The police raid on Liliesleaf on 11 July 1963 is understood to be the result of informants within the liberation movements either breaking down in detention or “selling out” and providing information about the farm with its safe house and its people. This paper, while acknowledging that there were informants inside the liberation movements, maintains that this was only a fragment of a kaleidoscope of events culminating in the raid and subsequent Rivonia Trial. Rather it was a covert investigation undertaken since 1962 that resulted in the blow delivered by the combined security agencies, that shattered the underground networks opposing the apartheid state. It was an investigation which relied extensively on the principles of the mythological Greek Trojan horse; it used persons and technology that aimed to undermine and overthrow their opponent, to subvert and defeat it from within, while appearing non threatening. This paper identifies three Trojan horses. A human spy concealed behind the innocent look of a child who fronted for sinister forces. Electronic warfare deployed by the military and linked to an innocuous caravan park; and finally a laundry van to deliver the surgical knockout strike. Yet all this subterfuge has eluded the narrative for 53 years.
The build-up, 1963
By June 1963 the state crackdown was relentless. Political organisations, such as the African National Congress (ANC), the South African Communist Party (SACP) and Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), together with their activists were under banning orders, restricted from almost all social and political contact with others, rendered incommunicado, detained, driven into exile, or serving prison sentences. The PAC’s resistance had been neutralised, numerous political trials were underway and of the various methods exhibited by a growing security police state, one was increasing brutality.
It became increasingly difficult for the members of the underground to operate. Informants were rumoured to be everywhere and the pressure of living beneath the radar became unbearable. At some point a fatal mistake might be made or the sheer weight of the security apparatus might find a leak in the dyke, bursting through to flood into the underground networks.
Dennis Goldberg recalled that there were two sides to operating in the underground.
“It really was as exciting as I imagined it would be. I was a fulltime revolutionary. I felt invincible: on the brink of something great. There was a constant rush of adrenaline”.1
However this came with a price. Goldberg recalled living under this terrible strain:
“What happens when you are working underground is that you’re constantly working under the pressure of discovery; you’re constantly having to think about it. It becomes a terrible anxiety. The pressure of being underground, it was wearing and wearing … and you’re forced into making mistakes. This is what the pressure does, it forces you into mistakes. I am talking about the way the security forces pressure you.2
And this is the lesson to be learnt from it, there is always too much to do, you’re always in a hurry, the revolution must happen today, if not tonight, and so you make mistakes. What it plays on is that eventually you become so lonely, you give yourself away … It’s like a boil. That is part of the psychology. That might not necessarily be the whole thing. But we don’t train our people for this, you only learn it when it’s too damn late.3
Lionel ‘Rusty’ Bernstein – mugshot
There was a nuance of change taking place; one that the movement was slow to detect. Some members had become complacent, lulled by a false sense of security, which appeared to be presented by the façade of the safe house. After all, once inside the perceived guerrilla zone, the hostile world lay beyond its boundaries. Rusty Bernstein saw it as “evident that the ‘safe house’ syndrome was at work. Liliesleaf farm seemed to be the easy option for every hard choice. It was after all safe.”4
Kathrada recalled his emotions when he arrived at Liliesleaf:
“I’m living in another world. The comrades here were completely divorced, Soweto was just a few miles from here, they were completely divorced from reality. And drawing up very fancy documents. They had even forgotten that when MK was formed, no one had the idea that MK was going to overthrow the government. At the very most MK was going to be a pressure group. The goal remained that MK would be one of the pressure groups together with the political struggle, together with the international pressures, to force the enemy to the negotiation table.”5
In 2006, according to Vivien Ezra who owned the front company, Navian Ltd, established by the SACP to purchase Liliesleaf, there were no internal security arrangements within the cells to resist infiltration. 6 Structures just did not exist whereby suspicions could be reported. In short, there was no structured counter intelligence mechanism in use by the underground. 7 Naïve is a persistent word that crept through all the interviews conducted by the author in the period from 2004 to 2006.
Nothing illustrates this better than the fact that although Mandela was captured in August 1962, Liliesleaf continued to be used by the allied organisations, including the SACP, the ANC, MK, members of the Congress Alliance, South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) and members of the Indian political organisations, right up until the raid, eleven months later.
Liliesleaf farm – aerial photo taken after the raid, note the thatch roof room top left connected to rear farm quarters and buildings – this room was used by Nelson Mandela. Brenthurst Library.
One would have thought that once South Africa’s most wanted fugitive was captured, these organisations would have tried to put as much distance as possible between themselves and Liliesleaf, given that Mandela had used the farm as his base of operations. He had travelled throughout Africa and the United Kingdom, yet it would appear that no one considered the possibility that his movements might be tracked back to Liliesleaf, or that had he been under surveillance, which he was, thus compromising the farm around August 1962 when captured. Mandela claimed that he concealed a revolver and notebook within the upholstery of the front seat of Cecil Williams’s car before being arrested and taken into custody.8 The hypothesis is that the police found this notebook, which enabled them to investigate his activities in South Africa after his return from Ethiopia. The impending danger was that by using this information the security branch could hone in on Liliesleaf. In fact, it appears that that the underground activities and the use of Liliesleaf by the liberation movement actually increased after August 1962 and continued to do so until the 1963 raid. It is possible that more leaders of the underground and operatives sought shelter at Liliesleaf after August 1962, than at any other time in its history before this date. Walter Sisulu, Raymond Mhlaba, Wilton Mkwai, Andrew Mlangeni, Govan Mbeki and Ahmed Kathrada certainly did, to name but a few. Meetings of MK’s high command, the Secretariat and the SACP’s central committee were held there, and quite possibly also the ANC’s NEC and various MK committees such as those dealing with intelligence, logistics, transport and housing.
Police searching the living room at Liliesleaf farm – main house, police photograph.
It is widely understood that the meeting of the Secretariat on the day of the raid was the last meeting held at Liliesleaf and that thereafter other venues would be used. Some had serious reservations about returning there believing the farm to be compromised. Bernstein was vehemently opposed to returning to Liliesleaf. 9 Other senior leaders, such as Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba and Wilton Mkwai no longer stayed there, having moved to Trevallyn, a smallholding near Krugersdorp, purchased shortly before by Denis Goldberg under a fictitious name. Meanwhile, Liliesleaf was to be used solely for accommodating the MK high command and those immediately involved in its functioning.10 However this was not the case for that one fateful meeting. The Logistics Committee was due to meet the night of 11 July 1963. So in fact two meetings were intended at Liliesleaf on the day of the raid. All of those captured during the raid concur that because an alternative venue couldn’t be found, it was agreed to meet at Liliesleaf one last time.
Yet other parallel activities were occurring, such as a scheduled Logistics Committee meeting, planned to take place inside the main house after the Secretariat concluded its business in the thatched cottage. One of its members, Denis Goldberg was already seated in the lounge reading a book when the veranda door swung open to initiate his capture. Another member, Arthur Goldreich, drove home into the raid with a copy of Operation Mayibuye concealed behind his vehicle’s hubcap. A third, Hilliard Festenstein, walked into the house punctually that night to attend the meeting which never happened – straight into the arms of the police. The chairman of the Logistics Committee, Wilton Mkwai, narrowly avoided capture when approaching the farm as scheduled and saw the raid already in progress. A fifth member, Ian David Kitson, escaped due to a bout of flu which had kept him in bed; while the reasons for Lionel Gay’s non-show remain unknown.
All those at Liliesleaf that day were arrested. The exceptions were six children, three black and three white. Together with other members of the liberation movement who were serving jail sentences or who were arrested elsewhere, those arrested stood trial in what became a watershed moment in South African history. Rivonia.
Leakage
Liliesleaf was leaking. A few weeks before the raid some MK members had visited the farm and were arrested. It was a matter of time before the security branch broke them. By July 1963, there were numerous security lapses so it was inevitable that if the police hadn’t already done so, they would soon find the farm. Apart from which, “we were total amateurs. You cannot cross both worlds, indefinitely”.11
The concept of security had broken down. Too many people were using Liliesleaf. Its numerous visitors included people who were known to the security branch and foreign intelligence agencies, such as Joe Slovo, Ruth First, Jack Hodgson, Bram Fischer, Lionel Bernstein, Harold Wolpe and many others. Lionel (Rusty) Bernstein described this osmosis from the safe house:
“Later people who had been overseas for military training would arrive back in Bechuanaland without any proper planning. The first thing we would know was that they were in Bechuanaland and wanted come back. So we’d bring them back and they would stay for a few nights … Rivonia came into sudden use in a way that had not been foreseen.
So this place became a sort of centre, if you like because Sisulu and Mbeki were the two senior ANC people at large at that time. [Since] both of them were [also]participating on the high command, they began to use it for MK high command activities, both for keeping documents and holding meetings, and they were bringing people to their meetings who were not in the high command, not living underground and so on. So the place really changed from being a really closely kept secret to being something of a centre.”12
Even Thomas Mashifane, the foreman, could sense the inherent danger building up. “What are you folks doing? The way motor cars are coming in and out, the next thing the police are going to come.”13 No one was prepared to listen. The question is, where others listening with a more sinister intent? Had those with a little more intellect than ascribed to them, applied themselves as opposed to the thuggery displayed by the police? Had the proverbial Mr Plod finally caught up?
Rear view aerial image of Liliesleaf farm – Police photograph post raid, Brenthurst Library.
The central thread that runs through the literature is that the security branch experienced a lucky break when they raided Liliesleaf farm. Starting in 1965, Strydom has it that an informant offered to tell what he knew about activities at the farm, yet had only a vague idea where it was. Accompanied by a detective and after driving about the area for some time, he eventually recognised the property.14 Frankel has it that Lt. Van Wyk who led the raid was advised by a colleague that he had an informant with information to sell. Apparently he knew where to find Walter Sisulu and half a dozen other important leaders of the Umkhonto high command. For a large payment he would take the lieutenant there.15 According to Frankel the informant took Van Wyk to Liliesleaf, enabling him to plan the raid which he sprung the following day. After the raid the informant received R6 000.16 More recent works, for example that by Smith, have the security branch depicted as a proverbial Mr Plod staffed with bumbling policemen who eventually caught up with the activists.17 If so, who was listening in besides the SAP and its security branch?
This paper will show that at least three parallel lines of investigation by three separate security agencies took place between 1962 and the day of the raid. There could have been other agencies but these remain unidentified. The three agencies were the SAP’s security branch, using its methods of informer recruitment and information collected; Republican Intelligence (RI), using informants and information trading with foreign intelligence organisations (later better known as the National Intelligence Service or NIS); and the South African Communications Security Agency which was linked to the South African Defence Force (SADF).
Investigating Liliesleaf, 1962-1963
There is no doubt that captured operatives gave the police information. Examples include Bruno Mtolo, Patrick Mthembu and Bartholomew Hlapane.18 However, this paper will identify one informer whose role the author uncovered in 2005 by locating this informant’s 1963 statement to the SAP. A copy was provided by the author to the Liliesleaf Trust in 2005 and is included in an unpublished research report to the Trust in 2007.19 All subsequent references to this informant are drawn from the author’s prior work. Within weeks of Nelson Mandela’s capture on 5 August 1962, the security branch had a ten-year-old informant who had access to the farm. His name is George Mellis. His parents owned the Rivonia Caravan Park directly across the road from Liliesleaf. He was the perfect Trojan horse. He could literally breach the sanctity of the safe house undetected, much like the mythical Trojan horse parked outside the gates of Troy. No one gave the boy so much as a second glance when he arrived to play with his friends Nicholas and Paul Goldreich, or wandered around near the outbuildings while covert meetings were underway.
On 5 August 1963, George Mellis made a sworn statement to Sergeant Fourie who commanded the Rivonia police station.
“About a year ago, one day when I was playing in the yard of the Goldreichs’ place, I saw a number of white and Bantu males together in the thatch-roof building next to the main house. These people were talking and I saw some shaking hands with each other. This seemed strange to me and I told my parents about it. On some occasions that I went there I saw a lot of cars parked in the yard and one occasion, I took the registration numbers of all the cars parked in the Goldreich yard and handed the numbers I had written down, to the police at Rivonia.” 20
Sergeant Fourie forwarded Mellis’s number plate list and his information to the security branch. Mellis tried to elicit further information from his Goldreich playmates whom he joined inside the main house for lunch. On one occasion, he said, “I asked Nicholas about the persons on the premises but Nicholas said that he was not allowed to tell me anything”. 21
In his 1963 statement Mellis identified Walter Sisulu Raymond Mhlaba, Denis Goldberg and Ahmed Kathrada from police photographs. His Goldberg reference is pertinent in that Goldberg first visited Liliesleaf in May 1963. This means that Mellis was spying on Liliesleaf from the time of his first report (about a year before the raidand soon after Mandela’s capture), through to when Goldberg visited Liliesleaf between May and July 1963. Mellis spied right up until the raid.
Photo of Nicholas and Paul Goldreich who befriended George Mellis, this photograph was taken at Liliesleaf farm and is in the private collection of Arthur Goldreich and shared with the author.
Sergeant Fourie assisted the security branch too. In December 1962, Fourie received a summons for a parking offence from the Alberton magistrate’s court which he had to serve on Arthur Goldreich. Fourie held back.
“Aangesien ek bang was dat dit met die ondersoek mag inmeng het ek die lasbrief nie laat uitvoer nie maar het die agterwee gehou [Because I was afraid that it might interfere with the investigation, I did not serve the summons but held it back.]”.22
Fourie instructed his policemen that any action against anyone at Liliesleaf, for example serving a summons, should first be cleared with him. No policeman was to go onto Liliesleaf for any reason without prior authorisation, because an investigation was underway. The farm was sanitised from any official physical interruption.
On 14 January 1963, Colonel Hendrik van den Bergh was appointed head of the security branch of the South African Police. His orders were to reorganise the South African security establishment and it was he who created the first national intelligence service, originally known as Republican Intelligence (RI). The government needed an intelligence organisation that could function along the lines of America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). The RI, together with the security branch, were instructed to smash all organised resistance to the minority regime.
According to Gerhard Ludi the RI’s primary focus was the South African Communist Party (SACP). Ludi, one of RI’s first agents, has suggested that the RI identified the SACP as the primary problem confronting the apartheid regime. Ludi has said that the CIA assisted RI and provided intelligence about financial assistance that Russia provided to the liberation movements. The CIA also indicated who the KGB operatives in South Africa might be and pointed out some of the local communists to the RI.23 RI fed intelligence to both the CIA and the SIS on a weekly basis and these agencies reciprocated. This foreign intelligence feed also included information about Operation Mayibuye and Radio Freedom, both implicitly connected to Liliesleaf.24
Ludi related that RI took the approach that, “if one learned about the cores of the Communist Party, one would learn about the why and where and the role the Soviets were playing in this”.25 Persons of interest who formed their intelligence target were Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Michael Harmel, Lionel Bernstein, Hilda Watts, Harold Wolpe and Ahmed Kathrada. Ludi said that Mhlaba, Bernstein and Harmel would be of particular focus for RI.
Liaison between the apartheid regime and other regimes in Southern Rhodesia and the Portuguese colonies was improved and intelligence sharing became the established modus operandi. Cooperation with the Portuguese extended into their Angola and Mozambique colonies and surveillance reports were provided to government about the movements of known South African communists such as Ruth First, Hillary Plegg, Ben Turok, V.W. Mkwai, Moses Mabida, Julius Baker and P. Beyleveldt who were travelling through Portuguese controlled territories.26 The Portuguese assisted the SIS in monitoring MK activities. In 1961 Portuguese Naval Intelligence transmitted an intelligence report to SIS that Ghana was recruiting South Africans for political, military and sabotage training and supplying funds to SouthAfrican anti-government groups.27
Documents photographed at Liliesleaf in one of the out buildings – Police photograph
Ludi claimed that RI was, “instrumental in pin pointing Rivonia through the radio”. 28 This was the radio transmitter linked to Walter Sisulu’s Freedom Day, Radio Freedom broadcast on 26 June 1963. It is important to note that this broadcast did not occur at Liliesleaf although the radio equipment was tested there. Ludi claims that one of his agents was an electrical engineer; he was connected to the SACP transport manager who knew someone who ran a dry cleaning operation and whose vans were used to transport underground operatives around the country. This link to a dry cleaning van is another Trojan horse. Someone connected to the underground structures used a vehicle like this one, and inside the van lurked an RI agent. This also shows that the routines at the farm were already under surveillance. They were understood, mapped and logged; a Trojan horse disguised as an innocuous laundry van was the modus operandi when the knockout blow was delivered.
The agent met the go between at a bus terminus where he was tied up and blindfolded inside the van. Driven to Liliesleaf he was shown the radio and commented, “This is the most antiquated piece of rubbish I’ve seen in my life.” He couldn’t do anything with it, but the information assisted RI who now knew that somewhere in that area:
“There was a place where things were happening and I believe that after we fed that information to the police that they then started driving … patterns in that area looking for something they thought must be happening there and that’s how they actually found Rivonia, plus of course somebody also gave them information.”29
Who gave the police information is a moot point – informants or another process? While the role of the security branch and RI is known, what is not known is the role of the SADF and its electronic warfare capabilities in locating Liliesleaf. Research and development into electronic warfare began in the early 1950s in response to SACP underground radio broadcasts. By the early 1960s their direction finding technology was on par with the British and Americans.
In about 1955/56, the Radio Section of the engineers’ section of the general post office (GPO) was tasked to assist the SAP to locate the source of Radio Freedom broadcasts that transmitted on short-wave wavelengths. The SACP transmitted on Sunday evenings at 20h00 for 15 minutes. The Radio Act No. 3 of 1952 stipulated that a conviction could only result if the police caught the perpetrators in the act of broadcasting. 30 As the SAP and the Union Defence Force (later the SADF) had no direction-finding capability to comply with this stipulation of the Act they turned to the GPO. The Derdepoort Radio Station based at Hartebeesfontein farm near Pretoria was given the task. Having no direction finding equipment they then developed their own.31
Transmissions were identified as coming from Natal. They then built a mobile direction finding facility and installed it in GPO vans and undertook the search. After nine months the operation halted without success. During early 1956 the transmissions resurfaced in the Johannesburg/Pretoria area. Each transmission came from a different location thus requiring greater mobility. Derdepoort’s technicians developed man-pack equipment which could be carried while walking. The SAP flying squad drove these operators (known then as chase teams). Three vehicle mounted direction finding units and five man-pack units were deployed. Included in the chase teams were technicians from Derdepoort station. The security branch supported the operation. 32 On Sunday 12 August 1956, they identified 363 Berea Street Muckleneuk, Pretoria and raided the house, seizing the transmitter and other equipment along with a pre-recorded taped broadcast. The four accused were convicted of violating the Radio Act No.3of 1952, a relatively minor offence, and sentenced to a fine of ₤50 or six months in jail. 33
Following this the engineers’ section acquired more sophisticated equipment to facilitate their direction finding methods. In 1958, they imported the Adcock System from the USA, the most advanced of its kind at the time. Located at Derdepoort, this static system included an all-round direction finding capability. 34 Cooperation on direction finding operations between the GPO and SAP was not unusual for this era. Britain’s Security Service MI5, used British post office technology in its counter intelligence operations, both in the United Kingdom against Soviet agents and operations, and also during military operations against independence movements in its colonies, such as in Cyprus.35
The role of the SADF and South African Communications Security Agency
In 1960/1961 the SADF established an overarching telecommunication function, the South African Communications Security Agency (SACSA). SACSA fell under the directorate of telecommunications, and its director was accountable to the prime minister at the time, H.F. Verwoerd. SACSA’s duties were enabling secure and un-compromised communications between all government departments. This included all arms of the SADF, the Department of Foreign Affairs, military attaches abroad, and between the SAP and its agents. 36
During 1963, SACSA played a key role in locating and spying on Liliesleaf. On 1 April 1963, Captain Martiens Botha was transferred to defence headquarters Pretoria to work for the chief telecommunications officer. Included in this small team was Captain Mike Venter of the South African Air Force (SAAF) who was proficient in Morse code. One of his duties was monitoring radio transmissions that the authorities deemed as subversive. Venter detected suspicious Morse code messages inside the country and showed them to Botha. Venter’s information was reported to the security branch and to RI. 37
SACSA borrowed a direction finding vehicle from the post office telecommunications section and pinpointed the location to within a few blocks of where the transmitter was located. This was enabled because, according to Captain Venter, the Morse code transmitter burst its signals more than once from Liliesleaf. SACSA then searched for visibly suspicious equipment such as antennas on properties in the area. Liliesleaf had two lightning conductors next to the main house. 38
SACSA observed and noted all these activities. Mary Russell and her husband lived in the Rivonia Caravan Park directly opposite the Rietfontein Road entrance into Liliesleaf. After the 1963 raid, Russell later shared her observations with her family, saying that, she “knew something was going on across the road”.39 In 2005, Russell’s nephew, Gavin Olivier, shared this account with the author. According to Olivier, Russell was an avid birdwatcher and used binoculars to observe the birdlife from her veranda. Prior to the raid, she saw postal workers standing on ladders erected against telephone poles along Rietfontein Road, working on the telephone lines. For Russell, it was odd that they stood atop for long periods of time and used binoculars. Russell recalled what she described as “mysterious bread delivery vans” parked inside the caravan park several times a week for the entire day. Strange, she said, “we don’t have a shop that sells bread in the caravan park.”40 Yet there they were opposite the driveway into Liliesleaf. Paul Goldreich also recollected men working on telephone cables outside the farm.41
The view of Liliesleaf farm in the valley to the left taken from the caravan park by Mary Russel (photographing a shrike) and the road and telephone lines on which the bakery van operated.
July 1963 was a cold winter, yet shortly before the raid, from at least May 1963, Denis Goldberg recalled there being a single caravan inside the park. Its presence made him feel uneasy.
“There was only one caravan there most of the time, and this area was so far out of Jo’burg, it was deep countryside … And there was this caravan park, which was bare red earth with what I remember as one caravan. A very sleepy police station around the corner. I believe they said they watched the place, this is what I am basing it on … it would have been the obvious thing.” 42
The Trojan horse was literally across the road, parked inside a caravan park owned by the Mellis family, who were actively assisting this investigation. There is other evidence of electronic surveillance activity, all intersecting towards July 1963. In 2005 the author interviewed an individual who wished to remain anonymous. This person claimed that in 1963 he had supplied the security branch with RM 401 hearing aid microphones together with long life batteries which lasted about a month. The microphones and their batteries fitted into a human ear, making them ideal for covert listening. These bugs could be disguised and planted anywhere and were small enough to be inserted into a pen and worn by an informant during a conversation; three or four such devices fitted into a matchbox. The microphone and transmitter worked at low frequencies, and the range was as much as 1⁄2 km to a listening station located within a line of sight.
The receiver for these devices was very powerful. The signal did not need to be very strong and the microphone did not require a large opening, a pin hole would suffice, as in a standard hearing aid. The listening station required a sizable aerial, about one metre in length. It could be erected in a tree; run along telephone wires; concealed inside a roof; or tucked out of sight inside a caravan. It could even masquerade as a car aerial if parked nearby.
If inserted inside a building then transmission distanced would be reduced and to compensate for this, some type of aerial would have to be attached to boost the transmission. An option was a shortwave radio, working at 10 MHz, providing there was a good receiver on the receiving end. If the transmitter was outdoors the range would increase and the only limitations would be caused by background noise. These transmitters picked up sound in an entire room, and the next room as well. The bug could be concealed in a light switch and fitted by an electrician or plumber. It could be hidden beneath a car or anywhere else and camouflaged to resemble any type of contextual object. Lightning or electrical activity did not affect its performance.
Police purchases began with a phone call to check for available stock; followed by a visit from two plainclothes policemen. Payment with was cash and no receipt was required. Prior to the raid, as many as 1 000 units may have been supplied. When news of the Liliesleaf raid broke, the salesperson thought, “So that’s where all our microphones were going! Damn sure in my own mind – bloody hell, so that’s where our microphones went!” 43
Surveyor General map of Rivonia
In 2004 the author uncovered additional tangible evidence of a surveillance operation. In 1961 the surveyor general updated the cadastral maps and the Rivonia area was aerially re-photographed to produce maps in 1962. Each photographic contact sheet covers a vast area and nothing distinguishes a particular property from the next unless the sheets are significantly enlarged. The next photographic series dates to 1964. The author scanned the sheets depicting Liliesleaf in the 1961 and 1964 mapping process in high resolution. One of these sheets revealed a trace of the SACSA direction finding andelectronic warfare operation. (None of the 1964 photographs reflect any tampering). Three microscopic red dots and a pencil cross (x) emerged when a high resolution electronic scanner was used. Two red dots are on a neighbouring property. One red dot marks the approximate centre of Liliesleaf farm and the pencil cross on the sheet marks the dirt driveway leading into Liliesleaf, directly across the road from the caravan park. 44
Tampering on the surveyor general cadastral map of the Rivonia area to show sophisticated electronic triangulation intelligence and X marks the spot on the Liliesleaf driveway.
Someone involved in this investigation examined this contact sheet and made the markings before returning the sheet assuming that the microscopic tampering would remain invisible. Not only was the SADF proficient in electronic warfare. The technical skills of the SAAF, the second oldest air force in the world, were on par with its international counterparts. In combat operations in Africa, Madagascar and Europe during the Second World War, the SAAF made extensive use of aerial photo reconnaissance. Nor were their skills of electronic warfare neglected in the post-war years.
In 1957, the SAAF acquired the Avro Shackleton MR Mk3 which it used for long range maritime patrolling and naval surveillance operations. 45 Between 1962 and 1964 the SAAF acquired 16 Mirage IIIC fighter aircraft from France, followed by four Mirage RZ fighter reconnaissance aircraft. 46 In late 1963, SAAF took delivery of the Canberra B (I) Mk 12 heavy bomber and photo reconnaissance aircraft from Britain. It was adding to and upgrading its technological capacity. Consequently, in 1962 to 1963 the only agency with the technical skills capable of identifying targets from aerial photographs of Liliesleaf was the SAAF.47
Thursday 11 July 1963
A meeting on Saturday 6 July 1963 to discuss Operation Mayibuye at Liliesleaf deadlocked. The plan was not approved and it created deep divisions within the Secretariat and amongst members of the SACP’s Central Committee. The plan had to be either approved by the political structures, which did not happen, or be sent back for further work. However, the next part of the problem was a practical one: where could the Secretariat meet and when? The matter had to be speedily resolved, yet the issue of a venue was becoming contentious and downright dangerous.
Denis Goldberg’s mugshot after his arrest and one his drawings on the working of a grenade recovered from Liliesleaf farm, evidence used in his trial.
There were a number of people who did not want to return to Liliesleaf. According to Goldberg:
“They had earlier taken the decision not to bring people who were not living underground to the place where others were living in hiding. Too many people had been to Liliesleaf farm. The security risks were great. We urgently needed a different place and the task of buying somewhere new was given to me because I could legally buy property.” 48
A number of the senior leaders, such as Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba and Wilton Mkwai no longer stayed at the farm, having moved to Trevallyn, a smallholding near Krugersdorp, recently purchased by Goldberg under a fictitious name and which was to be used solely for accommodating members of the MK high command and those immediately involved in its functioning. 49 Goldberg later wrote that “the last meeting of the High Command at Liliesleaf was one too many”.50 Goldberg remembered:
“They didn’t have time to arrange a new venue, so we had to come back here, knowing that it was dangerous to come here. The decision had been taken, no more meetings at Rivonia. Yet we had one more, because of the pressure of Rusty’s house arrest.”51
Kathrada recalled:
Ahmed Kathrada after his arrest – JHB Fort.
“A number of us started feeling uneasy about the continued use of the Rivonia farm. We were well aware that the need-to-know principle had not applied to Liliesleaf for some time, and that far too many people – one of whom was Bruno Mtolo, a saboteur from Durban and leader of the Natal branch, had visited the farm. But there was no avoiding one final meeting in Rivonia. In the days leading up to this crucial gathering, I became more agitated and afraid. The only person who I could share my views with was Walter Sisulu, whose views coincided with my own.”52
As for Bernstein, he was not in favour of holding the meeting there. He had lost faith in Liliesleaf as an uncompromised venue:
“I don’t even remember who convened the meeting. I know I didn’t want to go to it. I was afraid of the place. It was Hepple who persuaded me. [He said] “Okay, you don’t want to go to this place, just this one last time”. Famous last words.53
The next issue was the timing of the meeting. Which day might be appropriate? Thursdays were delivery days. Produce from the butcher and grocer were delivered; dry cleaning collected and dropped off; cars came and went – these goings-on were an established routine. Because these activities had doubled up as a screen for meetings before, Thursday it would be. However, these routines were known and identified, all watched and listened to inside the Trojan horse parked innocently in the caravan park.
Nothing untoward happened during the day except for Bob Hepple’s encounter with an unidentified individual which alludes to a covert investigation.
“On the morning of the 11th July, a man came to my chambers. He was an Indian. I had never met him before. And he said to me, “I have got a message for Cedric from Natalie.” Now I knew that I regularly received letters addressed to me at my chambers. Inside was an envelope sealed from Natalie for Cedric. And I knew these were for the leadership and I would deliver them personally to Liliesleaf Farm. And I wondered what was going on because Cedric was the codename for the centre and Natalie was the code name for the Natal district. And I knew these names on letters would come to my chambers addressed me. I would open them …and would take them over. Who was this guy? I had no knowledge of him. I fobbed him off. I said I don’t know what this is about but I’ll look into it and see. So I realised he was bringing some message. But I didn’t know if he was genuine, he could have been a police spy. And I was deeply suspicious. I feigned ignorance and said I have to go out now and sent him away and said come back to me tomorrow morning. My idea being to make enquiries if anyone knew what this was about. So the result, I was very worried and it was one of the things when I did go there that afternoon that I was worried about. So on my route there I was extremely nervous, I kept thinking maybe I am going to be followed.” 54
This encounter unnerved Hepple. According to him there were already suspicions that the CIA had had a hand in Mandela’s capture. For what reason and by whom was this visitor sent? 55 Hepple told Kathrada about his suspicious visitor and Kathrada confirmed that he too had received a garbled message from someone who mentioned Cedric. After ten minutes of exchanging pleasantries, the six took their seats inside the thatched cottage, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Walter Sisulu, Lionel Bernstein, Bob Hepple and Ahmed Kathrada. Their agenda was to discuss the impact of the 90 days arrests and to continue the discussion on Operation Mayibuye.
Walter Sisulu after his arrest – JHB Fort
Bernstein held the Operation Mayibuye document on his lap so that he might refer to it and started his critique. No sooner had he commenced when they observed a dry cleaning van, bearing the logo Trade Steam Pressers through a rear window driving down the driveway. It drove up and parked next to the house. Bernstein looked out the window and exclaimed. “Oh my God, I saw that van opposite the police station this afternoon!”56 The Trojan horse was in position. Perfectly timed and synchronised to the exact moment that the meeting started. Certainly no coincidence. Coordinated by another Trojan horse parked inside the caravan park and listening in. Suddenly the rear doors of the dry cleaning van opened, disgorging the security branch police with their attack dog. While the raiders encircled the main house, Govan Mbeki snatched the Mayibuye plan from Bernstein and tried to burn it but without matches it was useless. Mbeki then shoved the plan into the stovepipe chimney.
Mbeki, Sisulu and Kathrada leapt through a rear window but were immediately caught. The remaining three hoped to bluff their way out. Detective Kennedy opened the door and rushed inside. “Stay where you are. You’re all under arrest!”57
Arthur Goldreich after his arrest – JHB Fort
The three were then escorted outside. Hepple recalled that by this stage the place was piling up with police and dogs. This suggests that the dry cleaner’s van was the initial probe – the Trojan horse. Once it had breached the gates and parked inside, its occupants would disgorge to secure the buildings while the main body, already in position on Rietfontein Road would then swoop in and overwhelm the farm, while securing the perimeter.
Earlier, in the lounge, Goldberg looked up to see Lt Van Wyk swing open the veranda door and step inside, only metres away from where he sat. Goldberg leapt from his chair, grabbed his coat which contained his notes about weapons manufacture and manufacturing quotations which he had received – and made a desperate dash to reach a toilet to flush them away. Intercepted by another policeman entering through the kitchen he was overpowered in the entrance hallway and arrested. “It was a disconcerting moment. Actually what I thought was, oh shit, we’ve been caught.” 58
Govan Mbeki after his arrest – JHB Fort
The suspects and farm labourers were handcuffed inside the dry cleaner’s van. At about 17h50 Arthur Goldreich drove down Rietfontein Road in his Citroen. 59 When he drew level with the entrance gate he noticed two men wearing the hallmark raincoats of plain clothes policemen, standing beneath a tree in the caravan park, talking to each other. It wasn’t raining and they weren’t relieving themselves.
“And my first thought was special branch, and my second thought was I am late. I can’t just drive by. Then the third thought of mine was how come the guy who’s supposed to be guarding the gate is not there … and I came down the driveway, there were trees on either side and from behind the trees came some police and some dogs. And they jumped on the motor car, and the guy with a pistol in his hand put the pistol to my head, and I heard someone shout, “moenie skiet nie!” So I switched off the engine and rolled down and came in towards the garage.” 60
Arthur’s car ground to a halt. He got out, hands raised above his head. 61 At around 18h00 after each captive had been shown the contents of the outbuildings, Bernstein and Hepple joined Mbeki inside the laundry van. Goldberg was then brought out of the house, four policemen climbed into the van and the Trojan horse drove them off. Having breached the gates of the safe house the Trojan horse left with its captives handcuffed inside, facing the horrors ahead, fearing the worst, potentially a death sentence. Passing the solitary caravan parked in the red dirt of the park. Into the dark. The Rivonia Trial followed.
Arthur Goldreich, looking very worried and Detective Warrant Officer Carel Dirker. By law Goldreich had to be made witness to the search.
Conclusion
Colonels Van den Bergh and Klindt arrived after sunset. Arthur Goldreich was taken into the main bedroom for a one-on-one monologue delivered by Van den Bergh. Among other things Van den Bergh said:
“The trouble with you, Goldreich, and the trouble with all of you, is you’re amateurs. You always have and you always will underestimate your enemy. And that’s why you’re in the shit.” 62
Colonel H.J. Van den Bergh
Liliesleaf and all that was linked to it was captured. The Rivonia Trial followed and after that more arrests and trials until the internal networks were neutralised. A blow most certainly, yet not one which was terminal to the forces of liberation. In the 53 years since the raid the focus on what led to the raid has always been on the security branch. These accounts claim that the SAP, assisted by informants from within the movement, were able to raid Liliesleaf and were lucky to have achieved the success that they did. Kathrada later wrote that the police had the farm under surveillance for some hours before the raid. However, according to him the no one had ever found out the truth:
“ … every version that has been bandied about over the years is based on nothing more that speculation.” 63
The author concurs with Kathrada’s statement. Starting with Strydom in 1965 and weaving through into the recent past with Frankel, popular notion has it that an informant or informants “gave up” the farm to the security branch and fed their information to Lt. Van Wyk who, on receiving it, literally sprung the raid the following day. In a massive twist of fate and coincidence, good luck for some and horrific luck for others, in a single swoop the raid netted prominent leaders connected with MK, the ANC and SACP, together with a haul of documentary and other evidence. This smashed the leaders of organised resistance to the apartheid regime in one massive lucky break, all a result of informants. The security branch pulled it off all on their own. So the story goes. This article demonstrates that to be a fallacy.
By means of an inter-agency investigation into Liliesleaf, this paper outlines some of the complex ways in which the combined security services used a range of techniques and tactics in an attempt to destroy armed opposition to apartheid. One agency was the security branch; its investigations commenced weeks after Nelson Mandela was captured, and later in 1963, the RI and the SADF joined the probe, which led eventually to an operation culminating in the raid. The hypothesis is that information in Nelson Mandela’s notebook and other sources enabled the security branch to identify Liliesleaf. Evidence of the investigation by the security branch soon after Mandela’s arrest is seen in the actions of the first Trojan horse, a young boy, George Mellis, who was able to observe events from within. He was the perfect spy; he passed on information to the Rivonia police station; no one gave him so much as a second glance. However, he would have been carefully handled both by his parents and the security branch, given that he was a minor. Additional evidence of a security branch investigation in 1962, assisted by the Rivonia police station, was the matter of holding back a summons to be served on Goldreich. By December 1962 a determined investigation was underway, so much so that the police sanitised the farm and there were instructions that no policemen were to enter the property.
Mellis’s parents owned the caravan park which offered an ideal position from which to conduct surveillance. A caravan was the second Trojan horse, innocuous on the outside yet filled with electronic equipment, it listened into conversations held at Liliesleaf via hearing devices and telephone line interceptions. Operated by SACSA the timing of the raid could be carefully calculated, which indeed it was. In position during the weeks leading up to the raid, they also detected the Radio Freedom transmitter being tested when it was switched on. The predictably of activities on a Thursday were all observed and calculated. This Trojan horse in turn linked to other SADF technologies of direction finding, electronic warfare and aerial reconnaissance. Evidence of this was provided by those who saw the “postal workers” equipped with binoculars working on the telephone lines. Postal vans and bread delivery vans were seen parked in the caravan park. They were being covertly used by the SACSA. The contact sheets in the surveyor general’s office bear evidence of aerial target identification and the only organisation with the requisite skills to undertake this task, was the SAAF.
The final deception was the third Trojan horse, a laundry and dry cleaning van. Prior to the raid at least one RI spy had accessed the premises in a similar van, so the tactic of using a laundry van to breach the safe house was the ideal choice. Like the mythological Trojan horse which breached the gates of Troy, it was driven inside the farm to disgorge the policemen and their dogs.
In conclusion this paper demonstrates that there was far more to the raid than what has been written about it since that fateful day. It was not merely a police strike. Key roles were played by the SAAF and electronic surveillance was carried out by the SACSA in the state’s offensive against MK. This challenges the commonly held view that the military was not involved in the counter-insurgency operations of 1962 1964. In conventional accounts of the period, the South African military only became involved in counter insurgency when P.W. Botha gained political ascendancy and together with General Magnus Malan, made the notion of Total Onslaught the apartheid government’s strategic doctrine. This paper shows just how heavily involved the military and the security agencies were against MK soon after its formation in 1961.
Written and Researched by Dr. Garth Conan Benneyworth
References
Bernstein, L., Memory against Forgetting (Penguin, London, 1999).Dingake, M., Better to Die on One’s Feet (South African History Online, Cape Town, 2015). Ellis, S., External Mission: The ANC in Exile (Johnathan Ball, Johannesburg, 2012). Frankel, G., Rivonia’s Children (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, 1999). Goldberg, D., The Mission: A Life for Freedom in South Africa (STE Publishers, Johannesburg, 2010), Hepple, B., Young Man with the Red Tie: A Memoir of Mandela and the Failed Revolution: 1960-1963 Jacana Media, Johannesburg, 2013). Kathrada, A., Memoirs (Zebra Press, Paarl, 2004). Mandela, N.R., Long Walk to Freedom (Abacus, London, 1994). SADET, The Road to Democracy in South Africa Volume 1 (1960-1970) (Zebra Press, Cape Town, 2004). Smith, D.J., Young Mandela (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2010). Strydom, L., Rivonia Unmasked (Voortrekkerpers, Johannesburg, 1965). Volker, W., Army Signals in South Africa: The Story of the South African Corps of Signals and its Antecedents (Veritas Books, Pretoria, 2010). Volker, W., Signal Units of the South African Corps of Signals and related Services (Veritas Books, Pretoria, 2010). Wright, P., Spy Catcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer (Heinemann, Melbourne, 1987).
Footnotes
D. Goldberg, The Mission: A Life for Freedom in South Africa (STE Publishers, Johannesburg, 2010), p 99. ↩︎
Liliesleaf Archives, Rivonia (hereafter LL), INT 2, Interview with Denis Goldberg, conducted by G. Benneyworth, Liliesleaf, 2004. ↩︎
LL, INT 2, Interview with Denis Goldberg, Liliesleaf, 2004. ↩︎
L. Bernstein, Memory against Forgetting (Penguin, London, 1999), p 249. ↩︎
LL, INT 4, Interview with Ahmed Kathrada, conducted by G. Benneyworth, Liliesleaf, 2005. ↩︎
LL, INT 6, LOT 2 (a-k), Interview with Vivien Ezra, conducted by G. Benneyworth, Liliesleaf, 2006; LL, G. Benneyworth, “Research Report: Rivonia Uncovered”, p 137. ↩︎
N.R. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (Abacus, London, 1994), pp 372–373 ↩︎
National Archives of the United Kingdom (hereafter NAUK), DO 195, 2, SECRET, “Ghana’s Relations with the Union of SA”, 29 July 1960–1962. ↩︎
LL, Benneyworth, “Research Report: Rivonia Uncovered”, Appendix C, Interview with Gerhard Ludi. ↩︎
LL, Benneyworth, “Research Report: Rivonia Uncovered”, Appendix C, Interview with Gerhard Ludi. ↩︎
W. Volker, Army Signals in South Africa: The Story of the South African Corps of Signals and its Antecedents (Veritas Books, Pretoria, 2010), pp 226–227. ↩︎
This website article focuses on Dassault Mirage jet aircraft for Microsoft Flight Simulator and Combat Flight Simulator. At http://www.mirage4fs.com/slides15.html. Accessed 12 December 2016. ↩︎
This article has been a long time in coming because it’s really a simple soldier’s story … it’s mine … and I’m a real son-of-a-bitch to consolidate myself with and as such this has been very hard to put together. However, I hope it gives some insight into what it was like to serve in the South African Defence Force (SADF) from the unbanning of the ANC and release of Nelson Mandela on 11 February 1990 to the landmark year for the transformation of South Africa’s democracy in April 1994.
It’s also a testament and a cathartic exercise, as … ta da! No surprise to anyone who knows me personally and what I went through with Covid 19, but I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). So, no surprise on the Covid front, but it’s the root of the PTSD that’s the real problem, and it boils down to my time in the SADF from 1990 to 1994, it settled on ‘Trust’ or lack thereof really.
“Ag Fok man! No more PTSD G3/K3 Fucked Up Kak” some of my fellow veteran buddies may jump to, heck at one stage I felt the same. But bear with me ‘manne’, this is not a ‘outreach’ or a ‘call for help’ .. I’m solid, in good spirits and very stable (more on this later). What my therapy disclosed is in fact a very interesting bit of history not often held up in the narrative of 1994 and it possesses a load of inconvenient truths, that’s what this story is really all about. So, here goes;
Wit en Swart Gevaar (White and Black Danger)
In 1990 Whilst the now ‘unbanned’ African National Congress (ANC) was finding its political feet and locating itself to ‘Shell House’ near Bree Street in Johannesburg, I was located at Witwatersrand Command’s new HQ Building – also in Bree Street a block away – the nearby old HQ at the bottom of Twist Street called the ‘Drill Hall’ had been all but abandoned after it was bombed by a ‘lone’ ANC cadre – who oddly was a ‘white Afrikaner’ from a top Upper Middle Class Afrikaans school, Linden High School, and who had some serious ‘Daddy issues’ with his Conservative father and upbringing. With the building now declared ‘unsafe’ the HQ had moved next door. Here begins my problem in trying to define the enemy – as we had been conditioned by the old Afrikaner Nationalists and in the SADF that the ‘enemy’ was a ‘Swart Gevaar’ (Black Danger) and a ‘Rooi Gevaar’ (Communist Red Danger) – not a ‘Wit Gevaar’ (White Danger) with a Upper Middle-Class sense of Liberalism as the bomber in question, Hein Grosskopf, was.
Hein GrosskopfThe Drill Hall
So, here I am, a freshy minted National Serviceman ‘one-pip’ Loot ( 2nd Lieutenant or Subaltern) seconded to Wit (Witwatersrand) Command Operations (Ops) from my initial placement at D-Ops (Directive Operations) located in a underground circular shafted ‘nuclear proof’ building in Pretoria called Blenny, the building whose Top Secret Ops room looked like a scene out of Dr Strangelove had its entry bunker located near the Pretoria Prison. This underground building is now falling derelict as a SAAF HQ, in my time the personnel stationed there were known as the ‘Blenny rats’ for obvious reasons, and funnily I can count myself as one.
My job at Wit Command (not ‘Wits’ Command mind – that designation was for the nearby University) was to provide Operation Support and send Top Secret daily SITREP (situation reports) from Wit Command to D Ops at Blenny, or just been a ‘Bicycle’ as my fellow senior officers called ‘one pip’ 2nd Lieutenants (you can ‘trap’ i.e. peddle/stamp on a bicycle), the lowest rung on the officer rank profile.
Whilst parking in my cushy post in the Ops room in September 1990 processing a whack of casualties reported on Johannesburg’s railway lines as the ANC dealt with ‘sellouts’ by throwing them off the commuter trains, the Railways Police and Army Group 18 collecting the corpses and sending reports to me for the daily SITREP and suddenly ‘bang’ another bomb blast (more like a muffled ‘thump’ actually), this one a couple of city blocks away in nearby Doornfontein and the target is the old Beeld Newspaper Offices, the bomb later turned out to be placed by the Orde Boerevolk – one of the spin-off militant White Supremacist Groups. Swart Gevaar suddenly turned Wit Gevaar again. Luckily nobody killed.
This ‘White’ Danger did not end there for me that month. Being a ‘bicycle’, 2nd Lieutenant I was given the shift nobody wanted, the weekend shift in the Ops room, the ‘Commandants’ (Lt. Colonels – and there were loads of them in Army Ops), were all at home enjoying their braai’s and brander’s. It was a 24 hour on – 48 hour off gig with no brass around so I enjoyed it. Late on a Saturday night, its all quite and I’m stretched out on a cot behind the signaller’s station watching TV and enjoying my lekker time in the ‘Mag’ when a white Ford Cortina pulled up in Bree Street, four white men in the car, out step two, one of them wearing a AWB arm band hangs back standing watch and the other walks up to the entrance of Wit Command and calmy shoots a 21 Battalion sentry on duty in the reception in the head.
21 (Two-One) Battalion was a ethnic Black Battalion – the SADF was ethnically funny that way, so this was basically a white extremist shooting a black SADF troop as a terror attack. I hear the gunshot, then get a frantic call from the guard room. There is no medic support and only one other officer on the base, so I grab a hand-held radio and the emergency medic bag and give instructions to the signaller to stay on the radio and relay messages. The troopie is fortunately alive, the bullet having passed through his jaw as he flinched away from his attacker’s gun. I patch him up with bandages from the medical kit bag and radio the signaller to call an emergency medical evacuation. I then issue an order to the 21 Battalion Guard Commander to double the guard, take note from witnesses as to what happened and then back to my post to disturb my senior officer’s weekend. ‘Wit Gevaar’ had struck Wit Command again.
Image : AWB Clandestine paramilitary
Given the general carnage in the country created by the AWB, the Inkata Freedom Party (IFP) and African National Congress (ANC) at this time it did not take long for the ANC version of ‘Swart Gevaar’ and it would hit me directly again about two weeks later in October 1990 when I received a desperate call over the Ops room phone from an ANC informant, his cover blown and an angry ANC mob had turned up outside his house in Soweto. I was unable to get an extraction to him in the time that it took for the mob to break down the door and the line go dead after I had to listen to his desperate pleading to me for help, the Police picked up his body later. The dismissive and rather racist attitude of one of the other officers present to the whole incident .. “just another kaffir.”
Shortly after that in October ANC ‘danger’ turned to IFP ‘danger,’ same scenario I’m sat on the weekend in the Ops room enjoying my cushy 24 hours on 48 hours off. This incident strangely happened on a Sunday afternoon, so again the Command is relatively silent manned only by a skeleton staff. Odd for a Sunday, but a small group of IFP supporters banishing traditional weapons (deadly spears and pangas in reality) had made its way down Twist Street from Hillbrow and was making its way past the old Drill Hall to Bree Street, which, as it was still a SADF installation had a group of 21 Battalion guards staying in it. One troop was casually standing outside having a smoke, and I don’t know if it was a ethnic retaliation of Zulu sentiment for a Black SADF troop, but in any event, he got attacked – hit by a panga as he lifted his arms to prevent a killing blow.
Same drill as previous – no medics around and only 2 officers on the base, grab radio to relay instructions, grab bomb bandages, immediately double the guard, relay instructions to my signaller. I get to the troop and start bandaging him up, however as the panga had severed veins and done other general carnage in both his arms it took some bomb bandages and applied pressure to get it the bleeding under control before an ambulance arrived.
Image: Inkata Freedom Party member taunts a black SADF soldier
He lived, but the strange bit for me, next morning – Monday early, I had been up all night and my uniform was covered in blood. The Commandant, whose lekker branders and braai weekend I had once again disturbed, came in earlier than expected at 06:30am, called me in ‘on orders’, and whilst ‘kakking me out’ from high told me I was derelict in my duty for not wearing barrier gloves when treating a casualty, who, as he was a black man (and to his racially ‘verkrampt’ mind) he would likely have AIDS, thus I was endangering myself as government property. That there were no barrier gloves around was not an excuse – and as some sort of punitive measure, he then instructed me to attend the morning parade on the open ground on the Command’s car park (as Ops Officers we had usually been excluded from it). I objected on the basis that I could not change my uniform in time, but he would have none of it.
So, there I stood, an officer on parade covered in blood from saving yet another lowly regarded ‘black’ troopie, watching the sun come up over a Johannesburg skyline on a crisp clear day (if you’ve lived in Johannesburg, you’ll know what this is like, it’s the town’s only redeeming factor – it’s stunning) all the time thinking to my myself “this is one fucked up institution.”
There were more instances of the random nature of violence at the time, I was called to and attended to the stabbing of a woman (later criticised by a Commandant for calling a emergency ambulance for a mere ‘civilian’) – she had a very deep stab wound about two inches above her mons pubis into her lower intestines which looked pretty bad to me, so I called it and I have no regrets. I was also called to help with a off duty white troop who staggered into the Command late Saturday night with a blunt trauma to the back of the skull and subsequently pissed himself and went into shock.
Oh, and if the general populace wasn’t bad enough, then there were the ‘own team’ military ‘idiots’ which posed a danger all of their own, my first ‘Padre’ call out as an Ops officer was for a troop shot dead by his buddy playing around with his 9mm side-arm, and some months later on after a morning parade walking back to the Bree Street building I had to deal with an accidental discharge gunshot in the guardroom of the old Drill Hall which saw two troops with severe gunshot wounds (a conscript Corporal in counter-intelligence decided to check R4 assault rifles standing on their bi-pods on the ground, one discharged taking off a big chunk of his calf muscle which was in front of the muzzle, the bullet then entering both legs of a 21 Battalion guard standing opposite him).
One thing was very certain to me … everyone, black and white .. from white right wing Afrikaners to left wing English and Afrikaner whites .. to militant and angry Zulus, Tswanas and Xhosas and just about everyone in between was a threat to my life whilst in uniform. These instances whilst serving as an Ops officer would later serve as the basis of stressor trigger during my Covid experience. To me in 1990 there was no such thing as a ‘friendly’, extreme racism, danger and hate coursed in all directions and the old Nationalist idea of the ‘Gevaar’ was a crock of shit.
Wit Command Citizen Force
On finishing my National Service (NS) stint, I immediately landed up in my designated Citizen Force Unit, 15 Reception Depot (15 OVD/RCD) which was part of Wit Command and basically handled the bi-annual National Service intakes and call-ups (reserve forces included). It also provided surplus personnel to assist in Wit Command’s administration, and that included Operations and Intelligence work. By 1991, I was back doing ‘camps’ and had impressed my new Commanding Officer (CO) enough to earn my second ‘pip’ and now I was a substantiated Full Lieutenant, an officer good and proper. I had previously keenly jumped at a role as a Convoy Commander escorting raw SADF recruits to their allocated training bases.
Images of Nasrec NSM intakes circa 1990-1993. Photo of Lt. Col Mannie Alho (then a Captain) and Miss South Africa, Michelle Bruce at an intake courtesy Mannie Alho.
These were ‘fully armed’ operations as NSM intakes were regarded as a ‘soft’ and very ‘public’ target, of much value for an act of terrorism. As such each convoy needed an armed escort with a lot of Intelligence and logistics support. If you need to know how dangerous – consider how many times a recruitment station has been bombed in the Iraq and/or Afghanistan conflicts. I volunteered for the furthest and most difficult escort as the Convoy Commander – the bi-annual call up to 8 South African Infantry Battalion in Upington (8 SAI). My ‘escort’ troops were made up of Wit Command reservists, some from Personal Services but most of them with Infantry Battalion backgrounds, Border War veterans in the main and highly experienced.
1994
By 1994 I had really earned my spurs doing ‘long distance’ Convoy Command. In early 1993 my CO – Lt. Col Mannie Alho had seen enough potential in me to kick me off to do a ‘Captain’s Course’ at Personal Services School at Voortrekkerhoogte in Pretoria. At the beginning of 1994 Colonel Alho called me in, handed me a promotion to Captain and gave me his old Captain’s ‘bush pips’ epaulettes he had in his drawer – a gesture and epaulettes I treasure to this day.
Images: … erm, me – in case anyone is wondering why the ‘Bokkop’ (Infantry beret), I started off at 5 SAI, then PSC, then back in an infantry role in Ops.
At this time around Wit Command, a number of significant things happened involving all of us in 15 RCD to some degree or other – some less so, others more so. It was a BIG year. In all, these instances would really question who the enemy was in any soldier’s mind serving in the ‘old’ SADF at that time.
The Reserve Call-Up – 1994
Firstly, the call up of the SADF Reserve in the Witwatersrand area to secure the country for its democratic transformation. Generally, in 1994 the SADF was running out of National Servicemen – the ‘backbone’ of the SADF, the annual January and July intake of ‘white’ conscripts had dwindled alarmingly. Generally, the white public saw the writing on the wall as to the end of Apartheid and the end of whites-only conscription program and simply refused to abide their national service call-ups.
As to the ‘Permanent Force’ (PF), the professional career element of the SADF, many senior officers (and a great many Commandants) along with warrant officers and some senior NCO’s took an early retirement package. They had seen the writing on the wall as to their role in the Apartheid security machine and felt they had been ‘sold out’ by the very apparatus they had sworn their allegiance to. Some would head into politics in the Conservative Party, others would join the AWB structure and other ‘Boerevolk’ resistance movements and some took their Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) amnesty’s and quietly retired. Others would just bow out honourably, their time done. Nearly all of them totally fed up with FW De Klerk and his cabal and feeling utterly betrayed by them – even to this day, and I meet many in military veteran circles.
As to the other part of the SADF ‘backbone’ of which I was one – the Citizen Force, then made up almost exclusively of ‘white’ ex-National Service members now undertaking their ten odd years of ‘camp’ commitments. In 1994, it was on the cards that a future ‘whites only’ conscription would be stopped, but the problem was a great many soldiers would be needed to stop the country falling into a violent abyss and continuing its journey to a free fully democratic election. To keep up with resourcing requirements, the government contested that ‘whites only’ conscripts who had completed their National Service and were now serving in citizen force Regiments and Commandos must continue to do so and attend their call ups (or risk being fined).
Many were simply sick and tired of the situation; they had done their ‘Border Duty’ and ‘Townships’ and had seen the writing on the wall. They knew the Citizen Force structures would be toothless trying to enforce the camp call-ups and ‘fines’. Many just didn’t bother with a camp call up and just wanted to get on with their professional and family lives. A small few however split their loyalty on political grounds and made their way into the AWB and other Boerevolk Armed Resistance movements instead.
Copyright Ian Berry
Images: AWB Training – note the use of parts of SADF ‘Browns’ uniform
However, and this is a truism, a great many of these active reservists (the vast majority) stayed on out of sheer loyalty to serve their country no matter what, and to serve their comrades (a powerful bond of brotherhood develops when you serve) and to execute their mandates as well trained and professional military personnel. It was to this element of the Citizen Force that the government would ultimately turn to for help and implore them to volunteer to steer the country to democracy. Even the old ‘End Conscription Campaign’ anti-apartheid movement moved to support the ‘camper call up’ for the 1994 general elections.
Personally, I found the SADF military personnel moving to join the AWB and other White Supremist groupings very disappointing as I honestly believe they were hoodwinked and misled. Whilst serving in the SADF, the AWB presented itself as a very distinct enemy and they had no problems targeting the SADF – of that I had first-hand experience, so very little doubt. I find myself often in military veteran circles in contact with some of these veterans and must say I still find it difficult to reconcile with them.
The country’s military also can’t just ‘sommer’ fall apart when a new political party is elected, the loyalty and oath on my officer’s commission is not party political it’s to the State. As a soldier, acting against the State is an act of sedition and all it did was show up these SADF soldiers as loyal to political causes, in this case the National Party’s Apartheid policy and not to the country per se, the military, or their fellow comrades-in-arms still in the military. Having any of them on the ‘inside’ at this time simply qualified them in my eyes as yet another form of ‘Wit Gevaar’.
To secure the transition of the country to its new democratic epoch, CODESA (the Committee overseeing the establishment of a new constitution and transition of power) proposed the National Peacekeeping Force (NPK), a hastily assembled force consisting of SADF soldiers, some ‘Bantustan’ Defence Force soldiers and ANC MK cadres, to conduct peace-keeping security operations and secure the 1994 election. The NPK was a disaster, SADF officers complained of the very poor battle form and discipline, especially of the ANC ‘cadres’ and pointed to basic cowardice. All this materialised in the accidental shooting and killing of the world renown press photographer, Ken Oosterbroek by a NPK member nervously taking cover behind journalists advancing on a IFP stronghold. The NPK was finally confined to barracks in disgrace and quietly forgotten about (even to this day).
Images: National Peacekeeping Force in Johannesburg and surrounds
So, it was the old SADF that would have to do the job of taking the country into democracy. I was at the Command when this news came in on the NPK, and I must say I was very relieved, I felt we had been held back ‘chomping at the bit’ literally, and this was our opportunity to shine. It was the opportunity for all involved in the SADF at the time to redeem its image so badly battered by its association to Apartheid and the controversial decision in the mid 80’s to deploy the SADF in the Townships against an ‘internal enemy’ (protesting South African citizens in reality) as opposed to the ‘Rooi Gevaar’ enemy on the Namibia/Angola border (MPLA, SWAPO and Cuban Troops). Added to this were the emerging confessions of political assassinations by Civil Co-Operation Bureau (CCB) members, a SADF clandestine ‘black-ops’ group off the hinge and operating outside the law.
The decreasing pools of experienced SADF soldiers, the increasing violence between ANC and IFP supporters, the substantial increase in attacks and bombings by armed ‘Boerevolk’ white supremacist movements like the AWB and others, and the disaster that was the ‘National Peacekeeping Force’ and its disbandment; all forced CODESA and the FW de Klerk government to call-up the SADF’s National Reservists. This was done to boost troop numbers and inject experience into the ranks, take over where the NPK left off, and secure the country’s democratic transition and elections.
A Reception Depots primary role is ‘mustering’ and this does not matter if it’s a citizen recruit for Military Service – conscript or volunteer or the mustering of the country’s National Citizen Force Reserve. The mustering of the SADF Reserve in Johannesburg took place at Group 18 (Doornkop) Army Base near Soweto and as 15 Reception Depot I was there with our officer group to process the call-ups, see to their uniform and kit needs and forward these Reservists to their designated units to make them ‘Operational’.
Operational Citizen Force members in Johannesburg and surrounds during 1994
Swaggering around the hanger rammed full of reservists, as a newly minted Captain and trying to look important, I was tasked with dealing with a handful of reservists who had abided the call-up but turned up wearing civilian clothes and no ‘balsak’ kitbag and uniforms in sight. The Army regulations at time allowed National Servicemen to demobilise but they had to keep their uniforms in case they are called back. I was to send them to the Quarter Master Hanger to get them kitted out again but had to ask what they did with their uniforms. Expecting a “I got fat and grew out of it” or “the gardener needed it more” I got a response I did not expect. They all destroyed or disposed of their SADF uniforms – three said they had even ceremonially burned their uniforms when they left the SADF they hated serving in it so much. All of them said; despite this, for this occasion, the securing of a new dawn democracy, for this they would gladly return and serve again, they just needed new browns. It got me thinking, and I felt we were really standing on the precipice of history and as ‘men of the hour’ we were going a great thing. We were the men who, at an hour of great need, had heeded the call to serve the country, and we were to advance human kind and deliver full political emancipation to all South Africans, regardless of race, sex or culture…. heady stuff indeed!
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Images: SADF Citizen Force members guarding polling stations and securing ballots during the 1994 election.
A very ‘Noble Call’ and I felt very privileged and excited at the time that I was involved in such an undertaking, I felt like my old ‘Pops’ (Grandfather) did when the country called for volunteers to fight Nazism in World War 2. We were most certainly on a great precipice.
I don’t want to get into the “look at it now” as I type this in 2022 during Stage 5 loadshedding. That was not the issue in 1994, the ANC miss-management and plundering of the country of its finances decades later was not on the cards then, what was on the cards was the disbandment of an oppressive political regime looking after a tiny sect of Afrikaner Nationalists and in the interests of a minority of white people only, and one which was trampling on the rights of just about everyone else. The idea of a country, a ‘rainbow nation’ with one of the most liberated constitutions in the world was paramount at the time, and I’m very proud of my role in this (albeit small), my UNITAS medal for my role in all this still sits proudly on my medal rack.
Newspaper at the time capturing the mutual confidence in the future of a ‘new South Africa’ and avoiding ‘the abyss.’
These ‘white’ ex-conscript reservists guarded election booths, gave armed escort to ballot boxes, patrolled the ‘townships’ keeping APLA, ANC, IFP and AWB insurgents away from killing people – black and white in the hopes of disrupting the election. If you think this was a rather ‘safe’ walk in the park gig, the ‘war’ or ‘struggle’ was over, think again. I accompanied Group 42 soldiers later in an armoured convoy into Soweto and it was hair raising to say the least. Which brings me to the next incident in 1994.
The Shell House Massacre – 1994
As noted, earlier Shell House was located a block away from Wit Command and was the ANC’s Head Office in the early 90’s (Letuli House came later). On the 28 March 1994, IFP supporters 20,000 in number marched on the ANC Head Office in protest against the 1994 elections scheduled for the next month. A dozen ANC members opened fire on the IFP crowd killing 19 people, ostensibly on the orders of Nelson Mandela. SADF soldiers from Wit Command mainly reservists and national servicemen were called to the scene, on arrival, to save lives they put themselves between the ANC shooters and the IFP supporters and along with the South African Police brought about calm and an end to the massacre.
I was not there that day, but some of my colleagues at Wit Command were and all of them would experience ‘elevated’ stress and take a hard line, fully armed response when it came to dealing with protests, especially on how quickly they could go pear shaped. This would permeate to all of us in our dealings with this kind of protesting (more on this later). If you think this incident was yet another in many at this time, note the photo of the dead IFP Zulu man, shot by an ANC gunman, his shoes taken off for his journey to the after-life, and then note the three very nervous but determined SADF servicemen from Wit Command putting themselves in harm’s way to prevent more death.
Images: Shell House Massacre
The Bree Street bombing and 1994 Johannesburg terrorist spree
Not even a few weeks after the Shell House Massacre, the ANC HQ on the same little patch on Bree Street as Wit Command was to be hit again, and this time it was as destruction outside Shell House was on an epic level.
The bomb went off on 24th April 1994 near Shell-house on Bree Street and was (and still is) regarded as the largest act of bombing terrorism in Johannesburg’s history’. It was part of a bombing spree focussed mainly around Johannesburg which left 21 people dead and over 100 people with injuries between April 24 and April 27, 1994. The worst and most deadly campaign of terrorist bombings in the history of the city.
And … it was not the ANC, nope, my old enemy in 1990 had reappeared with vengeance, it was ‘Wit Gevaar,’ it was the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) again. Luckily, I was not at our HQ at Wit Command when the bomb went off, however I was there afterward to see the carnage – the whole city block was sheer destruction – everywhere.
The thunderous blast of a 150 pounds of explosives set off at 09:50 am left a waist-deep crater in the street about midway between the national and regional headquarters of the African National Congress, shattered glass and building structures for blocks and lacerated scores of passers-by on the quiet Sunday streets and residents in the surrounding high-rise buildings. It was the deadliest blast of its kind in South Africa since 1983.
Images: AWB Bree Street Bombing
A total of 7 people were dead in Bree Street, mostly by-standers and civilians from all racial and ethnic groups and 92 people in total were injured. The only reason behind the low death toll is that the bomb went off (and was planned) for a Sunday when the streets were relatively empty. Even though it was a Sunday, members of the Army from Wit Command, SAP and especially SADF Medics quickly moved in to secure the bomb blast area and treat the wounded.
The AWB bombing campaign did not stop there, it continued at pace, the very next day on April 25 a bomb was placed in a trailer allegedly belonging to the AWB leader, Eugene Terre’Blanche (the AWB later claimed it had lost the trailer during its disastrous Bophuthatswana campaign). The Trailer was towed to Germiston where it was left and then detonated in Odendaal Street near the taxi rank at about 8.45am. Again, civilian by-standers took the toll, 10 people were killed and over 100 injured.
Later in the day on April 25 at 11.45am, a pipe bomb detonated at a taxi rank on the Westonaria-Carletonville road, injuring 5 people. Earlier, at about 7.45am, a pipe bomb went off at a taxi rank on the corner of Third and Park streets in Randfontein, injuring 6 people. At 8.30pm on the same day, a pipe bomb attack at a restaurant on the corner of Bloed Street and 7th Avenue in Pretoria killed 3 and injured 4.
To prevent more bomb-blasts in Johannesburg’s city centre on the election day and the lead up to it, Johannesburg’s city centre was locked down by the SADF using reams of razor wire and armed guards. The election booths themselves in the high-density parts of the city became small fortresses with a heavy armed SADF presence, all done so people in the city centre could vote in the full knowledge they were safe to do so.
Then, just two short days later, on the Election Day itself, 27th April 1994 the final AWB election bombing campaign attack came in the form of a car bomb at the then Jan Smuts International Airport (now OR Tambo International). The bomb was placed at this high-profile target so as to create fear on the Election Day itself. The blast left the concourse outside the airport’s International Departures terminal damaged along with a number of parked vehicles on the concourse. Ten people were injured in this blast. If the AWB was going to make an international statement on their objection to the 1994 Election Day itself, this was it.
Images: AWB Jan Smuts Airport Bombing
To try and understand my context, this was violence in the ‘white danger’ context of the ‘Struggle’ it was on top of such a general surge of violence at the time I was serving that was the ‘black danger’, the townships of Johannesburg burned as the IFP and ANC went at one another hammer and tongs leaving thousands dead and wounded. The Human Rights Committee (HRC) estimated that between July 1990 and June 1993, some 4 756 people were killed in politically in mainly IFP and ANC related violence in Gauteng alone. In the period immediately following the announcement of an election date, the death toll in Gauteng rose to four times its previous levels.
Armed ANC, APLA and IFP driven unrest in Johannesburg Townships 1994
I often look at the SADF conscripts from this period – the post 1989 intakes, as having more violent exposure than the majority of SADF veterans called up for the Border War which ended in 1989. Our experience ‘the post 1989 intakes’ was fundamentally different to that experienced by the Border War veterans who stopped doing camps after 1989, and I stand by that. I see this difference in old SADF social media groups especially, if a Border War vet posts a picture showing the war against the MPLA and PLAN prior to 1989 that’s fine, post a picture of the elections showing the AWB mobilising or the MK amalgamation in 1994 and its too ‘political’ for them – our war doesn’t count, it’s all a little too ‘blurred’ for them – no clear cut Rooi-Gevaar and Swart-Gevaar see – no clear cut ‘enemy’, it just doesn’t make sense to them.
The elections, as we all know went ahead, history marched on, but I must smile at the inconvenient truth of it all, it was the SADF, and more specifically the white conscripts serving their camp commitments, who brought the final vehicle of full democracy to South Africa – the vote itself. There was not an ANC MK cadre in sight at the election doing any sort of security, they played no role whatsoever, in fact at the time they were part of the problem and not part of the solution, and their efforts in the NPK deemed too inexperienced, so they were sidelined. The ANC and PAC military wings fell at the last hurdle, they didn’t make it over the finish line of Apartheid bathed in glory, in fact they came over the line a bloody disgrace. To watch them in their misguided sense of heroism today just brings up a wry smile from me.
Integrated Military Intakes
Later in 1994, as a Mustering Depot, we naturally became involved in implementing the newly developed ‘Voluntary Military Service’ program. This was the first multi-racial intake of male and female SANDF recruits. The Voluntary Military System (VMS) was originally established as a substitute for the defunct ‘whites only’ involuntary national service system (NS) and the ‘Indian’ and ‘coloured’ voluntary national service. Also, out the window where the ethnic intakes into ‘Black’ battalions.
In terms of the VMS, volunteers had to undergo ten months basic military training, followed by a further obligation of eight annual commitments of 30 days in the Regiments and Commandos (the Reservist Conventional Forces). The objective was to create a feeder system for the Reservist Conventional forces and eventually balance the ethnic make-up of Reservist Regiments (up to this point they were a near ‘all-white’ affair with black troops and officers gradually joining them).
Our first VMS intake at Nasrec in early January 1995 was historic and very telling. In 15 RCD, some of our battle hardened and experienced escorts had to re-programmed a little. We introduced a policy of minimal force, we were no longer at war and we had to change mindset. We replaced our pre-intake shooting range manoeuvres with ‘hand to hand’ self-defence training instead. The photo on this article shows our escorts getting this training – it was very necessary and vital, times had changed.
Image: 15 RCD Hand to Hand Training NASREC – My photo.
Our intelligence had picked up chatter that the local ANC structures planned to disrupt the intake by spreading the word that the army was now employing – ‘Jobs’, ‘Jobs’, Jobs’ after all was an ANC election promise in 1994 and this a first opportunity for delivery on their promise, you merely had to turn up at Nasrec and a ‘job in the defence’ was yours. Anyone with a brain knows a political party cannot promise jobs, an economy creates jobs – but this did not (and still does not) deter the ANC on trying to fulfil their own propaganda.
And so it happened, two sets of people turned up, one set with ‘call-up’ papers, vetted by the military before mustering and one set, just turning up. The job seekers naturally started to get very upset, angry and uneasy with being turned away and a potentially violent situation began to brew with a large and growingly angry crowd. A couple of other officers and I were called to the situation, and it suddenly occurred to me, as comic as it is serious, that the 9mm Star pistol issued to me was a piece of shit and one of the two issued magazines had a faulty spring – so pretty useless if things go south – and angry crowds for whatever reason in South Africa, even lack of electricity or a delayed train, can get very violent. So much for Denel’s (Armscor) best, but the SADF was like that when it came to issuing weapons and ammo – uber self-confident, during my basic training at 5 SAI and Junior Leaders (JL’s) training at Voortrekkerhoogte, the standard operation procedure (SOP) was only 5 rounds (bullets) per guard – I often wonder how MK would have reacted if their Intel knew just how underprepared and over-confident the SADF was sometimes.
Images: NASREC response, 1995 VMS Intake: My photos
We got to the ‘flashpoint’, and to this day I can kiss Staff Sergeant Diesel, who jumped up onto a Mamba Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC), two of which had been brought up, grabbed a loud hailer an told them calmly to go to Wit Command and then he quickly handed out a stack of application forms. His mannerism as a larger-than-life guy and likeability as a person immediately diffusing the situation as they all set off – either home or to Wit Command armed with the correct information.
The intake went on without any further incidence and I have the privilege of having the only photographs of this historic day. I asked VMS recruits what their expectations where, for many ‘white’ VMS recruits their parents (and fathers specifically) wanted them to have the military discipline and camaraderie they had experienced in the old SADF as a life purpose, the ‘black’ VMS recruits were different, they immediately wanted to sign up as permanent force members and make the military a full-time career – they saw the VMS system as a ‘In’.
The First Multiracial Intake: My Photos – Peter Dickens copyright
The VMS system of mustering also went ahead for the first multi-racial female intake, so as to address the balance of female personnel and officers, black and white in the Reserve forces, again I was proud to be involved in that ‘call up’ and again hold the only historic pictures of it. However, again, the general sense that I picked up was these women were holding out for full time military careers, but nevertheless it was critical that militarily trained females were sorely in need to modernise the South African military.
First Integrated Female Intake circa 1998: My Photos – Peter Dickens copyright
For the latter reason, the objective of the VMS was not initially met, many VMS service personnel, after doing their basic training, were in fact able to secure these permanent force contracts as the force experienced a contraction of trained personnel after 1994 and the VMS personnel proved an easy and trained recruiting pool. By 2006 the VMS system had all but served its role and was disbanded, the Reserve Force Regiments would recruit directly under a newly constructed training programme, and with that came the bigger changes that integration required.
Also, I don’t really want to hear the ‘it was the beginning of the end’ bit so many vets now feel, the SADF had to change, ‘whites only’ conscription had to change and Apartheid as an ideology was simply unsustainable and had to go. The SADF had to change – dividing units on colour and ethnicity was not practical, segregation had fallen on evil days to quote Field Marshal Jan Smuts. The Defence Force had to become reflective of the country at large – the extreme lack of Black African commissioned officers in 1994, in an African Defence Force nogal, was alone reflective of a system of extreme racial bias.
SANDF VMS Intake circa 1997, my photos
Remember, in 1994 nobody could predict the future, many held a belief that structured and balanced politics would happen, the Mandela Magic was everywhere, from 1990 to 1994 the violence was extreme and as a nation we had narrowly skirted ‘the abyss’ with a miracle settlement. In 1994, nobody foresaw Jacob Zuma and the ANC’s pilfering of the state from 2009, nor did they see the ANC’s extreme restructuring of the SANDF in their likeness, the ‘rot’ starting as early as 1999 when General Georg Meiring, a SADF stalwart and now the Chief of the SANDF, was dismissed on trumpeted up allegations of presenting a false coupe, making way for General Siphiwe Nyanda, a ANC MK cadre whose subsequent career as Jacob Zuma’s Communications Minister is a corruption riddled disgrace.
The MK Intake – 1994 to 1996
Finally on the 1994 line-up, the amalgamation of the Defence Structures with non-statute forces, the ‘Swart Gevaar’ terrorists. From 1994, 15 Reception Depot became involved to a degree with the mustering of ANC and PAC political armies into the newly SANDF. At this stage I was a SSO3 (Senior Staff Officer 3IC) at 15 Reception Depot and had the privilege to work closely with Sergeant Major Cyril Lane Blake, the unit’s Regimental Sergeant Major (RSM) who had been involved with the non-statutory force intake from an Intelligence standpoint. Mustering of MK and APLA took place at Personnel Services School, a military base in Voortrekkerhoogte and at Wallmannstal military base, many of these MK members were then destined to go to De Brug army base for training and integration.
Of interest was the intake itself, of the ANC Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) veterans, only half of them really qualified as trained soldiers, these were the MK members trained overseas – mainly in Angola, they were made up mainly of the old cadres (old guard) of Mandela’s period, trained by the ex-WW2 veterans like Joe Slovo, and they were recruited to MK after the Sharpeville Massacre (a very small contingent) and then the Seventy Sixes (the big contingent), those who were recruited after the 1976 Riots, added to this was a trickle from the 1980’s riots who made it to their Angolan training camps. Out of 32,000 odd MK veterans, there were only about 12,000 MK veterans who were accepted as proper military veterans (about half of them), the rest were ‘stone throwers’ (as some sarcastically called them) recruited rapidly into the ANC MK ranks in 1990 the very minute they were ‘unbanned’ and they just constituted political dissidents with little military experience if any and no formalised military training whatsoever.
Images: MK Intake into the SANDF issued with old SADF ‘Browns’ – Copyright Reuters, RSM Cyril Lane-Blake, my photo and finally ANC supporters appearing in ‘uniform’ as MK at Mandela’s inauguration in 1994.
Of the ‘Untrained’ MK veterans, many of these were the ‘MK’ cadres from the so called ‘self-defence units’ in the townships who had regularly gone about holding ‘peoples courts’ and sentencing people to death with ‘necklaces’ (placing a car tyre around the persons neck, dousing it in petrol and setting it alight).
Also, but not unsurprisingly there were MK ‘chances’ – people joining the intake pretending to be MK so they could get a ‘job in the defence’, BMATT (British Military Advisory Training Team), the British Military task force assigned to the integration, and even the ‘proper’ MK cadres themselves, had a heck of a job trying to identify these chance takers, and a great many ‘slipped’ through with falsified CV’s.
This would later result in what BMATT politely called a ‘hardening of attitudes’ in their report to Parliament, when it come to the way statutory force members viewed these ‘non-statutory’ force members and MK generally, an attitude which in my opinion is getting ‘even harder’ as the years go on as some of these MK vets really show their colours to all of South Africa – involved in corrupt and outright criminal behaviour, degenerating and demeaning themselves, their organisation and their ‘victory’ now well tarnished.
What amazed me was just how structured the MK was when it came to the their proper military veterans, I had been conditioned by the SADF that they were a rag-tag outfit and incompetent at best, but that wasn’t completely true, they had a highly structured command and very defined specialised units ranging from a Chief of Staff, Operations, Ordnance, Intelligence, Engineering, Anti-Aircraft, Artillery to Counter Intelligence/Communications (propaganda), and attached to nearly to all of it was a very detailed Soviet styled military Political Commissar structure. They even had unit designations, and many out of the half of them that had been trained, had decent military training.
I don’t want to get to the Pan African Congress’ APLA veterans, I was told they generally treated their SADF escorts with utter disdain.
Their problem (MK and APLA) is that they were asked to identify and verify all their members for their military credentials, and they quickly pointed out who was and who was not a trained military veteran, and this caused the huge division in the MK veteran structures we see today. The split of the Umkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans Association (MKMVA) and the MK Council recently is a case in point – the MK Council are the ones with the military ‘struggle’ credentials and the MKMVA have all the members who do not have any meaningful military ‘struggle’ credentials at all, they’ve all joined Jacob Zuma’s RET hence the reason the current ANC no longer wants to recognise them.
This makes me laugh uncontrollably when the MKMVA used to wheel out Carl Niehaus in his purchased PEP store MK camouflage fatigues pretending to be a military veteran, when in truth he is anything but one, and it makes me cry when the Department of Military Veterans squander all their time and money on the 12,000 odd MK ‘non-veterans’ trying to give them and their families un-earned veteran benefits and bring harmony to the ANC and they almost completely ignore their primary mandate – the 500,000 odd statutory force veterans, proper military veterans – solely because many of them (the majority mind) served in the old SADF and of that a great majority where conscripts.
In 1999, I was assigned to escort Joe Modise, the ex MK Commander in Chief, and Paratus (the SADF/SANDF) mouthpiece published it, yes, I admit it – I even shook his hand (we’ll there is a published photo to prove it – so no point hiding the fact), but again, at this stage in the SANDF we were still confident in the country, little did I know he would be dead two years later and embroiled in yet another ANC corruption and arms buying controversy. I did some more VMS work after that, but that signalled the beginning of the end of my service, reception depots had outgrown their use after 2002 and mothballed – in fact they are still mothballed, waiting for the day to muster the general populace in the event the country goes to war again.
Image: Joe Modise and myself – Peter Dickens copyright
Oh, and if this sounds a bit personal, it is, here’s a big “Fuck You” middle finger to the politically motivated pressure groups in ANC led government departments currently trying to delist the old SADF ‘conscripts’ as military veterans on the basis that they ‘served Apartheid’ and not recognising their role in bringing democracy to South Africa, whereas their ‘heroes’ in MK did. The historic record stands, there’s no changing it and as things go even this missive is now primary documentation for future generations of South Africans to read and assimilate – from someone ‘who was there’ and is a genuine ‘military veteran’ – true reconciliation comes with facing the truth comrades, just saying.
Back to PTSD
So, enough to do with the ANC and their Parliament of Clowns, the old ‘Swart Gevaar’ fast becoming a newly reinvigorated ‘Swart Gevaar’ of their own making and back to the serious stuff and all the ‘Wit Gevaar and Swart Gevaar’ from 1990 to 1994 forming my general mental mistrust of just about everything.
Whilst in hospital with Covid I had a psychological mistrust of efforts been made by Doctors, Nurses and medical assistants (Black and White), I was convinced they were out to kill me and efforts to pump lifesaving high pressure oxygen into me were met with an unnatural resistance and a self-induced gag reflex. To give you an idea of how bad this ‘mistrust’ was, if personnel so much as tried to ‘turn’ me to change bedding or wash me I would go into a panic attack, which resulted in rapid rapid thoracic breathing upsetting my body’s oxygen levels to the point of oxygen starvation and renal nerve release (I’d literally piss myself) – a simple ‘turn’ would become a life and death matter – and nobody could make sense of it, me included. So, in desperation .. enter stage right … the hospital Psychologist … and stage left my lifelong confidant, a solid Free State ‘Bittereinder Boertjie’ with the mental tenacity of a Ratel (an African Honey Badger) … my wife.
To define and understand PTSD, as it’s a much-brandished word nowadays with anyone having experienced a high stress incident claiming it, many using it as an excuse. PTSD is best explained a stressor bucket in your head, you’re born with it and its empty. In life stressful events are sometimes internalised and start to fill your bucket, your bucket usually makes it underfilled to the end of your life and you don’t have a mental meltdown and things make sense and you’re stable, the bucket is very resilient. What happens to military personnel especially is that the stressors they experience are often far beyond normal and it fills the bucket up at an early stage, right up to the ‘nearly full’ mark in some extreme cases, after some significant stressors are added to it later in life, anything really but usually the D’s – Disease, Debt, Divorce and Death. For Military veterans these ‘D’s’ can then ‘tip’ the bucket over and you start to psychologically have a meltdown. This is the reason why PTSD is gradually becoming more and more apparent in ex-SADF conscripts and PF members as they get older.
In extreme cases in the military, you can have that meltdown whilst serving, the old battle fatigue syndrome, repeated life and death experiences unrelentingly occurring end on end filling up the stressor bucket and finally your last one tips the bucket, produces meltdown and you’re withdrawn from the line. Refer to Spike Milligan’s autobiography ‘Mussolini, his part in my downfall’ of his time as a gunner in WW2 and you’ll see how this plays out in a serving combatant.
In therapy trying to get to the bottom on what initially filled my bucket up, and on this the Psychologist and my wife and I settled on ‘mistrust’ initially rooted deep in in my psyche whilst I was in the Army. Mistrust as I could not distinguish foe from friend, ‘swart gevaar from wit gevaar,’ and to me everyone was a ‘enemy’ – that enemy or ‘gevaar’ now included most hospital staff – black and white, and I was the only one who could fight my way out – no help required thanks.
To say my Covid condition was bad and a PTSD issue on its own would be an understatement, I had even died to be brought back with CPR on one occasion and knocked on the Pearly Gates a great deal more with more near death experiences than I can shake a stick at. I was intubated on a ventilator and placed in an induced coma for a full month. This was followed up with two collapsed lungs and a battery of deadly infections, two serious bouts of bronchitis and then bronchial pneumonia. To my knowledge, I walked into history as one of a mere handful of Covid patients to survive the disease with the number of infections and complications I had – 4 months in ICU, 2 months in High Care and another 2 months of Step Down therapy as I even had to learn to simply take a shit in a toilet and even walk again – a total of 8 months spent in hospital and a further 4 months as a oxygen supplement dependent outpatient, before been given an ‘all clear’ a full year later and taken off all drugs and supplemental oxygen.
This is pretty big story for another day, and a lot of people are very intrigued by it, so I am writing a book on it called ‘I’m not dead yet’ – my dark military sense of humour aside, do look out for it.
Images: Me recovering from a coma, giving my best army ‘salute’ just before both lungs collapsed and me sitting up for the first time once lungs drains were removed – copyright Peter Dickens
It took all that to ‘tip my stressor bucket’ – and no doubt I had a massive life and death fight on my hands, but I would have to say this in all honesty, I was substantially compromised by a latent mistrust I picked up as a young man in the Army, especially in 1990. Unlocking that, helped unlock the gag reflexes, which unlocked the fear and ultimately set me on a journey to a healthy recovery – physically and mentally.
Dragon Slaying
Many years after my service, a fellow military veteran, Norman Sander (and ex Sergeant Major in the Natal Carbineers) and I had lunch in London with an ex-BMATT officer, Colonel Paul Davis who had been involved in the South African Forces integration and at one stage headed up the BMATT delegation. He said something interesting, according to the Colonel, the South African Defence Force training modules where draconian at best and styled on the old Nazi Waffen SS model, which demanded absolute iron cast discipline, absolute obedience and absolute goal driven determination to function across multiple voluntary and conscripted outfits often ethnically separated. Notwithstanding his view, I’ve attested to this before, had I not undergone this “draconian” training as an SADF officer I would not have survived my Covid experience, no matter how bad it got I knew I had more in the tank, I’d pushed these limits whilst ‘pissing blood for my pips’ in the SADF as a young man and understood my breaking point from a early age, without this intrinsic knowledge and iron cast focus I would be dead, of that there is absolutely no doubt.
My Commission signed by President F.W. de Klerk, one of his last acts of office
In Conclusion
Now, I’m no ‘Grensvegter’ (Border Warrior), I’m a simple pen pusher, my service pales into insignificance compared to a great many veterans, many I’ve had the privilege to serve with, true soldiers fighting a brutal war in a brutal manner. Nope, I’m not one of those, and nor can I ever be, and nor do I pretend to be, to them the kudos of valour and I mean it.
Here’s a simple thought on my time as a Military Conscript and then a Volunteer, this quote from Czech author Milan Kundera and it resonates with me the most;
“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”
What this means to us SADF conscripts turned volunteers in 1994, we were on a journey, a ‘struggle’ if you will, to take our fellow citizens out of political oppression into political emancipation and liberty. If we forget our stories in this great struggle, discard them as irrelevant because we are no longer politically convenient, vanquished as ‘SADF’ baby killing monsters, and passed over as fighting for some sort of WOKE idea of ‘white privilege’ – if we don’t resist this and choose ‘forgetting’ instead, then we ultimately betray ourselves, we’ve lost.
On PTSD, it’s manageable for most, but you must get to those internalised ‘stressors’ and truly understand what they are and what caused them. Un-internalising the stressors is a first big step to ridding yourself of PTSD, and that’s why I can say in all honesty I’m happy and stable.
So, I thank all you who have made it to this last part of my ‘story,’ it really is a simple soldier’s small tale with a great deal of political ‘struggle’, and I really hope you’ve picked up some interesting historical snippets on the way, especially the ones which are not really in the broad ANC narrative today of ‘the struggle’ leading to 1994. The ‘truth’ will eventually ‘out’ and I sincerely believe that, and I believe its cathartic and from a cognitive therapy perspective a very necessary ‘out’.
A memoir: By Capt. Peter Albert Dickens (Happily Retired)
Here we like to keep those little inconvenient truths alive and put out a little perspective, this time on the fury around death penalty ‘executions’ during the Apartheid epoch. However this time we look at the ‘other side’ of the general narrative surrounding this subject, this looks at the ANC and their use of the death penalty.
On the 22nd August in 1996, seeking amnesty for its human rights abuses, the African National Congress (ANC) dropped a bombshell when it presents the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) with a 300-page analysis documenting the ANC’s uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) armed wing’s abuses during ‘the struggle’ period.
The document named thirty-four (34) ANC members who were executed by ANC military tribunals at their external MK bases in Angola. That’s more ANC cadre’s officially executed by their own hand than the Apartheid state managed to officially execute – almost three times as many … think about that!
What where these executions for? Most of them where cited as mutiny, murder and rape in Angola between 1980 and 1989.
ANC MK cadres in exile
As to ‘Mutiny’ Thabo Mbeki told the TRC that a serious mutiny broke out in Pango in 1984 with the MK mutineers using machine-guns and other heavy weapons to kill the camp commanders and other MK soldiers. A military tribunal was set up by the ANC’s national executive committee and 7 MK cadres who shot other cadres were given the death penalty and executed.
There were also isolated cases in which MK recruits were executed by MK after they were tried and convicted of crimes such as raping and murdering local villagers. Examples of this;
Thabo Makhubethe was found guilty of raping an Angolan woman. A MK military tribunal ordered that he be executed by firing squad. The sentence was carried out in 1984 in Luanda. In another case, Josiah Malhobane and Jeremiah Maleka indulged in heavy drinking in Milange randomly shot at shoppers at a local market, killing two Angolan women and seriously injuring another woman and child. They were executed by a MK firing squad in 1989 at Milange.
As to South African law and the ‘Apartheid’ state, no capital punishment was executed by any SADF military tribunal under ‘military law’ during the ‘struggle’ years. In terms of the Apartheid state and civilian law, a case of ‘murder’ had to be proven before a death sentence given – it’s why so many ANC cadres were given life sentences for high treason and not death sentences, it’s also the reason why relatively few MK cadres were executed by the state’s judiciary. In all the state officially executed 14 ANC and MK cadres, they were:
In 1964 and 1965, 6 MK men were executed – Vuvisile Mini, Wilson Khayinga, Zinkile Mkhaba, Daniel Ndongeni, Nolani Mpentse and Samual Jonas for the murder of a civilian who they alleged was a police informer and other killings.
In 1977, MK cadre, Solomon Mahlangu was executed for the murder of two innocent John Orr store employees during a shoot out with Police.
In 1983, MK cadres, Marcus Motaung, Jerry Mosololi and Simon Mogoerane (also known as the Moroka Three)– were executed by the state for attacks on Police stations and the murder of 4 Policemen.
In 1985, Benjamin Moloise, a poet and ANC activist (not MK) was executed for allegedly murdering a Policeman.
In 1986 MK cadre, Andrew Zondo was executed for placing a bomb at a shopping centre in Amanzimtoti which killed two adults and three children and injuring 161 other civilians. Alongside him two other ANC members were executed, Sipho Xulu and Clarence Payi – for murdering a famous ANC underground operative Ben Langa who they accused of being a government informer.
The last MK person to be hanged by the state was Jeffrey Boesman Mangena in 1989 for murdering a school teacher he accused of being a sellout.
There is also a thick irony in that the international community – including the United Nations, numerous civic organisations and even the ANC themselves called on the Apartheid State to remove the death penalty as unjust and save their comrades, at the same time the ANC was implementing the death penalty with impunity, free of any legal oversight to make their own rules and with no international or civic backlash whatsoever.
This is not a tit for tat saying – look at ANC they’re bad and the old Afrikaner nationalist government is ‘good’ – its not to say the Apartheid government didn’t kill, certainly by way of ‘execution’ many more MK cadres were killed. However these murderous ‘executions’ were done by clandestine organs of state operating outside the law in many instances – the military’s CCB ‘Civil Co-operation Bureau’ and the Vlakplaas C1 unit of the ‘Police Security Branch’ to name just two. The ANC in turn executed many civilians using necklacing and other methods under the guise of the MK’s ‘self defence units’ and their ‘peoples courts’ in the townships – unhinged from any legitimate legal oversight or international condemnation again. The net result, under the ruse of ‘Total War’ – both sides in this conflict were equally guilty of many, many transgressions of human rights.
The point, is that the ANC in modern-day South Africa like to see themselves as ‘roses’ in this struggle, they’ve positioned themselves as the ‘darlings’ in the fight for democracy in South Africa, some of these cited MK members executed by the Apartheid state are eternally celebrated in the media almost unrelentingly as national heroes .. and … nothing .. absolute crickets is said of all the MK members executed by their own hand, let alone the execution by MK (outside and inside South Africa) of innocent civilians – no visits to their families by well meaning ANC officials with apologies galore.
The truth is the ANC’s hands are as blood soaked as the old National Party when it comes to human rights abuses, and here’s the inconvenient bit – the old Nats are long gone, and the ANC continue to trample on our civilian rights to this very day as the country’s political elite and governing party; pillaging the state coffers, murdering one another over political appointments and government contracts and the likes of Dlamini-Zuma and Bheki Cele running the country like a Police State.
As to The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, whether the ‘truth’ ultimately set everyone free, including the ANC and its dire record of capital punishment executions, that can still be debated. However what is certain, as to Zaprio’s cartoon with Desmond Tutu, is that the gap between the ‘truth’ and that of ‘reconciliation’ is growing ever wider in South Africa today.
The big question remains for us as a nation as to who we should highlight as a war hero and who should we not – if not the ANC for helping ‘end’ Apartheid (an ironic case of an organisation steeped in human rights abuses ending a human rights abuser) – then who? To read an article on who and what qualifies war heroes for which we can all celebrate go to the following link; Tainted “Military Heroes” vs. Real Military Heroes
Huh! Since when are Nazis ‘left wing’? – they are almost always associated with the ‘Right’ or ‘Far Right’ as a form of totalitarianism in opposition to socialism and liberalism, and as to ideals of Libertarianism – that’s a ‘Left Wing’ concept in opposition to some form of conservatism on the right – right? – Wrong!
“You’re nuts” comes the universal chorus from the ‘Snowflake’ Liberals on the ‘left’ of me and the ‘Wingnut’ conservatives on the ‘right’ of me, but bear with me on this one, this comes from my Economic History university dissertation on ‘Communism versus Capitalism’ and the argument will become clear.
Modern politics likes to shoe in ‘isms’ in an ideal of ‘left or right’ continuum to make for ease of political thought – so in the United Kingdom for example you get ‘Tory’ Conservatives on the ‘Right’ and ‘Labour’ socialists on the ‘Left’, Tory Conservatives lean towards a Capitalism model and Labour Socialists lean towards a Communism model. Same Parliamentary model exists in South Africa – the ANC is ‘left’ leaning to Communism and the DA is ‘right’ leaning to Capitalism. Done – all clear, no debate. It’s an easy continuum, here it is:
So why socialism in the middle? Simple answer is the ‘role of state’ and in the case of political parties leaning towards Communism they see more involvement of the state in economic, individual and community affairs, whereas parties leaning to Capitalism see less role of the state in these affairs. In modern politics both ‘left’ leaning and ‘right’ leaning political parties see some sort of state (government) involvement in the socio-economic well-being of its citizens to a lessor or greater degree – depending on where they sit on the continuum.
Capitalism versus Communism
Lets pause and understand exactly what we are talking about between Capitalism and Communism and what the big differences are. Historically on the ‘far left’ sits the father of Communism – Karl Marx, and his book ‘Das Kapital’ and on the ‘far right’ sits the father of Capitalism – Adam Smith and his book ‘Wealth of Nations’.
Adam Smith and libertarianism
Adam Smith
In a nutshell, Adam Smith believed in the natural economic forces of demand and supply setting a point at which people freely trade with one another and some sort of barter or price will be agreed. His idea of state (government) involvement in this transaction between individuals or group of individuals is that it should be absolutely ‘invisible’.
Smith coined a term called the ‘invisible hand’ in which he outlines that natural economic forces will always guide a free market and it is the role of the state to provide the most fruitful environment to allow these natural economic forces to come together and trade, and nothing more really. The state is a referee in a game of economic rugby, that’s it – other than implementing law and order there should be minimal interference in socio-economic affairs and even individual liberties.
In this sense Adam Smith was a ‘classic’ Libertarian. The Libertarian concept begins with a conception of ‘Personal autonomy’ from which civil liberties are derived and a reduction or elimination of the state in those liberties is outlined. This is why libertarianism (epitomised by the statue of ‘lady liberty’) is so strongly associated with The United States of America and its enshrined ‘Capitalist’ model as originally outlined by Adam Smith.
Therefore ‘libertarianism’ is for the most part a ‘right-wing’ concept on the ‘left/right continuum’. The ideals in the USA on Gun Laws and the freedom of the citizen to own guns and resist government or state oppression is very much based on the American definitions of Liberty and central to their Bill of Rights.
It’s all Libertarian thinking, so next time some gun-toting conservative ‘Merican’ calls a liberal a ‘Libtard’ or a ‘snowflake’ – he is, most ironically, a liberal himself – in fact he’s exercising a supreme sense of Liberalism – in both free speech and his right to bear arms without state interference – which are all key concepts of ‘classic’ libertarianism.
Central to Adam Smith’s philosophy on the human condition is that it recognises that man is naturally competitive, the economic forces will aways strive to wealth creation and the advancement of the individual and therefore the society as a whole – man is naturally ‘greedy’, there will always be a natural sense of one-upmanship to drive a profit in the trading process and this in turn drives prosperity and wealth.
In the memorable words of Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street, “that greed — for lack of a better word — is good.” lies at the heart of capitalist society. The downside of this also results in social skews in capital ownership as more astute human beings in the negotiation process have an advantage over less astute human beings – this causes a wealth gap in an environment not fully controlled by the state and this is an intrinsic and at times fatal flaw of capitalism – and here is where Karl Marx kicks in.
Karl Marx and Labour
Karl Marx
In a nutshell, Karl Marx proposed that the ‘means of production’ should not be owned by the wealthy but by the labour that creates it. The idea is that people own their own Labour and should take out of the ‘means of production’ what they are owed to an equal value of the Labour they have put in to it. In this way profiteering and ‘class conflict’ is eliminated as wealth is simply redistributed back to the labourers in equal value to their labour input, the profit equally shared in effect.
It’s a utopian ideal where Karl Marx maintains that rich people and poor people want to work together for the greater good of society i.e. the community (hence communism) and in so eliminate ‘class conflict’. For his model to work Marx asserts that human beings are at their essence ‘honest’ and ‘earnest’ and in this state at all times, and by equalising everyone no individual person will be in a position to be corrupt or exercise any sort of one-upmanship over another (thus eliminating the basic premise of capitalism).
You can now easily see why ‘Communism’ has such romanticism to it, it’s a utopian ideal that assumes human beings are not greedy. It is also for this reason that Communism is intrinsically flawed, as reality and history have shown that man is greedy, and been ‘triumphal’ its as much part of the human emotional condition as joy, love and sadness.
The ‘state’ also plays a supreme role in dictating this ‘value’ outcome of labour relationship in Communism and individual rights are suppressed against those of the broader communal need. It is for this reason that modern societies which have driven towards Marx’s utopian ideal have so far failed – nobody is really prepared to give up their ‘Personal Autonomy’ as dictated by the rather ‘right wing’ classical ideal of Libertarianism and Capitalism.
So, the utopian ideal is really just that, and in reality its unattainable, but what of those societies who have had a crack at it, how did they fare? Here comes a raft of ‘isms’ including Bolshevism, Leninism, Stalinism, National Socialism (Nazism) and even African Nationalist socialism.
Nazism versus Bolshevism
Let’s look at National Socialism (Nazim) and Bolshevism (the Communist ‘Reds’) and Lenin, a Bolshevik (in fact he founded it) – where do they sit? Central to both these concepts is the ‘social hive’ and the ‘role of state’. Both Bolsheviks and Nazis believed in the concept of a ‘centralised’ authority to govern a socialist state.
Upfront, here’s the shocking news (to some) considering the degree of hatred between the two ‘isms’, they both complement each other on the continuum, they are ‘left wing’ and they sit here:
Central to both Nazism and Bolshevism is the idea of the communal hive. Think of this as a Bee Hive, everyone is equal to a degree except for the Queen Bee, who is not equal to anyone at all and is the ‘supreme leader’ in every respect. Injected with the ideals of ‘Nationalism’ whether Soviet or German, each hive is left with a unique species identity. The hive has a social structure and in both hives there are worker bees and drone bees, drone bees serve the supreme leader only – this would be the ‘the party’ elite. The worker bees are all equal and ‘honey’ is the ‘means of production’.
National Socialism (Nazism)
Both Nazism and Bolshevism have as their root – a utopian sence of ‘community’, so let’s have a look at why Nazim is at it’s very core a ‘labour’ and ‘community’ movement, and its all found in the name.
The full name of the party was Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, in English it means National-Socialist German Workers’ Party.
So what of this ‘workers party’ bit? The Nazi Party started out in 1919 as the German Worker’s Party i.e. Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or DAP with Anton Drexler as Chairman and Karl Harrer as the Reich Chairman. The party essence and cause in bringing a workers voice to disgruntled World War 1 veterans, especially as to their exploitation of their ‘labour’ by a capitalist elite which they believed sent them to war in the first place – in this respect the DAP was no different to that of Bolshevist Communists. The only area they really differed with Bolshevism on was over their central ideals of German ‘nationalism’ – known at the time as the völkisch movement.
Adolph Hitler joined the German Worker’s Party as its 55th member when it was a fledgling in 1920 and quickly became most active orator and chief of propaganda. Hitler preferred that role as he saw himself as the drummer for the ‘völkisch’ nationalism part of labour politics in Germany.
The ‘völkisch movement’ was the German interpretation of the ‘proletariat’ (middle class volk) and it had a romantic focus on German folklore and was defined as a ‘naturally grown community in unity’. It was characterised by a one-body-metaphor ‘Volkskörper’ encompassing the entire population.
In February 1920, Adolph Hitler proposed broadening the appeal of what was basically a Labour Party representing a disgruntled working class, to now appeal to the middle class by incorporating völkisch nationalism’ as a central theme to its socialist model. As a fire-brand Hitler initially wanted to re-name the party to ‘The Social Revolutionary Party’ but he was persuaded to add ‘National Socialism’ as a prefix to the ”German Worker’s Party’ and the National Socialist German Workers Party was born – Nazism for short. It was not plain sailing to incorporate völkisch nationalism into was in essence a Labour Party – the party Riech Chairman and founder Karl Harrer resigned in disgust.
So whats with ‘the ‘völkisch movement’ that it created such disunity in the original German Worker’s Party? Simply it also included the idea of ‘Pure’ Germans in its definition of the proletariat and this bit Hitler loved, he was later to write ‘Mein Kampf’ “the basic ideas of the National-Socialist movement are populist (völkisch) and the populist (völkisch) ideas are National-Socialist.” The ‘völkisch movement’ spun off a short-lived organisation called the ‘Thule Society’ and it was a member of this society Friedrich Krohn who designed the original Nazi Swastika.
Putting völkisch nationalism aside for a minute, as it is the key differentiator between the Bolsheviks idea of ‘Marx’s utopian idea of communism to those of Nazism. Let’s have a look at why Nazism has Communist leanings on the Communism/Capitalism continuum.
Arbeit macht frei
Adolph Hitler
The Nazis would never admit it as Karl Marx was Jewish, but at essence their idea of socialism carries all the hallmarks of Marx’s utopian communism. Like Marx, the Nazi’s saw ‘Labour’ as the path to Liberty – a grizzly reminder of this is the sign above Auschwitz concentration camp “Arbeit macht frei.”
Central to Nazi philosophy (and Communist philosophy) was their demand to “break the shackles of finance capital.” Expanding on this demand, the Nazis outlined that every citizen must productively work and their labour must benefit the whole community. In addition to this they demanded the abolition of ‘debt slavery’ brought on by capitalist ideals of ‘interest’. They demanded the nationalisation of key industries and trusts and that profits from heavy industries were equitably divided amongst the workers and they demanded expropriation of capitalist land without compensation for the ‘people’ and in addition the state take over all aspects of education. You may well agree that this is all very ‘Marxist’ in thinking.
As to their ‘utopian’ projects for good labour once the Nazis came to power, they implemented ‘Strength Though Joy’ which saw the German working class and middle class ‘people’ enjoy holiday and leisure opportunities which had previously been exclusive to the rich upper classes – these included sport and cultural activities, Alpine ski trips and even ‘Beach’ holidays on the Riviera. They famously came up with the ‘Peoples’ car for the masses to provide a state-supported car to people previously denied such an opportunity. This is now the famous Volkswagen Beetle.
They even built a gigantic holiday resort on the island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea – exclusively for the masses. It was designed to house 20,000 holidaymakers in simple 2-bed rooms but was stopped when WW2 started. So, happy worker bees all round.
Bolshevism (and Stalinism)
So how are the Bolsheviks the same as the Nazis? Like the Nazi’s their form of socialism is similar along economic principles and principles of governance. Where Bolshevism and Nazism both converge is on the principle of totalitarianism. With Karl Marx’s principles of Labour, Vladimir Lenin went further and proposed the idea of a one party state under a singular leader.
The ‘Marxist Russian Social Democratic Party’ which united various revolutionary organisations in Russia including the Bolsheviks (and Lenin), however it morphed and split to become The Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In this process Lenin was to play a key role.
Like Adolph Hitler, Vladimir Lenin was autocratic, narrow-minded and unbending in his views. Like Hitler had a utopian vision of a socialist German Reich, Lenin had a similar utopian vision for Russian socialism, and neither wavered in their belief of it, in fact Lenin (like Hitler) divided people into two categories, friend and enemy – those who followed him and the rest. Lenin (like Hitler) then went about forming a ‘cadre’ of loyalists around him – a political party elite.
Vladimir Lenin
One of the main points of Lenin’s writings was that a revolution can only be achieved by the strong leadership of one person over the masses. Lenin agreed with the Marxist idea of eliminating social classes, but in his utopian society there would still be visible distinctions between those in politics (the party elite) and the common worker. Here their ‘hive’ looks very similar to the German one.
When Joseph Stalin became the supreme leader of the Communist Party he was to build on Lenin’s ideals of absolute leadership. Stalin’s policy – Stalinism was to consolidate the concept of totalitarianism with Russian governance when he was elected as General Secretary in 1927 (as Hitler also consolidated totalitarianism with German governance when he was elected Chancellor in 1933).
Joseph Stalin
Stalin and Hitler start to look very similar when you review Stalin’s published work ‘Socialism in One Country’ and Stalin’s policies in relation to ‘Mein Kamph’ and Hitler’s published work and policies. In Stalin’s ‘Socialism in One Country’ the focus was on the implementation of a totalitarian state, rapid industrialisation, collectivisation of agriculture, elimination of enemies of the state and building a ‘cult of personality’.
Totalitarian policy, enemies of the state and the ‘cult of personality’ concept was extremely central to Hitler as well, so to the large industrial projects initiated by the Nazi to bring in productive labour from the masses. Nazism flirted with industrialists and private capital as a necessary means to building industry (and a war machine eventually) most notably BMW, IBM, Bayer, Kodac, Heinkel, Boshe – even Hugo Boss designed their uniforms, they were only picky as to which industrialists they used – choosing what they believed to be non-Jewish capital instead.
Stalinism was the same, Stalin flirted with industrialists and private capital to further his socialist goal – in the policy to accelerate the development of industrialization, Stalin imported materials, ideas, expertise and workers from Western Europe (and even the United States). Stalin even set up joint ventures with American private enterprises (most notably the Ford Motor Company), which under state supervision assisted in developing the basis of the industry of the Soviet economy from 1927 to the 1930s. After the American private enterprises had completed their tasks, Soviet state enterprises took over.
Nazism differed a little on collective agriculture and focused instead on expansion of agriculture to the ‘East’ to allow for more ‘living space’ and to feed the industrialised ‘volk’ of the Reich.
Enemy of the ‘People’
For Stalinism class conflict is key, the ‘enemy’ consisted of two broad kinds of class ‘the bourgeois’ (the intelligentsia and the owners of ‘capital’) and members of the working class with counter-revolutionary sympathies.
Both forms of socialism, Stalinism and Nazim dealt with their enemies of the ‘people’ in much the same way.
As head of the Politburo Stalin consolidated absolute power in the 1930s with a ‘Great Purge’ of the party that claimed to expel “opportunists” and “counter-revolutionary infiltrators”. Those targeted by the purge were expelled from the party, some were banished to Gulags (labour and re-education ‘concentration camps’) and some were subject to execution on trumped-up charges. Stalin passed a new law on “terrorist organizations and terrorist acts” which inevitably resulted in execution. Hitler’s ‘night of the long knives’ or Röhm Purge and subsequent policies were no different to Stalin’s.
Under the legislation many alleged anti-Soviet pretexts were used to brand someone a ‘enemy of the people’ starting the cycle of public persecution, often proceeding to interrogation, torture, deportation to a gulag or execution.
As with Hitler’s purge of Ernst Röhm and the Sturmabteilung (SA) the Nazi’s own mass paramilitary organisation, consider this; Stalin in his purge – with the exception of Vladimir Milyutin (who died in prison in 1937) and Stalin himself, all of the members of Lenin’s original cabinet who had not succumbed to death from natural causes before the purge were executed.
Socialist systems driven on various ideological difference whether German Nazi or Russian Communism all have in them this phenomenon to re-educate (and if necessary exterminate) anyone in their society not conforming to their idea of the ‘social hive’ or ‘community’. The Soviet system of ‘Gulag’ re-education/labour camps are no different to the early German Nazi concentration camps in their purpose (and as deadly).
Bourgeois capital under Stalinism and Nazism
Stalin’s Great Purge was extended to include all enemies of the Stalinist doctrine and this included the targeting his idea of the owners of capital i.e. the bourgeois and to settle Stalin’s idea of ‘class conflict’ between the ‘proletarian’ (worker) class and the ‘bourgeois’ (middle and upper) class.
Historians now estimate that nearly 700,000 people (353,074 in 1937 and 328,612 in 1938) were executed in the course of Stalin’s Great Purge’ with the great mass of victims merely “ordinary” Soviet citizens: workers, peasants, homemakers, teachers, priests, musicians, soldiers, pensioners, ballerinas and beggars. Many of the executed were interred in mass graves all over Russia.
Political satire of the time sees Hitler and Stalin in perfect step, tied at the hip politically their uniforms are those of impoverished proletariat and their militaristic totalitarian ‘isms’ in synch.
It is estimated that between 1941 and 1949 nearly 3.3 million people were deported to Gulags in Siberia and the Central Asian republics. By some estimates, up to 43% of the resettled population died of disease and malnutrition – that’s 1,400,000 ‘non believers’ in the glories of Communism – dead!
Hitler’s purge was also extended to include all enemies of the nazism doctrine and this also included the owners of Capital i.e the bourgeois – only with one very big difference, the targeted bourgeois and industrialists under Nazism were almost exclusively Jewish, as noted earlier Hitler had swung the ‘Pure German’ middle class (‘Pure’ German Bourgeois) to his side by building the ideology of ‘völkisch nationalism’ into his socialist worker’s party.
This meant that to German Nazism and Hitler all suffering of the working class (meaning the non-jewish German proletariat) was the fault of the Jews, the Jewish industrialists and capitalists had caused World War 1, Jewish Bankers had enslaved “good” Germans to poverty with finance ‘interest’, and Hitler would warn that World War 2 if it was to break out was solely the fault of Jewish Capitalists (and nothing to do with his Reich’s expansionist aims).
So when Nazi’s spoke of expropriation of capital and land without compensation, they really meant Jewish owned capital and land (think of this ideal as ‘Jewish’ Monopoly Capital similar to the modern-day South African derived ideal of ‘White’ Monopoly Capital as concocted up by a UK-based spin doctoring agency – Bell Pottinger). Under Nazism ‘the Jewish problem’ would see at least 6,000,000 Jews murdered and all their capital, wealth and land duly ‘expropriated’ for the ‘communal’ good.
Herein lies the key difference of Nazism and Stalinism, the Stalinists saw the ‘communal’ bee hive as a Broad Church, as long as people fell in line with the authoritarian’s ideal of a communist utopia they were let into the hive and could participate in the sharing of wealth and equal labour. If not, death awaited. The Nazi ideal the same, you could enjoy an equitable distribution of wealth in the hive if you were good in your labour towards it and followed the authoritarian’s ideal of the utopian community (the Reich), the only really big difference; No Jews allowed. Death awaited those not buying into the scheme, and this meant normal people not deemed ‘Aryan’ enough in the ‘völkisch’ ideology and Jews as an entire population without exception.
So, Nazism and Stalinism are basically the same at root values – economic policy, utopian ideal and political policy, the only BIG difference, the Bolsheviks allowed Jews into their social hive, in fact Jews played an active role in Communist sciences, technological advancement and industrialisation. To the Nazi’s this was unpalatable and it stood in stark opposition to their ‘völkisch philosophy – this is why they hated the idea of Bolshevism to the degree that they did, the Bolshevist socialist ideology threatened the Nazi socialist ideology at its very core – the advancement of soviet communism had to be stopped if Germany’s economic Reich and Aryan ‘white’ people where to remain ‘Pure’ and free of Jews.
Left or Right?
The Nazi war with the Soviet union was less about where they stood on the Communism/Capitalism continuum and more about race politics. In fact on the continuum they stand in the same place – socialists with leanings towards a utopian sense of communism. They are both LEFT WING.
So why the confusion? In essence the confusion as to Nazism as ‘right wing’ lies in a political continuum and not the great capitalism/Communism Left/Right debate. It lies with the idea of a dictatorship – which is ‘right’ to the ideals of a popular democracy on the ‘left’. Here is the political continuum as it stood before WW2, and America and the United Kingdom’s systems are placed on it for measure;
However, if you consider that Stalinism also subscribed to totalitarianism for its socialist state, then an argument can be made that one-party, supreme leader communism is also a ‘right wing’ ideology.
This gets even more complicated and confusing when you try to apply the ‘Democracy Index’ as outlined by the UK-based Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) which builds their continuum from left to right starting with ‘full democracy’ on the far left to ‘flawed democracy’ to ‘hybrid regime’ to ‘authoritarian regime’ on the far right. The EIU is confusing as it ranks Sweden, the United Kingdom, Denmark and Norway as the top full ‘democracies and they all have constitutional monarchs.
In the end both Stalinism and Nazism socialist systems left a wake of millions of dead and these ‘isms’ are inherently ‘evil’ in this very respect, yet there is a still a need to modern socialists to romanticise with Communism, Nazism given the outcome of WW2 is a modern-day non-starter – yet some of these socialist romantics are hidden Nazis – here’s why.
African Socialism
Prior to the collapse of Stalin’s Soviet Socialism in 1990, their ‘broad church’ beehive ideal extended into African communities as the continent started to break with its colonial legacy after World War 2. To African nationalists, the ideals of traditional 17th Century African monarchism and their communal agricultural economies fall in line with Lennist/Stalinist communism and to some degree with Marxism when the ideal of exploited African Labour is applied in the modern industrialist context.
The socialist ‘hive’ as practiced by the Soviets was exactly what was needed for many African socialists in their struggle against colonisation and ‘colonial’ agriculture, capital and industry after World War 2. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union) pact with African socialism even saw the Soviets train African ‘liberation’ groups in both ideological implementation and military overthrow.
All consistent with soviet styled communism, many examples in Africa since 1945 of one party states, leaders for life, dictatorships, nationalisation of capital, land appropriation without compensation and socialism, all with varying degrees of success, failure and war.
But what happens when you apply ‘race’ exclusion and ‘race capital’ to the concept of the African Socialist worker’s bee-hive as the Nazi’s applied it to their socialist bee hive? Enter, the Economic Freedom Front (EFF), a classic example of modern black nationalist socialist party which upfront have more in common with Nazism than anyone else and they sit on the continuum here:
So why is the EFF the same as the Nazis, they have self-proclaimed themselves as Marxist-Leninist?
Consider this in their socialist bee-hive, they are a populist ‘workers’ party (as the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei was), they have a ‘Commander in Chief’ in the form of Julias Malema as a supreme leader, and they have a cabal of party elite working towards the supreme commander’s utopian vision (exactly along the lines of both Leninism and Nazism thinking – queen and drones in effect), the marginalised ‘workers’ are promised equal ownership of capital and land – and if that capital is not freely handed over for the community good it will be expropriated and that there be universal land reform – these are the same ‘demands’ outlined the Nazis in their proclamation.
In addition the EFF match both the Stalinists and the Nazis on the militarisation of their party, like the Nazi’s had their own para-military force, the Schutzstaffel (SS), so to the Stalin with his party para-military force the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) – the EFF’s inner circle ‘security’ team have now also started to closely resemble original Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA) style ‘strong-men’ wearing combat fatigues, abiding military styled rank structures and openly carrying weapons.
Like the Nazi’s ‘völkisch philosophy, central to the EFF is a philosophy of ‘Sankarism’ – named after the black nationalist revolutionary who promoted black empowerment through wealth re-distribution of French capital in Burkina Faso during the 1980’s. Sankarism makes for some interesting and rather scary reading when parallels to Nazism and Stalinism are drawn, especially in Thomas Sankara’s ‘Popular Revolutionary Tribunals’ which included extrajudicial executions, arbitrary detentions and torture of political opponents (mainly those in competing labour movements and trade unions).
Yet the EFF has announced itself a “proudly Sankarist formation” according to EFF member Jackie Shandu, so if a lesson from history is be learned, it is a good idea to familiarise ourselves with Thomas Sankara, known as ‘Africa’s ‘Che Guevara’ and his ‘single authoritarian’ leader and one party state ideals, along with his ‘radical transformation’ of capital into impoverished black hands.
Thomas Sankara
Within Sankarism’s ‘radical transformation’ of capital lies the key point of departure of the EFF’s ideology from Stalinist, Marxist or Leninist Communism ideology, as it’s this point the EFF matches perfectly Nazism and National Socialism, and it’s simply because the capital in question is defined by ‘race’.
To the EFF, ‘white’ South African people are the source of all miserly to black people, whites are blamed for all war in South Africa, whites are ‘foreign’, they are ‘invaders’ and not of ‘pure’ African stock. ‘White’ owned capital serves only to oppress the black african proletariat, and therefore has to be redistributed – without any form of compensation to the owners or the financiers of that capital.
To the EFF, it is only by the expropriation of ‘white monopoly capital’ that the economy will be properly healed and the worker given equality for his labour. If ‘white’ South Africans object to this they must be annihilated – but not “just yet” whilst they still serve a means to economic transformation and only if they behave like ‘good South Africans’ in that transformation – and let’s face it, there is not really any tolerance or real place for ‘whites’ in the EFF socialist bee-hive.
Replaced the word ‘white’ and the words ‘white monopoly capital’ with the words ‘Jew’ and ‘Jewish monopoly capital’ and you have Nazism as outlined in Hitler’s Mein Kamph – pure and applied by the EFF.
In Conclusion
But … but … but … Liberals and libertarianism is also left-wing! – yes it is, but it is right-wing too, consider that the Communists sought to liberate people from the yolk of Capital (in general), the Nazi’s sought to liberate Aryan (pure white) people from Jewish Monopoly Capital and the EFF aims to liberate Black people from White Monopoly Capital – they are all ‘liberals’. Then consider the ‘classical’ Libertarianism of the likes of Adam Smith and subsequently his greatest disciple – John Maynard Keynes, whose Keynesian Economics takes the capitalist model into the 21st Century – the guiding principle here is Libertarianism – the ‘Lady Liberty’ which has seen in some great and very workable capitalist democracies. This is all very ‘Right Wing’.
On the great struggle between Marx’s ‘honest man’ needed for a Communist model to work and Smith’s ‘greedy man’ needed for the Capitalist model to work, it is the concept of striving for individual wealth enhancement which in the end has always won out in any economic barter – this basic human truth cannot be removed or overlooked.
The British government recently declared that the free market economy is “the greatest agent of collective human progress ever created” at the same time acknowledging that socialism had a place in welfare, education, health care and decent living standards for all its citizens – in the ‘Pure Democracy’ models like the United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland the free market economy drives the wealth necessary to sustain socialist welfare and most do it on the 80/20 principle, the 80% feed the 20% in need of state welfare via taxation.
Whenever socialist economic have been tried in the reverse of the 80/20 principle i.e. that the free market is capped by communist principles and capital ‘expropriated’ for universal use, then the 20% of the economy feeds the 80% in need of socialist welfare, and here we have historically seen abject failure in all economic markers and eventually economic (and political) collapse – and time and again Margaret Thatcher’s truism comes around “the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
The idea of ‘reappropriation’ (stealing in effect) other people money (capital) to feed a socialist model whose welfare proposal exceeds free market income is as old as Nazism, Leninism and Stalinism and all these particular ‘leftist’ ‘isms’ stand on the left of the Communist/Capitalist continuum. Also, in every respect these ‘isms’ have left millions of dead innocent people in their wake trying to either implement them or sustain them – which on the whole is a compete failure of the human condition.
As to this particular lesson from history, it is bewildering that ‘Communism’ as practiced by Lenin remains appealing, but completely jaw-dropping that veiled ‘Nazism’ is even allowed in any modern democracy, Nazism is despised in every single G20 country, except South Africa were its even represented openly in Parliament in the form of the EFF. True, its been skillfully covered over with the need to address ‘historical wrongs’ under a ‘Left Wing’ Communist banner, but I do wonder when that ruse will start to wear off and the truth exposed – with any luck without too much blood been spilled before we get there.
Colin Eglin, the long-time anti-apartheid campaigner and long-time leader of the opposition Democrats in South Africa has recently had a road named after him … but so what! Many streets and roads are named after various politicians in South Africa, especially the anti-apartheid campaigners in recent times … however, this one is different, very different.
Why? Because Colin Eglin Road is not in South Africa, it’s in Italy.
Most modern South Africans who can even recall him, just know him as part of the last vestige of ‘white liberals’ in a ‘whites only’ Parliament trying to hold the juggernaut of the National Party and its Apartheid policy to account. A tiny voice calling for full democracy in a sea of National Party (NP) rural ‘afrikaner-bloc’ gerrymandering which overtook him and pushed the ‘official opposition’ i.e. the PFP (now the DA) and the more liberal ‘english-bloc’ urban voters calling for an end to Apartheid into complete political irrelevance.
Note – this gerrymandering (the weighting and re-drawing of constituency boundaries to create a favourable political bias) which the NP used to destroy Colin Eglin and the PFP using the ‘rural bias’ is now happily used by the ANC and this last significant footprint of Apartheid has been put to good effect keeping the DA’s ‘urban’ vote ineffectual.
So, gerrymandering has resulted in well-regarded South African politicians been side-lined – what it did to the ‘democrat’ opposition bench then, it also does to them now. You may now even have to ask ‘Who is Colin Eglin anyway?’ and how is it that Colin Eglin became so revered that the Italians have named one of their roads after him?
That bit has a lot to do with Colin Eglin’s status as a military veteran and his tireless campaigning for South African military veteran recognition and the causes they fought so hard for in the mountains of Italy.
Now, who even knew Colin Eglin was a 2nd World War veteran? Let’s examine what drove this most complex war veteran turned political campaigner.
Background
Colin Wells Eglin was born on 14th April 1925 in Sea Point, Cape Town, at a young age he moved to live with his aunt, outside Hobhouse, Eastern Free State when his father died after a long illness. Colin attended the Hobhouse School where he was the only English–speaking pupil – “I found myself the only rooinek (red neck, or English-speaker) in the village school.” he later lamented and he very quickly came to learn of the ‘Afrikaner politics’ and tension between the National Party supporters of DF Malan and those of Barry Hertzog – politics which began to deeply affect him. It also him the rare advantage of being fully fluent in both English and Afrikaans.
Colin was a bright and highly intelligent pupil and he left the Orange Free State and attended the De Villiers Graaf High School in Villiersdorp where he matriculated in 1939 at the very young age for a matriculant – only 14 years old.
Colin Eglin during WW2
South Africa had gone to war when Colin matriculated, at 14 years old he was too young to join the army, so in 1940 (now aged just 15) Colin Eglin registered for a Bachelor of Science degree in quantity surveying at the University of Cape Town (UCT). In 1943, now finally at the recruitment age of 18 he interrupted his studies at UCT to fulfil Jan Smuts’ call to go to war, and he voluntarily joined the army.
World War 2
Colin initially became a full-time instructor in the anti-aircraft unit in Cape Town. He was then sent to a similar unit in Egypt and transferred to Italy in 1944 joining the 6th South African Armoured Division fighting in the Italian Apennines around Florence. Now a 19-year-old ‘rookie’ soldier, he was to be baptised in the last significant combat operations of the war and was front and forward in the South African assault on Monte Sole.
Colin Eglin had joined ‘D Company’ of an amalgamated Cape Town Highlanders (CTH) and First City (FC) from Grahamstown unit which had formed a combined regiment for service in the 6th South African Armoured Division.
The Cape Town Highlanders (CTH) and First City (FC), known collectively as ‘FC/CTH’ had just previously acquitted themselves very well under the command of Lt Col. Angus Duncan in the taking of Monte Stanco from strong German positions and at this stage the war had entered a static winter period before the next big push onto Monte Sole.
As Colin had completed four years university study at UCT in quantity surveying it was felt that he had sufficient qualification for ‘Battlefield Intelligence’ and he was put on a course to become ‘D’ Company’s intelligence corporal (the military – then and now – often displays this odd logic for placing individuals civilian qualifications for military needs).
Colin was taken to the ‘Pink House’ near Grizzana, a farm building that was also the operational HQ of ‘C’ Company for a crash course of two weeks training in ‘Battlefield Intelligence’ and then back to D Company.
‘D’ Company had its headquarters in a cluster of farmhouses, named the ‘Foxhole’, on the slopes of the mountain overlooking Grizzana. As it was in the line of fire of enemy positions, ‘Foxhole’ was a tough, cold and miserable posting. Colin found himself in a forward observation post (OP) located at the cemetery at Campiaro. The OP overlooked the town of Vergato which was the centre of the German defences in the area.
In the freezing weather, snow and mud guard duty and patrols by D company in the area were a miserable affair. Patrols were sent out at night, and they almost always hit fierce and lethal contacts with the German defenders. In these patrols and observations Cpl Colin Elgin became adept at map reading and at recognising, and noting, the sounds and sights of warfare.
Much needed ‘Rest and Recuperation’ (R&R) came around every two weeks when ‘D Company’ members would go to nearby Castiglione dei Pepoli, the South African 6th Division HQ was located there and they could shower, get fresh supplies and spend some time relaxing. Known to the South African soldiers as ‘Castig’ the town of Castiglione dei Pepoli was to become a central feature in Colin Eglin’s life for years to come.
The South African 6th Division in the town square of Castiglione dei Pepoli – 1945.
In the valleys around Monte Sole, between the 29th September and 5 October 1944 the Italian resistance kicked into action, this then spurred the defending German forces into an extreme action to control the area. They embarked on massacre, and proceeded to try to wipe out all Italian civilians around Monte Sole – resistance, men, women and children (all of them – it mattered not a jot). The town of Marzabotto alone commemorates the massacre of 770 individuals, mostly the elderly, women and children.
With the static winter period over, by the spring of 1945 the South African 6th Division could advance on Monte Sole. In April 1945 Colin Eglin joined a CTH/FC forward party for a briefing on the assault on Monte Sole by Colonel Angus Duncan.
Colin noted “In a few weeks’ time the Allied spring offensive would commence. The Sixth Armoured Division had been given the task of opening the road to Bologna. To do this, the Twelfth Brigade would have to capture the mountain massif formed by Monte Sole, Caprara and Abelle. The Highlanders had been assigned to capture Monte Sole. Suddenly that mountain we had gazed at all winter from a safe distance was in front of us. Forbidding, frightening, challenging. Casualties were likely to be heavy. Yet there was a sense of pride that our regiment had been chosen for this pivotal battle task, and quiet determination to show we could do it”.
The South African 6th Division attack in Spring 1945 was a two-pronged affair, the Cape Town Highlanders and First City (FC/CTH) were to take Monte Sole – regarded as the most formidable of the German Army defences, and Witwatersrand Rifles/Regiment de la Rey (another amalgamated unit) i.e. WR/DLR were to take Monte Caprara. The idea was to eventually push through and capture the crossings of the River Po and break out into the vallies and plains beyond the mountains.
Looking more like partisans than regulars, a First City/Cape Town Highlanders patrol sets out in the italian Apennines – 1945. SANDF Archive
To prepare for the attack on 15th April 1945, the German defensive positions were bombed from the air and shelled by artillery. In taking Caprara, the WR/DLR suffered heavy casualties right from the start and in desperate fighting which at time even involved hand-to-hand combat, they took the mountain. Counter-attacks by German forces were effectively fought off by the South African tenaciously holding on to their win.
Colin Eglin was assembled at the start-line for FC/CTH attack on Monte Sole at Casa Belvedere (two kilometers from the peak of Monte Sole). He had just celebrated his 20th birthday the day before.
Both ‘C’ and ‘D’ companies of FC/CTH advanced along two farm tracks leading up to the summit on Monte Sole. They re-assembled 800 meters from the crest of Monte Sole. The area was heavily mined by Germans, but despite this the South Africans of C and D company advanced under the command a 20-year-old rookie officer with only 12 days front line combat exposure. 2nd Lt. Gordon Mollett led the charge up the approach with only five men and ‘with total disregard for his life’ wiped out the machine gun posts on the crest of Monte Sole with the loss of one of his men.
So swift was the assault on the German’s position that they were completely unprepared for proper defence or the bayonet charge, and with that 2nd Lt Mollett walked into South African history with a DSO (Distinguished Service Order) for his actions and the rest of C and D companies of the FC/CTH took the crest and won the day.
Preceding the final attack on Monte Sole, Colin Eglin had been tasked to install telephone lines as far up the route as possible. Highly dangerous work, on his way up to Monte Sole the soldier walking just behind him stood on a German anti-personnel Schützenmine 42 mine. Also known as a Schuh mine (shoe mine) it is a simple wooden box with a hinged lid containing a 200-gram block of cast TNT and a ZZ-42 type detonator, and it blew off part of the South African soldiers foot.
Colin applied an emergency field dressing to his wounded comrades foot, administered first aid and called for a stretcher-bearer. Even with the threat of mines now highly apparent Colin and couple of ‘D’ Company platoons continued to press forward to the summit. Colin was able to get to the top and rigged up his field radio under fire, only to have its aerial cut in two by all the shrapnel and bullets flying around, thus rendering it useless. So he scrambled down the mountain to the HQ, it was here that he took in the news of the tragic death of his Commander – Lt Col Angus Duncan. He was killed the foot of Monte Sole when his jeep was blown up.
It is thought that the jeep carrying Lt. Col Duncan hit a mine, while other witness accounts suggest an artillery round fired from a German 88 mm anti-aircraft and anti-tank artillery gun across the valley hit the vehicle.
Officer Commanding First City/Cape Town Highlanders, Lt Col Angus Duncan, addressing his men before the assault on Monte Sole. He was killed shortly after this photograph was taken, while driving to his brigade’s position. SANDF Archive
Many years later in Peter Elliott’s interview with Colin Eglin (then Colin was 88 years old and this was his last visit to Italy), whilst the two of them re-traced the steps of FC/CTH at Monte Sole, Colin recalled how the strain of war impacted two completely different soldiers and comrades, Jan and Peter. Jan was a tough outdoors man, an extrovert and he relished army life prior to the battle. Peter was a indoors man, an introvert who just endured army life out of a sense of duty. During the battle for Monte Sole it was Jan, the extrovert whose nerves snapped, and he had to be withdrawn from battlefield. Colin found Peter, the introvert some time later still in his slit trench. He had been under intense mortar fire during a number of German counter-attacks, but remained resolute. He was exhausted but even cheerful and shouted across at Colin triumphantly, ‘Corporal, we made it!’
Even though the taking of the crest had been swift, the Battle for Monte Sole was heavy and hard going, in all FC/CTH suffered heavy losses – a total of 31 men killed and 78 men wounded. The extent of contribution of the two Regiments to the battle and victory can be seen in the bravery – in all twelve gallantry medals and awards were won.
The capture of Monte Sole by FC/CTH opened up the road to Bologna and beyond the Po Valley, within two short weeks on 2 May 1945, the Germans formally surrendered in Italy. For the South Africans it was effectively war over!
‘D’ Company FC/CTH HQ Melzo, Italy, a week after war ended in May 1945. Colin Eglin is fourth from right, back row.
But a new struggle was emerging for these newly minted war veterans, certainly for Colin Eglin. After the War Colin remained in Italy for nine months, he was stationed at Castiglione dei Pepoli, the town located near Monte Sole remained the South African 6th Armoured Division’s headquarters and it now became a depot and clearing station for the entire division (in fact the main South African military burial ground in Italy is located there). During this period, whilst waiting to be demobilised he undertook extra-mural courses in Archaeology and Town Planning.
The entire event had made an indelible impression on Colin’s soul, it was the Italian Campaign that was to deepen his commitment to democracy and liberty. Monte Sole was a shrine for him as he returned there on many occasions during the next sixty-eight years to stand gazing at the mountain where, as a young man, he quickly became an adult. During these trips he was also to build a lasting relationship with the towns-people of Castiglione dei Pepoli.
A military veteran’s legacy
In his autobiography, “Crossing the Borders of Power – The Memoirs of Colin Eglin,” Colin mentions the discussions that took place among the South African soldiers in 1945, whilst in Italy waiting to be repatriated to South Africa. Colin noted:
“The dominant view was that there should be a memorial, but that this should be a ‘living’ one that served the community, not merely a monumental structure. The servicemen, in overwhelming numbers, volunteered to donate two days’ pay towards what was to become the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital.”
The children’s hospital was to be built as a memorial to those who had contributed by sacrifice, suffering and service in the Second World War, the soldiers felt that children had been the innocent victims of the war and the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital was devoted to the relief of the suffering of children.
The building of the Children’s Hospital in Cape Town commenced in 1953 under the guidance of the South African Red Cross Society and remains a ‘living war memorial’ helping the most vulnerable of the community – our children – and Colin Eglin was to play a leading role in making it happen.
Colin Eglin speaking at the Red Cross Children’s Hospital in Cape Town on Remembrance Day
During his life-time Colin returned to the Italian Apennines and Castiglione dei Pepoli over ten times. For his work on Remembrance and maintaining the links of this part of Italy with their liberators – South Africa – he was even made an honorary citizen of the town of Grizzana Morandi.
But why was an opposition party leader elevated to such a significant position in Italy and not a government one? We all know the answer to that, as the Nationalist Party had no really sincere intentions on commemorating South Africa’s war against Nazism and Fascism in Italy, before and during the war they had supported the ideals of Nazism and Fascism. They were not going to change their stance on Britain, British Allies, Smuts, World War 2 or even Fascism. So this key task on building on the South African sacrifice in Europe, lest it all be in vain, was left to that part of the South African mainstream party political spectrum which supported Smuts and all the ‘liberals’ who went to war against Nazi Germany – and that part of the party political spectrum in 60’s, 70’s and 80’s was Colin Eglin’s turf.
The political path for Post War veterans
In 1946 Colin returned from the Italian theatre of Military Operations to South Africa, here he picked up where he left off and continued with his studies, graduating the same year with a B.Sc in Quantity Surveying from UCT.
He became involved in civic affairs and started the Pinelands Young People’s Club which helped set up a sister organization in the neighbouring Coloured village of Maitland. In 1951 he became chairman of the Pinelands Civic Association and was elected to the Pinelands town council.
The electoral loss of the Jan Smuts’ United Party in 1948 to the National Party and their Apartheid proposals sent shock waves into South Africa’s war veteran community. The war for liberty and democracy they had conducted overseas in places like Italy, against the same forces of fascism which had now come home to roost in South Africa. This spurred The Torch Commando in the early 1950’s led by Sailor Malan and Colin Eglin as a returning war veteran joined The Torch Commando and started to become very politicised.
The Torch Commando was the first anti-Apartheid mass protest movement, and it was made up of returning war veterans. It was primarily a ‘pro-democracy’ movement and was crushed by the National Party because of the military threat it posed – and it was done by using ‘anti-communist’ legislation designed to curtail any ideology in opposition to Apartheid.
The Torch Commando was linked to the United Party, who tried to leverage it for the ‘service vote’ and wrestle power back from the National Party. In 1953 Colin decided to enter in formal political party opposition to Apartheid in addition to protesting with The Torch Commando – and he joined Smuts’ United Party (Smuts had just passed away in 1950). Almost immediately he became the political campaign manager for his friend Zach de Beer who was the United Party (UP) candidate for the parliamentary seat of Maitland. Colin Eglin and Zach de Beer were to form a friendship and political bond which would transform itself into what is now the modern “Democratic Alliance’, of the two Helen Suzman would say “Zach was clever, but Colin was sounder”.
In 1954 Colin himself was elected unopposed as the UP provincial councillor for Pinelands. In addition to that, he became chairman of the UP’s Cape Peninsula Council and then in 1958 Eglin became the Peninsula MP.
By August 1959, following the United Party’s congress in Bloemfontein, Colin broke from the UP ranks, the new guard in the UP instead of following Smuts’ vision of universal suffrage and holistic reconciliation in South Africa, still humoured the more conservative elements of the party who wanted a limited franchise and some restrictive movements for South Africa’s black migrant working population – a sort of ‘Apartheid Lite’ if you will.
In 1959 this was clearly no longer the direction needed or in any way relevant for liberal and democratic opposition parties in South Africa. Colin was one of UP rebels who issued a declaration of dissent (the others included Zach de Beer and Helen Suzman).
Helen Suzman at a Progressive Party meeting
In November that year he was one of the 11 members of parliament who formed the nucleus of the new Progressive Party (PP). It was a bold move, it would ultimately spell the end of the United Party and the conservative element within it, also by fractionating the official opposition (the UP) it certainly bolstered the National Party. What it did however also do was draw the line in the sand of ‘white politics’ – on the one side, the whites who supported Apartheid and a whites only vote and on the other side whites who did not support Apartheid and wanted a democratic vote for all.
All through this Colin Eglin never wavered from his adherence to liberal, democratic values, he aimed to reform the system from the inside; and by balancing criticism of race discrimination with political pragmatism he sometimes found himself the subject of attack from both black and white communities.
The ANC would argue that by participating in the apartheid political system, no matter what his stance, Eglin helped perpetuate it. Yet by participating Eglin was also able to work against the Apartheid government machine and make important political gestures – such as his visit to the black activist Steve Biko, or sending ‘official government opposition’ delegations to promote the dismantling of Apartheid in the so-called ‘independent’ Bantustan ‘homelands’ and promoted dialogue with urbanised black leadership.
By 1966 Colin Eglin became chairman on the National Executive of the Progressive Party (PP) and in 1971 he became the party leader succeeding Jan Steytler. In an attempt to attract Afrikaners to the PP, he initiated ‘Deurbraak’, the first journal of verligte (enlightened) opinion in South Africa. Colin Eglin also initiated a dialogue between the PP and Black homeland and urban leaders. He was also instrumental in establishing Synthesis, a non-party political study and discussion group, which became an important tool for information and contact across the colour bar. He also held a symposium of 50 Afrikaner academics in 1971, from which a non-party-political movement, Verligte Aksie, was formed.
In 1974 the PP won six seats in the general election with the seventh coming from a by-election a few months later. In 1975 Eglin negotiated the merger with members of the Reform Party, which led to the formation of the Progressive Reform Party (PRP). In 1976 he called an Extraordinary Parliamentary session to discuss the Soweto Uprising and call for the resignation of the Minister of Bantu Affairs, M.C. Botha.
A combination of gerrymandering by the National Party and totalitarian crack-down by the Apartheid State of South Africa’s liberal ‘democratic’ politicians, gagging many of them by way of banning and sending many into exile after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, saw liberal politics in a racially segregated and conservative Afrikaner biased voting sphere become absolutely irrelevant – and the PP would eventually lose all its seats, except one – Helen Suzman – who remained a lone voice of official opposition to Apartheid in Parliament for many years.
Also for many years, while she was the Progressive’s sole MP, Colin Eglin acted as Helen Suzman’s link with extra-parliamentary activities. He travelled extensively in Africa, Europe, America and even China. During visits to 15 African countries, as official government ‘opposition’ to the National Party he met many heads of state to drive international opposition to Apartheid – and he did this using official and politically legal channels – without having to resort his party to violent opposition.
Criticism of the PRP by the National Party as they tried to brand then as a “Tool of Communist agitators.” was swiftly put in place by Suzman who said .. “it’s really a joke, isn’t it? Because, quite clearly, we are a party of real moderates. It just shows how little they understand.”
In 1977, following a merger with the Committee for United Opposition that had also broken away from the United Party the PRP became the Progressive Federal Party (PFP). By 1979 Colin stepped down as leader in favour of Dr F van Zyl Slabbert and became Shadow Foreign Minister, a post he would hold until 1986.
In 1986 Colin Eglin found himself at the reigns of his party again following the shock resignation of Van Zyl Slabbert from the PFP. Ironically van Zyl Slabbert had one crucial deficiency, which Eglin had in spades – staying power. Eglin, on one occasion described the pursuit of the liberal cause on the stony soil of South Africa as “the politics of the long haul”. And when Slabbert, despairing of making any change to the Apartheid machine quit the leadership in a fiery act of self-implosion it was again to Eglin that his shell-shocked colleagues turned to give the lead.
He remained party leader until 1988, however he didn’t have the best people skills to sustain this type of leadership. Affectionately known as ‘the Egg’, Colin Eglin had a sharp tongue and bit off many heads. His long-time colleague Helen Suzman admitted that his manner “put off a lot of people. Yet we all came back to “the Egg”, not only because he was a role model for progressives, or because of his intelligence and measured political judgment, but because he was a decent, very warm-hearted man, whom we held in great affection.
In 1988 his old UP friend, a veteran of democratic politics – Zach de Beer, took over from Colin as the newly elected party leader of the PFP. With seismic political changes on the horizon, in 1989 Colin Eglin focused on preparing his party enter into a meaningful role in South Africa’s democratic evolution, to do this he knew he needed other democratic bodies in coalition with the PFP – so he negotiated with the Independent Party and National Democratic Movement to bring together a new opposition to the National Party in parliament.
This resulted in the formation of the Democratic Party (DP) in 1989 and the dissolution of PFP. Colin was subsequently elected chairperson of the DP’s parliamentary caucus, and Zac de Beer took control of the reigns of the DP as leader.
Building Democratic opposition in a new epoch
In 1991, as the Democratic Party (DP) stalwart, Colin participated in the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) and served in its working group. Described by Nelson Mandela as “one of the architects of (South Africa’s) democracy”, Colin Eglin played a leading role in the drafting of the country’s post-apartheid constitution.
It was in CODESA at Kempton Park that Colin came into his own. It has been said that it was as though his life to then had been preparation for just this moment. Much of South Africa’s much praised liberal constitution is due to Colin’s clear grasp of the principles of liberal democracy and the constraints and provisions of those institutions charged with protecting and advancing these.
Colin’s negotiating prowess was recognised by Joe Slovo in particular and, when an impasse was reached, the two would get together and generally find a way forward and eventually, a worthy constitution was to emerge. His intellect, presence and engaging manner were recognised and respected by all in those crafting the new democratic Constitution and Bill of Rights in the tumultuous years of 1990 to April 1994.
Colin Eglin continued to serve in the segregated House of Assembly until it was abolished in 1994 after the historic democratic transition and vote in South Africa, and Colin then served in the multi-racial National Assembly as a DP Parliamentarian.
In November 1994, at the end of the first session of South Africa’s first democratic Parliament, a small group of Democratic Party MPs had lunch in Pretoria with President Nelson Mandela to discuss some challenges affecting the new legislature.
On arrival, in the dining room at the official residence, Mandela arranged the seating with this instruction: “Colin, you sit at the head of the table – you are the senior man here in terms of service.”
Mandela was giving recognition to a veteran anti-Apartheid stalwart, a person who had first been elected to Parliament fighting Apartheid tooth and nail some 36 years before this luncheon and a person whose Parliamentarian career would even outlive Nelson Mandela’s own after the luncheon was over. It was some acknowledgement to ‘the Egg’ and South Africa’s democrats and Mandela knew it.
In 2000, the DP merged with other groups to become the Democratic Alliance (DA), which survives as the current official ‘democratic’ opposition to an African National Congress (ANC) government.
Whilst in the DA, Colin turned his attention on the new ‘Nationalists’ in Parliament, where the Afrikaner Nationalists (NP) were his previous foe, the African Nationalists (ANC) were his next. To Eglin – nationalism almost always meant one-upmanship of one nation over that of another, he had learned a bitter lesson in nationalism and all its inherent evils in the freezing hills of Italy in WW2.
His foresight to NP politics then were as applicable to his foresight on ANC politics now. Colin felt that the ANC government should focus almost entirely on decreasing the poverty gap in South Africa – and in so do two things – unleash the forces of enterprise to reduce unemployment and focus government spending on housing and education … and not on self-enrichment – here he felt the flawed ANC driven BEE ‘transformation’ programs only served to transform a ANC political elite to a ‘super-class’ and the ‘under-class’ and poverty-stricken would simply be left behind. He also fought the ANC’s bills and amendments to press freedoms believing them to be “a cover up of corruption, incompetence and nepotism”.
In one his final speeches, Colin Eglin is nothing short of pure prophesy – consider this when he said “Ironically the (ANC) government’s Black Economic Empowerment policy has contributed to the widening of the (poverty) gap, by creating a new rich elite, often of persons with strong political connections, and by leaving the millions of impoverished out of the empowerment process. These factors are having an impact, turning people away from the values that underpin our constitutional system, and eroding confidence in our democratic institutions. They are driving people towards populism as a cure for their problems. In short, they are undermining our new democracy.”
Colin Eglin retired from the DA and opposition democratic politics in 2004 and in the same year was made an Officer of the Order of the Disa, conferred on him by the Western Cape Provincial Government.
In April 2013, the South African Government conferred the Order of the Baobab, Category II (Silver) on Eglin for serving the country with excellence and for his dedication and courage in standing up for the principles of equality for all South Africans against the unjust laws of the past.
Colin died at 88 years old on the 30 November 2013, his long time wife Joyce had died some years before of cancer in 1997 and he left his new partner Raili, three daughters and five grandsons.
As a leading politician and WW2 veteran of The Cape Town Highlanders (CTH), he was afforded a military funeral with draped coffin and the Guard of Honour was provided by the CTH. This short video captures his life and death and the respect he gained in opposition to the National Party and the ANC alike.
The peaceful road to democracy
Today, there seems to exist an opinion in the new political class in South Africa, that if you did not take up arms to fight ‘the crime of humanity’ that was Apartheid you were somehow derelict in your duty as a South African and somehow complicit in upholding Apartheid instead. This rhetoric is aimed at blaming white people for all of South Africa’s ills and demanding financial reparations from them. It’s an ANC and ECC narrative devised to whip up Populism and cover up their own inadequacies, crime and corruption – and its a narrative which is entirely misplaced.
The truth is that many ‘struggle’ organisations other than the ANC alliance fought against Apartheid, and not all of them had to resort to armed conflict to do so, Desmond Tutu and the Council of Churches, The Black Sash, the Progressive Federal Party, The Torch Commando, The Liberal Party, The National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), the United Democratic Front (UDF), the End Conscription Campaign (ECC), the Council of South African Students (COSAS), Jews for Social Justice, The South African Congress of Democrats, The Federation of South African Women. Temple Israel, The Boycott Movement, The Natal Indian Congress and many many more all worked within the confines of the Republic’s constitution and the law to bring Apartheid to an end.
This included South Africa’s white progressives and democrats – starting with the United Party in 1948 and ending with the Democratic Party in 1994 who felt that the system in the long run could be changed from within if they stuck to it and fought it tooth and nail. Here’s the inconvenient truth – they were correct, in the long haul their work was as effective in removing Apartheid as any armed struggle, if not more so. Bold statement but its the real truth.
The truth of the matter is that an armed struggle did not really end Apartheid, the ballot did. There was no MK led ‘military victory parade’ over defeated SADF/SAP forces – and that’s because there was no military victory. The victory in the end was a moral one, and it was one in which democracy loving white South African’s played a key role – the first time white people were given a proper representative vote since 1948 (without National Party gerrymandering of proportional representation playing any factor whatsoever) occurred in 1992. The ‘white’ electorate calmly, with no overt pressure whatsoever voted Apartheid OUT and voted a full and representative democracy for all South Africans IN – and the did that in the Yes/No referendum of 1992 – two years before the so-called ’94 miracle’ – and they voted for Colin Eglin’s ‘democrats’ and enlightened National Party ‘progressives’ who backed the ‘Yes’ vote by a majority of 70% – that is a truth.
Without this ‘YES’ vote the CODESA negotiations would have been scrapped and South Africa would have continued on its ‘Apartheid’ trajectory – fact. It was white people using the peaceful means of the ballot which ended Apartheid and not the ‘armed struggle’, and they used it within the Apartheid ‘whites only’ parliamentary process – fact. Colin Eglin, Zach de Beer, Helen Suzman and the DP played a key role in this referendum and their life’s work ultimately ended Apartheid – without firing a shot – fact.
Who do you think you are!
If you had to play a game of heritage along the lines of the BBC’s ‘who do you think you are’, the DA’s political pedigree starts with Smuts’ United Party and the war veterans like Colin Eglin who fought for liberty and freedom and returned to South Africa only to become politicised when the National Party came to power in 1948. This is the epicentre of the DA’s beginning, a proud cocktail of the ‘democratic’ fight against Nazism, Fascism Apartheid and Nationalism. Colin Eglin is the ‘golden thread’ that links the DA to its wartime beginning and its modern values.
In July 2018, the townspeople of four villages in the mountains Italian Apennines acknowledged Colin Eglin, for his work in keeping the sacrifice of South African in Italy alive and relevant in South Africa. For his work in creating a living war memorial to the children in South Africa, for his ties and diplomacy with the Italy authorities looking after the South African war dead and keeping their legacy alive in the years of Apartheid’s isolation and for his tireless political work to bring peace and democracy to South Africa.
The unveiling ceremony was attended by Mayors of the surrounding Italian towns in the Apennines where the South Africans fought, Italian Military and Police officials, the South African Ambassador to Italy, and the South African National Defence Force Military Attaché to Italy all attended. In addition, 73 years on, the extreme gratitude of the Italian people (including their modern-day children) to the South Africans is still palatable – and it is all in honour of South African sacrifice and the values of the men who brought liberty to this far-flung part of Italy.
In addition to the named road, the town of Castiglione dei Pepoli has a war museum dedicated to the South African 6th Armoured Division, and a special display is in the museum to Colin Eglin and his long-time association with the town’s remembrance and historical preservation of South Africa’s fight against Nazism and Fascism – in his capacity of a long time South African MP and as a veteran of the Battle of Monte Sole himself.
Display dedicated to Colin Eglin at the war museum in Castiglione dei Pepoli, Italy.
In conclusion
The ‘Egg’ literally epitomised the road to democracy in South Africa. A road is anything that connects two points and Colin Eglin Road in Italy connects South Africa with Castiglione dei Pepoli in Italy, and under the title ‘Colin Eglin’ is a description in Italian ‘uomo di pace’ meaning ‘a man of peace’ – and nothing could be more descriptive of Colin Eglin and his politics.
He was a man who had seen war and chose to use peaceful means to fight Afrikaner Nationalism and Apartheid and won, eventually becoming a founding father of South Africa’s democratic constitution – a true democrat in every sense. South Africa now has a strong set of multi-racial democrats in the form of the DA still holding African Nationalism (now in a state of racial reverse) in South Africa to account, and it’s all a result of the road Colin took.
It’s highly appropriate that a road is now named after him where his political journey started, in the midst of the mud, death and misery of Smuts’ war against despot nationalism and the South African sacrifice to rid the world of it – and it really is a very long road which begins in the mountains of Italy and continues to South Africa, even to this very day.
Large reference and thanks to Peter Elliott and his article and photographs in the Military History Journal, Vol 16 No 2 – December 2013 ‘FOREVER A PIECE OF SOUTH AFRICA’ A return to the area of Monte Sole in the Italian Apennines By Peter Elliott.
References also include ‘Tony Leon remembers great soldier Colin Eglin’ by Tony Leon Colin Eglin’s speech Presented to the Cape Town Press Club A TRIBUTE TO COLIN EGLIN – HELEN SUZMAN FOUNDATION – Peter Soal , December 2013
My sincere thanks to the curators of the South African Military Museum at Castiglione dei Pepoli for the personal tour, insights and assistance, especially to Mauro Fogacci.
The bomb that went off in downtown Johannesburg on 24th April 1994 was (and still is) regarded as the largest act of bombing terrorism in Johannesburg’s history’. It was part of a bombing spree focussed mainly around Johannesburg which left 21 people dead and over 100 people with injuries between April 24 and April 27, 1994. The worst and most deadly campaign of terrorist bombings in the history of the city. But few would recognise it as such – why?
Bree Street bomb aftermath Johannesburg – 1994
Earlier in the ‘Struggle’ for democracy in South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC)’ bombed a SAAF office target located in the Nedbank Plaza on 20th May 1983 in Pretoria, which was prematurely triggered on Church Street killing 19 and injuring 217 – mostly civilians. This bomb is regarded as ‘the largest act of bombing terrorism in Pretoria’s history’, it’s annually remembered in stoic disgrace by the SADF veterans and victims and celebrated unabashed in public by the ANC and their MK veterans organisation.
So why does this bomb in Bree Street and its related bombing spree in Johannesburg not receive the same nation-wide annual recognition, social reaction and all the indignation that comes with it? By all accounts the bombs in Johannesburg were placed with as much animosity and intent as the Pretoria bomb, the Bree Street bomb in downtown Johannesburg alone caused massive devastation and carried with it the same conviction and hatred to kill both the targets and innocent civilians alike on an epic and indiscriminate scale. This act of terrorism remains the single biggest event of its kind that Johannesburg has ever experienced, before or since – yet there is a general public conviction to just forget about it – and generally speaking that’s exactly what has happened over time. Why?
Simply put, because it was not the ANC who did it, it’s not really part of the ‘Black’ freedom struggle and the attacks had nothing to do with the ‘Apartheid’ state trying to remain in power – in fact it had more to with the Apartheid State trying to vote itself out of power. It also did not involve MK and the ‘struggle heroes’ fighting against these acts of terrorism and insurgents to secure the path to democracy in any way whatsoever, instead it involved the statutory forces of the SAP and the SADF fighting against this insurgency. This particular ‘terrorist’ organisation was on its own ‘struggle’ mission for recognition and liberty of its people – it was the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB), part of the ‘Boere’ (white farmer) community – and who really cares for them in today’s South Africa? Well, … we should.
This insurgent bombing campaign, the in’s and out’s of it is not even fully understood today, and it can safely be said that most of South Africa’s new generation (Born Free) are generally oblivious of this armed insurgency campaign and just how close the country came to all out war on this particular front. The inconvenient truth in this campaign is that this particular percipient to ‘all out war’ in South Africa did not come from the ‘Black’ liberation movements, it came from a ‘White’ supremacy movement. In the lead up to the elections, the period from 1990 to 1994, this particular organisation, the AWB – was more of a threat to the old ‘white’ government and its statutory forces (SADF and SAP) than any of the black ‘Liberation Movements’ could ever aspire to, and that’s a fact.
Downtown Johannesburg after the AWB Bree Street blast
So, with the ‘neo-Nazi’ AWB show-boating and its old leader Eugène Terre’Blanche now all but gone from the public eye and with the illusion of a ‘rainbow nation’ now starting to unbundle in South Africa with the ‘land debate’ we can now remove the rose-tinted glasses – and let’s have a proper look at this AWB led pre-1994 election campaign and really understand it. When reviewing it let’s really understand just how violent it was, and let’s also especially look at the ‘resolve’ of this movement’s ability to resort to deadly armed resistance for their ‘freedom,’ protection of their culture and their sense of ‘volk’.
Prelude
In the lead up to the 1994 elections and over the period of the CODESA and other peace negotiations starting in 1990, the far right-wing was involved in various forms of political protest, much of it violent. In 1990, following FW de Klerk’s speech unbanning the ANC and other political organisations, members of the Conservative Party (CP) threatened mass demonstrations and strike action led mainly by Afrikaner whites.
Starting from February 1990, some 2,000 odd AWB and Boerestaat Party members marched to protest the unbanning of the ANC, 5,000 AWB supporters marched in Klerksdorp. The largest demonstration was held on 26 May 1990 when approximately 50,000 protesters gathered at the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria and were urged to fight to restore what the government had ‘unjustly given away’. In 1991 farmers blockaded the city of Pretoria.
Realising these peaceful actions were side-lined in the greater scheme of the advance to a negotiated South African settlement, and that the demand for a ‘Boere-staat’ – a free state or ‘homeland’ of Afrikaner autonomy for the ‘Boere’ (white farmers) within South Africa was not going to materialise in any meaningful way – the protest actions became far more sinister and deadly as factions within the right-wing took on a much more organised and orchestrated form of armed and very violent struggle. ‘Land’ and the securing of the future of white owned farm land became the central concern and rally point for armed resistance.
The AWB formalised para-military units and weapons training bases and programs, they even began stockpiling weapons and explosives.
The turning point
On the 9th August 1991 things came to a head in what would become known as ‘The Battle of Ventersdorp’. The National Party’s meeting in Ventersdorp was violently disrupted by the AWB, and this event brought the South African Police and AWB into head-long conflict. South Africa’s Defence and Police structures and personnel now had to deal with this added, rather violent, dynamic to an already feuding and violent ethnic and political landscape.
Of concern to the ANC and the National Party was where ‘loyalty’ lay in the SAP and SADF and whether white members of the statuary forces would side with the far right-wing and enact a coup d’etat (armed overthrow of the government) and derail the peace negotiations.
This ‘loyalty’ issue was quickly cleared up as is shown in this iconic image by Ian Berry, as white South African Policemen clashed with white AWB members. It proved a deadly clash, in all thee AWB members and one passer-by were killed. In addition 6 policemen, 13 AWB members and 29 by-standing civilians were injured.
It was also clear to many in the AWB that this was now going to become an armed struggle against the country’s statutory forces, the AWB now had its first ‘martyrs’ to their struggle and even issued ‘Battle of Ventersdorp’ pins as a sort of medal to be worn with pride by members who participated in the ‘battle’.
Attacks leading up to the AWB Election Bombings
In the lead up to the Battle of Ventersdorp and the pre-election Johannesburg bombings the Human Rights Commission reported that various far right-wing clashes and attacks around the country had resulted in the deaths of twenty-six people and the injury of 138. More than 33% of these attacks took place in the PWV (Gauteng) area, although the largest number of fatalities occurred in the Orange Free State and Natal.
The Human Rights Commission also noted a number attacks in the 1990’s carried out by the right-wing in ‘Western Transvaal’ area (which began as an epicentre of their armed operations). These started as random assaults motivated primarily by racism but gradually became more coordinated attacks – especially around issues of land ownership.
One such coordinated attack in the Western Transvaal was a prelude to using planted bombs as method of attack, when a non-racial private school in Klerksdorp was bombed with no fatalities and only building damage. The AWB member responsible – Johan de Wet Strydom later applied and received amnesty for it from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
Later, the World Trade Centre in Kempton Park where the CODESA negotiations were taking place was violently occupied by armed members of the right-wing Afrikaner Freedom Front (AVF) and AWB on the 23rd June 1993, fortunately with no fatalities and injuries. The invasion started with a AVF peaceful protest outside – even festive, with families in attendance and braai’s set up. However, the mood changed for the worse when members of Eugene Terre’Blanche’s personal bodyguard wing, the Ystergarde (Iron Guard) began rocking cars; and many were carrying firearms and other weapons.
Eugene Terre’Blanche and his personal bodyguard at the World Trade Centre CODESA protest
A ‘Viper’ armoured vehicle was then used to crash through the glass windows of the World Trade Centre allowing supporters, carrying firearms and chanting “AWB”, to invade the premises. The AWB and other Right Wing political groupings occupied the building listing demands and courting media interviews and then peacefully left it. However this action was foreboding of more violent things to come.
On the 12th December 1993, 9 AWB members murdered 6 black people and assaulted more when they set up a ‘false’ road block – allegedly to search vehicles at Radora Crossing on the Krugersdorp – Ventersdorp Road. The people murdered admitted they were ANC members when questioned under duress and then they were shot and left in a ditch.
Then, on the 11th March 1994 the Bophuthatswana crisis erupted and the AWB saw an opportunity for a coalition with Lucas Mangope in his quest to keep the region independent of South Africa and to boycott the 1994 elections. Violent protests immediately broke out following President Mangope’s announcement on March 7 that Bophuthatswana would boycott the South African general elections. These escalated into a civil service strike and a mutiny in the local armed forces – the Bophuthatswana Defence Force (BDF) which was led and reinforced by 4,500 Volksfront members, a mutiny which was further complicated by the arrival of armed columns of 600 AWB members, arriving in Bophuthatswana ostensibly seeking to preserve the Mangope government and support the Volksfront Commando members in leading the Bophuthatswana Defence Force’s coup d’etat.
The Bophuthatswana Defence Force mutineers where not happy with arrival of AWB and Eugene Terre’Blanche specifically as it was going to complicate their cause and insisted that the AWB leave. Whilst negotiating their departure several civilians were injured by AWB forces, who fired upon looters taking advantage of the chaos and passerby alike. The predominantly black Bophuthatswana Defence Force, agitated by their superiors’ inability to control the white gunmen, threatened to attack both of the Afrikaner militias.
In a filthy mood, the AWB pulled out of Bophuthatswana, and driving recklessly through Mafikeng and downtown Mmabatho, some AWB fighters continued to shoot black citizens in the street, killing at least two. Crowds of angry Bophuthatswana residents, eventually moved to block the convoy’s way. An AWB member with an automatic weapon fired several rounds over their heads to disperse the human roadblock.
The single most memorable and publicised event of the conflict was the killing of three wounded AWB members who were shot dead at point-blank range in front of journalists by a Bophuthatswana Police Constable named Ontlametse Menyatsoe.
Three wounded AWB members surrender before they were executed in front of the world’s media by Ontlametse Menyatsoe
AWB Colonel Alwyn Wolfaardt, AWB General Nicolaas Fourie and AWB Veldkornet Jacobus Stephanus Uys were driving a blue Mercedes at the end of convoy of AWB vehicles that had been firing into roadside houses. Members of the Bophuthatswana Defence Force returned fire injuring all the occupants. They surrended and pleaded for their lives in front of the world’s media and cameramen, when suddenly Menyatsoe, in a bitter rage, shot the three wounded men dead at point blank range with a R4 assault rifle.
The chaos lasted for about four days and the South African Defence Force (SADF) responded by deposing of President Mangope and restoring order in Mafikeng on the 12th March 1994. In all the Volksfront lost one man killed, the AWB suffered 4 killed and 3 wounded and the BDF lost 50 killed and 285 wounded (reference TRC hearings).
SADF members round up looters in Mafikeng during the attempted BDF uprising in 1994 and bring peace to the streets
The killing of the three AWB men execution style in front of the media and the violent attempted mutiny was significant. In the AWB case it drove home to members just what a hard road resisting the 1994 elections was going to be, and in the case of Bophuthatswana, which now makes up most of the ‘North West Province’ this mutiny and power struggle in 1994 is very much still the underpinning reason behind all the current violence South Africa is experiencing in this province in 2018.
The AWB 1994 Election Bombing Campaign
The 1994 elections were scheduled to start on the 27th April 1994 and would last till the 29th April 1994. The AWB 1994 election bombing campaign began in earnest on the 14th April 1994 explosions at Sannieshof in the Western Transvaal involving ‘brother’ members of the Boere Weerstandsbeweging (BWB), this was followed by an explosion at the offices of the International Electoral Commission’s (IEC) at Bloemfontein, a fire bombing at the Nylstroom telephone exchange on 22nd April 1994 and a further explosion at the Natref oil pipeline between Denysville and Viljoensdrif in the Northern Free State.
Then, as the election campaigning was ending, on Sunday the 24 April 1994 a AWB insurgent cell placed a very large car bomb which was planted in the Johannesburg city centre. The Bree Street bomb was built into an Audi driven into place with the intention of targeting ‘Shell House’, the building which then housed the ANC’s head office. The car had been borrowed from a friend, an innocent Ventersdorp resident (who had in fact attempted to get his car back from the bombers on the day it was used for the bombing).
The thunderous blast of a 150 pounds of explosives set off at 09:50 am left a waist-deep crater in the street about midway between the national and regional headquarters of the African National Congress, shattered glass and building structures for blocks and lacerated scores of passers-by on the quiet Sunday streets and residents in the surrounding high-rise buildings. It was the deadliest blast of its kind in South Africa since 1983.
SADF Lance Corporal stands guard at the site of the Bree Street bombing as workers clean up
A total of 7 people were dead in Bree Street, mostly by-standers and civilians from all racial and ethnic groups, including Susan Keane, an ANC candidate for the provincial legislature in the Johannesburg region, who bled to death after the bomb concussion hit her car, which was stopped nearby. In addition to Susan Keane, the dead included the following; Jostine Makho Buthelezi; Makomene Alfred Matsepane, Goodman Dumisani Ludidi, Gloria Thoko Fani, Peter Lester Malcolm Ryland and one unidentified man.
92 people in total were injured. The only reason behind the low death toll is that the bomb went off (and was planned) for a Sunday when the streets were relatively empty. Even though it was a Sunday, members of the Army, SAP and especially SADF Medics quickly moved in to secure the bomb blast area and treat the wounded.
Note: the witness account in this CNN news insert of the car being searched by the Police before the blast was later found to be inaccurate by the TRC – another car had been searched.
The AWB bombing campaign continued at pace, the very next day on April 25 a bomb was placed in a trailer allegedly belonging to Eugene Terre’Blanche (the AWB later claimed it had lost the trailer during its disastrous Bophuthatswana campaign). The Trailer was towed to Germiston where it was left and then detonated in Odendaal Street near the taxi rank at about 8.45am. Again civilian by-standers took the toll, 10 people were killed and over 100 injured.
The dead were identified as Piet Mashinini, Phillip Nelaphi Nkosi, Mbulawa Jonathan Skosana, Lucas Shemane Bokaba, Gloria Khoza, Fickson Mlala, Mbereyeni Maracus Siminza, Paul Etere Ontory, Thulani Buthelezi and Thoko Rose Sithole.
Again, members of the SADF, SAP and Medical Services quickly moved in to secure the bomb blast area and treat the wounded.
Later in the day on April 25 at 11.45am, a pipe bomb detonated at a taxi rank on the Westonaria-Carletonville road, injuring 5 people. Earlier, at about 7.45am, a pipe bomb went off at a taxi rank on the corner of Third and Park streets in Randfontein, injuring 6 people.
At 8.30pm on the same day, a pipe bomb attack at a restaurant on the corner of Bloed Street and 7th Avenue in Pretoria killed 3 and injured 4. The dead were identified as Joyce Baloyi, Samuel Masemola and one man remains unidentified.
One bomb attack was foiled when AWB member Johannes Olivier, received his instructions and attempted to discharge a bomb in the district of Benoni and Boksburg. However, he was arrested before the bomb could be discharged after he was stopped and his car searched at a formal SAP/SADF roadblock.
The AWB bombing campaign was so impactful it prompted Nelson Mandela to placate the fears of a ‘white voters ahead of the elections by pleading to whites not to listen to the “prophets of doom” who predict a post-election orgy of black reprisal and property confiscation. He said “Nothing is going to happen to the property of any family, black or white,” he vowed this before 100,000 of his supporters at an election rally dismissing the far right-wing’s claims that blacks were preparing to invade the homes of the white privileged.
Armed SADF guards a election booth behind razor wire in downtown Johannesburg, a newly enfranchised South African points the way to the booth
To prevent more bomb-blasts in Johannesburg’s city centre on the election day and the lead up to it, Johannesburg’s city centre was locked down by the SADF using reams of razor wire and armed guards. The election booths themselves in the high density parts of the city became small fortresses with a heavy armed SADF presence, all done so people in the city centre could vote in the full knowlege they were safe to do so.
Then, just two short days later, on the Election Day itself, 27th April 1994 the final AWB election campaign attack came in the form of a car bomb at the then Jan Smuts International Airport (now OR Tambo International). The bomb was placed at this high-profile target so as to create fear on the Election Day itself. The blast left the concourse outside the airport’s International Departures terminal damaged along with a number of parked vehicles on the concourse. Ten people were injured in this blast. If the AWB was going to make an international statement on their objection to the 1994 Election Day itself, this was it.
Aftermath of the car bomb at Jan Smuts Airport – 27 April 1994
The Jan Smuts airport attack also shows that the AWB attacks over the election lead up and on the day itself were not strictly racially motivated as the injured ranged from across just about every race group in South Africa – completely indiscriminate, as bombs generally are, consider the ethnic names of the people injured – Mark Craig Mirion, Jo-Anne Des Fountain, Zacharia Monani, Walter Martin Peter, Frans Mlatlhela; Hendrik Lambert Pieterse, Percy Mosalakae Moshwetsi, Petrus Albertus Venter, Louis Stevens and Mathys Johannes van der Walt.
Oddly, the AWB did not take advantage and build on the public fear factor generated by the lead up bombing campaign or the Jan Smuts Airport bombing on the Election Day itself – they did not leverage the ‘terrorism’ aspect and in so failed to undermine the legitimacy of the election by forcing people to stay away from the polling stations for fear of being blown up. During the entire election bombing campaign AWB leader Eugene Terre’Blanche denied all involvement in the campaign, for both himself and the AWB. So the bombings were instead presented to the public by the media as some faceless unknown entity with a mild suspicion that it was the right-wing – just another chapter in the general violence people had become very accustomed to in South Africa.
SADF members treat the injured after the Bree Street bombing in Johannesburg – April 1994
Without monopolising on the fear factor and without mobilising the AWB in full with all its para-military units and cells to create maximum social dissonance, the AWB instead allowed the ‘good news’ to dominate the election campaign and for the most part people were either totally unaware of the extent of danger they faced or it was just simply ignored.
Aftermath
One key underpinning reason for the failure of the entire AWB anti-democracy campaign was the failure of the AWB to connect with the majority of white people in South Africa, both English and Afrikaans speakers. Their Neo-Nazi symbology and pro-Afrikaner Boer Republic rhetoric alienated the vast majority of English-speaking whites and alienated the Jewish community completely.
As to Afrikaners, the Neo-nazism appealed to a very small sect and whilst many may have quietly agreed with some of their antics in recognising Afrikaners in the transition to democracy, they did not fully support them when the cards were down. No doubt the image of the three AWB men gunned down on live TV with such detached brutality in Bophuthatswana played a key role, as it honed in what dying for your country actually means.
Prior to the 94 election, at a Right Wing AWB training camp near Wesselsbrom in the Orange Free State.1994. Copyright Ian Berry
Politically speaking the Afrikaner community fell into the plague of disunity which so dominates their history and did not stand as one. Instead the road to democracy drove multiple fissions and fractions into the white Afrikaans community, and even the Afrikaner Armed Resistance movement with a singular and shared objective was fractious at best. The vast majority of white Afrikaners were buoyed by the idea of the end of Apartheid, and followed FW de Klerk and Nelson Mandela’s promises of a bright and healed future, one in which Nelson Mandela repeatedly guaranteed that their future, history, property and culture would be safe-guarded.
It followed that after the euphoria of the elections and with all the buoyed enthusiasm for a ‘Rainbow Nation’ the AWB election bombers were quickly fingered by their own and in a police swoop at the end of April, thirty-four right-wingers were arrested in connection with the wave of bomb blasts.
All of them were members of the AWB’s elite Ystergarde (Iron Guard). A ‘turned’ star witness for the state, was also a former Ystergarde (Iron Guard) lieutenant Jacob Koekemoer (a dynamite specialist), who revealed in court that he had manufactured three of the bombs used in the terror campaign—those used in the Jan Smuts, Bree Street and Germiston taxi rank attacks.
Later the Truth and Reconciliation Commission received amnesty applications from several people convicted for the explosions including the bombers themselves and other AWB members supporting their operations.
The AWB election bombers consisted of small cells made up of ten AWB men in all – Jan de Wet, Etienne Le Roux, Johannes Vlok, Johan Du Plessis, Abraham Fourie, Johannes Venter, Johannes Nel, Petrus Steyn, Gerhartus Fourie and Johannes Olivier. All were given amnesty in December 1999 in the interests of national healing and on the basis that these bombings were part of a politically motivated campaign and part of a defined and structured non-statute para-military force in opposition to the government of the day (essentially putting them on the same footing as the MK applicants).
10 May 1999 Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB) leader Eugene Terre’ Blanche speaking to the judge at a truth and reconciliation commission in Klerksdorp.
With growing evidence to the contrary during the TRC hearings, Eugene Terre’Blanche initially still denied any involvement in the bombing campaign, this prompted one of Terre’Blanche’s former bodyguards and convicted bomber Jan Adriaan Venter to describe his former leader as a coward who knew about the bomb campaign but got cold feet when the explosions started. Eugene Terre’Blanche eventually responded in a fax letter to the TRC that his speeches at the time could have been interpreted by his followers as a call to war, later he changed tack again and took full responsibly and in another letter to the TRC he stated “As political head of the AWB, I accept political and moral responsibility for the acts that have been committed.”
An inconvenient truth
The 1994 Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) election campaign bombing spree was basically swept aside in the bigger democratic and social events and news stories gripping South Africa, but this ‘white’ armed insurgency – although decades ago now – remains a foreboding warning to the path South Africa is currently on.
In April 1994, the vast majority of South Africans and all the media were generally swept into the euphoria of creating a ‘rainbow nation’ and the drive to the first fully democratic election evolving into a ‘miracle’ to give the odd bomb blast too much attention, It was ‘faceless’ bad news in a barrage of good news scoops so it did not make the mark it intended to do, the country in the vast majority was steaming to a new epoch, with or without the ‘far-right’ and their related ideological parties and movements.
Different story entirely for the SADF members tasked with defending this ‘miracle’ surge towards democracy in April 1994 and who were deployed to protect the election booths, strategic installations and even the election process itself. For the mainly ‘white’ SADF conscripts who, with conscription all but ended, had now volunteered in their tens of thousands to usher in South Africa’s new democracy safely – and for them this AWB campaign, targeting the exact installations they were protecting – this particular armed insurgency was very big threat and a very big deal.
SADF member escorts a 1994 general election ballot box under armed guard
These SADF ‘conscripts’ now turned volunteers stood at the sharp end of ushering the ‘New South Africa’ in extreme danger of their lives (not MK or any other Black liberation movement), and they did so willingly, proudly standing on the edge of creating significant historical change and were strong in the belief and convictions of securing an end to Apartheid and a lasting peace (at least that was what they felt then).
You would think in the country’s New Democratic epoch and majority of Black South Africans would be proud of the men and women of the SADF who put their lives on the line for their liberty and freedom, and honour them for the dangers they faced safely delivering the very instrument of democracy to them – the vote itself. Sadly that is not the case, they care less – these are now the ‘Apartheid’ forces, to be vanquished and shamed.
Yet it still stands as an inconvenient truth that it was not the MK or the ‘Struggle heroes’ who in the end stood against the AWB campaign of armed violence and delivered the 1994 elections safely to the people, there was not a ‘cadre’ in sight – instead the undisputed fact is that it was the SADF and SAP who delivered the country safely into its new epoch.
Therein lies one of the key reasons this pre-election AWB/far-right bombing campaign is seldom (if ever) referenced by the current government when honouring people who brought democracy to South Africa – because it would mean honouring the likes of ‘white’ SADF conscripts, and that just doesn’t hold well in their misconstrued historical rhetoric of ‘the struggle’ for an open democracy and the path taken to achieve it.
Thanks for Nothing!
So how do the SADF (and SAP) veterans feel about it now? Broadly there are two groups of SADF veterans who were conscripted under the ‘whites only’ National Service program. The first group is the group who fought in the South West African/Angolan Border War and did ‘township duty’ under the State of Emergency declarations – they completed their military obligations whilst legally obliged to do so and no more.
Then there is a second group, these are the SADF veterans who continued with obligatory military service or as volunteers after 1990. The year 1990 is pivotal because in that year the National Party officially scrapped the legal pillars of Apartheid, thus ending ‘Grand Apartheid,’ unbanned the ANC and released Nelson Mandela. With ‘Grand Apartheid’ gone, this group of SADF conscripts continued their military service whilst ‘white’ conscription was constitutionally unbundling and they volunteered to continue with military commitments to steer the country to the 1994 elections. This group also literally put their lives on the line in a period which is singularly regarded as the most violent period in South Africa’s history.
SADF member guards the bomb site at Jan Smuts Airport – 27 April 1994
The group of post 1990 SADF conscripts and volunteers were so important that the CODESA negotiators – including Nelson Mandela and Cyril Rampaposa – engaged them to accompany the SADF Permanent Force members in quelling the right-wing up-rising and BDF mutiny in the future North West Province. They were again called in to replace the failed ‘Peace Force’ to stop the spiralling violence between IFP and ANC members – a rampage of Black on Black killing and a type of ‘terrorism’ on such a level it even makes the AWB bombing campaign pale into insignificance in terms of the numbers left dead. They were again engaged by IEC and the CODESA steering group to actually guard the 1994 election process itself against all those bent on violently disrupting it – which turned out to be the AWB.
Do they want to be thanked for it? The answer is NO. They saw it as their duty to their country. Do they want recognition for it? The answer – not necessarily, they are soldiers first and foremost – but it would be NICE if someone did. Nelson Mandela was extremely thankful to these ‘white’ SADF volunteers, he knew what their voluntary contribution to defend the country from the likes of the AWB meant. He made it a point to stop and thank these men personally whenever he could on the Election Day.
Nelson Mandela taking time out to thank SADF members on his Election Day campaign – 27 April 1994
Does the modern-day ANC follow the example of Mandela in the treatment of these veterans now? The answer is – NO. In fact they are marginalised, vanquished, shamed and disgraced by the ANC and media, repeateldy and unrepentently. The current President Cyril Ramaposa is very aware of this contribution to democracy by these SADF veterans (in fact he called on them in their most urgent time of need) and he conveniently overlooks them now for the sake of his own political expediency.
Instead Cyril Ramaposa has capitulated to calls for the expropriation of white owned farmland and capital without compensation – a notion that has been put forward by black Far Left radicals touting a revolutionist history trying to re-write the truth, and it’s a notion that may bring the ANC and Cyril Ramaposa into full confrontation with the majority of South Africa’s white population. It’s also a notion that has released spiralling and complete social dissonance amongst millions of landless and poverty ridden Black South Africans. Poverty brought on by the ANC themselves as they took the country’s unemployment from 10 million in 1994 to 30 million in 2018, and failed to address the land issue as it was outlined in the constitution, instead they illegally enriched their own political class in the process and left the poor behind, allowing poverty levels to rise.
From 1990 to 1994, these SADF veterans were convinced by the country’s leadership, the CODESA team and by Nelson Mandela that the future was bright for white South Africans – it drove them to put their lives on the line for it.
During the CODESA negotiations the ANC undertook to preserve white Afrikaans and English culture, they vowed that statues and historical landmarks would not be changed unnecessarily, and when it was to be done it would be ‘neutral’ – a case in point was the AWB bombed Jan Smuts airport which was initially changed to ‘Johannesburg International’ – everybody happy. They vowed that white owned Capital and Land would be protected and where historical redress was sought the land-owners would be properly and fairly compensated. They enshrined the ‘willing seller willing buyer’ clause into the constitution and they enshrined the basic Human Right of all South Africans to own private property anywhere in the Republic. This part on land, is literally the ‘Price of Peace’ – if it is removed the very basis on which peace was struck in South Africa will be moot.
SADF member stands guard at an election booth 27 April 1994, a group of newly enfranchised South Africans wait to vote.
The sad truth is these veterans have seen all these promises gradually been broken over time and their very culture, history and land come under violent threat. So will they lend their considerable military experience to the state again if it finds itself in trouble when the likes of the AWB armed uprising experienced in 1994 occurs once again? The sad answer is properly not. In fact a large number would proberbly side with the right-wingers this time around and lend their military experience to them instead.
A lesson from history
There is a lesson in this to the growing social dissonance in South Africa in 2018 as unemployed and landless people target ‘white’ capital and ‘white’ farms for expropriation without compensation. The new and up surging need for current Black radical South Africans to re-start the ‘Struggle’ and ‘finish what Mandela could not’ should take a lesson from history, and this particular AWB ‘white liberation’ movement is it, and it has not ‘gone away,’ it lurks dangerously below the surface – even to this day.
There is an uneasy truth, due to cuts and skills drainage the SANDF is a mere shadow of its former self, both in terms of operating strength and military intelligence. It will never be in the same position the SADF was in to quell a committed militant terrorist campaign, such was the type of insurgent campaign engaged by the AWB from 1990 to 1994.
The inconvenient truth is that the AWB were a threat in 1994 that was quickly quelled because of good Military and Police Intelligence, a strong and highly disciplined battle order by SADF troops and the SAP and the lack of public resolve of the majority of white Afrikaners (and English) to support the AWB.
Finally, there is an another uneasy truth lurking, either the AWB and/or a more palatable group comprising a more modern manifestation of the ‘struggle’ for Afrikaner recognition, can easily become a threat again. Only this time, because ‘white owned’ Land and Capital is now under open threat in terms of ‘appropriation without compensation’ and due to the growing sense of desperation ahead of mounting animosity towards the country’s white farmers and Afrikaners as a racial minority in general – things can (and will) become even more dangerous and far more deadly than they were in 1994.
Bomb blast image at Jan Smuts Airport copyright Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times. Videos obtained from YouTube in the public domain. Battle of Ventersdorp and training camp image copyright Ian Berry. Mafikeng photo of SADF troops rounding looters up copyright to Greg Marinovich Image photograph of SADF member escorting ballot copyright Paul Weinberg
References include Truth and Reconciliation Commission transcripts and published public notices. the Mail and Guardian and BBC articles.
Huh! There was also a ‘white’ ‘armed insurgency movement against Apartheid! The ‘whites’ had their own ‘struggle’ insurgents, their own version of ‘umkhonto we sizwe’ (MK), the ‘whites’ had their very own anti-apartheid ‘terrorists’. What!
No way! This would be the universal chant of many South Africans – both black and white. This is not part of the current ANC inspired narrative on Apartheid in South Africa, we haven’t been taught this, the whites are the ‘guilty’ ones – not ‘liberators’ of Apartheid – what’s all this about?
Well, what if we told you that Apartheid did not just separate white and black people – it separated EVERYONE, including the whites. Grand Apartheid when it was conceived by the Nationalists had at its centre ideology the separation of ‘English’ white South Africans and ‘Afrikaans’ white South Africans. Afrikaner whites were to grow up separately, their own primary schools, their own youth movements (the Voortrekkers), their own church groups, their own High Schools, their own Universities and Colleges, their own exclusive youth sports leagues for everything – rugby, cricket, tennis you name it. The intention was that Afrikaner culture was to be guarded from not only ‘Black’ influence, it was to be guarded from the ‘English’ influence too.
This guarding stemmed from the Boer War. The scorched earth and concentration camp policies initiated by Kitchener had devastated the Afrikaner culture, family histories and culture lost forever, now the Nationalists had to rebuild it and the hard-liner Afrikaner Nationalists wanted nothing to do the British and their British descendants in South Africa. To them these were the English white South Africans concentrated mainly in Natal, the Western Cape and Johannesburg, Apartheid was also planned to separate Afrikaners from these most hated English – Black separation was part of the greater scheme, but so too white racial separation along cultural and even economic lines.
So not surprisingly the White community was split down the middle over the Nationalists plans as to Apartheid when they came to power in 1948 surprisingly beating Smuts in a constitutional victory based on ‘seats’ and not a ‘majority’ based on ‘votes’ – that it was a shock win would be an understatement.
To many the plans of Apartheid were absurd and spelt doom for the Union, they heeded Smuts’ warnings, and in fact as a nominal vote count went Smuts ‘won’ the election by a good majority, signalling that the majority of Whites in South Africa did not favour the Apartheid tenets put forward by the National Party at all. Most of this was the English white voting bloc, but statistically it also made up of a significant bloc of White Afrikaners as well, These were Afrikaners who followed Smuts’ ideals and visions of unification, internationalism and democracy. Unfortunately, as seats went – the majority lost, and the Nationalists assumed power on a narrow margin.
The first mass anti-apartheid mobilisation
This leads to the first inconvenient fact – it was this voting White majority of Smuts supporters, which was the first community to mass mobilise protests against Apartheid in any significant way (not the Black community and the African National Congress ANC) – and it was all in response to the gerrymandering which brought the Nationalists into power in 1948 and their policy of Apartheid which was unpalatable to the broader White community.
This mass movement of whites mobilised against Apartheid primarily came from moderate, democratic and liberal white political parties (mainly Smuts’ United Party), as well as predominantly White driven equal rights movements, like The Black Sash feminist movement. But it materialised in real strength in a returning war veteran’s movement called ‘The Torch Commando’ led by an Afrikaner war hero – Adolph ‘Sailor’ Malan – started in 1951, the ‘Torch’ saw nearly a quarter of this anti-nationalist White voting base – 250,000 Whites – actively mark their protest to the national party and their ideology of Apartheid and join their protest movement.
Torch Commando meeting – 1952
Read that again – 250,000 or a quarter of a million whites – signing up to an action group in active protest against Apartheid. This mass mobilisation of mainly whites in’ Torch’ protest rallies occurred nationwide in 1951 and not at the onset of the ANC’s Defiance Campaign on the 6th of April 1952. So as inconvenient truths go the first mass protest against Apartheid was led by the Torch and not by the ANC.
Now you don’t learn about that in South African historical narrative – then or now, and you have to ask yourself why – because there is more – much more?
The ‘white’ Anti-Apartheid Military ‘Threat’ from 1948 – 1959
To put this ‘White’ threat in perspective, the ANC, although representative of a bigger majority of people, had not yet mobilised itself in any significant way when the Nationalists came to power in 1948.
Prior to 1948 in the Union of South Africa, South African Black protest had come from a 1912 Anti-Pass Women’s protest which was very localised to Bloemfontein and a petition of 5000 signatures. It was not a national mass mobilisation of Black women against suffrage and pass laws in South Africa as the ANC like to position it and bend history now.
The next significant protest pre-1948 from the black community came in form of The 1946 miners strike, this was a one week mass strike action which ended in violence with government forces, the underpinning problem was a wage dispute, it was settled with a 10 shilling per day minimum wage (an increase from 2 shillings), and improved working conditions as the basis of the strikers demands. This action needs to be viewed as dispute on wages and conditions of miners with the mine companies primarily. It was also not really a national political protest and mobilisation against an entire system of Smuts’ government – which is again the way it is now very incorrectly presented to South Africans by the ANC.
From the Indian community there was Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha ‘peace’ campaign against Indian pass laws which eventually succeeded in 1914. Ironically Smuts’ and Gandhi actually became friends over the process and admired each other greatly till the day they both died.
The above posed nothing in any significant way as a military threat to the National Party in 1948, whilst weary of the ANC and what the Nationalists called ‘Swart Gevaar’ (Black Danger) they were not yet threatening, had not militarised itself and had not yet mass mobilised in any significant way. The ‘Torch Commando’, now that was threat to the Nationalists in 1950 – a very big and imminent threat.
Torch Commando rally in Caps Town. Protestors carrying thousands of oil soaked ‘torches’ of Liberty in defiance of Apartheid
Why? Because The Torch Commando was made up of second world war veterans, the national party had sat out the war in protest and in support of Nazi Germany and its ideology (which manifested itself in neo-Nazi Afrikaner nationalist movements like the Ossewabrandwag during the war itself). Now they were faced with 200,000 very angry, very well-trained ‘white’ soldiers who had been at war against Nazism for five long years – in effect thousands and thousands of combatants who had seen and survived the biggest war in this history of man, and they cared less for Nazism and fascism – nor could a great many of them really care for their Afrikaner Nationalist cabal.
The Torch Commando had within its ranks White members from various political groups, trade unions, political parties and veterans associations. In the main it was made up of members who had supported Smuts call to arms in WW2 – moderate members from the United Party who feared the disintegration of democracy and broader society under Apartheid – standing alongside broad military veteran associations like The South African Legion and the Memorable Order of Tin Hats.
The Torch Commando also had within it’s a ranks a smaller, but far more militant and vocal grouping. This grouping was made up of members of a veterans association called The Springbok Legion, alongside members of South Africa’s Liberal Party and members of The South African Communist Party (SACP). This part of the Torch Commando had firebrand future leaders in it – like Joe Slovo, Lionel Bernstein, Wolfie Kodesh, Jock Isacowitz, Jack Hodgson and Fred Carneso (all ‘communist’ members of The Springbok Legion), as well as Peter Kaya Selepe, a WW2 veteran and organiser of the African National Congress (ANC) in Orlando and Harry Heinz Schwarz, also a WW2 veteran who became the future Progressive and Democratic Party stalwart.
Torch Commando Rally
The Torch Commando at its zenith had 250,000 members, and in landmark protests across South Africa it brought of tens of thousands of protestors carrying ‘torches’ of light and freedom into physical defiance of the Nationalist government, the Torch Rally in Cape Town attracted 50,000 people and the one in Johannesburg put 75.000 mainly white protestors onto the streets. Now, that is a mass mobilisation movement.
A key objective underpinning the Torch was to remove the National Party from power by calling for an early election, the 1948 ‘win’ by The National Party was not a ‘majority win’, but a constitutional one, and the Torch wanted a groundswell to swing the military service vote (regarded as 200,000 in a voting population of a 1,000,000). A bunch of ex-WW2 military veterans trying to influence nearly a quarter of the voting bloc is a very big deal and a very big threat to the National Party.
The Torch at its core was absolutely against The National Party’s Apartheid ideology and viewed their government as unconstitutional when they started implementing policy – It regarded itself as a ‘pro-democracy’ movement and regarded the National Party’s policies as ‘anti-democratic’. The first action of the National Party to implement the edicts of Apartheid, was the Separate Representation of Voters Bill in 1951, which sought to disenfranchise the ‘coloured’ voters from the general voters roll, and it was in opposition to this legislation that the Torch Commando kicked off its campaign against the government. Its campaigns becoming progressively very vocal, and very large and they even started to clash with police in isolated cases.
The Nationalists, increasingly fearful of The Torch Commando splitting the White vote further and the fact that they had militant leanings acted in a manner that was to become their trade-mark, ‘decisively’ and moved to crush the Torch Commando. They did this by threatening Torch members, many of whom were still in the military or in civil service with their jobs if they continued membership and they moved to ban the Torch Commando through legislation.
Suppression of Communism Act
The legislative tool they used to crush the Torch Commando was the Suppression of Communism Act 44 which the Nationalists passed into law in July 1950. The act was a sweeping act and not really targeted to Communists per se, it was intended for anyone in opposition to Apartheid regardless of political affiliation.
The Act proscribed any party or group subscribing to Communism according to a uniquely broad definition of the term. The Act defined communism as any scheme aimed at achieving change–whether economic, social, political, or industrial–“by the promotion of disturbance or disorder” or any act encouraging “feelings of hostility between the European and the non-European races…calculated to further (disorder)”.
The government could deem any person to be a communist if it found that person’s aims to be aligned with these aims. After a nominal two-week appeal period, the person’s status as a communist became an un-reviewable matter of fact, and subjected the person to being barred from public participation, restricted in movement, or even imprisoned.
Passage of the Act was facilitated by the involvement of communists in any anti-apartheid movement, starting with The Torch Commando and eventually included any movement, individual or political party that advocated black equal rights and was deemed a ‘threat’.
Any ‘liberal’ movement came under the Suppression of Communism Act, not just the ANC and PAC, but also White members in the Liberal Party and the Black Sash, eventually it would even be applied to academics, novelists, journalists, poets, party leaders – anyone from the White community not buying into Apartheid in effect, and the penalty was harsh in the extreme. Imprisoned, deported or banned – labelled as ‘Traitors’ and ‘Communists’ – their voices were silenced.
Joe Slovo (right of picture) in WW2
Faced with a diversifying internal political agenda, anti-liberalism legislation and direct government pressure and sandbagging the Torch Commando split and collapsed, the moderate war veterans chose to continue their opposition through peaceful political opposition using the narrow but available means to them. The firebrand military radicals in the Torch Commando (like Joe Slovo) were a different matter entirely, and they moved to other political organisations, mainly the ANC and the Liberal Party, to give them their military advise and expertise, and embark on a more robust and subversive resistance to Apartheid.
Liberalism in ‘white’ South Africa
A key organisation in opposition to Apartheid in the 1950’s and 1960’s was the South African Liberal Party (SALP). Central to the Liberal Party were three men, Leslie Rubin Peter Brown and Alan Paton.
Leslie Rubin was an outspoken opponent of the apartheid regime in South Africa. He joined the South African army as a private in 1940, and was commissioned as an officer in the intelligence corps in north Africa during the war, and later attached to the Royal Air Force in Italy. After the war, he settled in Cape Town and joined the Torch Commando movement led by Sailor Malan.
With Alan Paton, Rubin created the Liberal party of South Africa (LPSA) within the definition of political parties that could stand for election and appoint ministers to Parliament. It founded on 9 May 1953 out of a belief that Jan Smuts’ United Party was in disarray after his death in 1950 and unable to achieve any real liberal progress in South Africa, the LPSA initially called for a franchise based vote for Black South Africans and later this evolved to a call for ‘one man one vote’.
Sailor Malan greets supporters at a Torch Commando Rally in Cape Town
The Liberal Party also attempted to draft Sailor Malan as a candidate, in addition to his role in the Torch Commando as the National President, however Sailor’s position on voting equality differed from Rubins’, Sailor conceded that a black majority would eventually govern South Africa, and he was very happy in that prediction, however Sailor sought economic empowerment of Black South Africans to address poverty as a priority (in this respect Sailor is years ahead of his time as it is exactly this issue – economic emancipation over political emancipation – only now has this become a burning priority for the EFF and ANC).
The Liberal Party elected to draft its members from The Torch Commando and Rubin became the first Chairman of the party in the Cape, in 1954 he was elected to the senate as what was then called a “natives’ representative”, a position he used to fight every piece of apartheid legislation. Whenever he got up to speak, the Minister of Native Affairs, the ‘architect’ of Apartheid – Dr Hendrik Verwoerd – would leave the chamber in protest. On one occasion, the entire Nationalist party caucus walked out.
The Liberal Party held the objective of bringing together committed Whites, Africans, Indians and Cape Coloured people in opposition to the Apartheid system. Rubin resigned from the senate in 1960, before the native representatives’ seats were abolished.
Like Rubin, Alan Paton volunteered for service during World War 2 but was refused, after the war be wrote Cry the Beloved Country to critical acclaim. He eventually became the President of The South African Liberal Party (SALP). Although he Paton did not have military experience it did not stop him from also initially joining the Torch Commando and publicly supporting Sailor Malan and his cause.
The SALP had close friendships with senior ANC and Indian Congress members. They often acted as a liaison between banned organisations and fully bought into the ideals espoused in the Freedom Charter. One of the party’s main focus areas was the fight against “black spot removals” where the Apartheid government uprooted black communities in order to shift them to new areas to create homogenous race blocks across the country. Peter Brown in particular fought tireless against these removals by helping communities organise, protest and receive access to legal advice.
Persecution by the State of the LPSA
The government responded to the LPSA and its policies by persecuting its members as it viewed the party’s policies as a threat to its apartheid policy. This was because the party had both black and white members in its ranks. Several members of the party were banned, disallowed to hold gatherings and harassed by the security police. In 1962, BJ Vorster accused the party of being nothing more than a “communist tool”.
Between March 1961 and April 1966, forty-one leading members of the LPSA were banned under the Suppression of Communism Act. This was despite the fact that they were not members of the Communist Party or supported communism.
On 13 May 1965, the Rand Daily Mail reported that leaflets were secretly scattered warning African members of the LPSA that they would be banned unless they desisted from participating in political activities of the LPSA.
Alan Paton, President of SALP addresses a crowd in Fordsburg about the harm done to South Africa By the Group Areas Act
The state would harass and intimidate LPSA members. Security branch officers would attend party branch meetings and produce a warrant authorizing them to do so. The police would visit families of party members and ask them to persuade their relatives to leave the party, even Alan Paton was followed by the security branch, his telephone lines were tapped and his house was searched a number of times.
Due to political persecution, some members of the LPSA fled into to exile and became involved in anti-apartheid activities abroad. For example, Randolph Vigne was banned in 1963 and his house in Cape Town was fire bombed in an attempt to intimidate him. He left the country and went into exile in London where he worked closely with the Anti-Apartheid Movement there – so too Leslie Rubin who also went into exile in London.
Sharpeville and a ‘white lunatic’ liberal assassin
One of the defining moments in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa was the Sharpeville Massacre on 21 March 1960 and its aftermath.
On the Liberal Party front resistance by White liberals were about to a nasty turn, when in April 1960 – 19 days after the Sharpesville Massacre, Prime Minister H.F. Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid was giving his ‘good neighbourliness” speech at the Rand Show in Johannesburg.
After Verwoerd gave his opening speech, he returned to his seat in the grandstand where he was shot at point-blank range by David Pratt, who was an outspoken Liberal Party of South Africa (LPSA) member and a wealthy English farmer from the Magaliesberg region outside of Pretoria. He joined the Liberal Party in 1953 and believed that a coalition between liberals and ‘verligte’ (enlightened) Afrikaners was the only solution to defeating the National Party at the polls.
Verwoerd miraculously survived the shooting, Pratt was arrested and claimed that he shot Verwoerd because he represented “the epitome of Apartheid” and it was necessary to shoot “the stinking monster of apartheid that was gripping South Africa and preventing South Africa from taking her rightful place among men”.
Pratt was also an epileptic with a long medical history of heavy epileptic fits. So to dismiss Pratt as a ‘lunatic’ – as to the Nationalists no white person in their right mind would shoot a white Prime Minister – so he was judged as ‘insane’. Pratt was sent to an institution for the mentally ill and by October 1961 he was found – rather too conveniently for the Nationalist government – hanging from a rolled-up bed-sheet.
The ‘white’ Anti-Apartheid Military ‘Threat’ from 1960 to 1963
The heavy-handed response of the state to the Sharpeville massacre with a state of emergency and the attempted assignation of Verwoerd in first half of 1960 saw thousands of activists detained and imprisoned.
Political movements such as the African National Congress (ANC) and Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) were banned and forced underground, and although the Liberal Party was not banned by the government, its members were not spared the wrath of the state. The crackdown forced the ANC and PAC to re-evaluate their approach to the liberation struggle and consider whether to abandon the principle of non-violence in favour of a campaign of military sabotage.
Sharpeville mass funeral – 1960
Mkhonto we Sizwe (MK) was co-founded by Nelson Mandela the wake of the Sharpville Massacre its founding represented the conviction in the face of the massacre that the ANC could no longer limit itself to nonviolent protest. In forming MK previous ‘white’ Torch Commando members, military veterans all, proved to be the critical and primary source of military expertise for training and command of MK – ex-Torch Commando members like Joe Slovo, Lionel Bernstein, Wolfie Kodesh, Cecil Williams, Fred Carneson, Brian Bunting and Jack Hodgson all became founding MK cadres in 1966.
Many of these ‘Springbok Legion’ and ‘Torch Commando’ members to join the MK were war veterans from South Africa’s Jewish community. They were particularly militant because of the treatment and ‘extermination’ of Jews by the Nazi Party during the second world war and saw the National Party and its political disposition to Jewish people as an equal threat (ironically this origin history of MK and its ‘jewish soldiers’ is conveniently forgotten by the ANC today when it comes to their overt criticism of Israel).
The Liberal Party of South Africa (SALP) was in the same boat as the ANC, also stuffed full of military veterans from the old Torch Commando and they too re-evaluated their approach to the ‘struggle’.
Despite the Liberal Party’s initial non-violent stance, the party was not spared the suppression of political activity after the declaration of the state of emergency in March 1960. The government launched a vicious attack on the Liberal Party, arresting 35 of its leading members and detaining them at the Fort in Johannesburg
The National Committee of Liberation (NCL)
In 1961, the detention and banning of leading Liberal Party members forced them to form their own resistance movement and cells, out of this came The National Committee of Liberation (NCL) and a declaration for armed resistance.
During their detention, Liberals – Monty Berman, Myrtle Berman, John Lang, Ernest Wentzel and others challenged the idea of peaceful protest when the government was evidently intent on using violence to suppress dissent. Monty Berman, Lang and Wentzel played an important role in the formation of the NCL. While in detention, they debated the need for an umbrella organisation for movements ready to carry out sabotage campaigns. The name National Liberation Committee, which the trio felt was all-encompassing, was chosen to refer to the umbrella body. After their release in August 1960, Myrtle Berman and Lang tried to engage with the ANC to form the NCL, but were unsuccessful.
The NCL rose under a liberal ideological framework, those attracted to its ranks possessed common liberal ideological traits and recognised the impossibility of achieving the overthrow of Apartheid through non-violent means. Also, those gravitating to the NCL also tended to harbour a deep suspicion of the South African Communist Party and its relations with the Soviet Union. They were after all “Liberals” and not “Communists” – there s a very big ideological difference between two (a difference which did not matter to the Nationalists and its Anti-Communist Act).
Importantly, a further common theme within the party was the firm belief that acts of sabotage should not bring any harm to human life, which resonated with their liberalist ideological stance. The NCL was non-racial in character, although its membership was predominantly White. The organisation hoped to attract an African following by undertaking acts of sabotage against government installations and institutions.
The NCL attracted three groups of ‘Liberals’ to its ranks: members of the Liberal Party of South Africa (the largest grouping), the African Freedom Movement (AFM) – made up of disillusioned African National Congress (ANC) members not joining MK, and the Socialist League of South Africa (SLA) – made up of disillusioned South Africa Communist Party (SACP) members – liberal thinking ‘Trotskyites’ who also did not want to join MK and its SACP alliance.
Regional Committees of the NCL were to operate autonomously in the process of recruiting members and undertaking sabotage campaigns. Between 1962 and 1963 the NCL focused predominantly on recruiting people from across the country. In mid-1962 Adrian Leftwich of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) joined the organisation and became one of its leading figures. NUSAS was the student union present on most ‘English’ university campuses. Other people recruited into the NCL included Randolf Vigne, the vice chairman of the Liberal Party of South Africa (LPSA), who joined the NCL after he was recruited by John Lang.
Other members recruited to the organisation included Neville Rubin, Baruch Hirson, Stephanie Kemp, Lynette van der Riet, Hugh Lewin, Ronald Mutch, Rosemary Wentzel, Dennis Higgs and Alan Brookes – several of them from the LPSA. With the recruitment exercise gathering momentum, the NCL established two regional committees – in Cape Town and Johannesburg, cities that provided bases as well as targets for sabotage campaigns. The NCL also had members in Natal, notably David Evans and John Laredo.
Here’s another inconvenient truth, the formation of the NCL armed resistance to Apartheid pre-dates the formation of Poqo and ‘umkhonto we sizwe’ (MK) the only difference is that the NCL did not officially announce its existence until 22 December, five days after MK announced its existence. However the fact the NCL was the ‘Prima’ (the first) anti-apartheid armed resistance movement is conveniently left out of the modern ANC narrative and they barely if ever get a mention.
The NCL initially involved itself with smuggling people out of South Africa into exile, this included helping the ANC smuggle Robert Resha out to Botswana. The ANC reciprocated by helping Milton Setlhapelo of the NCL move from Tanzania to London.
With the formation of MK, the NCL again approached MK through Rusty Bernstein to organise joint operations. After one failed operation, the relationship did not last and the two organisations ceased to cooperate again.
NCL Military Operations
Destroyed Electricity Pylon – Photo Drum Magazine
Subsequent to his release from prison, John Lang began sourcing financial support for the NCL. He contacted Leslie Rubin – a member of the LPSA and a Ghanaian resident – to source funds from the Ghanaian government – which were given in two financial payments in 1961 (incidentally the NCL was the first armed resistance group to get finance from Ghana, the ANC and PAC came later). With money to buy weaponry and explosives the NCL were ready to go.
In 1961 the NCL sabotage campaign commenced with the targeting of three power pylons and the burning of a Bantu Affairs office.
By 1962, the was also stealing dynamite from mines for further operations. Dennis Higgs and Robert Watson, a former British Army officer, provided explosives training to members of the NCL in Cape Town and Johannesburg. In August and November 1962, the NCL carried out sabotage attacks on pylons in Johannesburg, bringing one down.
In Durban, the members of the NCL failed to bring down a pylon as a result of faulty timers. Later, in August 1963, the NCL made two attempts to sabotage the FM tower in Constantia, Cape Town. On the first attempt, the operation was cancelled after Eddie Daniels lost his revolver, which was found a few days later. In the subsequent operation at the same installation, the bomb failed to explode. Later, in September, explosives planted by the NCL damaged four signal cables at Cape Town railway station, and in November an electricity pylon was brought down.
African Resistance Movement (ARM).
It stands to reason that members of NCL quickly became wanted by the apartheid state, Myrtle and Monty Berman were banned by the government and in 1961 the police searched Lang’s residence where letters requesting financial assistance were seized. On 26 June 1961, Lang fled South Africa and went into exile to London, where he continued with anti-apartheid activities on behalf of the NCL. That same year, Monty Berman violated his banning order and was given a three-year suspended sentence. As a consequence, he was forced to leave the country in January 1962. His departure threw the NCL into disarray, and morale among the remaining members declined.
The NCL’s efforts to revitalise itself through discussion documents also failed to yield positive results. In an attempt to reinvent itself, the organisation changed its name in from the NCL to the African Resistance Movement (ARM). ARM launched its first operation in September 1963.
From September 1963 until July 1964, the ARM bombed power lines, railroad tracks and rolling stock, roads, bridges and other vulnerable infrastructure, without any civilian casualties. ARM aimed to turn the white population against the government by creating a situation that would result in capital flight and collapse of confidence in the country and its economy.
In Johannesburg, a cell of the ARM also carried out more attacks in September and November 1963. NCL members used hacksaws to cut through the legs of a pylon in Edenvale, which led to a blackout in Johannesburg’s eastern suburbs. More attacks on pylons were carried out in January and February 1964. The climax of the ARM campaign came in June 1964 when five pylons were destroyed; three around Cape Town and two in Johannesburg.
On 12 June 1964 ARM issued a flyer by way of a statement announcing its existence and committed itself to fighting apartheid and it read in part:
“The African Resistance movement (ARM) announces its formation in the cause of South African freedom. ARM states its dedication and commitment to achieve the overthrow of whole system of apartheid and exploitation in South Africa. ARM aims to assist in establishing a democratic society in terms of the basic principles of socialism. We salute other Revolutionary Freedom Movements in South Africa. In our activities this week we particularly salute the men of Rivonia and state our deepest respect for their courage and efforts. While ARM may differ from them and other groups in the freedom struggle, we believe in the unification of all forces fighting for the new order in our country. We have enough in common.”
Fighting talk no doubt.
Some inconvenient truths
So, here we have a mainly ‘white’ militant ‘terrorist’ group operating in the 1960’s blowing stuff up in resistance to Apartheid South Africa – now how many South Africans today know about that little inconvenient truth.
Here’s also another inconvenient truth, even the Black armed resistance movements like MK were led and advised by white WW2 military veterans. So much so that it even manifested itself in three of the MK’s most notable attacks – the bombing of Sasol, Wit Command and Koeberg all had ‘White’ cadres involved in them. In fact in the case of Wit Command and Koeberg they were led solely by White insurgents.
So, the basic truth is the ‘white liberals’ created their own armed resistance movements – at the same time as the ANC formed their armed resistance movement (MK), and this White armed insurgency was working in parallel with but separately to MK.
There is more inconvenient truth to come with regard ARM, and his name is John Harris, now not too many have heard of him – and many should.
John Harris
Frederick John Harris (known as John Harris) was born in 1937. He was a teacher, a member of the executive committee of the Liberal Party in the Transvaal, as well as a Chairman of the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee. He was also one of the members of the nearly all-white African Resistance Movement (ARM) and the first and only white man to be hanged for a politically inspired offence in the years after the 1960 Sharpeville emergency.
John and Ann Harris, 1963. John Harris seen here was on his way back from testifying at the International Olympic Committee on behalf of SANROC.
John Harris was banned in February 1964, a few months before police moved to smash the underground ARM. While maintaining his Liberal Party connection, he had joined ARM, but he was not arrested in the police swoops. He then decided that a dramatic gesture was needed to “bring whites to their senses and make them realise that apartheid could not be sustained”.
On July 24, 1964,John Harris walked into the Johannesburg railway station and placed a small explosive charge and several containers of petrol in a suitcase on the main ‘whites only’ concourse. On the case he left a note: “Back in 10 minutes”
It exploded just 13 minutes later, injuring several people seriously, in particular Glynnis Burleigh, 12, and her grandmother, Ethel Rhys, 77. Mrs Rhys died three weeks later from her injuries. Glynnis, who had 70% and third degree burns, was left with life-changing injuries.
A telephone warning had been planned so the station could be evacuated of civilians, but the warning was too late to prevent the explosion, and the result off this ARM action produced a horrified reaction amongst the white population – ARM had finally killed an innocent civilian. The incident was touted by the National Party as part of a terror plot by “Communists” (not liberals). Harris was arrested, tortured and beaten. His jaw was broken in three places.
Harris was tried for murder of a civilian and by the tenets of South African law for murder received an automatic death sentence. On April 1, 1965 went to the gallows, reportedly singing “we shall overcome”.
So, there you have an anti-apartheid campaigner sent to the gallows, seldom recognised in the modern South African narrative on the ‘Struggle’ as simply put he wasn’t part of the ANC and he’s the wrong colour. It would just throw out the entire whites vs. blacks political baloney banded about with such regularity, especially when the ANC, the government and the national media settle down to praise struggle ‘martyrs’ like Solomon Mahlangu as the ‘Black’ South African hanged in resistance by the nasty ‘White’ South Africans – all in broad and convenient ‘race silo’ paintbrush strokes
The end of ARM
The state crushed the ARM and the Liberal Party, eradicating both from history. The biggest setback for ARM – the one which ultimately led to its demise was not John Harris – it came in July 1964 when the police raided the flat of Adrian Leftwich. The Police subsequently raided the flat of Van der Riet, where they found documents containing instructions on sabotage and the storage of explosives. Under torture and interrogation, the two implicated their comrades.
Police hold back crowds at Johannesburg’s Park Station after a bomb exploded on the whites-only concourse on Friday July 24 1964, killing Ethyl Rhys
Leftwich’s statements were devastating for ARM. He testified against his comrades in at least two of the trials, and as someone who had played a key role in NCL/ARM operations, his evidence was difficult to refute. Subsequently, the police raided and arrested 29 members of ARM, among them Stephanie Kemp, Alan Brooks, Antony Trew, Eddie Daniels and David de Keller – all in Cape Town. Others like Vigne, Rosemary Wentzel, Scheider, Hillary Mutch and Ronnie Mutch escaped. The security police kidnapped Wentzel from Swaziland and brought her back to stand trial in South Africa. She sought relief for her illegal abduction through the courts. Higgs was also kidnapped by apartheid government forces and challenged the legality of his kidnapping through the courts.
In the subsequent trials, Eddie Daniels was sentenced to 15 years in prison, which he served on Robben Island. Baruch Hirson was sentenced to nine years in prison, Lewin to seven years, while Evans and Laredo were sentenced to five years in prison. David De Keller received a sentence of 10 years, Einstein seven years, Alan Brooks four years, Stephanie Kemp five years, and Anthony Trew four years.
The arrest of ARM members and the flight of others into exile led to the disintegration of the organisation. However, some of its members, particularly those in exile, continued fighting against apartheid by working for anti-apartheid organisations. Hugh Lewin was appointed head of the International Defence and Aid Fund’s (IDAF) information department. Rundolf Vigne also worked closely with IDAF in Britain and travelled to the United Nations (UN), campaigning against the apartheid government. Finally, Alan Brookes, a former member of ARM played a key role in organising demonstrations against the 1969 Springbok Tour to the UK.
The End of the Liberal Party
On 3 September 1965, the government issued a notice declaring that Coloured teachers were prohibited from being members of the ‘mainstream’ political parties i.e the United, Progressive and Liberal parties.
In 1966, the government tabled the Prohibition of Improper Interference Bill, which proposed the prevention of interracial political participation. In 1968, the Bill was passed in parliament as the Prevention of Political Interference Act. Two political parties, the Progressive Party (PP) and Liberal Party of South Africa (LPSA) with members across racial line were severely affected.
The PP chose not to disband but become a white’s only party to fight Apartheid via the legal parameters available to it and be a representative voice of the disenfranchised in a now dominated Nationalist Parliament (eventually the PP became the Progressive Federal Party i.e. PFP which has now morphed into the modern-day Democratic Alliance – the DA), while the LPSA chose to disband rather than comply with legislation that went against its defining principle of non racialism. Between April and May 1968, meetings were held in various parts of the country, bringing to end 15 years of anti apartheid struggle by the LPSA.
White ‘Privilege’?
So where does the ‘white privilege’ gained from Apartheid enter into all this resistance to Apartheid by White people? By the beginning of the 1970’s – at least according to the Nationalist government White resistance was no more, the Whites were all on their side now. By this stage any dissonance from the White community had been effectively crushed by the Apartheid State, like it ruthlessly crushed all movements – including the Black led ones. It might be worth pointing out that by the time the Liberal Party and NCL/ARM were crushed, so too were the ANC and MK, as they were also relatively small by 1970 – it was the 1976 Soweto Uprising and thousands of ‘Seventy Sixers’ – new youth – joining MK which were to rejuvenate and boost the MK to a significant degree.
So, leading White figures not in step with the National Party imprisoned, in exile or gagged – future opponents now under the threat of the anti-communism act – sorted, no more criticism of Apartheid from the whites and all the whites can now benefit from the grand Apartheid Scheme.
No so, although the ‘white armed insurgency’ was officially dead, well into the late 70’s and 80’s saw tens of thousands of White students from the ‘white English’ universities on active protest – Natal, Wits, Rhodes, UCT, a more ‘peaceful’ resistance sprang up in all directions in all manner – locally and internationally – from the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), the United Democratic Front (UDF), the End Conscription Campaign (ECC), the Council of Churches, the Black Sash, The Progressive Federal Party, Jews for Social Justice, The South African Congress of Democrats, Temple Israel and many many more.
We are not even going to start on the Anti-Apartheid activities of whites like Bram Fischer, Helen Suzeman, Harry Shwartz, Helen Zille, Breyten Breytenbach, Andrè Brink, Beyers Naudé, Rick Turner, Michael Harmel, Ruth First, Denis Goldberg, Albie Sachs, Ben Turok, Harold Strachan, Hilda Bernstein, Rusty Bernstein, Arthur Goldreich, Helen Joseph, Colin Eglin and Rica Hodgson – even other martyred ones like Neil Aggett, Ruth Slovo and David Webster. Then there is the entire Alternative Afrikaans rock music movement to consider in its resistance to Apartheid, the Voëlvry Movement – people like James Phillips, Koos Kombuis and Johannes Kerkorrel. The list goes on.
The ‘fatal’ 1992 Referendum
In the strange world of the National Party, where “Communism” equated with ‘Liberalism” – the Nationalists made a fatal error. Feeling confident that their hated nemesis ‘Communism’ no longer really posed a threat to their idea of the ‘Western World’ democracy when the Berlin Wall collapsed in 1989 with the resultant beak up of the Soviet Union. Feeling more confident that with the loss of its ‘communist’ backers the ANC plans as to a socialist communist take-over of South Africa would now not be possible and they would be in a position to ‘talk’. The National Party was on the ascendancy in terms of ‘seats’ in Parliament in 1989 using more gerrymandering and with the SADF enjoying 5% GDP spend (the average spend of a NATO country on the military is 2% GDP) they were now more powerful than ever – they now even felt confident that with a negotiated settlement with the ANC they had a shot at a sustained political future for themselves. They had started Apartheid, but now they would rather magnanimously end it and all would be forgiven.
So when they hit internal political hiccups and resistance from within their party, coupled with resistance from the ‘all white’ Conservative Party and Afrikaner extreme right (AWB) – and with the ANC not really rolling over in the negotiations. They made the fatal error of thinking they needed ‘populist’ support and put forward what was to become the last ‘whites only’ vote on the issue of Apartheid. But instead of a party political vote where they had a constitutional seat advantage which would see them over the line, FW de Klerk instead opted for a ‘one to one’ count, a ‘one man one vote’ all white referendum. For the first time since 1948 it would become clear again who in the white community supported Apartheid and who didn’t, and this time constitutional boundaries were moot.
The Nationalists for the first time sided with the ‘liberal white ‘left, it backed the support to end Apartheid and joined forces with the ‘Democratic Party’ (the newly reformatted PFP which had nearly folded along with the Liberal Party in 1965) – it would spell out just how many liberty loving white South Africans there were to vote ‘Yes’ to end Apartheid – the nearly 3 million strong white voter base brought back an astonishing result. 69% of whites wanted the end of Apartheid – nearly 2,000,000 whites (read that again – 2 million whites willingly and very peacefully voted to end what is now incorrectly touted as their ‘Apartheid privileges’).
In terms of demographics this was not really too dissimilar to the split faced by Jan Smuts in 1948 – the populist white vote was still very much an anti-apartheid vote, even 40 years on. The only difference between 1948 and 1992 was the fact the white electorate base had grown to three times that of 1948 and an armed struggle had kicked off in the interim.
The truth of the matter is that an armed struggle did not really end Apartheid, the ballot did. There was no MK led ‘military victory parade’ over defeated SADF/SAP forces – and that’s because there was no military victory. The victory in the end was a moral one, and it was one in which democracy loving white South African’s played a key role – the first time white people were given proper representation and voice by weight of sheer numbers – and they voted Apartheid and the nationalists out – that is a fact.
The ‘Yes’ vote spelled the end of the National Party, it had fundamentally misinterpreted its support. It’s voting base was fractured further after the 1994 Democratic elections and it continued to diminish until one day it did an unbelievable thing – after flirting with old ‘white’ enemy – the Liberals – in a Democratic alliance they then closed shop, left the Liberals and walk the floor in April 2005 and joined the ranks of none other than the African National Congress (ANC) – their much hated ‘Communists’. So much for Afrikaner Nationalism and the visions of Malan and Verwoerd – because the inconvenient truth is that this is what they are left with as a legacy.
In Conclusion
Nelson Mandela said – “there is no such thing as Black and White” and on this part he’s right. The armed struggle to end Apartheid was not a clear cut Black vs. White campaign. It was also a White vs. White and even a Black vs. Black struggle. The Apartheid Struggle was a struggle of normal decent democratic, human rights loving liberal people – black and white – against the forces of a very small white supremacist movement – a movement which did not even have the support of the majority of White South African people, and which by sheer luck and circumstance managed to get into power and then hung on to power using jackboot styled oppression – of all South Africans – the Black, Indian and Cape Coloured communities and large sectors of the White community too.
However since Mandela’s passing the ANC (and in later days the Economic Freedom Front and ‘Black Lives First’ movements) have worked hard to reinvigorate the struggle and reinvent it as a Black versus White issue – this been done because ANC corruption has so raped the country of its resources now, in not only ‘state capture’ but also in base municipal services – and as the ANC and its cabal collapse on itself they strike out to all White people in South Africa to give up a mythical concept of ‘white’ capital and ‘white owned’ farmland and continue to feed their corruption – Whites are to pay for their collective sins of Apartheid and their collective ‘white privilege’. It is all based on misconstrued history and as a result can be dismissed as utter hogwash, nothing more than party political rhetoric and nothing to do with historic fact at all.
The ANC in recent times is even audacious enough to say that it was only really their struggle to end Apartheid. Movements supported by White South Africans – like the Torch Commando, and the Liberal Party and its African Resistance Movement (ARM) are completely written out of the narrative – lost to history, to the point that not many South Africans today are even aware of them – where the National Party sought to eradicate them from the party political scene during Apartheid, the African National Congress in the Post-Apartheid political scene refuses to acknowledge them as well – literally dismissing thousands and thousands of ‘whites’ who did not support Apartheid and the ANC are very happy to keep this history buried – it contradicts their rhetoric and narrative that much.
Hendrik Verwoerd after he was shot in the head by David Pratt using a .22 revolver
Can you imagine the ANC standing up and thanking people like Sailor Malan for mobilising hundreds of thousands of white South Africans against Apartheid in his Torch Commando, or thanking the Springbok Legion for providing the mainly Jewish trained soldiers who helped start Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) or thanking and the members of the Liberal Party for their predominantly ‘White’ equivalent of MK, the NCL/ARM and their martyr to the cause, John Harris – it won’t happen. The revolver used by David Pratt to attempt to assassinate Prime Minister H.F. Verwoerd has not made it into the exhibits of the Anti-Apartheid museum as an icon of resistance. Instead the ANC are very happy to keep it in its dusty evidence box in an archive.
Given the Economic Freedom Front (EFF), Black Land First (BLF) and ANC’s current rhetoric, the truth is in the hard work pile – it would be very hard to imagine these organisations thanking the white community. What this ANC/EFF/BLF effort to re-establish race divide and deepen South African race politics has done – is force articles such as this one, which instead of taking about the general collective in a fight between dark and light and moving on with our young democracy, we are now almost forced to highlight the ‘White’ resistance to Apartheid, and historically point out it was not just a couple of ‘white liberals’ here and there – but hundreds of thousands of white South Africans over the course of four decades who resisted Apartheid, by ballot and some even by the gun.
Its bad enough that the ‘White’ conscripted statute military veterans are demonised and vanquished by the ANC ruling party and its aligned political affiliations, but it is with extreme irony that the ‘White’ veterans of the non-statute ‘struggle’ forces are now also completely ignored, not often thanked at all and out in the cold – no real effort to erect statues to them of name roads or airports in their honour – that would mean recognising white resistance to Apartheid.
So, it’s just another indication of Apartheid in reverse, the manipulation of history to suit a party political narrative – let’s face it, the last thing the ANC or EFF wants is for young Black South Africans to make heroes out of Apartheid era ‘White’ South Africans and recognise the white community’s struggle against Apartheid.
It’s suits them to trivialise the ‘white struggle’ as somehow insignificant, and they leaned this from the ‘masters’ – the National Party blazed the way by trivialising Jan Smuts, Sailor Malan, just about every South African military hero from WW2 and the entire ‘white’ Liberal Movement. They especially snubbed any white Afrikaans people resisting Apartheid – positioning these people as somehow ‘insignificant’, deviants of the ‘pure’ Afrikaner cause and traitors to their own nation – certainly not to be worshipped by Afrikaner youth, they buried their collective anti-apartheid legacy using a combination of unrelenting propaganda and quite literally writing them out of ‘national christian curriculum’ school history books. The net result is felt even today- the historical narrative of a broad group of ‘Afrikaners against Apartheid’ does not exist.
In the end, political inspiration and not historical fact will ensure this entire saga of ‘white’ resistance to Apartheid remains an unknown and inconvenient truth. It was as inconvenient to the Afrikaner Nationalists then as it is to the African Nationalists now.
South African History On-Line (SAHO) – articles on Liberal Party, Alan Paton, African Resistance Movement, Torch Commando and Liberal Party of South Africa. Dick, G. 2010. John Harris: Hardly a Martyr (Online). Gunther, M. The National Committee of Liberation (NCL)/ African Resistance Movement, in The Road to Democracy in South Africa: 1960-1970. Cape Town: Zebra Press. Large extract from SA History On-Line – The African Resistance Movement (ARM): An Organisational History. Large extracts and references from “Eighteen times white South Africans fought the system” and Opening Mens Eyes; Peter Brown and the Liberal Struggle for South Africa by Michael Cardo. Video copyright Verwoerd – Associated Press
Not too many people are fully aware of the story behind the bombing of the Koeberg nuclear plant in 1982, it made the news alright, big news, but who really knows the real story behind it? Now, if you’re not familiar, you are going to need a stiff drink and sit down, this story is guaranteed to make you laugh and cry all at the same time.
It’s actually a very comical and random sequence of events which led to the Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) getting this one right, and it’s one that will leave you simply astounded. It’s also an inconvenient story to the general narrative, as the bomber is in the same category as Hein Grosskopf, who bombed Witwatersrand Command – he was also ‘white’.
It gets better, not only was he ‘white’ he was also a serving Citizen Force Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) in the South African Defence Force (now that’s very inconvenient news to many SADF veterans). However, it gets even better than that, unlike Grosskopf he was a ‘English South African’ in origin, a South African national sporting champion and a free-thinking liberal soul, a little like the archetypal ‘hippy’.
He’s was not your typical MK cadre at all, in fact nowhere close. MK didn’t even need to train him (the SADF did) and he randomly arrived on their doorstep in Zimbabwe with Koeberg blue-prints under his arm, his proposition was so ‘out there’ MK thought he was a spy and initially laughed him off.
Koeberg Nuclear Plant
The bombing of Koeberg is now posted by MK as one of their ‘Top Achievements’ on their website, but the inconvenient truth is that it was not really theirs to start off with, it was more about the bombers own politics in resistance to Apartheid than the African National Congress’ (ANC) politics and the ‘operator’ was pretty much in his own ‘cell’ with his equally free-spirited girlfriend who in reality was a speech therapist. MK just provided some very ‘unstable’ limpet mines and helped pin-point the placement targets.
So audacious was the attack that the South African security forces at the time suspected the operation was the work of a ‘group’ of highly trained saboteurs. But in fact, and here’s a military truism, never under-estimate the ability of a ‘single’ corporal in the South African Defence Force (SADF) to wreak havoc.
The bombing of Koeberg Nuclear Plant reads like the ‘Incidental Tourist’, stuff just randomly falls in place with loads of luck and even though it is a very serious matter it even comes across as comical at times, you just could not make it up – so let’s have a look at a pair of ‘hippies’ Rodney Wilkinson, South Africa’s fencing sword fighting national champion and his side-kick, his girlfriend, Heather Gray, the speech therapist.
‘Planning’ the Koeberg bombing
Rodney Wilkinson taken in 1995
The Koeberg operation was born of sheer chance in 1978. Rodney Wilkinson was living in a ‘hippy’ commune near Koeberg. The commune ran out of money and Rodney, a student of building science and UCT drop-out, rather reluctantly mind, had to take a job at the nearby nuclear plant which was under construction.
Whist working at the plant for nearly two years he was privy to the building plans and blue-prints. With a strong anti-Apartheid sentiment and liberal conviction he was encouraged by his girlfriend Heather to steal a set of them. But what to do with them?
They came up with an idea, give them to the African National Congress (ANC) so they might find them handy and conduct an attack on the nuclear station. Buoyed up with this idea they both trekked off to the newly independent Zimbabwe to hand over the plans to the ANC in exile there, job done.
Not really. Rodney pitched up randomly on the doorstep of the ANC office and told them he was in possession of plans to one of the most secure and secret facilities in South Africa. The ANC took one look at the hapless hippy in front of them and dismissed him out of hand as a government spy.
The ANC were very circumspect of him, but Rodney was persistent so they agreed to take the plans from him and have them authenticated first. After many delays with Rodney hanging about, during which time the stolen plans were shown to Soviet nuclear scientists and an investigation into Rodney Wilkinson himself was done. Eventually the ANC reverted. Great news – all vetted, job done, they’ll take the plans, Rodney and Heather figured they now could head off home.
Not so fast snowflakes! The ANC then threw a curveball at Rodney and told him that the only way the job could really be done is if he carried out the attack himself. By his own admission he was initially taken aback by all this, as becoming a MK operative really wasn’t in his plans, however he pondered their proposal and eventually agreed. The operation was code-named Operation Mac (named after Mac Maharaj).
SADF Koeberg Commando flash
No military training required, luckily the South African Defence Force (SADF) had already provided all that when he was called up as National Servicemen conscript, completed his two years of training and deployment and he was now serving out his Citizen Force commitments with the rank of Corporal.
In fact he had even served duty on the Angolan border and at one stage wrecked a truck going AWOL and landed up in hospital, he was not prosecuted by the SADF and not demoted.
Therein lies the hazard of conscription, not everyone agreed with the government of the day and moreover many didn’t buy into the ‘whites only’ Afrikaner Nationalist government’s program of conscription at all, especially many of the ‘English’ conscripts and certainly not Rodney, but it did produce very proficient soldiers in any event.
‘Dirty weekends’ in Swaziland
To Rodney’s own surprise, more luck, Koeberg Nuclear station wanted him back at work on mapping emergency pipes and valves at the plant.
The ANC appointed a ‘Dolphin’ MK commander in Swaziland as Wilkinson’s ‘handler’, he was Aboobaker Ismail. So once a month Rodney and his girlfriend trekked off to Swaziland, the small independent kingdom which allowed gambling (banned under Apartheid South Africa), before Sun City was built, this was the premier destination for thousands of white South Africans to go gambling on weekend getaways and not unusual ‘movement’ of white people over a border at all.
Whilst in Swaziland, Rodney and his handler thrashed out the strategy, it was designed to maximise embarrassment to the South African government while minimising the risk to human life – this after all was a nuclear facility and required ‘careful’ thinking.
Aboobaker and Rodney then drilled down the targets onto which limpid mines would be placed. It was suspected at the time that Koeberg Nuclear plant would be used to produce plutonium for the construction of atomic bombs, so to avoid a radioactive fall-out, the attack had to happen before the plant went on-line.
Soviet era SPM Limpet mine commonly used by MK
Limpet mines were to be placed on the two reactor heads, yup – read that again, the reactor heads – they figured as these were made of 110 tones of steel the limpet mines were not really going to really harm them, also they figured there would be fantastic PR and media value in it for the ANC. Other mines were planned for the control room and a containment building, designed to do as much damage as possible.
The date for the attack was deliberate and designed to humiliate the government – it was set for 16th December, the National Party’s ‘Day of the Covenant’ – ‘Dingaan Day’ to others and ‘MK Day’ to members of the ANC. That the attack happened on the 17th December is another event of haplessness and chance.
The arms ‘cache’
To anyone with a military background, the arms ‘cache’ is where the story gets comically scary, as if blowing up a plutonium nuclear plant is not scary enough. Rodney and Heather were directed to the arms cache, and it was not where you would expect, nope this cache consisted of four very old and unstable limpet mines left next to a road side in the middle of the remote Karoo. Makes you think what else is still ‘out there’ in this quirky part of South Africa.
SADF Corporal holding a Soviet era SPM limpet mine
So, how to smuggle them unnoticed?, No problem to Rodney and Heather, they dug them up and simply hid them in decanted wine boxes – the good old box wine ‘doos’ now makes another unusual entry into South African history folklore. They jump into their little Renault 5 and head to their home in the tranquil up-market, very ‘white’ suburb of Claremont in Cape Town. If you have not yet reached for your stiff drink now is a good time.
Now enter the worst co-conspirator ever! Their puppy dog, Gaby. Gaby had been pretty efficient digging holes all over their garden, so thanks to her labours they buried these old and unstable limpet mines in the holes.
From there Rodney smuggled the mines one by one in a hidden compartment of the Renault through the perimeter security fence at the nuclear installation. But were to hide them in order that nobody would dare to look? No problem Rodney simply put them in his desk drawer in his prefabricated office. Now, to get them into the main building and past all the heavy security, no problem again he simply walked in carrying one at a time hidden in his overalls – so much for the ‘heavy’ impenetrable security on South Africa’s most vital, most prized and most secretive Nuclear Plant.
A series of mishaps
So on to the attack itself and it’s marred by a series of mishaps. It started with an unrelated accidental short-circuit which started a cable fire. The incident was reported in the local press. Now enter the ANC’s President-in-exile, Oliver Tambo, who had been made aware of the operation but not really the details of it, like timing. So he released a statement immediately claiming the fire as an ANC victory. All this did was prompt a security scare and clamp down at the plant and gave the National Party some ammo to ridicule the ANC for unsubstantiated claims.
Then, in November the firm hiring Rodney informed him that they were laying him off at the end of the month, so much for timing. Luckily for Rodney they changed their minds and asked him to stay on for another month. As fortune would also have it, he turned the security scare to his advantage and told them he would stay on, but only till the 17th December, thereby obtaining an official alibi and cover for his planned disappearance.
Here is where he missed the deadline of the 16th December, as previously stated the limpet mines were old and unstable. Rodney placed the mines in the pre-determined targets setting 24 hour fuses on the 15th December (a Friday) so they would blow on the public holiday (a Saturday), thereby assuring minimal casualties to his fellow contractors as nobody would be there.
Here’s the kicker, as his contract was ending, his fellow contractors and engineers liked this young man and decided to throw Rodney a farewell party at the plant on the Friday evening just after he had been busy planting the bombs. Rodney had to sit through his impromptu ‘going-away’ party stressing endlessly that the bombs would not go off prematurely.
He had no real need to worry, as said these limpet mines were old and they would not go off on the Saturday either in fact they eventually went off a day after the target date on the Sunday. The springs on the firing mechanism proved to have been brittle and the devices also exploded over a period of several hours instead of simultaneously.
Rodney’s ‘Great Escape’
Reach for that stiff drink again, you’ll need it for this next part of the story. Instead of bolting it out the country with a keen sense of urgency, as the other ‘white’ lone wolf MK cadre did – Hein Grosskopf who high-tailed it directly into Botswana after bombing of Wit Command on his motorbike, not even looking back for a nano-second. No, not our ‘hippy’ would casually, get this, ‘cycle’ out of South Africa on a bicycle, yup you heard right … a bicycle.
He took a domestic flight to Johannesburg and was driven with a borrowed bicycle to a point near the Swaziland border where he jumped on the bicycle and then casually cycled through the border post into exile.
Aftermath
Oliver Tambo at a news conference in exile (left) Gallo Image
A few days beforehand South African special forces had attacked ANC targets in the kingdom of Lesotho, Oliver Tambo claimed the Koeberg attack was an act of retaliation carried out by a MK ‘unit’ (one chap in reality and as propaganda goes his efforts had nothing to do with the Lesotho raid at all).
How close to nuclear fall-out did we come? Take a big sip that stiff drink again. Not part of Rodney’s plan but unbeknown to him enriched uranium fuel had been moved into to the plant when the attack took place and was due to come on-line in the reactors. Luckily for all of us (and here we include the entire planet) it was in dormant storage.
The attack delayed the commissioning of the plant by about 18 months and cost the Apartheid government millions of rand. This is why this attack sits as No. 2 on their all time greatest achievements (No. 1 is the Sasol bombing and No.3 is the rather controversial and bloody Church Street Bombing). Although there were no deaths attributed to the bombing, that it nearly cost thousands of lives in the entire city of Cape Town is lost on this particular MK ‘highlight’.
Rodney flew on to Maputo where he met Oliver Tambo, the two exchanged a warm and tearful embrace. Rodney’s girlfriend Heather was already in Maputo having flown out a week beforehand. The two jumped on a flight to the United Kingdom and further into exile.
They married one another in Woodbridge, Suffolk, before returning home to South Africa following the general amnesty and unbanning of all ‘liberation’ movements. The TRC rewarded the Wilkinsons and Aboobaker Ismail full amnesty in April 1999. Given the nature of this MK ‘cell’ it seemed a little unlikely that the ANC and its brand of politics is quite Rodney and Heathers bag, anti-apartheid, yes but unlike Carl Niehaus we don’t find him regularly wheeled out in a PEP store set of camos with the other ‘struggle heroes’ and he lives a life in relative obscurity.
A happy ending to our ‘Incidental terrorist’ and an equally and far more happy ending to just about every Cape Town and Western Cape resident, South Africa as a whole, the entire South African tourist trade, the local bio-sphere and the green planet in general. We can now all universally breathe a sigh of relief that the entire Cape Peninsula is not a radioactive ‘Chernobyl’ no-go zone thanks to the African National Congress.
If you chose not to have a stiff drink reading this article, nows a good time to really start.
Written and Researched by Peter Dickens. Primary source, an interview with Rodney Wilkinson by a daily mail staff reporter in December 1995 and photograph. Published news snippets, MK official web-page. TRC references. Image references – general net search. Nuclear terrorism in Africa: The ANC’s Operation Mac and the attack on the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station in South Africa. Jo-Ansie van Wyk
Once again the media is alive on the anniversary of Solomon Mahlangu’s hanging, no mention of course as to why he was hanged, other than the ‘Apartheid Regime’ did it and he’s a struggle hero, and so much attention is given his hanging anniversary that it is attended by the Vice President with a message to remind every-one again as to the brutality of Apartheid and white oppression.
So what sets him apart from other ‘struggle heroes’ that his day is specifically remembered with such hype? What else other than a quotable quote which has some good political mileage and makes for great media?
He said; “My blood will nourish the tree that will bear the fruits of freedom. Tell my people that I love them. They must continue the fight”. Powerful stuff as quotes go, great propaganda value.
Forget what he in fact did, forget the reason behind his hanging, forget even the tenets of law, the man’s a ‘hero’ to his ‘people’. But let’s take a step back and examine what he did, why he was executed instead of getting a life sentence as was the case with many ‘political’ MK cadres also charged with terrorism. Also, let’s question if he in fact should be the ‘prima’ anti-apartheid activist to be recognised because he was hanged, and finally let’s ask if we are in fact recognising the right role models.
Solomon Mahlangu
In 1976 Mahlangu joined an African National Congress (ANC) MK military training camp called “Engineering” in Angola – one of the thousands of disenchanted youth from the Soweto uprising known in MK as the 76’s which fundamentally swelled MK numbers (up to then MK was a very small group).
Solomon Mahlangu, George ‘Lucky’ Mahlangu and Mondy Motloung were then taken to Swaziland, where they were given large suitcases filled with pamphlets, rifles and hand grenades. On 11 June 1977 they crossed the border into South Africa and started making their way to Johannesburg.
The three, each carrying a large suitcase, were climbing into a taxi in Diagonal Street in the centre of Johannesburg. An ordinary policeman became suspicious and grabbed one of the suitcases. An AK-47 assault rifle and a hand grenade fell out. All three of them fled, Lucky Mahlangu in one direction and the other two in the direction of Fordsburg. There, in Goch Street, the two sought refuge in the storage facilities of the retailer John Orr’s. One of them opened fire on the employees of the company (essentially targeting and shooting innocent civilians in a retail store), killing two and wounding another two of them. Mahlangu and Motaung were eventually arrested.
Mahlangu’s trial started in the Supreme Court on 7 November 1977. The three faced two counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder and various counts under the Terrorism Act. In its judgment the court found that Mahlangu and Motaung had acted with a common purpose and that it consequently did not matter which of the two did the shooting and killing. Mahlangu had attested that he had not physically pulled the trigger himself but Motaung had. However to understand ‘common purpose’ in a military context – if you have a machine gun team of a gunner and ammunition feeder and spotter, it matters not who actually pulls the tigger – they as a team are acting in common purpose.
Mahlangu was convicted on all counts. In terms of the South African law at the time, the court was obliged to sentence any accused to death for murder, unless the accused proved mitigating circumstances. The court found that Mahlangu had failed to prove a mitigating circumstance and consequently handed down the death sentence.
In South African law at the time murder was murder and the standard sentence was death, politics did not really enter into it if the case proved murder and the state hung loads of people for murder, not just resistance movement cadres.
To test whether Solomon Mahlangu’s court case and sentence by the Apartheid Regime was in any way politically driven his case was re-opened by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) after 1994. Their findings are not what most people would expect. The commission examined the cases of Solomon Mahlangu and Monty Motaung and found that both of them were responsible for the deaths of Mr Rupert Kessner and Mr Kenneth Wolfendale (the John Orr employees). It also found both Mahlangu and Motaung guilty of gross human rights violations. Lastly it found both the African National Congress and the commanding officer of Umkhonto we Sizwe guilty of gross human rights violations.
So, there’s the reason the media hype and news don’t want to really get into the facts and would rather generate propaganda spin, a very unsuccessful MK insurgency gone very wrong (nothing noble in the action), and one that really is a case of terrorism and murder, the shooting of innocent store employees – a very ‘tainted’ “hero” by any stretch of reason. But why the focus on Solomon Mahlangu other than his quote?
Consider this, usually trailblazers are honoured with martyrdom, but there is a very inconvenient problem here. One of the first South African’s hanged for killing civilians in an anti-apartheid armed insurgency was not Black, nope – he was White. He also was not a member of the ANC, he had his own anti-apartheid political movement. His name was Frederick John Harris.
That should surprise many, a White man (not a Black man) was one of the prima anti-apartheid campaigners sent to the gallows, let that sink in for a second. It reveals another inconvenient truth, that the first mass anti-apartheid protestors – like the ‘Torch Commando’ and the ‘Black Sash’ were made up of White people in the majority. It was also no different in the case of John Harris’ own movement, the ‘African Resistance Movement’ (ARM).
John Harris
So let’s examine John Harris and why he went to the gallows and not into political confinement.
Frederick John Harris (known as John Harris) was born in 1937. He was a teacher, a member of the executive committee of the Liberal Party in the Transvaal, as well as a Chairman of the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee. He was also one of the members of the nearly all-white African Resistance Movement (ARM) and the first and only white man to be hanged for a politically inspired offence in the years after the 1960 Sharpeville emergency.
The African Resistance Movement (ARM) is not known to many in South Africa, in fact it started in parallel to the ANC’s Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), and it declared an armed struggle against Apartheid in 1961, and here’s the problem to current political narrative in South Africa – it was made up of white people primarily, some with experience from World War 2.
ARM was founded by members of South Africa’s Liberal Party. The Liberal Party was a mainly white party founded on 9 May 1953 out of a belief that Jan Smuts’ United Party was unable to achieve any real liberal progress in South Africa, they initially called for a franchise based vote for Black South Africans and later this evolved to a call for ‘one man one vote’. The Liberal Party was established during the coloured vote constitutional crisis of the 1950s, and they drew membership from the Torch Commando, run by Sailor Malan.
One of the defining moments in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa was the Sharpeville Massacre and its aftermath. The heavy-handed response of the state saw thousands of activists detained and imprisoned soon after the massacre of protesters on 21 March 1960. Political movements such as the ANC and PAC were banned and forced underground, and although the Liberal Party was not banned by the government, its members were not spared the wrath of the state. The crackdown forced the ANC and PAC to re-evaluate their approach to the liberation struggle and consider whether to abandon the principle of non-violence in favour of a campaign of sabotage. The Liberal Party of South Africa was in the same boat, and they too re-evaluated thier approach to the ‘struggle’ and embarked on armed resistance.
Despite the Liberal Party’s initial non-violent stance, the party was not spared the suppression of political activity after the declaration of the state of emergency in March 1960. The government launched a vicious attack on the Liberal Party, arresting 35 of its leading members and detaining them at the Fort in Johannesburg. Furthermore, the government issued banning orders under the Suppression of Communism Act, severely restricting the political activities of 41 leading members of the party between March 1961 and April 1966.
The detention and banning of leading Liberal Party members forced them to form their own resistance movement and cells, out of this came The National Committee of Liberation (NCL) and a declaration for armed resistance, the NCL changed its name later to African Resistance Movement (ARM).
ARM launched its first operation in September 1963. From then, until July 1964, the NLC/ARM bombed power lines, railroad tracks and rolling stock, roads, bridges and other vulnerable infrastructure, without any civilian casualties. It aimed to turn the white population against the government by creating a situation that would result in capital flight and collapse of confidence in the country and its economy. It launched four attacks in 1961, three in 1962, eight in 1963, and ten in 1964.
So, here we have a mainly ‘white’ militant ‘terrorist’ group operating in the 1960’s blowing stuff up in resistance to Apartheid South Africa – now how many South Africans today know about that little inconvenient truth.
John Harris was banned in February 1964, a few months before police moved to smash the underground ARM. While maintaining his Liberal Party connection, he had joined ARM, but he was not arrested in the police swoops.
On July 24, 1964, John Harris walked into the whites-only section of Johannesburg railway station and left a suitcase there that contained a bomb. It exploded just 13 minutes later, injuring several people seriously, in particular Glynnis Burleigh, 12, and her grandmother, Ethel Rhys, 77. Mrs Rhys died three weeks later from her injuries. Glynnis, who had 70% and third degree burns, was left with life-changing injuries.
A telephone warning had been planned so the station could be evacuated of civilians, but the warning was too late to prevent the explosion, and the result off this ARM action produced a horrified reaction amongst the white population – ARM had finally killed an innocent civilian.
The state crushed the ARM and the Liberal Party, eradicating it from history. Harris was caught, tried for murder of a civilian (see the trend) and by the tenets of South African law for murder received an automatic death sentence. On April 1, 1965 went to the gallows, reportedly singing.
An inconvenient truth
So, there you have the reason why we don’t recognise this anti-apartheid campaigner sent to the gallows, he wasn’t part of the ANC and he’s the wrong colour. It would just throw out the entire whites vs. blacks political baloney banded about with such regularity, especially when the ANC, the government and the national media settle down to praise Solomon Mahlangu as the ‘Black’ South African hanged in resistance by the nasty ‘White’ South Africans.
The inconvenient truth in all of this is that Apartheid did not just divide black and white, it divided EVERYONE, including whites. In fact the white community was split right down the middle. Try and explain this ‘truth’ to the average South African today, the first mass action movement and protests against Apartheid were a ‘white’ affair (200,000 Torch Commando members), an anti-apartheid ‘white’ martyr was also hanged and the ‘white’ Liberal Party had its very own ‘MK’ anti-apartheid armed resistance movement.
Wow, that’ll blow their minds, it just does not FIT into the current narrative, skin-colour didn’t matter to the Apartheid State when it came to executing anti-apartheid insurgents and crushing pro-democracy movements – it literally throws out the window the whole rhetoric and twaddle banded about the EFF and ANC as to ‘white privilege’ gained from Apartheid.
However, Black and White issues aside, as it really is distressing that South Africans are always ‘forced’ to think in racial silos whenever this political expedient baloney gets banded about by the ANC and EFF, so here’s the question – should we really be enshrining people like Solomon Mahlangu – and even John Harris as ‘heroes’?
The answer is no we should not, these ‘heroes’ are very tainted, not by the act of rising against injustice and racial oppression, there is honour in that – but because they both killed innocent civilians and in both cases they were found wanting. That makes them terrorists by the purest definition of the term.
The worshiping of tainted heroes is also a divisive issue, it simply does not bring people together, they murdered people and this is simply never to going to sit well with the community and families affected by them. These tainted ‘heroes’ are trouble, they deepen the issue of race divide and resentment, they do not lend themselves to community healing and nation building.
Now, why South Africans would choose theses ‘tainted’ heroes, when the country has a very long list of heroes who fought just causes, have broad appeal and can easily be adopted by nearly every community in South Africa is just beyond belief.
Nearly all of South Africa’s surviving World War 2 veterans fall into this category (Black and White). Aside from this, most World War 2 veterans took part in the Torch Commando’s anti-apartheid protests in their tens of thousands. These were men of conviction, men who fought the oppression of racist ideologies and fought it properly – real heroes.
It’s really difficult to fault these ‘real’ military heroes, here we choose just two, one Black and one White South African – read a little on them and keep in mind the two ‘tainted heroes’ (Solomon Mahlangu and John Harris) when comparing them. So here we have two ‘real heroes’ in a raft of many – Sailor Malan and Lucas Majozi.
Sailor Malan
Much has been written on Sailor Malan as a Fighter Ace, his rules for combat and his command of 74 Squadron during the Battle of Britain which played such a pivot role in winning the Battle. His combat record, promotions and decorations alone are simply astonishing.
He first took part in evacuation of Dunkirk. During this battle he first exhibited his fearless and implacable fighting spirit. When the Battle of Britain begun, 74 Squadron (known as ‘The Tigers’) was to take the full heat of the battle in what was known as ‘hell’s corner’ over Kent, the squadron was eventually based at the now famous ‘Biggin Hill’ aerodrome in the thick of the battle. Sailor Malan was given command of 74 Squadron at the height of the Battle of Britain and on the 11th August 1940 the scored so many kills that they day became for ever known as “Sailor’s August the Eleventh” in Battle of Britain folklore.
By D Day (i.e. Operation Overlord, the liberation of France and subsequently Western Europe), Sailor Malan was in command of 145 (Free French) Fighter Wing and was himself leading a section of the wing over the beaches during the landings in Normandy.
In all Sailor Malan scored 27 enemy aircraft kills, seven shared destroyed, three probably destroyed and 16 damaged. He was to receive the Distinguished Service Order decoration – not once, but twice and well as the Distinguished Flying Cross decoration, again not once – but twice.
When Sailor Malan returned to South Africa after the war, he could not believe a the Nazi sympathising National Party had been brought to power in 1948, implementing the very ideology that took him to war in the first place. In the 1950’s he formed a mass protest group of ex-servicemen called the ” Torch Commando” to fight the National Party’s plans to implement Apartheid and call for an early election to remove what they regarded as ‘fascist’ government from power.
In Sailor Malan’s own words, The Torch Commando was: “established to oppose the police state, abuse of state power, censorship, racism, the removal of the coloured vote and other oppressive manifestations of the creeping fascism of the National Party regime”.
The Torch Commando fought the anti-apartheid legislation battle for more than five years. At its height the commando had 250,000 members, making it one of the largest protest movements ever seen in South Africa’s history. The movement, mainly ‘white’ in its demographic can also count itself as the first mass anti-apartheid protest movement with protest rallies reaching up to 75,000 people. This mass ‘pro-democracy and anti-apartheid’ protest movement occurred before the ANC’s first mass protests against Apartheid, which manifested themselves in the form of the defiance campaign.
DF Malan’s nationalist government was so alarmed by the movement that it acted its usual way – ‘decisively’ – and crushed the organisation by legislation and painting Sailor Malan as ‘Afrikaner of a different kind’, a traitor to his ‘Volk’.
Despite this, Sailor continued to fight against the violation of human rights in South Africa with the same passion and moral fibre that allowed him to fight so vigorously against fascism and racism during the Battle of Britain. His dream of a better, democratic life for all in South Africa not only urged and carried him forward, but also caused him to be shunned by and isolated from his white National Afrikaner countrymen who were blinded by the short-sighted racial discrimination of their government.
In 1963, Sailor Malan, one of the most famous fighter pilots in the history of World War 2, one of the ‘few’ who Winston Churchill hailed as a saviour of European democracy (Churchill was also Sailor Malan’s son’s Godfather), lost his fight against Parkinson’s Disease and died at the young age of 52.
Lucas Majozi.
Now consider this real military hero, Lucas Majozi. Here’s a very notable South African military hero. The highest decoration awarded to a Black South African soldier during the Second World War was the DCM (Distinguished Conduct Medal) and it was awarded to Lucas Majozi.
Lucas Majozi volunteered to fight in the 2nd World War, however as he was a black man, race politics in South Africa dictated that he could only join the Native Military Corps (NMC) in a non-combat role, which meant he and all other South African ‘Bantu’ fighting in World War 2 could not carry a firearm – unlike the Cape Coloured Corps, which could carry firearms and take a combat role. This did not however keep the Native Military Corps away from the perils of fighting and NMC were often placed right in the middle of the fighting. Also, in instances of high peril reason prevailed and there were issued rifles, as many accounts show during the fall of Tobruk.
So how does an unarmed NMC soldier get to win one of the highest accolades for bravery in World War 2?
The answer lies in Lucas Majozi’s personality and character, he was a proper South African warrior and although he would be unarmed he volunteered to become a medic working as a stretcher bearer in the thick of fighting to bring wounded men back from harm to aid stations, an extremely dangerous job. Like another Native Military Corps hero – Job Maseko, Lucas Majozi by his actions was also to become one of South Africa’s fighting legends.
So let’s have a look at Lucas Majozi, his account is a truly inspirational one, a very remarkable act of bravery and courage.
During the Battle of El Alamein the South African 1st and 2nd Field Force Brigades (FFB), as soon after the battle began, became pinned down in the German Axis forces minefield by intense German machine gun and artillery fire. The South African infantrymen suffered very severe casualties.
Throughout the night of 23 October, the stretcher-bearers worked under heavy enemy fire, tending to the wounded and evacuating them from the battlefield. Amongst these Black NMC non-combatant medics rescuing their White combatant counterparts was Lucas Majozi.
As the action wore on, Lucas Majozi was within 100 meters of the enemy under heavy machine gun fire. Thinking nothing of his personal safety he continued to evacuate the wounded, returning time and again in the ‘veritable hell’ of the machine gun fire to rescue more of his wounded colleagues.
In the process he was himself wounded by fire, but continued to evacuate other wounded, when told to get to an aid station for his wounds, he refused going back into the hail of machine gun fire to rescue more wounded instead.
After his co-stretcher bearer also became a casualty himself, Lucas Majozi went on alone, again going back into the hell fire and carrying out the wounded on his back, never wavering.
He continued to rescue men under continuous fire all night and by the next morning he had lost so much blood from his own wounds he collapsed from both sheer exhaustion and blood loss.
Lucas survived the war and returned to South Africa to work as Policeman, He died in 1961.
A similar story was captured in a recent Hollywood Blockbuster called ‘Hacksaw Ridge’ involving an ‘unarmed’ American medic whose actions were not dissimilar to Lucas Majozi’s, but do you think South Africans have remembered our own hero and idolised him – no, most South Africans don’t even know who Lucas Majozi is.
Victims of Apartheid
Now, these men are ‘real military heroes’ by any definition of the term. In many other countries the men and women who fought in World War 2 against the Nazi and Fascism scourge are hailed as the nation’s heroes – from Russia to America to France to the UK to Canada and to Australia – world over. The living ones fawned over and idolised by just about everyone, including their respective Presidents and Prime Ministers.
But not in South Africa … why?
Simply put these Word War 2 heroes are also ‘victims of Apartheid’, their legacy devastated by the National Party whose narrow politics isolated them as ‘traitors’ for what they saw as a British cause (and not a world-wide war against Nazism and Fascism – in fact they had supported the Nazi cause prior to and during the war).
As ‘victims of Apartheid’ in an odd sense they are in the same boat as Solomon Mahlangu and John Harris. The difference is that in addressing who in this big pool of Apartheid’s ‘victims’ we choose to hail as National Heroes, the current government has chosen the most tainted and divisive ‘heroes’ they can muster and simply ignored anything that does not suit the ANC’s own history and their own political narrative.
In Conclusion
It’s a disgrace that the governing party still allows this ‘Apartheid’ legacy to continue to keep these ‘real military’ national heroes from the country for political expediency. One thing is for sure, the likes of Sailor Malan and Lucas Majozi are far better ‘heroes’ and role models and miles ahead of the likes of Solomon Mahlangu and even an obscure person like John Harris, who should rightly take the mantle as one of the prima anti-apartheid ‘heroes’ executed by the state, but is ignored because of the thing he was hanged for in the first place – Apartheid, only this time in reverse – his fault, he was not black and not a member of the ANC, his story simply just doesn’t fit the narrative.
It really is time we start to seriously address our values and priorities and start considering and highlighting the deeds of our real heroes, people whose deeds and stories build on reconciliation and don’t deepen the race divides in South Africa.
Written and Researched by Peter Dickens. Reference and extracts from Wikipedia, South African History On-Line SAHO, the Guardian (International edition)
“Christmas passes have been issued men and you need to organise a safe ride home. Here’s your reflective ‘Ride Safe’ band “Daar gat julle” (bugger off) … ”
Remember this – the ‘Ride Safe’ campaign? These Ride Safe signboards were posted all over South Africa at one stage so friendly motorists could pick up a “troepie” (troop or ‘troopie’ – English varient) hitching a ride home on ‘pass’ (leave).
The sign boards where distinctive showing the SADF ‘Castle’ emblem with a trooper and his ‘balsak’ (duffel bag) in the centre.
‘Ride Safe’ was a national campaign instituted by The South African Legion of Military Veterans (SA Legion) and co-ordinated across all the various municipalities and the roads authority. It was designed to give a safe pick-up place for members of all the country’s armed services to stand and wait for motorists to stop for them and give them a lift.
It was a campaign which came about in an age when service in the SADF was part of South Africa’s socio-cultural make-up this was a very normative practice.
The campaign included relective orange bands sponsored by Sanlam so motorists could easily spot a servicemen day or night as an added safety measure. Generally not enough of these bands were available and not everyone used them, but it was a great gesture and added safety measure. Motorists also had ‘Ride Safe’ number stickers which showed their support of the program.
To think that at its height this system was the primary shuttle for literally thousands of national servicemen on any given weekend heading to all parts of the Republic of South Africa, near and far, remote rural towns and farms as well as the big cities.
On a point as to the intensity of the ‘struggle’ and threat it posed, on a weekend tens of thousands of troops would be hitching on the highways, the majority where unarmed (you had to leave your weapons safely stored in the base) and here’s the hidden truth – the vast majority of National Servicemen never felt under any sort of threat or in any form of danger by ANC Umkhonto we Sizwe (Mk) forces or any other ‘struggle’ forces for that matter – a softer and easier target than an unarmed and isolated soldier you could not get and it never really posed an issue.
Such was the degree of ‘low key’ resistance in South Africa during the critical Apartheid ‘struggle years’ when it came to confronting the SADF directly (the ‘sharp end of a military confrontation), that thousands of unarmed national servicemen and permanent force members could freely roam the country and stand on the national roads without any real worry, and nor was it a concern of the military establishment.
In fact it was enthusiastically supported by the public at large, literally thousands of motorists and it was assisted by private corporate sponsorship, so much so it even became a media sensation and many will remember the ‘Ride Safe’ song by Matt Hurter (and here it is if you’re in need of a ‘blast from the past’).
Waiting in the middle of nowhere for the next lift was not unusual – and sometimes for troops who lived remotely the entire pass would be spent on the road trying to get home and the idea abandoned. There is a rich tapestry of ‘Ride Safe’ stories told by many a veteran on the quest to get home and the characters they would meet along the way.
Many veterans will immediately understand this image of a signaller, Stuart Robertson on his way home in the middle of absolutely nowhere hitching a ride.
Unfortunately by the late 80’s they became exploited by any hitch-hiker wanting a free lift, so motorists avoided the stop. By 1990 the ANC had been unbanned and the country spiralled into a political dog-fight, so by this time it was also deemed dangerous as it placed troops in a vulnerable position as the unrest intensified between an array of different political factions trying to power grab during the CODESA negotiations. In Afrikaans the campaign was called ” Ry Veilig” (ride safe) and by this stage national servicemen started to sarcastically call it “Ry Verby” (ride past).
By 1994 the ‘Ride Safe’ program and national service conscription was all but gone. Still – the good old days in South Africa when it was safe for national servicemen to hitch rides and safe to pick up a hitch hiker, especially when you did your bit for the country and gave a happy ‘troepie’ a ride home to his much-loved and missed family for Christmas.
Written by Peter Dickens. Copyright and thanks to Stuart Robertson for this great memory, the “Ride Safe’ song copyright Matt Hurter and Gallo Records.
So why socialism in the middle? Simple answer is the ‘role of state’ and in the case of political parties leaning towards Communism they see more involvement of the state in economic, individual and community affairs, whereas parties leaning to Capitalism see less role of the state in these affairs. In modern politics both ‘left’ leaning and ‘right’ leaning political parties see some sort of state (government) involvement in the socio-economic well-being of its citizens to a lessor or greater degree – depending on where they sit on the continuum.
Central to both Nazism and Bolshevism is the idea of the communal hive. Think of this as a Bee Hive, everyone is equal to a degree except for the Queen Bee, who is not equal to anyone at all and is the ‘supreme leader’ in every respect. Injected with the ideals of ‘Nationalism’ whether Soviet or German, each hive is left with a unique species identity. The hive has a social structure and in both hives there are worker bees and drone bees, drone bees serve the supreme leader only – this would be the ‘the party’ elite. The worker bees are all equal and ‘honey’ is the ‘means of production’.
Both Nazism and Bolshevism have as their root – a utopian sence of ‘community’, so let’s have a look at why Nazim is at it’s very core a ‘labour’ and ‘community’ movement, and its all found in the name.
Adolph Hitler joined the German Worker’s Party as its 55th member when it was a fledgling in 1920 and quickly became most active orator and chief of propaganda. Hitler preferred that role as he saw himself as the drummer for the ‘völkisch’ nationalism part of labour politics in Germany.
So whats with ‘the ‘völkisch movement’ that it created such disunity in the original German Worker’s Party? Simply it also included the idea of ‘Pure’ Germans in its definition of the proletariat and this bit Hitler loved, he was later to write ‘Mein Kampf’ “the basic ideas of the National-Socialist movement are populist (völkisch) and the populist (völkisch) ideas are National-Socialist.” The ‘völkisch movement’ spun off a short-lived organisation called the ‘Thule Society’ and it was a member of this society Friedrich Krohn who designed the original Nazi Swastika.
So how are the Bolsheviks the same as the Nazis? Like the Nazi’s their form of socialism is similar along economic principles and principles of governance. Where Bolshevism and Nazism both converge is on the principle of totalitarianism. With Karl Marx’s principles of Labour, Vladimir Lenin went further and proposed the idea of a one party state under a singular leader.
However, if you consider that Stalinism also subscribed to totalitarianism for its socialist state, then an argument can be made that one-party, supreme leader communism is also a ‘right wing’ ideology.
So why is the EFF the same as the Nazis, they have self-proclaimed themselves as Marxist-Leninist?
In addition the EFF match both the Stalinists and the Nazis on the militarisation of their party, like the Nazi’s had their own para-military force, the Schutzstaffel (SS), so to the Stalin with his party para-military force the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) – the EFF’s inner circle ‘security’ team have now also started to closely resemble original Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA) style ‘strong-men’ wearing combat fatigues, abiding military styled rank structures and openly carrying weapons.
Replaced the word ‘white’ and the words ‘white monopoly capital’ with the words ‘Jew’ and ‘Jewish monopoly capital’ and you have Nazism as outlined in Hitler’s Mein Kamph – pure and applied by the EFF.
As to this particular lesson from history, it is bewildering that ‘Communism’ as practiced by Lenin remains appealing, but completely jaw-dropping that veiled ‘Nazism’ is even allowed in any modern democracy, Nazism is despised in every single G20 country, except South Africa were its even represented openly in Parliament in the form of the EFF. True, its been skillfully covered over with the need to address ‘historical wrongs’ under a ‘Left Wing’ Communist banner, but I do wonder when that ruse will start to wear off and the truth exposed – with any luck without too much blood been spilled before we get there.
Colin Eglin, the long-time anti-apartheid campaigner and long-time leader of the opposition Democrats in South Africa has recently had a road named after him … but so what! Many streets and roads are named after various politicians in South Africa, especially the anti-apartheid campaigners in recent times … however, this one is different, very different.
In 1954 Colin himself was elected unopposed as the UP provincial councillor for Pinelands. In addition to that, he became chairman of the UP’s Cape Peninsula Council and then in 1958 Eglin became the Peninsula MP.
He remained party leader until 1988, however he didn’t have the best people skills to sustain this type of leadership. Affectionately known as ‘the Egg’, Colin Eglin had a sharp tongue and bit off many heads. His long-time colleague Helen Suzman admitted that his manner “put off a lot of people. Yet we all came back to “the Egg”, not only because he was a role model for progressives, or because of his intelligence and measured political judgment, but because he was a decent, very warm-hearted man, whom we held in great affection.
In 1991, as the Democratic Party (DP) stalwart, Colin participated in the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) and served in its working group. Described by Nelson Mandela as “one of the architects of (South Africa’s) democracy”, Colin Eglin played a leading role in the drafting of the country’s post-apartheid constitution.
Colin’s negotiating prowess was recognised by Joe Slovo in particular and, when an impasse was reached, the two would get together and generally find a way forward and eventually, a worthy constitution was to emerge. His intellect, presence and engaging manner were recognised and respected by all in those crafting the new democratic Constitution and Bill of Rights in the tumultuous years of 1990 to April 1994.
In 2000, the DP merged with other groups to become the Democratic Alliance (DA), which survives as the current official ‘democratic’ opposition to an African National Congress (ANC) government.
In one his final speeches, Colin Eglin is nothing short of pure prophesy – consider this when he said “Ironically the (ANC) government’s Black Economic Empowerment policy has contributed to the widening of the (poverty) gap, by creating a new rich elite, often of persons with strong political connections, and by leaving the millions of impoverished out of the empowerment process. These factors are having an impact, turning people away from the values that underpin our constitutional system, and eroding confidence in our democratic institutions. They are driving people towards populism as a cure for their problems. In short, they are undermining our new democracy.”
On the 9th August 1991 things came to a head in what would become known as ‘The Battle of Ventersdorp’. The National Party’s meeting in Ventersdorp was violently disrupted by the AWB, and this event brought the South African Police and AWB into head-long conflict. South Africa’s Defence and Police structures and personnel now had to deal with this added, rather violent, dynamic to an already feuding and violent ethnic and political landscape.
This guarding stemmed from the Boer War. The scorched earth and concentration camp policies initiated by Kitchener had devastated the Afrikaner culture, family histories and culture lost forever, now the Nationalists had to rebuild it and the hard-liner Afrikaner Nationalists wanted nothing to do the British and their British descendants in South Africa. To them these were the English white South Africans concentrated mainly in Natal, the Western Cape and Johannesburg, Apartheid was also planned to separate Afrikaners from these most hated English – Black separation was part of the greater scheme, but so too white racial separation along cultural and even economic lines.
A key organisation in opposition to Apartheid in the 1950’s and 1960’s was the South African Liberal Party (SALP). Central to the Liberal Party were three men, Leslie Rubin Peter Brown and Alan Paton.
So on to the attack itself and it’s marred by a series of mishaps. It started with an unrelated accidental short-circuit which started a cable fire. The incident was reported in the local press. Now enter the ANC’s President-in-exile, Oliver Tambo, who had been made aware of the operation but not really the details of it, like timing. So he released a statement immediately claiming the fire as an ANC victory. All this did was prompt a security scare and clamp down at the plant and gave the National Party some ammo to ridicule the ANC for unsubstantiated claims.
Once again the media is alive on the anniversary of Solomon Mahlangu’s hanging, no mention of course as to why he was hanged, other than the ‘Apartheid Regime’ did it and he’s a struggle hero, and so much attention is given his hanging anniversary that it is attended by the Vice President with a message to remind every-one again as to the brutality of Apartheid and white oppression.
In 1976 Mahlangu joined an African National Congress (ANC) MK military training camp called “Engineering” in Angola – one of the thousands of disenchanted youth from the Soweto uprising known in MK as the 76’s which fundamentally swelled MK numbers (up to then MK was a very small group).
So let’s examine John Harris and why he went to the gallows and not into political confinement.
Much has been written on Sailor Malan as a Fighter Ace, his rules for combat and his command of 74 Squadron during the Battle of Britain which played such a pivot role in winning the Battle. His combat record, promotions and decorations alone are simply astonishing.
Now consider this real military hero, Lucas Majozi. Here’s a very notable South African military hero. The highest decoration awarded to a Black South African soldier during the Second World War was the DCM (Distinguished Conduct Medal) and it was awarded to Lucas Majozi.
“Christmas passes have been issued men and you need to organise a safe ride home. Here’s your reflective ‘Ride Safe’ band “Daar gat julle” (bugger off) … ”
‘Ride Safe’ was a national campaign instituted by The South African Legion of Military Veterans (SA Legion) and co-ordinated across all the various municipalities and the roads authority. It was designed to give a safe pick-up place for members of all the country’s armed services to stand and wait for motorists to stop for them and give them a lift.
The Observation Post 