Thula Simpson

‘Umkhonto we Sizwe, We are Waiting for You’: The ANC and the Township Uprising, September 1984 – September 1985

ABSTRACT This article discusses the ANCs relationship with the youth-led township rebellion of the mid 1980s which has not received adequate attention in the existing literature on South African resistance politics. The argument made is that while the ANC lacked a physical presence in the townships and was thus unable to organise the uprisings, the appeal of its confrontational policies – and above all its armed struggle – meant it was accorded the mantle of symbolic leadership by the youths spearheading the fighting. The intangibility of mass consciousness and the difficulty of gauging it though conventional archival sources means the article relies heavily on the testimony of contemporary witnesses, and particularly journalists. The origins and dynamics of the uprising are investigated in the article and the gestation of the insurrection within the townships for almost a year before its eventual eruption is discussed, as is the manner in which the rebellions lack of formal leadership proved to be its greatest strength by making it difficult to quell. The timeframe covered spans the first year of the uprising because it witnessed in microcosm the basic themes which dominated mass politics in South Africa for most of the following decade.

'The bay and the ocean': a history of the ANC in Swaziland, 1960-1979

Abstract South African political refugees first began arriving in Swaziland in significant numbers in the late 1950s. In the mid-1960s the ANC tried to recruit these refugees to engage in operational activities but with little success. After Swazi independence in 1968 the kingdoms rulers were too scared of South African retaliation to provide active support for the ANCs armed struggle. Meanwhile ANC members in Swaziland were cut off from ANC structures in central Africa because the kingdom was landlocked between white-ruled South Africa and Mozambique. This changed following the army coup in Lisbon in 1974 which led to Mozambican independence. Mozambiques provisional government allowed the ANC access to Swaziland. The ANC sent Thabo Mbeki to try and establish links with activists in South Africa, but whilst he made some progress, this was reversed by police countermeasures early in 1976. A rump of activists left behind after Mbekis expulsion led ANC efforts to handle the exodus of youths into Swaziland after the June 1976 Soweto uprising. In the late 1970s Swaziland formed part of what the ANC referred to as the ‘Eastern Front’ of its liberation struggle. In trying to stop ANC infiltrations South Africa made use of an extensive network of highly-placed agents in the Swazi establishment. However this collaboration proved ineffective in stopping the ANC because, even if it wished to, Swaziland lacked the resources to prevent its territory being used, whilst there were also many prominent Swazis, including King Sobhuza II, whose sympathies lay with the ANC. By the end of the 1970s ANC activity in Swaziland had grown to such a scale that it began to unnerve the Swazi authorities. This set the stage for the closing of the ‘Eastern Front’ in the early 1980s.

The making (and remaking) of a revolutionary plan: strategic dilemmas of the ANC’s armed struggle, 1974–1978

After the African National Congress’ (ANC’s) political and military structures within South Africa were destroyed by police repression in the mid‐1960s, there was a hiatus of a decade before the movement could contemplate resuming military operations within South Africa. By the mid‐1970s, the ANC found that the events that made this resumption possible also severely constrained its scope for action. While Mozambican independence gave the ANC a common border over which it could conduct attacks into South Africa, restrictions imposed by Mozambique’s government limited the ANC’s freedom to use the border in the same way that other African liberation movements had done in their struggles. This article argues that the ANC’s focus on military operations deep within the South African interior limited the ability of its rear bases to supply internal military units and thus made its army dependent on underground political structures for sustenance. The article explains how the absence of such structures resulted in significant casualties and contributed to the ANC’s decision to convene a review of strategy in 1978.

The ANC at 100

The approach of the centennial of the founding of the African National Congress (ANC) was accompanied by an upsurge of academic interest in various aspects of the history of the movement. Among the many seminars, panels, workshops and conferences held, two events in particular served to plant the idea that has resulted in this special edition of the journal. In early June 2011, in the run-up to the Southern African Historical Society (SAHS) conference that was to be hosted by the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the journal editors were impressed by the number of very interesting paper proposals submitted on a range of themes related to ANC history. Second, the History Department at the University of Stellenbosch was planning to convene a colloquium in October 2011 at which academics would gather to reflect on the goals and visions of the liberation struggle in light of developments in the new South Africa. Again, there were a number of very interesting papers on the programme for that event. With this in mind, and knowing that there would be a variety of similar gatherings at various other places during the year, the editors launched an initiative to solicit selected papers from the abovementioned events, to complement them with other papers of interest on the theme of ANC history presented elsewhere, and to publish the proceeds in a special edition of the journal whose publication would coincide with the centennial year, 2012. Thanks to the generosity of the majority of the academics that were approached, the sample of articles collected in this edition reflects much of the most important work that is presently being undertaken. Thanks also to a host of peer reviewers who were willing to work within strict time frames, we managed to meet our deadline. The remainder of this introduction is devoted to a discussion of some of the highlights that appear in the articles that follow.

Military Combat Work: the Reconstitution of the ANC's Armed Underground, 1971–1976

This article describes the African National Congress (ANC) underground in South Africa in the years immediately preceding the 1976 Soweto uprising, and it makes three main contributions to the existing literature on the topic. The first is primarily descriptive, and involves providing greater detail than has hitherto been offered on the ANCs clandestine organisational presence in neighbouring Swaziland, Mozambique and Tanzania that facilitated the revival of the underground in South Africa. The other two are of value in analysing the longer history of the ANCs armed struggle: firstly, the article describes Military Combat Work, the training regime offered to Umkhonto we Sizwe cadres in the Soviet Union, and which formed the template that was to guide the prosecution of the armed struggle in future years. The second involves backdating to the pre-Soweto uprising period, many of the challenges facing the armed struggle that historians have hitherto characterised as being a post-June 1976 phenomenon. This article describes the Challenges the ANC in exile faced hosting the hundreds of cadres that joined its ranks after recruiting work within South Africa began in the early to mid-1970s.

Toyi-Toyi-ing to Freedom: The Endgame in the ANC's Armed Struggle, 1989–1990

This article focuses on the twelve-month period between August 1989 and August 1990 which proved to be the final year of the African National Congresss (ANC) armed struggle against the South African government. This period is interesting because it dramatised the central paradox that existed throughout the ANCs armed struggle, namely its material weakness that was belied by its immense symbolic strength. In August 1989, the ANCs proposals for negotiations were accepted by African leaders, while in South Africa, F.W. de Klerk acceded to the South African state presidency. These events considerably improved the prospects of a negotiated settlement. However, by August 1990, the ANC and the South African government had still not begun formal negotiations, and the bone of contention between them was the ANCs continued commitment to violence. This highlights the second key theme: namely, the immense symbolic significance carried by the question of violence in the conflict. At stake was the credibility of the ANCs claims to be South Africas national liberation movement. The ANC needed to perpetuate the notion of MK as an effective fighting force in order to sustain its claim that negotiations had been achieved through its actions, and that it was entering into talks on its own terms. Meanwhile for the government, these considerations operated in reverse: it was anxious to counter the notion that the ANC had fought its way to the negotiating table. This article will discuss how the two sides jostled over this question in the period leading to the ANCs unilateral suspension of its armed struggle in August 1990.

Nelson Mandela and the Genesis of the ANC’s Armed Struggle: Notes on Method

Was Nelson Mandela a member of the South African Communist Party (SACP) at the time that he formed Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK)? Was he dishonest in not revealing that he established MK at the SACP’s behest? Did the African National Congress (ANC) ever grant Mandela the authority to launch an armed struggle? And, in leading the turn to violence, did Mandela strive to marginalise ANC president-general Albert Luthuli? These are the questions that have made the literature on the origins of the ANC’s armed struggle a field of rich controversy in recent years. If the claims are true, they would require a fundamental reappraisal of the life and legacy of one of the most respected political figures of the 20th century. They would also rehabilitate some of the charges levelled at Mandela and the ANC by their foes during the liberation struggle. For these reasons, interest in the controversy over these questions has spread far beyond academic circles. This article clarifies the terms of the debate. It does so by laying out the arguments of the protagonists on both sides, and discussing the extent to which the archival evidence supports the various interpretations that have been offered. In the process, it revisits the circumstances and conditions under which the revolutionary underground operated in the early 1960s, thereby making a historical as well as a historiographical contribution. The article as a whole is a ground-clearing exercise that outlines the limits imposed by the existing sources on what we are able to say regarding the origins of the armed struggle, while also identifying certain methodological principles emerging from these disputes that will need to be borne in mind by future contributors to the literature.

White Chiefs, Black Lords: Shepstone and the Colonial State in Natal, South Africa 1845–1878

White Chiefs, Black Lords is one of a Toyin Falola-edited series of titles published by University of Rochester Press that deals with aspects of African and African-diasporic history. I was able, in the pages of this journal, to review a previous publication in the series, J.C. Myers’ Indirect Rule in South Africa, which as indicated by its title, covers a similar theme (though with a much more theoretical approach) to the work presently under consideration.

Changes to the South African Historical Journal

The coordinating editors of the South African Historical Journal (SAHJ) are pleased to announce that the changes to the structure of the journals Editorial Board that were approved at the last Sou...

Walking on Air: The Story of ANC Activist John Edward Matthews

By COLLEEN MATTHEWS. Johannesburg: STE Publishers, 2006. 149 pp. ISBN 978 19198 5580 6.