This is the story that the vile NASPERS lapdogs or international media will never reveal. Remember- unlike the whites- this ANC murderers NEVER had to appear before the bogus " truth and reconciliation" tribunal...but walked-off scot-free...and are posing as the "government" today. This all whilst white policemen like Eugene De Kock are behind bars for "atrocities" committed against "humanity." I wonder where is " Amnesty International" and Jody Kollapen's bogus "Human Rights" farce in this case? Why was not even ONE of these identified ANC terrorists EVER brought on trail for this human rights atrocities?
NOW you could understand why the ANC- and especially Zuma- cares a hoot about the nearly 4000 farm murders- and sings hate-songs on podiums. The truth lies in that the ANC NEVER changed their policy with regard to murdering the "opposition"- and are today clandestinely indicated by many sources as being the driving force behind the farm murders. The ANC command are in reality- still very cruel ex-tin-pot murderers that did not changed their ways of the communist "extermination" methods used in their old torture camps- even flinching in murdering their own cadres....but today- proceeds to apply that same methods in murdering white farmers and torture whites been incarcerated for mediocre offenses. This all they do in order to gain sole dictatorial control of any "opposition." This is the Communist Socialist control methods they were taught in Russia- practiced and perfected it in their own "Gulags" on their own cadres during their so-called "Struggle" era- and now through this vile way of oppression- they aim to discard of all those opposing them (The Lethuli-House Polatriate)-and thus change South-Africa into a solitary one-party state...a-la Zimbabwe.
What could they feel for a white Boer? What do they feel for the Boer's heritage, his values, his freedom, street names, town names, history...or his future? They still are the "Struggle" tin-pot murderers...only with lots of power now. They only hide behind a farce mask of flat denial, corruption, lies and "democracy"- whilst they now use 3rd force killers and state security funding and forces to do their dirty work. Furthermore is the current "president" not only being accused of rape, extortion, corruption and hate speech...he also is accused of been an knowing accomplice in the murder of his own cadres in the ANC torture camps. Now we could also figure out Eugene Terreblanche's murder. They want to get rid of all "opposition" that might pose a threat to their one party state.....a police state. Thus also the reason for their bitter fight to get control over the media through their dubious "Information Law"- to pull a blanket over their vile past and future one-party socialist plans and deeds. This all was- from the beginning- the plan as set in their "Freedom Charter"- and they will see to it that the "Plan" will be carried out. This was what they fought for- this was what they lived for, died for - and this is what they aim for....a socialist one-party black ANC controlled state.
What is now for example - one can ask- the difference of action between Jacob Zuma and Clive Derby-Lewis...except the fact that Lewis do not face even half the charges Zuma do- but he is languishing 16 years in jail for one alleged offense- whilst Zuma and his gang members in the ANC parades as "heads of state" and "the government." - being accused of multiple-offenses? The answer...BLACK ANC HATRED AND RACISM against all whites in this country. So much for that beautiful Jewish term "Democracy." Irony comes into play that they have the audacity to pump out hundreds of "laws" to keep US "in-line."-Ed
THE ANC PRISON CAMPS:
AN AUDIT OF THREE YEARS, 1990-1993.
Paul Trewhela
Vindication of Searchlight South Africa
SEARCHLIGHT SOUTH AFRICA has been vindicated by three recent
reports and one major press investigation into the system of prison camps run
by the African National Congress in exile.
Still more, the participants in the mutiny in the ANC army Umkhonto we
Sizwe (MK) in Angola in 1984 have been vindicated. There is clear recognition
in all three reports that a major motive for the mutiny was the demand
for democracy in an army tyrannised by the ANC Security Department. Not
a shred of credibility remains for the slur that the mutiny was 'instigated by
enemy agents'.
At the same time, there has been no investigation worth the name into
abuses in the camps run by the South West African People's Organisation of
Namibia (Swapo) in southern Angola, or in camps run by the Pan Africanist
Congress (PAC) in Tanzania and elsewhere.
The three reports into abuses in the ANC appeared between October
1992 and January 1993. The most reliable and significant of these reports, by
Amnesty International (2 December 1992), drew more than half its material
from information previously published in Searchlight South Africa in issues 5
to 9. This information was subsequently confirmed by Amnesty, conducting
its own independent investigation through a full-time professional researcher,
Richard Carver, with whom SSA was frequently in touch.
The ANC was compelled at the highest level to acknowledge its imprisonment,
torture and execution of members in exile as a means of suppressing
critical opinion. It was compelled also to acknowledge the role of Searchlight
South Africa in exposing these abuses. The Weekfy Mail, the leading liberal
newspaper in South Africa, also acknowledged reliance on material published
in SSA more than two years previoasly, as a source for its own exposure of
torture and executions by the ANC.
After long delay, the work of this journal has become front-page reading
in South Africa. It has entered the archives and everyday political knowledge
and debate.
The reality of the ANC's system of prison camps and the nature of its
Security Department, Imbokodo ('the boulder that crushes'), has been established
without question. The ANC is no longer portrayed almost universally
by the left and the liberals as a saindy Robin Hood riding to the rescue of
humanity on a dashing (Hollywood) charger. Where previously there was
silence, or uncritical celebration of the perpetrators of abuses, there now is
routine reference in the South African and international press to the issue of
'the camps'. It is a truth that can no longer be suppressed.
This work was carried out in conditions of extreme difficulty. The Amnesty
report was the culmination of two and a half years of exhausting campaigning,
in all but total isolation, mainly by two people. Amnesty had to be
threatened with exposure before it undertook to carry out this investigation.
Even then there was no certainty that its inquiry — which was taken out of the
hands its South Africa desk — would result in publication.
Whole-hearted, generous and unstinting collaboration was provided to
this magazine by a single British colleague, the former Westminster borough
councillor, Bill McElroy — an outstanding human being worth an army in
any campaign. Southern Africa owes this remarkable man a debt of
gratitude. He is known and loved by many former ANC and Swapo
detainees.
The State of the Left
The campaign provided a painful lesson in the lack of concern for human
rights among socialists and liberals, when relating to nationalist and Stalinist
politics in southern Africa. Only one left-wing socialist group in Britain, the
Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP), and its affiliated organisations internationally,
actively and continuously drew attention to suppression of political
dissent by murder, torture and imprisonment by the ANC and by Swapo
(now the party of government), during the decades of exile.
The other trotskyist groups in Britain, the United States, South Africa and
elsewhere nearly all maintained a stony silence. So did the British Labour
and Liberal parties, which were informed at the highest level of what had
happened in the camps. This was done by Bill McElroy and myself, as coeditor
of Searchlight South Africa, working together in the umbrella organisation,
Justice for Southern Africa. The few individuals who read our journal
and expressed support for our stand were exceptions to the rule. We welcomed
them, but they were as isolated in this matter as was SSA.
These groupings and individuals either justified the methods of Stalinist
dictatorship when practised by the ANC and Swapo, or turned a blind eye.
This failure of moral judgement, in countries where press freedom and
freedom of association are well established, made the work of exposing
abuses extraordinarily difficult. Greater humanity was shown on this issue in
Britain by Baroness Chalker at the Foreign Office. It is sad, but true. The extraordinarily
comprehensive resistance to the fairly straightforward moral issues
posed in this campaign, especially in Britain, indicates a substantial
problem in modern society at the level of thought, of philosophy, of intellectual
culture and ideology. Hopefully, this can be explored in a future issue.
In one instance, the biggest left-socialist group in Britain, the Socialist
Workers Party (SWP), knowingly preserved silence over the assassination in
South Africa in June 1990 of Sipho Phungulwa, a former ANC detainee, even
though a leading member of the SWP had met Phungulwa in Johannesburg
only three weeks previously. This member of the SWP passed information to
Searchlight South Africa, published in issue number 6 (January 1991), which
the SWP excluded from its own press.
At a meeting in the London School of Economics in February 1992, at a
discussion on South Africa convened jointly by SSA, the RCP and the journal
Critique, a leading officer of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), suggested
from the platform that I 'deserved a bullet' after I had spoken to the
meeting about the ANC prison camps. IWo thirds of the audience, members
and supporters of the RCP, cheered vociferously.
Another Trotskyist group, based in the US, in its weekly newspaper
described the editors of Searchlight South Africa as 'New World Order
socialists' serving the interests of the Bush administration, because of our
criticism of the prison camps and the criminality of Mrs Winnie Mandela.
It was much the same within South Africa. When Baruch Hirson, coeditor
of SSA raised the issue of the ANC security department and its prison
camps in his opening address to the Conference on Marxism in South Africa
at the University of the Western Cape in September 1991, the audience froze.
No-one referred to the issue in general discussion. Other attempts to open
the discussion at the University of the Witwatersrand, never happened: there
was apparently no time in the busy academic year for a talk on the subject.
Frozen out in silence or vilified by the left, Searchlight South Africa was
simultaneously subject to arbitrary seizures by security officials in South
Africa, having been banned for commercial distribution in its first three issues.
We have no idea how many copies were confiscated or destroyed.
Individual copies nevertheless percolated through to university libraries
in South Africa and to individuals in the townships and suburbs. In particular,
the article on the 1984 mutiny in the ANC by Bandile Ketelo and four other
former ANC guerrillas in SSA No 5 was widely circulated within the country
by Samizdat, mainly through extensive photocopying. Each copy of this issue
entering die country was read by many readers, passing from hand to hand.
The article was later published as a pamphlet by Justice for Southern Africa
under the title Mutiny in the ANQ 1984. This pamphlet was produced jointly
with the WRP in Britain, which sold it through its bookshop in south London.
To many hundreds of people in South Africa, Searchlight South Africa
provided the first authoritative account of the mutiny and the fate of its victims.
In several instances, SSA and Justice for Southern Africa, working
together, provided families with their first glimmer of hope for the fate of
relatives whom they had last seen, as youngsters, fourteen or more years previously.
In several instances, we provided friends and relatives with the first
reliable account of a death.
Life in Arrears
In the years immediately before and after the return of the exiles, this was the
only South African journal that gave impartial airing to the truth that
everybody in the camps knew by word of mouth, or as the brand of servitude
on their own backs. Despite a few (very few) inaccuracies, inevitable in the
conditions under which the journal is produced, our reporting was and
remains trusted by the exiles.
Several prisoners of the ANC in central and east Africa were released as
a result of the efforts of SSA and Justice for Southern Africa. Slightly safer
conditions of life were secured for former detainees within African states,
and more especially in South Africa itself. Our achievements, however, only
throw into relief immense continuing unmet needs.
Two former ANC detainees with whom we were directly or indirectly in
touch were murdered almost immediately on their return 'home.' These
were Sipho Phungulwa (shot dead in Umtata in the Transkei in June 1990, 'allegedly
by named ANC officials', as Amnesty states, pl7) and Bongani
Ntshangase, 'shot dead by unidentified assailants', as Amnesty records, at
Msinga in Natal on 21 May 1992. More details can be found about the lives
and deaths of these two men in Searchlight South Africa Nos 5,6,8 and 9, and
in the Amnesty report. The bulk of the former victims of the ANC security
department who have returned to South Africa live miserable lives. Some in
disappointment and desperation have turned to alcohol.
It has been a chilling experience. We have struggled in isolation to try to
save the lives of brave and democratic people in South Africa, for whom existence,
as one said recendy, in desperation, is merely 'living in arrears'. In this
we have received no help of any substance from the left, or from liberals, or
from academics, in Britain, South Africa or internationally — rather,
obstruction. It is an issue that involves a mark of shame on nearly all the socialists and
liberals, who uncritically championed the ANC and failed to take the
measure of their own convictions. To this general truth an exception must be
made in the case of those individuals who, against the current in South Africa,
together with the courageous publisher of this magazine in South Africa,
Kevin French, gave their support to our protests against the crimes committed
by the ANC and by Swapo.
Former detainees now fear that a future ANC/National Party coalition
government, bringing together these two dominant undemocratic political
traditions, will be the most authoritarian in the country's history. They stand
in a very dangerous exposed position as this new fusion government comes
into being. Its first task must be to damp down expectations among milions of
blacks for an improvement in their immediate conditions of life. Under these
circumstances, the former detainees' critical understanding of the real nature
of the ANC and its corruption in exile may well prove intolerable.
Their experience of the ANC was and is a learning resource concerning
South Africa's future. By shutting their eyes to this, future oppositional individuals
and groups — socialists, liberals, trade unionists, convinced Christians,
civic-minded individuals and more independent-minded nationalists
— deprive themselves of an opportunity for arming themselves morally and
intellectually in advance.
In exile, the former detainees fought the battle for democracy under the
most difficult and dangerous conditions. They are precious educators of the
society about the need for defense of its civil rights, since they opposed both
the racist, capitalist abuses of the National Party and the Stalinist abuses of
the ANC (directed in large part by its guiding brain, the South African Communist
Party). As such, they cannot be trusted by either of the future main
parties of government.
The problem is: who wants these democratic nuisances? They know too
much. That is why they are dangerous for the powers that be, as members of
the generation that went from the school students' revolt of 1976 to the ANC
mutiny of 1984, and which humorously named the ANCs worst prison after
the Fort prison in Johannesburg. ('Number Four' in Sowetan argot, translated
into Portuguese, became 'Quatro' in Angola).
Despite the work of Searchlight South Africa, and despite the three recent
reports on ANC abuses, former detainees remain severely in danger because
of the world's indifference. Vindication by three reports has not brought
former detainees, or this journal, any relief. Nor has it yet brought any new
courageous support in the form of fresh contributors, distributors or even
subscribers. Yet SSA continues to be the sole disinterested centre for liberal
and socialist international support for the former ANC and Swapo detainees,
despite our own pitiful human and material resources.
This journal has onprinciple refused to attempt to 'use' the detainees for any ideological, political
or organisational end.Our dilemma will appear more clearly after a closer examination of the
three reports, and the public naming of individual ANC torturers and murderersby the Weekly Mail in its issue of 21 October 1992.
Conflict within the NEC
The first report to appear was at once conclusive and yet very far from conclusive.
In this report the ANC had no alternative except to condemn itself
out of its own mouth. In September 1991, Nelson Mandela as president of the
ANC responded to extensive pressure from returned exiles, from leading
members who had not been in exile and — no doubt — from certain foreign
governments, by naming a three person commission of inquiry into abuses
within the ANC in exile. This was in effect an inquiry by the ANC into itself.
It was reported in a footnote in Searchlight South Africa No 8, January 1992, in
which I stated: 'Political observers and victims of the ANC security apparatus
alike expect nothing to come of it', (p 24)
What could not be known at the time was that the decision to establish the
commission of inquiry, and then later on, the further decision to publish its
report, was the result of an intensive struggle within the National Executive
Committee of the ANC.
A very sharp conflict took place between NEC members who had run
Umkhonto we Sizwe and the security department in exile — who desperately
tried to prevent any inquiry (and, later, still more, publication of its findings)
— and other NEC members who wanted the truth to be known. These were
mainly more civic-minded ANC activists who had led the campaign of the
United Democratic Front within the country during the 1980s.
Exile leaders who adamantly opposed an inquiry were Chris Hani (secretary-general of
the South African Communist Party, former deputy commander of
Umkhonto and the person most responsible for suppression of the mutiny in
Umkhonto), Joe Nhlanhla (head of the ANC's Department of Intelligence
and Security from 1987, and thus head of security while Quatro prison was in
operation) and Jacob Zuma (a leading member of the SACP in exile, and
head of counter-intelligence in Umkhonto from 1987). The ANC president, Nelson Mandela, gave his support to those in favour of holding the inquiry
and, later, of publishing its report; and this grouping prevailed.
Taking place behind closed doors, this struggle was of immense importance
for the future of democracy and civic conditions generally in the whole
of southern Africa. At stake were two different styles of leadership within the
ANC, the one — of the 'external' leaders — deriving from three decades of
closed, autarkic, command society in the camps with its model derived from
the Soviet KGB and the east German Stasi; the other, of the 'internal' leaders,
from the more open and pluralistic culture developed in the trade unions and
civic associations within the country during the 1970s and 1980s.
A major concern of the 'internal* leaders was that in a future electoral
campaign, under a new constitution, the state security forces would use
secret information to discredit the ANC because of past human rights abuses
by 'external' leaders in the camps. There was no way 'internal' leaders could
know the background of their exile colleagues, in advance of the selection of
candidates, without an inquiry by the ANC itself. That decided the matter.
The commission appointed by Mandela was headed by a respected South
African barrister, Advocate Thembile Louis Skweyiya, SC. Its official title
was The Commission of Enquiry into Complaints by Former African National
Congress Prisoners and Detainees, and was known as the 'Skweyiya
Commission'.
Its report, conveyed to Mandela in August 1992, noted extensive concern
that the commission would carry out a 'tame' investigation. This was principally
because in this inquiry the ANC was investigating itself. In addition,
Skweyiya is a member of the ANC, and his brother, Zola Skweyiya, is a highranking
member of the ANC's legal department. As Officer of Justice in the
ANC in exile, Zola Skweyiya had been frustrated in his brief to investigate the
prison camps. However well intentioned personally, he had been totally ineffective
because the camps remained closed to him. A second member, Ms Bridget Mabandla, like Advocate Skweyiya, is a member of the ANC and a
member of its Constitutional Committee. The third initial member, Mr Charles
Nupen, resigned and was replaced during 1991 by Advocate Gilbert Marcus.
The Commission had no powers to subpoena witnesses, or to compel
them to answer questions. It was dependent on the willingness of witnesses to
come forward, which — given South African conditions — proved in the
Commission's words its 'greatest shortcoming'. Its hearings were not in
public.
Mr Marcus gave proof of personal impartiality in a discussion in Johannesburg
in October 1991 with the researcher appointed by Amnesty International,
who attended some of the sessions of the Commission. The
Commission's independence was however gravely threatened by the fact that
its secretariat was initially in the hands of a young lawyer, Mr Dali Mpofu,
later revealed in the press to be the lover of Mrs Winnie Mandela, then head
of the ANC's Department of Social Welfare and a voracious threat to the
former detainees.
As the scandal concerning Mrs Mandela's personal life rose to the boil,
Mr Mpofu left the commission. With him however also disappeared its
secretariat, seriously compromising it work. The ANC had undertaken that it
would appoint an 'independent lawyer to conduct investigations, interview
witnesses, visit detention camps and lead the evidence before the commission
and to do all things reasonably incidental to the foregoing'. Advocate
Elna Revelas of the Johannesburg Bar, who was not a member of the ANC,
was appointed to this investigatory post. A relatively extensive investigation
then followed — given the crucial limitation that this was an internal inquiry
by a commission appointed by a political party to look into its own abuses.
The reluctance of witnesses to come forward was not, in fact, the
Commission's greatest weakness. Its central flaw lay in its terms of reference.
These had been set in a letter by Nelson Mandela to each of the three commissioners,
referring them in effect to complaints only by living prisoners
about their own previous conditions of detention. By definition this excluded
what needed investigation at least as much: the murder and disappearances
of others. An absurd and arbitrary division was thus created for the Commission
from the beginning. Its report was by its very nature partial, flawed and
massively inadequate. In the eyes of the commissioners, their brief from the
ANC placed the central event in the three decades of the exile — the mutiny
in the ANC in Angola by 90 per cent of its trained troops — out of purview. It
was as if Hamlet's investigation into the troubles in his family were constrained
to omit his father's murder.
The consequences of this flawed brief were very serious. Of the three
reports, that of the Skweyiya Commission received by far the greatest attention
in the South African press. ANC leaders such as Hani were not only exonerated
without proper inquiry but were able to hold up the report
afterwards as providing them with a clean bill of health. In this sense, it served
the classic function of an official fudge.
An Abuse of Power
Nevertheless, the Commission concluded that within the ANC in exile for
the greater part of the 1980s,'there existed a situation of extraordinary abuse
of power and lack of accountability. It confessed to 'staggering* brutality by
the ANC security department, (pp 65,39) The silence of the left and the
vilification of this journal is striking in the light of this admission. Nelson
Mandela accepted the Commissions's conclusions - reluctantly, and
without grace — at a press conference on 19 October 1992. He stated that the
ANC leadership acknowledged 'ultimate responsibility for not adequately
monitoring and, therefore, eradicating such abuses'. (Guardian Weekly, SA,
23 October 1992) This was an evasion. As will be seen, there is evidence that
the top leadership in exile, up to the level of Oliver Tambo as president, condoned
and participated in the practice of abuses. A clear function of the
Skweyiya report was to deflect that impression.
The Commission's treatment of written evidence was dilatory. As one of
the editors of SSA, I posted the history of the mutiny in Umkhonto published
in SSA No 5 to Messrs Mashile-Ntlhoro, Attorneys, the Johannesburg firm
representing the Skweyiya Commission, on 19 May 1992. This was despite
reservations that the full truth could not be revealed in an internal ANC inquiry.
Having worked for an independent international commission of inquiry
since early 1990,1 felt, it necessary to make it as difficult as possible for
an internal inquiry to suppress information. I therefore tried to place this
document on record before the Commission, and in correspondence urged
former ANC detainees to place as much testimony as possible before it as
well. I later received a registered letter from Mr Brian Mashile of Mashile-
Ntlhoro, thanking me for providing the Commission with 'valuable
information'. The letter added: 'We will be corresponding with you in due
course and shall keep you posted of developments.' (Letter, 3 June 1992). No
such communication followed.
In the event, the Skweyiya report made no reference to the article on the
mutiny in SSA No 5. This was a significant and unjudicial lapse. The article in
SSA remains the single most important first-hand published account of
repressions within the ANC and of the mutiny, which took shape mainly in
response to these repressions.
The authors of the article had addressed a letter to Mr Mandela, then in
London, on 14 April 1990. This letter was later reprinted in SSA No 5, where
it was available to the Commission. In this letter, Ketelo and his colleagues
called on Mandela to support their demand for a commission to inquire into
'atrocities' in the ANC camps, (p 68) It was their own first-hand revelations of
tortures and killings, pubhshed in the British press the previous week, that
impelled Mandela to make his first public repudiation of torture by the ANC,
at Jan Smuts airport on 14 April 1990.
For the Commission, or its attorneys, to neglect this article - written by
the individuals who first drew Mandela's attention to the need for an inquiry
was beneath the level of judicial practice. Because of this lapse alone, the
investigation was neither 'full' nor 'thorough,' as Mandela had requested.
The report states that it was 'not within the scope of this Commission to
deal with the causes of the mutiny', (p 55) In so far as repressions and
maltreatment were a very major cause of the mutiny, the limitation is absurd.
The report adds however that there were a
a number of published accounts on the mutiny including a chapter in
the recently published book by Stephen Ellis and Tsepo Sechaba entitled
Comrades Against Apartheid. The authors record that included in
the demands of the mutineers was the suspension of the ANC security
apparatus and an investigation of Quatro. (pp 55-56)
This chapter in the book by Ellis and Sechaba (reviewed in SSA No 9) was
heavily based on the article by Ketelo and his colleagues. In this way, despite
the neglect of the 'valuable information' placed before the Commission by
this journal, the work of Searchlight South Africa could not be avoided.
In the event only 17 detainees gave evidence to the Commission. One was
Pallo Jordan, a leading figure in the ANC's negotiating team, who was held in
Isolation for six weeks by the ANC security department in Zambia in 1983.
According to the report, he was arrested following criticism of the security
department for conducting itself 'like a repressive police force', (p 66)
The Commission was 'eventually also furnished with a copy of the report
of the so-called Stuart Commission into the 1984 mutiny in Angola.
The Skweyiya Commission noted that the contents of this previous internal ANC
inquiry had 'never been made public and, it seems, not formally tabled before
the ANC National Executive Committee', (p 56) This bears out the account
published in SSA No 6 of the sinister and farcical nature of the 1985 ANC national
conference at Kabwe in Zambia in 1985. which, as stated in SSAy
neglected to table the Stuart Commission report.
The Skweyiya Commission in fact vindicates the motives of the mutineers,
and exculpates them from the charge of having been 'enemy agents'. Ellis and
Sechaba, it notes, state in their book that it was widely known that the Stuart
Commission 'attributed blame for the mutiny on the excesses of the security
department, poor political education, poor recreational facilities and quality
of food and the yearning to go home and fight'. The Skweyiya Commission
then places its own stamp of verification on these remarks. "These are indeed
the findings of the Stuart Commission', it states, (p 56)
The Skweyiya Commission did not publish the report of the Stuart Commission,
though it recommended publication. (So far, this appears not to
have been done). Revelations quoted from the Stuart report make it plain
that ANC leaders imprisoned, tortured and executed the mutineers in full
knowledge that they were innocent of the smear of being South African
government agents. The Skweyiya report states that the Stuart Commission
had 'clearly identified' the malaise of brutality in the ANC. (p 65) It quotes
the Stuart report as having stated that force had become 'the rule rather than
the exception' and that coercion was 'indiscriminately used not only as a
punishment but even when carrying out interviews and debriefings'. (ibid)
The then ANC president, Oliver Tambo, certainly knew this when he inspected
the inmates at Quatro in 1987, as reported in SSA No 5 and confirmed
by the Skweyiya Commission, (p 36) Yet neither he nor any other
leader relieved the prisoners of their misery, knowing well they were innocent
of the charge of being 'enemy agents'. In his report as former president in
exile to the ANC national conference in Durban in July 1992, Tambo
repeated against the mutineers the brutal and now discredited assertion:
'Enemy Agents!' {Sunday Star, Johannesburg, 21 July 1992) It was then, as it
had been in exile, an incitement to murder and brutality.
The Skweyiya Commission's Conclusions Contrary to Tambo, the report concludes:
(i) Tliose witnesses who were detained without trial should have the allegations
against them unequivocally and unconditionally withdrawn... These witnesses
deserve, in our view, a clear and unequivocal apology for the wrongs
that they have suffered.
(ii) Allwitneses who suffered maltreatment while being detained in ANC
camps should receive monetary compensation for their ordeal...
(Hi) Some of the witnesses who appeared before us were, in our view, in need of
medical and psychological assistance. Such should be offered and provided
by the ANC.
(iv) Some of the witnesses expressed the desire to continue their education
which had been interrupted by longperiods of detention. We recommend that
the ANC provide assistance in this regard.
(v) Detainees who lost property should be compensated for such loss.
(vi) It is apparent to the Commission that many people suffered in the ANC
camps... We suggest, therefore, that consideration be given to the creation of
an independent structure which is perceived to be impartial and which is
capable of documenting cases of abuse and giving effect to the type of recommendations
made in this report..:
(vii) We are aware that allegations have been made concerning the disappearance
and murder of prisoners... (Vie) allegations are of the most
serious nature and demand investigation. We therefore suggest that the impartial
and independent structure referred to in paragraph (vi) above, or some
other appropriate body be charged with the responsibility of investigating all
allegations of disappearance and murder.
(mi) We strongly recommend that urgent and immediate attention be given to
identifying and dealing with those responsible for the maltreatment of
detainees... It is clear that several persons against whom serious allegations
of brutality have been levelled are currently employed by the ANC in the
security department.
A list of such persons will be supplied to the President of
the ANC. It would be wrong in our view to limit the responsibility to such persons.
Viere are clearly persons in the senior ranks of the security department
who were responsible for the situation in the camps and who should not escape
the net of accountability. We consider this recommendation to be of the
greatest importance, particularly in the light of the role that the ANC is likely
to play in a future Government. No person who is guilty of committing
atrocities should ever again be allowed to assume a position of power. Unless
the ANC is prepared to take decisive action, the risk of repetition will forever
be present. The best formula for prevention is to ensure that the perpetrators
ofbnitality are brought to account and are seen to be brought to account.
(be) [The Commission here recommends that secret ANC internal reports into
the death ofTtiami Zulu in Zambia in 1989, and of the Stuart Commission
into the 1984 mutiny in MK, be made public.
(x) [The Commission finally recommends that in keeping with its terms of reference,
its report be released to the public 'as soon as possible*. In the event,
this was to take two months, while ANC leaders debated how to handle these
damning conclusions.] (pp 68-74)
The principal blame for the conduct of the ANC security department was
placed by the Commission on a single individual, Mzwai Piliso, head of the
ANCs Department of Intelligence and Security until 1987. Piliso admitted
personal participation in tortures. His task, in his own words, was to extract
information 'at any cost'. The report states that Piliso was 'relieved of his
duties' in 1987, and that the views and attitude of his successor at the head of
a provisional directorate of security, Joe Nhlanhla, 'contrasted sharply* with
those of Piliso. No evidence is provided for this assertion.
Sizakhele Sigxashe, head of the military tribunal which ordered public execution
of mutineers at Pango camp in 1984, is cited as a member of the 'new
department' which, according to the report, was 'charged with remedying the
past', (p 63) There is no reference in the report to Sigxashe's prominent role
in ordering executions, which is clearly stated in the article by Ketelo and his
colleagues. (SSA No 5. p 52) Nor therefore is there any explanation how a
person responsible for ordering executions could be 'charged with remedying
the past'. At this point the Skweyiya Commission report becomes
whitewash. The failure of the Commission to place on record the 'valuable
information' provided by SSA no 5 reveals itself here as prejudicial.
The Curious History of Chris Hani
In the same way, the Commission was able to exonerate Chris Hani, the then
Umkhonto commissar. Hani was permitted to express his 'feelings ofrevulsion' at oppressive practices in the ANC without becoming subject to
normal cross-examination, (p 60) This is particularly important because of
Hani's current status as secretary-general of the SACP and his former position
as Umkhonto chief of staff, with a major following among its commanders.
There are several explicit references to oppressive conduct by
Hani in Ketelo's article. These too were ignored by the Commission, which
reported that Hani told us of his increasing concern for what he described as 'the horrors
of Quatro' [in bold type in the report] and how he and others had insisted
on the adoption of the Code of Conduct of 1985. [This Code was
a dead letter — PT]
He described some of the members of the security
department as 'really vicious', a description which was amply borne out
by the evidence. He felt that the ANC as an organization built upon
respect for human rights had an obligation to acknowledge and redress
the wrongs of the past and to prevent them from happening in the future,
(pp 60-61)
The article by Ketelo and his colleagues includes the following references
to Hani.
1. In the second stage of the mutiny, duringthe democratic andpeacefid drawing
up of grievances at Viana camp outside Luanda in February 1984, Hani "with
an AK submachine gun, made his appearance on the side of the loyalists
chasing and firing at those who wanted to join the mutineers', (p 44)
2 Standing beside two members of the Liberation Committee of the Organisation
for African Unity, Hani made a speech to the troops at Viana in which he
denounced the mutiny and its demands as 'an adventure instigated by disgruntled
elements'. (p47)
3. Hani and the Umkhonto commander Joe Modise 'accompanied a group of
security personnel to round up those who had escaped arrest at Viana '. When
a captured mutineer tried to explode a g?enade in the military vehicle in which
Hani and Modise were escorting their prisoner, Hani issued instructions to
the security personnel to shoot [the prisoner] on the spot, but Modise intervened
saying"he [the prisoner] must go and suffer first"'. (p48) The prisoner,
Vuyisile Maseko (real name Xolile Siphunzi) was last known by the authors
of the article to have been left in Luanda State Prison when the mutineers
were released in December 1988.
4. MweziTwala (travellingnameKhotsoMorena), amemberoftheCommittee
of Ten which was elected to lead the mutiny, was 'shot from behind in the
presence of Joe Modise and Chris Hani during their round-up of other
mutineers', (p 50) Twala survived.
5. Following the decision by the military tribunal headed by Sigxashe to execute
seven of the mutineers at Pango camp in the third and final stage of the
mutiny, Hani 'endorsed their execution', which he appears to have witnessed
himself, (p 53) Another member of the tribunal was Morris Seabelo, 'a
former commander and commissar at Quatro and at that time chief of
security in the whole of the Angola region ofMK'. (p 52) Seabelo (real name
Lulamile Dandle) has been described by participants in the mutiny as Hani's
'closest lieutenant'. Prisoners at Quatro were told by guards that Hani was in
fact a member of the tribunal himself, and that he was present at the executions,
(personal communication) Similar allegations were made to the
Douglas Commission, discussed below, Hani denies this. SSA has not been
able independently either to verify or disprove these allegations. They are
matters that the Commission did not investigate.
6. Finally, together with Stanley Mabizela, afellow member of the ANC National
Executive Committee (NEC), Hani personally suppressed all elected
structures at Dakawa camp in Tanzania in late December 1989, in order depose former mutineers who had been freely elected by ANC exiles. These
included the chairman and organising secretary of the elected committee representing
all the exiles in Tanzania.
An Admission Hani and other top ANC leaders were spared by the Skweyiya Commission's
terms of reference and by its decision to place responsibility for investigating
details of torture, murders and disappearances, and for naming names, on
yet another commission.
Prior to the Skweyiya report, the most serious investigation into abuses in
the camps published in South Africa was an article by Hein Marais in the
journal Work in Progress, in its issue of June 1992. Marais gives an impartial
assessment both of the book by Ellis and Sechaba and of the article in
Searchlight South Africa No 5, which he acknowledges by name at several
points. An editorial explains the editors' decision to look closely at the dark
chapter, both in the interests of the ANC itself, and in the interests of
democracy in the long-term'. It urges ANC leaders to 'come clean', arguing
that the organisation could not afford to have its image tarnished at election
time by the National Party, which would exploit every weakness. Appearing
in the closing months of the secret sessions of the Skweyiya Commission, this
issue of WIP bears the marks of a strenuous efforts by 'internal' leaders of the
ANC and the SACP to force the Commission to publish. Marais nevertheless
does address the central moral issues.
Next to a photograph of Hani, the journal cover ran the headline: ANC
Camps: Hani opens up'. There is very little opening up by Hani. Forgetting
his own role in damning the first ANC detainees to return to South Africa as
'enemy agents' (on South African television, in mid-1990), Hani presents
himself as the person most responsible for ending executions in 1984, which
he says he had always opposed. He declares that while certain ANC members
should not be part of a new security force in South Africa, and that a parliamentary
committee should oversee the security apparatus, abuses in the
ANC had happened only 'to a very small extent'. The more the evidence is
studied, the more it appears that Hani has adapted himself chameleon-like to
every terrain.
Within days of its publication of the Skweyiya report, the Weekly Mail
summed up its inadequacy in a major front-page article. It headed its exposure:
The names the ANC tried to hide'. (21 October 1992) The article by
Ketelo and others in SSA, the major suppressed document of the Commission,
formed a principal basis to thzWAfs investigation. In the preceding
week, a journalist on its staff phoned Ketelo in Britain to question him in
detail about the article. He was intensively questioned about his relation to
this journal. (It must be stated emphatically that Ketelo has no relation to
Searchlight South Africa beyond having been the principal author of the article
in issue No 5).
An interview with Ketelo then appeared as part of the three-page investigation
by the WM. About half the names and details of torturers cited by the
WM confirmed information published over two years earlier in SSA and
posted to the paper at the time. It was not until after the ANC published the
Skweyiya report that the Weekly Mail moved to publish its own investigation,
confirming and supplementing Ketelo's article in detail. Even then, despite
citing Ketelo, it carried no reference to Searchlight South Africa. There was
nothing in the WM referring readers to Ketelo's article, despite its central
place in the literature on ANC abuses. In its own fashion, and for its own
reasons, the WM thus continued the strange relegation of this journal to the
land of the living dead.
In almost comical fashion, the WM was then forced to acknowledge the
existence of this journal the following week. This was at the instance of the
ANC itself. As the WM reported, its revelations 'sparked outrage' from the
ANC. For the first time, the ANC now publicly acknowledged the work of
Searchlight South Africa in exposing its abuses. Its spokesperson, Carl
Niehaus, stated: "The names, some of which are completely unknown to us, are clearly
drawn from a magazine article published in Searchlight South Africa
Vol 2 No 11990, and is [sic] therefore available for all people to read.
We find it regrettable that a newspaper such as The Weekly Mail with its
own outstanding record of exposing abuse and corruption should not
have seen fit to pay attention to accuracy and detail."
Among other things it states that Maurice Seabelo died mysteriously in
Lesotho. Now again the WM lifts this terminology from the magazine
article, whereas even a superficial investigation or an inquiry to the
ANC would have revealed what is a matter of public record. Maurice
Seabelo was among those killed in SADF raids on Maseru in December
1985. {WM, 30 October 1992)
Seabelo was the first commander at Quatro, which was known formally
both as 'Camp 32' and after his death as the 'Morris Seabelo Rehabilitation
Centre'. Substantial detail is provided mSSA No 5 about Seabelo, who at the
time of the mutiny was chief of security of the whole of the Angola region of
Umkhonto. As Hani's closest lieutenant, Seabelo sat on the tribunal which
ordered death by firing squad for the seven mutineers at Pango. He later
boasted to prisoners in Quatro that he had personally taken part in the executions,
blasting his victims with an RPG7 anti-tank bazooka rocket. Survivors
were compelled to witness the mutilation of their comrades, (personal communication)
Without citing its source, the WM article of 23 October had repeated a
phrase by Ketelo and his co-authors in 55/4 No 5, concerning Seabelo's
death. They had stated that in late 1985 Seabelo had 'mysteriously lost his life
in an underground ANC residence in Lesotho, where none of those he was
with, including Nomkhosi Mini, were spared to relate the story', (p 54)
Ketelo did not state that this mass killing took place in an SADF raid, but it
could easily be inferred. It was indicative of the ANC that it chose to make an
issue over such a phrase.
In reply, the WM stated that as well as drawing on 55/4 its report had been
based 'on a variety of sources, and no names were included unless they were
corroborated by more than one source'. It argued cogently that where people
in authority had knowledge of torture being carried out by individuals directly
under their command, this amounted to complicity. It asked:
If the minister of law and order, the commissioner of police or a senior
officer under his command, knew that certain detainees were being
tortured in security police detention and chose not to intervene, do we
not accuse them of the same crime?
[b]A Type of Ambiguity[/b]
The WM suggests a much broader scope for inquiry concerning Hani's activities
than provided by the Skweyiya Commission. Hani's role, it stated, was
'ambiguous/ It notes that
according to several affidavits and accounts by former detainees he endorsed
the decision by the Military Tribunal for the execution of seven
of the rebels (which he denies) and was present at the subsequent execution
of four others. They also say that he was present when Mwezi
TWala was shot in the back in Angola in 1984.
Former ANC detainees also say that at times he suppressed their right
to speak and hold office (after their release) and did not keep the
promises he had previously made to them. They say he also did little to
help them while they were in detention in Quatro.
Investigation of the role of ANC leaders in executions appears to be part
of the remit of a new commission named by the ANC a month after publication
of the Skweyiya report. It includes Mr Sam Motsuenyane (an elderly
South African businessman), Mr David Zamchiya (a former Zimbabwean
government official) and Ms Margaret Burnham of the United States.
{Weekly Mail, 27 November 1992)
554 has no additional information about the working of this new commission.
It suffers the same defect as the Skweyiya Commission: whatever the
merits of its members, it represents an organisation investigating its own
malpractice. The evasivesness of the Skweyiya Commission in relation to
Hani does not inspire confidence in the will or ability of the new commission
to name names comprehensively, to specify crimes committed and to recommend
firm measures for exclusion of the perpetrators from office.
As the WM pointed out, several high-ranking torturers and killers continue
to work in the ANC security department operating out of party headauarters
in Shell House, Johannesburg. These include Nelson Mandela's
personal bodyguard, MB Mavuso (Umkhonto travelling name 'Jomo'), a
former guard at Quatro who is 'widely alleged to have been directly involved
in torture', (ibid)
Another torturer currently working in ANC headquarters, travelling
name Sizwe Mkhonto - a former student at the Moscow Party Institution,
trained in intelligence in East Germany and the USSR — was camp commander
at Quatro for several years, starting while still in his teens. This
brutalised youth called the principal leader of the mutiny, Ephraim Nkondo,
from his cell in Quatro on Saturday 26 May 1984. This was shortly after the
crushing of the mutiny in Pango camp. Nkondo was seen the same day being
pulled through the camp with a rope around his neck, (personal communication)
The next day he was found dead in his cell, with a rope around his neck.
Without strict accounting for the torture and murder of individuals such as
Nkondo, the ANC continues to carry the mark of Cain. It remains to be seen
whether the new commission headed by Mr Motsuenyane - adirecoroflCI
(South Africa), president of the Boy Scouts in South Africa and founder and
chairman of the National African Chamber of Commerce (Nafcoc) — can
honestly confront this past.
As its title indicates, the report by Amnesty International, the second to
appear, is far more adequate to the subject. Entided: 'South Africa: Torture,
ill-treatment and executions in African National Congress camps', this was
the most balanced of the three reports. It notes that officials of politically impartial
human rights bodies in South Africa had informed Amnesty that they
would have been 'willing to establish a genuinely independent commission of
inquiry had they been approached by the ANC. (p 21) The ANC did not approach
them.
Amnesty is very forthright that the ANC's torturers and killers should
never be allowed to hold positions of authority within the organization or under
any future South African administration. In particular, they should
never be in a position where they have responsibility for law enforcement
or custody of prisoners, (p 26) Such a cleansing of the stables has yet to begin.
Amnesty is lucid in pointing out weaknesses in the terms of reference and
operation of the Skweyiya Commission, particularly its failure to 'analyze the
chains of command within the security department and MK, and between
these bodies and the ANC leadership, in order to establish political responsuity
for what went on in the camps', (p 23) This is the most sensitive issue for
the leaders in exile, and therefore least accessible to an internal closed inquiry.
The Amnesty report indicates that the ANC's system of providing nearly
all its black members in exile with travelling names, or noms de guerre, con
tinues to screen the identities of both victims and their persecutors. This is
shown by continued effective anonymity of torturers such as Sizwe Mkhonto
and of the seven men executed at Pango. (They are not anonymous of course
to South African state security officials, or to Imbokodo, only to the general
public).
The names of the seven people executed at Pango are taken by Amnesty
from Ketelo's article. But these are travelling names, fictions, and therefore
serve to obscure of the fate of these people to their relatives. The best known
of these men, referred to in Searchlight South Africa and in the Amnesty
report by the travelling name James Nkabinde, was Mlamli Namba. (personal
communication) Along with several other members of Imbokodo,
Namba resigned from the security department in 1980 in protest at its
authoritarian behaviour and because of corruption at ANC headquarters in
Lusaka. As stated in Ketelo's history of the mutiny, he had been a personal
bodyguard to Tambo in Lusaka. Namba's fate is therefore a personal
reproach against Tambo.
[b]The Responsibility of Oliver Tambo[/b]
The third of the three reports summarises the results of an inquiry by a Durban
advocate, Robert Douglas SC, commissioned by an explicitly procapitalist
organisation based in Washington DC, the International Freedom
Foundation (IFF). Its most important section consists of extracts from about
60 sworn depositions made in the second half of 1992, mostly from survivors
of the camps. These depositions need to be carefully checked and assessed in
their original form, since witnesses were not cross examined and their statements
may well contain some individual errors as well as unfounded assertions.
In time, however, and in the course of thorough historical research,
they will provide a major source of information for a fuller historical picture
of the ANC in exile.
Outside the archives of state security and the ANC itself,
they represent the biggest body of first-hand statements yet collected about
the life of the ANC in exile. Judging from extracts from witnesses whose experiences
were previously recorded in this journal, the material presented as
evidence by Douglas does appear to reflect the actual statements of survivors
of the camps and generally does not appear to have been falsified. Survivors
of the mutiny and victims of the security department think highly of the
evidence, though not necessarily of Douglas' method of drawing conclusions,
(personal communication)
The report is particularly damaging to the reputation of Tambo. Witness
25 (they are not named) is described as having joined the ANC inside South
Africa in 1978, eventually becoming a senior member of the intelligence wing
after leaving the country. He states:
I am fully familiar with the command structure of both the security and
intelligence wings in the ANC during those years. At the head of both
was Oliver Tambo, the President of the ANC. The security wing was
commanded by Mzwai Piliso [condemned by the Skweyiya Commission
for his forthright advocacy of torture] and the intelligence wing by
Sezekele Sigxashe [head of the tribunal that ordered the execution of
the mutineers at Pango]. (p 45)
A former medical officer in the camps, interviewed by Douglas, is also
cited as saying that after the influx in 1976, 'President Tambo appointed him
to a senior position in the security department to assist with the screening of
new recruits'. This witness is then quoted as saying that:
The security system was directly under the President. We reported to
the President direcdy and his secretary Duma Nokwe was the one we
first reported to. (pp 58-59)
Tambo has a powerful case to answer. As president he was no remote,
purely formal figure in the ANC — that is, principally a figurehead or symbol,
like a modern constitutional monarch. He was more in the manner of the
president of the United States, head of the executive: and in this case, at the
time of the mutiny, an unaccountable and largely unelected executive, unrestrained
by checks and balances.
As ANC president he was commander in chief of MK and one of the three senior office-holders in the ANC. (The other two were Alfred Nzo, secretary-general after Nokwe, and Tom Nkobi,
as treasurer). Direcdy under his authority came three sub-departments: 1)
army; 2) security and intelligence; 3) information and publicity. As president,
he thus had more information than anyone else in the whole organisation.
Tambo presided over a crucial session of the High Command of MK,
meeting in Luanda, either in the last week of January or early February 1984.
This meeting took place immediately after the first stage of the mutiny at
Kangandala on the eastern front in Malanje province — when troops refused
to go into action against the Angolan rebel movement Unita — and immediately
before the second stage of mutiny at Viana camp on the outskirts of
Luanda in February, when a Committee of Ten was elected and demands
were drawn up.
Present at this session of the High Command besides Tambo were Nzo;
Nkobi; MK commander Joe Modise; MK chief of staff (and SACP secretary
general) Joe Slovo; SACP leaders Reg September, Mac Maharaj and Cassius
Make; Julius Mokoena, MK chief of personnel; David Moshoeu,
regional commander; and a number of ranking military and security officers.
(Hani was not present). The meeting discussed the grievances already being
expressed by the troops, Tambo taking a leading part.
The top political leaders of the ANC, the SACP, and the top military
leaders of MK, most notably Tambo and Slovo, were therefore well apprised
of the discontent among the overwhelming majority of the ANC's trained
troops. They knew the feeling of the troops, then gathering in Viana, before
the outbreak of full-scale mutiny, and took no adequate measures to meet
their demands. As Ketelo and his colleagues recorded, these were:
1. An immediate suspension of the Security Department and establishment of a
commission to investigate its all-round activities. Included here are alsothe
investigation of one of the most feared secret camps oftheANC, Quatro.
2. A review of the cadre policy oftheANC to establish the missing links that were
a cause for a stagnation that had caught up with our drive to expand the
armed struggle. [This was in essence a demand to be withdrawn from the civil
war in Angola, and to be sent to fight in South Africa against the forces of the
state.-PT]
3. To convene a fully representative democratic conference to review the
development of the struggle, draw new strategies and have elections for a new
NEC (SSAt No 5, p 45)
It is most probable that the High Command, acting as a body, and headed
by Tambo, directed the suppression of the purely peaceful gathering of the
mutineers at Viana, where these demands were formulated in a series of
open, public mass meetings. The ANC suppressed this phase of the mutiny
principally by summoning the Presidential Brigade of FAPLA, the army of
the ruling MPLA party, to storm the camp. In all likelihood this followed a
personal appeal by Tambo to the Angolan president. Close questioning of all
those present at this meeting of the High Command, by commission of inquiry,
meeting in open session, is needed to determine precise reponsibility
for the tortures, imprisonment and deaths that followed.
The Executions at Pango
In his report, Advocate Douglas suggests further dimensions of responsibility
on the part of the ANC leadership. He quotes a very important passage from
the interview with Hani in Work in Progress (June 1992) concerning suppression
of the mutiny in its third and final stage, at Pango camp in May 1984.
Hani states:
The loyalists (if I may use that term) overran the camps. Lives were lost
on both sides. Very sad, because these were all members of the ANC,
fellow South Africans. And that was the end of my role. I was never a
member of the tribunal which tried them. A tribunal was set up by the
ANC to try them, and some of them were sentenced to death. And executed
— it was a big number, about eighteen or nineteen, I can't
remember. I rushed back to to Lusaka and said to the leadership: Stop
the executions, (pp 54-55)
This is the first high-level acknowledgement that the number of people executed
at Pango was much higher than indicated in the article by Ketelo and
his colleagues. Their account was clearly restrained.
Secondly, Hani makes plain in this statement that authority for stopping
the executions lay with the top political leadership of the ANC at the
organisation's headquarters in Lusaka. This suggests primarily Oliver Tambo
himself. Hani's statement is the most important public comment on the
mutiny so far by any leading figure in the ANC in exile. It is puzzling, however,
because as Army Commissar of MK and as the sole member of the NEC in
the region, Hani was himself already the senior leader of the ANC at Pango.
It was left to a relatively far less influential figure in the NEC, Mrs Gertrude
Shope to relieve the suffering of the prisoners, as reported by Ketelo and his
colleagues in SSA No 5. (p 53) As Douglas observes, Hani's statement raises
more questions than it answers. Nothing except questioning, in open commission,
of all relevant ANC officials can satisfy the need for justice in this
matter. No ANC leader of the exile can be trusted with authority until full
knowledge of this individual's conduct is made available to the public.
The principal flaw in the Douglas Commission report relates to instances
of over-straining of the published evidence, to support conclusions condemning
leading figures in Umkhonto: principally Slovo and Ronnie Kasrils,
both leaders of the SACP. In the opinion of this writer, the existing evidence,
including evidence accumulated by Douglas, provides very strong supposition
that both men had extensive knowledge of the system of human rights
abuses in the camps, and perhaps actively participated in authorising it. But
the evidence which is publicly available at present is not yet conclusive. It cannot
be concluded on the available evidence that they had direct, personal,
first-hand responsibility.
Slovo is cited in one deposition as having visited Quatro at night, (p 43)
Prisoners from the mutiny in Quatro were indeed told this at the time by
guards. An Umkhonto soldier, Zondi, whose jaw had been broken at Pango,
told fellow prisoners in Luanda State Security Prison that he had been sent to
military hospital in Luanda on Slovo's orders, following a visit to Quatro.
Zondi later suffered severely at Quatro, where guards repeatedly hit his still
broken jaw, and where he developed epilepsy, (personal communication)
Kasrils is cited as being responsible for visiting a prison camp at Nampula
in Mozambique in 1982 and for incarcerating fourteen Umkhonto soldiers in
a basement at Quibaxe in northen Angola, following their refusal to obey orders
in 1977. (pp 7,43,60) The prison at Nampula was deep in the bush, surrounded
by wild animals and in an area heavily affected by malaria.
The majority of prisoners were MK veterans of the war in Zimbabwe, where they
had fought in the military wing of the Zimbabwe African People's Union
(Zapu). When they refused to be transferred to fight in the civil war in Angola,
demanding to be sent to fight in South Africa itself, they were confined
to Nampula, where some went mad. Kasrils did not deny knowledge of this
camp in a press conference in Johannesburg in January 1993. At this conference,
he and two former participants in the 1977 'mutiny' at Quibaxe
denied that the men imprisoned in the basement had been affected by
noxious fumes. (Weekly Mail, 29 January 1993) Slovo and Kasrils bear
responsibility as senior officers of Umkhonto. The precise limits and extent
or their responsibility for abuses remain unclear.
Douglas unfortunately made no headway in tracking down the drugs
mafia within Imbokodo, a line of inquiry that may well hold the key to the
murder of several ANC personnel in Zambia in 1989, including the highranking
Umkhonto commander Thami Zulu who died under ANC guard in
Lusaka in November 1989.1 Until the criminal network within Umkhonto
we Sizwe, and especially in the security department, is uncovered, the precise
extent of infiltration by South African Military Intelligence must remain unknown.
Whatever the flaws in the report, these are insignificant by comparison
with the additional information it makes available to South Africans about
the organisation which now prepares to govern them. The report is full of
suggestive leads, which need to be followed up by careful, investigative, historical
research. This cannot be done in detail here.
The editors of this journal were invited by letter to assist the investigation
by Mr Douglas. We did not respond, as there was no way of knowing what
kind of hidden agenda lay in his commission by the IFF. Paradoxically, the
report by Douglas was the only one to quote directly from the article by
Ketelo and others m 55^4, and to cite this magazine by name as its source.
There is a long, extended extract from this article in the report - a description
of the mutiny, which Douglas describes as a 'vivid and detailed account/ (pp
20-23) It is the longest quoted passage in the report.
Some former detainees whom we know of provided depositions to
Douglas, others declined. There can be no imputation of 'selling out5 against
those who gave evidence to Douglas. They were completely within their
rights. So too of course was Stephen Ellis, who gave the benefit of his
knowledge to Mr Douglas in Leiden.
That said, it must be stated that it seems extremely likely that the IFF in
South Africa stands close to Inkatha and Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, and
therefore also to the wrecking strategy directed against the ANC and the
SACP by South African Military Intelligence. This is no reflection on the
standing of Mr Douglas as a barrister or on the quality of his evidence, but it
does indicate the serious weakness of liberal and human rights organisations
in South Africa, which all too frequently have compromised their principles
through uncritical support for the ANC.
There is urgent need for these individuals and/organisations to reassess their mode of thinking and activity.
For many ANC detainees there is nowhere to turn for support, except to
an organisation tainted by its relation to the far right. Criticism must be
directed, not to these detainees (many of whom are in despair), but to people
and organisations in South Africa and abroad who abandoned them. In the
absence of liberals and socialists who are prepared to conduct these investigations,
this is left to the IFF and individuals such as Advocate Douglas.
There is a major need for a campaign to compel the ANC to implement
the recommendations of the Skweyiya Commission calling for disclosure of
the names of the guilty and for real, practical monetary restitution to the
detainees. The majority of the former detainees are in desperate poverty. It is
South African and international disgrace, a pall on the conscience of
Liyone concerned with civil rights in the region. Likewise, this journal suports
the demand of former detainees (and of Advocate Douglas) for the
commission headed by Mr Justice Richard Goldstone - investigating murders
and abuses by the security forces of the state - to extend its inquiries to
human rights abuses by the ANC and SACP in exile.
The matter becomes all the more urgent, since merger between the old
South African state security forces and members of the ANC security
department is on the order of the day. Nhlanhla, the head of the ANC's
Department of Intelligence and Security - and one of the leading opponents
of the Skweyiya inquiry - is reported to be in line 'for a top job' in
the new combined force. (Weekly Mail, 29 January 1993)
Maladministration of Justice Like Amnesty, this journal deplores the government's Further Indemnity
Act, which was passed shortly after publication of the ANC commission's
report. The effect of this act is to provide state protection for its own torturers
and murderers and those of the ANC alike. We endorse the call of the
Douglas Commission for those responsible for human rights abuses in the
ANC camps to be prosecuted- but as part of comprehensive prosecution of
the infinitely greater number of murderers and torturers paid by the South
African state. There can be no justice in South Africa without this. Yet it is all
but impossible that it will happen.
The former detainees have real cause to fear for their future. This can be
seen in the Transkei. As the Amnesty report reveals, two and a half years after
the political assassination of the former detainee Sipho Phungulwa in the
Transkei, nobody has yet been brought to trial. This is despite the presence of
witnesses and ballistic evidence, and the fact that two men were belatedly arrested,
charged and released on bail.
Amnesty cites a report in the South African newspaper City Press in late
1992 to the effect that the office of the Transkei Commissioner of Police had
circulated a directive signed by the deputy chief of the Criminal Investigation
Department, ordering police not to arrest ANC members on criminal charges
without first consulting an Umkhonto liaison officer, (p 18) The Transkei
police have denied the report. It seems all too likely to be true.
To former detainees from the camps, it is a foretaste of South Africa to
come. There is urgent need for connections to be made between former
detainees in South Africa and Namibia, and human rights organisations in
South Africa and the world. Without Ml and public justice for the victims of
the prison camps run by the ANC and Swapo, there is no future for civil rights
in the region. Future abuses can not be combatted by people who endorse (or
are silent about) past abuses. An issue of this kind can not be buried in a shallow
grave.
Notes
1. Report of the Commission of Enquiry into Complaints by Former African National Congress
Prisoners and Detainees, Johannesburg, August 1992.
Amnesty International, South Africa: Torture, ill-treatment and executions in African National
Congress camps, London, December 1992 (AI Index: AFR 53/27/92).
The Report of the Douglas Commission, Durban, January 1993.
2. The Guardian in Britain carried a sharp rebuke on its letter page on 19 February 1993 from
Mr Bill McElroy, of Justice for Southern Africa. He pointed to factual errors and bias in a
eulogistic article by Victoria Brittain on Chris Hani, the SACP secretary general, concerning
his role in the mutiny in Umkhonto in Angola in 1984.
3. Ketelo, Bandile, et al (1990), 'A Miscarriage of Democracy: The ANC Security Department
in the 1984 Mutiny in Umkhonto we Sizwe,' Searchlight South Africa No 5, July.
4. Ellis, Stephen, and Sechaba, Tsepo (1992), Comrades Against Apartheid The ANC and
the South African Communist Party in Exile, James Currey and Indiana University Press.
Ellis and Sechaba note that their account of the mutiny 'relies heavily' on the article in SSA
No 5 by Ketelo et al. (p 128, n 3) The reviews of this book were interesting. The ANC
newspaper, New Nation, funded by the Catholic Church, waited until immediately after
publication of the Skweyiya report before printing a very favourable review which took note
of the 'Stalinist socialism' of the SACP and commended the book's "wealth of new information
and insights.' (30 October 1992) By contrast, the review by Garth Strachan - formerly
close to the ANC security department - in the SACP journal African Communist (second
quarter, 1992) - is concerned mainly to question the motives of the authors, and avoids the
central issue of suppression of democratic discussion by the security department through a
bland reference to 'mistakes.' Strachan's review makes no reference at all to the mutiny.
5. Mkatashingo (letter to the editors), The ANC Conference: From Kabwe to Johannesburg,'
Searchlight South Africa No 6 (January 1991).
6. For the mysterious death of Thami Zulu (real name Muzi Ngwenya), poisoned with a
chemical Diazonin used by South African Military Intelligence while under ANC guard in
Zambia in November 1989, see Paul Trewhela, 'A Can of Worms in Lusaka: The Imprisonment
of Hubert Sipho Mbeje,' Searchlight South Africa No 9 (August 1992). A definite
criminal network existed within the ANC in Angola, Zambia and the frontline states. (See
note 10.)
7. The following appear to be the real names of some of the people executed at Pango: Mlamli
Namba, Vusumzi Maxwell Tonisi, Loyiso Victor August, Lucky Samuel Twala, King
George Matshika. These names are derived from named photographs of Umkhonto members
published in an 8-page Fact Sheet titled 'ANC Hell Camps,' abstracted from the Aida
Parker Newsletter No 141, Johannesburg. Names and photographs are almost certainly
from the files of South African Military Intelligence.
8. The Johannesburg newspaper City Press has stated that the IFF is headed by US Congressman
Jesse Helms, whom it describes as 'a renowned ANC-basher and supporter of
Renamo in Mozambique, Unita in Angola and other rightwing causes elsewhere in Africa
and Latin America.' (18 October 1992)
9. Kasrils is described in the Douglas report as deputy commissar of Umkhonto in Angola,
head of Umkhonto special operations and head of its military intelligence (1983-88). He
played a prominent part in events leading to the massacre by Ciskei troops at Bisho in September
1992. (See this issue, Paul Trewhela, 'A Massacre of Innocence.')
10. Earl, a senior figure in Imbokodo in Angola and Tanzania, fled to Kenya in 1990 with his
wife after they rejected efforts by a leading figure in Imbokodo to recruit them into an
operation involving smuggling of drugs into South Africa. The United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees moved them to the United States, (personal communication) Earl
was based at this time in Zambia, where a series of mysterious deaths took place around the
same time, in some cases involving security personnel. One of those murdered was Jackie
Mabuza, a member of the security directorate and nephew of the Imbokodo security chief
Joe Nhlanhla. Mabuza was poisoned in Lusaka in 1989 while attempting to investigate corruption
in the National Executive Committee. (See note 6) A major scandal involving the
top ANC leadership in Lusaka has still to break.
