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Obstacles to Guerrilla Warfare–a South African Case Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Sheridan Johns
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Extract

More than ten years after the turn from non-violence to organised violence by the African opposition in South African the white Nationalist régime remains firmlly entrenched in power. Its security forces have successfully suppressed sabotage campaigns initiated in the early 1960s, unco-ordinated terrorist attacks mounted during the same period, and incipient guerrilla action in South-West Africa in 1966. At the call of the authorities in Salisbury they joined their northern neighbours to defeat armed incursions in Rhodesia during 1967–8, and more recently they have contained sporadic attacks in the Caprivi Strip along the Zambian border. The South African Government appears confident that its forces can continue to thwart any future attempts at domestic insurgency.

Type
Africana
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , June 1973 , pp. 267 - 303
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

Page 267 note 1 For general accounts of the A.N.C. in the 1950s, see Benson, Mary, South Africa: the struggle for a birthright (London, 1966)Google Scholar; Feit, Edward, South Africa: the dynamics of the African National Congress (London, 1962)Google Scholar, and his Urban Revolt in South Africa, 1960–1964: a case study (Evanston, 1971), pp. 14–48.Google Scholar An analysis of the A.N.C. in the context of South African liberalism is found in Robertson, Janet, Liberalism in South Africa, 1948–1963 (Oxford, 1971).Google Scholar

Page 268 note 1 For a detailed study of the Defiance Campaign, see Kuper, Leo, Passive Resistance in South Africa (New Haven, 1957).Google Scholar

Page 269 note 1 An analysis of the two campaigns focusing upon organisational performance is available in Feit, Edward, African Opposition in South Africa: the failure of passive resistance (Stanford 1967).Google Scholar

Page 270 note 1 Perhaps the best survey of this process is to be found in Horrell, Muriel, Action, Reaction, and Counteraction: a review of non-white opposition to the apartheid policy, counter-measures by the Government, and the eruption of new waves of unrest (Johannesburg, 1963).Google Scholar

Page 272 note 1 Using evidence from the reports of subsequent trials, Feit's Urban Revolt contains the most extensive analysis of this first period of underground activity by the A.N.C. and its allies. The statement of Nelson Mandela at the ‘Rivonia Trial’ presents an explanation of the origins of Umkhonto and its activities by the first leader of the underground A.N.C.; see his No Easy Walk to Freedom (London, 1965), pp. 162–89.Google Scholar

Page 273 note 1 Ibid. pp. 170–71.

Page 274 note 1 Feit, , Urban Revolt, pp. 202–10 and 257–77.Google Scholar

Page 275 note 1 Sechaba (London), 5/6, 12 1971/01 1972, p. 14.Google Scholar

Page 275 note 2 Marcum, John, ‘The Exile Condition and Revolutionary Effectiveness: Southern African liberation movements’, in Potholm, Christian P. and Dale, Richard (eds.), Southern Africa in Perspective: essays in regional politics (New York, 1972), pp. 262–75.Google Scholar

Page 276 note 1 The details of the international campaign of the Zimbabwean nationalists are to be found in Day, John, International Nationalism: the extra-territorial relations of Southern Rhodesian African nationalists (London, 1967).Google Scholar

Page 277 note 1 Feit, , Urban Revolt, pp. 232–33.Google Scholar

Page 277 note 2 An indication of the unhappiness of the A.N.C.'s communist ally with the situation in Ghana can be found in The African Communist (London), 9, 04/05 1962, pp. 11–12.Google Scholar

Page 277 note 3 The nature of some of the anxieties regarding the O.A.U. Liberation Committee have been articulated publicly by spokesmen for the Communist Party; ibid. 36, First Quarter 1969, pp. 16–17.

Page 277 note 4 The extent of the disappointment of the A.N.C. with the O.A.U. Liberation Committee can be inferred from reports that in the first six months of 1967–1968 the A.N.C. was promised $80,000, but received only $3,940; The Sunday Telegraph (London), 4 05 1969.Google Scholar The National Executive Committee of the A.N.C. has also criticised the O.A.U. Liberation Committee for its support of the P.A.C.; The African Communist, 38, Third Quarter 1969, p. 27.Google Scholar For a general analysis, see Tandon, Yashpal, ‘The Organization of African Unity and the Liberation of Southern Africa’, in Potholm and Dale (eds.), Southern Africa, pp. 245–61.Google Scholar

Page 278 note 1 Sechaba, 3, 07 1969, p. 8.Google Scholar

Page 278 note 2 Feit, , Urban Revolt, pp. 296–7.Google Scholar

Page 278 note 3 See, for example, the statement of the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party in The African Communist, 29, Second Quarter 1967, pp. 15–17,Google Scholar and the speech of J. B. Marks, Chairman of the South African Communist Party, at the International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties in Moscow in June 1969; ibid. 38, Third Quarter 1969, Special Supplement, pp. 49–56.

Page 279 note 1 For a more general discussion of the impact of the Sino-Soviet dispute upon the Southern African liberation movements, see Marcum, loc. cit. pp. 266–8.

Page 281 note 1 Sechaba, 5/6, 12 1971/01 1972, p. 15.Google Scholar

Page 281 note 2 Joe Matthews, ‘Forward to a People's Democratic Republic of South Africa’, ibid. I, September 1967, p. II.

Page 281 note 3 Joe Slovo, ‘The Armed Struggle Spreads’, ibid. 2, May 1968, pp. 2–6.

Page 281 note 4 Slovo, Joe, ‘Latin America and the Ideas of Régis Debray’, in The African Communist, 33, Second Quarter 1968, pp. 37–54.Google Scholar For a further elaboration of these views, see his ‘Che in Bolivia’, ibid. 38, Third Quarter 1969, pp. 46–61.

Page 282 note 1 Sechaba, 3, 07 1969, pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

Page 283 note 1 See ibid. pp. 16–23 for the full text of the statement on the ‘Strategy and Tactics of the African National Congress’.

Page 283 note 2 In 1965 the Minister of Justice reported that 85 persons had been arrested returning to South Africa after military training outside the country; House of Assembly Debates (Cape Town), 11 06 1965, col. 7918.Google Scholar

Page 283 note 3 Sechaba, 5/6, 12 1971/01 1972, p. 15.Google Scholar

Page 284 note 1 See, for example, the New Year's message of Oliver Tambo, ‘Call to Revolution’, ibid. 2, January 1968, pp. 2–5; and the text of a leaflet distributed within South Africa, ibid. 2, February 1968.

Page 284 note 2 See ‘An African's Story of a Terrorist Training Camp’, in Intelligence Digest (Cheltenham), 368, 07 1969, pp. 17–18Google Scholar; and Gibson, Richard, African Liberation Movements: contemporary struggles against white minority rule (New York, 1972), pp. 70–2.Google Scholar

Page 284 note 3 For overlapping, but significantly different reports of the conference, see Mayibuye (Lusaka), 10, 05 1969Google Scholar; Sechaba, 3, 07 1969Google Scholar; and The African Communist, 38, Third Quarter 1969, pp. 15–30.Google Scholar

Page 285 note 1 The African Communist, 38, Third Quarter 1969, p. 16.Google Scholar

Page 285 note 2 Sechaba, 3, 07 1969, p. 2.Google Scholar ‘If there were factions at the beginning these rapidly dissolved themselves in the course of the conference’, Mayibuye, 10, 05 1969, p. 3.Google Scholar Reports in The African Communist also emphasised the open and self-critical nature of these discussions.

Page 285 note 3 Mayibuye, 10, 05 1969, p. 2.Google Scholar

Page 285 note 4 The African Communist, 38, Third Quarter 1969, p. 18.Google Scholar

Page 286 note 1 Mayibuye, 10, 05 1969, p. 10.Google Scholar The only mention of the abortive proposal for a national liberation front appeared in this journal.

Page 286 note 2 Sechaba, 3, 07 1969, p. 22.Google Scholar

Page 286 note 3 Mayibuye, 10, 05 1969, p. 8.Google Scholar

Page 286 note 4 Ibid. p. 10. No reference to this decision appeared in Sechaba and The African Communist.

Page 287 note 1 Mayibuye, 10, 05 1969, p. 14.Google Scholar

Page 288 note 1 Sechaba, 3, 07 1969, pp. 22–3.Google Scholar

Page 288 note 2 Ibid. p. 10.

Page 288 note 3 Ibid. p. 8.

Page 289 note 1 The African Communist, 38, Third Quarter 1969, p. 28.Google Scholar

Page 289 note 2 Sechaba, 3, 07 1969, p. 8.Google Scholar

Page 289 note 3 Ibid. p. 6.

Page 289 note 4 See The African Communist, 37, Second Quarter 1969, p. 21.Google Scholar

Page 289 note 5 Sechaba, 3, 04 1969, p. 3.Google Scholar For selected speeches and messages of support, see ibid. 3, March 1969, pp. 4–10. An appraisal of the conference from another perspective appeared in The African Communist, 37, Second Quarter 1969, pp. 13–22.Google Scholar

Page 290 note 1 Gibson, , African Liberation Movements, p. 66.Google Scholar

Page 290 note 2 Sechaba, 3, 07 1969, p. 3.Google Scholar

Page 291 note 1 For a discussion of the dissension within Z.A.P.U. and the subsequent formation of Frolizi, see Gibson, op. cit. pp. 169–74 and 183–4.

Page 291 note 2 In December 1970, James April, a Coloured veteran of the first A.N.C./Z.A.P.U. campaign in Rhodesia, who had subsequently returned to Zambia after a prison sentence in Botswana, flew back to South Africa on a regular commercial flight, carrying forged identification papers. He sent messages to England in invisible ink, while attempting to establish links among the Indian community of Durban, but was apprehended in early 1971, tried, and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. A report of his trial in a South African newspaper was republished in Sechaba, 5, 08 1971, pp. 4–5.Google Scholar hroughout the 1960s South African authorities have also alleged that the A.N.C. was making plans to return its trainees to isolated points along the coast. In 1969 eleven A.N.C. supporters were convicted upon charges which, inter alia, accused them of searching for suitable submarine landing sites; Horrell, Muriel, A Survey of Race Relations in South Africa, 1969 (Johannesburg, 1970), p. 64.Google Scholar

Page 291 note 3 The African Communist, 47, Fourth Quarter 1971, p. 30.Google Scholar

Page 292 note 1 Brief reports on the action of the World Council of Churches and its repercussions in South Africa are to be found in Horrell, Muriel, A Survey of Race Relations in South Africa, 1970 (Johannesburg, 1975), pp. 15–18,Google Scholar and A Survey of Race Relations in South Africa, 1971 (Johannesburg, 1972), pp. 51–3.Google Scholar

Page 292 note 2 A partial list of supporters is available in ibid. p. 94.

Page 292 note 3 The most regular and comprehensive summaries of the actions of the Government are to be found in the annuul Survey compiled by Muriel Horrell for the South African Institute of Race Relations; see especially her section, ‘Detention and Trial under the Security Laws’. A.N.C. publications tend primarily to note actions taken against their members and supporters; see, for example, Sechaba, 5, 05 1971, pp. 8–9, and 6, 02 1972, pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

Page 293 note 1 ‘In a word, these “new” militant demands from our people, echoed from all corners of the country, are in fact the same demands which the African National Congress has been making on behalf of our people for years, i.e. the demands for higher wages, for the abolition of job reservation, proper education, the expropriation of all our land from the Whites, etc.’ Sechaba, 5/6, 12 1971/01 1972, p. 20.Google Scholar

Page 293 note 2 Ibid. p. 21.

Page 293 note 3 See, for example, Oliver Tambo, ‘Mobilize Our Black Power’, ibid. 6, February 1972, pp. 4–5; and ‘Black Consciousness’, ibid. 6, May 1972, pp. 18–20.

Page 293 note 4 See, for example, the report of a discussion on the Bantustans by members of an A.N.C. youth and student school; ibid. 5, November 1971, p. 13. A commentator from the communist perspective has warned against too close an identification with even selected Bantustan leaders, but has recognised ‘that some members and supporters of the revolutionary movement may even find it expedient to make use of apartheid institutions to be able better to destroy them’. Sol Dubula [pseud.], ‘Trends in “Bantustan” Politics’, in The African Communist, 48, First Quarter 1972, p. 61.Google Scholar

Page 294 note 1 Bell, J. Bowyer, The Myth of the Guerrilla: revolutionary theory and malpractice (New York, 1971)Google Scholar; and ‘The Future of Guerrilla Revolution in Southern Africa’, in Africa Today (Denver), 19, Winter 1972, pp. 7–15.Google Scholar

Page 294 note 2 Gann, Lewis H., ‘No Hope for Violent Liberation: a strategic assessment’, in Africa Report (Washington), 17, 02 1972, pp. 15–19Google Scholar; Grundy, Kenneth W., Guerrilla Struggle in Africa: an analysis and preview (New York, 1971)Google Scholar; John Marcum, loc. cit.; Edward Feit, Urban Revolt; and Adam, Heribert, Modernizing Racial Domination: South Africa's political dynamics (Berkeley, 1971).Google Scholar

Page 294 note 3 Morris, Michael, Terrorism: the first full account in detail of terrorism and insurgency in Southern Africa (Cape Town, 1971).Google Scholar

Page 294 note 4 Meer, Fatima, ‘Africa Nationalism – Some Inhibiting Factors’, in Adam, Heribert (ed.), South Africa: sociological perspectives (London, 1971), pp. 121–57.Google Scholar

Page 294 note 5 Richard Gibson, African Liberation Movements.

Page 295 note 1 Ibid. pp. 64 and 75.

Page 296 note 1 Two provocative scenarios of the future in Southern Africa are given by Grundy, op. cit. pp. 153–88, and Potholm, Christian, ‘Toward the Millennium’, in Potholm and Dale (eds.), Southern Africa, pp. 321–31.Google Scholar

Page 296 note 2 Davidson, Basil, ‘In the Portuguese Context’, in Allen, Christopher and Johnson, R. W. (eds.), African Perspectives: papers in the history, politics, and economics of Africa presented to Thomas Hodgkin (Cambridge, 1970), p. 330.Google Scholar

Page 296 note 3 Bell doubts in The Myth of the Guerrilla, p. 155, that armed struggle by the African majority could ever have been successful in South Africa in the face of white might and determination; in any case, he argues, when the decision was taken in 1961 the option was no longer valid.

Page 296 note 4 Useful sources on the background of the nationalist movements in the Portuguese colonies include the following: Chilcote, Ronald, Portuguese Africa (Englewood Cliffs, 1967)Google Scholar; Marcum, John, ‘Three Revolutions’, in Africa Report, 12, 11 1967, pp. 9–17,Google Scholar and ‘Liberation Movements of Portuguese Africa’, written for the United Nations Association of the United States of America, Inc., I June 1970; and Samuels, Michael A., ‘The Nationalist Parties’, in Abshire, David M. and Samuels, (eds.), Portuguese Africa, A Handbook (New York, 1969), pp. 389–405.Google Scholar For more extensive general treatments of the nationalist movements in particular colonies, see Marcum, John, The Angolan Revolution, vol. I (Cambridge, Mass., 1969)Google Scholar; Wheeler, Douglas L. and Pélissier, René, Angola (New York, 1971)Google Scholar; Chaliand, Gérard, Armed Struggle in Africa: with the guerrillas in ‘Portuguese’ Guinea (New York, 1969)Google Scholar; Davidson, Basil, The Liberation of Guiné: aspects of an African revolution (Harmondsworth and Baltimore, 1969)Google Scholar; Chilcote, Ronald, ‘Mozambique: the African nationalist response to Portuguese imperialism and underdevelopment’, in Potholm and Dale (eds.), Southern Africa, pp. 183–95Google Scholar; and Mondlanc, Eduardo, The Struggle for Mozambique (Harmondsworth and Baltimore, 1969).Google Scholar

Page 298 note 1 Marcum, ‘The Exile Condition’, loc. cit. p. 267.

Page 298 note 2 Marcum, , The Angolan Revolution, vol. I, pp. 27–30.Google Scholar

Page 298 note 3 For a detailed treatment of the Communist Party of South Africa and its relationship to non-white politics, see Johns, Sheridan W., III, ‘Marxism-Leninism in a Multi-Racial Environment: origins and early history of the Communist Party of South Africa, 1914–1932’, Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1965Google Scholar; Roux, Edward, Time Longer Than Rope: a history of the Black Man's struggle for freedom in South Africa (London, 1948; 2nd edn. Madison, 1964)Google Scholar. A discussion of the relationship between communism and the A.N.C. focusing upon the post-1950 period is to be found in Feit, Urban Revolt, pp. 278–300. For an official survey by a member of the South African Communist Party, see Lerumo, A. [pseud.], Fifty Fighting Years: the South African Communist Party, 1921–1971 (London, 1971).Google Scholar

Page 299 note 1 The viewpoint of the A.N.C. leaders on communism has been most explicitly articulated by the late Luthuli, Chief Albert, President-General of the A.N.C., in Let My People Go: an autobiography (London, 1962), pp. 153–5Google Scholar; and by Mandela, Nelson, in No Easy Walk, pp. 178–84.Google Scholar

Page 300 note 1 The African Communist, 43, Fourth Quarter 1970, p. 54.Google Scholar Earlier the Central Committee had asserted that ‘the strengthening of the independent organization of the Party itself is a vital and indispensable task of every member’; ibid. 29, Second Quarter 1967, p. 13.

Page 300 note 2 Ibid. 43, Fourth Quarter 1970, pp. 51–2.

Page 301 note 1 Cabral, Amilcar, Revolution in Guinea: an African people's struggle (London, 1969)Google Scholar; and ‘National Liberation and Culture’, Syracuse University, Program of Eastern African Studies, Occasional Paper No. 57, 1970.

Page 301 note 2 Notably Chaliand, Armed Struggle in Africa; Davidson, The Liberation of Guiné; and Rudebeck, Lane, ‘Political Mobilisation for Development in Guinea-Bissau’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), X, 1, 05 1972, pp. 1–18.Google Scholar

Page 303 note 1 Sechaba, I, 09 1967, p. II.Google Scholar

Page 303 note 2 Ibid. 5/6, December 1971/ January 1972, p. 21.