africa-under-threat-or-do-they-complain-too-much-45459">pushed back</a> but earned the wrath of the ANC and its alliance partners.</p>
<p>They always closed ranks to shield Zuma from accountability. He survived numerous motions of no confidence in parliament for, among other things, <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2012-11-08-parties-to-file-motion-of-no-confidence-against-zuma/%22">“dangerously flawed judgment”</a> relating to his <a href="https://www.gov.za/news/media-statements/president-zuma-appoints-new-national-director-public-prosecutions-25-nov-2009">appointment of Menzi Simelani</a> as head of the National Prosecuting Authority, despite evidence that he had lied to a presidential commission of inquiry.</p>
<p>Among the notable no-confidence votes against which the ANC-dominated parliament shielded Zuma was over his use of public money to renovate his private homestead <a href="https://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2016/11.pdf">at Nkandla</a>. </p>
<p>The stage was set for Zuma to wreak havoc with impunity. The alliance left only started to move away from him when it became obvious that he had outsourced the running of the country to his friends, <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/how-gupta-brothers-from-india-landed-south-africas-ruling-party-in-its-biggest-crisis-397138">the Gupta family</a>. It was too late.</p>
<p>In 2015, he <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0UO0KO/">sacked</a> the finance minister Nhlanhla Nene, only to replace him with an obscure Gupta-sanctioned appointee, with an eye on the national treasury.</p>
<p>The market tailspinned into and the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/5c0da8b2-9eb5-11e5-b45d-4812f209f861">rand plummeted</a>. Yet the ANC still defended him in parliament.</p>
<p>Towards the end of 2016, the public protector released a <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/state-capture-report-public-protector-14-october-2016">damning report</a> showing how the state had been captured at Zuma’s behest. Again, the ANC foiled attempts to remove him.</p>
<p>He only resigned on <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-43066443?utm_source=Media+Review+for+February+15%2C+2018&utm_campaign=Media+Review+for+February+15%2C+2018&utm_medium=email">14 February 2018</a>. This was not so much for his misdemeanours but because he was no longer the president of the ANC.</p>
<h2>What needs to happen</h2>
<p>The ANC’s indecisiveness does it no good. Its claim that he has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuu_FEGQc0A">“walked away”</a> from the party and is therefore no longer a member is wishful thinking. He has <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/zuma-says-he-will-not-vote-anc-south-africas-election-2023-12-16/">made it clear</a> he will remain an ANC member.</p>
<p>The only way to terminate his membership is to expel him. This should have happened much earlier, at least before the ANC’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-marks-its-112th-year-with-an-eye-on-national-elections-but-its-record-is-patchy-and-future-uncertain-221125">112th anniversary festivities </a> earlier this month. They could have used the platform to explain the decision to cleanse the party of those who debase it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221900/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mashupye Herbert Maserumule received funding from National Research Foundation(NRF). He is affiliated with the South African Association of Public Administration and Management(SAAPAM).</span></em></p>The ANC tied itself in knots defending Zuma’s destructive bad behaviour in the past. Acting against him now would require it to own up to its sins.Mashupye Herbert Maserumule, Professor of Public Affairs, Tshwane University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2215052024-01-26T10:24:19Z2024-01-26T10:24:19ZThe two faces of Jacob Zuma – former South African president campaigns to unseat the ANC he once led. Who supports him and why?<p>Former South African president Jacob Zuma’s political comeback builds on support from marginalised and angry constituencies within or close to the governing African National Congress (ANC). His vengeful but <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-67741527">“loyal” rebellion</a> against the ANC resonates with these political constituencies.</p>
<p>In mid-December 2023, Zuma announced that he would be <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2024-01-09-umkhonto-wesizwe-what-we-know-about-zumas-new-party/">supporting</a> the newly formed <a href="https://mkparty.org.za/">uMkhonto weSizwe Party</a> (MK Party), rather than the ANC, in the <a href="https://www.eisa.org/election-calendar/">upcoming national election</a>. But he would <a href="https://www.enca.com/videos/2024-elections-zuma-ditches-anc-pledges-vote-mk-party">not resign from the ANC</a>. <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk">Umkhonto we Sizwe</a> is the name of the ANC’s former guerrilla army. </p>
<p>This latest assault by Zuma on the ANC coincides with the embattled party entering a tough campaigning period for the <a href="https://www.eisa.org/election-calendar/">national and provincial elections</a>, expected between May and August 2024. Zuma is using his new platform to strike at his arch-enemy, President Cyril Ramaphosa, who also heads the ANC. </p>
<p>Zuma, president of the ANC from <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/former-leaders-2/">2007 to 2017</a>, and of South Africa from <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/jacob-gedleyihlekisa-zuma-mr">2009 to early 2018</a>, rose to power controversially, amid allegations of corruption related to the government’s <a href="https://scientiamilitaria.journals.ac.za/pub/article/view/1037">1998 procurement of arms</a>. This scandal became the hallmark of his reign, followed by the debilitating <a href="https://pari.org.za/betrayal-promise-report/">state capture and gross misgovernance</a> scandals. </p>
<p>He has used the <a href="https://definitions.uslegal.com/s/stalingrad-defense/">Stalingrad legal strategy</a> – wearing down a plaintiff by challenging their every move – to evade justice. However, he was convicted on a relatively minor charge in July 2021, for defying a court order to appear at a <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/">judicial commission into state capture</a>. His subsequent jailing triggered violent protests in which <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-deadly-july-2021-riots-may-recur-if-theres-no-change-186397">about 350 people died</a>. There are fears that further action against Zuma could spark a resurgence. </p>
<h2>Challenging Ramaphosa</h2>
<p>Zuma has portrayed the MK Party as the authentic ANC, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UEzy1ELNgo">not the one led by Ramaphosa</a>. He has been drawing sizeable crowds to the meetings of the new party, provoking the ANC and <a href="https://www.news24.com/citypress/politics/anc-take-a-chill-pill-on-their-zuma-headache-for-now-20240114">paralysing its strategists</a>. The ANC faces a difficult choice: suspend or expel Zuma and face a backlash; or tolerate him within the ANC, lest he turns disciplinary action against him into martyrdom.</p>
<p>My academic study of South African politics, and the ANC, over three decades provides some insight into why Zuma continues to command support, despite his ruinous tenure. Under his presidency, the state and its organs were <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-48980964">captured and repurposed</a> for his benefit and those around him; state organs were disabled and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.18772/12021026451">ANC factional divisions pushed to unprecedented levels</a>. I suggest the reasons people still support him include public unhappiness with the ANC’s performance in government; Zuma’s cunning casting of himself as their similarly suffering saviour; his exploitation of Zulu cultural identity; the shared loss with his faction of status; and exclusion from the ANC’s patronage system. He feeds on the government’s performance failures.</p>
<h2>State of the ANC</h2>
<p>The ANC bears scars of at least two presidential battles: <a href="https://ebin.pub/dominance-and-decline-the-anc-in-the-time-of-zuma-1868148858-9781868148851.html">Zuma versus Mbeki</a>, and then <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.18772/12021026451">Zuma against Ramaphosa</a>. The fights spawned internal enemies, many of them now Zuma disciples <a href="https://web.facebook.com/p/Areta-African-Radical-Economic-Transformation-Alliance-100090796962653/?_rdc=1&_rdr">stirring up support for the MK Party project</a>.</p>
<p>Zuma’s prime target is the Ramaphosa-led ANC with its <a href="https://www.sanews.gov.za/south-africa/yes-sa-thuma-mina">Thuma Mina (“Send Me”) campaign</a>, which promised to rebuild the country from the mess Zuma created or exacerbated, guided, according to the text, by values of integrity, equality, solidarity and shared humanity. Zuma <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/i-wont-campaign-for-anc-in-2024-will-vote-mk--jaco">accuses Ramaphosa</a> of being corrupted by <a href="https://theconversation.com/white-monopoly-capital-good-politics-bad-sociology-worse-economics-77338">“white monopoly capital”</a>, and pins his marginalisation from the ANC on having become the victim of a corrupted judiciary. He complains that Ramaphosa introduced practices that are foreign to the ANC’s character. </p>
<p>At the height of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Zuma-Years-South-Africas-Changing/dp/1770220887">Zuma’s tenure</a> as president of South Africa, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jacob-gedleyihlekisa-zuma">2009 to early 2018</a>, he proved himself as the <a href="https://repository.uwc.ac.za/xmlui/handle/10566/491">patriarch of patronage</a>. Tenders were his to dictate. Entire state institutions fell victim. </p>
<p>His attack on the ANC resonates with an activist core that is angry with <a href="https://www.news24.com/citypress/news/mpumalanga-anc-says-no-no-no-to-anger-classes-20191204">losing the privileged positions they held</a> before Ramaphosa became the party leader in 2017. Some were felled by the Ramaphosa-led ANC’s <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/politics/2024-01-19-no-orders-yet-to-exclude-corruption-suspects-from-anc-candidate-list/">clampdown on corruption</a>. </p>
<p>Zuma also gets support from former ANC provincial and national leaders who have been at the receiving end of <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/12/ex-anc-chiefs-zuma-and-magashule-team-up-ahead-of-south-africas-elections#:%7E:text=The%20%E2%80%9CMagashule%20Zuma%20United%20Front">ANC disciplinary action</a>. For them, supporting for Zuma is a way to punish the ANC.</p>
<p>Zuma’s <a href="https://www.news24.com/citypress/politics/zuma-i-am-a-victim-cyril-is-corrupt-global-powers-want-sa-20221022">portrayal of himself as a victim</a> at the hands of Ramaphosa resonates with many who feel they have been wronged by their organisation. </p>
<p>For the “<a href="https://www.gov.za/news/speeches/tenderpreneurship-stuff-crooked-cadres-fighters-04-sep-2014">tenderpreneurs</a>” – business people who feed off government contracts – <a href="https://www.vryeweekblad.com/en/opinions-and-debate/2023-08-18-anc-has-lost-control-of-its-den-of-thieves/">the taps have been dripping</a> rather than spouting contracts as before. They are set to bond with citizens whose livelihoods dissipate as government policies fade and fail.</p>
<p>Zuma’s <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-10-30-three-polls-show-anc-election-support-is-falling-off-a-cliff/">popular standing</a> coincides with the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-16/zuma-s-popularity-threatens-anc-s-majority-hopes-srf-says">decline in the electoral standing</a> of the ANC. </p>
<h2>State of government</h2>
<p>The ANC of 2024 is weather-worn and has <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-marks-its-112th-year-with-an-eye-on-national-elections-but-its-record-is-patchy-and-future-uncertain-221125">less of a grip on the state’s delivery apparatus</a>. Despite the party’s <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/ramaphosa-scolds-ruling-anc-losing-south-africans-trust-2022-07-29/">claims</a>, there is slim hope for economic growth and jobs that will be sufficient to drive an economic turnaround. </p>
<p>Many have no chance to move beyond a life of social security grants and dependence on the state. </p>
<p>The ANC’s poor performance in government – <a href="https://www.gov.za/news/media-statements/statistics-south-africa-quarterly-labour-force-survey-quarter-three-2023-14">high unemployment</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-cant-crack-the-inequality-curse-why-and-what-can-be-done-213132">deep inequality</a>, continuously <a href="https://www.parliament.gov.za/storage/app/media/1_Stock/Events_Institutional/2020/womens_charter_2020/docs/19-02-2021/20210212_Womens_Charter_Review_KZN_19th_of_Feb_afternoon_Session_Final.pdf">rising poverty</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-police-are-losing-the-war-on-crime-heres-how-they-need-to-rethink-their-approach-218048">crime</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africans-are-revolting-against-inept-local-government-why-it-matters-155483">poor and collapsing services</a>, <a href="https://wandilesihlobo.com/2023/01/14/crumbling-basic-infrastructure-limits-south-africas-agriculture-and-tourism-growth-potential/">collapse of public infrastructure</a> – provides fertile soil for the populist and opportunistic former president to reclaim credentials of the ANC’s former armed wing, scavenge on ANC weaknesses and wreak havoc in the party. </p>
<p>The disgruntled communities supporting Zuma also feature <a href="https://irr.org.za/media/articles-authored-by-the-institute/the-dangerous-rise-of-jacob-zumas-private-army">military veterans</a> and <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/politics/political-parties/zumas-tour-de-resistance-first-religious-leaders-then-on-to-anc-home-ground-20240106">religious organisations</a>, largely in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Zuma has had well-attended meetings in other provinces too.</p>
<p>Across all strata of society, there is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/30/south-africa-anc-voter-anger-election">anger with how the ANC has been treating citizens</a>. Many citizens now fail to see the promise of order and definitive economic progress in Ramaphosa’s <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/202010/south-african-economic-reconstruction-and-recovery-plan.pdf">plans and visions</a>.</p>
<h2>Zuma’s KwaZulu-Natal trump card</h2>
<p>The KwaZulu-Natal province <a href="https://www.eisa.org/storage/2023/05/2010-journal-of-african-elections-v9n2-african-national-congress-unprecedented-victory-kwazulu-natal-eisa.pdf">helped sustain national ANC support</a> at a time when the ANC had started declining below its 2004 two-thirds-plus national majority. Without this boost, the ANC would have declined faster and earlier. Zuma’s contribution was in bolstering high-level Zulu cultural presence and political influence in the ANC. He helped make the ANC an organisation where this populous group of South Africans felt they had a political home. Their votes followed. </p>
<p>This helped Zuma build a near-untouchable status in the ANC. It helps explain why ANC leaders would <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/mercury/news/anc-asks-zuma-to-join-kkelection-campaign-3cafacb6-cbfa-4f19-8aba-9f6d10506046">go hat in the hand to his Nkandla homestead</a> requesting his help in election campaigning, after the end of his party presidency.</p>
<p>Zuma, in 2024 campaign rallies, <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2024-01-18-jacob-zuma-calls-for-more-power-for-amakhosi-and-takes-a-dig-at-ramaphosa/">promises traditional leaders (amakhosi)</a> the status of sovereign authorities with executive powers. This idea, he well knows, is at odds with the country’s constitutional democracy. Yet it endears him to traditionalists who do not feel at home in a multiparty, competitive democracy. </p>
<h2>Hedging bets</h2>
<p>Zuma’s new model of resistance – voting for an ANC-derivative party against the ANC (while remaining within its ranks) – appeals to many discontented citizens and traditional communities. It arrives at a time when many South Africans, and in particular ANC followers, feel multiparty democracy and its governance have <a href="https://www.corruptionwatch.org.za/democracy-not-so-sweet-any-more-say-south-africans/">not worked for them</a>.</p>
<p>Zuma operates on the belief that he will be the hero of this struggle. If electoral politics does not satisfy the discontented citizens, and anger and rebellion prevail, he has already shown that he is an effective apostle of the alternative track of non-electoral politics. He offers the full repertoire of protest and rebellion associated with the ANC, a former liberation movement, now party, which survives but battles to reconnect with the hearts and minds of citizens.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221505/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susan Booysen is affiliated with the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic reflection, a non-profit think tank. She writes this analysis in her capacity as author, analyst, and Emeritus Professor, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. </span></em></p>Jacob Zuma claims that his new political home, the Umkhonto we Sizwe Party, is the authentic ANC, not the one led by President Cyril Ramaphosa.Susan Booysen, Visiting Professor and Professor Emeritus, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2024482023-04-03T13:57:39Z2023-04-03T13:57:39ZTanzania-South Africa: deep ties evoke Africa’s sacrifices for freedom<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517946/original/file-20230328-16-hrrcio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, left, hosts his Tanzanian counterpart during a state visit in March 2023.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS/Flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan recently paid a <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/speeches/opening-remarks-president-cyril-ramaphosa-during-official-talks-state-visit-tanzanian-president-samia-suluhu-hassan%2C-union-buildings%2C-tshwane">state visit to South Africa</a> aimed at strengthening bilateral political and trade relations. As the South African presidency <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/press-statements/president-host-her-excellency-president-hassan-tanzania-state-visit">noted</a>, ties between the two nations date back to Tanzania’s solidarity with the anti-apartheid struggle. </p>
<p>This history is an important reminder of the anti-colonial and pan-African bonds underpinning international solidarity with southern African liberation struggles. It’s also a reminder of the sacrifices many African countries made to realise continental freedom.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Tanganyika">Tanganyika</a>, as Tanzania was known before independence in 1961, was the first safe post for South Africans fleeing in the aftermath of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville massacre</a> on 21 March 1960, when apartheid police shot dead 69 peaceful protesters. The apartheid regime <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/origins-formation-sharpeville-and-banning-1959-1960">banned liberation movements</a> shortly thereafter. </p>
<p>Among those who left South Africa to rally international support for the liberation struggle were then African National Congress deputy president <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-is-celebrating-the-year-of-or-tambo-who-was-he-85838">Oliver Reginald Tambo</a>, Communist Party and Indian Congress leader <a href="https://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/people.php?kid=163-574-661">Yusuf Mohammed Dadoo</a>, and the Pan Africanist Congress’s <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/nelson-nana-mahomo">Nana Mahomo</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/peter-hlaole-molotsi">Peter Molotsi</a>.</p>
<p>Not many people will know that on 26 June 1959 <a href="https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-128;jsessionid=5715EBDE3CC6DEEF837F2753FC3A4D39">Julius Nyerere</a>, the future president of Tanzania, was among the speakers at a meeting in London where the first boycott of South African goods in Britain was launched. Out of this campaign, the <a href="https://www.aamarchives.org/">British Anti-Apartheid Movement</a> was born a year later. It spearheaded the international solidarity movement in western countries over the next three decades.</p>
<h2>Liberation struggle bonds</h2>
<p>Tanzania’s support for South Africa’s liberation struggle needs to be understood as part of its broader opposition to colonialism, and commitment to the achievement of independence in the entire African continent. In 1958, Nyerere <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-organization/article/abs/panafrican-freedom-movement-of-east-and-central-africa-pafmeca/A08CAFDC63C736384E47D52AA94191E2">helped establish</a> the Pan African Freedom Movement of Eastern and Central Africa to coordinate activities in this regard. This was extended to the Pan African Freedom Movement of Eastern and Central and Southern Africa at a conference in Addis Ababa in 1962. Nelson Mandela <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/1962-nelson-mandela-address-conference-pan-african-freedom-movement-east-and-central-africa/">addressed the conference</a> with the aim of arranging support for the armed struggle in South Africa. These efforts eventually led to the creation of the <a href="https://www.africanunion-un.org/history">Organisation for African Unity (OAU) in 1963</a>.</p>
<p>In February 1961, James Hadebe for the ANC and Gaur Radebe for the PAC opened an office in Dar es Salaam representing the <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sections/sacp/1962/pac.html">South African United Front</a>. It was the first external structure set up by the two liberation movements. Their unity was short-lived. But, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s capital, grew into a centre of anti-colonial activity after independence from Britain in December 1961. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man with a serious look on his face rests his chin on his left shoulder. His watch shows." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518130/original/file-20230329-20-z2y2c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518130/original/file-20230329-20-z2y2c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518130/original/file-20230329-20-z2y2c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518130/original/file-20230329-20-z2y2c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518130/original/file-20230329-20-z2y2c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518130/original/file-20230329-20-z2y2c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518130/original/file-20230329-20-z2y2c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The late Julius Nyerere was a staunch supporter of the movement for Africa’s independence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">William F. Campbell/Getty Images)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At independence, Tanzania faced a shortage of nurses as British nurses left in droves rather than work for an African government. On President Nyerere’s request, Tambo arranged the underground recruitment of 20 South African nurses (“the 20 Nightingales”) to <a href="https://www.jamboafrica.online/clarence-kwinana-the-untold-story-of-the-20-nightingales-a-contribution-never-to-be-forgotten/">work in Tanzanian hospitals</a>. The remains of one of them, Kholeka Tunyiswa, who died on 5 March 2023 in Dar es Salaam, were repatriated to South Africa for reburial in <a href="https://www.citizen.co.za/news/remains-sa-nurse-tunyiswa-repatriated/">her home city of Gqeberha</a>, Eastern Cape.</p>
<p>In the early 1960s, Tanzania was the southernmost independent African country from which armed operations could be carried out into unliberated territories in southern Africa. Its capital was chosen as the operational base of the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41394216">OAU’s Liberation Committee</a>. The committee provided financial and material assistance to liberation movements. Its archives remain in Tanzania. </p>
<p>In 1963, the ANC officially established its Tanzania mission, with headquarters in Dar es Salaam. A military camp for guerrillas of its armed wing, <a href="https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-1098?rskey=uSBACj&result=1">uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK)</a>
, who had returned from training in other African and socialist countries, was opened in Kongwa. The Tanzanian government donated the land. </p>
<p>Also stationed there were the armies of other southern African liberation movements – <a href="https://www.saha.org.za/collections/the_mafela_trust_collection_7.htm">ZAPU</a>, <a href="https://www.aluka.org/struggles/partner/XSTFRELIMO">Frelimo</a>, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41502445">SWAPO</a> and the <a href="https://www.tchiweka.org/">MPLA</a>.</p>
<p>In 1964, the PAC also moved its external headquarters to Dar es Salaam after it was pushed out of Lesotho. It <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0018-229X2015000200002">established military camps</a> near Mbeya and later in Mgagao, and a settlement in Ruvu. Both the PAC and the ANC held important conferences in Tanzania, in Moshi in 1967 and in Morogoro in 1969, respectively. These led to internal reorganisation and new <a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/anc/1969/strategy-tactics.htm">strategic positions</a>.</p>
<h2>Hitches in the relationship</h2>
<p>In spite of Tanzania’s support for the liberation movements, their relationship was not without its contradictions or moments of ambivalence. </p>
<p>In 1965, for example, the ANC had to move its headquarters from Dar es Salaam to Morogoro, a small upcountry town far from international connections. The Tanzanian government had decided that only four members of each liberation movement would be allowed to maintain an office in the capital. This reflected Tanzania’s anxiety over the growing numbers of revolutionaries and trained guerrillas it hosted. </p>
<p>In 1969 Tanzania, Zambia and 12 other African countries issued the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/45312264">Lusaka manifesto</a>, which was also adopted by the OAU. It expressed preference for a peaceful solution to the conflict in South Africa over armed struggle. There were also rumours of ANC involvement in an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1970/07/13/archives/tanzanian-treason-trial-entering-third-week.html">attempted coup against Nyerere</a>. In this climate, the ANC had to evacuate its entire army to the Soviet Union. Its soldiers were allowed back in the country a couple of years later.</p>
<h2>Lived spaces of solidarity</h2>
<p>In the 1970s, ANC headquarters moved to Lusaka, in Zambia, and uMkhonto we Sizwe operations <a href="https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-1098?rskey=uSBACj&result=1">moved</a> to newly independent Angola and Mozambique. But Tanzania remained a significant place of settlement for South African exiles. </p>
<p>In the late 1970s and 1980s, additional land donations from the Tanzanian government enabled the ANC to open a school and a vocational centre near Morogoro. The Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College in Mazimbu and the Dakawa Development Centre were set up <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/education-in-exile">to address the outflow of young people</a> from South Africa following the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">June 1976 Soweto uprising</a>. Its other aim was to counter the effects of <a href="https://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/sidebar.php?kid=163-581-2">Bantu education</a>, a segregated and inferior education system for black South Africans. </p>
<p>These became unique spaces of lived solidarity between the ANC and its international supporters. They accommodated up to 5,000 South Africans. Some of them died before they could see a liberated South Africa. Their graves are in Mazimbu. Besides educational facilities, the camps included an hospital, a productive farm, workshops and factories. They were all developed with donor funding.</p>
<p>Tanzanians, too, contributed to these projects through their labour. Many Tanzanian women became entangled in South Africa’s liberation struggle through intimate relationships, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03057070.2014.886476">marriage and children</a>. Thanks to these everyday social interactions, Tanzania became “home” for many South African exiles. The ANC handed over the facilities at Somafco and Dakawa <a href="https://www.conas.sua.ac.tz/historical-sites">to the Tanzanian government</a> on the eve of the first democratic elections in 1994. But these personal and affective connections live on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202448/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arianna Lissoni 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>Ties between the two nations date back to Tanzania’s solidarity with the anti-apartheid struggle.Arianna Lissoni, Researcher at History Workshop, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1999972023-02-21T09:40:14Z2023-02-21T09:40:14ZSouth Africa and Israel: new memorial park in the Jewish state highlights complex history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510859/original/file-20230217-16-6qx4p0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An artist's impression of Gan Siyobonga memorial park in Israel.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied by author</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Israeli officials and Jewish South African activists <a href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-723790">inaugurated</a> a memorial park in Tel Mond, a city north of Tel Aviv, in November 2022. Gan Siyabonga (We Thank You Garden) commemorates several dozen Jewish South African anti-apartheid activists who had personal connections to Israel. </p>
<p>The main sponsors of Gan Siyabonga are the <a href="https://www.jnfsa.co.za/">Jewish National Fund South Africa</a> and <a href="https://www.sazf.org/">South African Zionist Federation</a>. The park’s creation is a milestone in the South African Jewish community’s decades-long introspection into its complex relations with the apartheid regime. </p>
<p>This memorial site is unique in Israel, where an <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-south-africa-home-white-colonialists">estimated</a> 20,000 South Africans live.</p>
<p>Gan Siyabonga is the first site in Israel to highlight the involvement of Jews in the anti-apartheid struggle. It is also unique because it calls attention to a group that was both anti-apartheid and pro-Zionist, or at least not anti-Zionist. The combination is considered unconventional today. That’s because <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zionism">Zionism</a>, the political ideology that favours a Jewish state, is largely associated in South Africa with collaboration with apartheid and the oppression of Palestinians. </p>
<p>Gan Siyabonga is a reminder that relations between Zionism and apartheid, and between Israel and South Africa, were complex and multilayered. In the last few years I have been working on a PhD dissertation that explores this complexity. Digging into archives and historical periodicals revealed a fascinating story that defies some assumptions. </p>
<h2>Israel’s troubled relations with apartheid</h2>
<p>Israel is commonly remembered as one of the last allies of apartheid South Africa. From the mid-1970s, the Israeli government maintained <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/unspoken-alliance-israels-secret-relationship-apartheid-south-africa-sasha-polakow-suransky">close relations</a> with the minority white regime in Pretoria. </p>
<p>It was one of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1987/09/17/israel-imposes-sanctions-on-south-africa/70cbb4f4-77b9-4898-8df7-dc39c2c5a500/">last countries</a> to enforce full sanctions on Pretoria. As a result, many anti-apartheid activists, including Jewish ones, held fierce anti-Zionist stances. These were amplified by the strong alliances South African liberation movements forged with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/history-may-explain-south-africas-refusal-to-condemn-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-178657">Soviet Union</a> and the <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220609-the-plo-at-58-and-the-anc-at-110-how-they-evolved-and-where-do-they-stand-today/">Palestinian Liberation Organisation</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-push-led-by-south-africa-to-revoke-israels-au-observer-status-is-misguided-168013">Why the push led by South Africa to revoke Israel’s AU observer status is misguided</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution">accusation</a> that Israel practises apartheid-like policies against Palestinians is another reason Israel hasn’t been seen as anti-apartheid. Recent anti-Zionist rhetoric by some Jewish veterans of the South African struggle, such as <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/05/17/how-stop-apartheid-israel">Ronnie Kasrils</a>, strengthened this feeling of unbridgeable contradiction between Israel and anti-apartheid values.</p>
<h2>Support for Israel</h2>
<p>But anti-apartheid activism and Zionism were not always in conflict. Up until the late 1960s, many radical anti-apartheid activists were sympathetic towards Israel and Zionism’s more progressive strands.</p>
<p>In 1948, most radical activists in South Africa supported the establishment of the State of Israel and its war against the invading Arab armies in Palestine. <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/362107/pdf">The Guardian</a>, the main radical weekly in South Africa at the time (linked to the <a href="https://www.sacp.org.za/">South African Communist Party</a>), rooted for an Israeli <a href="https://twitter.com/AfrIsrRel/status/1626615101770936322">victory</a>. </p>
<p>Young Israel was a symbol of opposition to racial persecution and fascism. Those two themes strongly resonated with South African anti-apartheid activists. They tended to see the Afrikaner <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/National-Party-political-party-South-Africa">National Party</a> as an <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02582473.2021.2009014?tab=permissions&scroll=top">ideological relative</a> of the Nazis. </p>
<p>The initial <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/martinkramer/files/who_saved_israel_1947.pdf">Soviet support for Israel</a>, and a prominent socialist element within Zionism, also contributed to these feelings, especially among South African Marxists.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-search-of-advantages-israels-observer-status-in-the-african-union-165773">In search of advantages: Israel’s observer status in the African Union</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>From the late 1950s, many anti-apartheid activists cherished Israel’s stances against South Africa <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ehr/article/132/559/1440/4831456">at the United Nations</a>. Similarly its <a href="https://www.academia.edu/90295451/_We_Are_Returning_to_Africa_and_Africa_is_Coming_Back_to_Us_Israels_Evolving_Relations_With_Africa">support for decolonisation</a> in Africa. By the early 1960s, Israel had become the most anti-apartheid country in the “western” camp of the Cold War. In 1963, it <a href="https://www.jta.org/archive/south-african-premier-attacks-israel-for-recall-of-envoy-israel-mum">recalled its envoy</a> and supported international sanctions against South Africa. Israeli archives contain many <a href="https://twitter.com/AfrIsrRel/status/1524773424324923393">letters</a> from South African liberation movements <a href="https://www.archives.gov.il/archives/Archive/0b071706800399c8/File/0b071706804bc4fc">thanking Israel</a> for its support at the UN and elsewhere. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An old typed letter signed by an ANC official praises Israel" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510860/original/file-20230217-22-kdw80u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Letter from ANC officials praising Israel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Israel State Archive</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During the 1960s, Israel offered covert material support to anti-apartheid groups, perhaps even <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2013-12-20/ty-article/.premium/mandela-and-the-mossad/0000017f-e66d-dc7e-adff-f6eda1960000">to Nelson Mandela</a>. Israeli experiences inspired the early stages of uMkhonto we Sizwe, the African National Congress’ (ANC) military wing, for example through <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/arthur-goldreich">Arthur Goldreich</a>. It also had stable communication channels with the <a href="https://www.archives.gov.il/archives/Archive/0b0717068031bdef/File/0b0717068062f0ae">Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania</a>. </p>
<h2>Post-1967</h2>
<p>Sympathy towards Israel diminished considerably after the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4325413">Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973</a>. But relations between anti-apartheid activism and Zionism remained complicated.</p>
<p>Many Jewish individuals who joined the struggle against apartheid had been active in Zionist youth movements. The socialist-oriented <a href="https://habonim.org.za/">Habonim</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Shomrim_in_the_Land_of_Apartheid.html?id=ZMltAAAAMAAJ">Hashomer Hatzair</a> stand out. Those who joined the anti-apartheid struggle (such as <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Slovo_the_Unfinished_Autobiography.html?id=9QxzAAAAMAAJ">Joe Slovo</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Revolutions_in_My_Life.html?id=vQYwAQAAIAAJ">Baruch Hirson</a>) typically abandoned Zionism. But they acknowledged its role in forming their radical worldview.</p>
<p>Jewish South African individuals were prominent in the liberal strand of the anti-apartheid struggle too. They usually used their professional skills to challenge the apartheid regime. Lawyers like <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/advocate-israel-isie-aaron-maisels">Isie Maisels</a>, parliamentarians like <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/helen-suzman">Helen Suzman</a>, journalists like <a href="https://southafrica.co.za/benjamin-pogrund.html">Benjamin Pogrund</a>, and rabbis like <a href="https://www.sajr.co.za/rabbi-ben-isaacson-a-maverick-soul-finds-rest/">Ben Isaacson</a> were examples. Jewish liberal activists usually expressed support for Israel in various ways.</p>
<p>Developments since the mid-1970s have largely overshadowed the complex history of Zionism’s engagement with the apartheid regime. The anti-apartheid struggle became tightly associated with the Palestinian struggle. And, after its rise to power in 1994, the ANC reaffirmed its commitment to its Palestinian allies.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-and-russia-president-cyril-ramaphosas-foreign-policy-explained-198430">South Africa and Russia: President Cyril Ramaphosa's foreign policy explained</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Since then, relations with Israel have largely remained chilly. The ANC <a href="https://bdsmovement.net/news/s-africas-ruling-party-anc-reaffirms-boycott-israel-resolution">supports</a> the movement to boycott Israel and Pretoria <a href="https://thewire.in/external-affairs/south-africa-israel-anc">downgraded</a> its representation in the Jewish state. South African foreign affairs minister Naledi Pandor has <a href="https://www.jpost.com/bds-threat/article-713140">called</a> for Israel to be declared an “apartheid state”. </p>
<h2>A step in the right direction</h2>
<p>Israel and South Africa’s Jewish communities have a long and ambiguous history of entanglement with race politics. There were admirable moments in this history. But there were also periods of complicity with racism. In Israel, both sides of this history are largely forgotten.</p>
<p>Gan Siyabonga is an important first step in placing this history in the Israeli public sphere.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199997/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Asher Lubotzky 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>Gan Siyabonga is unique in Israel. It highlights a group that was both anti-apartheid and pro-Zionist.Asher Lubotzky, PhD Candidate, History, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1924252022-10-20T14:07:58Z2022-10-20T14:07:58ZSouth Africa’s struggle songs against apartheid come from a long tradition of resistance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490044/original/file-20221017-21-qtbypn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions sing political songs in 1987 in Johannesburg. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Walter Dhladhla/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Struggle songs, also known as protest music or liberation songs, are <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03007768308591202">defined as</a> “expressions of discontent or dissent” used by politically disenfranchised protesters to influence political conversations and express emotions. </p>
<p>Some scholars <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03007768308591202">argue</a> that these songs date back to ancient biblical times when the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt and “the Hebrew people sang their lamentations”. </p>
<p>In the American context, researchers <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Sinful_Tunes_and_Spirituals.html?id=OvQLVneUgHkC&redir_esc=y">contend</a> that protest music can be traced back to transatlantic slaves. But others <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-50538-1">note</a> that the use of these songs <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-50538-1">goes back even further</a>.</p>
<p>In modern Africa and in other colonised contexts, such as Latin America, protest music was an <a href="https://www.palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/attachments/jps-articles/jps_2003_32_3_21.pdf">important tool</a> used by oppressed peoples in their quests to overthrow oppressive regimes. </p>
<p>In South Africa, struggle songs were critical in the strategies used to depose the oppressive race-based <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> state. They became effective instruments of confrontation used by the black majority against the white oppressors.</p>
<p>They were also used as a means of keeping alive the memory of political icons who had been killed, like <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-steve-bikos-remarkable-legacy-often-overlooked-82952">Steve Biko</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-south-african-struggle-hero-chris-hani-lessons-for-today-64715">Chris Hani</a>, and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/solomon-kalushi-mahlangu">Solomon Mahlangu</a>. </p>
<p>At the same time they helped ensure that those resistance leaders who were imprisoned, like <a href="https://theconversation.com/mandela-was-a-flawed-icon-but-without-him-south-africa-would-be-a-sadder-place-142826">Nelson Mandela</a>, or exiled, like <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/oliver-tambo">Oliver Tambo</a>, were not forgotten. These people, the dead and the living, represented the country’s political struggle.</p>
<p>The songs were also a way of marking moments of grief, of which there were many, and the occasional moments of hope, as black South Africans looked forward to the apartheid regime’s demise.</p>
<p>As a researcher whose work looks at the intersection of rhetoric, language and media, I <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780367823658-26/persuasion-songs-protest-sisanda-nkoala">have</a> <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/abs/10.10520/EJC-20c6b555ff">examined</a> the appeal of struggle music as an persuasive means of engaging in political communication in the South African context. </p>
<p>These texts are relevant even in the post apartheid context because they continue to be an important way in which people deliberate on issues. </p>
<p>Even though the lyrics are relatively simple, and the music can be viewed as straightforward and repetitive, the depth of the ideas they capture makes a case for reading texts like struggle songs at a level much more profound than what they literally denote. </p>
<h2>A brief history</h2>
<p>Different styles of music characterised different periods in South Africa’s struggle for liberation. The change in political and social conditions did not just prompt a change in the lyrics of the songs; it called for a change in the form to capture the tone of the times. </p>
<p>From the late 1800s into the early 1900s, the strong influence of missionaries on black South African literary culture influenced the tone and lyrics of protest music. It resulted in struggle songs that were characterised by a hymn-like sound. This was in the context of a shared Christian belief system. </p>
<p>For example, Biblical and ancient studies scholar, J. Gertrud Tönsing (2017) <a href="https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/4339">talks about</a> how the emphasis of prayer as a tool against the apartheid regime was rooted in the missionary influence. This, in turn, influenced the lyrics and melodies of the struggle songs that emerged so that they featured rhythmically static music and words written like prayers. </p>
<p>From the 1940s and 1950s the violence against black South Africans was written into law through the passing of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/group-areas-act-1950">Group Areas Act</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pass-laws-south-africa-1800-1994">“pass laws”</a>. These restricted the movement of black people in certain areas. </p>
<p>Music began to incorporate musical elements inspired by <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3113919#metadata_info_tab_contents">American jazz and kwela penny whistles</a>. Kwela is a <a href="https://ukzn-dspace.ukzn.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10413/9106/Allen_Lara_V_1993.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">pennywhistle-based street music with jazzy underpinnings and a distinctive, skiffle-like beat</a>.</p>
<p>This merger of musical elements was indicative of the cultural diversity that characterised the townships. Music historian Lara Allen <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3113919#metadata_info_tab_contents">argues</a> that the music found resonance and gained popularity because the sound expressed a “locally rooted identity”. </p>
<p>Another feature of the struggle songs from this era was the topical subject matter. Lyrics spoke to current events as they affected black people – kind of “singing the news”. As Allen <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3113919#metadata_info_tab_contents">puts it</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In this regard vocal jive enjoyed an advantage … in that lyrics, through reference to current events and issues of common concern, enabled listeners to recognize their own interests and experiences more concretely.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The 1960s marked an intensification of the apartheid government’s heavy-handedness on any form of protest and resistance. On 21 March 1960, the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville massacre</a> occurred, where 69 people were killed while staging a protest against pass laws. In response, the struggle approach changed from a non-violent to an armed struggle with the establishment of the militant wing of the African National Congress, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk">uMkhonto we Sizwe</a>. </p>
<p>The upbeat vocal jive style <a href="http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/265/the-sounds-of-resistance-the-role-of-music-in-south-africas-anti-apartheid-movement">was increasingly replaced</a> by militaristic rhythms and chants accompanied by marching actions. </p>
<p>Some of the songs from this period were simply chants. Nevertheless, they were still musical in the way in which they used the beat and other vocal sound effects to evoke emotions. They were often accompanied by the toyi-toyi, a high-stepping ‘dance’ that Allen describes as a march that <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03057070902920015?casa_token=IJZ5nO8NssYAAAAA:WTltYQHaHlYg6ZvMtFriNwlAyF-CADEhEmDcxyV32iauPXJbrCVK0Vnl2xkrU0Hmws5O9K9FrD6rLg">mimicked the movement of soldiers in training</a></p>
<p>As musicologist and expert in struggle music Michela Vershbow <a href="http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/265/the-sounds-of-resistance-the-role-of-music-in-south-africas-anti-apartheid-movement">describes them</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The power of this chant builds in intensity as it progresses, and the enormity of the sounds that erupt from the hundreds, sometimes thousands of participants was often used to intimidate government troops.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>In a post-apartheid world</h2>
<p>In the late 1980s academic and expert on Latin American revolutionary songs Robert Pring-Mill <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/853420#metadata_info_tab_contents">wrote about how</a> songs that featured prominently in many oppressive cultures retained their power and currency over time.</p>
<p>This is true in South Africa too where songs from the struggle continue to hold an established place as part of South Africa’s political communication heritage. Examples include songs of lament, like <em>Senzeni na?</em> which bemoans the unjust treatment of marginalised South Africans. Another is the more confrontational <a href="https://www.newframe.com/political-songs-ndodemnyama-miriam-makeba/">Ndodemnyama we Verwoerd!,</a> which was written by Vuyisile Mini and sung by him and his compatriots while walking to their death in the apartheid gallows.</p>
<p>Pring-Mill argues that struggle songs endure because they reflect historical </p>
<blockquote>
<p>events recorded passionately rather than with dispassionate objectivity, yet the passion is not so much that of an individual singer’s personal response, but rather that of a collective interpretation of events from a particular ‘committed’ standpoint. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s noteworthy that in recent years, some of these songs are now said to be hate speech. There have even been calls <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/politics/political-parties/equality-court-grants-afriforum-leave-to-appeal-kill-the-boer-ruling-20221004">to ban them from being sung</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192425/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sisanda Nkoala receives funding from the National Research Foundation and has previously been awarded an AW Mellon-UCT Graduate Scholarship in Rhetoric </span></em></p>Struggle songs are relevant even in the post apartheid context because they continue to be an important way in which people deliberate on issues.Sisanda Nkoala, Senior Lecturer, Cape Peninsula University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1897412022-08-31T16:56:08Z2022-08-31T16:56:08ZMikhail Gorbachev: southern Africans have a special reason to thank him<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482092/original/file-20220831-11-td7z0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mikhail Gorbachev at his news conference following a summit with US President Ronald Reagan in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1986. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Bryn Colton/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The whole world has much to thank Mikhail Gorbachev for. As <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-consequential-but-ultimately-tragic-figure-last-leader-of-the-ussr-mikhail-gorbachev-dies-aged-91-189676">many have pointed out</a> since <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-31/ex-soviet-leader-mikhail-gorbachev-dead-at-91/101389174">his death in Moscow earlier this week</a>, Gorbachev – the last leader of the Soviet Union – did more than anyone to bring the Cold War to an end peacefully, reducing the threat that nuclear weapons might be used. </p>
<p>He allowed the countries of Eastern Europe to move out of the Soviet orbit and towards democracy in 1989. And he tried to set Russia on the path to a more democratic society. His actions led to the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. </p>
<p>Though Vladimir Putin views that break-up <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-historical-russia-soviet-breakup-ukraine/31606186.html">as a very negative development</a>, most have welcomed it. </p>
<p>Southern Africans have a special reason to thank Gorbachev. He <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/grade-12-topic-4-end-cold-war-and-new-global-world-order-1989-present">helped bring apartheid to an end</a>. He did this both directly and indirectly.</p>
<h2>Pivotal interventions</h2>
<p>The assistance that the Soviet Union provided to both the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia and Umkhonto we Sizwe was essential in enabling them to fight armed struggles against the South African regime. Without that assistance the South West Africa People’s Organisation and the African National Congress might not have survived in exile, or ultimately come to power. </p>
<p>But it was not those armed struggles that brought them to power. That was made possible in part by the fact that from 1988 the balance of forces in the region changed. In that Gorbachev played a major role. </p>
<p>Soon after taking over as general secretary of the central committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985, he decided that the Soviet Union should withdraw from regional wars in which it was engaged, most notably in <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/soviets-to-withdraw-from-afghanistan">Afghanistan</a> and <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203874240-15/angola-namibia-crisis-1988-resolution-chris-saunders">Angola</a>. </p>
<p>He then authorised his diplomats to engage with the Americans to help mediate a negotiated settlement for Angola. They assisted in that process, which led to an agreement being reached in December 1988 that provided for the withdrawal of the Cuban military from Angola and the independence of Namibia. </p>
<p>The Soviet Union then participated in the joint commission that was set up as a result of that agreement to ensure it was implemented. When a crisis in April 1989 threatened its implementation, the Soviets again worked with the Americans to help defuse the crisis, after which Namibia moved towards independence with the assistance of the United Nations.</p>
<p>By then the Soviet Union had made it clear that it was in favour of a negotiated settlement in South Africa. At the same time, the communist ideology that had underpinned the Soviet Union and its satellite countries was crumbling.</p>
<p>The success of the Namibian transition helped make possible the South African one that followed. But it was also the collapse of the communist regimes of Eastern Europe, and the removal of what South Africa’s National Party government had seen as a communist threat, that made it possible for the new President of South Africa, FW de Klerk, to take his party with him when he agreed to open the door to a negotiated settlement. </p>
<p>The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union destroyed what remaining credibility the idea of a <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/apartheid-crime-against-humanity-unfolding-total-strategy-1948-1989">“total onslaught”</a> still had in National Party circles and reduced fears, both in those circles and in Western capitals, that the South African Communist Party would control the ANC if it were to come to power. </p>
<p>Though de Klerk initially hoped for a power-sharing arrangement, even such a settlement, which turned out not to be possible, meant the end of apartheid and white minority rule. </p>
<h2>Unexpected outcomes</h2>
<p>Like Gorbachev, De Klerk was a reformer whose domestic reforms led <a href="https://inews.co.uk/opinion/fw-de-klerk-south-africa-last-apartheid-president-mikhail-gorbachev-1295872">to unexpected consequences</a>.</p>
<p>When De Klerk made his breakthrough speech <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02039/04lv02103/05lv02104/06lv02105.htm">in February 1990</a>, unbanning the ANC and announcing that Nelson Mandela would be released from prison unconditionally, he made much of what had happened in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in late 1989. He said that events there had weakened “the capacity of organisations which were previously supported strongly from those quarters”. </p>
<p>Without Gorbachev those changes would not have taken place, and without them it is unlikely that De Klerk would have moved as he did at that time.</p>
<p>By the end of the 1980s, internal pressures, most particularly from mass resistance, and a variety of external pressures from the west, including sanctions, were undermining the apartheid regime. </p>
<p>But of all the external factors that helped lead to the ending of apartheid in 1994, the collapse of the communist regimes of Eastern Europe and the process leading to the end of the Soviet Union must count among the most important. </p>
<p>And we have Gorbachev to thank for that.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189741/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Saunders 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>External changes, including the end of the Cold War, helped lead to the ending of apartheid. Gorbachev played a major role in that process.Chris Saunders, Emeritus Professor, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1638722021-07-06T06:54:51Z2021-07-06T06:54:51ZJacob Zuma: when did erstwhile South African revolutionary lose his way?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409656/original/file-20210705-39677-18fs4vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former South African president Jacob Zuma.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Photo by Rajesh Jantilal/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s the small crimes that bring you down. Al Capone went merrily on his murdering way until the FBI <a href="https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2005/march/capone_032805">nailed him for tax evasion</a>. Richard Nixon seemed immune to the consequences of lying about Vietnam, Cambodia and Chile but his lies over the silly crime of burgling the Democratic Party’s headquarters <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/richard-m-nixon/">did for him</a>.</p>
<p>So it is with Jacob Zuma South Africa’s former president. He faced <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/jacob-zuma-pleads-not-guilty-to-18-corruption-charges-e5d7fe94-9e4a-4883-ab7f-e6625ab48556">multiple charges of corruption</a>, but, so far, has avoided his day in court. He was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/10/khwezi-woman-accused-jacob-zuma-south-african-president-aids-activist-fezekile-ntsukela-kuzwayo">tried for rape and acquitted</a>. As president he was accused of working with an Indian family, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-22513410">the Guptas</a>, in orchestrating <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/state-capture-report-public-protector-14-october-2016">“state capture”</a> (seizing control of state organs for corrupt purposes). He is refusing to cooperate with the <a href="https://www.sastatecapture.org.za/">judicial commission</a> investigating the allegations.</p>
<p>In the end it is his contempt of the Constitutional Court’s order that he cooperate with the commission that may send him to jail <a href="https://theconversation.com/historic-moment-as-constitutional-court-finds-zuma-guilty-and-sentences-him-to-jail-163612">for 15 months</a>. He’s appealed for a <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/reprieve-for-zuma-as-concourt-agrees-to-hear-his-contempt-rescission-case-20210703">rescission of the order</a>.</p>
<p>A question that invariably gets asked is whether power changed him. The country’s former foreign intelligence chief Moe Shaik seemed to think so, <a href="https://www.nb.co.za/en/view-book/?id=9780624088967">writing glowingly</a> of the capable “struggle” version of Zuma, suggesting it was only as president that things went awry, although he noted that we will never know when “precisely Jacob Zuma lost his way”.</p>
<p>Perhaps it came rather earlier than Shaik thinks. As with so many fallen revolutionaries, the seeds of venality seem to have been sown in his younger days. It’s just that political power provided the nutrients for spectacular sprouting.</p>
<h2>A taste of Zuma</h2>
<p>My first taste of Zuma came in 1989. The ANC’s <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/members-anc-and-sacp-are-detained-due-operation-vula">Operation Vula </a> was under way. It involved building an underground insurrectionary network and I belonged to one of its regional leadership structures. We received an instruction to investigate whether <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/peter-mokaba">Peter Mokaba</a>, the leader of the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL), <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2002-06-14-two-faces-of-mokaba/">was a spy</a>. </p>
<p>Our damning report was presented to Zuma and the ANC’s security chief Joe Nhlanhla who informed us that <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/peter-mokaba">Mokaba</a>, who died in 2002, was an informer whose relationship with the security police <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2002-06-14-two-faces-of-mokaba/">went deeper than we’d suspected</a>. Other ANC leaders got on board to spread this message but we were told that <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-is-celebrating-the-year-of-or-tambo-who-was-he-85838">Oliver Tambo</a>, who then led the exiled ANC, decided it would be better to rehabilitate Mokaba, which duly happened. </p>
<p>Soon after that I was visited by a senior leader of the South African Communist Party, which was in an alliance with the ANC. He pleaded with me to do a journalistic hatchet job on Zuma. He said his own home in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, was bugged by ANC intelligence and that Zuma was corrupt. </p>
<p>I ignored the request. But it was one of several signs I’d seen that Zuma was despised within the Communist Party. </p>
<p>Zuma had briefly been on the party’s politburo but fell from favour partly because of conflicts between ANC intelligence and its armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe. One conflict involved commander Thami Zulu, who was branded by Zuma’s allies as an enemy agent, <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/how-the-killing-of-thami-zulu-contradicts-zumas-cl">detained for 14 months</a> by the ANC in Lusaka and <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2018-02-15-the-murder-of-thami-zulu-a-call-for-a-formal-judicial-inquiry/">died of poisoning a week after his release</a>. Those who knew Zulu insisted he was innocent.</p>
<p>His death contributed to the hatred for Zuma. It was by no means the only crime attributed to ANC intelligence.</p>
<h2>Steely resolve</h2>
<p>Zuma started life in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal, in <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jacob-gedleyihlekisa-zuma">1942</a>, the son of a policeman and a domestic worker. He received scant formal education but emerged as a lad with a sharp mind and steely resolve. At 17 he joined the ANC and three years on was arrested as part of a group of military recruits, leading to a <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/president-jacob-zuma-0">10-year spell on Robben Island</a>. He went into exile in 1975.</p>
<p>His ambition, prodigious memory and avuncular personality all helped him along and he became the ANC’s chief representative in Mozambique, a member of its political and military committee and its intelligence chief in 1987. Those who backed him tended to overlook his darker side, including his sexual promiscuity. </p>
<p>When Zuma returned to South Africa in 1990 KwaZulu-Natal was in the midst of a territorial war between the ANC and Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Zulu nationalist <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/history-in-africa/article/abs/inkatha-and-its-use-of-the-zulu-past/14E0B3C8A767C4811A3A1AD974A1EA77">Inkatha </a> movement. He emerged as ANC leader there after seeing off the ANC warlord <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/harry-themba-gwala">Harry Gwala</a>, using his charm and Zulu credentials to secure the peace. But this came at a cost. The ANC drew some of Inkatha’s most notorious killers into its fold and a new form of violence broke out. </p>
<p>This time it had nothing to do with ideology. Instead, it was all about money – as so much was when Zuma was around.</p>
<h2>Corruption and legal jeopardy</h2>
<p>In 2004, when Zuma was deputy president, his financial advisor Schabir Shaik was arrested for his role in an arms deal and sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment (but released after 28 months on <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/thepost/news/schabir-shaik-is-a-free-man-48662347">spurious health grounds</a>). He was found to have solicited bribes of R500,000 a year for Zuma, who was later charged with corruption. This was followed by further charges relating to another arms deal. But procedural irregularities and allegations of political interference meant <a href="https://theconversation.com/president-zuma-loses-bid-to-dodge-criminal-charges-but-will-he-have-the-last-laugh-85703">none of these went to trial</a>.</p>
<p>He faced legal jeopardy from a different source in 2006, tried for allegedly raping a 31-year-old Aids activist whom he knew to be HIV-positive (he said he believed a <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/sas-zuma-showered-avoid-hiv-bbc-news-05-april-2006">shower after sex would be adequate protection</a>). Zuma claimed it was <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/zuma-i-had-to-oblige-271913">his duty as a Zulu man</a> to have sex with a woman if she wore a short kanga (African wrap), and that he could not leave her <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/pdf/10.10520/AJA20732740_29">“unfulfilled”</a>. </p>
<p>He argued Zulu men have sexual primacy over women and he could therefore not be guilty.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/jacob-zuma-deadly-serious-1667308.html">To deny her sex, that would have been tantamount to rape</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Zuma was <a href="https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/fr/node/226198">acquitted</a> while the alleged victim was vilified, with Zuma and his supporters singing his favourite song, <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/zuma-gets-heros-welcome-20060213">Lethu Mshini Wami</a> (Bring me my machine gun) during and after the trial. The woman, later named as Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo, fled into exile for safety. She returned after a decade and died <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2016/10/09/Zumas-rape-accuser-Khwezi-dies">in 2016</a>. </p>
<p>Thabo Mbeki had dumped Zuma as his deputy <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/zuma-axed-243733">in 2005</a> and the long-time allies became enemies. The <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/thabo-mvuyelwa-mbeki">paranoid Mbeki</a> lacked the common touch and was oddly devoid of his former gracious charm, while Zuma was the opposite: friendly and humorous. By playing on popular concerns about service provision, crime, and Aids, and being chummy with the unions, the youth and the left, he won the backing of people who should have been more wary.</p>
<p>Zuma defeated Mbeki for the ANC leadership <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/52nd-anc-national-conference-polokwane-2007">in 2007</a> and became president in 2009, remaining in office for <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/president-jacob-zuma-0">nine years</a>. The left hoped he’d curb his excesses, but the opposite happened. The Guptas fed his greed in return for state contracts, to the point that they <a href="https://pari.org.za/betrayal-promise-report/">offered cabinet positions to obedient hopefuls</a>.</p>
<p>Eventually, Zuma over-reached. He dipped into state coffers to upgrade his house <a href="https://theconversation.com/dramatic-night-in-south-africa-leaves-president-hanging-on-by-a-thread-57180">in Nkandla</a>. Then he <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-zumas-actions-point-to-shambolic-management-of-south-africas-economy-52174">fired two finance ministers</a> who would <a href="https://theconversation.com/firing-of-south-africas-finance-minister-puts-the-public-purse-in-zumas-hands-75525">not do his bidding</a>. </p>
<p>Cyril Ramaphosa won the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-anc-has-a-new-leader-but-south-africa-remains-on-a-political-precipice-89248">ANC leadership race in December 2017</a>. Two months later Zuma stepped down as president of the country. The Guptas promptly <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tony-ajay-and-atul-gupta-flee-south-africa-and-denounce-corruption-inquiry-lt5828rxh">fled to Dubai</a>.</p>
<p>Zuma faces jail for contempt, the revival of the original fraud, racketeering and money laundering charges, and possibly further charges, depending on the findings of the Zondo Commission into state capture, whose subpoenas he ignored. </p>
<p>There will be more posturing and more singing of Lethu Mshini Wami by followers who stand to lose from his demise. But at the age of 78 Zuma’s long day in the sun is over.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163872/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gavin Evans 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>The posturing is bound to continue. But at the age of 78 Jacob Zuma’s long day in the sun is over.Gavin Evans, Lecturer, Culture and Media department, Birkbeck, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1535012021-02-02T14:53:36Z2021-02-02T14:53:36ZThe incredible journey of the toyi-toyi, southern Africa’s protest dance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380292/original/file-20210123-13-a5vl9o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Africa's Economic Freedom Fighters toyi-toyi at an anti-Israel protest.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">PHILL MAGAKOE/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20181112-is-this-south-africas-12th-official-language">toyi-toyi</a> is a high-kneed, foot-stomping dance, rhythmically punctuated by exhaled chants and call and response. </p>
<p>It can be observed at almost any kind of protest in South Africa and Zimbabwe today. In South Africa, university students toyi-toyi when they protest against fees, while township residents might toyi-toyi when they object to the presence of ‘foreigners’. In Zimbabwe, the opposition party toyi-toyis to protest the ruling party’s abuses, while ruling party supporters might toyi-toyi when they want to evict white farmers.</p>
<p>Where did this ‘dance’ come from? Many people associate it with the South African <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/township-uprising-1984-1985">township protests</a> of the 1980s, when young men toyi-toyied as they confronted police or attended political funerals and protests. These images filled the world’s TV screens, becoming one of the most recognisable performances of the anti-<a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> struggle. </p>
<p>But its origins are in fact much further away, and they tell us about a much longer, global history of political and military struggle. This story played out across Africa, moving from north to south, all the way from Algeria to South Africa, with stops in Tanzania, Zambia, Angola, and Zimbabwe along the way. </p>
<h2>Military camps</h2>
<p>We explored this history in our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057070.2020.1804123">research</a>. Our interest in the toyi-toyi did not come from its recent uses, but from our efforts to understand the liberation armies that <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Southern-Africa/Independence-and-decolonization-in-Southern-Africa">fought</a> against colonial and white minority rule in every southern African country from the 1960s. </p>
<p>These armies have an extraordinary history shaped by the alliances of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Cold-War">Cold War</a> era. They were made up of mostly young men, who left their rural homesteads and townships for training camps that might be in the Soviet Union or Cuba, Algeria or Tanzania, Angola or Zambia. </p>
<p>We wanted to understand what this experience was like and what kinds of armies it made. We focused on ‘military culture’ – that is, the ideas, practices and traditions that give an army character and meaning for soldiers – and how it was instilled through training in all these different places. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XPuQBqNhH1M?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">TRIGGER WARNING: VIOLENCE. The toyi-toyi’s relationship with protest music.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The toyi-toyi proved a great way of understanding how these men learned what it meant to be a soldier, and how those ideas were transmitted over thousands of kilometres and through dozens of military camps. When the toyi-toyi eventually arrived in South Africa’s townships it was something very different from what it had been at the start of its long journey. </p>
<h2>Algerian roots</h2>
<p>We <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057070.2020.1804123">interviewed</a> <a href="https://readingzimbabwe.com/books/lest-we-forget-histories-of-the-zimbabwe-people-s-revolutionary-army-zpra">members</a> of the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary <a href="https://www.xlibris.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/579630-z-p-r-a">Army</a> (ZPRA, also referred to as Zipra, the armed wing of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union or Zapu). We learned that the toyi-toyi’s origins were located in the training camps set up to support African liberation movements in Algeria in the mid-1960s. </p>
<p><em>Toyi-toyi</em> was thought to be an Arabic phrase and it formed part of the songs and chants that recruits learned. For them, the toyi-toyi was a military drill – certainly not a ‘dance’ – that they associated with achieving the high level of toughness and fitness required to survive guerrilla war. Its foreign language chants and novel movements expressed the international character of the armed liberation struggle itself. </p>
<p>From Algeria, the toyi-toyi moved southward, through training camps in Tanzania and then into Zambia, and in the process it changed. </p>
<h2>Zimbabwean nationalism</h2>
<p>It began to take on a nationalist character – the Arabic slogans were replaced with slogans in Zimbabwe’s main languages and they were refocused around expressions of loyalty to the party and its leader. This was at a time when there were many divisions that threatened the movement. The toyi-toyi became a way of instilling loyalty and discipline as well as physical strength as many more soldiers started to fight inside Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>The military toyi-toyi required hours of high-kneed running in difficult terrain while carrying heavy packs and weapons. ZPRA veterans told us how they had suffered from the toyi-toyi’s demands but they also stressed that it had given them tremendous pride in their toughness and helped them to face the terrible demands of the battlefield. They remembered the toyi-toyi as an essential part of their military culture. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380421/original/file-20210125-15-1e8xn3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A group of protesters with banners; in the foreground a group appears to be marching in the same style, knees raised very high." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380421/original/file-20210125-15-1e8xn3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380421/original/file-20210125-15-1e8xn3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380421/original/file-20210125-15-1e8xn3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380421/original/file-20210125-15-1e8xn3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380421/original/file-20210125-15-1e8xn3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380421/original/file-20210125-15-1e8xn3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380421/original/file-20210125-15-1e8xn3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Zimbabwean protesters in Harare, demonstrating against the disappearance of a journalist.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">JEKESAI NJIKIZANA/AFP via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The toyi-toyi had, however, a different standing in other liberation armies. We can see how the toyi-toyi tells us about how military cultures were remade over time in one army – it can also tell us about how such cultures were transmitted from one liberation army to another. </p>
<h2>The toyi-toyi arrives in South Africa</h2>
<p>The main South African liberation army, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk">uMkhonto we Sizwe</a> (MK), learned the toyi-toyi from ZPRA, in <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03057070.2017.1262639?journalCode=cjss20">shared</a> military camps in Angola and Zambia and on the Zimbabwean battlefield. The spread of the toyi-toyi in MK shows how extensive these interactions were. </p>
<p>But MK soldiers had very different <a href="https://www.ifwemustdie.co.za">reactions</a> to it. Some denounced the toyi-toyi as a mindless, brutal physical exercise and blamed it for instituting a repressive military culture in MK.</p>
<p>These critical views of the toyi-toyi did not stop it from spreading throughout MK camps in Angola and from there southwards again into South Africa. One of the main routes for the toyi-toyi’s arrival in the South African townships was through <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/za/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/politics-general-interest/robben-island-and-prisoner-resistance-apartheid?format=PB&isbn=9780521007825">MK soldiers</a> who had been captured, held in the infamous <a href="https://www.robben-island.org.za/stories">Robben Island prison</a> and subsequently released in South Africa. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/politics-and-fashion-the-rise-of-the-red-beret-128333">Politics and fashion: the rise of the red beret</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>These men were heroes to many young people in the townships. Performing the toyi-toyi was a means through which young men and women could link their protest to the glories of the armed struggle – now in the form of an at times joyous, at times menacing ‘dance’ rather than a military drill. </p>
<p>The toyi-toyi has continued to change its meanings – it has taken on many different political roles for people with no connection to the liberation struggles. By tracing its journey, we can learn how liberation movements’ militaries were made – and also how they spread into a much wider political culture which remains significant today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153501/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jocelyn Alexander receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust, RPG-2019-198. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>JoAnn McGregor receives funding from The Leverhulme Trust</span></em></p>South Africa’s famous toyi-toyi was adopted from Zimbabwean troops, who learned it in Algeria – showing the interconnected nature of Africa’s liberation struggles.Jocelyn Alexander, Professor, University of OxfordJoAnn McGregor, Professor, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag: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/1356902020-04-06T13:17:24Z2020-04-06T13:17:24ZHow Mandela stayed fit: from his ‘matchbox’ Soweto home to a prison cell<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325705/original/file-20200406-74261-ru1dh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former South African President Nelson Mandela with former American world boxing champion Marvin Hagler. The undated photo was taken after Mandela's release.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Louise Gubb/GettyImages</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The spread of the coronavirus has forced millions all over the world to retreat to base and abandon outdoor exercise and gym sessions. If they own a big house and garden, it’s manageable, but many live in shacks, cramped houses or tiny high-rise flats. How can they avoid going to seed during lockdown? Gavin Evans takes a look at how former boxer and South African liberation struggle icon <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/nelson-rolihlahla-mandela">Nelson Mandela</a> adapted while incarcerated in a tiny cell on Robben Island.</em></p>
<p>February 15, 1990: Nelson Mandela wakes as always at 5am and begins his hour-long exercise routine. The difference this time is that instead of a prison cell, his gym is the front room of his <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2008-07-17-matchbox-house-revolution-is-needed-for-soweto/">“matchbox” house</a> – so-called for its small size – at 8115 Vilakazi Street, Soweto. And soon he’ll be besieged by journalists, well-wishers, diplomats and family members.</p>
<p>I get to interview him a few hours later to ask about his plans. His answers are clear and concise and I’m too nervous to probe deeper. But towards the end I toss in a question about boxing, and his stern demeanour changes. He beams with delight and begins to chat about his favourite fighters and how he followed the sport in prison.</p>
<p>Mandela started boxing as a student at <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/university-fort-hare">Fort Hare University</a>, and then trained more seriously when studying, working and struggling in Johannesburg during the 1940s and 50s, although he didn’t fight competitively and was modest about his prowess. “I was never an outstanding boxer,” he said in his autobiography, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/318431.Long_Walk_to_Freedom">Long Walk to Freedom</a>. “I was in the heavyweight division, and I had neither enough power to compensate for my lack of speed nor enough speed to make up for my lack of power.”</p>
<p>What he relished about it was the rigour of training, a routine periodically broken by arrest and the demands of the “struggle”, but not often. He wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I unleashed my anger and frustration on a punchbag rather than taking it out on a comrade or even a policeman.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Refuge in exercise</h2>
<p>Mandela believed this routine was the key to both physical health and peace of mind.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Exercise dissipates tension, and tension is the enemy of serenity. I found that I worked better and thought more clearly when I was in good physical condition, and so training became one of the <a href="http://www.mindfulnext.org/mandela-on-peace-of-mind/">inflexible disciplines of my life</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325700/original/file-20200406-74206-1oblloc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325700/original/file-20200406-74206-1oblloc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325700/original/file-20200406-74206-1oblloc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325700/original/file-20200406-74206-1oblloc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325700/original/file-20200406-74206-1oblloc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325700/original/file-20200406-74206-1oblloc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325700/original/file-20200406-74206-1oblloc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nelson Mandela was a boxing enthusiast. The photo depicts him circa 1950.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">GettyImages</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Four mornings a week he’d set off for a run and three evenings a week he’d work out in a Soweto boxing gym – his way of losing himself “in something that was not the struggle”. He said he’d wake up the next morning feeling refreshed – “mentally and physically lighter” and “ready to take up the fight again”.</p>
<p>From 1960 Mandela led the underground campaign of the African National Congress’s military wing, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk">umKhonto weSizwe</a>, moving around the country disguised as a chauffeur, with trips abroad to rally support, so his boxing training became sporadic. The “Black Pimpernel”, as he was dubbed, was arrested in 1962 – the result of a tip-off to the apartheid police from the CIA, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/15/cia-operative-nelson-mandela-1962-arrest">it has since emerged</a> – and spent the next 27-and-a-half years in jail, 18 of them on Robben Island.</p>
<h2>Life behind bars</h2>
<p>When Mandela arrived, a prison warder sneered: “This is the Island. This is where you will die.” </p>
<p>Part of the challenge was getting used to monotony. As he put it: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Prison life is about routine: each day like the one before; each week like the one before it, so that the months and years blend into each other.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The daily routine of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-23618727">Prisoner 46664</a> consisted of gruelling manual labour – working in a quarry to dig out limestone and using heavy hammers to smash rocks into gravel. This was draining but he decided not to use it as an excuse to abandon his exercise regime. From then on it started at 5am and was carried out in a damp 2.1m squared cell rather than a sweat-soaked Soweto boxing gym. “I attempted to follow my old boxing routine of doing roadwork and muscle-building,” he said. </p>
<p>He’d begin with running on the spot for 45 minutes, followed by 100 fingertip push-ups, 200 sit-ups, 50 deep knee-bends and calisthenic exercises learnt from his gym training (in those days, and even today, this would include star jumps and ‘burpees’ – where you start upright, move down into a squat position, kick your feet back, return to squat and stand up).</p>
<p>Mandela would do this Mondays to Thursdays, and then rest for three days. This continued even during his several spells in solitary confinement.</p>
<h2>Beating TB</h2>
<p>In 1988, aged 70, he contracted tuberculosis, exacerbated by the damp cell, and was admitted to hospital, coughing blood. He was moved to a prison warder’s house in <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/mandela-moved-victor-verster-prison">Victor Verster Prison</a> near Paarl and soon resumed a truncated version of his exercise programme, which now included laps of the prison swimming pool.</p>
<p>He was released from prison, along with other political prisoners, on 11 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1azBzDpmEU">February 1990</a>, nine days after the African National Congress and other liberation movements <a href="https://theconversation.com/fw-de-klerk-made-a-speech-30-years-ago-that-ended-apartheid-why-he-did-it-130803">were unbanned</a> by the apartheid government. He went on to become the first president of a democratic South Africa, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/nelson-mandela-presidency-1994-1999">from 1994 to 1999</a>. </p>
<p>Inevitably as he reached his 80s, his exercise routine was moderated but never abandoned. He <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2013-12-05-nelson-mandela-dies/">died on 5 December 2013</a>, aged 95, of a respiratory infection.</p>
<p>Mandela believed a lifetime’s habit of exercise helped him to survive prison, ready for the challenges that lay ahead. “In prison, having an outlet for my frustrations was absolutely essential,” he said – words that might be taken to heart by those facing months of coronavirus-prompted lockdowns in cramped conditions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/135690/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gavin Evans 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>Prison life is about routine: each day like the one before; each week like the one before it, so that the months and years blend into each other.Gavin Evans, Lecturer, Culture and Media department, Birkbeck, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/893792018-01-03T05:49:54Z2018-01-03T05:49:54ZBiopic misrepresents Miles Davis in the life of a South African freedom fighter<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199899/original/file-20171219-27557-18k0tl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The cover of 'Seven Steps to heaven'.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">From: Wolf's Kompaktkiste</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africans had specific attitudes to American jazz during the liberation struggle against apartheid. The late trumpeter <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-lives-of-two-south-african-music-giants-tell-us-about-culture-under-apartheid-80970">Johnny Mekoa</a> told me in an interview for <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/soweto-blues-9780826416629/">my book</a>, “Soweto Blues: jazz politics and popular music in South Africa”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>People were listening to this music at home because we felt this was our music and these are our black heroes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For South Africans aspiring to freedom, jazz was protest music. In struggle, jazz offered shared, collective messages of black intellectual attainment – and beauty. </p>
<p>It’s therefore not surprising that jazz plays a starring role in Mandla Dube’s 2017 biopic <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3487278/">“Kalushi”</a> – the story of South African freedom fighter <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/solomon-kalushi-mahlangu">Solomon Kalushi Mahlangu</a>. Today, few of those born later know Mahlangu’s story. But in telling it, the film takes too little care over factual accuracy, and narrows and distorts what jazz meant to those fighting on the front lines for liberation.</p>
<p>In the opening minutes of biopic we see the young Kalushi parting with his savings for a copy of the <a href="http://www.milesdavis.com/">Miles Davis</a> LP <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/seven-steps-to-heaven-mw0000188023">Seven Steps to Heaven</a> in a general store in the Pretoria township of Mamelodi.</p>
<p>The scene was inspired by Kalushi’s well known fondness for Davis. But <a href="http://www.samro.org.za/newsletter/beat-bulletin-september-2017#Behind%20the%20Scenes%20with%20Kalushi%20Film%20Score%20Composer%20Rashid%20Lanie">according to</a> score composer Rashid Lanie, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>When I first saw the first scenes of Solly carrying Miles Davis’s ‘Kind of Blue’ album… I said: ‘I don’t think we should use that visual – let’s change it.’ When Solly walks to the gallows, it is 52 steps to the gallows. Five plus two is seven. Did you know Miles Davis also has an album called ‘Seven Steps to Heaven?’</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199888/original/file-20171219-27557-5c0imy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199888/original/file-20171219-27557-5c0imy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199888/original/file-20171219-27557-5c0imy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199888/original/file-20171219-27557-5c0imy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199888/original/file-20171219-27557-5c0imy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199888/original/file-20171219-27557-5c0imy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199888/original/file-20171219-27557-5c0imy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The cover of ‘Kind of Blue’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.milesdavis.com/albums/kind-of-blue/">Miles Davis website</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That’s why, in the film, Kalushi is seen carrying the ‘Seven Steps to Heaven’ LP.</p>
<h2>Military training</h2>
<p>That’s not the last time Davis appears. The album is used by Kalushi’s struggle contact (a thuggish character first shown stabbing someone in a back alley) to pressure him into political activity. It survives jumping the border, and military training in a camp of the African National Congress (ANC) army in exile, Umkhonto we Sizwe. Kalushi’s final words as he heads for the gallows have become immortal: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Tell my people that I love them and that they must continue the struggle.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the film, they are reduced to a coda after Kalushi muses: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>You know, Miles Davis once said: ‘If somebody told me I only had one hour to live, I’d spend it choking a white man. I’d do it nice and slow…’ </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Which is all very well, except that if those words of Davis’s were spoken at all, they were uttered six or seven years after Kalushi’s judicial murder at the gallows by the South African state. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/msW13gUZRVk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The title track from Miles Davis’s album, ‘Seven steps to heaven’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Davis has often been invoked to signify the kind of outspoken black pride that scared the white jazz establishment. But while the trumpeter had his ugly side – especially in terms of how he bullied women – his comments on race were incisive and intelligent: firmly grounded in experience. </p>
<p>South African music professor <a href="http://www.salimwashington.com/">Salim Washington</a> comments in a recent email interview I did with him:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Miles flouted the absurd rules while inventing a cooler and more inventive way to be, in a world designed to make black men politically impotent and culturally neutered … But sometimes it seems he is cited as a bad boy and not as a thinker, which he was.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>See, for example, the 1962 <em>Playboy</em> <a href="http://www.alex-haley.com/alex_haley_miles_davis_interview.htm">interview</a> with Alex Haley. </p>
<h2>Questionable provenance</h2>
<p>The “choking” comment, however, has a questionable provenance. It is cited by the American <a href="https://www.jetmag.com/"><em>Jet</em> magazine</a> on 25 March 1985 (Mahlangu was executed on 24 July 1978) as coming from a “recent” interview with <em>USA Today</em> reporter Miles White. <em>Jet</em> <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=FbEDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA61&lpg=PA61&dq=Miles+Davis+can%27t+shake+boyhood+racial+abuse">completes</a> the quote as: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The only white people I don’t like are the prejudiced white people. Those the shoe don’t fit, well, they don’t wear it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Before Kalushi, it was widely <a href="http://www.aim.org/wls/i-want-to-choke-a-white-man/">republished</a> on ultra-right white supremacist websites.</p>
<p>Framing Davis this way reinforces other conservative tropes in the movie; tropes already prevalent in hegemonic discourses about revolution. Anti-apartheid youth rebellion in Mamelodi appears as a few isolated young individuals (one, a murderous thug) restrained by their frightened families, echoing multiple Hollywood biopics where the revolutionary is an <a href="http://www.dictionary.com/browse/anomic">anomic</a> individual amid apolitical peasants muttering,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>All we want to do is herd our goats in peace.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>What’s missing from the film</h2>
<p>Wholly absent from the film is that Mamelodi had for two decades before 1976 been a multi-generational ferment of ANC, Africanist and black consciousness community revolt and cultural activism, led by the kinds of older heroes from whom Kalushi would have learned about both politics and Miles, such as the late cultural activist <a href="http://kaganof.com/geoff.html">Geoff Mphakati</a>. </p>
<p>On top of this the film images Africa – Mozambique and Angola – in “basket-case” terms. The first thing Kalushi sees arriving over the border is a helpless young orphan begging in Xai Xai refugee camp, followed by unexplained executions: his first sight as he arrives at the MK training camp in Angola. Umkhonto we Sizwe political education is portrayed as mindless sloganeering, when ANC stalwart <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03005/06lv03006/07lv03105/08lv03116.htm">Jack Simons’s</a> political <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Comrade-Jack-Political-Lectures-Catengue/dp/1919855025">lectures and diaries</a> (of which I was co-editor) make it very clear the process had significantly more content and nuance.</p>
<p>By the end, Kalushi’s final words – addressed to “my people”: his community, placing love at the roots of struggle – have been negatively re-contextualised by Davis’s supposed individualistic vengefulness. Kalushi faithfully carts his LP around the perilous frontline (something unlikely to the point of fairytale) but “choking a white man” is the only rationale for why.</p>
<p>“Don’t worry about playing a lot of notes,” Davis legendarily said. “Just find one pretty one.” The late trumpeter and Umkhonto we Sizwe combatant Dennis Mpale <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/soweto-blues-9780826416629/">spoke</a> to me of jazz,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[making] beautiful music in a very ugly world.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>South Africa’s freedom fighters yearned for chances to listen. </p>
<p>Sticking out of the charnel-house debris created by the South African Defence Force when they murdered artist <a href="http://kaganof.com/kagablog/2009/01/15/art-lost-in-a-time-of-struggle-thami-mnyele-and-medu-art-ensemble-retrospective/">Thami Mnyele</a> in Botswana in June 1985 was the cover of the <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/john-coltrane-and-johnny-hartman-bonus-tracks-sacd-mw0000263500">John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman jazz album</a>. The story of jazz, in Umkhonto we Sizwe culture and Kalushi’s life, is far more nuanced – and positive – than a poorly sourced quote from <em>Jet</em> magazine.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89379/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell 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>The story of jazz in the ANC army-in-exile, Umkhonto we Sizwe culture is far more nuanced – and positive – than depicted in a new film.Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/893172017-12-18T13:15:42Z2017-12-18T13:15:42ZVintage Zuma delivers a vengeful swansong, devoid of any responsibility<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199689/original/file-20171218-27607-1xxomej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African President Jacob Zuma sings before his opening address at the 54th National Conference of the governing ANC.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The hope was that in <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/anc-conference-2017/2017-12-16-in-full--president-jacob-zumas-final-speech-as-anc-president/">opening</a> the <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/54th-national-conference">54th National Conference</a> of the African National Congress (ANC), South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma would rise to the occasion, seize the moment of his last address as party president with honesty and leave something worthy of history. For posterity to cherish.</p>
<p>It sounded as though he was taking the bull by the horns when he referred to <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/jackson-mthembu-ending-slate-politics-cant-happen-like-instant-coffee-20151108">slate politics</a> as the function of ANC factionalism, which he acknowledged had fractured the governing party, including corrupting its systems and processes. Slate politics are the reason for internecine contests for leadership positions in the ANC, which, as he correctly pointed out, rob the ANC of good leadership.</p>
<p>But, in the end, his narcissistic streak shaped his swansong. It was largely couched in aspirational rather than diagnostic terms. For a political report of a leader whose 10-year tenure was coming to an end, it left much to be desired. </p>
<p>He claimed that he was leaving behind a stronger ANC, a statement he could only make if he’s suffering from delusions of grandeur, or because he’s indulging in self-gratification. Which ever it was, it exposed the dishonesty of the <a href="http://www.thenewage.co.za/anc-political-report-by-outgoing-president-jacob-zuma/">political report</a> he subsequently delivered, which was cluttered with rhetorical ploys and lacked a coherent theme for the august event. In truth, the divisions in the ANC are at their worst under him. So is its governing <a href="http://www.cosatu.org.za/show.php?ID=2051">Tripartite Alliance</a> - with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-communist-party-strips-the-anc-of-its-multi-class-ruling-party-status-88647">South African Communist Party</a> and labour federation <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/zuma-banned-from-speaking-at-cosatu-events-9300206">Cosatu</a> - that it leads.</p>
<h2>An attack on democracy</h2>
<p>Zuma missed the purpose of a valedictory address – to guide the future in the wake of leadership changes. Instead, he became vengeful, taking issue with what he termed ill-discipline in the organisation. Here he was referring to members who <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/just-in-anc-free-state-pec-several-branches-barred-from-attending-elective-conference-20171215">take the ANC to court</a> for violating its own constitution and processes. He suggested that they should be dismissed from the organisation immediately. </p>
<p>This is a strange way of dealing with issues, particularly for a president in a constitutional democracy who spent <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jacob-gedleyihlekisa-zuma">half of his life</a> selflessly fighting for a more just system of organising society. The idea that someone’s membership of an organisation be immediately terminated when they take it to court to protect their rights is at variance with the principle of the supremacy of the constitution. </p>
<p>Zuma’s suggestion violates the right to external recourse for those aggrieved by internal organisational processes. That it’s even entertained by some in the leadership of the ANC demonstrates the extent of the crisis under Zuma. This is because ideas such as these pose a danger to the party’s <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/what-anc">foundational values</a> - of unity, non-racialism, non-sexism and democracy - as well as to the future of democracy in the country. That is because the ANC, despite its waning electoral performance, remains <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-has-remained-dominant-despite-shifts-in-support-base-63285">politically dominant</a>. Thus, what happens inside it ultimately affects the running of the country, hence it’s imperative <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-a-countrys-constitutional-court-can-consolidate-and-deepen-democracy-54184">internal party democracy</a> be entrenched in the ANC.</p>
<p>Had Zuma looked objectively and honestly into what led some members to take the ANC to court, his report would have perhaps managed to get to the core of the morass.</p>
<h2>Factional till the end</h2>
<p>Zuma also squandered the last opportunity he had to remove himself from petty factional politics of the ANC and assert himself as a unifier and a statesman. This was his chance to echo the voice of <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/oliver-reginald-kaizana-tambo">Oliver Tambo</a>, the revered leader of the ANC who is attributed with holding the organisation together during its turbulent years as a <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-is-celebrating-the-year-of-or-tambo-who-was-he-85838">banned organisation</a>. </p>
<p>But he blew it by making a point of graciously thanking three senior members of the ANC who are leaders of the factions behind <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-11-03-anc-leadership-race-dlamini-zuma-supporters-in-battle-to-secure-the-final-prize-the-eastern-cape/">Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma’s presidential campaign</a>. These were the ANC Women’s League President <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/the-judiciary-carries-itself-as-if-its-being-lobbied-ancwl-president-20171209">Bathabile Dlamini</a>, ANC Youth’s League <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/anc-conference-2017/2017-12-16-maine-accuses-judges-of-seeking-to-influence-outcome-of-anc-conference/">Collen Maine</a>, and ANC military veterans leader <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2017-12-16-mkmva-boss-launches-scathing-attack-on-judiciary">Kebby Maphatsoe</a>.</p>
<p>On top of this, his political report lacked the valedictory message of hope for the future. It tinkered at the edges, and largely misrepresented the reality about the state of the ANC. Instead, he fanned the flames of revenge, particularly against those who have consistently tried to hold him accountable. </p>
<p>He made references to corruption, but deflected attention from his alleged implication in it. He set out to create the impression that South Africans are outraged only about corruption in the public sector, not what’s happening in the private sector. A veiled retort to those who have questioned his moral credentials and ethical leadership was that: if you don’t talk about corruption in the private sector, you shouldn’t talk about it in the public sector.</p>
<p>And rather than denouncing slate politics and factionalism, he stuck to lamenting their existence. I believe that the only reason he mentioned them at all was because they have led to splinter groups that have affected the ANC <a href="https://www.power987.co.za/news/read-its-been-an-honor-zumas-full-speech">“quantitatively and qualitatively”</a> . If slate politics hadn’t led to the current malaise, I doubt he would have made any reference to organisational maladies, which have in fact been spawned and sustained by his leadership over the past 10 years.</p>
<p>Zuma has bequeathed the ANC (and the country) a highly divided party, one that is factionalised and a threat to its own existence. Even when history gave him the opportunity to apologise for the mess his leadership has left the country in, the vintage Zuma didn’t want to take responsibility. </p>
<p>It is now left to those picking up the baton to take on the challenging task of returning the ANC to its foundational values of selflessness and service and its stature as a leader of society.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89317/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mashupye Herbert Maserumule received funding from the National Research Foundation(NRF) for his post-graduate studies. He is a member of the South African Association of Public Administration and Management(SAAPAM). He is the Chief Editor of the Journal of Public Administration.</span></em></p>Zuma’s last address to South Africa’s governing party, the ANC, as its president, betrayed his strange way of dealing with issues. He came across as delusional and self-indulgent.Mashupye Herbert Maserumule, Professor of Public Affairs, Tshwane University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/858382017-10-25T12:18:10Z2017-10-25T12:18:10ZSouth Africa’s ANC is celebrating the year of OR Tambo. Who was he?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190606/original/file-20171017-30390-1bx309e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Oliver Reginald Tambo served as ANC president from 1967 to 1991.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2538380.Oliver_Tambo">Oliver Tambo’s</a> name and reputation are <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781770100756">lauded</a>, not least because he succeeded, remarkably, in keeping the African National Congress <a href="http://www.anc.org.za">(ANC)</a> together as a liberation movement during an <a href="http://www.whyjoburg.com/oliver-tambo.html">exile lasting 30 years</a>. Despite this legacy, the ANC, now South Africa’s governing party, has seen a year culminating in what is, arguably, its greatest crisis. Today, factions within the ANC nostalgically point to the <a href="http://www.sabc.co.za/wps/portal/news/main/tag?tag=OR%20Tambo%20Memorial%20Lecture">example of Oliver Reginald Tambo</a> , or OR as he was affectionately known in party circles.</p>
<p>Evidence of <a href="https://www.enca.com/south-africa/the-race-corruption-a-big-problem-for-anc">systemic corruption</a> and <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/09/04/mkhize-we-must-face-up-to-the-problems-of-factions-inside-anc">factionalism</a> for personal gain within the ANC are blamed for the failure to deliver improved living conditions to the poorest communities. The loss of three major metropolitan municipal councils in the industrial heartland testifies to diminished <a href="https://theconversation.com/sharp-tongued-south-african-voters-give-ruling-anc-a-stiff-rebuke-63606">confidence in the ANC</a>.</p>
<p>By contrast, in the year of his <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/splash/index">centenary</a>, Oliver Tambo is held as an exemplar of integrity, personifying the ideal of a leader who for 50 years selflessly served the movement, consistently holding up the goals of a humane and caring society.</p>
<p>But who was this much talked about Tambo? And what lessons can be learnt from his leadership?</p>
<h2>Exile</h2>
<p>In 1960, after the <a href="http://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/multimedia.php?id=65-259-E">Sharpeville massacre</a>, then ANC President Chief Albert Luthuli instructed Tambo to leave South Africa as an international <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2538380.Oliver_Tambo">diplomat of the ANC</a>. His task was to mobilise a worldwide economic boycott.</p>
<p>With hindsight it was a prescient judgement call. The military wing of the ANC <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk">Umkhonto we Sizwe</a> was launched a year later and within two years leaders of the ANC were facing charges of treason in the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/rivonia-trial-1963-1964">Rivonia Trial</a>. The trial, which stretched through 1963-1964, led to life sentences for the leaders of Umkhonto we Sizwe, which included <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/walter-ulyate-sisulu">Walter Sisulu</a>, <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Mandela</a>, <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=2360">Govan Mbeki</a> and <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/mr-ahmed-kathrada">Ahmed Kathrada</a>.</p>
<p>Tambo’s task was to alert the world to the horrors of apartheid South Africa, and to seek assistance and support from newly independent states in Africa. It was to be more than 30 years before he returned home in <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/oliver-tambo-returns-exile">December 1990</a>. During this time, his integrity combined with his keen intellect and natural warmth impressed many people in diverse countries around the world.</p>
<h2>Consensus seeker</h2>
<p>Tambo was a careful and astute listener. He followed the indigenous African consensus system of decision making, crafting a conclusion that included at least some of the opinions of all participants.</p>
<p>He believed that the ANC should maintain the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2538380.Oliver_Tambo">“high moral ground”</a> and that it should be a broad umbrella under which all enemies of apartheid could shelter and enrich the movement, irrespective of their political beliefs. He was also cautious, likening the challenge of the liberation struggle to the traditional <em>“indima”</em> method of ploughing a very large piece of land. He <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2538380.Oliver_Tambo">explained</a> at a Sophiatown meeting in 1953.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There’s a point where you must start. You can’t plough it all at once – you have to tackle it acre by acre…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One of Tambo’s strengths was his constructive and creative response to criticism. In 1967, for example, following the failure of Umkhonto we Sizwe cadres to reach the borders of South Africa after a battle at <a href="http://www.sadet.co.za/docs/rtd/vol1/sadet1_chap12.pdf">Wankie in “Rhodesia”</a> (now Zimbabwe), Chris Hani and others, disillusioned with the leaders’ lethargy, released an <a href="http://www.loot.co.za/product/hugh-macmillan-chris-hani/pyjg-2664-g860?referrer=bookslive">angry memorandum</a>. In an interview I did with Hani in Johannesburg in 1993 he admitted: “We blew our tops.” They accused the leadership of Umkhonto we Sizwe and the ANC of getting too comfortable and losing their appetite to return home – they had become “men in suits, clutching passports”.</p>
<p>The response by the leadership was outrage – the Secretary-General Alfred Nzo called for Hani’s execution for treason. But Tambo immediately began organising a conference of elected representatives of the branches around the world. A message was sent to Robben Island to inform ANC leaders jailed there, including Nelson Mandela, of this development.</p>
<p>It was time for frank conversation and a comprehensive, considered assessment. The outcome was the historic and constructive conference at <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/morogoro-conference">Morogoro in Tanzania</a>. The conference took on a more inclusive and democratic direction for the ANC, foregrounding the political aims over the military, and identifying the importance of mobilising workers at home.</p>
<h2>Challenging 1980s</h2>
<p>In the 1980s Tambo was faced with a more serious challenge. International attention against apartheid was growing; he was travelling extensively, persuading ordinary people to undermine apartheid by boycotting its products and banks and denying it arms. Alarmed, the apartheid regime sent spies into ANC camps on the continent, infiltrating top committees in Lusaka and other ANC structures.</p>
<p>The panic that ensued turned the spotlight on the flaws of the Umkhonto we Sizwe leadership. Human rights abuses of suspected spies and “ill-disciplined cadres” led to <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/media%5C1996%5C9608/s960822l.htm">unlawful deaths and executions</a>.</p>
<p>Tambo’s <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02582473.2012.675813">cautious response</a> was criticised by the leadership of both ANC intelligence and Umkhonto we Sizwe for “impeding investigation” into the spies, owing to “his sense of democracy”. The chief culprits of these human rights abuses were formerly trusted peers of Tambo. He faced the dilemma of blowing the ANC wide apart if he challenged them. Instead, he resorted to the compromising strategy of redeploying them to other sections of the movement, such as education – perhaps leaving an unfortunate legacy for today’s ANC.</p>
<h2>Enduring legacy</h2>
<p>Tambo was to set in motion a process that culminated in South Africa’s democratic constitution. He:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>subscribed Umkhonto we Sizwe and the ANC to the Geneva Convention, which imposed a strict adherence to human rights.</p></li>
<li><p>set up a <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/stuart-commission-report">commission</a> of trusted senior comrades to look into the conditions in the ANC’s camps in Africa as well as abuses. The commission’s report was highly critical.</p></li>
<li><p>summoned an consultative conference in Kabwe in 1985 that reaffirmed ANC’s humanist values, addressed gender inequalities and formally accepted whites in official positions.</p></li>
<li><p>appointed the movement’s top legal minds to research and craft a constitution for the ANC; it was inspired by the <a href="http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/HIST/freedomchart/freedomch.html">Freedom Charter</a>, which had been drawn up in 1956 after extensive consultation with ordinary people. It opened with the ringing words:</p></li>
</ul>
<blockquote>
<p>South Africa belongs to all who live in it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>South Africa’s new democracy essentially incorporated many of the clauses in the charter’s the path-breaking <a href="https://www.gov.za/DOCUMENTS/CONSTITUTION/constitution-republic-south-africa-1996-1">1996</a> constitution.</p>
<h2>Tambo’s insights remain relevant</h2>
<p>Reporting to his first conference inside South Africa in December 1990 after the unbanning of the ANC, <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/president-or-tambos-opening-address-ancs-48th-national-conference">Tambo warned that </a> “suspicions will not disappear overnight, the building of the South African nation is a national ask of paramount importance. </p>
<p>And he warned:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The struggle is far from over: if anything, it has become more complex and therefore more difficult. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He also reflected that "we were always ready to accept our mistakes and correct them.”</p>
<p>Faced by crises in the ANC, Tambo had always been ready to listen, responding constructively and creatively with new policies to meet the challenges of the time. </p>
<p>This is the enduring legacy of Oliver Tambo: many seasons later, many continue to gain insights and learn relevant lessons from his responses to the universal, human condition of our time. But whether they heeded this call is a moot point:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have devotedly watched over the organisation all these years. I now hand it back to you, bigger, stronger - intact. Guard our precious movement.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85838/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luli Callinicos is author of Oliver Tambo: Beyond The Engeli Mountains published by David Philip Publishersin 2004. She received a Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Grant (1993), Ford Foundation (2000) towards writing the biography of Oliver Tambo. She serves on the MISTRA Council of Advisers, National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciens Board member, also on Council of Robben Island Museum.</span></em></p>Factions within South Africa’s ANC nostalgically point to the example of Oliver Reginald Tambo whose seen as an exemplar of integrity, personifying an ideal leader who served the party selflessly.Luli Callinicos, Researcher and founder member of the History Workshop, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/812162017-07-19T18:22:22Z2017-07-19T18:22:22ZMoney has little to do with why South Africa’s military is failing to do its job<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178679/original/file-20170718-10316-wlsu7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A soldier with the 9th South African Infantry Battalion during a biennial training exercise with the US military in the Eastern Cape.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">US Army/ Taryn Hagerman</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Much has been said about the size of South Africa’s <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/07/16/sandf-unable-to-meet-mandate-due-to-reduced-budget">defence budget</a>, the tension between commitments and capabilities, and the need to arrest the decline in <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-army-is-in-steady-decline-and-nothings-being-done-to-fix-it-74712">defence</a>. Despite the fact that the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) is still a major player in <a href="https://businesstech.co.za/news/general/112885/south-africas-military-power-vs-the-world-in-2016/">Southern Africa</a>, it has real problems.</p>
<p>For one, directing vital peacekeeping funds, which should be part of the defence budget, away from the military to the
national budget, is a <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2017-06-30-00-diverted-funds-puts-soldiers-at-risk">major problem</a>.
But, it’s time for the <a href="http://www.dod.mil.za/">SANDF</a> to face some serious realities. </p>
<p>Firstly, it should not place its hope in the rollout of the current <a href="http://www.gov.za/documents/south-african-defence-review-2014">Defence Review</a>. The review doesn’t provide an honest outline of the threats and vulnerabilities facing the country, defence capabilities needed, military organisation or the cost to taxpayers.</p>
<p>The review saw the light in 2014 when the country’s economic outlook was substantially better. It was deliberately drafted without considering the costs and threats facing the country. As nothing more than an honest internal analysis of the state of South African defence, the document is of little strategic significance.</p>
<p>Secondly, in view of the social, educational and other economic realities, there is no fat in the national budget for defence. It needs to accept the reality that it is not to receive a cent more than what’s already allocated. For the foreseeable future, defence spending will remain at about 1% of GDP. South Africa cannot afford the 2% of GDP that’s accepted for defence spending across the world. </p>
<p>In addition, the SANDF also confronts a number of critical political realities. It is, for all practical purposes, the face of South African foreign policy in Africa and is, to a large extent, functioning in a domestic political conundrum shaped by the policy and political cravings of the governing party and its elite.</p>
<p>It’s also subject to the political expressions of policy documents such as the <a href="http://www.gov.za/sites/www.gov.za/files/Executive%20Summary-NDP%202030%20-%20Our%20future%20-%20make%20it%20work.pdf">National Development Plan</a>, which aims to eliminate poverty and reduce inequality by 2030. The Force is also hostage to the factional battles within the governing African National Congress (ANC), as reflected in the fallout over such slogans as <a href="http://www.fin24.com/Economy/radical-economic-transformation-zuma-vs-ramaphosa-20170502">“radical economic transformation”</a>. Like all sectors of the society, defence is also victim to the political manoeuvring, underpinning the current national executive’s need for survival.</p>
<h2>Political whims trump strategy</h2>
<p>For the SANDF, these realities unfold along the lines of a need to be everything for everybody, with little strategic guidance and priorities forthcoming <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-06-11-op-ed-the-sandfs-misguided-role-in-africa/#.WW8LPoSGOos">from the political domain</a>. In practice, this means that there’s no emphasis on defence priorities and that the demands for the Defence Force to “assist” unfolds through a process of adhocracy. </p>
<p>Generals, functioning in a self sanctioning institutional culture of misplaced political loyalty, stretch the defence capacity to please their political masters. In the process, they oversee the breakdown of the institution they command, because there are limits to what a defence force can do.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178811/original/file-20170719-13593-de0czj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178811/original/file-20170719-13593-de0czj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178811/original/file-20170719-13593-de0czj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178811/original/file-20170719-13593-de0czj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178811/original/file-20170719-13593-de0czj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178811/original/file-20170719-13593-de0czj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178811/original/file-20170719-13593-de0czj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Jacob Zuma and government ministers visit a border gate and temporary army base.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Politicians don’t necessarily understand the borders of these limitations and, if not clearly outlined, this may have disastrous consequences for the military as an institution.</p>
<p>From a theoretical perspective, there are two broad approaches to deal with a problematic defence budget. The so-called interests-driven approach accepts the need to prioritise defence commitments in line with national interests, which the Force needs to extend or protect.</p>
<p>The priorities should provide a clear indication of what funding level is required to execute the defence function. This approach, though, has to be content with the reality that no country in the world has the capacity to fund all its defence priorities.</p>
<p>The budget driven approach, in contrast, takes the national budget as a point of departure. The question that drives this approach is what can be done with the money allocated for defence. This is the question central to South Africa’s defence budget woes.</p>
<p>An analysis of the structure of South African defence spending provides a better understanding of the military’s budgetary problems. As a guideline, defence forces around the world accept that the budget, irrespective of its size, ought to be divided between personnel, operational and capital expenditure, more or less in equal portions. </p>
<p>In reality this boils down to between 30 and 35% for operational and capital expenditures and 35 to 40% for personnel. This represents the first major challenge in South Africa’s defence budget: almost 80% of it is for <a href="http://www.treasury.gov.za/documents/national%20budget/2017/enebooklets/Vote%2019%20Defence%20and%20Military%20Veterans.pdf">personnel expenses</a>. </p>
<p>The rest is allocated for operational expenditure, with only limited money available for any capital projects. It’s no surprise then that the Defence Force complains about the maintenance of equipment, infrastructure, training, administration and force preparation. </p>
<p>The truth is: if personnel are the problem; they are also the solution. The failure of the defence force over many years to implement an <a href="http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/pentagon/2015/06/11/up-or-out-carson-pentagon/71067386/">up-or-out personnel management system</a> is very much at the heart of its budgetary problems. The nature of military work relies on the availability of young people. In a typical military hierarchical personnel system, most of them must be out by age 30.</p>
<h2>The veterans burden</h2>
<p>Another problem is the way in which the defence budget has been taxed with veterans’ affairs. Since the Ministry of Defence was renamed the <a href="http://www.dod.mil.za/ministry/minister.htm">Ministry of Defence and Military Veterans</a>, the <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/legis/num_act/aaa2011311.pdf">Veterans Act, Act 18 of 2011</a> has been adopted. The name change is significant. </p>
<p>This is to a large extent a reflection of the intimate link between the executive and the military veterans of <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv02918/06lv02985.htm">Umkhonto we Sizwe</a>, the former armed wing of the governing ANC. This is embodied in the appointment of <a href="https://www.pa.org.za/person/emmanuel-ramaotoana-kebby-maphatsoe/">Kebby Maphatsoe</a> as the deputy minister of Defence and Military Veterans. </p>
<p>In line with the Veterans Act, a new body has been created to deal specifically with military veterans’ affairs. The new <a href="http://www.archivalplatform.org/registry/entry/south_africannational_militaryveterans_associationsanmva/">South African National Military Veterans Association</a> is a public entity, state-funded, and accountable to the department. The SANDF is now increasingly financially and socially directly responsible for military veterans.</p>
<h2>Time for hard choices</h2>
<p>Thus, the problem is not in the size of the budget; the problem is how that budget is divided. A bigger defence budget is not the solution. Almost every problem in the SANDF is personnel related. </p>
<p>Money has very little to do with many of the challenges the military faces. Yet, its leadership sees the lack of money as its single most important challenge. Searching for the solution in the budgetary domain is the easy way out. </p>
<p>Blame it on a lack of money and no thinking is required; no innovation; no initiative; no dynamism; no drive. All one has to do is drift along. The solution is rooted in difficult political and strategic decisions about the future of the Defence Force. Decisions that will address, among other things, the professionalism and effectiveness of the organisation, the oversized bureaucratic corporate army in Pretoria, and the age brackets of serving personnel. More specifically, the SANDF should not be allowed to spend more than 40% of its budget on personnel!</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81216/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Abel Esterhuyse is an associate professor of strategic studies at the Faculty of Military Science at Stellenbosch University</span></em></p>One of the problems bedevilling South Africa’s army is being compelled to be everything to everybody. Its strategic direction is compromised by generals who pander to the whims of politicians.Abel Esterhuyse, Associate Professor of Strategy, Faculty of Military Science, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/761182017-04-12T16:56:03Z2017-04-12T16:56:03ZANC military veterans and the threat to South Africa’s democracy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165248/original/image-20170413-25898-1lzqft3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">ANC military veterans guard the party’s headquarters.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mike Hutchings</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>We may look back on the days in April 2017 when tens of thousands of South Africans marched demanding that President Jacob Zuma <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/04/06/anti-zuma-protest-gains-momentum-outside-parliament">should fall</a> as the beginning of something bigger.</p>
<p>There’s been a wistful glint in the eyes of ageing activists as they gear up for action again, predicting a return to the 1980s. Many have embraced the idea of the reconstitution of a <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/united-democratic-front-udf">United Democratic Front-style</a> multi-class, non-racial and popular anti-apartheid alliance of NGOs, community movements and religious groups to <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/04/08/south-africans-strengthen-calls-for-president-zuma-to-step-down">“Save South Africa”</a> from the capriciousness and corruption of the Zuma government.</p>
<p>We are told that Friday April 7, the day of the nationwide marches against Zuma, was the day when ordinary people stood up and said to the ANC: “Enough is Enough”! It was followed by another large demonstration of opposition political parties marching on the government’s seat of power in Pretoria, the Union Buildings, on April 12, which was also the president’s <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2017/04/12/Zuma-reveals-his-birthday-wishes-amid-protests1">75th birthday</a>. </p>
<p>Yet, while we should in no way underestimate this democratic stirring, we may look back and say that its greater significance was that it was this moment when it became manifest that Zuma’s faction of the ANC would be prepared to resort to violence to entrench its domination.</p>
<h2>Signs of intolerance of dissent</h2>
<p>Once the first marchers had marched, the ANC government sought to save face by proclaiming the day a <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/04/07/ayanda-dlodlo-thanks-anti-zuma-protesters-for-their-conduct">triumph for democracy </a> – which, of course, it was. Yet during the build-up to the march, the ANC had filled the air with threats of violence. </p>
<p>The most explicit warning was delivered by the newly installed Minister of Police, Fikile Mbalula. He did <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/04/04/mbalula-issues-stern-warning-to-violent-protesters">not want another Marikana</a>, he said, but implied the repeat of such an event, when police killed 34 striking miners, if protesters damaged property.</p>
<p>Other ANC officials, notably eThekwini mayor Zondile Gumede, issued <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2017/04/06/Durban-mayor-says-anti-Zuma-march-is-treason1">not-so-veiled threats </a> against those marching. Others sought to tie up the marchers’ right to march by <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/04/07/phahlane-insists-save-sa-march-is-illegal-despite-court-permission">denying permission</a>; others referred to marchers as <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2017/04/06/War-talk-from-MK-vets">“counter-revolutionary”</a>. </p>
<p>The most chilling threat was represented by the MK Veterans Association <a href="http://mkmva.anc.org.za/">(MKMVA)</a>, supposedly former members of the ANC’s armed wing uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK). Its press briefing before the marches took place stated that it was “mobilising” its members, who would be <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2017/04/06/War-talk-from-MK-vets">“combat ready”</a> to defend Luthuli House, the headquarters of the ANC. It was backed up by statements by the ANC Youth League that it was ready to defend the premises with <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/news/special-features/zuma/watch-ancyl-backs-zuma-amid-calls-for-his-head-8497214">all the weapons at its disposal</a>.</p>
<p>Given that the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) had changed its initial plans to march upon Luthuli House, there was little or no need to “defend” the ANC’s headquarters from anyone. Even so, on the day, <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2017/04/07/MK-vets-gather-outside-Luthuli-House">some 700 MK “veterans”</a> assembled outside Luthuli House. </p>
<h2>Threat to democracy</h2>
<p>Dressed in military fatigues, the MK “veterans” explicitly presented themselves as the ANC’s armed wing ready to go into battle to counter the party’s enemies. In the event, they <a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/toyi-toyi">toyi-toyied</a> and demonstrated – and were fortunately denied the opportunity by the police to prove their metal in clashes with the DA or anyone else. Yet the threat of violence was immanent.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165060/original/image-20170412-25859-1tm0mv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165060/original/image-20170412-25859-1tm0mv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165060/original/image-20170412-25859-1tm0mv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165060/original/image-20170412-25859-1tm0mv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165060/original/image-20170412-25859-1tm0mv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165060/original/image-20170412-25859-1tm0mv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165060/original/image-20170412-25859-1tm0mv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Supposed veterans of the ANC’s military wing perform the toyi-toyi protest dance outside the party’s headquarters in Johannesburg.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mike Hutchings</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The real issue is how MK, as it’s presently constituted, views itself and is viewed by key elements amongst the ANC’s leadership as a militia ready to be deployed against its political opponents – internal as well as external. How many of those who presented themselves outside Luthuli House were genuinely former MK veterans we do not know. But, we can be pretty sure that many if not most - too young to have fought against apartheid – have been more recent recruits, with no genuine claim to membership.</p>
<p>We also know that under the national leadership of <a href="https://mg.co.za/tag/kebby-maphatsoe">Kebby Maphatsoe</a>, the deputy defence minister, the Veteran’s Association has been deeply corrupted. Major questions posed about its internal finances are the subject of a <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/mk-veteran-head-in-court-this-week-over-alleged-fraud-20160531">court case</a>. It’s been used to intervene violently in party <a href="https://theconversation.com/comrades-in-arms-against-apartheid-are-now-at-one-anothers-throats-64643">factional battles</a> on behalf of Zuma. Yet it has reserved its main animus for parties of opposition, regularly referred to by Maphatsoe as “the enemy”, “agents provocateurs”, and <a href="http://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/south-africa-first-an-organ-of-the-counterrevoluti">“counter-revolutionaries”</a>.</p>
<p>It would be a mistake to dismiss all this as harmless political theatre. Rather, it constitutes a very real and present danger. It’s worth recalling that Siphiwe Nyanda, a former leading member of MK who became chief of the South African National Defence Force, has already referred to the veterans under Maphatsoe as a <a href="http://www.sundayworld.co.za/news/2012/09/03/mkmva-is-divisive---nyanda-slams-anc-s-army-veterans">“private army”</a>. If he’s worried, then so should we be. Armed militias aligned to a political party, or a faction within it, have no place in a constitutional democracy.</p>
<h2>Shades of Zimbabwe</h2>
<p>We have no need to look further than Zimbabwe to recognise the threats to democracy posed by armed militias. Formed in 2000, the <a href="http://dev.icicp.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Country-Profile_Zimbabwe.pdf">National Youth Service</a> was subsequently responsible for the military style training of some 80 000 youths. Many of them went on to join the ruling Zanu-PF’s affiliated militias the <a href="http://www.refworld.org/docid/45f147ce2f.html">“Green Bombers”</a>which wreaked havoc upon supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in the 2008 general election. </p>
<p>Subsequently, many were to be incorporated into security structures such as the military, police and prison service. They remain a major reservoir of violent support for Zanu-PF, which doesn’t hesitate to use to intimidate and liquidate its opponents. As we know, Zimbabwean elections have now become a <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-are-elections-really-rigged-mr-trump-consult-robert-mugabe-68440">farce</a>.</p>
<p>Following the ousting of Pravin Gordhan as South Africa’s finance minister in the recent <a href="http://www.gov.za/speeches/president-jacob-zuma-appoints-new-ministers-and-deputy-ministers-31-mar-2017-0000">cabinet reshuffle </a>, and the <a href="http://www.fin24.com/Economy/breaking-fitch-downgrades-sa-to-junk-status-20170407">downgrade by ratings agencies</a>, fears that South Africa under Zuma has embarked down a road which leads to Zimbabwe-style authoritarian kleptocracy have gained considerable ground. For the moment at least, such fears are probably exaggerated. </p>
<p>Although Zuma may be dominant within ANC structures for now, and although he will probably survive the forthcoming vote of <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/04/11/mbeki-calls-on-anc-mps-to-put-sa-first-in-vote-of-no-confidence-1">no-confidence</a> in the House of Assembly, his reshuffle has alienated many within the party. It has threatened his ability to secure the party presidency for his former wife, <a href="http://citizen.co.za/news/news-national/1394103/1394103/">Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma</a>, at the party’s <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/54th-national-conference">elective conference</a> in December.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165066/original/image-20170412-25898-vtmcu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165066/original/image-20170412-25898-vtmcu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165066/original/image-20170412-25898-vtmcu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165066/original/image-20170412-25898-vtmcu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165066/original/image-20170412-25898-vtmcu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165066/original/image-20170412-25898-vtmcu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165066/original/image-20170412-25898-vtmcu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Zuma’s supporters from the ANC Youth League disrupt a memorial service for anti-apartheid and ANC hero Ahmed Kathrada in Durban.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Rogan Ward</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Furthermore, the recent marches may have given backbone to some ANC MPs who fear the electoral consequences of the party continuing to cling to Zuma’s coattails. Yet the more desperate Zuma and his supporters become, the more the risk that they will turn to the MK Vets to help them. If, in turn, the Zuma faction was to prove triumphant in the leadership battle, it’s unlikely to hesitate to deploy MK vets (alongside its Youth League) against opponents during the lead up to the 2019 election.</p>
<p>Although the DA would go running to the courts, the militant <a href="http://www.effonline.org/">Economic Freedom Fighters</a> would be likely to respond to violence in kind, rendering the 2019 election campaign the most violent we will have seen since 1994. We are not there yet, and hopefully we never will be. </p>
<p>But, an economy which is about to hit the skids and which offers a massive pool of <a href="https://www.saldru.uct.ac.za/images/pdf/PresentationIZA.1-31.pdf">unemployed youths</a> available for political recruitment, is highly combustible. In such a context, were MKMVA to receive the covert (or not-so-covert) backing of the ANC, the prospect of a Zimbabwean scenario would loom ever larger.</p>
<p>If the white right wing was to reconstitute and parade in public in military uniforms, the ANC and all democrats would be rightly outraged. Equally, there should be no place in our democracy for MKMVA to play the role of soldier: that should be left to the South African National Defence Force.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76118/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roger Southall receives funding from the National Research Foundation </span></em></p>The militant talk and antics by the ANC’s ex-soldiers may seem like theatrics, but they are a chilling reminder of how Zimbabwe used armed militia to crash opponents and democracy.Roger Southall, Professor of Sociology, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/700082016-12-18T16:05:22Z2016-12-18T16:05:22ZGood reads: fighters, feminists and the loss of freedom in Zimbabwe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149842/original/image-20161213-1625-pm101u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Zimbabwean police beat up a man protesting the reintroduction of local banknotes.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Political scientist and published poet Keith Gottschalk shares his recommendations for good reads of the year.</em></p>
<h2>1. Harvest – University of the Western Cape</h2>
<p>This 90 page anthology of the best poems by the best poets in three years of their creative writing class is published by the <a href="https://www.uwc.ac.za/Faculties/ART/English/Pages/default.aspx">English department at the University of the Western Cape</a> and may be ordered from them.</p>
<p>One of my two favourite poems here is Sal Gabier’s satirical “you already know me” about what it feels like to be a Muslim going through any western airport. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Hello Mr. CSI.
I hope your gloved hands
are for examining
my bags, and not
my insides…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The other, Zimbabwean Christopher Kudyahakudadirwe’s “Emerging images”, is a haunting reminder of what happens when a liberation movement slides into dictatorship</p>
<blockquote>
<p>imagine … the day of the second freedom</p>
<p>when the chains of the first freedom fall away;</p>
<p>imagine these images of freedom after all.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>2. Umkhonto we Sizwe – Thula Simpson</h2>
<p>Published by Penguin, this 591-page <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/umkhonto-we-sizwe-anc%E2%80%99s-armed-struggle/9781770228412">book</a> is a straight factual narrative of the three decades of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the military wing of the African National Congress – the party that governs South Africa. It includes a pre-history of the eight years before the guerrilla army’s founding.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149629/original/image-20161212-31385-ly0rq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149629/original/image-20161212-31385-ly0rq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149629/original/image-20161212-31385-ly0rq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149629/original/image-20161212-31385-ly0rq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149629/original/image-20161212-31385-ly0rq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149629/original/image-20161212-31385-ly0rq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149629/original/image-20161212-31385-ly0rq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is told from the viewpoint of guerrilla fighters, policemen and soldiers on the ground. It has eight pages of black and white photos. The author, a history senior lecturer at the University of Pretoria, has done his homework in the archives of South Africa, Bechuanaland Protectorate/Botswana, and the former Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.</p>
<p>Reading it brought back to mind the skewed way South Africans learnt of the armed struggle through the censored and racialist media of those decades. This history makes one painfully aware of the high proportion of fatalities and other casualties which are the inevitable trade-off which guerrilla war makes against the superior technology, budget, and other resources of a state.</p>
<p>This book is an antidote to the current revisionist fad of marginalising the armed struggle as irrelevant or trivial in our history.</p>
<h2>3. Secrets and Lies: Wouter Basson and South Africa’s Chemical and Biological Warfare Programme – Marlene Burger and Chandré Gould</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149417/original/image-20161209-31391-8hjgs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149417/original/image-20161209-31391-8hjgs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149417/original/image-20161209-31391-8hjgs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149417/original/image-20161209-31391-8hjgs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149417/original/image-20161209-31391-8hjgs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149417/original/image-20161209-31391-8hjgs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149417/original/image-20161209-31391-8hjgs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If anyone fantasises that corruption only began with South Africa’s current government, this book will educate them about what went on behind the iron curtain of South African Defence Force military censorship in the old:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…Basson might have been describing an exclusive ‘Boys Own Adventure’ club. Their games were rugby, golf and motor racing, their toys private aircraft and Rolex watches, their sandpits the celebrity playgrounds of the world … During 1991, Bosch’s wife accompanied Basson and Annette on a ‘shopping trip to Europe in the Jetstar, free of charge’ (p. 127)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I have just started reading this <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Secrets_and_Lies.html?id=ZJ7eAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">book</a>, which also reminds us that the <a href="https://www.warbooks.co.za/products/assignment-selous-scouts-inside-story-of-a-rhodesian-special-branch-officer-jim-parker?variant=1044809471">Rhodesian Special Branch and Selous Scouts</a> were the world’s second biggest perpetrators of bacterial and chemical warfare after the Japanese Empire in occupied China. They killed 809 Zimbabweans through poisoned clothes, food – and even poisoned medicine. This tells us about their attitude to the <a href="https://www.icrc.org/en/war-and-law/treaties-customary-law/geneva-conventions">Geneva conventions</a>.</p>
<h2>4 Luka Jantjie: resistance hero of the South African frontier – Kevin Shillington</h2>
<p>I have also just started this <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/luka-jantjie/">one</a>, published by Aldridge Press.</p>
<p>His full name was Luka Jantjie Mothibi Molehabangwe. This is a model history book, lavishly illustrated with legible maps, numerous photos, plus an insert of 16 pages of colour photos. We learn of the dispossession of community after community. The colonialists auctioned off 3 600 cattle, 6 000 sheep and goats, 63 wagons and spans of oxen of the conquered <a href="http://www.thuto.org/ubh/afhist/elnegro/eln02.htm">Batlhaping people</a> in 1878. Their former owners, now impoverished, would have to work for others’ profits on the diamond fields or on their former land, now white-owned ranches.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149418/original/image-20161209-31370-1knkckk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149418/original/image-20161209-31370-1knkckk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149418/original/image-20161209-31370-1knkckk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149418/original/image-20161209-31370-1knkckk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149418/original/image-20161209-31370-1knkckk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1089&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149418/original/image-20161209-31370-1knkckk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1089&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149418/original/image-20161209-31370-1knkckk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1089&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Cape Colony conquered the rest of the <a href="http://www.mahala.co.za/culture/the-last-stand-of-a-south-african-hero/">Batlhaping and Batlharo in 1897</a>, shooting Luka in what they called the Langeberg rebellion. Not only were their lands seized, but the entire community was taken off to Cape Town and enserfed to farmers under the criminal law of indenture which, according to the protest of two missionary wives, “differs in no essential point from the enslavement of the people”.</p>
<p>Their confiscated land is at Kathu, site of the Sishen iron ore mine. The mine company faces no land claims – because 1897 is before the 1913 <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2016/03/03/1913-cut-off-date-for-land-claims-should-be-pushed-back">cut-off point</a>.</p>
<h2>5. Why we are not a nation – Christine Qunta</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149419/original/image-20161209-31375-1a0ofgm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149419/original/image-20161209-31375-1a0ofgm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149419/original/image-20161209-31375-1a0ofgm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149419/original/image-20161209-31375-1a0ofgm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149419/original/image-20161209-31375-1a0ofgm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149419/original/image-20161209-31375-1a0ofgm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149419/original/image-20161209-31375-1a0ofgm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This readable book published by <a href="https://seritisasechaba.co.za/">Seriti sa Sechaba</a> is free of any jargon and divided into three extended essays. The first, mostly historic and political, is titled <em>Why we are not a nation</em>. The second essay, sociological and psychological, is called <em>Is hair political?</em>. The third is a 50-page part-autobiography called <em>Law, national duty, and other hazards</em>.</p>
<p>Qunta’s feminist critique says that if the fashion and beauty industries were states, they would undoubtedly be fascist.</p>
<p>Qunta’s memoirs of her struggle to found and establish her own legal practice ought to be compulsory reading for every schoolgirl who wants to become an entrepreneur.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70008/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Gottschalk 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>From poetry to factual narratives and personal memoirs, these books are worth reading.Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/646432016-09-01T15:35:45Z2016-09-01T15:35:45ZComrades in arms against apartheid are now at one another’s throats<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135954/original/image-20160830-28260-1ivszm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Des van Rooyen, cooperative governance minister and new treasurer-general of the MK Military Veterans Association. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">eNCA.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>South Africa’s embattled finance minister Pravin Gordhan has come under attack from two colleagues in government. The public attack has <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2016-08-30-des-van-rooyen-says-gordhan-is-undermining-the-hawks-and-trying-to-garner-sympathy">made headlines</a> because all three men serve in government as members of the African National Congress (ANC). In addition, they all served in the ANC’s military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe. Gordhan was, and is, very much the two men’s senior. Cooperative governance minister Des van Rooyen and military veterans’ affairs deputy minister Kebby Maphatsoe inferred at a <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2016/08/29/Gordhan-accused-of-undermining-the-Hawks-using-media-to-solicit-sympathy">media briefing</a> that Gordhan’s <a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/2016/08/24/hawks-accuse-pravin-gordhan-of-corruption">refusal</a> to present himself to the country’s elite police unit, the Hawks, was because he had something to hide. Politics and society editor Thabo Leshilo asked Keith Gottschalk to unpack what the incident says about tensions in the ANC.</em></p>
<p><strong>How important was MK in the liberation struggle and what significance does it have today?</strong></p>
<p>Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) was the armed wing of the then underground ANC. While it could never physically block apartheid soldiers from entering any “liberated zone”, its importance was threefold.</p>
<p>First, it electrified millions of oppressed people to mobilise internally in the United Democratic Front, trade unions and a host of civil society organisations and their campaigns “to make South Africa <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41067113?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">ungovernable</a>”.</p>
<p>Second, it gave the ANC credibility internationally as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-the-anc-survive-the-end-of-south-africas-heroic-epoch-57256">dominant resistance movement</a> against the apartheid regime, in a way that for example, the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania, the Azanian People’s Organisation and the Unity Movement could never claim. </p>
<p>Third, its activities compelled the apartheid regime to extend conscription successively during the 1970s and 1980s.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/military-service-becomes-compulsory-white-south-african-men">Conscription</a> was instituted in 1962 in the form of nine months of service for all white males between the ages of 17 and 65. Conscripts became members of the South African Defence Force or the South African Police. They were used to enforce the government’s stance against liberation movements, anti-apartheid activists and the “communist threat”. </p>
<p>In 1972, conscription (national service) was increased from nine months to one year. After completing the year, they were called up annually for 19 days for five years as part of the Citizen Force. </p>
<p>By the middle of 1974 control of northern Namibia was handed over to the South African Defence Force from the South African Police, and in 1975 the army invaded Angola. To keep up with operational demands, Citizen Force members were then required to complete three-month tours of duty.</p>
<p>In 1977 conscription was once again increased, this time to two years plus 30 days annually for eight years. </p>
<p>The state was also forced to pour funds into the Armaments Corporation of South Africa <a href="https://www.africaportal.org/topic/armaments-corporation-south-africa-armscor">(Armscor)</a>, building <a href="http://fas.org/nuke/guide/rsa/nuke/">six atomic bombs</a> and a long-range missile to threaten neighbouring states that were providing rear bases to MK. All this was a crippling financial burden which contributed to bring down the apartheid state, as did the emigration of white professionals to <a href="http://www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/inventories/inv_pdfo/AG1977/AG1977-A5-19-001-jpeg.pdf">avoid conscription</a>.</p>
<p><strong>What role did Gordhan play in MK?</strong></p>
<p>Gordhan was in the MK underground network operating in KwaZulu-Natal during the 1980s. He was joint secretary of the Regional Politico Military Committee in the greater Durban region of the then banned and underground ANC.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136262/original/image-20160901-1030-1oljgze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136262/original/image-20160901-1030-1oljgze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136262/original/image-20160901-1030-1oljgze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136262/original/image-20160901-1030-1oljgze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136262/original/image-20160901-1030-1oljgze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136262/original/image-20160901-1030-1oljgze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136262/original/image-20160901-1030-1oljgze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">South African finance minister Pravin Gordhan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gordhan was responsible for setting up a number of MK units operating in what was then southern Natal. He was closely involved in the mobilisation process and recruitment of young guerrillas in that area to undergo military training inside South Africa. This was part of <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/members-anc-and-sacp-are-detained-due-operation-vula">Operation Vula</a>, one of the ANC’s major offensives towards the end of apartheid. Gordhan was <a href="http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/37a/043.html">one of nine senior</a> Operation Vula trialists charged with terrorism by the apartheid state - it was the last terrorism trial in pre-democratic South Africa. In 1991 they were indemnified by the government.</p>
<p><strong>What is the status of MK today?</strong></p>
<p>MK was disbanded in 1991. The <a href="http://mkmva.anc.org.za/show.php?id=11329">MK Military Veterans Association</a> was formed shortly afterwards. Today it is just another ANC structure like the <a href="http://www.ancyl.org.za/">Youth League</a> and the <a href="http://womensleague.anc.org.za/">Women’s League</a>.</p>
<p>MK veterans are not a political force per se. But they are mobilised by <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/fransman-claims-anc-factions-out-to-stop-him-2045705">rival factions</a> within the ANC. For example, the smear attacks by <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2014/09/14/kebby-admits-he-ran-away-from-mk-camp1">Maphatsoe</a> against former intelligence minister <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/kasrils-and-kebby-settle-defamation-case-2060192">Ronnie Kasrils</a> are part of his defence of President Zuma. It is unlikely that his smears represent the views of most veterans, or that he has even consulted them.</p>
<p>These <a href="http://www.rdm.co.za/politics/2016/03/02/behind-the-sars-wars-are-intelligence-agents-with-agendas">contestations</a> will continue until Zuma’s successor has been chosen by the ANC. This should happen in 2017 when the ANC is due to hold its national conference to <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-02-02-mchunu-zikalala-war-foreshadows-ancs-2017-leadership-race">elect</a> a new president and national executive.</p>
<p><strong>What does the attack on Gordhan by two colleagues tell us about the ANC?</strong></p>
<p>ANC disagreements, like those of the <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-01/corbyn-sows-civil-war-as-u-k-labour-lawmakers-desert-him">British Labour Party</a>, are more often in public than is the case with their rival parties. For example, it is many years since then Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Helen Zille publicly <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2012-01-24-hilarious-storm-over-das-mazibuko-mnqasela-to-plead-not-guilty">dressed down</a> a (black) DA elected representative for saying that the party’s former parliamentary leader, Lindiwe Mazibuko, was not black enough. </p>
<p>But when cabinet ministers and deputy ministers criticise each other in public, as both Van Rooyen and Maphatsoe have done with Gordhan, it shows that even the top leadership is seriously divided on important issues.</p>
<p><strong>What does it all mean going forward?</strong></p>
<p>What this means for the future is that divisiveness between ANC factions in national and provincial structures will continue or even deteriorate all the way in the run-up to its 2017 conference.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64643/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Gottschalk is an ANC member. He writes this in his professional capacity as a political scientist.</span></em></p>MK, the army of the then banned ANC, electrified millions of oppressed people to rise against the apartheid regime. Today, its veterans are being used in factional battles within the ruling party.Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/616472016-07-06T03:37:03Z2016-07-06T03:37:03ZApartheid and the making of a black psychologist<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129369/original/image-20160705-791-12l0s06.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Professor Chabani Manganyi reflects on his time working as a black psychologist in the heart of the apartheid era. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is an extract from “<a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/apartheid-and-the-making-of-a-black-psychologist/">Apartheid and the Making of a Black Psychologist: A Memoir by N Chabani Manganyi</a>”. Chapter 5 is an account of Manganyi’s early years as a forensic psychologist in apartheid’s courtrooms.</em></p>
<p>The first hint of a professional connection between psychology and the courts occurred unexpectedly after my return from the US in 1975. I had a consultation in Pretoria with David Soggot, a senior and well-known advocate. He and the instructing attorney were preparing for one of the historic political trials of the 1970s, that of members of the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/south-african-student-organisation-saso">South African Students Organisation</a>. The accused were imprisoned in what was then known as the Pretoria Central Prison.</p>
<p>In looking back I ask myself how I ended up working in the courts during such a turbulent period in South Africa’s history. Considering that little or no forensic psychology was taught either in South Africa or in the US, how did I approach my professional responsibilities in the courts at different stages of my development as an expert witness? </p>
<p>In retrospect I appreciate the fact that my initial approach to giving expert evidence was not only tentative theoretically, but also rather amateurish. </p>
<h2>No established tradition</h2>
<p>My starting point was that I could use my general knowledge of psychology, coupled with the clinical skills I had developed, to establish what had happened and why in each case.</p>
<p>However, what turned out to be of greatest assistance to me was the fact that not much was known, formally, about the subject by the primary players in the court scene (judges, prosecutors, counsel for the defence and instructing attorneys). There was no established tradition to speak of in our courts at that stage.</p>
<p>By the second half of the 1980s a small group of psychologists began to take on the role of expert witnesses. They started presenting evidence of extenuating circumstances in cases that often involved crowd violence in which innocent people had been killed.</p>
<p>When I first began working in the courts, I had sufficient reserves of courage and of clinically and academically derived professional self-confidence to venture into a new and unfamiliar professional terrain. Could it be that I sensed that all the major players were, in some respects, on unfamiliar ground?</p>
<p>Those psychologists who appeared as expert witnesses in the 1980s were not driven by a perverse recklessness. Some of us were members of an oppressed black majority faced with a remorseless political adversity that required a response from professionals and nonprofessionals alike. Our people’s freedoms and lives were at stake.</p>
<p>Although I was qualified and experienced as a clinical and academic psychologist, I had never set foot in a courtroom, least of all as an expert witness. That was until the trial of Anthony Tsotsobe, David Moisi and Johannes Shabangu, known as the <a href="http://www.sabracelets.org/david-moisi.html">Sasol Three</a>, at the Palace of Justice in Pretoria in 1981.</p>
<p>The three men were part of <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk">Umkhonto we Sizwe</a> (MK), the military wing of the African National Congress. In the book “<a href="http://www.unisa.ac.za/default.asp?Cmd=ViewContent&ContentID=96701">The Road to Democracy in South Africa</a>” it is reported that Tsotsobe</p>
<blockquote>
<p>was part of the unit that carried out one of MK’s most daring operations, the attack on the Booysens police station in which an RPG-7 rocket launcher, also known as a “Bazooka”, was used for the first time on South African soil. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The accused were convicted of high treason and sentenced to death.</p>
<h2>Working as a novice</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129367/original/image-20160705-804-cyqcy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129367/original/image-20160705-804-cyqcy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129367/original/image-20160705-804-cyqcy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129367/original/image-20160705-804-cyqcy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129367/original/image-20160705-804-cyqcy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129367/original/image-20160705-804-cyqcy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129367/original/image-20160705-804-cyqcy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My first appearance in court was to present evidence of extenuating circumstances in respect of Tsotsobe. Although I cannot find the original text of my report, I remember the occasion vividly because the memory of Tsotsobe and his co-accused being herded down the stairs after sentencing is so unpleasant.</p>
<p>I was overwhelmed by the fear that I was seeing them alive for the last time.</p>
<p>Happily, the death sentences they received were commuted on June 6 1983. Tsotsobe was released from Robben Island in April 1991, but was gunned down outside his home in Soweto in September 2002.</p>
<p>Following that appearance in Pretoria a small group of human rights attorneys and advocates elsewhere in the country became aware of my availability as a possible professional resource. Consequently, throughout the 1980s my services as an expert witness were sought from as far afield as Pietersburg, Cape Town, Grahamstown and Durban.</p>
<p>My early experience included emergency calls for assistance from lawyers who sometimes contacted me only a day or so before the trial began. It put a great deal of pressure on me. I paid special attention to such matters as meticulous preparation of reports. That included conducting and recording pre-trial interview data and the structure of the written reports that formed the basis of my testimony.</p>
<p>One of the guiding ideas was that I would use all my clinical skills and knowledge to understand the events associated with the crime. In doing so I was also trying to find an answer to the question of why the crime had been committed in the first place. </p>
<p>In that way, some light could be shed on questions of intent, motivation and personal accountability. My main aim was to ensure that, in the end, a working psychological profile of the accused was developed and presented to the presiding judge.</p>
<h2>Avoiding the death sentence</h2>
<p>By the mid-1980s some South African courts had become combat zones in which the biggest prize for human rights activists and defence lawyers was to save the accused from being sentenced to death. It was some time before the full implications of expert evidence in mitigation and extenuation became clear to me. Once again I had to study my way out of ignorance in a focused manner.</p>
<p>Evidence in mitigation involves presenting evidence and arguments that will secure the fairest sentence for the crime in question. In some cases the search for such evidence led me to look for psychosocial deficits in the life histories of the accused. I took particular note of developmental deficits associated with poverty, family dysfunction, health and poor education. </p>
<p>The attraction of the psychological and social deficit model is that it is not difficult to present or for the judge to understand. The effective presentation of evidence is a formal exercise in storytelling and persuasion. It is expressed, if and when necessary, in the language of psychology and other people-based disciplines.</p>
<p>In recognising the value of psychological explanations and the formal exercise of well-reasoned arguments, it is important to acknowledge the role of interviews, life histories and, in appropriate instances, psychological tools (tests). It is also helpful to remember that, in practice, the terms “mitigation” and “extenuating circumstances” are like fraternal twins: close in meaning but not identical.</p>
<p>In practice, evidence in extenuation is closely associated with capital punishment. It is evidence outlining why a sentence other than the death sentence should be considered by the presiding judge.</p>
<p>Mitigation is less onerous in that the expectation is primarily a reduction in sentence following proper consideration of mitigating circumstances.</p>
<p><em>“<a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/apartheid-and-the-making-of-a-black-psychologist/">Apartheid and the Making of a Black Psychologist: A Memoir by N Chabani Manganyi</a>” is published by Wits University Press (2016).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61647/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chabani Manganyi 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>In the heart of South Africa’s apartheid era, Professor Chabani Manganyi was among a handful of black psychologists offering expert testimony in the country’s courts.Chabani Manganyi, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.