Quito Cuanivale Re-Visited ...

Dear/Kjære Vegard Bye og/and Alberto Valiente Thoresen, who also reminders us of the invaluable assistance given by the Cuban and PLAN soldiers of Swapo during the Battle of Quito Quanivale (@ http://radikalportal.no/2013/12/10/mandelas-frihetskjempere-verdens-kjeltringer/). A good historian or journalist/observer relies of SOURCES, verifiable source-materail and "facts" (archival and recorded: not speculation, conjecture and personality-cult hagiography, and as you all well know, the expert specialist and the tools of his/her trade has been greatly helped by the tools of the internet, so I will provide the necessary internet links and necessary article/book documentation below. But as a trained historian and economist, I would like to add some words to "add" to your bold assertions that this or that "factor" was responsible for the "negotiations" that led to the Downfall of Apartheid in 1994.  The "single cause" or monocausal explanation is a good journalistic ploy but is not good history-writing, it is the dishonest and lazy methodology of a career academic. While I would not go so far as to regard this event as "Africa´s Stalingrad" (which ocured after 20 million Russian soldiers and civilians were slaughtered by the Nazi war machine!). As I wrote in my Comment to Comrade Alberto, the following "factors" are also important when we look for "cause" and "effect": In fact it was a series of "external shocks" or events that have not been given much treatment that ALSO could be regarded a "contributing factors". 1)  This is generally recognised to be the "turning-point" whereby the Nationalist Party (NP) strategists wanted to change its domestic policies, and in fact the lifting of the Pass Laws and residential segregation and a limited local political representation was allowed by the mid-1980s, while waging war abroad in the Front Line States until their "withdrawal" from Cuito Cuanavale, 1988, after being militarily matched and beaten in the skies.  Piero Gleijeses is the most common source for this information, but see also: Michael Gorbachev´s version of "detente" (after he became General Secretary of the Communist Party of Russia) put political pressure on the ANC for "negotiations" /" a negotiated settlement" and the pressure of the (then) USSR put on the ANC/SACP (withdrawal of material/arms support, logistic and technical assistance and training) was a major factor pushing the liberation movement in that direction. Political pressure was put on the Front Line States, as had been done with the Nkomati Accord with Mocambique, 1984. 2) The "organic crisis" of apartheid is discussed in numerous works: when loans were not forthcoming any longer and investments were shrinking (it has been argued that the profit rates were falling and that that the economy was to enter an "overaccumulation crisis", see Patrick Bond and Michael Roberts below), the capitalists were ready to "talk" with the ANC in exile (see especially: Stephen Ellis, Hein Marais and Alec Russel for background). The "external" wing of the ANC were undergoing its own crises and secret talks were initiated by the National Party security and Afrikaner capitalists and notables in 1985. Pilger and Bond give some of the details of this "Deal with the Devil" (according to Ronnie Kasrils, one time MK commander, ex-ANC Minister). Some important titles: The following (very selective) works represent some of the more useful guides to this process of incorporation of the ANC into the political discourse from 1985/6: Patrick Bond: ELITE TRANSITION - From Apartheid to Neo-Liberalism in South Africa, Pluto Press, London, 2000. Willie Esterhuyse: ENDGAME - Secret Talks and the End of Apartheid, Tafelberg, Cape Town, 2012. Hein Marais: South Africa: LIMITS TO CHANGE: The Political Economy of Transition, Zed Books, June 1998. Hein Marais: SOUTH AFRICA PUSHED TO THE LIMIT: The political economy of Change, UCT Press/ Zed Books, 2011 Alec Russel: AFTER MANDELA, The Battle For The Soul of Africa (2009, 2010), Windmill Books/Random House, London. I hope this bibliography will be of some help to the potential reader. Well-stocked Research Institutes (NUPI, NORAD; PRIO etc) or University Libraries should have copies of some of these - check on-line for availability.
--------- The crisis in the external ANC´s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, erupted in the early 1980s in the camps in Angola, as the younger militants who had fled the country after the Soweto Uprising of 1976 fled the country, their demands were clear (see below, the especially the articles and books by Stephen Ellis and Paul Trewhela).  It was a Pro-Democracy Movement and lasted up till 1984, and ended in a blood-bath and the killing of many of these militants and their jailing in the infamous Quatro prison center: the first major article to break the wall of silence in the Solidarity Movements in the West was in Searchlight South Africa No. 5: "Inside Quatro"@  http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/supplem/hirson/quadro.html When the ANC refuses to listen | Opinion | Mail & Guardian (Printer ... Nov 6, 2009 ... When the ANC refuses to listen. The ruling party's culture of authoritarianism goes back a long way, to the days of exile writes Stephen Ellis. mg.co.za/print/2009-11-06-when-the-anc-refuses-to-listen Stephen Ellis: http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/anc-exile-stephen-ellis - "The ANC in Exile" African Affairs", Vol 90, No. 360, July 1991 Mbokodo: Security in ANC camps, 1961-1990 - Stephen Ellis, @ http://libcom.org/history/mbokodo-security-anc-camps-1961-1990 full article on pdf: Mbokodo: ANC Security in camps 1960 - 1090, African Affairs, Vol 93, No. 371, April 1994. http://libcom.org/files/Mbokodo%20Security%20in%20ANC%20Camps,%201961-1990_0.pdf,  From:  Comrades Agaianst Apartheid: The ANC and the South African Communist Party in Exile, by Stephen Ellis and "Sepho Sechaba"  @ http://books.google.no/books?id=RwaTZ76cvOIC&pg=PA33&lpg=PA33&dq=Stephen+Ellis,+Umkhonto+we+Sizwe&source=bl&ots=q23iqRqA-R&sig=Yry3TvHXwaNaO8rmdgiCjOU392k&hl=no&sa=X&ei=dKypUuC9BYjoywOvjILgBw&ved=0CG0Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=Stephen%20Ellis%2C%20Umkhonto%20we%20Sizwe&f=false see:  Stephen Ellis: EXTERNAL MISSION: The ANC in Exile 1960-1990, Hurst and Compant, London, 2012.   http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/anc-exile-stephen-ellis Reviewed by Dennis Herbstein in African Arguments: " External Mission: The ANC in exile, 1960-1990, by Stephen Ellis – Review by Denis Herbstein Paul Trewhela: INSIDE QUATRO: Uncovering the exile history of the ANC and SWAPO, Jacana Media, Johannesburg, 2009. -------------------------------------------- THE FACTS OF THE MATTER ARE …. A POINT OF CLARIFICATION, SIR! Dedicated to the memory of Madiba and telling Truth to Power. Beyond A Monocausal Explanation "What we commonly consider the word ´understand´ to mean is ´simplify´. Without profound simplification, the world that surrounds us would be an infinite, undefined tangle, which would defy our capacity to orient ourselves and decide what to do … This desire to simplify is justified; but a simplification itself is not always justified. It is a working hypothesis, useful in so far as it is recognised as such and not taken for reality. Most historical phenomena are not simple, however; or in the way that would please us." Primo Levi The Deification of Mandela and the Reality Everyone Wants A Piece of Madiba: Or as a young Janis Joplin was say, "Just Take It, take another piece of my heart" (or liver, or kidneys or gallstones in this world of criminal internal body-part theft). "The virtual deification of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, would almost certainly have been anathema to the man. Especially since it has been peppered with hypocrisy in the laudatory comments by the likes of President Robert Mugabe, and the statements by, and selection of, some of the VIP delegations to his memorial and funeral. As advocate, businessman and former political prisoner Dumisa Ntsebeza, notes: “Just about everybody now wants a piece of brand Mandela”. Because, for all bar a small minority, such as writers Nadine Gordimer and especially Zakes Mda and the young Zama Ndlovu, Mandela has indeed become a saintly brand. Even suspended Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi has referred to the man as a “supernatural human”. Yet, while it was under Mandela’s watch that a rightly lauded Constitution and Labour Relations Act came into being, the government under his presidency also introduced the Growth Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) framework. It incurred — and continues to incur — the wrath and hostility of the labour movement, derided by many as the ultimate “sell out”. These, together, were the practical doings not of one man, but of a government headed by “an ordinary human being”, by a pragmatic politician and his cabinet and party." from, Terry Bell, Cape Town based labour analyst and journalist writes: "MANDELA & THE DANGERS OF DEIFICATION, @ http://terrybellwrites.com/2013/12/13/mandela-the-dangers-of-deification/ " As everyone from monarchs to the labouring masses this week sought to share in the Mandela memorial moment, the myth machine went into overdrive, the very machine Mandela had so disparaged when I sat with him in his Johannesburg office in 1992. One sentence he uttered then has resonated with me throughout the years: “I am no messiah”. The public scribes, corporate hacks and journalists, academic huckstrers and hustlers of the "old" New Left (the so-called ´68 generation of losers) are busy pouring over their notes and composing their memories: "I met Mandela in Stockholm (or Oslo or Pretoria etc) and was at the first Mandela Concert in London and had a ball … Man it was groovy". "I was present at the photo-shoot when Mandela´s feet was washed in public by de Klerk and anointed by Desmond Tutu at that famous Nobel Peace prize ceremony in Oslo …" "I am writing this book (or making a film) of Madiba as I want to share in his glory, bask in his magnificence, sanctify his halo, his legacy and get in on act of the financial returns that this will prove me in my old age …" they could have added! Always the prefix "I" … Deconstructing History: The Battle of Stalingrad, @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad; also @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalingrad "The Battle of Stalingrad (August 23, 1942 – February 2, 1943) was the major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in the southwestern Soviet Union. Marked by constant close quarters combat and disregard for military and civilian casualties, it is among the bloodiest battles in the history of warfare. The heavy losses inflicted on the Wehrmacht make it arguably the most strategically decisive battle of the whole war. It was a turning point in the European theatre of World War II–the German forces never regained the initiative in the East and withdrew vast military force from theWest to reinforce their losses.[11] "Although the city may have originated in 1555, documented evidence of Tsaritsyn located at the confluence of the Tsaritsa and Volga Rivers dates only from 1589.[6] The fortress Sary Su (a local Tatar language name meaning: yellow water/river), was established to defend the unstable southern border of the country. During the Russian Civil War, Tsaritsyn came under Soviet control from November 1917. In 1918, Tsaritsyn was besieged by White troops under Ataman Krasnov. Three assaults by White troops were repulsed. However, in June 1919 Tsaritsyn was captured by the White forces of General Denikin, which left the city in January 1920. This was known as the Battle for Tsaritsyn. The city was renamed Stalingrad after Joseph Stalin on April 10, 1925. This was officially to recognize the city's and Stalin's role in its defense against the Whites between 1918 and 1920.[11] Under Stalin, the city became a center of heavy industry and transshipment by rail and river. It was attacked by Germany and Axis forces during World War II. In 1942, the city became the site of one of the pivotal battles of the war. The Battle of Stalingrad had perhaps the greatest casualty figures of any single battle in the history of warfare (estimates are between 1,250,000[12] and 1,798,619[13]). The battle began on August 23, 1942, and on the same day, the city suffered heavy aerial bombardment that reduced most of it to rubble. By September, the fighting reached the city center. The fighting was of unprecedented intensity; the central railway station of the city changed hands thirteen times, and the Mamayev Kurgan (one of the highest points of the city) was captured and recaptured eight times. By early November, the German forces controlled 90 percent of the city and had cornered the Soviets into two narrow pockets, but they were unable to eliminate the last pockets of Soviet resistance in time. On November 19, Soviet forces launched a huge counterattack. This led to the encirclement of the German Sixth Army and other Axis units. On January 31, 1943 the Sixth Army's commander, Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrendered, and by February 2, with the elimination of straggling German troops, the Battle of Stalingrad was over. Used in a metaphorical sense, "Stalingrad" has come to mean a "military turning point", a "strategic battle and victory", and it is in THIS sense it was used by Nelson Mandela. That the troops of the ANC, uMKh0onto we Sizwe, present in camps in northern Angola, did not participate (to my knowledge) in the struggles is never mentioned. Why? Why not? What happened? A "Mutiny in the ANC" or "the Mkatashinga" (from a Mbundu word said to refer to the burden carried by a soldier") has also been "hidden from history", although details of this had been known to many for some time. Writes Stephen Ellis the biographer of the ANC in exile * see "External Mission" (2012): see especially pages 186 - 196: "Mkatashinga" (esp pps. 192-194, 196, 286) Writes Paul Trewhela: in Searchlight South Africa No. 5: "Inside Quatro"@  http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/supplem/hirson/quadro.html The KGB and Stasi in southern Africa In his book on black politics in South Africa since 1945, Tom Lodge, (Black politics in South Africa Since 1945, Ravan, 1987), writes: In 1968, a batch of Umkhonto defectors from camps in Tanzania sought asylum in Kenya, alleging that there was widespread dissatisfaction within the camps. They accused their commanders of extravagant living and ethnic favouritism. The first Rhodesian mission, they alleged, was a suicide mission to eliminate dissenters. In political discussions no challenge to a pro-Soviet position was allowed (p.300). From 1968 to 1990, nothing basic altered in the ANC’s internal regime in the camps, except that in the high noon of the Brezhnev era it operated para-statal powers under civil war conditions in Angola, where a large Cuban and Soviet presence permitted the ANC security apparatus to ‘bestride the narrow world like a Colossus.’ From the account of the ex-mutineers, ANC administrative bodies ruled over its elected bodies, the security department ruled over the administrative organs, and KGB-trained officials – no doubt members of the SACP – ruled over the security apparatus. Umkhonto we Sizwe functioned as an extension in Africa of the KGB. Its role in the civil war in Angola was to serve primarily as a surrogate to Soviet foreign policy interests, so that when the ANC rebels proposed that their fight be diverted to South Africa this counted as unpardonable cheek, to be ruthlessly punished. Over its own members, the ANC security apparatus ruled with all the arrogance of a totalitarian power. There is a direct line of connection between the ANC reign of terror in its prisons – which a UN High Commission for Refugees official described as more frightening than Swapo prisons – and the ‘necklace’ killings exercised by ANC supporters within South Africa, especially during the period of the 1984-86 township revolt, but now once again revived against oppositional groupings such as Azapo. (The ANC’s’ necklace’ politics was also a definite contributory element provoking the carnage in Natal). Two former ANC prisoners, Similo Boltina and his wife Nosisana, were in fact necklaced on their return to South Africa in 1986, after having been repatriated by the Red Cross … An extract from the document: A MISCARRIAGE OF DEMOCRACY:
THE ANC SECURITY DEPARTMENT IN THE 1984 MUTINY IN
UMKHONTO WE SIZWE An Internal-Enemy-Danger-Psychosis’ The Revolutionaery Council, adopted at the 1969 Morogoro Conference, was abolished by the NEC and a new body was set up, the Political Military Council (PMC). Announcements of personnel to man the Political Council and the Military Council were also made. The mere mention that Joe Modise would remain the army commander demoralized many cadres, who had speculated that he would be sacked as commander after rumours that he had been arrested in Botswana for diamond dealing (some cadres were severely punished for circulating that account) and because of his dismal failure to lead our army into meaningful battles against the South African racist regime. To completely efface the spirit of resistance in Fazenda, the majority of the MK forces there were taken to Zimbabwe, where they fought alongside guerrillas of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), led by Joshua Nkorno against the Smith forces as well as the guerrillas of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), led by Robert Mugabe. Many worthy fighters perished there. Fazenda camp was closed in 1980, and fighters there were distributed among the two main camps of the ANC, Pango and Quibaxe, both to the north of Luanda. The chapter on Fazenda was closed. But a burning urge to liberate South Africa, with the only language the boers understood, the gun, could not be trampled on as contemptuously as that. Yet it had become very dangerous to raise even a voice against the leadership. The ANC had become divided into a force of the rank and file and that of the leadership clubbed together with the security apparatus, which had grown to such enormous levels that practically every administration of whatever ANC institution was run by the security personnel, and practically every problem was viewed as a security risk and an ‘enemy machination’. In a bid to strengthen their repressive apparatus, Andrew Masondo created a security crack force in a camp known as Viana, near Luanda. This unit, known as ODP (Peoples’ Defence Organization), was composed mainly of very young men or boys. Its tasks were to guard the ANC leadership when they paid visits to different camps, to enforce discipline and bash up any forms of dissent and ‘disloyalty’. By this time, after the Fazenda events, the ANC leaders had begun to whip up an ’internal-enemy-danger-psychosis,’ and whenever they visited the camps they had to be heavily guarded. Worse still if it was Tambo who visited: the whole camp would be disarmed, and only the security personnel and those attached to it would be allowed to carry weapons. It is important to realize that most of these atrocities were carried out in the camps themselves, and not in the secrecy of Quadro, where only a few would know. The operation succeeded in its objectives. Fear was instilled and hatred for the ANC security crystallized. Every cadre of MK took full cover, and the security department was striding, threatening to pounce on any forms of dissent. Camps were literally run by the security personnel. Many underground interrogation houses were set up in all places where the ANC had its personnel, and underground prisons were established in the places known as ‘R.C.’ and Green House in Lusaka and at a place in Tanzania disguised as a farm near the Solomon Mahlango Freedom College (SOMAFCO) at Mazimbu, the main educational centre of the ANC in exile. In Mozambique a detention camp was set up in Nampula where ‘suspects’ and those who kept pestering the leadership about armed struggle in South Africa were kept. MK began to crack into two armies, the latent army of rebels which kept seething beneath the apparent calm and obedience, and the army of the leadership, their loyal forces. The former was struggling for its life, kicking into the future, but all its efforts were confined within the suffocating womb of the latter. Security personnel were first-class members of the ANC. They had the first preference in everything, ranging from military uniforms and boots right up to opportunities for receiving the best military, political and educational training in well-off institutions in Europe. Face to face with this state of affairs, disappointment and disillusion set in and the cadres began to lose hope in the ANC leadership. The rate of desertion grew in 1982-83. There occurred more suicides and attempted suicides. The political commissars, whose task was to educate the armed forces about the ideological and moral aspects of our army, became despised as the protectors of corruption and autocracy. It became embarrassing to be in such structures. Cases of mental disturbance increased. This was mostly the case with the security guards of Quadro, rumoured by the cadres to be caused by the brutalities they unleashed against the prisoners. It was this worsening state of the cadres that made Tambo issue instructions in September 1982 to all the army units to discuss and bring forward proposals to the leadership about the problems in which the ANC was enmeshed. The whole of the Eastern Front was engulfed in sounds of gunshots, and there were stronger demands for the closure of the front and the deviation of the whole manpower to a war against Pretoria. A few days later word came from the NEC that the front would be closed and that all the soldiers must prepare themselves to leave Malanje for Luanda, where they would meet with the ANC leadership. The first convoy of a truckload of guerrillas left, followed by a second the following day, all eager for the meeting which they expected to put the ANC on a new footing. Located at the outskirts of the capital city, Luanda, the ANC transit camp of Viana had been evacuated of all personnel, who had been sent to an ANC area in Luanda to prevent contact with the mutineers. Strict orders were circulated by the ANC security personnel that nobody in the district of Luanda should visit Viana or have any form of contact with the mutineers. Guerrillas from the Malanje Front entered Viana in a gun salute, shooting in the air with all the weapons in hand. Later the security personnel in Viana, under the command of a man known as Pro, a former security guard at Quadro and then also a camp commander at Viana, also very notorious among the mutinying guerrillas, demanded that every soldier surrender his weapons, explaining the danger they posed to the capital. The demand was dismissed summarily with the reason that arms provided security for the mutineers against the reprisals the security department would launch, given that situation. Instead, all the security personnel within the premises of the camp were searched and disarmed, but never even once were they pointed at with weapons. The administration of the camp deserted to other ANC establishments in Luanda. In one of the metal containers, used for detention, a corpse was found with a bullet hole in the head. It was the corpse of Solly [not to be confused with the earlier named Solly], one of the strong critics of the ANC military leadership. At some stage he had tasted the bitter treatment of the security department and had in the process got his mind slightly disturbed. At the news of the mutiny in Malanje he had become vociferous and fearless, and that was the mistake of a lifetime. That same day, some crews of guerrillas volunteered to round-up ANC establishments in Luanda to explain their cause and to understand the political positions of others. Even though this was a dangerous mission, given the mobility of the ANC security personnel in Luanda and the likely collaboration with them of FAPLA [armed forces of the Angolan state, controlled by the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, MPLA], the task was fulfilled. That very same day again, people from all ANC establishments came streaming to Viana to join and support the mutineers. The efforts of the leadership to isolate the mutineers were shattered and they resorted to force by laying ambushes to attack those who were travelling to Viana with guns. In one such an encounter, Chris Hani with an AK submachine gun, made his appearance on the side of the loyalists by chasing and firing at those who wanted to join the mutineers. For the first time since the mutiny began, a series of mass meetings were held in an open ground in Viana. Everybody was allowed to attend, even members of the security department. Demands of the Committee of 10 They were: An immediate suspension of the Security Department and establishment of a commission to investigate its all-round activities. Included here was also the investigation of one of the most feared secret camps of the ANC, Quadro. A review of the cadre policy of the ANC to establish the missing links that were a cause for a stagnation that had caught up with our drive to expand the armed struggle. To convene a fully representative democratic conference to review the development of the struggle, draw new strategies and have elections for a new NEC. In anticipation of a heavy-handed reaction from the ANC leadership, the committee members felt it was necessary to secure protection by the people of South Africa and the world. Placards calling for a political solution and reading ‘No to Bloodshed, We Need Only a Conference’ were plastered on the walls of Viana camp. Journalists were called, but they were never given the slightest chance to get nearer the mutineers. Two men, Diliza Dumakude and Zanempi Sihlangu, both of them members of the Radio Propaganda Staff, were intercepted by the security personnel and murdered while on their way to the studios of Radio Freedom. While all this was happening, the presidential brigade of FAPLA (the Angolan army) was being mobilized and prepared to launch of an armed raid on Viana. The decision was that the whole mutiny must be drowned in blood. The ANC could not be forced by soldiers to a conference hall ‘at gunpoint’. Early the following day, the mutineers were woken up by the noise of military trucks and armoured personnel carriers (APCs) as the forces of FAPLA encircled the camp. An exchange of fire ensued as the guerrillas retaliated to the attack with their arms. Shortly thereafter, shouts of ‘Ceasefire’ emerged from one of the firing positions and Callaghan Chama (Vusi Shange), one of the commanders of the guerrillas, rose out of a trench beseeching for peace. One MK combatant, Babsey Mlangeni (travelling name), and one FAPLA soldier were already dead and an Angolan APC was on the retreat engulfed in flame. What followed were negotiations between the national chief of staff of FAPLA, Colonel Ndalo, and the Committee of Ten. An agreement was reached after lengthy discussions with the guerrillas, with the Angolans trying to convince them that there would be no victimizations. Weapons were surrendered to the FAPLA commanders and they promised to provide security for everybody who was in Viana, and that even the ANC security would be disarmed. Two member of the OAU Liberation Committee arrived together with Chris Hani who delivered a boastful address denouncing the whole mutiny and its demands as an adventure instigated by disgruntled elements. Then the usual political rhetoric followed, that the ANC was an organization of the people of South Africa, and that those mutineers were not even a drop in an ocean and that the ANC could do without them. To demonstrate this, Hani called on all those who were still committed to serve as ANC members to move out of the hall. The hall was left empty. All the mutineers were still committed to the ideals of the ANC, they were committed to ANC policies. Nevertheless, they could discern deviations from the democratic norms proclaimed in those policy documents and declared on public platforms. It was a concern for this that had forced them to use arms in conditions where criticism of the leadership and democratic election of NEC members by the rank and file was branded as counter-revolutionary. During the period of these events, another rebellion was breaking out in Caculama, the very camp in which President Tambo had delivered his address about the illegitimacy of the mutiny which had then been in progress in Kangandala. Some groups of trained guerrillas and officers, including the staff unit commissar, Bandile Ketelo (Jacky Molefe), moved out of the camp, boarding trucks and trains to join and support the mutineers at Viana. The training programme for the new recruits came to an abrupt stop, and this was another slap in the face of the ANC leadership because Caculama camp was their last hope to counterbalance the popularity of the mutiny. With the support from Caculama, the mutiny acquired a 90 per cent majority among the whole trained forces of MK in Angola, which was then the only country where the ANC had guerrilla camps. The Angolan government authorities played a very dishonest role thereafter. They began to throttle this popular unrest in collaboration with the ANC security, dishonouring all the agreements they had made with the guerrillas. The security personnel of the ANC were allowed to enter the camp armed, which was defended by the Angolan armed forces with their weapons. Quadro was best described in a terse statement by Zaba Maledza, when he said: ‘When you get in there, forget about human rights.’ This was a statement from a man who had lived in Quadro during one of the worst periods in its history, 1980-82. Established in 1979, it was supposed to be a rehabilitation centre of the ANC where enemy agents who had infiltrated the ANC would be ‘re-educated’ and would be made to love the ANC through the opportunity to experience the humane character of its ideals. Regrettably, through a process that still cries for explanation, Quadro became worse than any prison than even the apartheid regime itself considered a crime against humanity – had ever had. However bitter the above statement, however disagreeable to the fighters against the monstrous apartheid system, it is a truth that needs bold examination by our people, and the whole of the ANC membership. To examine the history of Quadro is to uncover the concealed forces that operate in a political organization such as the ANC. Quadro, officially known as Camp 32, was renamed after Morris Seabelo (real name Lulamile Dantile), one of its first and trusted commanders. He was a Soviet-trained intelligence officer, a student at the Moscow Party Institution and a publicized young hero of the South African Communist Party. In late 1985 he mysteriously lost his life in an underground ANC residence in Lesotho, where none of those he was with, including Nomkhosi Mini, was spared to relate the story. Located about 15km from the town of Quibaxe north of Luanda, Quadro was one of the most feared of the secret camps of the ANC to which only a selected few in the ANC leadership (viz., Mzwandile Piliso, Joe Modise, Andrew Masondo and also the then general secretary of the SACP, Moses Mabhida) had access. The administration of the camp was limited to members of the security forces, mostly young members of the underground SACP. Such were most of its administrative staff. for example, Sizwe Mkhonto, also a GDR-Soviet trained intelligence officer and former political student at the Moscow Party Institution, who was camp commander for a long time; Afrika Nkwe, also Soviet intelligence and a politically trained officer, who was a senior commander and commissar at Quadro, with occasional relapses of mental illness; Griffiths Seboni; Cyril Burton, Itumeleng, all falling within the same categories, to name but a few. The security guards and warders were drawn from the young and politically naive fanatic supporters of the military leadership of Modise and Tambo, who kept to strict warnings about secrecy. They are not allowed to talk to anyone about anything that takes place in an ‘ANC Rehabilitation Centre.’ The prisoners themselves are transported blindfolded and lying flat on the floor of the security vehicle taking them there. Upon arrival in the camp they are given new pseudonyms and are strictly limited to know only their cellmates, and cannot peep through the windows. From whatever corner they emerge, or any turn they take within the premises of the prison, they must seek ‘permission to pass’. Any breaches of these rules of secrecy, whether intentional or a mistake, are seriously punishable by beatings and floggings. To crown it all, when prisoners are being released they must sign a document committing them never to release any form of information relating to their conditions of stay in the prison camp, and never to disclose their activities there or the forms of punishment meted out to them. In the Hands of the SACP The life activity of the inmates at Quadro is characterized by aggressive physical and psychological humiliation that can only be well documented by the efforts of all the former prisoners and perhaps honest security guards combined. Confronted by questions from the MK combatants before the outbreak of the mutiny, Botiki, one of the former detainees who had lived through camp life in Quadro during its worst period, simply answered: ‘What I’ve seen there is frightening and incredible.’ For a long tinie, Quadro had been a place of interest to many cadres, and it was so difficult to get knowledge of the place from ex-detainees. The ANC security had instilled so much fear in them that they hardly had any hopes that the situation could be changed. The meek behaviour and fear of authority shown by ex-detainees, the intimidating and domineering posture of the security personnel, attempted and successful suicides committed by ex-prisoners such as Leon Madakeni, Mark, and Nonhlanhla Makhuba when faced with the possibility of re-arrest, and the common mental disturbance of the guards and personnel at Quadro, and what they talked about in their deranged state, threw light on what one was likely to expect in this ‘rehabilitation centre.’ In Quadro the prisoners were given invective names that were meant to destroy them psychologically, names ‘closely reflecting the crimes committed by the prisoners.’ Among the mutineers, we had Zaba Maledza named Muzorewa, after a world-known traitor in Zimbabwe; Sidwell Moroka was named Dolinchek, a Yugoslav mercenary involved in a coup attempt in the Seychelles; Maxwell Moroaledi was named Mgoqozi, a Zulu name for an instigator; and there were many other extremely rude names that cannot be written here. Otherwise, generally every prisoner was called untdlwenibe, a political bandit. The political mood within the ANC in exile had remained shaky since the mutiny of 1984. The divisions between the security personnel and the general membership had continued to widen in spite of cosmetic changes of personnel in the apparatus. Piliso had been shifted from heading security to chief of the Development of Manpower Department (DMD), replaced by Sizakhele Sigxashe, who had been part of the commission set up to probe into the details about the mutiny in 1984. Workshops had also been convened to look into the problems of the Security Department, with the aim of reorganizing it in order to change its monstrous face. But these were half-hearted efforts, and could not improve the situation because they evaded the sensitive issues and left out the views of those who had been victims. The old security personnel were, above all, left intact. There was also the pressing issue of the running battles against Unita that had resumed in 1987, in which MK cadres were losing their lives in growing numbers. Armed struggle inside South Africa, one of the central issues in 1984, was caught up in a disturbing state of stagnation. The leadership of the ANC had become more and more discredited among the exiles, and it was hard to find anyone bold enough to defend it with confidence, as was the case earlier. Even within the security personnel you could detect a sense of shame and unease in some of its members. But it was still difficult for the membership to raise their heads, and the ANC security was in control of strategic positions in all structures. As a result of this political atmosphere within the ANC, frustration and disillusion had set in at most of the ANC centres. Dakawa, where the ex-Quadro detainees were taken after their release in December 1988, was also trapped in political apathy, with political structures in disarray. The Zonal Political Cominittees (ZPCs), Zonal Youth Committees (ZYCs), Women’s Committees, Regional Political Committees and all the other structures whose membership was elected, were either functioning in semi-capacity or were completely dormant. Only the administrative bodies were in good shape, and this was mainly because their membership was appointed by the headquarters in Lusaka, and was composed of either security or some people loyal and attached to it. These are the structures that, contrary to the ANC policy of superiority of political leadership over administrative and military bodies, wielded great powers in running the establishments and which suffocated political bodies elected by the membership. This state of affairs reveals clearly that after more than 15 years without democracy and elected structures, the ANC was finding it difficult to readjust itself to the democratic procedures it was forced to recognize by the 1985 Kabwe Conference. The leadership found itself much more at home when dealing with administrators than with bodies that drew support from the grassroots. This strangled political structures, and drove many people away from political concern to frustration and indifference…." Really, the protests that culminated in the mass meetings at Viana (Feb. 1984) are not accurately described as a mutiny, although soldiers were refusing to follow orders. It is an odd sort of mutiny in which rank and file demanded to be sent into battle against the enemy. It is better labelled a pro-democracy protest, with the bloody events at Pango (camp) conforming more closely to the description of a mutiny." It was remarkable how little of all these events was reported in the press (but) news of the Mkatatashinga certainly reached Pretoria (as it had double-agents and spies embedded in the exile movement at leadership level). It was not difficult for South African intelligence and military officials to turn this to their advantage. These were elements that led to the tragic Gukurahundi, the ZANU government´s anti-Ndebele genocide of the mid-1980s. The "dirty war" that evolved from the mid-1980s in various countries of southern Africa included legions of unfortunate people who were lured or coerced into working for one military or security unit or another (called "askaris" who worked undercover on assassination and sabotage duties - becoming the mainstays of the main police death equals during the 1980s). Now this picture above is clearly at odds with the "heroic" portrayal being served up by the Mandarins of Anti-Apartheid Movement, the ANC representatives in exile and the political hangers-on who wished to curry favour with the ANC in return for favours or "gifts in kind" etc But it goes a long way in "explaining" why the Armed troops of MK is not fight at Quito Cuanivale Cuito Cuanivale, the Cuban Internationalists and the End of Apartheid South Africa´s military involvement in Angola was to span 13 years, from its initial incursion in 1975 up until the withdrawal in 1988. Duringthis time, the SADF ran a series of devastating campaigns that took a heavy toll on Angola´s military and civilian population. In the largest mechanised manoeuvre South Africa had undertaken since WWII, the SADF rolled into the Cunene Province, taking cntol of nearly 50,000 sq. kilometres of land in ashore period of time. Towns that refused to bow to the SADF were confronted with a three-pronged attack: long-range artillery bombardment matched with extensive ´carpet bombing´by the South African Air Force, clearing the way for an overwhelming storm of ground troops (including black Unita troops). The result was that, within a short period of time, virtually the entire Cunene province was evacuated by Angolans terrified of the onslaught that left 160,000 Angolans homeless (BBC). UNICEF estimated that between 1980 and 1985, 100,000 Angolans died largely as a result of of war-related famine. Between 1981 and 1988, 333, 000 Angolan children died of unnatural causes. The Angolan government estimated the cost of the war about $12 bn. in 1987 alone. However, Pretoria´s plan for Angola was to unravel in early 1988 when the SADF attempted to capture the town of Cuito Cuanivale, and were repulsed by combined Angolan and Cuban forces, which were able, in the vacuum, to make advances into southern Angola. Their failure at Cuito Cuanivale was decisive in pushing the apartheid state into comping into a belated peace through negotiations with Angola in August 1988 and, in a related development, granting independence to Namibia in 1990 However, it was only in 2006 that Angolan´s hostilities finally ground to a halt. Havana´s Last Stand ""On 16 November 1987 in Havana the Cuban Central Committee made the dramatic decision to reinforce its 25,000 troops in Angola to counter a massive new South African commitment of infrastructure and logistics in northern Namibia which began in March. The South Africans, with the backing of the Reagan administration, were preparing for the most ambitious offensive inside Angola since 1975. The Cuban´decision to counter it was equal in historical importance to the arrival of the first Cuban fighting contingent on 4 October 1975 which headed off the the South African units bent on installing their client FNL/Unita government in Luanda. The South African generals aimed at the capture of the town and FAPLA base of Cuito Cuanivale, 200 miles from the Namibian border. This would give Unita a completely new strategic base to attack central Angola (and finally install Savimbi and oust the MPLA government). Through August and September South African units, numbering about 7,000 men, fought off a major FAPLA offensive to retake the town of Mavinga, occupied by South African and Unita since 1980 and an important supply base for them. In mid-September FAPLA units were encircled on the Loma river and took very high casualties. The South African military, convinced they were close to a decisive victory which would change the course of the war, pushed on towards Cuito Cuanivale … But in the dry and desolate plains of southern Angola the military tide began to turn against them in the early weeks of 1988 with the arrival of the first additional 9,000 Cuban troops two months after the Central Committee decision. The troops, who would number 15,000 when the deployment was complete, and their equipment, arrived at the three ports of Luanda, Lobito and Namibe and swept in three columns along the country´s main west/east axes, from the coast to the mist, hills and forest of Malange in the north, to remote Luena near the border of Zaire and Zambia, and to the main war theatre of Cuito Cuanivale in the south of the country. By mid-February (1988) these thousands of young Cubans were ready to take on the South Africans at Cuito Cuanivale in a set-piece battle of tanks and heavy artillery, including South Africa´s mammoth G5 and G6 howitzers, aircraft, and anti-aircraft batteries. The Anglan/Cuban side, in which SWAPO also fought, was led by the legendary General Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez … In the following weeks of heavy fighting they not only halted the South Africans, but defeated them so definitively that Cuito Cuanivale became a symbol across the continent that apartheid and its arms were no longer invincible. By early May the South Africans had been pushed back and the Angolan army was 50 miles east of Cuito Cuanivale … the Cubans fanned out south towards the Namibian border area … ahead of the Cubans some South African units, together with the Namibian conscripts … retreated to the border area and in heavy fighting a dozen white South Africans were killed. The Cuban-led campaign struck at the South African military´s confidence and helped to set the scene for quadripartite negotiations which began in London in May with Angola, South Africa, Cuba and the US at the table. The central agenda items were the long-overdue independence of Namibia from South Africa, under the ten-year-old UN Resolution 435, and a timetable for Cuban withdrawal from Angola of its 40,000 troops. The South Africans knew for the first time they had lost air superiority to Angola´s MIG23s, a fact which changed the military picture as dramatically as their defeat on the ground at Cuito Cuanivale. Source: Victoria Brittain: Death of Dignity, Angola´s Civil War, Africa World Press, London, 1998. The Cuban victory at Cuito Cuanivale, 1988 pp. 276279 "… Faced with the imminent defeat in the south, (president José Eduardo Dos Santos) asked Castro for assistance. This new request came just twelve years after the original Cuban intervention in Angola had turned the tide in 1975. Prompt Cuban intervention on this second occasion, as before, was to change the history of Africa. Cuba rescued the Angolan government from South African attack and paved the way to an end to apartheid in South Africa itself. In the first weeks of 1988, with the arrival of the first 9,000 Cuban reinforcements, the military tide began to turn against the South Africans … The long-awaited South African attack came on the 14 February, and their soldiers, in support of the CIA-funded guerrillas of Unita, penetrated the suburbs of the town. The Cuban forces fought back and Cuito Cuanivale soon turned into a resounding Cuban victory. After several weeks of heavy fighting the South African advance was halted. Cuito Cuanivale was to become a symbol across Africa, indicating that apartheid and its army was no longer invincible. The South African defeat obliged its arms to withdraw from Angola. This intern was followed by the withdrawal of South African troops from namibia, leading to a diplomatic solution - orchestrated by (US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs) Chester Crocker - that allowed both for the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola and for the Namibian Liberation Movement SWAPO to come to power in Windhoek. This strategic collapse in southern Africa was eventually to lead to the end of the apartheid state itself. In February 1990, two years after Cuito Cuanivale, Nelson Mandela, the black South African leader, was released from prison. He came to Havana in July 1991 to thank Castro personally for Cuba´s assistance in the anti-apartheid struggle." Richard Gott: CUBA - A New History, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 2005. Cuba, African Nationalism and the Soviet Union The Two Stages of Cuban Foreign Policy "Immediately after having consolidated his control over the island´s foreign policy by the end of 1959, Fidel Castro adhered to a policy that was predominantly a mixture of Guevara´s brand of independent Communism and the Caribbean and Latin American tradition with which he had been associated since the late forties. During the first period, Cuba´s policy in Latin America involved open and aggressive support for guerrilla movements and harsh denunciation of the traditional Communist Parties n the continent. It was during this initial period that the Cuban leadership put forward guerrilla warfare as the strategy for the Latin American left. By the sixties, Fidel Castro and his associates had become firmly wedded to the institutional structures of the one-party state along the general lines of the Soviet model established under Stalin. The fact that the Cuban leaders modified the model in certain respects, like placing a greater emphasis on popular mobilisation - not to be confused with popular control - did not alter the fundamental structural kinship between the two models. The early period of conflict between Cuba and the Soviet Union came to an end with Castro´s speech supporting the Soviet and Warsaw Pact countries´invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. This speech showed Castro to be still very critical of the USST and the East European Communist counties and was more a defines of the Stalinist mddl of the one-party state than the Soviet bloc as such. After Havana withdrew its open support of the latin American guerrillas, Castro began to move toward a second foreign policy stage associated with the traditional Soviet approach. However, even during this period of close partnership with the Soviet empire … objective features regarding Cuba´s position in the Western hemisphere and in the world made its foreign policy more militant than the Soviet Union´s. Cuba´s geographical location within the geopolitical sphere of influence of the American empire, its small size and relative economic underdevelopment, forced it to maintain a substantial degree of militance to be able to survive as a society with an economic and social system inimical to Washington´s. During this stage of closer ties to the Soviet Union, Castro supported the suppression of the Eritrean national movement in the seventies and, with much discomfort and in a low-key manner, the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan that began in late 1979 and continued through the eighties. Until then, Cuba managed to play an important leadership role in the movement of the Third World ("Non-Aligned Nations") in a manner that was compatible and supportive of Soviet goals. Even when Castro´s policies were closest to those of the Soviet Union, in terms of nth his domestic and foreign policies, he avoided a total identification with the Soviet leaders in the eyes of the world. As it shifted away from open support of guerrilla warfare ("armed struggle" warfare in Latin America, Cuba became increasingly interested in Africa, a region on the fringes of the American geopolitical sphere of influence where Cuban initiatives were more compatible with Soviet foreign policy. Besides, there were fewer political risk to Cuba´s intervention in Latin America. Cuba´s political and military presence in Africa (and in other parts of the world) also had a significant effect on the balance of its power relations with the Soviet Union. Its global presence along with its development into a significant military power gave Fidel Castro greater leverage and room for negotiation with the Soviet leaders, who for these reasons could not treat Cuba as if it were a mere East European satellite. The conflict between China and the Soviet Union and what was once called "Communist polycentrism" helped to give the Cuban government even grater room to manoeuvre from Moscow. At the same time, the substantial subsidies the island received from Moscow and its economic dependence of the USSR allied it, until the late eighties, to maintain a standard of living that, although austere, covered the most basic needs of its population. The Soviet union was able to compel Cuba to purchase its poor-quality consumer and industrial products at questionable prices … (the sugar quota issue) …. while Moscow was able to use Cuban ports and airports to service its warships and aircraft and to establish a base (at Lourdes, near Havana) for electronic intelligence gathering and communications facilities. During the second stage of its foreign policy in the seventies and eighties, Cuba´s strategy was orientated towards building an alliance with African nationalism. Eventually, this alliance required the commitment of qualitatively far greater human and material resources than those Cuba ever invested in Latin America. In the course of implementing this strategy, Cuba took independent initiatives without consulting the Kremlin, although they were generally compatible with the overall strategy of Soviet policy in the region even if occasional tactical disagreements arose between Cuba and the uSSR. The Cuban government was able to kill two birds with one stone. It was able to exercise its own military and political muscle on the African continent without the risk of causing the clash with the Soviet Union that Fidel Castro´s earlier aggressive support of guerrilla warfare in Latin America had provoked. In the axe of Angola, Fidel Castro´s strategy, combined with his alliance with the Soviet empire, allowed him to play a very important role in the defence of that country against Western imperialism and its right-wing (surrogates) agents. During the initial months of the Angolan operation, Cuba handled the transportation of its troops by itself but used USSR-supplied weapons. Later on, the Soviets took over the transportation operation and supplied the Cubans with a variety of weapons to stop the domestic and foreign enemies of Angolan national self-determinationn. The Cubans, in alliance with the MPLA and with the help of the Namibian independence fighters (PLAN of Swapo), eventually won this conflict and delivered a heavy blow against the South African armed forces (SADF), the backbone of apartheid. This victory also opened the way for the independence of Namibia in the late eighties." Samuel Farber: CUBA since the Revolution of 1959, A Critical Assessment, Haymarket Books, Chicago, 2011. - see especially Chapter Three: Cuba´s Foreign Policy - between Revolution and Reasons of State, pp. 96-130, esp. 105-114. The most common reasons for Cuba´s International Solidarity with Cuba and Africa has been rationalised as one of "socialist internationalism" and "racial solidarity": Piero Gleijeses ("Conflicting Missions" - 2003) and the prime historiographer and most quoted writer of this writes: "Prologue: p. 11 - Curiocity about Havana´s intervention in Angola sparked this book. It became the story of Cuba´s halting, self-interested, and idealistic steps in Africa, both at the governmental level and at the individual level, embodies by the thousands of Cubans who doctored, and soldiered, and taught in Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. And it became a parable of the Cold War, in which Washington was blinded by its singular focus on the great powers …" pp. 379 "By the early 1970s, reeling from the failure of his revolutionary offensive in Latin America and of his economic policies at home, Castro had softened his attitude towards the Soviet Union. Cuban criticism of Soviet policies ceased, and Havana acknowledged Moscow´s primacy with the socialist bloc … In August 1975, when Castro first considered sending troops to Angola, he asked Brezhnev to endorse the operation. In the 1960s, he had never sought Moscow´s approval before embarking on a military mission in Africa, but in the 1960s Cuba had never undertaken such a major and risky operation. To ask for Soviet support in these circumstances was not subservience but common sense … When Brezhnev said no, Castro stepped back. At the time the MPLA was winning. Three months later (November 1975), the South African invasion presented Castro with a stark choice: intervene or seal the fate of the MPLA. It was a defining moment. Castro defied the Soviet Union. He sent his troops on Cuban planes and Cuban ships ("Operation Carlota"), without consulting Brezhnev, hoping that Moascow would come around, but without any assurance that it would. He was no client." "Of the 30,000 Cubans who went to Angola between November 1975 and March 1976, there were "few casualties" - at the most 200 dead, including 16 prisoners who had been captured by the South Africans, handed over to Unita and executed." Victory in Angola in 1976 boosted Cuba´s prestige in the Third World. "The Cubans are now the people who are regarded as the heroes in the black world", said a prominent SA member of Parliament. In 1976 the fifth summit of the Non-Aligned Movement praised Cuba for its intervention "against South Africa´s racist regime and its allies". Cuba was chosen to host the next summit in 1979 (and therefore to chair the movement in the 1979-82 period). The Soviet leaders´initial displeasure with Castro´s decision to send troops to Angola had turned into warm approval by early 1976, as they concluded that Operation Carlota had achieved an important victory for Soviet foreign policy. p. 389 "As US officials had predicted, the MPLA victory did not threaten major U.S. interests in Angola. Luanda´s economic tied continued to be with the West, the Soviet Union gained no naval bases, and the Angolan government soon sent signals of its willingness to improve relations with the United States. The best epitaph to Kissinger´s Angola policy was offered by Kissinger himself. "It would´t be the first time in history", he rued in January 1976, "that events that no one can explain afterwards give rise to consequences out of proportion to their intrinsic significance". Richard Gott writes of the period around 1988 (2005): Chapter 8: Cuba Stands alone - 1985 - 2003 pp. 272 -320 - esp. pp. 276 - 279 "The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 which had provided financial and subsidised it , and was a source of its military security over three decades, disappeared for all time. In March 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev was appointed secretary-general of the Soviet Communist Party. The arrival of Gorbachev on the Soviet scene was seen as aseismic change likely to cause problems in its Cuban semi-colony. Gobachev´s use of the key words of glasnost and perestroika - the promotion of political openness and economic restructuring - could be dismissed as an internal affair if the Soviet Union with little necessary effect on Cuba. (But) The Soviet leader´s pursuit of East-West détente with President Reagan was certain to have an adverse impact. In private Gorbachev made it clear that the old economic relationships, with the price subsidies that had long helped to keep Cuba relatively prosperous, would have to be phased out. The Russians, in future, would expect payment for their goods in US dollars. p. 276 "Thousands of Cuban troops ere still stationed in Africa and their safety depended on the weapons that the Soviet Union provided for the Angolan armed forces. In Gorbachev´s view perestroika and the gradual withdrawal from Angola by the Cuban and Soviet armies would mean a more friendly relationship wight he United States, as well as greater resources for the Soviet consumer at home. Dissatisfaction with the reformist winds of change in the Soviet Union was not confined to Havana. Cuba´s close African ally was also worried … The long war in defines of his (dos Santos) sustained by 25,000 Cuban soldiers and with a heavy strategic input from Soviet advisors, had been going well in 1986. But vigorous attacks by the guerrilla forces of Jonas Savimbi´s UNITA movement, funded and armed by the United States and backed by South Africa, had caused the MPLA´s army (FAPLA) a series of setbacks in 1987. Perceiving Soviet weakness, the South Africans prepared an offensive in southern Angola, their most ambitious since 1976. Faced with imminent defeat in the south, dos Santos asked Castro for assistance … Cuba´s first action was to send its most experienced pilots to Angola to Cuba. Based in Menonque, they were to attack the South African forces besieging Cuito Cuanivale. Prompt Cuban intervention on this second occasion, as before in 1976, was to change the history of Africa. p. 278-9 "The South African defeat obliged its army to withdraw from Angola. This in turn was followed by the withdrawal of South African troops from Namibia, leading to a diplomatic solution - orchestrated by Chester Crocker - that allowed both for the withdrawal of Cuban troops fromAngola and for the SWAPO to come to power in Windhoek. The Cuban victory accelerated an East-West agreement on southern Africa, and the continued negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union, conducted by Crocker, were joined by Cuban and South African representatives. All four con tries signed an Angola agreement at the UN in New York in December. The internationalist spirit of the revolution lived on, not with soldiers but with doctors and teachers, deployed in ever-increasing numbers throughout Africa." The Path of Negotiations, "Secret Talks", Global Geo-Politics and its historiography So now let us look at how the historians and professional scribes view this issue of the negotiations that followed on the defeat of the SADF at Quito Cuanivale. "Recognising that South Africa could no longer extend its military occupation beyond the country´s borders without risk of defeat, and that the occupation of Namibia would inevitably become vastly more costly in both money and lives, (P.W. State President) Botha in August (1988) reached an accord to withdraw all South African forces from southern Angola and to begin negotiations for the independence of Namibia (which would likely mean that SWAPO would govern the country). Background "The combined impact of international sanctions and internal conflict was devastating for the South African economy. Investment in the capital goods necessary to develop a long-term import substitution policy caused, the cost of imports to rise by 60 per cent between 1986 and 1987. Unable to borrow further internationally, South Africa spent almost half its foreign exchange reserves in the 14-month period between August 1987 and October 1988 to service existing loans. The value of the rand plummeted, while the rice of gold (still South Africa´s chief earner of foreign currency) by the end of the 1980s was half of what it had been a decade before. Inflation was chronic. Businessmen, who had benefited from the cheap labour policies for the apartheid state, became some of Botha´s strongest critics. Even within the Afrikaner business community and the government itself, there was a growing call for new political steps to be taken to alleviate the economic disaster facing the country." p. 100-101 (Nancy L. Clark& William H. Worger: South Africa - The Rise and Fall of Apartheid, Pearson/Longman, 2004) - see also "With fighting bringing the country to an impasse, with the black revolutionaries unable to overthrow the white state, and the state unable to eliminate the revolutionaries, Botha contemplated negotiation, but negotiation not in order to compromise or surrender but in order to win. Such a strategy had already been raised at a meeting of the State Security Council late in 1985 when one of those in attendance, General Groenewald, reflecting the consensus of the meeting that some form od settlement with anti-apartheid forces was unavoidable in the long term, expressing the strategy thus: ´You can thus only negotiate from a position of power. If we negotiate with the ANC with the purpose of eliminating it, that is acceptable. If we negotiate with the purpose of accommodating it, that is unacceptable.´ Negotiations could weaken the ANC and destroy its revolutionary potential (TRC, 1998, vol. 2: 703)Adoption of this strategy lay behind a series of meetings held from May 1988 onwards between a government committee (consisting of the minister of justice, the commissioner of prisons, the director general of prisons, the head of the National Intelligence Service Neil Barnard) and Nelson Mandela. A month later (August 1989) Botha was out of office … he suffered a stroke in January but in August resigned to be replaced by F.W. de Klerk who had taken over as leader of the National Party in February, and replaced him as state president. He was widely regarded as an "unremarkable foot soldier of apartheid". At the opening session of parliament on 2 February 1990, he (de Klerk) announced that the banning orders on the ANC, SACP, PAC and 31 other organisations were to be rescinded (lifted). Such steps were necessary, he argued, were necessary in oder to carry out the process of negotiation that he considered ´the key to reconciliation, peace, and a and a new and just dispensation´(Hansard, 1990: col. 12) (op cit 102-3) Hein Marais (2011) writes: Chapter 2: pp 39 - 68: SAVING THE SYSTEM p. 59 "Early in the 1980s, former president P W Botha had warned whites they had to adapt or die´, by the late 1980s it was clear that adaptation within the paradigm of apartheid offered no escape. The political and social stability needed to restore and consolidate a new cycle of accumulation required a new political model that had to incorporate the basic demands of the political opposition: a non-racial democracy based on universal suffrage in a unified nation-state. As early as March 1986, National Party (NP) ministers had grasped this point … what baffled them was how to proceed. A leap was needed. In 1986, corporate capital fell in line behind state repression - but without offering a congruous strategy for how to proceed once the uprising had been quelled. By mid-1980s, however, a cluster of ´visionary´corporate and political figures in the ruling bloc (including the top security officials) understood that a political exit had to be carved open and that it would have to involve the ANC. Meanwhile, two developments had combined to create a favourable balance of forces within the NP and the government. The NP had jettisoned its far-right supporters and there had been centralised within the party and government Reformists took heart from the crushing of the 1980s uprisings: by 1990, a five member committee headed by the Minister of Justice Kobie Cortzee, and National Intelligence Service chief, Daniel (Neil) Barnard, had met with Nelson Mandela 47 times. Facilitation was provided by social-democratic entities like the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA) (megabucks funded by Western governments - esp. Scadinavian and German-EU funds and development agencies) was instrumental in establishing the climate and forging the trust that would lead to formal political negations. A new pack of cards had been dealt." (Marais: pp 58-59); also; #1 below, footnote :Willie Esterhuyse: Secret Talks and the End of Apartheid, Tafelberg, Cape Town (2012) AT THE CROSSROADS Here are some of the factors that tilted the balance of power towards the proponents of political negotiations in the ANC, the NP and the government, and the corporate camp and to establish a broader context that favoured that route. * International sanctions handicapped efforts to slow the slide of the economy(although how severely remains a point of debate). Certainly, government´s options for dealing with with internal resistance were influenced by the prospect of harsher sanctions (boycotts and penalties). At the same time, South African exports experienced an upturn from 1987 onwards, despite sanctions. The main impact of sanctions seemed to be their negative effect on foreign investment flows and government´s ability to secure financial assistance to offset balance of payments difficulties. Those pressures would not relax substantially until a political settlement was reached. In other words, the economic sphere could only be rescued if the political framework could be restructured. * The absurd duplication of state institutions (3 chambers of parliament, dozens of governments performing the same tasks for racially defined sections of the population, expensive homelands administrations), as well as the costs of the Namibian occupation and the war in Angola, all increased financial strains at a point when the economy was slumping into its worst recession since the 1930s. * The NP had weaned itself from its old multi class social base, enabling it to free its policies from the ideological straightjacket of (grand) apartheid and transform itself into a party championing the interests of the white middle classes and bourgeoisie. A power-struggle in the ruling NP ended in the election of F.W. de Klerk as leader, with the party´s ´young turks´grouping around him. * The internal anti-apartheid forces had regrouped with the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM inc. the UDF and new Congress-aligned union federation Cosatu) and were capable of noun ting resistance campaigns which, while not posing immediate threats to the state, could further raise the costs of avoiding a political force with sufficient legitimacy and authority among the excluded majority to make the deal stick. The ANC had clearly emerged as as that force. * A profound process of class restructuring was underway in urban African communities. A small but distinct black elite had emerged, especially in the homelands where this layer was also invested with political and administrative power. The rise of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) in particular (and with it organised black political ethnicity) raised hopes that the hegemony of the ANC could be reduced during and after a negotiations process. These developments fed exaggerated expectations within the NP that a ´non-racial´centre-right political alliance could be mustered to challenge or hold the ANC in check. * The military defeat suffered by the South African Defence Force (SADF) at Cuito Cuanivale in Angola pushed militarist hardliners onto the defensive, as did Namibia´s almost anti-climatic achievement of independence and the progress towards a peaceful settlement of Angola´s civil war. * Pressure from Western governments, principally the US, and their touting of the reassuring examples of ´managed transitions´ to democracy in the Philippines and Namibia softened the reluctance to opt for negotiations. The options appearing before the ANC, in particular, and the (internal) anti-apartheid movement, in general were influenced by the following factors: * Withering (unrelenting) state repression, along with organisational and strategic dysfunction (political conflict) in the democratic movement, had dashed the dream of overthrowing the apartheid state by force (military means). Those favouring an unremitting confrontation with the apartheid state were weakened - a long period of rebuilding the internal popular forces lay ahead. * The armed struggle never reached a point where it posed a military threat to white rule. By the late 1980s its potency had faded to the point where the ANC would later admit ´there was no visible intensification´. (taken together with the Mutiny/"Mkatashinga" in the MK camps in Angola 1982-84 had sown further dissatisfaction with the leadership by the rank-and-file, and resignation and defeatism in the broader layers of the exile movement). After the Namibian settlement, the ANC lost its military bases in Angola and was forced to transplant then as far afield as East Africa (Uganda). There was no foreseeable prospect of re-establishing them in the region again. * The collapse of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union´s shift towards demilitarising its relations with the West (perestroika/detente) and dramatically reducing its support for revolutionary projects in the south) deprived the ANC of its main (financial and political) backers and effectively curtailed its armed struggle initiatives, and accelerated an endemic retreat by radical forces worldwide. The radical social transformation (although based on a one-party state model of Soviet/Cuban vintage) projects attempted in Mozambique and Angola had been destroyed through a massive destabilisation campaign by the apartheid state, reinforcing South African hegemony throughout the subcontinent. * During the 1980s, the ANC had received substantial ideological hegemony among the popular masses and their main organisations (the Charterist current), bolstering their claim to be the ´government-in-waiting´. * The balance of power within the ANC tilted towards a well-organised (and funded) pro-negotiations faction (clustered around Slovo, Mbeki, Jordan, Loots) of "moderates" that got the upper hand over the hardliners ("militarists") embarrassed by the collapse of their insurrectionary strategy ("Operation Vula", Hani and Maharaj) and alarmed by the disappearance of the long-term support traditionally drawn from the Soviet bock. Thus, political pressure had been put on both the ANC and the apartheid government - the ANC was notified that it, too was best served by "seizing the moment" and accept "constructive engagement". The collapse of the Soviet bloc meant that post-apartheid South Africa would be knotted into a world wide economic system dominated by the US, Western Europe, Japan and now also China. "Neither side could claim to have triumphed, but the balance of forces still favoured the incumbents (old regime), who remained in control of the economy, the state (particularly its repressive apparatus) and the media. The apartheid state had weathered turbulent uncertainties and retained the (provisional) support of powerful Western governments. The retreat of radical projects (Cuba) internationally favoured the consolidation of centrist political alternatives. Growing class (social) differentiation and the emergence of other contradictions in African communities (the rise of political ethnicity) emboldened those who believed that they could save the system by sacrificing it." (p. 61-62) Negotiations, talks, compromises and normal political processes were to become the new paradigm of liberation: the discourse that spoke of the violent overthrow of the apartheid state had been foreshadowed by a more moderate one that seemed inclined towards a negotiated settlement. It was the failure of a strategy centred on an insurrectionary of armed struggle that tilted the ANC onto the negotiations path reconnoiter and explored by Nelson Mandela since 1986. ---------- #1 Willie Esterhuyse: Secret Talks and the End of Apartheid (2012) gives us an "insiders" version of the wooing and courting of Mandela by the Afrikaner elite: It has a useful chronology/timeline for the uninitiated From the dust jacket: "The full story of the secret meetings between ANC leaders and a select few Afrikaners in the turbulent 1980s, told for the first time by someone who was there himself. Stellenbosch professor Willie Esterhuyse (he was also my philosophy professor on the "Island" in Durban harbour, on Sailsbury Island, Durban University-College in 1967). A verligite Broderbonder and a wiley political fox!) "Endgame recounts how these talks, held behind closed doors in England, … kick-started negotiations in South Africa … Esterhuyse´s first-hand account, filled with anecdotes, offered a fresh look at many South African leaders. It contains fascinating information on secret discussions in prison, what went on in P W Botha´s situation room, and how the NIS tried to save South Africa from widespread violøence by covertly intervening in the high-stakes game played by "enemies". --------------- * A profound process of class restructuring was underway in urban African communities. A small but distinct black elite had emerged, especially in the homelands where this layer was also invested with political and administrative power. The rise of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) in particular (and with it organised black political ethnicity) raised hopes that the hegemony of the ANC could be reduced during and after a negotiations process. These developments fed exaggerated expectations within the NP that a ´non-racial´centre-right political alliance could be mustered to challenge or hold the ANC in check. * The military defeat suffered by the South African Defence Force (SADF) at Cuito Cuanivale in Angola pushed militarist hardliners onto the defensive, as did Namibia´s almost anti-climatic achievement of independence and the progress towards a peaceful settlement of Angola´s civil war. * Pressure from Western governments, principally the US, and their touting of the reassuring examples of ´managed transitions´ to democracy in the Philippines and Namibia softened the reluctance to opt for negotiations. The options appearing before the ANC, in particular, and the (internal) anti-apartheid movement, in general were influenced by the following factors: * Withering (unrelenting) state repression, along with organisational and strategic dysfunction (political conflict) in the democratic movement, had dashed the dream of overthrowing the apartheid state by force (military means). Those favouring an unremitting confrontation with the apartheid state were weakened - a long period of rebuilding the internal popular forces lay ahead. * The armed struggle never reached a point where it posed a military threat to white rule. By the late 1980s its potency had faded to the point where the ANC would later admit ´there was no visible intensification´. (taken together with the Mutiny/"Mkatashinga" in the MK camps in Angola 1982-84 had sown further dissatisfaction with the leadership by the rank-and-file, and resignation and defeatism in the broader layers of the exile movement). After the Namibian settlement, the ANC lost its military bases in Angola and was forced to transplant then as far afield as East Africa (Uganda). There was no foreseeable prospect of re-establishing them in the region again. * The collapse of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union´s shift towards demilitarising its relations with the West (perestroika/detente) and dramatically reducing its support for revolutionary projects in the south) deprived the ANC of its main ( In 1986, corporate capital fell in line behind state repression - but without offering a congruous strategy for how to proceed once the uprising had been quelled. By mid-1980s, however, a cluster of ´visionary´corporate and political figures in the ruling bloc (including the top security officials) understood that a political exit had to be carved open and that it would have to involve the ANC. Meanwhile, two developments had combined to create a favourable balance of forces within the NP and the government. The NP had jettisoned its far-right supporters and there had been centralised within the party and government Reformists took heart from the crushing of the 1980s uprisings: by 1990, a five member committee headed by the Minister of Justice Kobie Cortzee, and National Intelligence Service chief, Daniel (Neil) Barnard, had met with Nelson Mandela 47 times. Facilitation was provided by social-democratic entities like the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA) (megabucks funded by Western governments - esp. Scadinavian and German-EU funds and development agencies) was instrumental in establishing the climate and forging the trust that would lead to formal political negations. A new pack of cards had been dealt." (Marais: pp 58-59); also; #1 below, footnote :Willie Esterhuyse: Secret Talks and the End of Apartheid, Tafelberg, Cape Town (2012) AT THE CROSSROADS Here are some of the factors that tilted the balance of power towards the proponents of political negotiations in the ANC, the NP and the government, and the corporate camp and to establish a broader context that favoured that route. * International sanctions handicapped efforts to slow the slide of the economy(although how severely remains a point of debate). Certainly, government´s options for dealing with with internal resistance were influenced by the prospect of harsher sanctions (boycotts and penalties). At the same time, South African exports experienced an upturn from 1987 onwards, despite sanctions. The main impact of sanctions seemed to be their negative effect on foreign investment flows and government´s ability to secure financial assistance to offset balance of payments difficulties. Those pressures would not relax substantially until a political settlement was reached. In other words, the economic sphere could only be rescued if the political framework could be restructured. * The absurd duplication of state institutions (3 chambers of parliament, dozens of governments performing the same tasks for racially defined sections of the population, expensive homelands administrations), as well as the costs of the Namibian occupation and the war in Angola, all increased financial strains at a point when the economy was slumping into its worst recession since the 1930s. * The NP had weaned itself from its old multi class social base, enabling it to free its policies from the ideological straightjacket of (grand) apartheid and transform itself into a party championing the interests of the white middle classes and bourgeoisie. A power-struggle in the ruling NP ended in the election of F.W. de Klerk as leader, with the party´s ´young turks´grouping around him. * The internal anti-apartheid forces had regrouped with the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM inc. the UDF and new Congress-aligned union federation Cosatu) and were capable of noun ting resistance campaigns which, while not posing immediate threats to the state, could further raise the costs of avoiding a political force with sufficient legitimacy and authority among the excluded majority to make the deal stick. The ANC had clearly emerged as as that force. financial and political) backers and effectively curtailed its armed struggle initiatives, and accelerated an endemic retreat by radical forces worldwide. The radical social transformation (although based on a one-party state model of Soviet/Cuban vintage) projects attempted in Mozambique and Angola had been destroyed through a massive destabilisation campaign by the apartheid state, reinforcing South African hegemony throughout the subcontinent. * During the 1980s, the ANC had received substantial ideological hegemony among the popular masses and their main organisations (the Charterist current), bolstering their claim to be the ´government-in-waiting´. * The balance of power within the ANC tilted towards a well-organised (and funded) pro-negotiations faction (clustered around Slovo, Mbeki, Jordan, Loots) of "moderates" that got the upper hand over the hardliners ("militarists") embarrassed by the collapse of their insurrectionary strategy ("Operation Vula", Hani and Maharaj) and alarmed by the disappearance of the long-term support traditionally drawn from the Soviet bock. Thus, political pressure had been put on both the ANC and the apartheid government - the ANC was notified that it, too was best served by "seizing the moment" and accept "constructive engagement". The collapse of the Soviet bloc meant that post-apartheid South Africa would be knotted into a world wide economic system dominated by the US, Western Europe, Japan and now also China. "Neither side could claim to have triumphed, but the balance of forces still favoured the incumbents (old regime), who remained in control of the economy, the state (particularly its repressive apparatus) and the media. The apartheid state had weathered turbulent uncertainties and retained the (provisional) support of powerful Western governments. The retreat of radical projects (Cuba) internationally favoured the consolidation of centrist political alternatives. Growing class (social) differentiation and the emergence of other contradictions in African communities (the rise of political ethnicity) emboldened those who believed that they could save the system by sacrificing it." (p. 61-62) Negotiations, talks, compromises and normal political processes were to become the new paradigm of liberation: the discourse that spoke of the violent overthrow of the apartheid state had been foreshadowed by a more moderate one that seemed inclined towards a negotiated settlement. It was the failure of a strategy centred on an insurrectionary of armed struggle that tilted the ANC onto the negotiations path reconnoiter and explored by Nelson Mandela since 1986. ---------- #1 Willie Esterhuyse: Secret Talks and the End of Apartheid (2012) gives us an "insiders" version of the wooing and courting of Mandela by the Afrikaner elite: It has a useful chronology/timeline for the uninitiated From the dust jacket: "The full story of the secret meetings between ANC leaders and a select few Afrikaners in the turbulent 1980s, told for the first time by someone who was there himself. Stellenbosch professor Willie Esterhuyse (he was also my philosophy professor on the "Island" in Durban harbour, on Sailsbury Island, Durban University-College in 1967). A verligite Broderbonder and a wiley political fox!) "Endgame recounts how these talks, held behind closed doors in England, … kick-started negotiations in South Africa … Esterhuyse´s first-hand account, filled with anecdotes, offered a fresh look at many South African leaders. It contains fascinating information on secret discussions in prison, what went on in P W Botha´s situation room, and how the NIS tried to save South Africa from widespread violence by covertly intervening in the high-stakes game played by "enemies".