MK's ability to execute a proper armed Struggle remained a victim of the ANC's own misdirected strategies, writes Dale McKinley.
In April 1969, in Morogoro, Tanzania, the ANC held its Third Consultative Congress. It lasted for seven days and most of the delegates were members of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK).
Much of the conference debate centred around the need for organisational and leadership reforms and, as a result, the decision was made to establish an internal commission to hear grievances, as well as an oath and code of behaviour. It was decided further that MK and all military affairs would now come under the responsibility of a Revolutionary Council, subordinate only to the ANC's national executive.
More importantly, though, was the adoption by the conference of a new “Revolutionary Programme”, commonly known as the “Strategy and Tactics” document.
Since the 1955 Freedom Charter, the ANC had not produced a written policy and strategy document that took into account the new situation of being an exiled liberation movement conducting an armed Struggle. The “Strategy and Tactics”, in placing the question of the seizure of power firmly at the strategic centre, argued “it is surely a question of whether, in the given concrete situation, the course or policy advocated will aid or impede the prospects of the conquest of power”.
It then went into detail about the history of the armed Struggle and the “special” circumstances of South Africa that made guerrilla warfare both appropriate and necessary. In a related document, also produced at the conference, “Development of the South African Revolution”, the primacy of armed Struggle was linked to the rejection of reforms.
Assessing the “strength and weakness” of the enemy, the Strategy and Tactics document followed the classic guerrilla warfare scenario of weaker forces conducting a war of attrition on superior enemy forces, reminiscent of a Cuban-style struggle. Although it argued that the working class constituted a “distinct and reinforcing layer of our liberation and Socialism” (the only place in the document where “socialism” is identified as a goal of Struggle), the document made it clear the Struggle should have a national focus.
On the ground, however, the practical pursuit of this armed Struggle had not been proceeding according to the theory.
Besides the Wankie Campaign in 1967, a brave but unsuccessful attempt to infiltrate two groups of MK guerrillas into South Africa through the then Rhodesia (alongside units of the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army), there were several partially successful attempts to infiltrate MK cadres through the Botswana border, the explosion of leaflet “bombs” in major South African cities and at least one ill-fated plan to land guerrillas on the coast.
It was a far cry from the revolutionary guerrilla onslaught called for at Morogoro.
Inside South Africa, it was the newly formed Black Consciousness Movement, along with new labour formations, that came to represent the focus of internal Struggle during the early to mid-1970s.
Although the newly combative mood of the youthful BCM and a revived workers movement, combined with the 1975 independence of Mozambique, opened up new spaces for MK, the exiled ANC's preoccupation with its own external problems and plans resulted in little practical movement on the armed Struggle front.
However, there was some rebuilding of underground structures that took place under the guidance of those ANC members recently released from Robben Island (for example, Joe Gqabi) and initial steps were taken to build underground structures by an MK detachment based in Lesotho and led by Chris Hani.
The 1976 student uprisings in Soweto, which galvanised widespread internal resistance to the apartheid state, took place with little serious involvement of formal ANC/MK structures and leadership. Regardless, it presented the ANC, and MK in particular, with both opportunities and challenges.
Thousands of young students crossed over the borders, the majority of whom wanted to join the armed Struggle. Despite the political, organisational and military weaknesses and problems of the ANC and its armed wing MK, they represented the only viable “home” for the young guerrillas-in-waiting. With new blood in its ranks, paralleled by high expectations of intensified MK activity inside the country, the ANC's main strategic focus of armed Struggle was faced with a major test.
In its efforts to meet this test the ANC formed the Operations Unit, which was designed to enhance the overall strategic, tactical and logistical co-ordination of MK, so the armed Struggle could become more intensive and influential. This hastily convened unit was however to create further problems for MK.
There was already a Revolutionary Council, responsible for the overall prosecution of armed Struggle; the Politico-Military Strategy Commission, responsible for “reviewing” ANC strategy and tactics; and another sub-body, the Internal Reconstruction and Development Unit, responsible for political work.
With the formation of the Operations Unit, it appeared one hand didn't know what the other was doing and there arose serious problems in carrying out joint military and political work, as called for in the ANC's strategic guidelines.
Indeed, a 1978 meeting of the Revolutionary Council and the ANC National Executive Committee emphasised the need to combine armed activity with legal and semi-legal internal activity to spur “general mass uprisings”. However, it took the ANC four years before its armed Struggle registered substantially increased activity.
Over the 1977-80 period, the amount of guerrilla activity inside the country totalled 82 “incidents” and from 1981 to 1984 there were 194 incidents. Much of the armed activity mirrored the sabotage campaign of the early 1960s, with small units attacking military and administrative targets.
Despite their overall limited military threat to the apartheid state, MK did manage to pull off a few spectacular attacks that contributed to both the apartheid state's fears of a revolutionary onslaught and to raising the ANC's symbolic appeal among the masses. Between 1980 and 1982, MK launched mine and rocket attacks on the Sasolburg refinery, the SADF's Voortrekkerhootge headquarters and Koeberg nuclear power station.
Under the direction of MK's special Operations Unit, these attacks no doubt provided apartheid president PW Botha with an excuse to launch his own raids and destabilisation campaigns in Mozambique and Angola, where MK was now based.
The apartheid offensive was, of course, also directed at preventing the ANC from carrying on its armed Struggle. Mozambique had been the only secure base from which MK could directly infiltrate South Africa and what successes MK had managed were in no small part due to the use of it as a forward base of operations.
All that changed when Mozambique signed the Nkomati Accord with the apartheid state in 1984. This stated, in return for barring MK from its turf, Mozambique would receive Botha's assurance South Africa would end its support of Renamo. The accord turned out to be a chimera. MK lost its forward base but Renamo was kept well oiled by the clandestine efforts of the apartheid military.
For all its plans and activities, MK's prosecution of an armed Struggle remained a victim of the ANC's own misdirected strategies. Still clinging to the centrality of a guerrilla strategy designed to ignite mass resistance and seize power from the apartheid regime, the organisation appeared blinded to the realities of its failure.
The international and internal “changes” the ANC saw as strengthening their strategy were, if anything, confirmation that an externalised guerrilla strategy could be little more than what it had become - armed propaganda.
The apartheid state was nowhere close to being militarily threatened, the geo-political obstacles remained formidable and the internal conditions necessary for successful guerrilla-type operations were tenuous at best. In the words of one commentator: “It remains the fundamental tenet of revolutionary armed activity that its success depends on political mobilisation of the populace at large.
“It depends not merely on popular support but popular involvement.”
* Dale McKinley is an independent writer, researcher and lecturer and a political activist. This is an extract from a paper he is presenting at the Armed Struggle Conference
** The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Independent Media.
Struggle under the spotlight
On Wednesday, a major conference on the history and politics of the armed Struggle in southern Africa starts at Wits.
Hosted by the Wits History Workshop, the Mapungubwe Institute and South African History Online, the conference is funded by the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, with the support of the French Institute.
In recent years, southern Africa's armed Struggle has been the subject of intense debate around its relative success or failure. Meanwhile, with few exceptions, the experiences of former cadres, particularly at rank-and-file level, remain untold.
Aimed at opening up new areas, the conference will include public dialogues, discussions, papers and cultural events.
Key participants include Dumiso Dabengwa, Ayanda Dlodlo, Thenjiwe Mtintso, Vladimir Shubin, Mandla Langa, Ronnie Kasrils, Mac Maharaj and Robert Vinson, among many more great names.
* For more, go to www.sahistory.org.za
The Star