Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps and Figures
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: Mandela' Kinsmen
- 1 Education, Monarchy & Nationalism
- 2 The First Bantustan, 1954–1963
- 3 The Second Peasants' Revolt, Mpondoland 1960–1980
- 4 The Old Mission Schools, 1963–1980
- 5 The Comrade-King, Bantustan Politics 1964–1980
- 6 Chris Hani's Guerrillas, 1974–1987
- 7 The Apartheid Endgame, 1987–1996
- 8 The New South Africa & Transkei's Collapse, 1990 onwards
- Conclusion: African Nationalism & its Fragments
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Chris Hani's Guerrillas, 1974–1987
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps and Figures
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: Mandela' Kinsmen
- 1 Education, Monarchy & Nationalism
- 2 The First Bantustan, 1954–1963
- 3 The Second Peasants' Revolt, Mpondoland 1960–1980
- 4 The Old Mission Schools, 1963–1980
- 5 The Comrade-King, Bantustan Politics 1964–1980
- 6 Chris Hani's Guerrillas, 1974–1987
- 7 The Apartheid Endgame, 1987–1996
- 8 The New South Africa & Transkei's Collapse, 1990 onwards
- Conclusion: African Nationalism & its Fragments
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Hani's Transkei hinterland
In 1974, Chris Hani illicitly travelled across South Africa to Lesotho. His mission was to ‘establish a political and diplomatic presence there’. It was through frontline states such as Lesotho and Swaziland – known as the Island and the Bay – that ANC guerrillas in Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) would return to South Africa.
The ANC-in-exile believed they would return to South Africa through armed struggle. Just as Fidel Castro's forces had survived in the Cuban countryside whilst support for Batista's regime had ebbed away, so insurgent forces inside South Africa would detonate a popular struggle against the apartheid regime. However, the ANC had difficulties returning to South Africa for much of the 1960s and 1970s. Apartheid was supported by settler regimes in Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia). Namibia was a UN mandate territory governed by South Africa. Moreover, Lesotho, Botswana and Swaziland were landlocked states with limited room to manoeuvre, given their economic ties to South Africa. In the Wankie and Sipolilo campaigns in 1967 and 1968, the ANC attempted to send detachments of guerrillas through Rhodesia into South Africa, but they were cut up by General Ron Reid-Daley's Rhodesian counter-insurgency forces. In 1971, a plan to land 50 men in Mpondoland ended in fiasco when the ship bound for Transkei's Wild Coast suffered engine failure only a few hours after setting off from Dar es Salaam. (Perhaps the planners of the operation had read Govan Mbeki and were hoping to reprise The Peasants' Revolt).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Mandela's KinsmenNationalist Elites and Apartheid's First Bantustan, pp. 111 - 130Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014