Alan Wieder has done a wonderful service in researching and writing such a detailed, well constructed narrative, setting the intertwined personal histories in the context of the long and difficult struggle against apartheid. Based on extensive reading of relevant literature, much enriched by interviews, as befits an oral historian, this book provides many new insights to those of us who only knew a part of the lives of Ruth First and Joe Slovo.
From the early years of both activists, the book covers in great detail their political activities and personal lives as they each became involved (through different routes initially) in the struggle against ever strengthening institutionalised racism, a process that culminated in apartheid in South Africa. It then describes how deeply they became involved in the anti-apartheid struggle as state repression grew ever more intense, and as the African National Congress (ANC) took up armed struggle, culminating in the famous Rivonia trial and in exile for most of the ANC leadership that had not been arrested, including First and Slovo. It chronicles their lives in England and back in Africa. This includes a chapter on the assassination of Ruth First at the Centre of African Studies (CEA), Eduardo Mondlane University, Maputo and the expulsion of Joe Slovo and other ANC members from Mozambique, following the Nkomati Accord. Interestingly, it shows how quickly Joe Slovo became reconciled to the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (FRELIMO) afterwards, understanding the factors that motivated that decision, and appreciating that it did not end the South African destabilisation of Mozambique (or indeed of Angola). The final three chapters describe the changes of the late 1980s, the negotiations between the ANC and the National Party and the homecoming, together with Joe's brief term of office as Minister of Housing and his final battle with cancer.
It is always difficult to know what to leave out, especially when covering a long period packed with complex developments and radical changes, and yet Wieder has coped admirably in conveying both intimate aspects and the broad political picture at the different periods in both their lives. Nevertheless, there are some features of that bigger picture that could perhaps have deepened our understanding still further.
When Wieder states that the CODESA (Convention for a Democratic South Africa) talks between the ANC and the National Party in the early 1990s broke down at some points and that Joe Slovo was instrumental at one point in restarting them, that action shows the real commitment to peaceful elections on the part of the ANC. However, this review will argue that the ANC had background knowledge which meant that it was well aware of the likely consequences of any failure of the talks.
The current dominant narrative regarding the end of apartheid treats it as an outcome of negotiations between the National Party and the ANC that encountered difficulties which were overcome largely through the skill and goodwill of Nelson Mandela. This approach ignores the larger interests at play, and treats the National Party as ‘courageous’ and fair in its tactics. The difficulties tend to be treated as arising in part from instability within South Africa, including the assassination of the leader of the South African Communist Party (SACP) Chris Hani in 1993 ‘by a single racist’, and so-called ‘black-on-black’ violence that is left unexplained. This review argues that the violence in South Africa and elsewhere in neighbouring countries was part of a strategy on the part of the National Party, with support from external forces including the United States, of neutralising the effects of the changed strategic situation in southern Africa that followed the ‘battle of Cuito Cuanavale’ in southern Angola in 1988.1 It describes some features of that bigger picture, features that for many will constitute new information. Three events in particular come to mind: first, additional dimensions to the origin of the ANC–SACP armed struggle; second, events which help to shed light on the ANC's decision to engage more seriously in negotiations with the National Party in the late 1980s; and third, evidence of the National Party's tactics in Angola which have crucial bearing on the regional dynamics of the southern African settlement. The account here draws largely on personal experience as well as the experiences and accounts of others who witnessed and were involved in these events, made available to the reviewer via personal conversations and, in the case of Allison Drew, a book chapter and an unpublished paper.
First, with regard to the origin of the armed struggle, Alan Wieder (119–120) states that Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) was formed by a decision of ANC and SACP leaders, including Joe Slovo, and treats a paper by Michael Harmel, a member of the SACP Central Committee, as a foundation. However, it is clear from a book chapter by Allison Drew that Govan Mbeki's experience in Phondoland was probably a more important foundation (Drew 2011). This account by Drew argues convincingly that the Mpondo revolt of 1960 analysed in Govan Mbeki's famous book The Peasants' Revolt (1964, edited by Ruth First) had an influence on ANC leaders during the early stage of armed struggle that has been underestimated. Mbeki believed that the revolt showed that the apartheid government's attempt to use chiefs as pivotal intermediaries to obtain African acquiescence was not working. Fury at collaborating chiefs swept across the Transkei. Fear of the decline suffered in other parts of the Transkei undoubtedly also played a part. In analysing the revolt, Mbeki ‘highlighted the importance of understanding local and regional specificities in developing a political strategy that encompassed town and countryside’ (Drew 2011, 80–81). Rural struggles could last far longer than urban ones, and so were capable of pinning down large government forces, at much lower cost comparatively. Drew shows that the early discussions of the armed struggle involved consideration of four types: sabotage, guerrilla warfare, terrorism and revolution. It is doubtful that guerrilla warfare would have been on the agenda in the earliest discussions had it not been for Mbeki's influence.
MK was founded in November 1961, and its existence was announced through armed sabotage action on 16 December 1961. This was followed by Mandela leaving South Africa early in 1962 to attend the Pan-African Freedom Movement of East, Central and Southern Africa (PAFMECSA) meeting in Addis Ababa.2 Joe Slovo also told Dan O'Meara ‘several times that MK emerged from discussions he had with Mandela in which each was consciously representing their respective organisations (though in Mandela's case he had no mandate from Luthuli, the then ANC president, to do so). The full-throated commitment of the SACP to the armed struggle provoked some internal conflict and departures from the party.’3 By late 1962, it was evident that sabotage was not working, and Mbeki's views became more influential within the MK high command.
What is less well known is that, while abroad, Mandela met his friend Aquino de Bragança,4 and that the latter introduced Mandela to members of the Algerian Front de Libération National (FLN).5 The FLN had recently won a war of independence against France, in which the most brutal measures had been used by France to try to retain control of Algeria, including a massacre of Algerians in Paris. The importance of this initial meeting of Mandela and his fellow ANC member Robert Resha with the FLN is that it led to a series of further meetings in Morocco and Tunisia. Mandela learned at first hand how such an armed struggle might be conducted, and there were offers of logistical and training support from the FLN.6 Precisely such support was later forthcoming from Algeria for the armed independence struggles in the Portuguese colonies, and while working as a journalist, de Bragança coordinated those struggles through the organisation known as CONCP (Conferência das Organizações Nacionalistas das Colónias Portuguesas). Aquino first met Samora Machel when the latter landed in Algeria for military training and he drove Machel to the training camp. At the Ruth First Memorial Colloquium, at University of the Western Cape (UWC) on 17 August 1992, Mandela stated how devastated he had been on Robben Island to hear of the death of Ruth and, later, that of Aquino.7 It becomes easier to understand why it was that Ruth First was invited to work at the CEA in Maputo when one realises that Aquino, Ruth, Joe and Nelson Mandela already knew each other in the early 1960s.
Second, with regard to negotiations, Wieder (292) and others mention that informal negotiations between some ANC members and de facto representatives of the National Party had been going on before this process became public. However, in understanding this change of position on the part of the ANC it is vital also to mention a crucial meeting which took place in September 1988 at St Antony's College, Oxford, which convinced the ANC that negotiations must now begin in earnest. This reviewer was present at the meeting, having just returned from a tour of southern Africa.8 Among those present were Professor Apollon Davidson and three colleagues from the Institut Afriki in Moscow, Frene Ginwala, Essop Pahad, and Harold Wolpe for the ANC, Professor Shula Marks of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Professor Terence Ranger of St Antony's College, a representative from the Cuban Embassy and three senior figures from the Dukakis Democrat Party presidential campaign in the USA. The Cuban representative was there presumably because the Angolans did not have an embassy in the UK at the time, and they needed to be informed of the content of this meeting through the Cuban embassy in London. The Democrat Party members were presumably present because the US government could not be in the same room as the Cuban representative. During this meeting, and speaking in Russian through a translator so that his remarks would be clearly understood by his own colleagues as well as others present, Apollon Davidson said that the Soviet Union was following the same policy as the USA on southern Africa. He made it clear that the Soviet Union felt that it was time for negotiations to be conducted over the future of southern Africa. The ANC seemed to be deeply shocked by this statement, which was met initially with complete silence. This surprised reaction was doubtless because, as Wieder mentions (293), in April 1988 Joe Slovo and Chris Hani had led a delegation to Moscow. At about this time, Slovo had been assured that Moscow would not only continue financial support to the SACP but would increase it. However, Slovo and Hani were also asked to delete the word ‘armed’ from the phrase ‘armed struggle’ in their statement, which should perhaps have been a clue that future support would be more ‘conditional’. The fact that the USA and the Soviet Union were in agreement by September 1988 meant that, realistically, the ANC now had no option but to negotiate.
Within a few weeks of the meeting at St Antony's College, discussions were taking place at the University of York, hosted by the then Centre for Southern African Studies. Once again, this reviewer was present. Some representatives of the ANC were also present, including Tito Mboweni, later Governor of the South African Reserve Bank, but the main discussions were between staff from the European Commission (Directorate-General for Development) and representatives from the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) country group, as defined by the Lomé Convention. The entry of Namibian beef products into the EU market was one item discussed. In other words, semi-official discussions were taking place over the implications of a general southern African settlement. The approximate date for Namibian elections was already pencilled in.
Third, a fuller understanding of the negotiations to end the war against apartheid, and the ANC's position during those negotiations, requires acknowledging crucial regional dimensions and the strategies of the National Party and other parties regarding the regional settlement. In July 1992, while the reviewer was in Angola during the electoral registration process, South African Defence Force (SADF) activity in Angola was frenetic. Despite the fact that South Africa was not a member state of the UN at that time, SADF transport aircraft arrived at Luanda airport with large UN symbols on their tail fins, and offered logistical help for the election process. However, they wished to reserve this support exclusively for areas held by the União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA). This was denied by the national electoral commission (Comissão Nacional Eleitoral/CNE) and they apparently flew to where the Angolans directed them. Despite this high-profile arrival, following which good sense might have suggested that they stayed neutral in the election process and followed peace mission protocol, members of the SADF were caught red-handed photographing sensitive military equipment at Luanda airport. In addition, a group led by the same SADF officer who had previously placed a bomb in the ANC office in Maputo arrived in Angola on a clandestine sabotage mission. This group was promptly caught and arrested.
Within a day or two of their arrest, the front page of the leading Angolan national newspaper, Jornal de Angola, carried a story outlining the South African strategy for limiting the effects of the new settlement in southern Africa. The first phase of this plan had already been carried out by then, namely the ‘successful’ outcome of limiting the vote for the South West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO) in Namibia to less than the two-thirds majority required to make immediate constitutional changes. An electoral study conducted in Namibia by Professor Lionel Cliffe from the University of Leeds, Balefi Tsie, a prominent Botswanan political scientist, and others had already shown the brutality of the tactics, including exemplary public killings, used to prevent the two-thirds majority for SWAPO (see Cliffe et al. 1994).
The second phase was to secure victory for UNITA in the upcoming Angolan elections.9 UNITA's electoral campaign was facilitated primarily by the fact that, although the US Senate had stopped funding for UNITA, disbursement of funds under the previous fiscal year's funding was still continuing. As a result, 183 Humvees arrived in the port of Luanda during the electoral registration process.10 UNITA refused to hand them over for use as ambulances. These Humvees presumably were very useful during the subsequent war. A supposedly independent US non-governmental organisation was pressured into engaging in dubious activity which, had it come to light, could have been used to discredit the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA) during the election campaign.11
In addition, UNITA was allowed to hold de facto election meetings during the registration campaign,12 when these were officially banned. An attempt was also made to insert UNITA election slogans into the supposedly neutral civic education leaflets that were designed to encourage people to vote. This manoeuvre was prevented by a Portuguese member of the CNE. He was a former helicopter pilot who had fought against FRELIMO in Cabo Delgado, but he was having none of this attempt to rig the election. This information was not publicly revealed.13 All of this showed the lack of good faith on the part of the then South African and US governments. At the Ruth First Memorial Colloquium in August 1992, the reviewer made known the above facts concerning Angola to a senior ANC CODESA negotiator, Jeremy Cronin, only to be told that the ANC was well aware that the SADF were even sending military supplies to UNITA in addition to the electoral materials seen in Luanda, but that the ANC could not state this publicly for fear of jeopardising the negotiations.
The third phase of the plan described in Jornal de Angola was to neutralise the ANC as far as possible prior to elections. While many media commentaries on the period between the release of Mandela from prison and the elections of 1994 treat ‘black-on-black’ violence as somehow random, the Third Force was almost certainly a reality during this period,14 and these events in South Africa fit in with the three-phase plan outlined in the press in Angola in July 1992. Far from there having been a courageous decision by the National Party to negotiate in good faith, it is evident that the ‘transition’ was extremely fraught, with a new geo-politics forcing the hand of the ANC, while the National Party engaged throughout in dirty tricks designed to undermine every aspect of the strategic defeat that they had previously suffered at Cuito Cuanavale.